A Son of Courage

Mrs. Wilson lit the coal-oil lamp and placed it in the center of the kitchen table; then she turned toward the door, her head half bent in a listening attitude.

Between the fishermen of Sandtown and the farmers of the community existed no very strong bond of sympathy or friendship. The former were a dissolute, shiftless lot, quite conte...

The morning wood-mists were warm, sweet-scented; the wood-birds' song of thanksgiving was glad with the essence of God-given life. But the man astride the dejected and weary hor...

"Lord love us!" Mrs. Wilson started to undo her apron. "Why didn't you tell me before, you freckle-faced jackass, you! Lord knows what use you boys are anyways! Think of you, ha...

Caleb Spencer, proprietor of the Twin Oaks store, paused at his garden gate to light his corncob pipe. The next three hours would be his busy time. The farmers of Scotia would c...

Out behind the wood-shed Maurice Keeler, by the dim light of a smoky lantern, was splitting kindling for the morning's fire when something clammy and twisting dropped across the...

The place which old Harry O'Dule called home was a crumbling log cabin on the shore of Levee Creek, just on the border of the Scroggie bush. Originally it had been built as a sh...

Beneath the shadow of the coming storm the forest gloom deepened to velvet blackness. Suddenly a tongue of lightning licked the tree-tops and a crash of thunder shattered the st...

"Now that we've got ol' Harry's charm along with my rabbit-foot," Billy was saying, "we ought'a be able to snoop 'round in the ha'nted grove an' even hunt through the house any...

The August days were passing swiftly, each fragrant dawn marking another step towards that inevitable something which must be faced--the reopening of the Valley School by a new...

As Billy rounded a curve in the road he met the cattle. Anson was driving them. "You needn't mind turnin' back, Bill," he said. "I don't mind waterin' 'em fer you."

Through the dusky twilight, soft with woodland dews and sweet with odor of ferns and wild flowers, Billy walked slowly. For the first time in long days his heart felt at peace....

Through the summer night, Hinter, astride a rangy roan, rode the ten mile trail that lay between the foot of Rond Eau and the light-house. On his left the giant pines stood with...

Maurice Keeler, wan, hollow-eyed, and miserable, was seated on a stool just outside the door in the early morning sunlight. Near him sat his mother, peeling potatoes, her portly...

Recovery of the stolen goods caused considerable excitement in the Settlement. For a week or so nothing else was talked of and conjecture ran rife as to why the thieves had not...

Billy spent the days preceding the reopening of the Valley School much as a criminal awaiting execution might spend his last hours of life. The fact that Trigger Finger Tim had...

It was broad daylight when Anson, in response to an angry call from the bottom of the stairway, sat up in bed. Vaguely he realized that in some dire way this glad morning procla...

"I think," Mr. Johnson's voice was heard above the din, "it would be a good plan to start a fire in that big stove. This place is positively vault like with dampness."

It was Sunday. Anson, with eyes close-shut and suds dripping from his freckled nose, was having his weekly ear and neck cleansing, his mother's strong hands applying the coarse...

Billy found Croaker just where he thought he would be--clinging to the latch of the menagerie door and peering with one black eye through the chink above it at the owls, the whi...

Erie Landon faced her father across the breakfast table, dimpled chin cupped in her brown hand. It was early morning; a red sun was just lifting above the Point to wipe away the...

September passed laden with summer perfumes and song and, beneath a blanket of hoar frost, October awoke to send her hazy heralds far across wooded upland and open. Slowly those...

October's second morning dawned sullen and grey, with a chill wind banking slate-hued clouds in the sky. Deacon Ringold, taking the short cut across the stubble-fields to Wilson...

Nature had crooked a wooded arm about Rond Eau Bay so that her tranquillity seldom was disturbed by the fall gales which piled the waters of Lake Erie high and made her a verita...

It was the evening of the next day. Frank Stanhope lay on a couch in a darkened room, a black bandage across his eyes. Erie Landon sat beside him, holding his hand. The pungent...

Bad news travels fast but good news wings its way quite as speedily. Life teaches the human heart to accept the one bravely and to laugh happily with the other, for after all li...