Milly: At Love's Extremes; A Romance of the Southland

Excerpt: A man stood on the jutting shoulder of a mountain overlooking a long narrow valley whose scattering houses and irregular farm-plats seen through the clear air of that high region appeared scarcely a gun-shot distant when in fact they were miles away. It was early morning; the sun had barely cleared the highest peaks in the east and the landscape albeit a mid-winter one was wonderfully rich in colors. On the oak trees the leaves still clung in heavy brown green and russet masses; the hickory forests though leafless made bits of tender gray along the lower valley-slopes whilst high up toward the mountain tops the billowy wilderness of pines cedars and chestnut trees added their variegated patch-work that gradually rose and shaded off into the blue of distance. In some places where storms or the needs of man had removed the oak woods a dense frondous mass of young pines had leaped up with a greenness full of a soft yellow glow. The sunshine and the wind of the South were flowing over this scene and there were fragrant odors and balsamic pungency in every wave.