The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Man, by Bram Stoker

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Title: The Man

Author: Bram Stoker

Release Date: May 16, 2007 [eBook #2520]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN***

Transcribed from the 1897 Robert Hayes edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

THE MAN

BY
BRAM STOKER

AUTHOR OF "DRACULA," ETC.

LONDON: ROBERT HAYES, LTD.
SIXTY-ONE FLEET STREET, E.C.

Copyright, 1897, in the United States of America, according to Act of
Congress, by Bram Stoker.

[_All rights reserved_]

FORE-GLIMPSE

'I would rather be an angel than God!'

The voice of the speaker sounded clearly through the hawthorn tree. The
young man and the young girl who sat together on the low tombstone looked
at each other. They had heard the voices of the two children talking,
but had not noticed what they said; it was the sentiment, not the sound,
which roused their attention.

The girl put her finger to her lips to impress silence, and the man
nodded; they sat as still as mice whilst the two children went on
talking.

* * * * *

The scene would have gladdened a painter's heart. An old churchyard. The
church low and square-towered, with long mullioned windows, the yellow-
grey stone roughened by age and tender-hued with lichens. Round it
clustered many tombstones tilted in all directions. Behind the church a
line of gnarled and twisted yews.

The churchyard was full of fine trees. On one side a magnificent cedar;
on the other a great copper beech. Here and there among the tombs and
headstones many beautiful blossoming trees rose from the long green
grass. The laburnum glowed in the June afternoon sunlight; the lilac,
the hawthorn and the clustering meadowsweet which fringed the edge of the
lazy stream mingled their heavy sweetness in sleepy fragrance. The
yellow-grey crumbling walls were green in places with wrinkled
harts-tongues, and were topped with sweet-williams and spreading house-
leek and stone-crop and wild-flowers whose delicious sweetness made for
the drowsy repose of perfect summer.

But amid all that mass of glowing colour the t