Between two thieves

An old paralytic man, whose snow-white hair fell in long silken waves from under the rim of the black velvet skull-cap he invariably wore, sat in a light invalid chair-carriage...

Old, sick and helpless as he was, this was a great grief to him. Useless the presence of others when we lack the one we need. And a little crack in a dam-wall is enough to liber...

This one thing is certain, that at rare, irregular intervals, he reaped the fruit of his long devotion--his unswerving, fanatical fidelity--in the renewal of that lost, vanished...

“Having made Madame his wife, and legitimatized her son by the marriage, Monsieur the Marshal instituted legal proceedings to recover the dowry paid by Madame’s father, the Here...

“It does not matter,” said de Moulny, but his long upper lip quivered and the water stood in his own eyes. “They will make a priest of me now, that is all. She”--he jerked his c...

“Why--what for? Because you said that a raw English girl nursing a dying sheep-dog on a mountain in Peakshire reminded you of the Maid of Orleans and Our Blessed Lady!”

That the offering was a poor one never occurred to simple Smithwick. She received it with little squeaking, mouselike cries of delight, and grief, and admiration; she ran at the...

“I am told that you are well, have returned from Algeria in good health, that your services have earned you distinguished mention in the dispatches of your Colonel, and that you...

So, when the train, jolting and rattling and clanking in the Early Victorian manner, through the chilly, dripping country, at the terrific speed of twenty miles an hour, slowed...

Morty nodded, with a cheerful grin, and Thompson Jowell’s heart glowed with fatherly pride in this big young man with the foolish, good-natured face and the round, somewhat owli...

Chobley, the Manager, had looked sharply at Standish when he had given voice to that strange reason for preferring the thick red wine. He had respectfully smoothed out the crump...

“I pray the day you speak of may not dawn for years! My leave, procured with difficulty owing to threatening national disturbances which the Army may be employed in quelling, ex...

“Taking our respective loads of aims and ambitions and responsibilities with us,” said Bertham. “My badly-housed Military Invalid Pensioners for whom I want tight roofs, and dry...

“She is a nun of the Order of St. Vincent de Paul. You know, the nursing-community. I stayed some time with them at their Convent at Paris, studying their good, wise, enlightene...

It taxed her, for her dream-fraught sleep had not refreshed. But she ministered to her fevered, pain-racked patient with gentle unwearying patience and swift, noiseless tenderne...

Meanwhile Josh Horrotian pursued his march, but without the cheerful whistling accompaniment, decapitating the more aggressive weeds and thistles growing by the roadside with su...

“And naked shall you go, Joshua, save for the clothes upon your back, and not a penny of my money shall be lavished upon the accursed of God and of his mother, for whom Hell gap...

Unimaginative as the woman was, her bitter love for both of them had brought its cruel gift of clairvoyance. The premonition of a growing tenderness between the two had sat by h...

Thus sang Jason, solemnly gamboling in the muck and litter, close to the edge of the oleaginous and strongly-smelling brown duck-pond previously described, which, reinforced by...

“In that coat.... Not for the world!” said a soft voice through the intervening veil, and the warm perfumed darkness of the little brougham. “You would expose me to the very per...

“You will see!... It is as I say!... This arrest is a mere piece of official humbug. No doubt it was better for your own sake that you should not be seen in the streets for a da...

He found her still pale, but without that bleak look of horror that had appalled him. She tried to smile with lips that had partly regained their hue. She asked, averting her ga...

They laughed and wept tears of rapture that washed the paint from the faces of elderly belles and ancient dandies, and rinsed the old lees of vice and vanity and selfishness fro...

“I was leaving the Hotel--where my husband was dining with M. Guizot--when the great crowd of people, led by the drum and the Red Flag, filled the Boulevard, and seemed as thoug...

Dunoisse gave the promise with obvious reluctance. Then they talked about the music energetically. But presently, when the great gilded chandelier soared up into the artificial...

She looked at him full, and her beautiful eyes were dewy, and her white bosom rose and fell in sighs that, if not genuine, were excellently rendered. He went on:

The simile of the changeful fay in the rainbow was never inappropriate to her. What a charming mingling of inconsistencies, what a creature of contradictions was she.... When he...

“Because all this swearing of fidelity to the Republic will end, as I have prophesied, in a coronation at Notre Dame, and a court at the Tuileries. My Emperor crowned himself wi...

He thrust it from him, that conjectured image, but always it hovered in the background of his mind. By the blood-red December dawn that followed on the crime of the _coup d’État...

“I saw myself at Ham when I looked at that creature in its loneliness and impotence, surrounded by the keepers who jeered and mocked.... Death in its fangs and death in its hear...

“For that the banquet in which I shared to-night was intended to celebrate this day that has seen the triumph of bad faith and mean deceit, and hideous treachery, over generous...

“How can we pay her too much reverence, accord her a devotion too profound, to whom Archangels bend the knee and the Son of God accorded filial obedience? Being perfect Man, He...

You may imagine that the bridegroom--placed upon the right hand of the _Britannia’s_ commander at the head of the board, made tremendous havoc among the eatables; disposed of pe...

“Look at Madame there!... Does not she seem as though she laughed at you? You, who would drive Propriety and pleasure in double harness--who expect a woman like me--who have dru...

Thus, daily drawing nearer to the scene of destined humiliation and well-earned disgrace, the green chariot and the brown landau rolled on, until at high noon upon the Vigil of...

Dunoisse had long joined the ranks of the deniers. He had determined that for him yonder shining, jeweled tabernacle should thenceforth house no Unspeakable Mystery, shelter no...

“My children, we are not ignorant of the cause of this demonstration. You are gathered here to protest, by force if necessary, against what justly appears to you a sacrilege of...

She paced the painted floor of the meagerly-furnished, bare inn guest-chamber, dragging the woolen rugs awry with her trailing silken flounces, spurning the spotted fawn skins w...

Whispers began to circulate.... In the smoking-rooms of the great Clubs, in the social circle at the palace of the Presidency, Dunoisse’s rare appearances were provocative of th...

“We give all we have for love, and the love is never real, only pinchbeck of flattery and kisses; or the cruel love of an urchin for a kitten--of a baby for a tame bird.... You...

A vivid recollection of the duel at the School leaped up in Hector as he listened to de Moulny’s thick panting, and saw the savage, livid face, its paleness now blotched with re...

To the stolid vice of the country-side Sarah’s late milkmaid was no stranger. Abey Absalom’s too-yielding girl, Betsy Twitch the weeding-woman, were not the only specimens of fe...

“Hooroo, Jude!” said Mrs. Geogehagan, with graceful brevity, rising up to the full extent of her six feet odd of stature, setting her vast elbows akimbo, and surveying the scare...

Referring to the Imperial Wedding number of the _Ladies’ Mentor_--into which entrancing periodical Mrs. Geogehagan,--acting during a delicate domestic crisis as nurse to a new b...

“Absurd, Peter Michailowitch!” said the autocrat. “All men are to be bought. This one as well as the others.” He added, as a stray gleam of light from a wind-blown lamp in the g...

They ought to have gulped out trivialities until the last minute, such as: “Don’t forget the whisky-flask!--it’s in your great-coat pocket.” “Not me, egad! trust a British soldi...

His thick voice shook and his surface grew more unwholesomely mottled, and his popping eyes whirled in their circular orbits. That this beloved son--in whose interests so many n...

But here she was, on _The British Queen_--and near her Mrs. Joshua Horrotian. When the Call was sounded for the drawing, and the folded slips of official paper that had an inky...

As though the out-at-elbows refugee, the borrowing adventurer, the temporary occupant of the Presidential armchair had never existed, you are to see him Sire my Friend as the Al...

“Without spies, informers, interpreters, and agents of all grades, an Invading Army is blindfold and helpless. Thus, the assistance of pachas, boyards, consuls, attachés, secret...

“Odly enuf, the French on the Hites have got it Though their Camps are better Plaiced than what ours Are. They have sent 3 Divisions into the Dobrudja, where 90 thowsand Russian...

“The Hole Army has landed after a Saif and Prosperus Voyag across the Black Sea to the Crimea. We--I Mean the English--saled in 7 Collums each of 30 vessels every 2 or 3 Vessels...

But every throat set up a cry and every finger pointed in one direction, and a rush of the crowd swept her down the steep hillside. You may conceive how the women greeted that s...

He knew a few moments later. For a gray-painted express rushed, with a winnowing and fanning as of giant wings, through the station. The train was full of English soldiers, thei...

“It would break for them, if it could not serve them infinitely better by keeping in working-order. But you speak of your letter. Has not mine?--no!--mine must have traveled up...

“Galamaki--who had the honor of meeting you at Petersburg, Lady Stratclyffe--and who had attended to make his bow prior to leaving for the Embassy at Vienna, looked civilly agon...

He gloomed. Oblivious of his displeasure, she went on: “There were no vessels for water, or utensils of any kind. They had no soap, or towels, or Hospital clothing. The sick wer...

It was feeble, and faint, and broken, and unutterably pitiful.... It reminded you of the bleating of sheep buried in a snowdrift--or the complaint of young calves being bled by...

The tramp of eight miles through knee-deep, sometimes waist-deep slough would have been no joke to men full-fed and in hard condition. They were muddy to the hair, weary and sor...

“Give it here!” snorted Jowell, grabbing it and fumbling for a penny. As he dropped the copper in the dirty hand, he knew that he and the sea-green Standish had met again. The e...

Strong men grew weary, and went away in search of rest and refreshment. Nurses collapsed, and were succeeded by other nurses. Relays of bearers were replaced by fresh relays. Bu...

“No more, sir! You have sought me, it may be, in all sincerity, but the obligations of my post forbid me to hear you to the end. You have suffered imprisonment--possibly ill-usa...

He saw devils, and roared and brandished his big cane at them. Only in imagination, because his voice had sunk to a crackling whisper, and his hand was powerless. A little child...

Was it fancy? Was it some shadow cast athwart the dead face by a wind-blown taper-flame that made the stern old beautiful mouth under the white mustache that charitable hands ha...