Short Stories (single author) Books

PREFACE These stories were all written at a very happy time of my life, and they were first published when I was a master at Eton with a boarding-house. A house-master is not always a happy man. It is an anxious business at best. Boys are very unaccountable creatures, and the years between boyhood and adolescence are apt to represent an irresponsible mood. From the quiet childhood at home the boys have... more...

Jean de Marselait, Inquisitor Extraordinary of the King of France, raised his head from the parchments that littered the crude desk at which he sat. His glance shifted along the long stone-walled, torchlit room to the file of mail-clad soldiers who stood like steel statues by its door. A word from him and two of them sprang forward. "You may bring in the prisoner," he said. The two disappeared... more...

CAPTAIN "BULLY" HAYES In other works by the present writer frequent allusion has been made, either by the author or by other persons, to Captain Hayes. Perhaps the continuous appearance of his name may have been irritating to many of my readers; if so I can only plead that it is almost impossible when writing of wild life in the Southern Seas to avoid mentioning him. Every one who sailed the... more...

"I'm desperately afear'd, Sue, that that brother of thine will turn out a jackanapes," was the apostrophe of the good yeoman Michael Howe, to his pretty daughter Susan, as they were walking one fine afternoon in harvest through some narrow and richly wooded lanes, which wound between the crofts of his farm of Rutherford West, situate in that out-of-the-way part of Berkshire which is... more...

Dinner was over, and Mme. Constantin and her guests were seated under the lighted candles in her cosey salon. With the serving of the coffee and cigarettes, pillows had been adjusted to bare shoulders, stools moved under slippered feet, and easy lounges pushed nearer the fire. Greenough, his long body aslant, his head on the edge of a chair, his feet on the hearth rug, was blowing rings to the ceiling.... more...

THE SON’S VETO CHAPTER I To the eyes of a man viewing it from behind, the nut-brown hair was a wonder and a mystery.  Under the black beaver hat, surmounted by its tuft of black feathers, the long locks, braided and twisted and coiled like the rushes of a basket, composed a rare, if somewhat barbaric, example of ingenious art.  One could understand such weavings and coilings being wrought to last... more...

nterplanetary flight having been perfected, the planets and moons of the Sol system having been colonized, Man turned his attention to the stars. And ran into a stone wall. After three decades of trying, scientists reluctantly concluded that a faster-than-light drive was an impossibility, at least within the realm of any known theory of the Universe. They gave up. But a government does not give up so... more...

"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once more. I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by the help of a crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half... more...

PALOMITAS I’ve been around considerable in the Western Country––mostly some years back––and I’ve seen quite a little, one way and another, of the folks living there: but I can’t really and truly say I’ve often come up with them nature’s noblemen––all the time at it doing stunts in natural nobility––the story-books make out is the chief population of them parts. Like enough the... more...

There are not many who will remember him as Thomas Jefferson Brown. For ten years he had been mildly ashamed of himself, and out of respect for people who were dead, and for a dozen or so who were living, he had the good taste to drop his last name. The fact that it was only Brown didn't matter. "Tack Thomas Jefferson to Brown," he said, "and you've got a name that sticks!" It... more...