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: Ill TRENCH walked slowly homeward. Colonel Royall's place, the largest of its kind in the neighborhood of Eshcol, was on a hill above the town, and Trench's nearest path lay not by the highroad but past the Colonel's gates along a lovely trail that led through a growth of stunted cedars out into the open ground above the river, and thence by a solitary and wooded path known sometimes as the Trail of the Cedar-bird, because those little birds haunted it at certain seasons of the year. It was now broad moonlight, and Trench, who was peculiarly susceptible to the sights and sounds of Nature, was aware of the beauty of every tremulous shadow. The chill spring air was sweet with the aromatic perfume of pines and cedars, and, as he turned the shoulder of the hill, his eye swept the new plowed fields. He could smell the grape-vines that were blooming in masses by the wayside, promising a full harvest of those great purple grapes that had given the settlement its name. Below him the river forked, and in its elbow nestled the center of the village, the church at the Cross-Roads, and the little red school- house where Peter Mahan had fought Jacob Eaton and whipped him at the age of twelve, long beforeCaleb Trench had even heard of Eshcol. To the left was the Friends' Meeting-House, Judge Hollis' home, and the lane which led to Trench's shop and office. Beyond, he discerned the little old white house where Dr. William Cheyney lived, but that was where Eshcol lapped over on to Little Paradise, for they had bridged the creek ten years before. Across the river lay the city, big and smoky and busy, its spires rising above its shining roofs. A light mist, diaphanous and shimmering, floated over the lowlands by the water, and above it the dark green of the young foliage and the lovely slope ...