The Zeit-Geist
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THE Zeit-Geist Library of _COMPLETE NOVELS_ in One Volume. _Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s._
Early Volumes. By L. DOUGALL. THE ZEIT-GEIST. With Frontispiece.
By GYP. CHIFFON'S MARRIAGE. With Portrait of Author.
By FRANKFORT MOORE. THE SALE OF A SOUL. With Frontispiece.
By the Author of "A Yellow Aster." A NEW NOVEL. With Frontispiece.
_Other volumes to follow._
Each volume with designed Title-page.
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
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The Zeit-Geist
L. DOUGALL
Author of Beggars All, What Necessity Knows, etc.
LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO PATERNOSTER ROW
"I ... create evil. I am the Lord." _Isa. xlv. 6, 7._
"Where will God be absent? In His face Is light, but in His shadow there is healing too: Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!" _The Ring and the Book._
"If Nature is the garment of God, it is woven without seam throughout." _The Ascent of Man._
OXFORD, _January 1895_.
_When travelling in Canada, in the region north of Lake Ontario, I came upon traces of the somewhat remarkable life which is the subject of the following sketch.
Having applied to the school-master in the town where Bartholomew Toyner lived, I received an account the graphic detail and imaginative insight of which attest the writer's personal affection. This account, with only such condensation as is necessary, I now give to the world. I do not believe that it belongs to the novel to teach theology; but I do believe that religious sentiments and opinions are a legitimate subject of its art, and that perhaps its highest function is to promote understanding by bringing into contact minds that habitually misinterpret one another._
THE ZEIT-GEIST.
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE.
To-day I am at home in the little town of the fens, where the Ahwewee River falls some thirty feet from one level of land to another. Both broad levels were covered with forest of ash and maple, spruce and tamarack; but long ago, some time in the thirties, impious hands built dams on the impetuous Ahwewee, and wide marshes and drowned wood-lands are the result. Yet just immediately at Fentown there is neither marsh nor dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a foaming flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all about the town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still standing, and arable lands well cleared. The little town itself has a thriving look. Its public buildings and its villas have risen, as by the sweep of an enchanter's wand, in these backwoods to the south of the Ottawa valley.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: The Zeit-Geist by Lily Dougall
- 2: There was a day when I came a stranger to Fentown
- 3: Toyner is always talking about God
- 4: I watched the sunlit acacias as they fluttered
- 5: Toyner made a slight gesture of his hand
- 6: I always remember Ann Toyner as I saw her that first time
- 7: In the days when there were not many people in Fentown Falls
- 8: She neither liked nor admired Bart Toyner
- 9: Toyner tried to repeat what he heard
- 10: Had undoubtedly come to Bart Toyner
- 11: Crime was seldom perpetrated in Fentown
- 12: Ann closed her house for the night
- 13: After a while Toyner retreated with noiseless steps
- 14: She dipped her oars to steer rather than to propel
- 15: Stretching himself luxuriously
- 16: For a long while he writhed and cried
- 17: It's Toyner that will catch me
- 18: Both sentiments fused into keener hatred of Toyner
- 19: Now the fugitive had been never a friend to Toyner
- 20: And to bring up Christa that way
- 21: I say I will do it and Christa will do it
- 22: Bart Toyner betook himself to prayer
- 23: Toyner had gone in labouring under horrible emotion
- 24: Toyner saw the detective depart by the afternoon boat
- 25: Hope in other possibilities of eluding Bart
- 26: When Christa had performed her toilet
- 27: But with pathos it's hard on Christa
- 28: He took hold of the end of her seam
- 29: Bart could help him quite easily
- 30: Markham was little known at The Mills
- 31: Toyner looked eagerly into the mist
- 32: Toyner peered into the silver mist on all sides of him
- 33: With unnatural strength he lifted Toyner
- 34: For two days the sun rose on Bart through the mellow
- 35: Toyner had often seen these scenes before
- 36: Christa had sauntered out to smell the morning air
- 37: Christa was perfectly consoled
- 38: When he was gone Christa laughed
- 39: But Ann thought she recognised Toyner
- 40: That Bart had wavered in his resolution to relieve Markham
- 41: Ann moved the canoe under the fallen log
- 42: As she began to paddle the canoe forward
- 43: That unspoken reverence for Toyner
- 44: She helped Bart out of the canoe
- 45: The peas had been gathered weeks before
- 46: She cooked the apples and tomatoes
- 47: I only meant about Christa that I think I made a mistake
- 48: Not because you were a devil that wanted him to be naughty
- 49: And she's got an awful disease
- 50: It is because they are a parable
- 51: For she turned to Bart trembling
- 52: At length Toyner found strength to walk feebly
- 53: When Toyner was well he came home again
- 54: When Toyner woke up his humiliation was terrible
- 55: Toyner shivered even within the clasp of the encircling arm
- 56: Longest depth of the same kind of hell beyond
- 57: His faith was in the Father of sinners
- 58: Toyner had just spoken of the sacrifice of Calvary
- 59: Toyner never became intoxicated again
- 60: To Toyner sin was an abhorred thing