About the end of the reign of the Emperor Paul I—that is to say, towards the middle of the first year of the nineteenth century—just as four o'clock in the afternoon was sounding from the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, whose gilded vane overlooks the ramparts of the fortress, a crowd, composed of all sorts and conditions of people, began to gather in front of a house which belonged to... more...

CHAPTER I AT SOLBERGA PARSONAGE In the days when King Frederik the Second of Denmark ruled over Bohuslen [FOOTNOTE: Frederik the Second reigned from 1544 to 1588. At that time, Bohuslen, now a province of southwest Sweden, formed part of Norway and was under the Danish Crown.—Trans.] there dwelt at Marstrand a poor hawker of fish, whose name was Torarin. This man was infirm and of humble condition;... more...

Contents with First Lines: PreludeI have gathered these stories afar, The Man from Snowy RiverThere was movement at the station, for the word had passed around Old Pardon, the Son of ReprieveYou never heard tell of the story? Clancy of the OverflowI had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Conroy's GapThis was the way of it, don't you know — Our New HorseThe boys had come... more...

CHAPTER I On the first Sunday in the month of August, 1815, at ten o'clock precisely—as on every Sunday morning—the sacristan of the parish church at Sairmeuse sounded the three strokes of the bell which warn the faithful that the priest is ascending the steps of the altar to celebrate high mass. The church was already more than half full, and from every side little groups of peasants were... more...

INTRODUCTORY. It is upon this occasion my rare and happy privilege to introduce the reader to something absolutely new. How many English-speaking tourists have found their way to the Roof of France—in other words, the ancient Gévaudan, the romantic department of the Lozère? How many English—or for the matter of that French travellers either—have so much as heard of the Causses, [Footnote: From... more...

CHAPTER I. THE HOME OF THE ALLY "And because the town of this story is what it is, there came to dwell in it a Spirit—a strange, mysterious power—playful, vicious, deadly; a Something to be at once feared and courted; to be denied—yet confessed in the denial; a deadly enemy, a welcome friend, an all-powerful Ally." This story began in the Ozark Mountains. It follows the trail that is... more...

  nearly stumbled over the kid in the dark before I saw him. His wheelchair was parked as usual on the tired strip of carpet grass that separated his mother's trailer from the one Doc Shull and I lived in, but it wasn't exactly where I'd learned to expect it when I rolled in at night from the fishing boats. Usually it was nearer the west end of the strip where Joey could look across the... more...

PREFACE In Northern India stood a monastery called The Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat. No one remembered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been. He had lived his life, made a little money and spent it all, as every good Hindu should do, on a work of piety—the Chubara. That was full of brick cells, gaily painted with the figures of Gods and kings and elephants, where worn-out priests could sit and meditate on... more...

In preparing this volume on the Countess of Albany (which I consider as a kind of completion of my previous studies of eighteenth-century Italy), I have availed myself largely of Baron Alfred von Reumont's large work Die Gräfin von Albany (published in 1862); and of the monograph, itself partially founded on the foregoing, of M. St. René Taillandier, entitled La Comtesse d'Albany, published... more...

THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the unseen power in the next room—a certain... more...