Sir Isumbras at the Ford

The moon that night, peering through the half-shuttered windows of the manoir, spilt on the dark floor pools that reminded La Vireville of those others in the interminable wet r...

"God bless my soul, what book have you got hold of?" demanded the old man; but before he could pull himself out of his arm-chair to see, there was a knock at the library door, a...

Mathieu Pourcelles had now definitely become a nuisance to the habitués of that old-established house of entertainment, the _Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution_ at Abbeville....

Anne-Hilarion was sorry to say good-bye to the _Trois Frères_ at Caen, and all the way up the river from the little port at Ouistreham he sat quietly on deck with a pensive expr...

La Vireville did not go into the little Clos-ajonc with his lady. He waited for her outside, leaning upon its low, whitewashed wall, over which the tamarisk whispered with its f...

The subject of their conversation lay before them at that moment on the beach, an open sixteen-foot fisherman's boat, broad in the beam, ballasted with stones, and lug-rigged. T...

When the Chevalier de la Vireville, wet and draggled from his long ride, flung himself off his horse at the gate, and knocked on the door of the little house at Canterbury, that...

It may be judged whether Anne-Hilarion kept silence on his adventures, either to his grandfather or to his admiring audience of servants. The chief rôle in his recitals, however...

Just as on the day when he had first entered the cottage in Clouarnet village to look for his friend, and had met his deadly foe, so now Fortuné de la Vireville stood hesitating...

Up and down the Hard at Portsmouth, among rough sailors and rough language, but apparently unconscious of either, there walked in the last days of November 1795 a little old man...

Five seconds, no more, did Fortuné de la Vireville allow himself wherein to reflect that he found himself, as the door was shut and the bolt slid into place, in one of the most...

"Mon cher beaupère," wrote the Marquis de Flavigny, "my former letter (if you ever get it, which I should think doubtful) will have told you of the incidents of our landing at C...

The coach ride to Rochester, the night's stay there, and the journey on to Canterbury through the fine April weather had been all delight to Anne-Hilarion. And now he was being...

The port of St. Helier, reached at last after such vicissitudes of seafaring, was ringing with Jersey-French and English, and here and there with the genuine tongue of Gaul, for...

The hour when their last defence should fail them was nearer even than any of the Royalists had imagined. All next day, and the next, while Sombreuil's contingent--the émigrés w...

sang a clear tenor voice in the forest next morning--the once famous air out of that opera of _Richard Cœur-de-Lion_ which had served the Royalists of three or four years ago as...

A brilliant May morning of sun and wind was exulting over the beautiful harbour of St. Peter Port at Guernsey, and over the old town rising steeply like an amphitheatre from its...

He had just brought the coffee into the library, and it pleased the Baba-sahib, who had accompanied him, to offer the sugar to the two gentlemen. He was, however, dressed for ou...

Anne-Hilarion was still sitting obediently on the cloak, staring at the now stationary compass. La Vireville stooped and kissed him before he had time to ask any questions. "Ann...

It was not until the _Seaflower's_ boat was actually pulling off from the shore, and his feet were sunk in the wet sand of Porhoët Bay, that Fortuné de la Vireville realised how...

In the Square garden, behind the statue of Butcher Cumberland, the leaves fell early that year. Anne-Hilarion, Comte de Flavigny, playing under their fading splendour, daily col...

But on the dining-room wall it was Janet Elphinstone, a fair-haired child of ten, in a long white dress girt with a blue sash, her arm over the neck of a deerhound, who looked d...

A cold and grey light was in the sky when La Vireville came back to consciousness, and, for the moment greatly puzzled, raised his head and looked about him. There was no fallen...

The full-rigged ship, in oils, embedded in a solid sea of the same medium resembling a newly ploughed ultramarine field, which hung over the chest of drawers in the Bishop's bed...

In a cheap little room, not much more than a garret, at the top of a house off Tottenham Court Road, the Chevalier de la Vireville was shaving himself before a cracked mirror. A...

The Chevalier de la Vireville was lying, as he had so often lain, staring at the stuffed trout and the triptych of the Assumption. The adventurous and disappointed spirit which...

From the quarterdeck of His Britannic Majesty's frigate _Pomone_, which had recently come to anchor in the wide and placid bay of Quiberon, Mr. Francis Tollemache gazed with int...

Half an hour later M. de la Vireville's half-perfunctory, half-condemnatory regret at Mme. Rozel's approaching departure was a much more genuine and a deeper feeling. At his req...

But Fortune, after whom Fortuné de la Vireville had been somewhat ironically named, had all his life taken away with one hand what she had given him with the other. So now she g...

"At ony rate," she remarked, when the operation was concluded, "A'll no leave ye till A please, and gif ane of these madams comes A'll e'en gar her turn me oot."

The gods, however, had not finished amusing themselves with the situation they had brought about, and planned an improvement on it. The very next day La Vireville was summoned t...

All that night Fortuné de la Vireville sat in the desecrated church of St. Gildas at Auray, his back against a pillar. Hundreds of his comrades were there with him, so crowded t...

La Vireville reprieved was much less composed than La Vireville condemned. For about half an hour, it is true, he sat motionless on the steps of the desecrated altar in the litt...

Quiberon once more, place of intolerable memories, that Fortuné had thought never to see again, and the sea, blue and sparkling, breaking idly on the white sand that a few days...

The silky brown head on the pillow was shaken. "No, please. I like well enough the Queen of Elfland, but best of all 'Noroway-over-the-foam' and the shoes with cork heels."

So he was dead--was lying with his comrades in a hasty trench at Auray, or under the bloodstained sand of Quiberon itself. Sometimes--for she had heard that many had been drowne...

Four days later Mr. Elphinstone and his grandson were breakfasting alone in the room where Anne-Hilarion had remained, so unsuitably attired, to hear matters not primarily inten...

In a little wood to the south of Auray, and in an exceedingly bad temper, the Chevalier de la Vireville sat on a fallen tree and surveyed his small band of Chouans, who, lying,...

For the second time that day Baptiste was distractedly polishing his silver. About every six minutes a tear rolled off his sharp nose on to salver or tankard and had to be wiped...

"It was mirk, mirk night, there was nae starlight, They waded through red blude to the knee; For a' the blude that's shed on the earth Rins thro' the springs o' that countrie."