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The Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott: Guy Mannering.
The Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott Guy Mannering 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: GUY MANNERING; THE ASTROLOGER. CHAPTER I. He could not deny that, looking round upon the dreary region, and seeing nothing but bleak fields and naked tr... more »ees, hills obscured by logs, and flats covered by inundations, he did for some time suffer melancholy to prevail upon him, and wished himself again safe at home.— Travels of WiU Marvel, "Idler," No. 49. It was in the beginning of the month of November, 17—, when a young English gentleman, who had just left the University of Oxford; made use of the liberty afforded him, to visit some parts of the North of England, and curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of the sister country. He had visited, on the day that opens our history, some monastic ruins in the county of Dumfries, and spent much of the day in making drawings of them from different points; so that, on mounting his horse to resume his journey, the brief and gloomy twilight of the season had already commenced. His way lay through a wide tract of black moss extending for miles on each side and before him. Little eminences arose like islands on its surface, bearing here and there patches of corn, which even at this season was green, and sometimes a hut, or farmhouse, shaded hy a willow or two, and surrounded by large elder-bushes. These insulated dwellings communicated with each other by winding passages through the moss, impassable by any but the natives themselves. The public road, however, was tolerably well made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger. Still, it is uncomfortable to travel, alone and in the dark, through an unknown country; and there are few ordinary occasions upon which Fancy frets herself so much as in a situation like that of Mannering. As the light grew faint and more faint, and the...« less