United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Right or wrong," the officer retorted, "I have to carry out my orders, not reason about them. Here, sergeant, let three men hold the horses and get to work on this fence." As the sergeant advanced and put his hand on the top layer of the heavy snake-fence, the Elder levelled his shot-gun and said: "Ef you pull down that bar I'll shoot."
I loved the lonely lake, with its magnificent belt of dark pines sighing in the breeze; the cedar swamp, the summer home of my dark Indian friends; my own dear little garden, with its rugged snake-fence, which I had helped Jenny to place with my own hands, and which I had assisted the faithful woman in cultivating for the last three years, where I had so often braved the tormenting mosquitoes, black-flies, and intense heat, to provide vegetables for the use of the family.
It was an incongruous assortment; some of the knights of Sir Malory; the River above the booms, with the brown logs; a plume of white steam against the dazzling blue sky; the mellow six-o'clock church bell to which he arose every morning; the snake-fence by the sandhill as it was in winter, with the wreaths of snow; and all through everything the feel of the woods he had seen at the picnic, their canopy of green so far above, their splashes of sunlight through the rifts, the friendly summer warmth of their air, their hot, spicy wood-smells wandering to and fro; their tall trunks, their undergrowth, with the green tunnels far through them, the flashes of their birds' wings, their green transparent shadows.
It had been decided that four cows, which had been driven round from the fort, should be housed during the winter in a small building on the other side of the stream, which had belonged to Malachi Bone, as it was surrounded with a high snake-fence, and sufficiently large to hold them and even more.
She had her own neatly-appointed little dining-room in her own well-ordered little wing of the great, rambling colonial house which Peggy Stewart called home, a house which could have told a wonderful history of one hundred eighty or more years. We will tell it later on. We have left Peggy too long perched upon her snake-fence with Shashai and Tzaritza.
"Right or wrong," the officer retorted, "I have to carry out my orders, not reason about them. Here, sergeant, let three man hold the horses and get to work on this fence." As the sergeant advanced and put his hand on the top layer of the heavy snake-fence, the Elder levelled his shot-gun and said: "Ef you pull down that bar I'll shoot."
A piano-top buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed boulders; a wisp of Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder have only touched the life of which they are part.
If the musket was not strapped to the tail of the plough, it leaned against the snake-fence loaded. The goose-step, the manual and platoon took the place of the quadrille. Every clearing became a drill-hall, every log cabin an armoury. Many of the militia were crack shots, with all the scouting instincts of the forest ranger.
"Well, sir, I am ready," said Malachi, coming out with his deer-skin jacket in one hand and his rifle in the other. They walked to the maize-field on the other side of the river, and found that the trap had been successful, for a large bear lay dead at the foot of the snake-fence. "Yes, sir, I've got him," said Malachi. "But what was the trap?" said Henry.
"Well, sir, I am ready," said Malachi, coming out with his deer-skin jacket in one hand and his rifle in the other. They walked to the maize-field on the other side of the river, and found that the trap had been successful, for a large bear lay dead at the foot of the snake-fence. "Yes, sir, I've got him," said Malachi. "But what was the trap," said Henry.
Word Of The Day