CHAPTER I: OF THOSE THREE WHO CAME TO THE HOUSE OF THE RAVEN It has been told that there was once a young man of free kindred and whose name was Hallblithe: he was fair, strong, and not untried in battle; he was of the House of the Raven of old time. This man loved an exceeding fair damsel called the Hostage, who was of the House of the Rose, wherein it was right and due that the men of the Raven... more...

XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a spit? It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks, wrapt in a mist, that no London in the Novem-berest November ever equaled. The chronometer pronounced... more...

ACT I At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry morning in the year 1777, Mrs. Dudgeon, of New Hampshire, is sitting up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm house on the outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a prepossessing woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all night; and Mrs. Dudgeon's face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the... more...

PREFACE Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of our talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our art. And my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied with this doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old time?" I would not like to believe that our faith in... more...

PILATE'S WIFE'S DREAM. I've quench'd my lamp, I struck it in that startWhich every limb convulsed, I heard it fall—The crash blent with my sleep, I saw departIts light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;Over against my bed, there shone a gleamStrange, faint, and mingling also with my dream. It sank, and I am wrapt in utter gloom;How far is night advanced, and when will... more...

CHAPTER I THE EAVESDROPPER A one-eyed man with a stuffed crocodile upon his head paused before the steps of Cairo's gayest hotel and his expectant gaze ranged hopefully over the thronged verandas. It was afternoon tea time; the band was playing and the crowd was at its thickest and brightest. The little tables were surrounded by travelers of all nations, some in tourist tweeds and hats with the... more...

ONE DAY MORE SCENE I. CURTAIN RISES DISCLOSING CARVIL and Bessie moving away from sea-wall. Bessie about twenty-five. Black dress; black straw hat. A lot of mahogany-coloured hair loosely done up. Pale face. Full figure. Very quiet. Carvil, blind, unwieldy. Reddish whiskers; slow, deep voice produced without effort. Immovable, big face. Carvil (Hanging heavily on Bessie's arm). Careful! Go slow!... more...

INTRODUCTION It is at my persuasion that these poems are now published. The earliest of them were read to me in London in 1896, when the writer was seventeen; the later ones were sent to me from India in 1904, when she was twenty-five; and they belong, I think, almost wholly to those two periods. As they seemed to me to have an individual beauty of their own, I thought they ought to be published. The... more...

ACT I SCENE I The scene is a well-lighted, and large, oak-panelled hall, withan air of being lived in, and a broad, oak staircase. Thedining-room, drawing-room, billiard-room, all open into it; andunder the staircase a door leads to the servants' quarters. Ina huge fireplace a log fire is burning. There are tiger-skinson the floor, horns on the walls; and a writing-table againstthe wall opposite... more...

ITHE UNKNOWN QUANTITY Professor William James Maynard was in a singularly happy and contented mood as he strolled down the High Street after a long and satisfactory interview with the solicitor to his late cousin, whose sole heir he was. It was exactly a month by the calendar since he had murdered this cousin, and everything had gone most satisfactorily since. The fortune was proving quite as large as... more...