Audrey

An hour before dusk found the company that had dined in the valley making their way up the dry bed of a stream, through a gorge which cleft a line of precipitous hills. On eithe...

The two men, left alone, turned each toward the interior of the store, and their eyes met. Alike in gray eyes and in dark blue there was laughter. “Kittle folk, the Quakers,” sa...

The creek that ran between Fairview and the glebe lands was narrow and deep; upon it, moored to a stake driven into a bit of marshy ground below the orchard, lay a crazy boat be...

Before eight of the clock, Mr. Stagg, peering from behind the curtain, noted with satisfaction that the house was filling rapidly; upon the stroke of the hour it was crowded to...

June came to tide-water Virginia with long, warm days and with the odor of many roses. Day by day the cloudless sunshine visited the land: night by night the large pale stars lo...

About this time, Mr. Charles Stagg, of the Williamsburgh theatre in Virginia, sent by the Horn of Plenty, bound for London, a long letter to an ancient comrade and player of sma...

It was ten of the clock upon this same night when Hugon left the glebe house. Audrey, crouching in the dark beside her window, heard him bid the minister, as drunk as himself, g...

MacLean sprang up from the log, and, joining her, saw indeed two horsemen galloping toward them, their heads bent and riding cloaks raised to shield them from the whirlwind of d...

Although the house of worship which boasted as its ornament the Reverend Gideon Darden was not so large and handsome as Bruton church, nor could rival the painted glories of Pop...

Hugon went a-trading to the Southern Indians, but had lately returned to his lair at the crossroads ordinary, when, upon a sunny September morning, Audrey and Mistress Deborah,...

“Mistress Audrey?” said the Governor graciously, as the lady in damask rose from her curtsy. “Mistress Audrey whom? Mr. Haward, you gave me not the name of the stock that hath f...

The valley lay like a ribbon thrown into the midst of the encompassing hills. The grass which grew there was soft and fine and abundant; the trees which sprang from its dark, ri...

“Child,” demanded Haward, “why did you frighten me so?” He took her hands from her face, and drew her from the shadow of the curtain into the evening glow. Her hands lay passive...

It was May Day in Virginia, in the year 1727. In England there were George the First, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King and Defender of the Faith; m...

Saunderson, the overseer, having laboriously written and signed a pass, laid down the quill, wiped his inky forefinger upon his sleeve, and gave the paper to the storekeeper, wh...

To the north the glebe was bounded by a thick wood, a rank and dense “second growth” springing from earth where had once stood, decorously apart, the monster trees of the primev...

MacLean put aside with much gentleness the hands of his surgeon, and, rising to his feet, answered the question in Haward’s eyes by producing a slip of paper and gravely proffer...

There had lately come to Virginia, and to the convention of its clergy at Williamsburgh, one Mr. Eliot, a minister after the heart of a large number of sober and godly men whose...

Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyes at her own fair reflection in th...

Haward, sitting at the table in Marot’s best room, wrote an answer to Audrey’s letter, and tore it up; wrote another, and gave it to Juba, to be given to the messenger waiting b...

“Yea, I am glad--I and my father and mother and Ephraim--that thee is returned to Fair View,” answered Truelove. “And has thee truly no shoes of plain and sober stuffs? These be...

Evelyn, hearing footsteps across the floor of the attic room above her own bedchamber, arose and set wide the door; then went back to her chair by the window that looked out upo...

The exile broke off and sighed heavily. Before the two a little yard, all gay with hollyhocks and roses, sloped down to the wider of the two creeks between which stretched the F...

Mistress Truelove Taberer, having read in a very clear and gentle voice the Sermon on the Mount to those placid Friends, Tobias and Martha Taberer, closed the book, and went abo...

In the moment in which she sprang to her feet she saw that it was not Hugon, and her heart grew calm again. In her torn gown, with her brown hair loosed from its fastenings, and...

April had gone out in rain, and though the sun now shone brightly from a cloudless sky, the streams were swollen and the road was heavy. The ponderous coach and the four black h...

By now it was early spring in Virginia, and a time of balm and pleasantness. The season had not entered into its complete heritage of gay hues, sweet odors, song, and wealth of...

For an hour it had been very quiet, very peaceful, in the small white house on Palace Street. Darden was not there; for the Commissary had sent for him, having certain inquiries...

Juba, setting candles upon a table in Haward’s bedroom, chanced to spill melted wax upon his master’s hand, outstretched on the board. “Damn you!” cried Haward, moved by sudden...

It was now late afternoon, the sun’s rays coming slantingly into the forest, and the warmth of the day past and gone. To Haward, riding at a gallop down the road that was scarce...