Beadle's Dime Novels No. 35: East and West — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

8 THE BEAUTY OF WILLARD’S MILL. wherever convenience suggests; though it may happen, in the case of a stock-grower, that the out-buildings are superior in appearance to the dwelling-house. Set down such a cabin as this close upon the bank of a deep creek, whose winding course through the wide Missouri bottom-lands is marked by a scattering fringe of willows, - about half way between the river it flows into and the bluffs where it rises; put a water-mill of very ordinary unpic- turesqueness a few rods below the house, and a rude bridge over the creek between, and you have the principal features of the scene of our story. Add, however, for detail, a tiny island in the creek, just before the door, covered with young cottonwood trees and planted with a few common flowers. A floating bridge of an old flat-boat affords passage to this min- iature garden, while a row-boat or two are generally moored along its border. If you are a close observer, you will see a rude bench against the shed, on which is asmall iron kettle— the family wash-basin when the ampler one of the creek is not used. If you are a critical observer, you will stop to ex- amine some charcoal drawings on the white-washed chimney, whose outside surface, like its inside capacity, is enormous, Not a tree nearer than two miles, except those young cot- tonwoods on the island, and the willows along the creek! No fences either ; nothing but the wide and endless bottom-prai- rie, waving with the tall yellow grass of last year which has Over this singular but not unattractive landscape, has dropped the purple evening—the sky, which bends over like a great dome touching the prairie all around, showing here and there a star. The damp, soft wind of early spring goes by with a fluttering sound, at once soothing and lonesome. But not the darkness, the lonesomeness, nor the more dan- gerous dampness of the air, startled from her hiding-place the ‘ Prairie Fawn,’ as the miller’s only daughter was called by the few neighboring squatters, and her father’s mill-hands. Nestled in a covert of dry grass on the furthermost side of the tiny island, Minnie Willard was holding communion with her own thoughts, and dreaming strange, impossible dreams—she knew not how impossible—of the glorious future. What were her dreams it is not relevant here to relate. All that could comlicbooks.com