The Wrong Man — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

8 THE WRONG MAN. whose grassy brink the water willows dipped their yellow branches in the stream. The margin of the river, on one sid was a beach of pure white sand, from which rose a chain of high, romantic hills, their fringed and wavy outline boldly defined against the western sky. In the solitary ravines between them, might be heard the tiny dash and roar of some nameless tributary of the Ohio, as it tinkled over, it uneven bed, or was broken into cascades by the trunks of fallen tree and far above, a rude bridge, thrown across one of these nar- row glens, added another picturesque feature to the scene. The opposite shore of the river was a level border of rich bottom-land, sweeping away to a distance from the stream, when its surface became abruptly broken by the hills which rose one beliind another, until the topmost range, dim in the distance, terminated the view. The soil on both sides was thickly covered with trees of a size which attested its luxuriance; and, towering far above the rest, the huge sycamore threw its white arms abroad, a3 if in conscious superiority to its brothers of the forest. Though early in the season, a slight frost had already thinned the foli- age of sume of the trees, and tinged the leaves of others with | hues which render the forest-scenery of our country so glorious in decay. Among the boughs, thus partly stripped of their covering, the misletoe everywhere displayed its verdant leaves and beautiful white berries ; while in the al- and recesses beneath, enormous grape-vines twisted them- yes from tree to tree, and hung their fantastic festoons through the arches of the wood. Behind a wooded headland, near the island above men- tioned, several thin columns of smoke, curling up in the still morning air, denoted the spot which had been chosen as the site of one of those vill , Which, few and far between, then began to dot the onade of the Ohio. At a little distance from the village, an elevated knoll, entirely denuded of trees, was crowned with a small building, the shape and construc- tion of which showed it to have n erected as a place of defense—probably to guard against some former incursion of the Indians. At the other extremity of the view, on the side of the bluff round which the Ohio first swept into sight, a neat log-cabin might be descried, through the openings in the wotd; and a curious eye would not have failed to remark that 1t was surrounded with well-inclosed, cultivated fields convenient out-houses, and other evidences of comfort, not ofter ‘met with, at the period of our narrative, in that region. The sun about an hour, and had given to the had been sky that serene and Geleeehanns which distinguishes it in — the Mississippi, when the stillness of the scene the ey of pow the whip-like report of a rifle. The sound was yet reverberating among the hills, when a deer—its side — Pte - “ *