Category: Romance

Rockhaven

"It ain't more'n onct in a lifetime," said Jess Hutton to the crowd of friends in his store, "that luck comes thick 'n' fat to any on us 'n' so fer that reason I sent over to the mainland fer suthin' o' a liquid natur; 'n' now take hold, all hands, 'n' injie yerselves on Jess."

Chapters

1. CHAPTER I

"It ain't more'n onct in a lifetime," said Jess Hutton to the crowd of friends in his store, "that luck comes thick 'n' fat to any on us 'n' so fer that reason I sent over to th...

13. CHAPTER XIII

It has been said of the modern young lady that the more of her home life a gentleman saw, the less likely he was to fall in love with her; but as the days sped by and Winn saw m...

20. CHAPTER XX

A man is happiest when he has most to do, and though a woman's face intrudes upon his thoughts and he feels her smiles are all for him, it is life and action and the push forwar...

43. CHAPTER XLIII

The doubt and distrust of all humanity, first implanted in Winn Hardy's mind by his friend and adviser, Nickerson, was now working its inevitable injury. Much of it had been bru...

34. CHAPTER XXXIV

The bubble of Rockhaven, the flight of Weston, the suicide of Hill furnished a few items for the city press, a little gossip among interested ones for a week, then passed into h...

5. CHAPTER V

Like one of the spruces that towered high above others on Rockhaven, like one of the granite cliffs bidding defiance to storm and wave, so did Jess Hutton tower above his fellow...

30. CHAPTER XXX

His coat, a surtout with small gilt buttons, a reddish brown vest, trousers of gray mixed stuff, a high collar with black satin stock, and his ruddy brown face with fringe of gr...

46. CHAPTER XLVI

To that city, surfeited with pleasure, a new sensation had come, and while Winn Hardy was aimlessly gathering news items, too disconsolate to read the amusement notes even, and...

21. CHAPTER XXI

There were two church bells on Rockhaven, one at each village, and every Sunday evening, year in and out, they called the piously inclined together, always at the same time. Tha...

39. CHAPTER XXXIX

There had been a time in the long ago of Rockhaven's history when Jess, then a bashful young man, had loved pretty Letty Carver, now the Widow Hutton. It had started in her scho...

17. CHAPTER XVII

For a few weeks Winn worried over the suspicions of Weston & Hill's honesty that seemed like a cloud of danger, and then, to a certain extent, it passed away. To no one, not eve...

41. CHAPTER XLI

Fritz Geisling, who for many years had lived in two rooms, second floor, No. 10 Amity Place, was short, fat, and bald. Each morning he arose at seven, went out to an adjoining c...

42. CHAPTER XLII

To Mona, reared beyond the world of wealth and social custom, the great city she was now in seemed a monster hive. An endless tangle of crowded streets, of pushing humanity, and...

31. CHAPTER XXXI

Weston cursed Simmons for an arrant coward and a doddering old idiot, and Simmons abused Weston for a stupid fool who believed his dupe, Hardy, was blindly quarrying granite and...

11. CHAPTER XI

The time-worn saw that two is company and three a crowd never struck Winn so forcibly as that evening when he called again on Mrs. Hutton. On the first occasion he had only felt...

4. CHAPTER IV

Like a pair of Titanic spectacles joined with a bridge of granite, the two halves of Rockhaven faced the Atlantic billows, as grim and defiant as when Leif Ericson's crew of fea...

10. CHAPTER X

Mona Hutton was, as Winn instinctively felt that Sunday when he first glanced into her well-like eyes, a girl but little akin to her surroundings--a child of the island, full of...

35. CHAPTER XXXV

For weeks Winn lived an aimless life without occupation, which to him meant misery. He walked the streets to be jostled by people in a hurry, and wished that he also was. He loo...

25. CHAPTER XXV

The life of suspense now forced upon Winn was not agreeable. He had too much inborn ambition and energy of character, and once he had come to feel himself his own master, as his...

8. CHAPTER VIII

For a few days Winn Hardy was the busiest man on Rockhaven. What with setting up the steam drill that had been sent him, finding a man to work it, adjusting the derricks, and la...

15. CHAPTER XV

As the days passed on Winn noticed that more and more interest came to be felt in the Rockhaven Granite Company and his management. And when the first schooner he had chartered...

33. CHAPTER XXXIII

When Winn bade good-by to Jess Hutton he realized for the first time how closely his life had become linked to Rockhaven. The old man, burdened with the responsibility of twenty...

44. CHAPTER XLIV

When Winn reached home, he found two messages awaiting him, one from Ethel Sherman asking him to call, and another bidding him journey to the home of his boyhood and attend to a...

6. CHAPTER VI

The little steamer _Rockhaven_ was but a speck on the southern horizon, the fishermen that had earlier spread their wings were still in sight that June morning, and Jess Hutton,...

7. CHAPTER VII

For a few days Winn Hardy was so occupied with the cares of his new position that he thought of little else. It was a pleasing freedom, for never before had he known what it was...

16. CHAPTER XVI

"Young Hardy's making his mark down on the island," observed J. Malcolm Weston to his partner that morning when they had received notice of the stock purchase made by Jess, "and...

3. CHAPTER III

"Please step into my private office, Mr. Hardy," said J. Malcolm Weston, head of Weston & Hill, bankers, brokers, and investment securities, as stated on the two massive nickel...

18. CHAPTER XVIII

Men are very much alike in this respect: if one finds fortune or a path that seems to lead that way, all who suspect it will try to crowd in. The same instinct may be seen among...

12. CHAPTER XII

When Winn passed out of Rockhaven the next morning, Mona was in her dooryard kneeling beside a bed of flowers, her face shaded by a checked calico sunbonnet. At the gate he paused.

36. CHAPTER XXXVI

Winn Hardy, agentle child when the hand of want was stretched out to him, but a lion in wrath at all iniquity and injustice, was not long in carrying out his thought to write th...

37. CHAPTER XXXVII

One evening, a few weeks after the auction, Winn, in his new occupation, was detailed to report one of those affairs in high life where wealth gathered to display its gowns, and...

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII

Rockhaven, a colony by itself, had slowly increased from its one family starting-point until more than two hundred called it home. In doing this it had, to a certain extent, sus...

40. CHAPTER XL

Out of the many weddings inevitably occurring on Rockhaven but few ever attained to the importance of a trip to the mainland. The sense of utility among them, the need of every...

9. CHAPTER IX

The suggestion Jess had made regarding the scarcity of money on Rockhaven was plainly evident to Winn, now that he had become acquainted. It made him feel that his firm's enterp...

47. CHAPTER XLVII

The first warm days of spring had come to Rockhaven ere Mona and her parents returned. The sunny slopes back of the village were growing green, the tulips and daffodils in Mona'...

14. CHAPTER XIV

There is in this land of the free, where all men are created equal (on paper), a class of financial sharpers, whose ambition and sole occupation is to secure for themselves the...

29. CHAPTER XXIX

It was early dawn when Winn stepped from his train and into the ceaseless babel of the city. Market wagons were crowding the streets, the army of workers hurrying in every direc...

45. CHAPTER XLV

There was nothing that could depress Winn just now any more than to visit his boyhood home. It had been twelve years since he left the hillside farm, and to return to it, even f...

19. CHAPTER XIX

Winn had felt it best to keep silent regarding his suspicions of Weston & Hill, but this new development forced him to unbosom himself to some one and he went to Jess. He waited...

27. CHAPTER XXVII

"I wish you would go over to the gorge with me this afternoon," he said to Mona that morning, "I must leave here to-morrow, and I want to bid the spot good-by."

24. CHAPTER XXIV

There are honest and honorable stock brokers, and Page, a friend of Nickerson's and acting broker for him, was one of them. He knew Simmons well, and had at one time or another...

26. CHAPTER XXVI

When Winn reached his room that evening, a letter from Jack Nickerson and a clipping from the _Market News_ was awaiting him. The letter said: "Come at once to the city, but kee...

28. CHAPTER XXVIII

In Wall Street, the most gigantic gambling Mecca the world knows, where millions change hands every hour of the five of howling delirium that constitute a stock-exchange day, th...

22. CHAPTER XXII

There are genial, liberal, and companionable rascals and mean, contemptible, sneaking ones. The former attract by their apparent honesty and cordial expressions, and are the mor...

2. CHAPTER II

Winn Hardy, born and reared where the tinkle of the cow bells on the hillside pastures, or the call of the village church bell on Sunday was the most exciting incident, and a cr...

23. CHAPTER XXIII

There are always two parties in every stock exchange, well known as bulls and bears. Those who believe in an advance, or what is to the same end, manipulate a stock to increase...

32. CHAPTER XXXII

Out of all the many confiding investors who were robbed by Weston & Hill, only a few need be mentioned. Winn's aunt, Mrs. Converse, was the most flagrant case of pure theft, for...

48. CHAPTER XLVIII

The ocean billows still beat unceasingly against Rockhaven's granite cliffs and toss the rockweed and kelpie aloft. The tide still ebbs and flows beneath the old mill, and the f...