Read "My Merry Rockhurst" by Egerton Castle online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Lionel Ratcliffe closed behind him the gate of the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields where he had his lodging. He crossed the road, then paused to survey the desolate scene.
The day was drawing to a close, but sullen fires of sunset were still burning low under a leaden, cloudy sky. Beneath his feet the grass was parched, the ground everywhere leprous grey. Though it was only early July, the foliage of the trees hung limp and sick-hued; there was not a flicker of life among the branches-indeed, hardly a stir anywhere in the languid atmosphere. Sky seemed to brood over earth, earth to lie paralysed, awaiting some moment of catastrophe, and heavy vapours to be fusing them together. The heat was a palpable presence. An anguished expectation caught the throat as with an actual pressure. The plague held all London in its grip.