XXII THE DARK NEBULA Years melted into the past, centuries, aeons.

How hypocritically he leers upon everything about him, as if butter would not melt in his mouth?

Being thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy boughs, it is oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow, forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until the melting of the snow in spring.

My bones were molten with fright, and I had not one ounce of bravery in me.

But in a few days, this light covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the sun and causes but little apprehension on the part of mountaineers who may be lingering among the high peaks at this time.

I went over to the ministry in the afternoon to see the table, which was very well arranged with quantities of flowers, beautiful Sevres china, not much silverthere is very little left in France, it having all been melted at the time of the Revolution.

Her husband's small estate had melted like a snow-bank in the liquidation of his debts.

The brook shallows are plaited across and across with slender lances of ice, but both these and the grass crystals are melted before midday, and, notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow, the afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies and call them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods.

I saw a play once in which the most blood-thirsty and brutal ruffian that ever existed was melted to tears at the mention of his mother's name, and childhood's happy hours, and everybody knows that what happens on the stage happens just the same in real life.

Birkendelly's heart was now melted within him, and all his senses overpowered by one overwhelming passion.

The rain was so heavy and long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make a good wild flood, while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted on the upper and middle regions of the basins was sufficient to make another flood equal to that of the rain.

The Latron-Jerusalem road was better going, but the soft metal laid down seemed to melt under the unceasing traffic in the wet, and in peace time this highway would have been voted unfit for traffic.

His legs are short, his hams are thick, his hoofs are black as night, Like a strong flail he holds his tail in fierceness of his might; Like something molten out of iron, or hewn from forth the rock, Harpado of Xarama stands, to bide the alcaydé's shock.

It was probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and the object that he gazed at.

"Soft eyes looked love to eyes that spake again," and their hearts melted beneath each tender glance.

There was no arrangement for water, travellers being frequently delayed three or four hours, while blocks of ice were melted for the boiler; while the so-called first-class carriages were filthy, and crowded with vermin.

Others keeping near the ground glided behind separate groves, and brought them forward into relief with admirable distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole groves in succession, pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and bursting forth again seemingly clearer than before.

If the rapidity of the earth's rotation is diminishing, it is not certain how much of that retardation is due to tidal friction, how much to meteors, how much to possible excess of melting over accumulation of polar ice, during the period covered by observation, which amounts, at the outside, to not more than 2,600 years.

Ask him, and he perhaps will say,"This is my soul's hour; this purpled air the heart's atmosphere, melting by its breath the sealed fountains of love, which the cold commonplace of the world had frozen: I feel them gushing forth on every thing around me; and how worthy of love now appear to me these innocent animals, nay, these whispering leaves, that seem to kiss the passing air, and blush the while at their own fondness!

Well, if the neighbors will either melt down the church bells they jangle so horribly within fifteen yards or so of my unfortunate ears, or else hang them up two hundred feet high in a beautiful tower where they would sound angelic, as they do at Utrecht, then perhaps I will stop the organ to listen to them.

" It had been so good to see the forest creature at the moment when he was needed most, that Angela had melted toward him as snow melts in the spring sun.

That armor was without a joint; a lance would bend like so much tin against its plates, and yet there must be some alchemy that would make it melt as a mist before the sun.

CHAPTER VIII GRACE FINDS A WAY Soon after the reckoning at Mireside, the snow melted off the fells and for a month dark rain clouds from the sea rolled up the dale.

" Then he melted without noise into the darkness and Robert was alone.

But, when he went on to hint at Bianca's condition, the loving heart of Madonna Costanza melted towards the beauteous, weeping girl, and she drew her to her bosom to embrace and comfort her.