Excerpt from Barbara Dering: A Sequel to the Quick or the Dead? More than two years had passed since Dering left Rosemary. There was a soft, gold-gray mist over everything; the tulip-tree leaves glimmered a pale yellow against the dark evergreens on the lawn; the Indian-corn, standing in great tasselled shocks, gave forth a dry rustle now and then as a field-creature scampered through it; a crow could be heard some times very faintly, as though drowsing on its listless, slow-moving wings; but, except for such noises, the warm autumn day was silent and the air still. Barbara was walking through the cornfield, reading as she went. Her figure, in its dimly-tinted gown, looked thinner. She was pale, and her mouth had a tired bend at its fine corners. Under her broad hat her hair was gathered into a sleekly-plaited great knot, like that of a school-girl. She looked younger, and at the same time there was an expression of deeper experience in her large eyes, as she lifted them gravely from her book to the murky blue of the hills or the rich coloring of the meadows through which she was passing. 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.