Excerpt from Craque O'doom Like two night-birds who had strayed into the wrong season, a pair of girls flopped about on the snowy walk or huddled together outside of the Hill house. The house was lighted. They could see, through one uncovered window, which extended to the veranda floor, the ruby gates, the cut-glass candelabra, and the luxurious furniture. The girls were on the west side of the house, which was a large square structure with extensions at the rear. Below the hill an old turnpike town straggled eastward, its lights barely twinkling through a winter fog. The evergreens and old forest-trees all around the grounds were weighted with soft snow, and there were occasional slides from the roof which dropped with a half-liquid splash. The sound of a piano made the air delicious to these girls outside. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.