DEAR EXCELLENCY: The communicating time will be here soon. I have started this letter early to be sure it will be ready. This is the first time I have felt safe when communicating with you. Our enemies at home can solve such extraordinarily complex ciphers that I have always been uneasy before. They cannot possibly solve an entirely new language like this one; a language based on an utterly different... more...

CHAPTER I The first Penhallow crossed the Alleghanies long before the War for Independence and on the frontier of civilisation took up land where the axe was needed for the forest and the rifle for the Indian. He made a clearing and lived a hard life of peril, wearily waiting for the charred stumps to rot away. The younger men of the name in Colonial days and later left the place early, and for the... more...

I. THE TWO SPRINGS High above Sierra's peaks stands grim Mount Tallac. Ten thousand feet above the sea it rears its head to gaze out north to that vast and wonderful turquoise that men call Lake Tahoe, and northwest, across a piney sea, to its great white sister, Shasta of the Snows; wonderful colors and things on every side, mast-like pine trees strung with jewelry, streams that a Buddhist would... more...

CHAPTER I A KNOCK AT THE DOOR Fran knocked at the front door. It was too dark for her to find the bell; however, had she found it, she would have knocked just the same. At first, no one answered. That was not surprising, since everybody was supposed to be at the Union Camp-meeting that had been advertised for the last two months. Of course it was not beyond possibility that some one might have stayed... more...

II. It has been thought desirable to reprint the Essays and other short Works of the late Marquess of Bute in an inexpensive form likely to be useful to the general reader, and thereby to make them more widely known. Should this, the second of the proposed series, prove acceptable, it will be followed by others at short intervals. [A Lecture delivered on January 19, 1893, before the Scottish Society of... more...

CHAPTER I A PLENIPOTENTIARY   Has no writer ever dealt with the dramatic aspect of the unopened envelope? I cannot recall such a passage in any of my authors, and yet to my mind there is much matter for philosophy in what is always the expressionless shell of a boundless possibility. Your friend may run after you in the street, and you know at a glance whether his news is to be good, bad, or... more...

CHAPTER I THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 1720-1744 The fortress of Louisbourg arose not from victory but from defeat; not from military strength but from naval weakness; not from a new, adventurous spirit of attack, but from a half-despairing hope of keeping one last foothold by the sea. It was not begun till after the fortunes of Louis XIV had reached their lowest ebb at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.... more...

LAYAMON'S BRUT At Totnes Constantin the fair and all his host came ashore; thither came the bold man—well was he brave!—and with him two thousand knights such as no king possessed. Forth they gan march into London, and sent after knights over all the kingdom, and every brave man, that speedily he should come anon. The Britons heard that, where they dwelt in the pits; in earth and in stocks... more...

CHAPTER I AT RAINBOW HILL VALLEY A companionable silence prevailed in the room. At intervals it was broken, but only by the rustle of paper or the striking of a match. The heavy breathing, almost amounting to a snore, of one of the two men, and the inarticulate protests of a laboring "rocker" chair—these things were only a part of it. The man at the table was deeply immersed in a miniature... more...

THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL It was the hour of rest in the Country Beyond the Stars. All the silver bells that swing with the turning of the great ring of light which lies around that land were softly chiming; and the sound of their commotion went down like dew upon the golden ways of the city, and the long alleys of blossoming trees, and the meadows of asphodel, and the curving shores of the River of Life. At... more...