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It was a cheerless prospect he saw through the haze of rain. Back into the distance ran a stretch of slate-gray water, flecked and seamed by the white tops of little splashing waves, for a nipping wind blew down the lake. On either side rose low hills, dotted here and there with somber and curiously rigid trees.
As usual he was up with the dawn, and after his breakfast of cold boiled rice and pork he walked down to the shore for a farewell look at the village. As he passed along the little crooked street he could see old women sitting on the mud floors of their huts, by the open door, weaving. They were all poor, wrinkled, toothless old folk with faces seamed by years of hard heathen experience.
The notary, whose face was so seamed by the smallpox that it seemed to be covered with a white net, formed a perfect contrast to the rotund person of the mayor, whose face resembled a full moon, but a warm and lively moon; its tones of lily and of rose being still further brightened by a gracious smile, the result not so much of a disposition of the soul as of that formation of the lips for which the word "simpering" seems to have been created.
Ralph Genvil, a veteran whose face had been seamed with many a scar, and who had long followed the trade of a soldier of fortune, stood apart from the rest, holding his horse's bridle in one hand, and in the other the banner-spear, around which the banner of De Lacy was still folded. "What means this, Genvil?" said the page, angrily.
But the four claws hold fast; life, before withdrawing from them, left them rigidly contracted, so that they should support without yielding the struggles and withdrawals to follow. Now the wing-covers and wings emerge. These are four narrow strips, vaguely seamed and furrowed, like strings of rolled tissue-paper. They are barely a quarter of their final length.
In some way, perhaps by the growing mass of rushing emotion set in action by some deep-going phrase, or perhaps by some interior slow weakening of stubborn will, Deacon Allen gave way; and when the preacher called for penitents, the old man struggled to his feet, his seamed, weather-beaten face full of grotesque movement. He broke out: "Brethren, pray for me; I'm a miserable sinner.
They were, I saw, all aged men, with beardless, seamed faces, long snowy-white hair to their shoulders, and dressed in flowing silk robes. The king was a man of seventy-odd, kindly faced, gentle in demeanor.
He found his grandfather seated in the library, in front of a half- dead fire. A word, in passing, to describe this remarkable old man. He was tall and thin, and strangely erect for one of his years. His gaunt, seamed face was beardless and almost repellent in its severity. In his deep-set, piercing eyes lurked all the pains of a lifetime.
At the sound of this name Squire Haynes sank into a chair, ashy pale. A man, not over forty, but with seamed face, hair nearly white, and a form evidently broken with ill health, slowly entered. Squire Haynes beheld him with dismay. "You see before you, Squire Haynes, a man whose silence has been your safeguard for the last twelve years. His lips are now unsealed.
All were so feverishly impatient, now that they were almost in sight of their goal, that none of them paid much attention to the meal, and it was soon over. "Do you s'pose the crew have any idee why we're stopping at this island?" asked Tyke. There was a grim look on his seamed countenance, and both the captain and Drew looked at him curiously.
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