United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"By Thor!" he cried, "here lies the corpse of Eric Brighteyes!" and Atli wrung his hands and wept, for he loved Eric much. "Be not so sure that the men are dead, Earl," said one, "I thought I saw yon great carle move but now." "He is Skallagrim Lambstail, Eric's Death-shadow," said Atli again. "Up with them, lads see, yonder lies a plank and away to the hall.
The flock of God had long left the green pastures and still waters of outward peace, and were passing through the valley of death-shadow, every step of the path being infested by the enemies of their peace. The wolf, indeed, was coming.
"'Tis the Death-Shadow of the Miamis!" he cried, in choked accents, striding toward us along the narrow plank, and pointing eastward. "I knew it must come, for our doom is sealed." What centuries of Indian superstition rested behind the fateful utterance, I know not; but facing that horrible spectre as we did, his words held me in speechless awe.
Tears were rolling down the face of the once stern old man, as he pressed his son's hand again and again, and murmured blessings on him, and thanks to GOD for his safe return; and Ernest, as he marked the death-shadow on his father's brow, felt that a tie was tearing away which had been woven more intimately than he had supposed with his heart's fibres.
She was dressed in dark, soft garments very simple and graceful in effect, and her bearing was that of one accustomed to willing service from others. Her smile was as sad as her eyes which had in them the death-shadow.
Slowly and solemnly the intruding gloom overspread the sweet splendour of the shining sky, creeping like a death-shadow over a dear face, and making the most talkative feel strangely quiet and ill at ease.
I noticed Captain Wells standing beside me. "You thought I raved up yonder," he said gravely; "to-morrow will prove that my interpretation of the vision was correct." "You believe it a prophecy of evil?" "It was the warning of the Great Spirit the Death-Shadow of the Miamis. Never has it appeared to men of our tribe except on the eve of great disaster, the forerunner of grave tragedy.
"I will not tell you what I went through in that interval. But even in its utmost agony even in those terrible throes that love must suffer before it can be disembodied of selfish desire my love for you sufficed to withhold me from suicide, without the aid of any other motive. In the midst of my egoism, I yet could not bear to come like a death-shadow across the feast of your joy.
So when he came into the court, bravely clad, with Skallagrim at his back, who was now almost recovered of his wound, the King called out to him to draw near, saying that he desired to look on the bravest viking and most beauteous man who sailed the seas, and on that fierce Baresark whom men called "Eric's Death-shadow."
So he thought, and thought; and prayed silently for the old drummer groaning on his bed of pain; and pleaded for Atwater lying there, still, with the death-shadow he had foreseen darkening the portal of his body. And Frank longed for his mother, as he grew weary and weak, until at last sleep came in mercy, and dropped her soft, vapory veil over his soul.
Word Of The Day