King of the Castle

Christopher Lisle sat in his snug, bachelor room at Danmouth, tying a fly with a proper amount of dubbing, hackle, and tinsel, for the deluding of some unfortunate salmon. The b...

Glyddyr was seated in the cabin, restlessly smoking a cigar, and gazing through the open window at the Fort, where it stood up grey and glittering in the sunshine, and holding w...

"Well," said the steward, laughing, "he's my boss, so it ain't for me to say; but if it had been you, I should have said you had been looking into a brandy glass till you were t...

Then would come, till he was half maddened by the thought, the idea that Glyddyr had returned after a few days' absence and had the free run of the Fort, and would be always at...

"It's enough to drive a man mad," said Chris Lisle, as he sat in his room with a book in his hand, one which he had been vainly trying to read. "To think of him having the run o...

"Mary, dear, don't deceive me for the sake of trying to give me comfort," said Claude, as she knelt in the study, beside the mattress upon which her father lay breathing stertor...

"Sit down, Mr Wimble, and how's all Danmouth? I was coming over in a day or two perhaps, to stay at the Fort, and if I do, I dare say I shall have to make a call on you."

Doctor Asher did not go straight up to the Fort and tell every one that he had seen Chris Lisle coming down from the house. In fact, he hardly gave the meeting a second thought,...

The doctor went out just as silently as he had entered, and Sarah heard the study door softly close, when once more she uttered the same low, moaning sigh, and rocked herself to...

A hasty note had been despatched to the Fort by Glyddyr, announcing that a friend had come down from town, and that to entertain him he was going to take him for a short cruise...

Five minutes after, dinner was announced, and Glyddyr took in Claude, who trembled as she felt what a quiet, respectful manner he had adopted, and how it seemed to indicate a fe...

She was busy in the store-room, playing the part of mistress at the Fort, and giving out sundry and domestic necessaries to the old servant, who was watching her intently, and l...

"Look here, Isaac Woodham, once for all I will not have any of your Little Bethel cant in my presence. Now about this block; let it be deeply tamped, and the powder put well home."

It was some minutes before Chris opened that paper, and then he had to turn it over and over before he found the racing intelligence, and even then he did not begin to read, for...

He had no fear of his ultimate success, for he had seen enough of Gartram to know that his will was law, and that, even if Claude were thoroughly opposed to the match, she would...

John Trevithick would, in an ordinary way, have finished the little business in connection with Mrs Sarson's savings in a very short time, but he quite fluttered the widow by th...

The occupants of the Fort were broken up into little parties on that eventful day. Claude seemed to go from one fit into another, and her cousin and Sarah Woodham did not leave...

As Burns said, matters go very awkwardly sometimes for those who plot and plan--as if some malicious genius took delight in thwarting the most carefully-laid designs, and tangli...

Sarah Woodham sat in her little parlour, sallow of cheek, and with a hard, stern look in her eyes as she gazed straight before her at the drawn-down blind, and listened to the m...

She looked at him keenly, and felt a curious sensation of sinking and dread, as it struck her that her father was suffering from the effects of the sedative in which he indulged.

An enormous increase has taken place during the past five-and-twenty years in local journalism. England seems to have been almost Americanised in respect of news, for every cent...

Chris found it a harder task than he had anticipated. "Give a dog a bad name, and then hang him," says the old saw; and in his case Chris used to say bitterly to himself that he...

That was all, and he dropped it into the post-box himself, turned back to meet Trevithick on his way to the Fort, nodded to him and went straight to his room, where he stood for...

Now he was down on the beach, close to the sea; now wandering high up on the moorland, and seeing, from each point of view, trifles which showed that the mistress of the Fort wa...

Racing did not agree with Chris Lisle, for the morning after his return from town he rose with a bad headache; and as he lived one of the most regular lives, he knew that it cou...

The wind from off the sea rushing and sighing round the house, making, as the great hall door was opened, the lightly-hung pictures on the walls swing gently to and fro, as if g...

"Train my boy. Saw in the shipping news that _The Fair Star_ was lying in Danmouth. Felt a bit seedy, and knew that you would give me a berth aboard, and here I am."

The girl admonished turned merrily round, and stood facing an old bevelled-glass cabinet in the solid-looking, well-furnished library, and saw her reflection--one which for some...

"And, yes, indeed, sir. No big party; no wedding breakfast and cake; no going away in chaises and fours. If poor Mr Gartram had been alive, it wouldn't have been like this. Why,...

Faithful to his time of tryst with Gartram, Glyddyr made his way up to the Fort that morning, thinking deeply of his position, and wondering whether Gartram had good news to rep...

Mary Dillon did the greater part of the talking on the way home, Gartram saying scarcely a word, but making great use of his eyes, to see how Glyddyr took the unpleasant _contre...

There was a scene one day at the Fort when, after finishing the business in connection with a heavy sum which had been raised to pay over to Gellow, the lawyer had taken upon hi...

"Want lodgings, sir?" said Reuben Brime taking his short black pipe from his lips, and gazing straight out to sea, as if he thought there was plenty of room for a good long rest...

Glyddyr had undoubtedly gone backward in health with rapid strides since he and the Doctor had last met, not many hours before. His face was of a sickly yellow; there were dark...

He had been a great many times past Mrs Sarson's cottage, always with a stern determination in his breast to treat her with distance and resentment, as one who shunned him for t...

Things that seem far-fetched are sometimes simple matters of fact. Just as Claude was glancing back, and feeling as if she would give anything to be back home, a dove among the...

If Chris Lisle had had a binocular with him when he climbed the great cliff slope, and looked down into Gartram's garden, he would not have felt those poignant, jealous pangs. H...

She felt the truth of the French saying before she had gone a hundred yards from her gates. It was only the first step that cost, for, as she passed along the little row of hous...

"There, I'm off back to London town to keep a certain party quiet. You are going on all right here. You are bound to win, but don't be rash-- play her very carefully."

"Oh, yes, my dear sir, in spite of the fits. They will not hurt him. Come on after any fresh excitement, and prostrate him a bit afterward, but there's nothing much to mind."

It was after many hours of stupor, and when Doctor Asher, the physician of Danmouth, had gone back to the Fort, from a hurried visit to his injured patient, that Isaac Woodham u...

"It's all right, I tell you, my dear boy. You don't understand women yet. A girl who says _snap_ the moment you say _snip_, isn't worth having. A good, true woman takes some woo...

Chris fell back, staring like one who has received some mental shock, and then walked slowly along the main street of the place to get to the bridge and go up the glen, so as to...

For weeks Parry Glyddyr lay almost at the point of death, and there were times when Sarah Woodham shuddered and left the room, barring the door against all comers, as the poor w...

Mary's face was flushed, and her eyes were sparkling as much from mischief as pleasure as she caught her cousin's hand, led her softly to the open window of her bedroom, and poi...

"It does seem so hard to think that we have been away all these months, Claudie," said Mary the next morning. "Aren't you glad to be back once more in the dear old home?"

Any one who could have watched Michael Wimble shaving himself at early morn would have wondered whether the man were really sane, for, as he performed the operation upon himself...

Glyddyr gave the orders to unmoor and make sail, after a great deal of hesitation, and then countermanded those orders, and went down into his cabin. There he made the man who a...

"Don't be flurried, my dear," said Doctor Asher, as, in a calm, business-like way, he saw to Gartram being laid easily on the floor, where he had fallen in the study.

He had all that money lying at his bank, and after trying all kinds of subterfuges to satisfy his conscience that he had as good a right to it as anybody--that if he had not won...

All Danmouth gathered to see the funeral procession wind down the granite-paved path to the cliff, and then along by the harbour to the little church on the rock shelf at the en...

Doctor Asher was dying, and his colleague had sent for the nearest magistrate that morning, to take down the dying man's deposition in the presence of witnesses, Trevithick bein...