CHAPTER I.There, stranger lips shall give the greeting,There, stranger eyes shall mark the meeting;While the bosom, sad and lone,Turns its heavy heart-beats home.A September sun was casting its parting rays far over the dull waters of the Mississippi, as a steamer, with steady course, ploughed her way through the thick waves and "rounded to" at the thronged and busy wharf of New Orleans. Upon... more...

THE BROTHER AVENGED I stood before my master’s board,   The skinker’s office plying;The herald-men brought tidings then   That my brother was murdered lying. I followed my lord unto his bed,   By his dearest down he laid him;Then my courser out of the stall I led,   And with saddle and bit arrayed him. I sprang upon my courser’s back,   With the spur began to goad him;And ere I drew his... more...

CHAPTER I. AT THE SIGN OF THE SHIP. On a September evening, before the setting of the sun, a man entered the tavern of the Ship in Thursley, with a baby under his arm. The tavern sign, rudely painted, bore, besides a presentment of a vessel, the inscription on one side of the board:—   "Now before the hill you climb,   Come and drink good ale and wine." On the other side of the board the... more...

CHAP. I. It was at the end of a summer evening, long after his usual bedtime, that Joseph, sitting on his grandmother's knee, heard her tell that Kish having lost his asses sent Saul, his son, to seek them in the land of the Benjamites and the land of Shalisha, whither they might have strayed. But they were not in these lands, Son, she continued, nor in Zulp, whither Saul went afterwards, and... more...

I. THE FASCINATING UNKNOWN. HER room was on the ground floor of the house we mutually inhabited, and mine directly above it, so that my opportunities for seeing her were limited to short glimpses of her auburn head as she leaned out of the window to close her shutters at night or open them in the morning. Yet our chance encounter in the hall or on the walk in front, had made so deep an impression upon... more...

THE LANDING AT JOUAN The perfect calm of an early spring dawn lies over headland and sea—hardly a ripple stirs the blue cheek of the bay. The softness of departing night lies upon the bosom of the Mediterranean like the dew upon the heart of a flower. A silent dawn. Veils of transparent greys and purples and mauves still conceal the distant horizon. Breathless calm rests upon the water and that awed... more...

CHAPTER I This book deals with the Bronze Age principally from the point of view of the implements and weapons in use in Ireland during that period. It is unnecessary to state that the materials for writing anything like a full account of the civilization or political organization during the Bronze Age do not exist; and even the ethnological affinities of the dominant race that inhabited Ireland during... more...

LONG the old Roman road that crosses the rolling hills from the upper waters of the Marne to the Meuse, a soldier of France was passing in the night. In the broader pools of summer moonlight he showed as a hale and husky fellow of about thirty years, with dark hair and eyes and a handsome, downcast face. His uniform was faded and dusty; not a trace of the horizon-blue was left; only a gray shadow. He... more...

CHAPTER I THE BREAKING OF THE ROAD It was the Road which caused the trouble. It usually is the road. That and a reigning prince who was declared by his uncle secretly to have sold his country to the British, and a half-crazed priest from out beyond the borders of Afghanistan, who sat on a slab of stone by the river-bank and preached a djehad. But above all it was the road—Linforth's road. It... more...

THE HOMECOMING OF DIEUDONNÉ LANE "Eejit! My son John! Whip ary man in Jackson County! Whoop! Come along! Who'll fight old Eph Adamson?" The populace of Spring Valley, largely assembled in the shade of the awnings which served as shelter against an ardent June sun, remained cold to the foregoing challenge. It had been repeated more than once by a stout, middle-aged man in shirt sleeves and... more...