Fiction Books

CHAPTER 1. THE SAWMILL ON THE LESQUE Seymour Merriman was tired; tired of the jolting saddle of his motor bicycle, of the cramped position of his arms, of the chug of the engine, and most of all, of the dreary, barren country through which he was riding. Early that morning he had left Pau, and with the exception of an hour and a half at Bayonne, where he had lunched and paid a short business call, he... more...

CHAPTER I. A Word to Donald.—The Scotch Anecdote and its Character.—The Scotch painted by Themselves. h! my dear Donald, what good stories you told me in the few months that I had the pleasure of passing with you! How you stuffed and saturated me with them! And the English pretend that nobody laughs in Scotland! Don't they though! and with the right sort of laughter, too: a laugh that is... more...

The curtain of the big bed hung down beside the cot. When old Jenny shook it the wooden rings rattled on the pole and grey men with pointed heads and squat, bulging bodies came out of the folds on to the flat green ground. If you looked at them they turned into squab faces smeared with green. Every night, when Jenny had gone away with the doll and the donkey, you hunched up the blanket and the stiff... more...

SIMPLE CARD TRICKS AN EASY METHOD OF FINDING A SELECTED CARD Throw the pack on the table and request to select a card. Then gather up the rest of the cards and request your friend to show his card to his neighbour, to avoid mistakes. While this is being done bend the pack slightly while pretending to shuffle it, and cause the card to be returned and the pack shuffled. The selected card can then be... more...

What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrook was not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had come to settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious—he used to be very communicative about them at the time—but extremely morbid and unreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because he bought a plot of ground, and had a pair of... more...

CHAPTER ION THE CANYON TRAIL. “Hello, there! What in the name of reason is this?” The horseman’s excited cry was echoed by a startled neigh from his beast, which wheeled about so suddenly that he nearly precipitated both himself and rider into the gulch below. “Oh! I’m sorry––Hold on, Zu! Go! Do, please. Quick! It’s so narrow just beyond and I can’t––” The stranger obeyed,... more...

With the trueStory of Evangeline It seems but yesterday, and yet sixty years have passed away since my boyhood. How fleeting is time, how swiftly does old age creep upon us with its infirmities. The curling smoke, dispelled by the passing wind, the water that glides with a babbling murmur in the gentle stream, leave as deep a mark of their passage as do the fleeting days of man. I was twelve years old,... more...

SECRET BREAD PROLOGUE There was silence in the room where James Ruan lay in the great bed, awaiting his marriage and his death—a silence so hushed that it was not broken, only faintly stirred, by the knocking of a fitful wind at the casement, and the occasional collapse of the glowing embers on the hearth. The firelight flickered over the whitewashed walls, which were dimmed to a pearly greyness by... more...

THE BLACKBERRY GIRL. PART I. "Why, Phebe, are you come so soon,  Where are your berries, child?You cannot, sure, have sold them all,  You had a basket pil'd." "No, mother, as I climb'd the fence,  The nearest way to town,My apron caught upon a stake,  And so I tumbled down." "I scratched my arm, and tore my hair,  But still did not complain;And had my... more...

PART I. Tréguier, my native place, has grown into a town out of an ancient monastery founded at the close of the fifth century by St. Tudwal (or Tual), one of the religious leaders of those great migratory movements which introduced into the Armorican peninsula the name, the race, and the religious institutions of the island of Britain. The predominating characteristic of early British Christianity... more...