This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1887 Excerpt: ... 285 CHAPTER XXI. SPHLYGTIME. A Year and a half had elapsed--to be exact, nineteen months--since the snowy Goose Fair. Spring had come and was passing into summer. The trees had put forth their green leaves, tender and fresh, and the rushing salty blast from the sea had shrivelled them up and turned them black. Only those protected by shelter had survived. In the dingles, the coombes, under the hedges, the glistening pennywort leaves had spread, the white saxifage spikes of flowers had shot up, the primroses had opened, laughed and faded, and now the stately foxglove was everywhere tossing its pink bells. The garden of Towan was not a snuggery in which the flowers could flourish, but the glen of Nantsillan was overrun with them; plants that 'had languished at Towan, and had been cast forth, had found their way to the sheltered glen, and run wild there--blue navelwort, pink fumitory, and yellow horn poppy. About Towan the gulls screamed, and the magpies chattered, and the peewits piped, but down in the sheltered glen of Nantsillan thrushes and blackbirds sang and finches cheeped and chirruped. The sea had thrown aside its winter grey trimmed with white and put on azure and spangles, and the winds exchanged their wail for a plaintive song. Joyous with summer triumph that coast could never be, with its tortured trees and scanty vegetation, that fought the winds, a guerilla warfare of ambushes. But it could be pleasant, always with an under-note of melancholy in its gaiety. A change has taken place in Towan since we were last there. Mrs. Gaverock is better, but will never recover her former vigour. When old people descend the scale, they go down, not by steps but by stages. The loss of Constantine had broken her. She was so far recovered that she could attend to...