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Waverly Novels: Highland widow. Two drovers, etc.
Waverly Novels Highland widow Two drovers etc Author:Walter Scott 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: CHAPTER IH.. And aye, as if for death, some lonely trumpet peal'd. Campbell. The Varangian, his head agitated -with the weighty matters which were impos... more »ed on Mm, stupt from time to time as he journeyed through the moonlight streets, to arrest passing ideas as they shot through his mind, and consider them with accuracy in all their bearings. His thoughts were such as animated or alarmed him alternately, each followed by a confused throng of accompaniments which it suggested, and banished again in its turn by reflections of another description. It was one of those conjunctures when the minds of ordinary men feel themselves unable to support a burden which is suddenly flung upon them, and when, on the contrary, those of uncommon fortitude, avid that best of Heaven's gifts, good sense, founded on presence of mind, feel their talents awakened and regulated for the occasion, like a good steed under the management of a rider of courage and experience. As he stood in one of those fits of reverie, which repeatedly during that night arrested his stern military march, Hereward thought that his ear caught the note of a distant trumpet. This surprised him;a trumpet blown at that late hour, and in the streets of Constantinople, argued something' extraordinary ; for as all military movements were the subject of special ordinance, the etiquette of the night could hardly have been transgressed without some great cause. The question was, what that cause could be? Had the insurrection broken out unexpectedly, and in a different manner from what the conspirators proposed to themselves ?—If so, his meeting with his plighted bride, after so many years absence, was but a delusive preface to their separating for ever. Or had the crusaders, a race of men upon whose motions it was difficult ...« less