CHAPTER I He awoke in the dark. His awakening was simple, easy, without movement save for the eyes that opened and made him aware of darkness. Unlike most, who must feel and grope and listen to, and contact with, the world about them, he knew himself on the moment of awakening, instantly identifying himself in time and place and personality. After the lapsed hours of sleep he took up, without effort,... more...

CHAPTER I. UNDER THE MEXICAN EAGLE.—EXIT THE FOREIGNER.—MONTEREY, 1840. "Caramba! Adios, Seflores!" cried Captain Miguel Peralta, sitting on his roan charger on the Monterey bluffs. A white-sailed bark is heading southward for Acapulco. His vaqueros tossed up their sombreros, shouting, "Vive Alvarado! Muerte los estrangeros!" The Pacific binds the hills of California in a sapphire... more...

CHAPTER I "NAH! Renestine, cannot you come with the skirt and let me lay it in your trunk? You are dreaming, dreaming all the time. My child, these things must be ready by midnight tonight." The girl was thirteen years old and her mother was getting her possessions together to send her to America to join a sister who had already gone there and was married and now sent to have her little sister... more...

The little hunchback Zia toiled slowly up the steep road, keeping in the deepest shadows, even though the night had long fallen. Sometimes he staggered with weariness or struck his foot against a stone and smothered his involuntary cry of pain. He was so full of terror that he was afraid to utter a sound which might cause any traveler to glance toward him. This he feared more than any other... more...

CHAPTER I That morning began no differently from any morning, though it was to be the beginning of all things new for Eric. He was awakened early by Mrs. Freg's rough hand shaking him by the arm, and her rough voice in his ears: "Get up, lazy-bones! All you boys pile out, this very minute! It's six o'clock already!" Then she reached over Eric and shook the other two boys in the... more...

Once in a while there come to me out of the long ago the fragments of a story I have not thought of for years—one that has been hidden in the dim lumber-room of my brain where I store my by-gone memories. These fragments thrust themselves out of the past as do the cuffs of an old-fashioned coat, the flutings of a flounce, or the lacings of a bodice from out a quickly opened bureau drawer. Only when... more...

THE LITTLE GOLD MINERS OF THE SIERRAS. Their mother had died crossing the plains, and their father had had a leg broken by a wagon wheel passing over it as they descended the Sierras, and he was for a long time after reaching the mines miserable, lame and poor. The eldest boy, Jim Keene, as I remember him, was a bright little fellow, but wild as an Indian and full of mischief. The next eldest child,... more...

Little Lucy's mother had died when she was a very small child;—this was a great misfortune to Lucy, for her mother loved her very tenderly, and she would have taken the trouble to tell her what she did wrong, and when she felt wrong, and would have taught her to correct all her faults; she would have taught her that happiness could not dwell in her heart, while she permitted wicked passions... more...

NELLY AND HER FRIENDS Nelly Grey was a little English girl who had never been in England. She was born in China, and went with her father and mother to live in the British Legation compound in Peking when she was only three years old. A compound is a kind of big courtyard, with other courts and houses inside. Nelly's was a large one, and very open. It had several houses in it: not like we have in... more...

NE day, the cook went into the kitchen to make some gingerbread. She took some flour and water, and treacle and ginger, and mixed them all well together, and she put in some more water to make it thin, and then some more flour to make it thick, and a little salt and some spice, and then she rolled it out into a beautiful, smooth, dark-yellow dough. Then she took the square tins and cut out some square... more...