United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was the dim shadow of a man's head upon the blind, cast there by an old withered moon low in the west! Perhaps it was something in the shape of the shadow that made her pull up the blind so hurriedly, and yet with something of the awe with which we take "the face-cloth from the face."
A moment later he walked over to the body on the table, lifted the sheet and turned it back from the head, exposing a mass of dark hair and a thin face-cloth, beneath which the features showed with even sharper definition than before. Shading his eyes by interposing his free hand between them and the candle, he stood looking at his motionless companion with a serious and tranquil regard.
God forbid that you in your youth and manhood should take to wife such a death-like thing as I! Four years I have lain like this waiting for the messenger to fetch me away, and now that at last he is near at hand, shall I array myself in a bridal veil for a face-cloth, and trailing skirts of silk or satin for a shroud?
The wind was high. It found its way through the open casement. It fluttered the face-cloth above the face. Ralph pushed back the sash, and in a moment he was gone. The household on the Moss were early astir on the morning appointed for the funeral of Angus Ray. Matthew Branthwaite's wife and daughter were bustling about the kitchen of the old house soon after daybreak. Mrs.
Picture, whom she had chanced upon in Sapps Court, and found so strange a truth about, lay under that face-cloth on the bed. She moved the window-curtain for a stronger light, and uncovered the marble stillness of the face. The kerchief tied beneath the chin ran counter to her preconceptions, but no doubt it was all right. Ruth would know. She did not look long.
There was the dim shadow of a man's head upon the blind, cast there by an old withered moon low in the west! Perhaps it was something in the shape of the shadow that made her pull up the blind so hurriedly, and yet with something of the awe with which we take "the face-cloth from the face."
The face was covered with a linen cloth, yellow now through age and fitting like a mask to the features. The chief knelt down and drew away the face-cloth. The countenance, though shrunken, was almost perfectly preserved.
"Remove the face-cloth, that we may know on whom the blow hath fallen." One of the young men obeyed. It was not easy to recognise, through the mutilations of savage barbarity, the features of the sufferer. But a second and steadier look showed the gory and still agonized countenance of the individual who had, that morning, left the Wish-Ton-Wish on the message of the colonial authorities.
He lifted off the face-cloth, gazed on the clay-cold face, touched it, and now was opened the "Sacred source of sympathetic tears." He burst into a loud paroxysm; and, as if nature had been to take her revenge for her sufferings, under the freezing influence of his sorrow, he wept as if there had been to be no end of his weeping.
But he begged us to put the book into the coffin, and now he lies there, and in a little while the lid will be nailed down, and he will have his quiet rest in the grave." The face-cloth was raised, and there was peace upon the features of the dead man, and a sunbeam played upon it; a swallow shot with arrowy flight into the arbour, and turned rapidly, and twittered over the dead man's head.
Word Of The Day