The Lake of Wine

From a deadening of all his faculties, of all his perceptives, to stupor; from stupor to a delirium of weariness, in which so little as a ring on his finger was a conscious burd...

The wind was so bitter, the roads so glassy with peril and so scourged with swept drifts of snow, that when at last on the following morning the little party of three gentlemen,...

At breakfast the next morning Darda waited upon her master, with swollen eyes and a very sullen manner of attention. He was in a strange mood himself, compound of perplexity and...

The man’s face looked fallen and hectic; but he was recovered at least of his fit. Darda clung to his arm, a frail, defiant, wisp of a thing, her hair a quivering mist of fire i...

When upon the poor gentleman, starved and re-fettered, descended once more the sick loneliness of confinement, he assured himself that only a little time now was needed to see t...

Mr. Tuke, as a result of his grudging sop to respectability, had brought about nothing more definite than some unprofitable temporizing. No doubt this served him well right, and...

Perhaps a half-hour elapsed before any one of the exhausted men was able to do more than sigh and shift his aching limbs on the bed of rubbish where he lay. They had taken the p...

To a sane and humane soul there is no revelation so shocking as that of the scorn in which its rectitude is held by the prevailing beasts of the world. To the most of us at some...

For all the starkness of frost that now befell, it was not till the early days of February that the packed heavens began to discharge themselves of the congested stores of snow...

Mr. Tuke had ridden a mile along the last lap of his journey, when he suddenly drew himself together, gave a whistle, and set to communing audibly with his inner man.

At length he rose, and took a step or two towards the window. It was no trick of his fancy. There lay the abomination, its dry dead hair stirring in the draught, its stuft lid w...

Upon the unfortunate gentleman, now committed to an irksome and most apprehensive solitude, fell a score of little demons of melancholy and alarm. To men of his fibre there is n...

About mid-day Mr. Tuke sat himself down, like a man thoroughly wearied, in his great flagged hall--which, with a fancifulness of conceit, he had dubbed his dining-room--and summ...

Pushing onward at what fury of speed the dangerous state of the road permitted, Tuke, like a good captain, would not subordinate his prudence to his eagerness. True, he had noth...

Sir Robert Linne, as he left the club, had no thought but to sever the tangle of things by cutting his own throat. He intended to do this agreeably and decently, and to step off...

Like one who accepts an indifferent gift, rather to pleasure a friend than for his own gratification, Sir Robert Linne held his reprieve in his pocket, as it were, with a carele...

“The fiend take the jade! I’ll have her out bag and baggage if she trifles with me. Here, sir--do you know who I am? Take my horse and see that he has food and water.”

Thus, at length, was Sir Robert the younger informed of the history of his inheritance. Thus, also, was it an aggravation of that wounding recital that, to all appearance, he mi...

Mr. Tuke and his man were employed upon a very profitless and monotonous task. The one--the first--was engaged in drawing stagnant water from a well in a bucket; the other recei...

During a period of supreme trial Sir David showed himself a man of courage and resource. The appalling thunder of the explosion, the vision of the fiery upheaval of the floor we...

He saw surrounding him a very choice variety of villainous faces--perhaps a dozen types in all; but, if his blood ran cold, he had a lofty fancy to attribute it to the weather.

The night fell dead and blank, and with it came the snow, crisp, large-flaked, dropping silently as autumn leaves in a windless garden. These were but the pickets of a gathering...

“I have no knowledge,” said Creel--“I have no knowledge whatever, Mr. Tuke, of this ‘Lake of Wine.’ Very probably it was as you suggest. I was acquainted with the man’s characte...

There is a curious anomaly about the way in which a self-confidence, impervious to the stabs of ill-fortune, may be paralyzed in a moment by the little prick of a snub irrespons...

Mr. Tuke rode homewards in a very grave and preoccupied frame of mind. Perhaps he was conscious of a peril more nearly threatening his peace than any scheme of truculent knavery...

Reason is fatal to romance, and Miss Royston was coming to it. She had, indeed, a very practical side to her character, which side was all of the world and eminently fancy-free....

Oppressive dusk was drooping as Mr. Tuke came in sight of the lonely tavern on the downs. The inconsistent moodiness of autumn had fallen into another humour as the day declined...

A few minutes later Mr. Tuke descended the stairs, and, happening to be in slippered feet, walked without sound in search of his visitor, whom, curiously, he came upon comprehen...

It was on the second day after the arrival of the furniture that the surcharged storm, that had so long been lowering over the caretaker’s head, burst in an explosion of thunder...

Mr. Tuke was arrayed resplendent, _cap-à-pie_. His personal baggage had reached him from London, and he felt human, in the sense of the beast of civilization, once more. If his...

By all the chill miles homewards, whatever and what varying emotions prevailed in the breasts of the little party found no expression in words. Indeed there could be no passion...

Something singular in the appearance of his house engaged Mr. Tuke’s attention the moment he drew rein before the door. Desolate and haunted it always looked; but now there was...

Miss Angela came out on the steps to wave farewell to her brother’s guest of the night. This was in itself a particular favour; for she made it rather less than a rule to submit...

It was six o’clock of a cold September morning when Sir Robert--or Mr. Tuke, as we must now know him--woke in his room off the stable-yard of the old “George” inn at Winchester....

A white bed and sleep; food and drink in judicious allowance; salve for his hands and love for his heart; not least, the conviction that he might rest secure of the right conduc...

Before the other could reach him, the ready Mr. Brander had extricated himself from his perilous position and, leaving the bruised post-boy to manage his own, strode back a pace...

So far as two men could explore minutely the interior of a house so eccentrically designed--on a plan that seemed indeed to affect an absence of all design--as “Delsrop,” Mr. Tu...

“When is it ye’re leavin’? Is it the ocean’s heavin’ That sets your stummick grievin’, To see what lies before? What ails that nowt ’ll start ’ee? We wait ye right and hearty, O...

Mr. Tuke sat in his dining-hall, swollen and glowering as a ruffled tom-cat. He had not struck in haste to repent at leisure; but it is true that he was woefully exercised in hi...

It is a keen experience of wayfarers that a north-easterly, unlike a south-easterly wind, seldom drops at evenfall; and therefore should it be a leading principle in the ethics...

Captain Luvaine--misanthrope, ascetic, wiry as a ferret and disciplined on a drum-head--had fallen asleep at his post. No doubt the exhaustion induced by cold, hunger, and the e...

The kitchen of the tumbled lodge served for guardhouse; and the two officers were quartered in the little parlour opposite Mr. Tuke’s room of bondage. Between walked a sentry, a...

Some time in June of the year 1800 (as privately chronicled) there came a famous evening at Whitelaw’s Club in St. James’s Street, off Piccadilly, London. There and then--accord...

The gentleman hesitated and pondered. Were the man in truth alone, he could not see what ruse might be designed. His tale, too, was probable enough. Baulked in their outrageous...

Now, before Mr. Tuke was called upon to reap the full embarrassment arising from that impulsive confession of his to Miss Royston, events came to so crowd themselves upon the li...

The hapless master of “Delsrop” paced his dining-hall in a rare conflict of emotions. The wine gleamed on the table; but none was there to call a toast in it. His hospitality wa...

“Now we gather,” said Sir David, with importance, “that of the ancient gang, only Mr. Fern hath cheated the gallows, to return at this eleventh hour to the search; but that he h...

Sir David Blythewood had a particularly infectious laugh, and like all men who make a plaything of their own dignity, he was wont to find his risibilities tickled consumedly bef...

A dream, a memory of a wire factory he had once been shown over--this to re-connect him with a world he had sunk fathom-deep from; a buzzing and whistling in his brain, from whi...

It would seem something a matter for a wonder that a lady of Miss Royston’s refinement and varied capacity for ideals should be content to lead so long an annual series of her d...

“A toast!” said he, the leaping candle-light making a shifting grotesque of his wholesome young face. “Here’s to the memory of the last tenant o’ ‘Delsrop,’ and the health of th...

“Well,” cried Creel, “you have sown your wild oats and reaped a whirlwind; and now at last is the calm; and you shall sit under your fig-tree and grow fat.”

Tuke, withdrawn into his dining-hall, was sprung to his feet and faced his serving-man with wide eyes. He, the latter, was all hurried and high-strung. His lips looked as if his...

“Blythewood,” said Mr. Tuke, “’twould be a rare thing could we light on this bogle-gem--succeed where a whole troop of cut-throats had failed--and bribe Luvaine to sanity thereb...

“If you move, so do I not. Then see if you can find the way by yourself. No, no--stay where you are. In half-an-hour I will be back as full of information as a verger.”

_“So fares the unthrifty lord of Linne_ _Till all his gold is gone and spent:_ _And he maun sell his lands so broad,_ _His house and landes and all his rent._ . . . . . . . _Thu...