The Dynamiter (Alan Sutton Pocket Classics Series)

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: '' Here,'' she said, '' here at last we are secure from listeners. Here, then, you shall learn and judge my history. I could not bear that we should part, and that you should still suppose your kindness squandered upon one who was unworthy." Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to take a place immediately beside her, began in the following words, and with the greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life. STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL. MY father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great, ancient but untitled family ; and by some event, fault, or misfortune he was driven to flee from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name of his ancestors. He sought the States ; and instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed at once into the far west with an exploring party of frontiersmen. He was no ordinary traveler ; for he was not only brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many sciences, and above all in botany, which he particularly loved. Thus it fell that, before many months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted and bowed to his opinion. They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of the west. For some time they followed the track of Mormon caravans, guiding themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by the skeletons of men and animals. Then they inclined their route a little to the north and, losing even these dire memorials, came into a country of forbidding stillness. I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride : rock, cliff, and barren moor alternated ; the streams were very far between ; and neither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude. On the fortieth day they had already run so short of food that it was judged advisable to ca...