A Fool and His Money

For ten minutes I stood there staring up at her, completely bewildered and not a little shaken. My first thought had been of ghosts, but it was almost instantly dispelled by a s...

Halfway up the winding stairways, I paused in some astonishment. It had just occurred to me that I was going up the steps two at a time and that my heart was beating like mad.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I really had a mind of my own. Would I be content to exercise it capably? Would I cease to be putty in the hands of other people? I doubt...

The post that morning, besides containing a telegram from Vienna apprising me of the immediate embarkation of four irreproachable angels in the guise of servants, brought a lett...

I am quite sure it was my Uncle Rilas who said that I was a fool. If memory serves me well he relieved himself of that conviction in the presence of my mother--whose brother he...

My humblest apologies, dear reader, if I have led you to suspect that I want to be looked upon as a hero. Far from patting myself on the back or holding my chin a little higher...

He sought me out just before luncheon. I was in the courtyard, listening patiently to Jasper Jr.'s theories and suggestions concerning the restoration of the entire facade of th...

Mr. Poopendyke began to develop a streak of romantic invention--in fact, tomfoolery--A day or two after my experience with Count Tarnowsy in the Rempf Hotel. He is the last pers...

True to the promise she had extracted from me, I laid off my workmen the next morning. They trooped in bright and early, considerably augmented by fresh recruits who came to sha...

We were drenched to the skin and bespattered with mud, cold and cheerless but full of a grim excitement. Across the street from the small, poorly lighted railway station there w...

Late in the afternoon, I opened my door, hoping that the banging of hammers and the buzz of industry would have ceased, but alas! the noise was even more deafening than before....

Any one who has travelled in the Valley of the Donau knows the Rempf Hotel. It is an ancient hostelry, frequented quite as much in these days as it was in olden times by people...

"My dear Countess," said I, the next morning, "while I am willing to admit that all you say is true, there still remains the unhappy fact that you were very near to upsetting ev...

The door creaked villainously. The gaunt, ecclesiastical tails of my borrowed frock coat were on the verge of being safely outside with me when she cried out. Whereupon I swiftl...

Four o'clock in the morning is a graceless hour. Graveyards may yawn at twelve but even they are content to slumber at four. I don't believe there is anything so desolate in thi...

Poopendyke and I tried to do a little work that evening, but neither of us seemed quite capable of concentration. We said "I beg pardon" to each other a dozen times or more, fol...

Accompanied by Hazzard and Smith, I went over the castle from top to bottom, in quest of the reason for Tarnowsy's prompt acceptance of my demand. We made no doubt that he had a...

The east wing of the castle was as still as a mouse on the day my house party arrived. Grim old doors took on new padlocks, keyholes were carefully stopped up; creaking floors w...

That night I dreamed of going down, down, down into the bowels of the earth after buried treasure, and finding at the end of my hours of travel the countess's mother sitting in...

IF I have, by any chance, announced earlier in this narrative that the valley of the Donau is the garden spot of the world, I must now ask you to excuse the ebullience of spirit...

I give you my word my heart almost stopped beating. I've never seen any one so lovely as she was at that moment. _Never_, I repeat. Her hair, blown by the kind November winds, s...