The Man with a Shadow

Hartley Salis was not the only watcher. Mary lay with her eyes burning and brain throbbing with contending emotions. She was in agony, for she had to combat, in addition to the...

The girl looked very handsome and animated, and, since the scene in the wood with Tom Candlish, had been so penitent and patient that her brother had shrunk from checking her in...

"Yes, gran'fa, dear," cried Dally, bustling about and fetching the clay pipe with a clean white bowl, consequent upon its having been thoroughly burned in the fire before it was...

"Then I'll tell you, Dally. You are growing too light and free, and your conduct is far from becoming, or what it should be for a maid-servant at the Rectory. If girls are so fo...

The big tenor bell made the louvres rattle in the tower windows, as it sent forth its sonorous note to announce far and wide that the Candlish mausoleum was open and ready to re...

"I don't like it, Mary. North has completely shut himself up. He will not even see Mrs Milt, so she tells me, and she is getting very uneasy about his state."

The Candlish mausoleum had been built by an architect who had an excellent idea of the beauties of the Jacobean style, and he had got over the many-windowed difficulty by making...

"Indeed!" said Cousin Thompson, in a tone of voice which made the housekeeper wish she had bitten off her tongue before she had committed herself to such a speech. "You heard hi...

Dally wasted no time, but hurried to Mary's room to listen for a few moments, and then steal into Leo's, where she peered in for a moment, and then hurried out to return with a...

Squire Luke Candlish looked flushed and angry, as he stood facing his brother in the billiard-room, over the dining-room, at the Hall. Dinner had been ended an hour, and in comp...

"It's so tiresome," exclaimed Salis testily; "busy as I am this morning--letters to write. I must answer this last letter of May's. More complaints--more complaints! Oh, what a...

"It's little better than murder: it's cruel, that's what it is. What does he mean by being ill and shutting hisself up, and won't see anybody? What right has a doctor to go and...

"They drinks it, doctor, the idiots, and all the time they say it's horrid to eat a bit o' churchyard mutton. Squire Luke didn't care, though. He wouldn't have said no to a bit...

"Ah, it's wonderful what a many doctors do take to it, and gallop theirselves off with it. Begins with a drop to keep 'em up sometimes, I s'pose, and then takes a little more an...

"It's all very well, Master North, for you to come here bullying me about my health, and ordering me to go fishing, and half ruin myself with cigars," said the curate; "but I fe...

"Poor girl!" muttered North, as he felt the hands which had clasped his neck steal down his arm softly and lingeringly, as if they delighted in its strength and muscularity, res...

Horace North stood in the old mausoleum for a while, appalled by the thoughts that flooded his soul. The silence was awful. At other times, wrapped up in his pursuit, the presen...

Dr Benson drove over daily from King's Hampton to attend Sir Thomas Candlish, and, to do Dr Benson justice, he made a very good professional job of the injury to the young baron...

"My Dally" had been otherwise employed, for a messenger had come over from the Hall to see the curate; and at the time her grandfather was departing, Dally was cross-examining t...

A virtuous mob's war-cry. The favourite ejaculation of the unwashed scoundrels who are always ready to redress grievances and hunt down their fellow-creatures for the crimes the...

As Horace North took the hand of Leo Salis in his, it was to find it soft and cool and moist--very different from the burning palm he had so often held a few months since. It wa...

There was a reason for Dally's non-appearance at the sexton's cottage, and that reason was that she did not stir out of the Rectory that evening, but was exceedingly attentive i...

Leo closed her eyes, and lay back with her lips moving slightly, while Mary watched and wondered whether North would come and see her sister again, and whether any fresh eccentr...

He learned that "a gentleman," as the people at the hotel called him, had been staying at the hotel, that a lady, evidently Leo, had come in by the early train, and that they ha...

The old church at Duke's Hampton, a fine old structure, built in the latter part of the thirteenth century, stood calm and still upon its eminence that dark night. The older fol...

Old Moredock kept his word, for after leaving North alone to carry out his experiment, he went round the old church, proceeding cautiously from tombstone to tombstone, his red,...

"What a morning for a run with the hounds!" said Horace North, as he stood at the door of the fine old Manor House, where he had come to cool himself, after a scene with Mrs Mil...

"Humph!" said the curate's visitor--Horace North; and there was a curious twinkle in his eyes. "I say, I should have been over sooner, but I found a letter from Luke Candlish, a...

A week had passed since Horace North's straggle with the strange fits of repugnance and dread that had assailed him on his researches: six nights, during each of which he had ba...

The old clock wheezed, and rattled, and spun round, and its weights ran down as the doctor and old Moredock entered the belfry door. Then, as the portal was closed, the dark pla...

"But here is a foolish woman; goes and listens to a plausible lawyer, and makes at his suggestion a number of investments, and then repents and comes to the parson."

The restless, wild-beast pace went on upstairs with intervals hour after hour, as, for the first time for many years, Horace North felt the terrible side of his lonely life, and...

"My good fellow," said Salis sternly, "you are trying to murder yourself. Sit still, or I'll hold you down. If you don't know what's good for yourself, it's fit some one should."

He looked up at his clock, and the clock's sallow round face looked down at him, pointing out how time was getting on, and kept on its monotonous _chick chack_, as the old pendu...

"Not rich, dear, but well off. But money is a great trouble; for Mr Thompson, my agent in London, worries me a great deal, investing and putting it for me somewhere else. He say...

Mary Salis was wrong, for her headstrong, passionate sister was ready to do whatever she pleased, and what pleased her then was to obey the summons contained in the note Dally W...

Ten o'clock had just struck, and the old tower was still vibrating, when Dally Watlock's bedroom door was softly opened, and the little lady, clad in her tightly-fitting jacket...

"Yes, I'll come," said North quickly. "By what strange irony of fate am I called upon again to attend on her?" he thought to himself, as he recalled her last illness, and the wa...

Hartley Salis did not tell the doctor the whole of his trouble, neither did he say a word to Mary upon the subject; but she divined the cause of his auger as she lay helpless th...

It was Mrs Berens who spoke; the accident, and its consequent call upon her for aid, having in an instant swept away all thought of self, and shown her at once in her best colou...

"No, sir, he isn't at home," said Mrs Milt, trying to smile at the curate, but only succeeding in producing two icy wrinkles--one on either side of her lips. "Some one ill, Mrs...

"I feared it," said North, as he returned from the bedroom, where he had left Leo with the servants, who stood staring helplessly at her, and listening to her ravings about the...

"Hartley, for shame!" cried Mary, with her eyes flashing. "You left here an hour ago full of faith and trust in the friend of many years' standing. You find him ill and peculiar...

Other people, too, noticed the doctor's strangely intent manner, as he went hurriedly about among his patients every morning, and then returned to his study to pore over sundry...

The old sexton took a key from his vest, and opened a curious old oaken corner cupboard, upon whose shelves were ranged a variety of objects which gleamed out from their prison,...

"Poor old fellow!" he muttered; "nearly a hundred years old, and clinging to life more tightly than ever. Believes he saw something, of course. Not fit to go out alone. But he'l...

"Ay, and so I did, doctor. I s'pose I swownded away, I was took so bad; and must have laid there for hours before I got up and crawled home; and Parson Salis must be in a fine t...

Horace North reeled against the wall, and rested there as he uttered that piteous groan; for, like a flash of lightning, the ray of memory had shot into his darkened brain, and...

"Yes, at last, Mrs Berens," said the doctor, taking the extended, soft, white hand of the pleasant, plump lady of eight-and-thirty or forty, whose whole aspect was suggestive of...

Jonadab Moredock sat smoking his pipe on the night of the funeral, after Luke Candlish had been laid to his rest. The old man sat in the dark for economical reasons, and wheneve...

"No, Moredock, I am not going to find more fault, and I am not going to complain to the rector. If you had been a young man, with chances of getting work elsewhere, I should hav...

"I might have known it," he panted excitedly. "The cruel, treacherous hound! I might have known that he had some hidden meaning in what he was doing. Friend from town--no faith...

"You puzzle me, doctor," said Moredock; "you do, indeed. I've been a-going to church all my life, and I've listened to hundreds o' sarmons, and I know all about the Good Samarit...

"Nothing at all. I went to bed at the usual time, sir," said the butler--"half-past ten--yes, sir, I've the chaise waiting; won't you come in that, and I can tell you as we driv...

"It's like a shadow following me always," muttered North, "and it is hopeless for me to try longer. I've fought and battled with it as bravely as a man could fight, and for what...

Perhaps it was the reflection from the sleek, superfine garments of his cousin, for that gentleman was walking slowly up and down on the lawn in front of the old Manor House, an...

As a rule, repeated knockings at a bedroom door when there is no response create alarm; thoughts of accident, illness, murder, teeming to the brain of the one who summons, and t...

The old housekeeper had indeed a long series of eccentricities to record to Salis, speaking freely to him, as to her master's firmest friend, though what she knew and had dimini...

It was a close race, and Mary Salis felt that, ere many minutes had passed, the strange force which had nerved her so that she had traversed the distance between the two houses,...

"Why, what's he got to say for himself? He's nearly always in London, so as to be within reach of his club. It isn't time for him to come down and give us another of his sermons...

"But I am, doctor--I am," said the old man, with a peculiar change in his voice. "You see, I've just been ill, and it would be very hard to be ill again. Is--is it ketching?"

Horace North had sternly determined on self-repression, and, from the moment when the crisis of Leo's fever had left her utterly prostrate, he had set himself the almost superhu...

"I don't like it, and I mean to find it out," said Joe, scratching his head on one side. "And if I find as there be anything going on twix' new squire and she, why I'll--"

She had come down looking happy and contented, with a satisfied smile upon her curved lips, heightened by a rather mocking light which danced in her eyes, as they encountered th...

"Dally!" he cried wonderingly, as the girl writhed and fought and moaned in his arms. The doctor glanced at the hysterical girl. "Light here," he said sternly; and as Mary wonde...

He stood motionless, staring at the window as a white arm was forced through the broken glass, and the catch thrust back, but not so quickly but that a deep red stain had time t...

Dally had not reached the Rectory, and Horace North had not sat long thinking over the girl's words in a way which puzzled him, as it brought a curious feeling of rest and satis...

He strode towards him, and the man smiled and beckoned to him to come out; but the smile became a scowl as the cord was seized and the blind drawn down.

Patient never had more assiduous attention than Mary Salis received from Dr North. He had formed his opinions about her case, but insisted upon having further advice, and Mr Del...

"Oh, master--dear master," sobbed the frightened woman piteously, as the hand was removed from her lips, and she sank at North's knees and embraced them. "What does it all mean?...

That gentleman had only spoken to him just so far as the sad business upon which they had been engaged demanded, and had gone back to King's Hampton on his way to town, probably...

Horace North was more of the student than the athlete, and he felt the blood rushing to his head--a strange sensation of vertigo which he could have aptly described in writing,...

"Serve him right," muttered Tom. Then rising and pushing the door, which had swung to, he entered the dark billiard-room, where he felt his way to the spirit stand, and took a h...

Leo made light of her accident, though her shoulder was a good deal hurt, and she bore the bandaging of what was a serious wrench with the greatest fortitude. As North learned b...