Into the Highways and Hedges

Tom had taught Meg to drive a little; she managed to harness Molly with some difficulty, and started on the long, lonely road across the marshes, without any fears. She was neve...

He did not even pretend not to be astonished; he was too clever a man to waste time in futile conventionalities. He had always his wits about him; and he spoke in a tone that ex...

Meg awoke at the farm. After the strange and wonderful journey by the side of the preacher; after the days of wandering over hill and dale, with exhausted body, but with mind so...

"See Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, Calcine its clods and set my priso...

Dover was unusually gay in the year when Barnabas Thorpe held his revival meetings there. Mr. Deane gave a large ball at Ravenshill, all the county magnates attended, and the gu...

I do not see them here; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath, I am thyself, what hast thou done to me? And I--a...

I am too weak to live by half my conscience, I have no wit to weigh and choose the mean. Life is too short for logic; what I do, I must do simply; God alone shall judge, For God...

"I might have a remarkable piece of evidence as to the excellence of that charming family's temper," he remarked; "but it's not worth while being mobbed for that. I wonder Tom T...

He was sitting on the bench under the narrow barred window, which was high above their heads. The winter sun was setting through a lifting haze of fog; it threw a faint red glea...

"A small piece of good fortune having fallen to Mrs. Thorpe's share, it's really time that her old acquaintances should ask what has become of her, isn't it?" said Mr. Sauls.

It was mid-day when Margaret woke; the day after her fruitless expedition to her father, after the terrible night which had left its traces on both her soul and body.

Caulderwell Farm is built on the edge of the "flats". All round it, in the days of which I write, was unreclaimed land--broad salt marshes, where the water crept slowly up at hi...

And on his brest a bloudie crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead as living ever Him ador'd.

"What had the fellow meant?" George puzzled over that point on his way back to N----town. It had been more than a mere ranting denunciation of the "rich man" as a "rich man". Th...

Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, Destiny, whithersoever ye have appointed me to go, and may I follow fearlessly. But, if in an evil mind I be unwilling, still must I follow.

It was Meg's twenty-first birthday. She woke early, and went into the garden while the dew was still thick on the grass, and there was a wet haze, precursor of a broiling day, o...

She had never said in her heart that she disliked Margaret; she was not the kind of person to look at her feelings boldly, or to own to experiencing either love or hate in undue...

It was the last day of August. The London plane trees were beginning to shed their leaves, that were choked with the season's dust; the air was still and hot, the West End nearl...

Mrs. Russelthorpe was not a popular woman, and she was too proud to elicit much sympathy; but, on the whole, public opinion sided with her, rather than with her niece.

Had he followed his natural inclination, he would have held his tongue on the subject of the sensational episode that had led to the preacher's arrest; but, seeing that the tale...

Margaret's father felt very bitterly the blow that had fallen on him. Both his affection and his pride were outraged; and he was wanting in neither quality, though, in the first...

Her name is inscribed in the family Bible, that holds on its flyleaf the generation of Deanes, but there is a thick stroke through it, which almost obliterates the delicate char...

She had lost count of time; she could not have told how long ago she had left the preacher on the threshold of the old house in which her childhood and girlhood had been passed.

Margaret lay on the settle in the farm kitchen recovering slowly from a sharp attack of marsh fever, and declaring in apparent jest, that had more than a substratum of truth, th...

Barnabas Thorpe stood preaching by the river. He had preached in northern manufacturing towns, where the struggle for life is hard; he had preached by the sea shore, and in litt...

Lifting him up, Tom found the wound at the back of the head, made with a bill-hook or hatchet. Whoever had done that, had also turned his victim over to rifle the pockets; for a...

The churchyard of Lupcombe joins the vicarage garden, and slopes downhill to it. First comes the church on the top of the hill, with its squat square tower, weather-beaten and s...

This year-old baby, who was too young to regard her with wonder or pity, was a comfort to her, and she felt most at ease in his society. Laura was kind, but brimming over with u...

Uncle Russelthorpe sat alone in his library on the evening of the ball: the habit of shuffling out of family gatherings had grown on him, his queer slip-shod figure was seldom s...

"She was ridiculously young for her age," her aunt said; "besides, three unmarried nieces were too many, and Margaret was so unsteady that the least taste of excitement turned h...