DOI article:
Frederic, Harold: The truce of the Bishop
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27806#0088
The Truce of the Bishop
By Harold Frederic
I
A pallid and starved sunlight looked upon the shore-land, and
mocked it, because, now, in the fall of the harvest, there
was no yield'"of any kind for the blade, or any reaper to seek it.
On all the four fair ploughlands of the lords of Dunbeekin, stretch-
ing alongjThe smooth valley of the bay, and pushing inward over
gently lifting slopes to the furze-lined granite barrier of Gabriel,
no ditch stood unbroken : the fields lay naked and blackened by
fire. The tall keep watched the deserted water with sightless eyes,
through whichThe daylight shone from wall across to wall, and at
its feet the crouching huts of its people were thatchless. It was
the desolation fof conquest. The conquered were dead, or in
hiding among the hills. The spoilers, their havoc wrought, had
turned and gone away, with famine spreading wave-like at their
heels.
Far up on the flank of the mountain there fell the distant
lowing boom of a bittern. Some cattle, lost in the waste of
thicket at a further height, answered this call as if it came from
their kind.
Three men, sprawled on their bellies in a grassy crevice between
the
By Harold Frederic
I
A pallid and starved sunlight looked upon the shore-land, and
mocked it, because, now, in the fall of the harvest, there
was no yield'"of any kind for the blade, or any reaper to seek it.
On all the four fair ploughlands of the lords of Dunbeekin, stretch-
ing alongjThe smooth valley of the bay, and pushing inward over
gently lifting slopes to the furze-lined granite barrier of Gabriel,
no ditch stood unbroken : the fields lay naked and blackened by
fire. The tall keep watched the deserted water with sightless eyes,
through whichThe daylight shone from wall across to wall, and at
its feet the crouching huts of its people were thatchless. It was
the desolation fof conquest. The conquered were dead, or in
hiding among the hills. The spoilers, their havoc wrought, had
turned and gone away, with famine spreading wave-like at their
heels.
Far up on the flank of the mountain there fell the distant
lowing boom of a bittern. Some cattle, lost in the waste of
thicket at a further height, answered this call as if it came from
their kind.
Three men, sprawled on their bellies in a grassy crevice between
the