Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 138: what you’re looking at

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

LADY BESS’S HISTORY 121 and then to sit down upon a stone or a bank, but gallantly battling against increasing fatigue. Thus I continued my way till morning dawned, and now I was in the midst of all the characteristic scenery of the immense principality of Catalonia. Barren rocks and fertile valleys, groves of cork- | trees, cascades and torrents, limpid streamlets and roaring ) waterfalls, these were the principal features which nature presented to my view. When the sun was rising over the Orient hills, I sat down upon the slope of an eminence, now no longer able to combat against the sense of fatigue. A smiling valley, intersected with a rivulet, spread itself out at my feet, and behind me the wild, barren hills rose in amphitheatrical grandeur. Not a habitation was to be seen. I had frequently slaked my thirst during the night’s wanderings, for there had been no lack of springs and rivu- lets in the path which I had pursued, but I was now tortured with the gnawing pangs of hunger, and the dread appre- hension began to creep shudderingly over me that it was possible for me to starve amidst these Catalonian wilds. “My hope that I should reach some hospitable cottage appeared to be disappointed, and I felt that I must rest some hours before I could resume my wanderings with ease or speed. “While I was thus giving way to the disagreeable re- flections that began to steal over me, I heard footsteps suddenly approaching from behind, and, starting up, I beheld a figure that I must describe. It was that of a man at least six feet high, symmetrically but strongly built, his form being alike muscular and elegant. He appeared to be about thirty years of age, and was perhaps one of the hand- somest men | had ever seen in my whole life. His com- plexion, naturally of Spanish swarthiness, was more deeply bronzed by exposure to the scorching sun; but it had an olive clearness through which the warm blood could mantle upon that fine countenance. His eyes were dark, but full of fire, looking like jet that burns without losing its sable hue. His features were of the purely Grecian cast, and his teeth were truly splendid. His long, black hair, the least thing coarse, but glossy and curling naturally, and of re- markable luxuriance, fell upon his shoulders. He wore a Ss moustache, but neither beard nor whiskers, and thus ap- _ peared even younger than he really was. He was dressed = d en + — ie" ’ i bia a | rs Gomiichdoo ‘S (C(O) im