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Tears sometimes came to Hetty's eyes at such words as these; and good Father Antoine went with renewed fervor to his prayers for her conversion. In the centre of the village was a square laid out in winding paths, and surrounded by fir trees.
Marie rapids, that rise and leap and throb like a storm hurling through the fir forest like the distant rising of an Indian war-song; it swept up those mighty archways until the gray dome above me faded, and in its place the stars came out to look down, not on these paleface kneeling worshippers, but on a band of stalwart, sinewy, copper-coloured devotees, my own people in my own land, who also assembled to do honour to the Manitou of all nations.
A Flemish cure for the ague is to go early in the morning to an old willow, tie three knots in one of its branches, say, "Good-morrow, Old One, I give thee the cold; good-morrow, Old One," then turn and run away without looking round. In Sonnenberg, if you would rid yourself of gout you should go to a young fir-tree and tie a knot in one of its twigs, saying, "God greet thee, noble fir.
Walter had many messages to send to his mother and Master McCleary, and if the messenger remembered them all his memory must have been prodigious. Finally, the young men crept into the lean-to where Sewatis lay, apparently sleeping, and very shortly after they had stretched themselves out on the fragrant fir boughs their eyes were closed in slumber.
For the house in general there were some ingenious arrangements in fir cones and small shells. The Christmas-tree was set up in the great drawing-room on the ground floor and reached almost to the ceiling. It was a beautiful young fir, so fresh and fragrant of pine that the breath of the woods seemed to cling to it still. A large party had gathered for the lighting-up.
Umbria was then, as it is now, a beautiful and fertile valley, rich in citron, almond, aloe, with forest trees of oak and pine and fir, to which long cultivation has added grapevines, engarlanding the elms, and orchards of the pale-leaved olive-tree, that give the landscape a somewhat transparent, aërial effect.
"You're reprieved, West," he announced simply. The desperado staggered to the sled and leaned against it faintly. His huge body swayed. The revulsion was almost too much for him. "I I knowed you couldn't treat an old pardner thataway, Tom," he murmured. Morse took the man out to a fir tree. He carried with him a blanket, a buffalo robe, and a part of the dog harness.
In, another moment he had stepped out into the January morning. It was clear and still as the night had been. In the east there was a pale promise of sun; the reddish-brown trunks of the fir woods had just caught it and rose faintly in glowing in endless vistas and colonnades one behind the other.
Then he stopped, and looked with blank, unseeing eyes down the slanting fir avenue. "It is a mystery," he went on "the very mystery of mysteries; the Sphinx is nothing to it. A month ago we were strangers I neither knew nor cared that such a person as Elizabeth Templeton existed; and a week a little cycle of seven or eight nights and days has wrought this wondrous change. Am I the same man?
At the Russian post-house we found only a woman with the usual troop of children, the eldest of whom, a boy of sixteen, was splitting fir to make torches. I called out "hevorste!" After some consultation with the old woman, a younger boy was sent off somewhere, and we sat down to await the result.
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