The Fate of the Black Swan

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1885 Original Publisher: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV, A STRANGE SAILOR. [OM COURTLAND, on leaving the Rectory, hurried along the road toward Courtlands. His heart was full of the plan that he had proposed to Grace -- full of the hope that he might be able to discover, at least, tidings of his brother. Even if the worst had happened, and Geoffrey were no longer alive, Tom knew that his father, and mother, and sister, and the girl who was as much to him as a sister, could bear the tidings better than the terrible suspense in which they were now living. He hurried along the road with beating heart, resolving to tell his father of the hope that had taken possession of him. So absorbed was he in the idea of finding the brother whom he loved so dearly, that he never contemplated the possibility of his father's opposition to the scheme; the course which he was desirous of pursuing seemed so plain to him, he never thought of the likelihood of its appearing unwise to other people. The road was very dark at this time, for the moon had not yet risen, and the air of the early night was anything but clear; scarcely a star appeared in the sky above him. When he had come within a short distance of the entrance to the grounds of his father's house, he was somewhat startled by the striking of a match under the wayside hedge a few yards ahead. The little spark of flame made in this way was sufficient to show him, leaning up against the hedge, the figure of a man in the ordinary fisherman's attire of UtterporL He was lighting his pipe with the match, and at every puff that he gave, his face g...