Excerpt from In the Distance: A NovelThe Cleft - a rugged gully breaking from the roadside, and tearing a long, descending seam in the wooded hill, about midway of the route from Willowbridge to Marle - was a silent place always. The hush that brooded over it seemed to be preparing the mind for events of importance. As if it were the primeval atmosphere, it was charged with a sense of profound beginnings.Beginnings usually imply hope; but about this place there was something sad, austere, and minatory. A new life, a new scheme, a new passion, even in the midst of its hopefulness, carries with it a shadow of coming struggle and the pathos of possible failure. It was this shadow, this pathos, which seemed to pervade the spot, in the full leafy vigor of the June day to which we now look back.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis 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.