The cloven foot

The air was thick with falling snow, and the country side looked a formless mass of chilly whiteness, as the south-western mail train carried John Treverton on a lonely midnight...

Jasper Treverton lingered nearly a week after the coming of his kinsman--a week that seemed interminable to the expectant heir, who could not help wishing the old man would make...

The next day was fine, and Mr. Sampson and his visitor set out in a dogcart directly after breakfast on a tour of inspection. They got over a good deal of ground between an eigh...

About this time there appeared among the multifarious placard which adorned the dead walls and hoardings and railway arches and waste spaces of London one mystical dissyllable,...

Laura Malcolm remained at the Manor-house. Mr. Clare, the vicar, had persuaded her to relinquish her idea of going into lodgings in the village. It would be a pity to abandon th...

Slowly, reluctantly, Winter crawled away to his hidden lair, and made room for a chilly, uncomfortable spring. It had been the longest, dullest winter that Jack Chicot had ever...

It was midwinter when Jasper Treverton died. Spring had come in all her glory--her balmy airs and sultry noontides, stolen from summer; her variety and wealth of wood and meadow...

There was excitement and agitation in Cibber Street, Leicester Square, that essentially dramatic, musical, and terpsichorean nook in the great forest of London. La Chicot had na...

It was late in November, and the trees were bare in the grounds of Hazlehurst Manor. The grand old mansion wore its air of grave dignity, under the dull grey skies of late autum...

John Treverton stayed at the Manor-house till after dark, alone with his betrothed, and happier than he had ever been in his life. Yes, happy, though it was with a desperate hap...

Laura was utterly happy in the brief interval between her betrothal and her wedding. She had given her love and trust unreservedly, feeling that duty and love went hand in hand....

The last day of the year, nature’s dullest, dreariest interval between the richness of autumn and the fresh young beauty of spring. Not a flower in the prim old Manor-house gard...

Laura had been married three weeks and a day, and the new year was just three weeks old. It was a very ailing and ungenial year in this infantine stage of its existence. There h...

Mr. Smolendo was in his glory. In the words of his friends and followers he was coining money. He was a man to be cultivated and revered. A man for whom champagne suppers or din...

‘Hazlehurst Rectory, February 22nd.--Dear Ned,--Do you remember my saying, when Laura refused to have a proper wedding-gown, that her marriage was altogether an ill-omened busin...

The question was addressed to Mr. Desrolles. The two were standing side by side in the wintry dusk, in front of one of the windows that looked into Cibber Street, contemplating...

Murder! an awful word under the most ordinary circumstances of every-day life--an awful word even when spoken of an event that happened long ago, or afar off. But what a word sh...

The inquest was held at noon next day. The news of the murder had spread far and wide already, and there was a crowd gathered round the house in Cibber Street all the morning, m...

It was summer-time again, the beginning of June, the time when summer is fairest and freshest, the young leaves in the woods tender and transparent enough to let the sunlight th...

Celia opened her eyes to their widest extent a fortnight later, when Mrs. Treverton informed her that she was going to meet her husband, and that, after a few weeks’ holiday, th...

There were no bonfires or floral arches, no rejoicings of tenantry or farm labourers, when John Treverton and his wife came home to Hazlehurst Manor. They came unannounced one f...

Edward Clare came back to his native village a few days later, looking somewhat dilapidated by his campaign in the great metropolis. He had found the gates of literature so bese...

After that portrait of Lady Barker, John Treverton drew no more caricatures. It seemed as if he had laid aside the pen of the caricaturist in deference to his wife’s dislike of...

Christmas was at hand, the first Christmas in Laura’s married life, and to her happy fancy it seemed the most wonderful season that had ever been marked on the calendar of the a...

The servants’ hall was one of the finest rooms in the Manor House. It was at the back of the house, remote from all the reception rooms, and had been part of a much older buildi...

‘A person has called to see you, ma’am. He begs to apologise for coming so late, but he has travelled a long way, and will be very thankful if you can see him.’

Mr. Desrolles left the Manor House a new man. He held his head erect, and bore himself with a lofty air even before the butler who showed him out. He was respectabilised by a fu...

To sit beside a man’s hearth, drink his wine, shoot his pheasants and ride his horses, would in a savage community be incompatible with the endurance of a deadly hatred against...

John Treverton was out of the doctor’s hands before Christmas was over, and able to appear on his mare, Black Bess, with his wife, mounted on the gentlest of gray Arabs, at the...

The next day was Sunday. George Gerard was up as soon as it was light, and off for a ramble on the moor before the nine o’clock breakfast. This glimpse of the country was sweet...

That winter Sabbath was a dreary day for John Treverton. He walked home almost in silence, Laura wondering at his thoughtfulness, and speculating anxiously upon the possible rea...

A letter was brought to the Vicar just as he was sitting down to his five o’clock dinner that Sunday evening in the bosom of his family. The Vicar dined at five on Sundays, givi...

It was midnight when John Treverton went upstairs to his study, where there were lighted candles, and a newly replenished fire; for it was one of his habits to read or write lat...

Although George Gerard had made up his mind to leave Beechampton by the first train on Monday morning, and although he began to feel doubtful as to the purity of Edward Clare’s...

After pitching and tossing all night in a manner painfully suggestive of shipwreck, John Treverton and his faithful solicitor arrived at St. Malo early in the afternoon, where t...

‘Father le Mescam,’ said John Treverton, ‘do you ever remember hearing of a girl who left this town a laundress to become afterwards a celebrity in Paris, as a stage dancer?’

While John Treverton was in Paris, waiting to obtain proof of Jean Kergariou’s identity with the sailor whose corpse he had seen carried to the Morgue, Laura was sitting alone i...

‘So you see, dearest,’ he wrote, after he had related all that Father le Mescam had told him, ‘come what may, our position as regards my cousin Jasper’s estate is secure. Malice...

Mr. Treverton’s hunter was taken back to his loose-box, where he executed an energetic _pas seul_ with his hind legs, in the exuberance of his feelings at being let off his day’...

An inquiry was held at Bow Street next day. Several of the witnesses who had appeared nearly a year ago at the inquest were present, and much of the evidence that had been then...

Mrs. Evitt was very ill. It may be that a prolonged residence on a level with the sewers, and remote from the direct rays of the sun, is not conducive to health or good spirits.

‘My father,’ cried Laura, when Mr. Leopold had taken his departure, and she and her husband were left alone, ‘my father guilty of this cruel murder! A crime of the vilest kind,...

On the following afternoon Laura drove straight from the House of Detention to Russell Square. Her interview with her husband had been full of comfort. Mr. Leopold had been with...

The same witnesses were present who had been examined on the previous occasion. Two medical men gave their evidence as to the dagger, which had been sent to them for examination...

When Desrolles left the village under the shadow of Dartmoor, after bargaining for a handsome annuity, he meant to enter upon a new and delightful stage of existence. The world...