United States or Slovakia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I can imagine," thought Durtal, "how it would have been painted by an Early Flemish master; the long street paved by patient pencils, the stories open from top to bottom, and the cupboards the same; and on one side massive cells with iron bedsteads, a stoneware jug; little peepholes in the doors secured by strong bolts, inside, scoundrels and thieves, gnashing their teeth, turning round and round, their hair on end, howling like caged animals; on the other side little rooms, furnished with a pallet-bed, a stoneware jug, a crucifix, these also closed by doors iron-banded, and within nuns or monks, kneeling on the flags, their faces clean cut against the light of a halo, their eyes lifted to heaven, their hands joined, raised from the ground in ecstasy, a pot of lilies at their side."
This time his task was counting all the spears and halberds, the battle-axes and the coats of mail that filled the earl's great armament. And o'er and o'er he counted, keeping careful tally with a bit of keel upon the iron-banded door, till the red lines that he marked there made his eyes ache and his head swim.
The whole length of the wall was, I judged, considerably over a city block, but there was no other opening in it. At the farther end, it was bounded by a crossroad, and, turning along this, I found that the wall extended nearly the same distance in this direction. There was an opening about midway a small opening, closed by a heavy, iron-banded door the servants' entrance, I told myself.
Since to go on foot, even though the distance was only a few hundred yards from Mr. Greathouse's, where I was living, would have been, according to Corean etiquette, a disgrace and an insult, I rode up to his door on horseback. His house stood, surrounded by a strong wall of masonry and with impregnable iron-banded gates, in the centre of a large piece of ground.
Already the ponderous door of iron-banded oak was groaning and splintering under the hail of blows. And in the forefront, with a laugh upon his lips, hewed Quinton Edge. The barrier was down at last and the wolves were free to fall upon their quarry. A score of men, all told, against a hundred; the outcome was hardly doubtful.
Word Of The Day