Explore "The Secret in the Hill" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I looked in Mr. Quayle's face; but I asked him no question. The mud we trod seemed colder, the houses we passed more frowning than before; but I asked no question. I could not form one in my mind; only suddenly and somehow I felt frightened, as if in dreams before a great solitude. Then in a moment I was sobbing fast and thickly.
Ah, what is the use to skate round the memory! Let it clutch me for a moment, and be faced and dismissed. My father, my dear, ardent, noble father was dead -- struck down in an instant -- shaken out of life by the poignant utterances of his own spirit. While the flower of his fervour was blossoming and bearing fruit, the roots thereof were dead already -- smitten in their place in his heart. That, its work done, had ceased beating. Sometimes afterwards in my desolation I recalled the church clock, with its poised motionless hands, and thought what a melancholy omen it had been.