Smoking flax

The house faced the college campus and was the only one in the block. This, in Georgetown, implies a lawn of no small dimensions; the place had neither gardener’s house nor port...

In process of time, hardly a brick was to be seen in this old house that had not grown purple with age and become cloaked with moss and ivy. Antiquity looked out from covering t...

In the same year that Elliott Harding was graduated from Princeton, he came into possession of his estate, which he at once began to share with his mother. Her love of good livi...

One day while sitting in his accustomed writing place, which was the parlor, now furnished with a table and office chair, a man walked up the front steps. Elliott had just finis...

As early as ten o’clock the Riverside road was thronged with all manner of conveyances, moving toward the country, bound for an out-of-door fête of the character known in that r...

To a casual reader of the human countenance, it would be evident at a first glance that Holmes was a man of no small worldly knowledge, and as he now appeared with his companion...

As the volume of general applause lessened, the cry of “Holmes! Holmes!” was kept up with an insistence which might have induced a less capable man to respond. Nor would the ent...

The sun had set; off beyond the glistening green woodline, the sky was duskily red. The air was full of that freshness of twilight, which is so different from the dew of morning.

Dorothy’s father, Napoleon Carr, was a man well known and greatly respected throughout the south country where he had always lived. His existence had been a laborious one, for h...

Time went swiftly. The seasons followed each other without that fierceness in them to which one is accustomed in the North. The very frosts were gentle; slowly and kindly they s...

“I’se ransacked dis place an’ it kyant be paraded,” she said, placing her hands on her ample hips to pant and wonder. Meanwhile she could hear the impatient lowing of the cows a...

Happy weeks! Happy moons! uncounted days of uncounted joys! For Elliott and Dorothy the summer passed away in blissful Arcadian fashion. She was to him that most precious and su...

As Elliott drove briskly home that evening, hope pointed enthusiastically forward. The two ambitions he was about to realize had long been interwoven with the whole tenor of his...

October days! The sumacs drabbled in the summer’s blood flaunt boldly, and green, gold and purple shades entrance the eye. The mullein stands upon the brown land a lonely sentin...

Elliott had had a succession of busy months, when the case was called for the notorious moonshiner, Burr Chester, who had killed the sheriff while resisting arrest. The Grand Ju...

The news flashed over the country as if by the lightning’s spark and by nine o’clock the district was aroused to a state of frenzied passion. From near and far they gathered to...

A storm was gathering and the sheriff thought by hard riding he might reach the nearest railway station before it broke. He knew his prisoner’s life depended upon his getting hi...

Elliott Harding was coming home--home to Dorothy, and joy was so strong within him that it almost touched the edge of tears. The rising sun was trying hard to struggle out of a...

A half hour before, Elliott had been in a delicious reverie passing what were, perhaps the sweetest moments of his life. He had awakened early from a dream. He had dreamed that...

Among the neighboring people, there prevailed a respect for these two in their distress which was full of gentleness and delicacy. Men kept apart when they were seen walking wit...

The coming of October brought the next term of court. What seemed an age had at last terminated and Ephriam Cooley was again brought to trial. His removal from the prison to the...

Mr. Carr, who had been slowly succumbing to his great grief, was ill the closing day of the trial. Dragging heavily through an existence that was not life, he was but a wraith o...

The day set by the court, upon which Ephriam Cooley was to pay the penalty for the crime of which he had been adjudged guilty, was the thirteenth of June.

He shook his head as he answered: “And none likely to come.” Taking out a silver watch he added: “The hanging is set for eleven o’clock to-morrow morning. Umph! This is tough wo...