Explore "The One Black Spot" by Samuel Warren on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the evening of a bleak, cold March day, in an early year of this century, a woman, scantily clad, led a boy about eight years old, along the high-road towards the old city of Exeter. They crept close to the hedge-side to shelter themselves from the clouds of dust, which the sudden gusts of east wind blew in their faces.
They had walked many miles, and the boy limped painfully. He often looked up anxiously into his mother's face, and asked if they had much farther to go? She scarcely appeared to notice his inquiries; her fixed eyes and sunken cheek gave evidence that sorrow absorbed all her thoughts. When he spoke, she drew him closer to her side, but made no reply; until, at length, the child, wondering at her silence, began to sob. She stopped and looked at her child for a moment, her eyes filled with tears. They had gained the top of a hill, from which was visible in the distance, the dark massive towers of the cathedral and the church-spires of the city; she pointed them out, and said, "We shall soon be there, Ned. " Then, sitting down on a tree that was felled by the road-side, she took "Ned" on her lap, and, bending over him, wept aloud.