“Hillo, Roger! glad to find you at last. I have been hunting up and down along the cliffs for the last hour or more, till I began to fear that you must have been carried off by a Barbary corsair, or spirited away on the end of Mother Shipton’s broomstick.” The speaker was a fine-looking lad of sixteen, dressed in the costume worn by Puritans in the time of the second Charles—a long cloth coat... more...

PREFACE When visiting my native county some time since, I was struck with the modern, "up-to-date," aspect of men and things. In this respect Cornwall has much changed even during the twenty years since I left it. The quiet, old-world feeling which I can remember has gone, and instead there is a spirit of eagerness, almost amounting to rush. I discovered, too, that the old stories, dear to me,... more...

A Summons. The snow lay thick round Maxfield Manor. Though it had been falling scarcely an hour, it had already transfigured the dull old place from a gloomy pile of black and grey into a gleaming vision of white. It lodged in deep piles in the angles of the rugged gables, and swirled up in heavy drifts against the hall-door. It sat heavily on the broad ivy-leaves over the porch, and blotted out lawn,... more...

CHAPTER I “YOU––YOU SIMPLETON!” A sturdy boy in homespun, a lad of nearly fourteen years, whose eyes were clear and gray and whose face was resolute and honest, led his little sister by the hand, for she was small and the road was rough. “We’ll rest, ’Omi, when we come to the big tree. Are you cold?” he asked, for there was the chill of March in the wind, though the sun lay very warm in... more...

CHAPTER I. RODNEY KEEPS HIS PROMISE. "So you are going to stick to your uniform, are you? I thought perhaps you would be glad to see yourself in citizen's clothes once more, and so I told Jane to put one of your old suits on the bed where you would be sure to see it." It was Mrs. Gray who spoke, and her words were addressed to her son Rodney, who just then stepped out of the hall upon the... more...

RODMAN THE KEEPER.The long years come and go,And the Past,The sorrowful, splendid Past,With its glory and its woe,Seems never to have been.—Seems never to have been?O somber days and grand,How ye crowd back once more,Seeing our heroes' graves are greenBy the Potomac and the Cumberland,And in the valley of the Shenandoah!When we remember how they died,—In dark ravine and on the mountain-side,In... more...

With her white cotton canvas swelling gently out and then softly drooping flat against her cordage, the Shawnee, sperm whaler of New Bedford, with the dying breath of the south-east trade, was sailing lazily over a sea whose waters were as calm as those of a mountain lake. Twenty miles astern the lofty peaks of Tutuila, one of the islands of the Samoan group, stood out clearly in the dazzling sunshine,... more...

CHAPTER I. Rowland Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of his father. He was urged by the reflection that an affectionate farewell might help to exonerate him from the charge of neglect frequently preferred by this lady. It was not that the... more...

CHAPTER I. IN ST. JACOB STRAAT. "The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life." "It is the Professor von Holzen," said a stout woman who still keeps the egg and butter shop at the corner of St. Jacob Straat in The Hague; she is a Jewess, as, indeed, are most of the denizens of St. Jacob Straat and its neighbour, Bezem Straat, where the fruit-sellers live—"it is the Professor von... more...

CHAPTER I A WAIF OF THE NIGHT Parson Dan chuckled several times as he sipped his hot cocoa before the fire. It was an open fire, and the flames licked around an old dry root which had been brought with other driftwood up from the shore. This brightly-lighted room was a pleasing contrast to the roughness of the night outside, for a strong late October wind was careening over the land. It swirled about... more...