Project Gutenberg's The Disowned, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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Title: The Disowned, Complete

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7639]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE DISOWNED

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

CHAPTER I.

I'll tell you a story if you please to attend. G. KNIGHT:
Limbo.

It was the evening of a soft, warm day in the May of 17--. The sun had
already set, and the twilight was gathering slowly over the large, still
masses of wood which lay on either side of one of those green lanes
so peculiar to England. Here and there, the outline of the trees
irregularly shrunk back from the road, leaving broad patches of waste
land covered with fern and the yellow blossoms of the dwarf furze, and
at more distant intervals thick clusters of rushes, from which came the
small hum of gnats,--those "evening revellers" alternately rising and
sinking in the customary manner of their unknown sports,--till, as
the shadows grew darker and darker, their thin and airy shapes were no
longer distinguishable, and no solitary token of life or motion broke
the voiceless monotony of the surrounding woods.

The first sound which invaded the silence came from the light, quick
footsteps of a person whose youth betrayed itself in its elastic and
unmeasured tread, and in the gay, free carol which broke out by fits and
starts upon the gentle stillness of the evening.

There was something rather indicative of poetical taste than musical
science in the selection of this vesper hymn, which always commenced
with,--

"'T is merry, 't is merry, in good green wood,"

and never proceeded a syllable further than the end of the second
line,--

"when birds are about and singing;"

from the last word of which, after a brief pause, it invariably started
forth into joyous "iteration."

Presently a heavier, yet still more rapid, step than that of the
youth was heard behind; and, as it overtook the latter, a loud, clear,
good-humoured voice gave the salutation of the evening. The tone in