The Mark of Cain

Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali, in the “Arabian Nights.” With his...

In the Strangers’ Room of the Olympic Club the air was thick with tobacco-smoke, and, despite the bitter cold outside, the temperature was uncomfortably high. Dinner was over, a...

Girls’ schools are chilly places. The unfortunate victims, when you chance to meet them, mostly look but half-alive, and dismally cold. Their noses (however charming these featu...

A cold March wind whistled and yelled round the twisted chimneys of the _Hit or Miss_. The day had been a trial to every sense. First there would come a long-drawn distant moan,...

The _Hit or Miss_ tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least) who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by the river’s brim. Not being ravaged and parc...

Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton’s letter. He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which he offered to Margaret and Bart...

The day before the encounter with Mr. Cranley at the house of the lady of _The Bunhouse_, Barton, when he came home from a round of professional visits, had found Maitland waiti...

Maitland’s reflections as, in performance of the promise he had telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted. The newspapers with which he had littered t...

To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland’s scout called him at half-past seven with the invariable question, “Do you breakfast out, sir?” If a man were in the c...

Next morning Barton entered his sitting-room in very high spirits, and took up his letters. He had written to Maitland the night before, saying little but, “Come home at once. M...

Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and aspects of her conduct were not devoid...

That Margaret and Barton were losing their hearts to each other could not, of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She noticed that Margaret, though perfectly...

The following day was spent by Maitland in travel, and in pushing such inquiries as suggested themselves to a mind not fertile in expedients. He was not wholly unacquainted with...

A doctor, especially a doctor actively practising among the poor and laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather calmly. Barton had often been called i...

The foul and foggy night of early February was descending, some weeks after the scene in the Cockpit, on the river and the town. Night was falling from the heavens; or rather, n...

“So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume, a fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. ‘Such an one,’ he says--meaning me, and inventors like me--...