CHAPTER I THE GREAT SEA WATERSGray sky, brown waters, as a bird that fliesMy heart flits forth to these;Back to the winter rose of Northern skies,Back to the Northern seas.The sea is His, and He made it. I saw a man of God coming over the narrow zigzag path that led across a Shetland peat moss. Swiftly and surely he stepped. Bottomless bogs of black peat-water were on each side of him, but he had... more...

CHAPTER I The most remarkable thing about the boy was his eyes––that is, if any man with his spread of shoulder and masculine grace of flat muscled hips could be spoken of any longer as a boy, merely because his years happened to number twenty-four. They, however––the eyes––were gray; not a too light, off-color, gleaming gray, but more the tone of slate, deep when one chanced to find... more...

CHAPTER I. "On hospitable thoughts intent."   "Positively he is coming!" says Mr. Massereene, with an air of the most profound astonishment. "Who?" asks Molly, curiously, pausing with her toast in mid-air (they are at breakfast), and with her lovely eyes twice their usual goodly size. Her lips, too, are apart; but whether in anticipation of the news or of the toast, it would be... more...

THE PASSING OF TONY. "Last mail in, Mis' Bascomb?" "Last mail's in, Tony." "Be there anything for me to-night?" Widow Bascomb knew perfectly well there was not, but she reached for a small pile of letters in a pigeonhole on her right and glanced over them rapidly. Her sour visage and rasping voice softened perceptibly as she smiled on the little old man before her.... more...

CHAPTER I. SCENE. Deck of an ocean steamer. Characters:Mrs. Jerrold, matron and chaperon in general.Edith Jerrold, her daughter.Albert Madden, a young man on study intent.Eric, his brother, on pleasure bent.Norman Mann, cousin of the Jerrolds, old classmate of theMaddens.Mae Madden, sister of the brothers and leading lady. "It's something like dying, I do declare," said Mae, and as she... more...

FOREWORD An American ambulance going south stopped on the snowy road; the driver, an American named Estridge, got out; his companion, a young woman in furs, remained in her seat. Estridge, with the din of the barrage in his ears, went forward to show his papers to the soldiers who had stopped him on the snowy forest road. His papers identified him and the young woman; and further they revealed the fact... more...

CHAPTER I. RECOVERY.   Something I know. Oft, shall it come about    When every heart is full of hope for man,  The horizon straight is darkened, and a doubt    Clouds all. The work the youth so well began  Wastes down, and by some deed of shame is finished.    Ah, yet we will not be dismayed:  What seemed the triumph of the Fiend at length    Might be the effort of some dying... more...

CHAPTER I. I GO TO PITTSBURG McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of... more...

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 1 Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous silver calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and bickered about the creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred brooks running together... more...

I begin a life without a similitude with a simile—Start off with four horses—And, finally, I make my first appearance on any stage, under the protection of the “Crown.” In the volume I am going to write, it is my intention to adhere rigidly to the truth—this will be bonâ fide an autobiography—and, as the public like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the whole of it,... more...