Excerpt from The Silence of Dean Maitland: A Novel "Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday." The gray afternoon was wearing on to its chill close; the dark cope of immovable dun cloud overhead seemed to contract and grow closer to the silent world beneath it; and the steep, chalky hill, leading from the ancient village, with its hoary castle and church, up over the bleak, barren down, was a weary thing to climb. The solitary traveler along that quiet road moved her limbs more slowly, and felt her breath coming more quickly and shortly, as she mounted higher and higher, and the gray Norman tower lessened and gradually sunk out of sight behind her. But she toiled bravely on between the high tangled hedges, draped with great curtains of traveler's joy, now a mass of the silvery seed-feathers which the country children call "old man's beard," and variegated with the deep-purple leaves of dogwood, the crimson of briony and roseberry, the gleaming black of privet, and the gold and orange reds of ivy hangings; and, though her pace slackened to a mere crawl, she did not pause till she reached the brow of the hill, where the hedges ceased, and the broad white highroad wound over the open down. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.