Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Lewis Rand by Mary Johnston
page 12 of 555 (02%)
and long levees; and the boy's mind perused the road before him.

"When I get to Richmond," he suddenly announced, "I am going to find a
place where they sell books. I have a dollar."

The hunter put his hand in his pouch, drew out a shining coin, and
tossed it across the fire. "There's another," he said. "Good Spanish!
Buy your _Cæsars_ and your _Pompeys_, and when you are a lawyer like Mr.
Jefferson, come West--come West!"

Men and beasts slumbered through the autumn night, waked at dawn, and,
breakfast eaten, took again the road. Revolving cask, horses, dogs, and
men, they crossed the wet sedge and entered the pine wood, left that
behind and traversed a waste of scrub and vine, low hills, and
rain-washed gullies. Chinquapin bushes edged the road, the polished nut
dark in the centre of each open burr; the persimmon trees showed their
fruit, red-gold from the first frosts; the black haw and cedar overhung
the ravines; there was much sassafras, and along the plashy streams the
mint grew thick and pungent-sweet. In the deep and pure blue sky above
them, fleecy clouds went past like galleons in a trade-wind.

The tobacco-roller was a taciturn man, and the boy, his son, never
thought of disburdening his soul to his father. Each had the power to
change for the other the aspect of the world, but they themselves were
strangers. Gideon Rand, as he rode, thought of the bright leaf in the
cask, of the Richmond warehouse, and fixed the price in his mind. His
mind was in a state of sober jubilation. His only brother, a lonely,
unloved, and avaricious merchant in a small way, had lately died, and
had left him money. The hundred acres upon the Three-Notched Road that
Gideon had tilled for another were in the market. The money would buy
DigitalOcean Referral Badge