Explore "The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman" by Francis Hopkinson Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Again Adam drew rein and looked over the brown hills of Maryland. No wealth of bursting blossoms greeted him; the trees were bare of leaves, their naked branches shivering in the keen November wind; in the dips of the uneven roads the water lay in pools; above hung a dull, gray sky telling of the coming cold; long lines of crows were flying southward, while here and there a deserted cabin showed the havoc the years of war had wrought -- a havoc which had spared neither friend nor foe.
None of these things disturbed Adam nor checked the flow of his spirits. The cold would not reach his heart; there was a welcome ahead -- of eye and hand and heart. No word of him had reached her ears. If she had forgiven him, thought of him at all, it was as across the sea in some unknown land. Doubtless she still believed he had forgotten her and their early days. This would make the surprise he held in store for her all the more joyous.