Contraband

Tubal gave the key another quarter turn in the quoins and tested the security of the type in the form with the heel of his grimy hand. After which he shut his eyes very tight an...

Carmel Lee had been told by everybody, ever since she could remember being told anything, that she was headstrong and impulsive. Her parents had impressed it upon her and, rathe...

Carmel more than half expected Abner Fownes to appear in the office, but he did not appear. Indeed, it was some days before she caught so much as a casual glimpse of him on the...

When Carmel entered the office next morning she found Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell occupying her chair. On his face was an expression of displeasure. He forgot to arise as she st...

Carmel was not long in discovering Gibeon’s attitude toward advertising. The local merchants regarded it much as they did taxes, the _dull season_, so called (for in Gibeon’s bu...

It was on the morning following the issuance of the second publication of the _Free Press_ under Carmel’s editorship that she became uneasily aware of a marked scrutiny of herse...

Carmel entered the office of the _Free Press_, after her encounter with Abner Fownes, in a temper which her most lenient friend could not describe as amiable. It was no small pa...

Gibeon was so accustomed to Abner Fownes that it took him for granted, as if he were a spell of weather, or the Opera House which had been erected in 1881, or the river which fl...

Deputy Jenney was a big man. In his stocking feet he stood a fraction more than six feet and two inches, but he possessed more breadth than even that height entitled him to. He...

Carmel went directly to the room in the hotel which she still occupied pending the discovery of a permanent boarding place. She locked the door carefully and closed the transom....

In the morning Carmel Lee had made up her mind. She did not know she had made up her mind, but it was none the less true. Her mind was of the sort which makes itself up upon sli...

Deputy Jenney, with a crumpled copy of the _Free Press_ in his hand, rushed into Abner Fownes’s office--for once omitting the formality of rapping on the door. He threw the pape...

It is much to be doubted if violence and scenes of violence are as abhorrent to the so-called gentler sex as it is popular to pretend. There lurks in a corner of the mind an imp...

The days which succeeded that night’s adventure were placid. Carmel awoke in the morning as one awakes after a singularly realistic dream. It was a dream to her, unreal, impossi...

Evan Bartholomew Pell was thinking. He had been thinking for hours, and according to present rate of progress, it would be hours more before he arrived at a conclusion. He had f...

“I judged not,” he said, unwittingly reverting to his patronizing manner. “However, it seems to me the individual who searches for truth--in the happenings of the day--would be...

Carmel walked back rapidly, but her pace did not interfere with the activities of her mind. She had many things to reflect upon, and not the least of these was a sudden realizat...

Carmel wondered how one went about it to obtain a private interview with a Governor. She was still young enough and inexperienced enough in life’s valuations to regard a man in...

Carmel was astonished at herself; she discovered herself to be cool and self-possessed; determined rather than frightened. Here was an emergency; her one thought was to prove ad...

The east was glowing dully with approaching dawn when Carmel alighted from the car at the hotel in Gibeon and hurried through the deserted office and up the scantily illuminated...

She thought it queer, but, so occupied was her mind with the disclosures of Lancelot Bangs and with the events of last night, that the fact of Evan Pell’s unexplained absence di...

Abner Fownes was apprehensive. Notwithstanding his success in obtaining the appointment of Deputy Jenney as sheriff and the utter discomfiture of Carmel Lee, uneasiness possesse...

It is not easy for one unaccustomed to the woods to remain undeviatingly upon his course even in the daytime; at night it can be accomplished only by a miracle. Carmel, in a sta...

He did not come toward her; did not move from his place, and then she saw that he stood only by clinging to the back of a chair.... He leaned forward and stared at her through e...

“I have come to the conclusion,” said Evan Pell, “that every man, no matter what his vocation, should be a man of action. That is to say, he should devote some attention and pra...

The hall was still. It was as if, by some necromancy of words, Carmel had turned to stone the town meeting of Gibeon. She looked down into faces which seemed to her white and st...

Abner Fownes was sitting in his library waiting for word from Sheriff Jenney. If matters went to-night as he felt certain they must go, he could live again in security, untroubl...