Paul Ralston

She was standing in the doorway of her cottage, in Oak City, one morning in May, watching the early boat as it came slowly up to the wharf and counting the passengers who landed...

He was a tall, broad-shouldered, fine-looking young man of twenty-three or twenty-four, with a frank, open countenance and a magnetism of voice and smile and manner which made e...

He had grown broader and handsomer and looked a trifle older, with that brown beard on his chin, she thought, but otherwise he was the same Paul as of old, with his sunny smile,...

They were a very old Virginian family whose line of ancestry stretched backward quite as far as that of Miss Hansford, and touched the days of Cromwell, when white people were s...

The next summer Mrs. Percy bought a pretty little cottage on Oceanside, which she occupied season after season, while Jack grew to manhood and Clarice to a brilliant, beautiful...

The May days were growing longer and warmer. Many of the cottages were open and there was a feeling of summer everywhere, when suddenly the weather changed. The sea looked green...

If Miss Hansford could have seen the Rectory in Samona she would hardly have likened it to bedlam. It was a small wooden structure without much architectural symmetry, but with...

They found the miners in their Sunday clothes, some sitting on the ground, some on big boulders and piles of debris, some standing, and all smoking and waiting anxiously the arr...

One morning about a week later as Elithe was sweeping the door steps she saw an ox-cart coming up the street. Beside it was Bill Stokes flourishing his whip and calling loudly t...

It was quite a gala day in Samona. The church was to be consecrated, and the place was full of people, many of them miners, who had come from Deep Gulch, to see the Bishop and t...

It was soon known in Samona that the Rector’s aunt had invited Elithe to spend the summer with her and that she was going. One of the miners’ daughters, a strong, capable girl,...

Elithe had kept up bravely while the necessity lasted, but when her mother faded from her sight and she could no longer see the handkerchief Artie had tied to a stick and was wa...

The Naumkeag was standing at the wharf waiting for the passengers who had come on the Western train. There was a great crowd, all hurrying, with bags and umbrellas, towards the...

The boat was beginning to stop, and the passengers were hurrying from the deck, which Elithe was almost the last to leave. On the wharf crowds of people were gathered,—hundreds...

Miss Hansford had had many misgivings with regard to the wisdom of having sent for her niece. She had lived alone so long and her habits were so fixed that she dreaded the thoug...

Miss Hansford had sat below listening to the splashing of water overhead, hoping Elithe would not get much on the floor, as it might come through into the kitchen, and that she...

After the disease left her, if there had been any disease, Elithe’s recovery was rapid. Of her illness she remembered nothing, except a feeling that she was having a delicious r...

It was the fashionable hour for bathing. The band, which alternated between Oceanside and the Heights, was to play that morning, and the pavilion was full of people watching the...

“I want you up early to-morrow morning, for I am going to take the first boat for Boston,” Miss Hansford said to Elithe, when she came down to tea after Paul had left.

“I want you to be fresh and to hold your own with them,” she said, happy that Elithe was at last to be introduced into society as represented by the tennis club.

“Paul,” Clarice said, when they were down on the avenue, and she was leaning on his arm, “I’ve had a letter from Jack, and where do you think he is?”

“Well, Elithe, then, if it suits you better,” Clarice replied. “Her father, you know, lives in Samona,—preaches there, and in some unaccountable way Jack has stumbled upon the p...

When Paul parted with Clarice that night he was conscious of a feeling of disquiet unusual to him. He had been angry with Clarice and made her cry. This of itself was enough to...

The day after the ball Clarice returned from New York, and the following morning several messenger boys were busy going from house to house with the little square envelopes, the...

It was the Saturday before the wedding, which was to take place on Thursday of the next week. Many of the guests from a distance had arrived. The Ralston House was full, Miss Ha...

As it was Sunday morning there were not as many people as usual on the piazza of the Harbor Hotel when Jack went up the steps, and seated himself in an arm chair. As it chanced,...

Elithe was in her room at the rear of the cottage trying to bring up arrearages in her Bible reading. Since entering society she had fallen sadly behind with her five chapters o...

Elithe had sat upstairs in the darkness praying that Jack Percy might live, or if he died, that no harm might come to Paul. Hearing no sound from below, and anxious to know how...

With all his faults there was much that was good in him, and right influences could have brought it out. Neglected by his stepmother, treated with indifference by his sister, ca...

Nearly all that day Elithe stayed in bed, sometimes burning with fever, but oftener shivering with cold, which the ginger tea had not counteracted. She had experienced two great...

Very early the next morning crowds of people were making their way to the Percy Cottage, which was soon filled to its utmost capacity. The yard, also, was full, and the sidewalk...

Jack Percy had been lain to rest beside his father and mother and old Roger in the family cemetery at Beechwood. The rain, which fell so heavily in Oak City, extended as far as...

When Paul heard the key turned upon him and the sound of voices die away and began to realize that he could not get out if he wished to, a kind of frenzy seized him and for a ti...

All that night lights were burning in the Ralston House, where the judge sat by his wife, who lay with her eyes closed and tears constantly running down her cheeks until it seem...

her good. The last part of her father’s letter was a help and comfort to her. Her aunt had written: “She don’t know what to do when she is on the stand. She’ll tell the truth, o...

Every preliminary in the way of examination, indictment and committal had been gone through. Bail had been offered and refused. The $10,000 offered to any one who would capture...

“I think my bones must have contracted some of Miss Hansford’s prophetic nature,” he said to his mother, “for I feel it in them that something will turn up in my favor,—the righ...

It was a kind Providence which kept Paul in his numb and dazed condition and made him eat the supper Mrs. Stevens brought him with a keen relish, and afterwards wrapped him in a...

After Miss Hansford and Elithe left the court room that afternoon there was but little to do. One or two unimportant witnesses were sworn and one or two recalled, when the prose...

By nine o’clock the next morning everyone in Oak City knew that Paul had escaped. “Broke jail, and there ain’t no court to-day,” Max Allen said, when he brought the news to Miss...

While the men were going over the house he was lying in the smuggler’s room on the billiard table, which had been put there in the spring and scarcely used at all, as the young...

He was in the Smuggler’s room, which, luxuriously as it had been fitted up, was a prison still. All the world was a prison and would be as long as he lived as he was living now.

This was what Elithe said to Tom, sitting in the Baptist Tabernacle just where she sat when he came asking her to help him liberate Paul, and where he now came to tell her of Pa...

The broken bars to the window of the jail had been repaired, and Paul was in his old quarters, to which a part of the furniture carried there before from the Ralston House had b...

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Ralston, maid and valet, were staying at the Grand Hotel in Paris and making occasional trips to Versailles, St. Germain, Vincennes and Fontainebleau. They had...

There was much surprise when it was known that Mrs. Percy and Clarice were again in their cottage, and many remarks were made as to the probable state of Clarice’s feelings, and...