Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. "Does it never rain here?" asked the Latest Arrival, with sudden shift of the matter under discussion. "How is that, Bentley?" said the officer addressed to the senior present, the surgeon. "You've been here longest." "Don't know, I'm sure," was the languid answer. "I've only been here three years. Try 'Tonio there. He was born... more...

CHAPTER 1. THE COUNCIL OF WAYS AND MEANS This is the story of the different ways we looked for treasure, and I think when you have read it you will see that we were not lazy about the looking. There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about the treasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know how beastly it is when a story begins, "'Alas!" said Hildegarde with... more...

SIR, The Bible lately presented to the Royal Society by Count de Salis, being a version into a language as little attended to in this country, as it may appear curious to those who take pleasure in philological inquiries; I embrace this opportunity to communicate to you, and, with your approbation, to the Society, all that I have been able to collect concerning its history and present state. This... more...

CHAPTER I. "Let the boy go to Paris," exclaimed our guest, Roland Belloc. "I warrant he'll find a path that will lead him to fortune." "He is young," said my father doubtfully. "He will be killed," cried my mother, while I stood upright against the wall and looked at Roland gratefully. It was in 1650, in the days of the Regency, and all France was in an uproar. Our... more...

In which Certain Details regarding a Lost Opal are Set Forth. Sandy MacWhirter would have an open fire. He had been brought up on blazing logs and warm hearths, and could not be happy without them. In his own boyhood's home the fireplace was the shrine, and half the orchard and two big elms had been offered up on its altar. There was no chimney in No. 3 when he moved in—no place really to put... more...

Jack Barrington, nominal owner of Tinandra Downs cattle station on the Gilbert River in the far north of North Queensland, was riding slowly over his run, when, as the fierce rays of a blazing sun, set in a sky of brass, smote upon his head and shoulders and his labouring stock-horse plodded wearily homewards over the spongy, sandy soil, the lines of Barcroft Boake came to his mind, and, after he had... more...

OUR AGREEABLE FELLOW PASSENGER n the same spirit in which a solicitous mamma or benevolent middle-aged friend will sometimes draw forth from the misty past some youthful misdeed, and set the faded picture up before a girl's eyes, framed in fiery retribution—for an object lesson and a terrible example—so will I, benevolent, if not middle-aged, put before the eyes of my sisters a certain... more...

CHAPTER I. Two men sat by the sea waves. "Well, I know I'm not handsome," said one gloomily. He was poking holes in the sand with a discontented cane. The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome with perspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right. Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line. "To be sure you are not," he cried... more...

THE PARTY ON SPECIAL NO. 218 Any one who hopes to find in what is here written a work of literature had better lay it aside unread. At Yale I should have got the sack in rhetoric and English composition, let alone other studies, had it not been for the fact that I played half-back on the team, and so the professors marked me away up above where I ought to have ranked. That was twelve years ago, but my... more...

SAHARA LIMITED Sir Robert Aylward, Bart., M.P., sat in his office in the City of London. It was a very magnificent office, quite one of the finest that could be found within half a mile of the Mansion House. Its exterior was built of Aberdeen granite, a material calculated to impress the prospective investor with a comfortable sense of security. Other stucco, or even brick-built, offices might crumble... more...