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The Feud of Oakfield Creek: A Novel of California Life
The Feud of Oakfield Creek A Novel of California Life Author:Josiah Royce Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: pity, scorn, the idiot gabble of newspapers and of lying men, the vile sympathy of an accursed world, for us — and for Mrs. Eldon. At last the sacrilege was over... more », and our Ellen's memory was now once more our own." With these words Escott's story ended. CHAPTER VII. A STRANGER GUEST. Tom Eldon had appointed to meet Harold Sunday morning, at the Oakland ferry-boat, for the purpose of conducting him on the intended visit. Just before the time for setting out to keep the appointment, Tom Eldon found himself thinking afresh of the unhappy fatality that had always attended his best efforts to be heroic and self-sacrificing. During his career he had done at least a few good deeds, — so he often used to assert to himself; and yet those were the very deeds that bad invariably resulted in mischief. Just now, as he reflected, his life bad but one very dark shadow in it; and that need n't have been there at all, had he not chosen, on a certain great occasion, to attempt a picturesque and quit uncalled-for act of devotion. The younger Eldon, in fact, at the moment when we now meet him, had just reached the age at which a man who has disappointed the greatexpectations of numerous friends feels a little keenly bow commonplace an affair life is. In bis early youth, Tom had fascinated a great many people besides the susceptible Alf Escott. Nobody had understood him, but everybody had recognized bis talents. His mother had died during bis childhood. With his father be bad never bad close acquaintance. He bad spent enough of his boyhood away from California to lose close sympathy with bis fellows at home. His intercourse with strangers had made him a good converser, an easy dissembler, and a very well informed man. His ambitions bad been numerous, and his capacities for a time extraor...« less