Conjurer Dick; or, the Adventures of a Young Wizard

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: . CHAPTER III. My First Introduction to the Major?The Other Things?A Delightful Promise?A Deadly Combat. On returning home from school with Peter one afternoon, we found sitting with my mother a gentleman, at that time a stranger to us, but who was destined to have a very great influence on my life. Such...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: . CHAPTER III. My First Introduction to the Major?The Other Things?A Delightful Promise?A Deadly Combat. On returning home from school with Peter one afternoon, we found sitting with my mother a gentleman, at that time a stranger to us, but who was destined to have a very great influence on my life. Such mixture of good as there may be in the queer piece of patchwork that serves me for a character?the instinctive love of what is good and true, and hatred of what is mean and base?I owe, under God, chiefly to Major Manly. He had been a schoolfellow and special friend of my father, and now, after spending the greater part of his life in India, had returned to end his days in England. Almost his first act, on returning to his native land, had been to look up the widow of his old friend, and the tears with which my mother's eyes were filled showed what tender memories had been recalled by his visit. He rose at our entrance, and gave a hand to each of us with a hearty grip. And these are your boys, poor Dick's boys ? Good boys, too, I'll be bound, or they're not like their father before them. Come, lads, let's have a good look at you. We looked at him with a smile, half gratified, half shamefaced, and he looked, not at us, as it seemed to me, but through us, in return. The first thing one noticed about the Major was his eyes?they were grey, and clear, with a pleasant twinkle; ordinary eyes enough to describe, but by no means ordinary eyes to look at. If ever a brave white soul looked out of a man's eyes, it did so from Major Manly's. You felt instinctively that the man who owned those eyes did not know what fear was, and thatthrough storm or sunshine, evil repute or good repute, he would hold to what he believed to be the right. And the clear gaze of the Major's eyes seemed not...