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With what eagerness had he seized upon the history of the enterprise! with what interest had he followed the redoubtable bibliographer and his graphical squire in their adventurous roamings among Norman castles, and cathedrals, and French libraries, and German convents and universities; penetrating into the prison-houses of vellum manuscripts, and exquisitely illuminated missals, and revealing their beauties to the world!

Abbe Papon, in his roamings through Provence, paid a visit to the prison in which the Iron Mask was confined, and thus speaks: "It was to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite that the famous prisoner with the iron mask whose name has never been discovered, was transported at the end of the last century; very few of those attached to his service were allowed to speak to him.

He glides under the close brushwood of the jungle in pursuit of lizards and frogs, birds, eggs, and rats or other small animals that come in his way. On his roamings he also climbs up trees and creeping plants, and swims across large streams.

"One thing, after much meditating, I have at last discovered, and now know for some time back: That you cannot be left to roam abroad in this unguided manner, stumbling over the precipices, and loading ever heavier the fatal chain upon those who might be able to stand; that this of locking you up in temporary Idle Workhouses, when you stumble, and subsisting you on Indian meal, till you can sally forth again on fresh roamings, and fresh stumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil; that this is not the plan; and that it never was, or could out of England have been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it!

I remember, in the trembling of my heart as I sat and listened and mused, and thoughts trooped in and out of my head with little order or volition on my part, one word was a sort of rallying point on which they gathered and fell back from time to time, though they started out again on fresh roamings "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations"! I remember, it seems to me now as if it had been some time before I was born, how the muslin curtains floated in on the evening wind, and the hum and stir of the street came up to my ear; the bustle and activity, though it was evening; and how the distant battlefields of Virginia looked in forlorn contrast in the far distance.

With what interest had he followed the redoubtable bibliographer and his graphical squire in their adventurous roamings among Norman castles and cathedrals, and French libraries, and German convents and universities; penetrating into the prison-houses of vellum manuscripts and exquisitely illuminated missals, and revealing their beauties to the world!

The look of premature age, which De Quincey insists on; the furrowed and rugged countenance, the brooding intensity of the eye, the bursts of anger at the report of evil doings, the lonely and violent roamings over the mountains, all told of a strong absorption and a smothered fire.

My studies, such as they were, were not by any means suited to curb or direct the vagrant tastes my childhood had acquired: on the contrary, the old poets, with their luxurious description of the 'green wood' and the forest life; the fashionable novelists, with their spirited accounts of the wanderings of some fortunate rogue, and the ingenious travellers, with their wild fables, so dear to the imagination of every boy, only fomented within me a strong though secret regret at my change of life, and a restless disgust to the tame home and bounded roamings to which I was condemned.

Whereas reporting on a salary had begun to be something of a grind, the less profitable roamings of a free lance furnished a life that had color and everlasting freshness.

Little wonder the girls' faces grew dreamy and their voices gentle. And none, none at all, that Lee succumbed to the spell. He was still under the enchantment when toward sunset Ruth suggested they go up the cañon. But Imogene, arousing herself, declared that she had letters to write; and Dave, still fast asleep, was already on roamings of his own.