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Updated: June 29, 2025
Snag-Orchard, however, was evidently dreaded until the Lindsays came to live there, when it became less gloomy: for though the old trees with their heavy foliage were still there, descending in long sentinel-like rows down the hill-slope, until the last row drooped their branches into the bright waters of the brook, yet the rank grass around the house, that had so long raised its seedy head, and looked in at the windows, was mowed down, and sociable-looking flowers had taken its place; and then at evening, the traveler returning from the pond by the way of the plain, realized what had once been but the brilliant phantasy of poor Graffam's brain for though Mrs.
The road itself is good, bordered on one side by the garden sweetness and the blossoms that foam like wave-crests over the walls, on the other breaking down to a steep hill-slope where all the wild flowers of spring star the grassy terraces, singing at the twisted feet of the olives that give them grey shadow. So the hillside runs steeply down to where at its rocky base the blue waves murmur.
And looking, they saw a big farmstead high up on a sunny hill-slope, close under the crest, and near by a long low house with a steep slate roof, the sort of place where the district officers used to live in old days. "Is that the house we are to live in?" she asked again. "Ay, that's it, right enough," said old Raastad, and chirruped to his horses. The woman looked long at the farm and sighed.
Beautrelet ferreted and snuffed from village to village, from the river to the sea, with his nose in the wind, his ears pricked, trying to compel the inanimate things to surrender their deep meaning. Ought this hill-slope to be questioned? Or that forest? Or the houses of this hamlet?
Beth stayed in her room a little while, and then came down stairs. Arthur was alone in the parlor, sitting by the north window, and Beth sat down near. The wind had ceased, the sun was slowly sinking in the west, a flock of sheep were resting in the shadow of the elms on the distant hill-slope, and the white clouds paused in the blue as if moored by unseen hands.
Yonder it lies, surrounded by that high white fence on the hill-top, above a marsh once clouded with clamorous water-fowl, but now all, all under the spell of the quarantine, and desolate beyond description. Our road winds up the hill-slope, sown thick with stones, and stops short at the great solid gate in the high rabbit fence that walls in the devil's acre, if I may so call it.
But it is almost suddenly that the great abbey church round which the village grew up stands out in one colossal mass from the western hill-slope; and in its very solitude and the rock-like grandeur of its vast nave, its noble apse, its low central tower, there is something that marks it as a fit resting-place for kings.
Meanwhile Naji, who had told marvellous tales concerning a well in the neighbouring hills, which showed the foundations of houses in its bowels, was directed to guide Lieutenant Amir. It proved to be a long-mouthed pit, sunk in the trap hill-slope some four fathoms deep, but much filled up; and, so far from being built in, it had not even the usual wooden platform.
The next morning broke bright and clear; the sunshine drifted through the green foliage of the trees, and crimson-breasted robins sung their sweetest songs in the swaying boughs of the blossoming magnolias; pansies and buttercups gemmed the distant hill-slope, and nature's fountain a merry, babbling brook danced joyously through the clover banks.
Jean lifted her pail of water and went singing with it up the hill-slope to the house for sheer joy that she was alive. "The Campbells are coming, O ho, O ho!" she sang, and the hills, taking up the refrain, echoed "O ho, O ho!" True Tammas, who had slept all night under the straw-stack by the byre, came bounding down the little path to meet her, wagging his tail and barking his morning greeting.
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