CHAPTER I IN A HOSTILE COUNTRY Eastward out of the Torquilla Range the Burntwood River emerged from a gorge, flowing swift and turbulent during the spring months, shallow and murmurous the rest of the year, to pass through a basin formed by low mountains and break forth at last from a canyon and wind away over the mesa. In the canyon was being erected the huge reservoir dam which was in the future to... more...

CHAPTER I Dunraven Bleak, the managing editor of The Evening Balloon, sat at his desk in the center of the local-room, under a furious cone of electric light. It was six o'clock of a warm summer afternoon: he was filling his pipe and turning over the pages of the Final edition of the paper, which had just come up from the press-room. After the turmoil of the day the room had quieted, most of the... more...

CHAPTER I The vague and hazy ideals which the white light of an English upbringing relegates to dreamland and dismisses as idle fancies, rise up in the glare of African sunlight, alive, tangible, unashamed; the things that are, not the things that might be:—the vivid colouring, the hot crowding, the stately men and veiled women, the despotism and stoicism, the unchanging picturesqueness of the... more...

In the Time That Was "And There Was Light." achook of the Chilkats told me these tales of The Time That Was. But before the telling, he of the Northland and I of the Southland had travelled many a mile with dog-team, snowshoes, and canoe. If the stories suffer in the telling, as suffer they must afar from that wondrous Alaskan background of mountain and forest, glacier and river, wrenched from... more...

A Tale of Modern War. Reveals the Explosive Nature of my Early Career. The remarkable—I might even say amazing—personal adventures which I am about to relate occurred quite recently. They are so full of interest to myself and to my old mother, that I hasten to write them down while yet vivid and fresh in my memory, in the hope that they may prove interesting,—to say nothing of elevating and... more...

TO Belden, pacing the library doggedly, the waiting seemed interminable, the strain unnecessarily prolonged. A half-hour ago quick feet had echoed through the upper halls, windows had opened, doors all but slammed, vague whisperings and drawn breaths had hovered impalpably about the whole place; but now all was utterly quiet. His own regular footfall alone disturbed the unnatural stillness of a large... more...

Chapter 1: A Brush With The Robbers. "Help--help--help!" This cry, growing feebler at each repetition, was borne by the evening breeze to the ears of a traveller who was picking his way along the dark mazes of Epping Forest one cool, fresh October day. Instinctively he drew rein and listened, laying his band unconsciously upon the hilt of his poniard. "A woman's voice," he said... more...

Prologue. “You coward!” The word cut crisply and sharp through the clear frosty air, lashing and keen as the wind that stirred the crystal-spangled pines, and the musical ring of skate-blades upon the ice-bound surface of the mere. She who uttered it stood, her flower-like face and deep blue eyes all a-quiver with contemptuous disgust. He to whom it was addressed, started, blenched ever so... more...

I. HOW I KILLED A BEAR So many conflicting accounts have appeared about my casual encounter with an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, to myself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear, that the celebration of the exploit may be excused. The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. I was... more...

CHAPTER I Amedeo Dorini, the hall porter of the Hotel Cavour in Milan, stood on the pavement before the hotel one autumn afternoon in the year 1894, waiting for the omnibus, which had gone to the station, and which was now due to return, bearing—Amedeo hoped—a load of generously inclined travelers. During the years of his not unpleasant servitude Amedeo had become a student of human nature. He had... more...