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The Devil's Pool
The Devil's Pool
The story of a young widower who sets out to remarry so that he will have someone to help raise his three young children. Translated by George B. Ives
Book Excerpt
empty place beside him, smelling the yoke and chains his companion wore, and calling him incessantly with a pitiful bellow. The driver will say: "There's a yoke of oxen lost; his brother's dead, and he won't work. We ought to fatten him for killing; but he won't eat, and he'll soon starve to death."
The old ploughman was working slowly, in silence, without useless expenditure of strength. His docile team seemed in no greater hurry than he; but as he kept constantly at work, never turning aside, and exerting always just the requisite amount of sustained power, his furrow was as quickly cut as his son's, who was driving four less powerful oxen on some harder and more stony land a short distance away.
But the spectacle that next attracted my attention was a fine one indeed, a noble subject for a painter. At the other end of the arable tract, a young man of attractive appearance was driving a superb team: four yoke of young beasts, black-coated with tawny spots that gleamed like fire, with the shor
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The author's preface goes on for a while, and adds nothing to the story, which begins with part III. The translation is fairly good and the writing, though a bit ornate, moves well. The postscript is the author being chatty, but it completes the story line.
It reminded me most of Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels in that the rustics are pure, honest, and have common sense and an innate wisdom based on nature, while the wealthier and more civilized people are greedy, immoral, and stupid.
No, it isn't a ghost or horror story.
It reminded me most of Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels in that the rustics are pure, honest, and have common sense and an innate wisdom based on nature, while the wealthier and more civilized people are greedy, immoral, and stupid.
No, it isn't a ghost or horror story.
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FEATURED AUTHOR - 'The Plotting Shed' (see her blog http://www.intheplottingshed.com/) was Alex Martin's first writing space at the bottom of her Welsh garden. Now she splits her time between Wales and France and plot wherever she is. She still wanders aimlessly in the countryside with her dog and her dreams and she can still be found typing away with imaginary friends whispering in her ear, but these days she has the joy of seeing her stories published and the treasured feedback from readers who've enjoyed them.