Excerpt from The Drakestone These, then, were the people who belonged to the land, as it belonged to them, for it had set its mark on them. They were a spare, muscular, tena cious breed; and in their watchful eyes - watchful from having had a deal to watch - and in their tall bent figures - bent before they were bom - they bore their title to Blackboy Hall and the Blackboy lands. They were seldom seen without dogs; and in a habit they all had of picking up things from the ground chips and twigs for kindl' lucky plants, nails, pq balls to stop bleeding, aiilf all manner of Odds and ends - they repeated the attitude of their ancestor, who had bent over the earth, and of his children, who had gathered the manure-droppings. 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.