Henry Lawson - Fiction

https://theoviebooks.wordpress.com/ It was dark enough for anything in Dead Man's Gap, a round, warm, close darkness, in which retreating sounds seemed to be cut off suddenly at a distance of a hundred yards or so. Instead of growing faint and fainter, and dying away, to strike the ear once or twice again—and after minutes, it might seem—with startling distinctness, before being finally lost in the distance, as it is on clear, frosty nights. So with the sounds of horses' hoofs, stumbling on the rough bridle-track through the “saddle”, the clatter of hoof-clipped stones and scrape of gravel down the hidden “siding”, and the low sound of men's voices, blurred and speaking in monosyllables and at intervals it seemed, and in hushed, awed tones, as though they carried a corpse. A cold hand seemed to take hold of the bow, through his, and ...anyway, before he knew what he was about he had played the first bars of 'When First I Met Sweet Peggy', a tune he had played often, twenty years before, in his courting days, and had never happened to play since. Henry Lawson (1867 - 1922) was one of the best known Australian poets and short story writers of the colonial period. He was born in South New Wales, which was called Pipeclay when his parents met during the gold rush. His mother was the poet and feminist, Louisa Lawson; his father, a miner, was born in Norway. Due to chronic ear infections, Henry became completely deaf, relying on reading to complete his education. In Public Domain First Published 1900 Ovi eBook Publishing 2024