Mortimers

Excerpt from The Mortimers: A Novel "The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. The moon being clouded presently is missed But little stars may hide them where they list." A great northern cantonment of the Punjab struggled for breath like a strong man strangled by asthma. Huge mountain ranges that towered forty miles away lifted their forests to dry stars. The monsoon had failed, giving its waters fitfully from a serene sky unable to command that deluge in the hills which the parched plain and dry waterways craved. In the Commissioner's bungalow a July night seemed stoked to white heat by the moon's merciless radiance, and a swaying punkah moved as a distraught thing in the still room where two Englishmen sat, enduring an onslaught of savage atmosphere such as their motherland never knows. They were brothers, and possessed in common a strong length of limb, blue and observant eyes, well chiselled noses, determined chins, and an unmistakable air of race. 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.