Furze the Cruel

Old Weevil walked about the moor, because there was no room in the cottage or garden, and whispered to the sun: "I wish she wasn't so happy, I wish she wouldn't laugh so, I wish...

The cult of the goose, so far as it concerns Tavistock Fair, is gastronomic entirely, and has no religious significance. At dedication festivals of a church some particular sain...

One of the creeping-things to be crushed at the forthcoming Assizes was Brightly. Ju had been already stamped out of existence, and it was meet and right that the little man sho...

What luck is nobody can know, but it is certainly a gift to be preferred before natural ability. Luck is that undefinable thing which enables a man to push his head and shoulder...

Old moormen said it was one of the worst winters they could remember, not on account of the cold, but because of the gales and persistent snow. The first fall soon melted, but n...

The devil had passed through Tavy woods late that year, and in his path blackberries were blasted, the bracken was scorched, and all the foliage smouldered. He had trampled upon...

Only well-to-do people, those who have many changes of raiment and can afford to poke the fire expensively, are happy in the winter. For others there are various degrees of the...

Mary soon forgave her brother for his failure over the electric light business, and they became as good friends as ever, except when Peter demanded sums of money for services wh...

Swaling-time had come, red patches of fire flickered every night on Dartmoor, and the furze-prickles crackled in the flames. The annual war between man and the prickly shrub was...

Unpleasant creatures are so plentiful in the world that they cannot be overlooked. Were there only a few they might be ignored; but they throng, they thrust themselves forward,...

Pendoggat stood beneath the penthouse of his peat linhay, looking at a newspaper. The issue was dated Friday, and it contained the news of the week; not the news of the world, w...

Up the road from Brentor to St. Mary Tavy came Brightly, his basket dragging on his arm. He was very tired, but there was nothing unusual in that. He was tired to the point of e...

Mary's greatest possession was her umbrella, which was no ordinary article, and would have been of little service to the orthodox woman, because she would have lacked strength t...

By the time Boodles was sixteen she was shaped and polished. Weevil had done what he could; not much, for the poor old thing was neither learned nor rich; and she had gone to Ta...

Thomasine was sitting in the stone kitchen of Town Rising sewing and trying to think; but the little skeletons of thought that did present themselves were like bad dreams. She h...

Sad-eyed little Boodles stood in the porch of Lewside Cottage holding a letter which the postman had just left. She did not know who it was from, nor did she care, as there was...

There are secret places among the rocks of Tavy Cleave. The river has many moods; one time in the barren lands, another time in bogland, and then in hanging gardens and woodland...

"Coop, coop!" called Mary Tavy. "Cooey, cooey! Aw now, du'ye come, my dear. He be proper contrairy when he'm minded to," she cried to Farmer Chegwidden as she shook a gorse-bush...

Down the hill from St. Mary Tavy to Brentor came Brightly, most irrepressible of unwanted things, his basket on his arm, feeding on air and sunshine. It was early spring, there...

Things had gone wrong with Peter and Mary ever since the festival. Excitement, Plymouth liquors, and ignorance were largely to blame for the general "contrairiness" of things; b...

This was numbered one-hundred-and-seventy, and it was the latest gem from his book of aphorisms; artful meaning in that connection clever, the author having a tendency to use ir...

Thomasine sat in the kitchen of Town Rising, sewing. It was a dreary place, and she was alone and surrounded with stone. The kitchen walls were stone; so was the floor. The wind...

There was a concert in Brentor village in aid of that hungry creature the Church, which resembles so many tin- and copper-mines, inasmuch as much more money goes into it than ev...

Clever men are either philosophers or knaves; and as the world is crawling with fools the clever men who are philosophers spend their time making laws which will protect the foo...

There was a whitewashed cottage called Lewside beside the moorland road, and at a window which commanded a view of that road sat a girl with what appeared to be a glory round he...

but love ye, Peter, in the old village schules us used to whack the lads every day--aye, and the maids tu. There be many a dame about here and Lydford whose buttocks I warmed wh...

One cannot help wondering how the early inhabitants of Dartmoor spent their time. Possibly the men found plenty of work for their hands, while the ladies talked of their babies,...

One day Peter went into the village to buy stimulants, and found, when he reached the house of the creaking sign-board, that he was penniless; a serious discovery, because the l...