Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 162: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

156 Roanoke of Roanoke Hall. to my eyes, until the gray, time-worn chim- neys of Roanoke Hall, rising amid the golden foliage of the surrounding trees, greeted my enraptured eyes from the brow of the hill, trending down into the valley, over which I had, years past, seen my father riding to his doom. If it were my purpose to depict the work- ings of my mind, I could fill pages with the sensations, half-painful, half-delightful, which throbbed in my bosom as I rode through the village and up to the Chace. It was sad to mark the havoc that time and neglect had wrought in that once prosperous spot ; but I was too glad to be once more at home to pay much heed to this at the moment. I should never have known the bent and wrinkled crone who tottered forward when I called for Martha, and it was long before I could convince her that I was indeed Ralph Roanoke, and not a ghost or an impostor. “‘Eh, Ralph,” she said, plaintively, when she was finally assured of my identity. “Glad am I to see ye; ’tis time ye came to lift the burden from my old shoulders. They have— oO 4 comichbooks.com j