A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time

It was Young Folks' Day in the Vale of Newlands. The summer was at its height; the sun shone brightly; the lake to the north lay flat as a floor of glass, and reflected a contin...

The Vale of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Gr...

Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small confectioner's shop in Whitehaven, and were d...

Allan spoke with the shuffling reserve of a man to whose secret communings a painful idea had been too long familiar. In the effort to cast off the unwelcome and secret associat...

Hugh Ritson was seven-and-twenty. His clean-shaven face was long, pale, and intellectual; his nose was wide at the bridge and full at the nostrils; he had firm-set lips, large v...

There was a drowsy calm in the room where Mr. Bonnithorne sat at lunch. It was the little oak-bound parlor to the right, in which he had begun the conversation with old Allan Ri...

The cloud that had hung over Walna Scar broke above the valley, and a heavy rain-storm, with low mutterings of distant thunder, drove the pleasure-people from the meadow to the...

In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a "griddle." The table was laid for suppe...

It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist s...

When Parson Christian finished his plowing, the day was far spent. He gave the boy a shilling as day's wage for leading the horses, drove the team back to their owner, Robert At...

Hugh Ritson sat in his room at the back of the Ghyll, with its window looking out on the fell-side and on the river under the leafless trees beneath. The apartment had hardly th...

Paul Ritson returned to the stack-yard, and worked vigorously three hours longer. A stack had been stripped by a recent storm, and he thatched it afresh with the help of a labor...

At eight o'clock that night the sky was brilliantly lighted up, and the sound of many voices was borne on the night wind. The red flare came from the Syke; the mill was afire. S...

Next day was Sunday, and after morning service a group of men gathered about the church porch to discuss the events of the night before. In the evening the parlor of the Flying...

"I've been away leading turf," he said, "from Cole Moss, for Robin Atkinson, to pay him for loaning me his gray mare on Saturday when I fetched my grain to the mill. Happen most...

When Greta set out, the atmosphere was yellow and vaporish. The sky grew rapidly darker. As she reached the village, thin flakes of snow began to fall. She could feel them drive...

Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by suggestions of the supernatural. If sh...

"Dearest,--I do not know what is happening to me, but my eyes get worse and worse. To-day and yesterday I have not opened them. Oh, dear, I think I am losing my sight; and I hav...

When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same hour on Wednesday. Since receiv...

"Seeing the sun low," he said, "and knowing it a long way to Keswick, and I not being able to abide the night air, but sure to catch a cold, I came straight to your house."

By the time that Paul had got to the Ghyll his anxiety had reached the point of anguish. Perhaps it had been no more than a fancy, but he thought as he approached the house that...

Paul went back home, carrying with him a crushed and broken spirit He threw himself into a chair in a torpor of dejection. When the servants spoke to him, he lifted to their fac...

That day--the day before the wedding--all the gossiping tongues in Newlands were cackling from morning till night. Natt had been sent round the dale with invitations addressed t...

The morning was brilliant--a vigorous, lusty young day, such as can awake from the sleep of the night only in winter and in the north. The sun shone on the white frost; the air...

A way-side hostelry, six miles from London, bearing its swinging sign of the silver hawk and golden heron. It was a little, low-roofed place, with a drinking-bar in front as you...

It was Mercy Fisher who sat in the room to the left of the bar, and played with the children, and laughed when they laughed, and tried to forget that she was not as young as the...

Alone with the sleeping man, Hugh Ritson stood and looked down at him intently. The fire had burned to a steady glow of red coal without flame. There was no other light in the r...

"As sure as sure! Lor's, yes; and to think the poor young dear is dead and gone! It's thirty years since, but it do make me cry, and my husband--he's gone, too--my husband he sa...

When Hugh Ritson stepped out into the road, the night was dark. Fresh from the yellow light of the inn, his eyes could barely descry the footpath or see the dim black line of th...

"This way, sir; this way, my lady; we knew you was a-coming, so we kep' a nice warm fire in the parlor. This way, my lady, and mind the step up. Yes, it air dark, but it's clean...

Hugh Ritson walked to the bare room opposite. The handle of the door did not turn in his hand. Drayton held it at the other side, and with head bent low he crouched there and li...

Alone with Greta, Paul kissed her fervently, and his head fell on her shoulder. The strong man was as feeble as a child now. He was prostrate. "The black lie is like poison in m...

The clocks of London were striking one when Paul and Greta descended the steps in front of St. Pancras Station. The night was dark and bitterly cold. Dense fog hung in the air,...

It was merely a momentary vexation which Hugh Ritson felt when the course that Paul had taken falsified his prescience. "No matter," he said, "it is only a question of a day, mo...

The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down the stairs. It was very dark in t...

Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret. It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch. The aisles, which were bare of se...

Abbey Gardens, the street in front, was dark and all but deserted. Only a drunken woman went reeling along. But the dull buzz in the distance, and the white sheet in the sky, to...

Hugh Ritson walked rapidly through Dean's Yard in the direction of the sanctuary. As he turned into Parliament Street the half moon rose above the roof of Westminster Hall. But...

At that moment there was a visitor in the bar down-stairs. He was an elderly man, with shaggy eyebrows and a wizened face; a diminutive creature with a tousled head of black and...

Before Gubblum Oglethorpe parted with Jabez, he tried to undo the mischief he had done. "Give us a shak' o' thy daddle," he said, holding out his hand. But Jabez had not forgott...

As soon as the noise of the retiring steps had died away on Gubblum's ear, he dressed himself partially, opened the door of his bedroom cautiously, and stepped into the passage....

The cab that drove Mrs. Drayton into London carried with it a world of memories. Thought in her old head was like the dip of a sea-bird in the sea--now here, now there, now a st...

When Greta parted from Hugh Ritson three hours before, she was in an agony of suspense. Another strange threat had terrified her. She had been asked to make choice of one of two...

Though the hour was late, the streets were thronged. The people were trooping home from the theaters; and the Strand, as Greta and the landlady crossed it, was choked with cabs...

"It will be remembered that in the reports of the disastrous railway collision, which occurred at Hendon on Friday last, it was mentioned as a ghastly accessory to the story of...

The chapter room of St. Margaret's Convent was a chill, bare chamber containing an oak table and four or five plain oak chairs. On the painted walls, which were of dun gray, the...

The dale lay green in the morning sunlight; the river that ran through its lowest bed sparkled with purple and amber; the leaves prattled low in the light breeze that souched th...

When the procession of children had passed the little cottage at the angle of the roads, the old man who leaned on his staff at the gate turned about and stepped to the porch.

Two hours later the doctors arrived. They had called at the vicarage in driving up the valley, and Parson Christian was with them. They looked at Mercy's eyes, and were satisfie...

"Listen to me," said the doctor, quietly but firmly. "You are now quite blind, and you have been in total darkness for a year and a half. We may be able to restore your sight by...

There was a gathering of miners near the pit-head that morning. It was pay day. The rule was that the miners on the morning shift should pass through the pay-office before going...

The sun was high over the head of Hindscarth, but a fresh breeze was blowing from the north, and the walk to the Ghyll was bracing. Mr. Bonnithorne talked little on the way, but...

Greta stayed with Mercy until noon that day, begging, entreating, and finally commanding her to lie quiet in bed, while she herself dressed and fed the child, and cooked and cle...

Greta returned to the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes unde...

When Greta reached the old charcoal-burner's cottage, the little one was lying in a drowsy state in Mercy's arms. Its breathing seemed difficult; sometimes it started in terror;...

The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in the sky ebbed away over the head o...

The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the...

The night was now dark; there was no moon, and there were no stars; the wind soughed mournfully through the trees. In the occasional lull the rumble of the cataracts drifted hea...

At 2 o'clock that day Hugh Ritson arrived at Euston. He got into a cab and drove to Whitehall. At the Home Office he asked for the Secretary of State. A hundred obstacles arose...

The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the night through.

Early next morning Hugh Ritson showed his order at the prison gates, and was admitted to the doctor's quarters. Hugh and the doctor went in search of the governor, but learned t...

Paul Ritson--let him be known by his official number no more--was not taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of t...

Two days later the gray old town-hall that stands in the market-place of Keswick was surrounded by a busy throng. The Civil Court of the County Assize was sitting in this little...

Hugh Ritson returned to his room on the pit-brow. On his way there he passed a group of people congregated on the bridge at the town end. They fell apart as he walked through, b...

Two days later the fell behind the Ghyll was a scene of unusual animation. It was the day of the shearing. The sheep, visibly whiter and more fleecy for a washing of some days b...