Jessica, the Heiress

Mrs. Benton and Jessica were upon the south porch of the Sobrante ranch house, the former busy as usual, the latter idly enjoying her charming surroundings as she swung to and f...

Mrs. Trent and Aunt Sally sat down alone to dinner. The little lads were in their beds, recovering from the sound scrubbing Pasqual had given them. Clothed in fresh nightgowns,...

The clatter of horse's hoofs on the dry sward made Pedro, the shepherd, lift his eyes from his basket weaving, but only for an instant. The sight of Samson, the herder, mounted...

A second night of fruitless search upon the rocky wall passed before the old Indian came to the spot which he had thought so near, full twenty-four hours before. He had fed his...

Though it had seemed as a lifetime to impatient Jessica that she had been kept in the cave, after Pedro's arrival there, in reality it was less than an hour; and it was yet earl...

She had come to the ranch thinking only of Jessica's mysterious absence, and meaning to do something, anything, which might help or comfort the child's mother; but the long walk...

Wolfgang took the bit of stone in his own fingers and examined it critically. Always deliberate in his words and actions, he was now doubly so, and Mrs. Trent grew impatient of...

Elsa caught her breath. To save her life she could not have stated in exact figures the sum, because, though she had known to a dime before the robbery, at, and after that time,...

"Oh, Samson! I'm so sorry. I hoped you would look after him until I could find some suitable institution in which to place him. It's time he should be helped, for if he's so sha...

The train from Los Angeles rolled slowly up to the little station at Marion and the asthmatic engine seemed to wheeze its relief that its labor was ended, as an old man stepped...

Jessica and her escort, John Benton, rode swiftly up the canyon trail and over the brow of the mesa toward the shepherd's cabin; but they had not proceeded far along the upland...

"Thank my stars, I haven't lost my faculty of doing two things to once, nor seein' a dozen!" cried Aunt Sally, as if in response to Mrs. Trent's exclamation. Then she rose so ha...

"Eels couldn't have done that slicker!" commented Ephraim, in surprise. For, behold! his arms were empty and the flash of twinkling legs along the garden path pointed whither hi...

"Nothing the matter with you but breakdown. The result of doing two men's work instead of one. What you need, and all you need, is a complete change of thought and scene. Go off...

Suddenly, out of the moonlit distance before them, appeared a strange vision. A horse and his rider, as spotlessly white and gleaming as the snow on the distant mountaintops, mo...

Love had lent to Jessica a strength and swiftness almost incredible even to her active body, and she had crossed the steep, slated roof just in time to clasp Ned's feet and to d...

The shrieks ended by Wun Lung's throwing himself face downward on the floor, but they had roused the whole household, even the sleeping children. Those in the room below had rus...

"Now I know how it was that Antonio disappeared that time when Aunt Sally and Ephraim heard him outside the pantry window!" cried Jessica, exultingly; and seeing the gentleman's...

These were the facts: Natan had been grooming the horses, Nimrod and Buster, when suddenly and soundlessly there appeared before the window in the stables' rear, the misshapen h...

"Oh! that's all right. Come around and in with me. I never yet heard a voice as lusty as that from a dying man, and I've been acquainted with Senor Bernal some little spell. He'...

Under the compulsion of his brother's will, so soon as that brother was able to think of anything beyond his own suffering, Ferd led a party of the ranchmen, with Ninian Sharp a...