The just steward

_This is a work of fiction and the characters moving through its Pages are imaginary, save in the instance of Hamid Bey, whose sinister activities were exercised as Commandant o...

In the ivory chair sat a man of forty, in a white tunic bordered with a wide stripe of purple, plunged deep in the perusal of a small scroll of papyrus thickly inscribed in the...

"Thanks, my friend!" said the father, with moisture showing in his bright blue eyes. Silently a hand-grip was exchanged between the ex-Prætor and his Chief Secretary. Then the f...

Water-skins brought by the Jews being filled by Ephraim, that the pure element might not be contaminated by the touch of idolaters, the Saracens filled their own, and drew water...

"Monk of Scete! I require from you neither compliments, nor anything else. There is a spring beneath some date-palms a bowshot from your monastery. There I and my companions wil...

"And if, even as that Saul who slew the Prophets, the Lord hath chosen such a man to be His servant, shall not the Judge of all the world do righteously? And if this man, blinde...

"Ah! ... Ah!" ... other unseen beings wailed in chorus: "Shall we never be rid of thee, thou Dweller on the Threshold? Begone! Depart from us! ... Were not the desolate places g...

While to the tortured Jew, dying amidst horrible agonies, it seemed that he saw his master Philoremus, joyful and smiling, standing near a Young Man apparelled in white, and of...

"But I'm not Church of anything, any more than you and Maurice or the Lee-Levysons--or anybody!--belonging to the set of people we visit and meet and dine.... Nice, pleasant, so...

Down through the return-traffic on his left hand side, came a stately fleet of motor-waggon ambulances of the Red Cross, British and American; escorted by a train of Auxiliary A...

"He is one Hamid Bey, a Colonel of Turkish gendarmerie, Vali of the labour-camps near Nazareth--high in the confidence of the Turkish commander of their Eighth Army Corps, and,...

"Carrying on as though one was Rob Roy M'Gregor," John remarked mentally. Then as Mendel made a strangle-knot in the purple woollen comforter, adjusted his mittens and was about...

"Howling swells!" was John Hazel's pithy mental comment, recognising upon three of his fellow-travellers the unmistakable cachet of Good Society. "The Mums," he reflected, rathe...

The newspaper rustled in a pair of big bony hands, that were shaking with rage as though with ague. There was a roaring in John Hazel's ears.... Spots of red, ringed with paler...

The gates stood open for the guest of honour. On their cracked stone pillars, topped with grotesque lead effigies of wolves, each supporting the sword of a Crusader, oil lantern...

"My dear," she said, knowing that his own case rose in mind, "my poor, poor dear!" And the wretched man grew sick at heart and shuddered. The mothering note in her voice called...

She shivered as though a chilly draught had pierced her blue alpaca. Nurse Pidge had not let the topic sleep. She had reverted to it often in that odd _argot_,--(compound of hom...

"There isn't so much wrong--and I'm going to drop a postcard to Abrahams in the Support trenches, to tell him so and cheer his heart. The queer thing about it is--that the momen...

"I think," she said, "I knew you from the first. But how wonderful that you should be _the_ Hazel. The man my father"--She was graver and older now, with that shadow of grief up...

Below the lettering was the coat-of-arms whose faded gilding shone on the courtyard-gates. The jut of the hooded hearth, below the narrow mantelshelf, showed the coat again, scu...

The door-handle turned as the short, stern colloquy ended. Both men looked round and saw Katharine standing near the door. Her black lace veil draped her head with mystery. In h...

Rejected.... Betrayed.... Cast off.... She, Katharine Forbis, so great, so beloved, so beautiful,--the desired of many honourable, brave, high-born, handsome and wealthy men. Ed...

"They're weel kent for loose-tongued, claverin' bodies at Cauldstanes Post Office," owned Whishaw, adding bitterly: "Nor ye'll no' bind Discretion on Meggy Proodfoot, wi' the Ki...

"I must take it from you, for I know the man who lost it. But I'll give you half-a-crown instead, to buy another," said John.... "You'll like the new one awfully!" ... John adde...

Weeks after John Hazel had sailed with a draft of leave-expired "Fenchurch Streets,"--to join the Division to which that gallant London regiment was attached--with the British M...

And he passed on, to gladden the heart of the Battalion Commander with discriminating praise, and drop a few curt sentences;--pregnant with great issues--before he went away. Pa...

"What? O, I sat tight on the sack of rooty, and smoked another fag, until the sun got too hot even for me! Then I got up and stretched myself, and caught my chameleon--who'd bee...

"Because my heart goes biff after a ducking, I resolutely decline to be treated as an invalid. Isn't it bad enough to know that another woman is doing my work of organisation at...

Two blue-shirted, white-gowned Egyptian boys and a bulky middle-aged negress, black as coal; with a high silk turban of rainbow hues, a skirted yellow over-robe, full striped tr...

He went with her across the lawn, and ushered her through the loggia door into a passage, and up a wide staircase leading by one short flight of steps to the single floor above....

"Well, for one thing, knowing the lie of the camp pretty well, the Pasha could carry a passenger.... A man who'd be prepared for risks--to some place in the neighbourhood of She...

It was Essenian who conducted Miss Forbis to the car, a palatial Daimler of huge size, enamelled black and violent red; overloaded with solid silver and ivory fittings; lined wi...

The cool, sinister strength that lay behind Essenian's veneer of finical affectation, came home to Hazel as it had not previously. This was the Essenian of his French observer-m...

"O son of a Maghribi dog! What is that to thee?" Essenian's Mohammedan body-servant, who had overheard, hissed fiercely at the offender. "Since when hast thou found it good for...

"She has earned a prettier name here among us," says Father Forbis, looking round at the faces,--pinched and white, or livid, or fever-flushed, that crowd about him, and speakin...

The man seems to be answering a series of interrogations. He asserts, he denies emphatically, he pleads, but he does not cringe. Driven to silent frenzy by the difficulty of see...

The rain that began at two a.m. by his wrist-watch (hidden under a broad band of untanned sheep-leather, laced on John's big wrist by a slender thong) shows no sign of abating....

The top of the triangular patch of waste ground ends at the very gate of Shechem, being lost in the great mounds of immemorial ashes, brought down in ancient days from the Templ...

Somewhat reluctantly the Chief has taken the thing, but its strange beauty and evident rarity tickle the _connoisseur_. It is thin as a soap-bubble, and as light. It might be bl...

"When I recovered sense and partial sight--after the horrors of which thou knowest!--it was to find myself in the house of a good, poor Jew of Nazareth, whither--may the Holy On...

On the right-hand side of the divan nearest the window, the Emir lies outstretched; pillowed on the embroidered saddlebags which contain his travelling-gear, and smoking his wat...

"A presumptuous one, who knowing that at this hour thou wouldst be in the state of _Kef_, or under the influence of the Healer, yet clamours to be brought before the Presence. W...

"Dearest," it ends, "John Hazel has promised to get this letter through to you, and the other that I have written for Julian,--and yet another that was sent to Kerr's Arbour for...

Ummshni is at her business now. John feels certain. He nods to himself, solemnly, and sitting on the lid of one of the broken bomb-boxes, folds his great arms, narrows his eyeli...

Two bombs greet the renewal of the attack upon the Shechem side.... Three, hurled one after the other with dazzling rapidity, explode in the covert that clothes the cliff-face....

Not without reason had the Pasha boasted of the beauty of his villa, a white marble palace of Arabian-Turkish architecture, standing well back from an avenue of casuarinas, embo...

"Certainly, going by your Western calendar. But in this house that lies hidden behind another that is full of barbarous Western inventions--Western customs do not prevail, and W...

"I will go, I will go! Do not handle me roughly.... Remember that I am an old--a very old man! Miss Forbis, I knew your father once! Speak for me! Use your influence! Remember,"...

Freedom and Peace came to the War-ridden City of the Prince of Peace with the Wire Road and the Pipe-Line. To a mixed and breathlessly-waiting queue of strangely-variegated nati...

Within the City English soldiers guard the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Mohammedans the Haram. The depot of the A.S.C. is lodged in the courtyard of a Jewish School.