The Last Hope

River Andrew had conducted the two gentlemen from “The Black Sailor” to the churchyard by their own request. A message had been sent to him in the morning that this service woul...

“The Last Hope” had been expected for some days. It was known in Farlingford that she was foul, and that Captain Clubbe had decided to put her on the slip-way at the end of the...

Not only France, but all Europe, had at this time to reckon with one who, if, as his enemies said, was no Bonaparte, was a very plausible imitation of one.

Dormer Colville smiled doubtfully. He was too polite, it seemed, to be sceptical, and by his attitude expressed a readiness to be convinced as much from indifference as by reaso...

For the man whose story it presumably was passed across the green ere the sound of the ship's bell had died away. He had changed his clothes, or else it would have appeared that...

When River Andrew stated that there were few at Farlingford who knew more of Frenchman than himself, it is to be presumed that he spoke by the letter, and under the reserve that...

Which was a near enough rendering, perhaps, to pass muster in the hearing of two persons imperfectly acquainted with the languages so translated. Then, turning again to the sail...

The Reverend Septimus Marvin had lost his wife five years earlier. It was commonly said that he had never been the same man since. Which was untrue. Much that is commonly said w...

The tide was ebbing still when Barebone loosed his boat, one night, from the grimy steps leading from the garden of Maiden's Grave farm down to the creek. It was at the farm-hou...

The Abbe Touvent was not a courageous man, and the perspiration, induced by the climb from the high-road up that which had once been the ramp to the Chateau of Gemosac, ran cold...

There may be some who refuse to take seriously a person like Albert de Chantonnay because, forsooth, he happened to possess a sense of the picturesque. There are, as a matter of...

There is no sentiment so artificial as international hatred. In olden days it owed its existence to churchmen, and now an irresponsible press foments that dormant antagonism. Wh...

But on the third day, soon after nightfall, it rang once more, breaking suddenly in on the silence of the shadowy courts and gardens, bidding the frogs in the tank be still with...

“Where is the boatman?” asked Marie, as she followed Juliette and Barebone along the deserted jetty. A light burnt dimly at the end of it and one or two boats must have been moo...

“Tide's a-turning, sir,” said a voice at the open doorway of the cabin, and Captain Clubbe turned his impassive face toward Dormer Colville, who looked oddly white beneath the l...

In a sense, politics must always represent the game that is most attractive to the careful gambler. For one may play at it without having anything to lose. It is one of the few...

It would appear that John Turner had business south of the Seine, though his clients were few in the Faubourg St. Germain. For this placid British banker was known to be a good...

There are in humble life some families which settle their domestic differences on the doorstep, while the neighbours, gathered hastily by the commotion, tiptoe behind each other...

The Marquis de Gemosac was sitting at the open window of the little drawing-room in the only habitable part of the chateau. From his position he looked across the courtyard towa...

As Juliette returned to the Gate House she encountered her father, walking arm-in-arm with Dormer Colville. The presence of the Englishman within the enceinte of the chateau was...

Between the Rue de Lille and the Boulevard St. Germain, in the narrow streets which to this day have survived the sweeping influence of Baron Haussmann, once Prefect of the Sein...

The old nobleman had never removed his covering hand from the locket. He had never glanced at it himself. He looked slowly round the peering faces, two and three deep round the...

Mr. John Turner had none of the outward signs of the discreet adviser in his person or surroundings. He had, it was currently whispered, inherited from his father an enormous cl...

If John Turner expected Colville to bring Loo Barebone with him to the Rue Lafayette he was, in part, disappointed. Colville arrived in a hired carriage, of which the blinds wer...

A large French fishing-lugger was drifting northward on the ebb tide with its sails flapping idly against the spars. It had been a fine morning, and the Captain, a man from Feca...

Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. Like many of his cloth and generation, Parson Marvin pinned all his faith on education. “Give a boy a good education,” he said,...

Miriam's manner toward him was the same as it had always been so long as he could remember. He had once thought--indeed, he had made to her the accusation--that she was always c...

At Farlingford, forgotten of the world, events move slowly and men's minds assimilate change without shock. Old people look for death long before it arrives, so that when at las...

Had John Turner been able to see round the curve of his own vast cheeks he might have perceived the answer to his proposition lurking in a little contemptuous smile at the corne...

Turner, stumbling along the road to “The Black Sailor,” probably wondered why he had failed. It is to be presumed that he knew that the ally he had looked to for powerful aid ha...

“It is an affair of the heart, Abbe,” she said. “Allez! I know what I talk of. It is an affair of the heart and nothing more. There is some one in England: some blonde English g...

“If I go on, I go alone,” Barebone had once said to Dormer Colville. The words, spoken in the heat of a quarrel, stuck in the memory of both, as such are wont to do. Perhaps, in...

It was late when Dormer Colville reached the quiet sea-coast village of Royan on the evening of his return to the west. He did not seek Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence until the lunche...

“Bon Dieu! my old friend, what do you expect?” replied Madame de Chantonnay to a rather incoherent statement made to her one May afternoon by the Marquis de Gemosac. “It is the...

All through the summer of 1851--a year to be marked for all time in the minds of historians, not in red, but in black letters--the war of politics tossed France hither and thither.

It was early in November that the report took wing in Paris that John Turner's bank was, after all, going to weather the storm. Dormer Colville was among the first to hear this...

“Everything is going a merveille!” he cried. “In three months we shall be ready to strike our blow--to make our great coup for France. The failure of Turner's bank was a severe...

“Ah!” he cried, on perceiving Barebone. “Good--you are safe!” He turned to speak to some one who was following him up the stairs with the slower steps of one who knew not his way.

Although it was snowing hard, it was not a dark night. There was a half moon hidden behind those thin, fleecy clouds, which carry the snow across the North Sea and cast it noise...

After a hurried consultation, Septimus Marvin was deputed to follow the injured man and take him home, seeing that he had as yet but half recovered his senses. This good Samarit...