The Obstacle Race

Columbus was not accustomed to being awakened in the early June morning and taken for a scamper when the sun was still scarcely two hours up. He arose blinking at his mistress's...

That Saturday night concert at High Shale entailed a greater effort on Dick's part than any that had preceded it. He forced himself to make it a success, but when it was over he...

It was an unpleasant shock to Juliet on the following morning when she went to Mrs. Fielding's room after breakfast to find her lying in bed, pale and tear-stained, refusing mor...

It was on a misty evening of autumn that Vera Fielding entered her husband's house once more like a bride returning from her wedding-trip. There was something of the petted air...

A chill breeze sprang up in the dark of the early morning and blew the drifting fog away. The stars came out one by one till the whole sky shone and quivered as if it had been p...

"Well, it ain't none of my business," said Mrs. Rickett, with a sniff. "Nor it ain't yours either. But did you ever know anyone as wore anything the likes of that before?"

On the slope of the hill behind the lighthouse and above the miners' village there stood an old thatched barn, and about this a knot of men and youths loitered, smoking and talk...

Juliet lunched at the Court in Dick's absence. They thought her somewhat graver and quieter than usual, but there was a gentle aloofness about her that checked all intimate enqu...

A rough platform had been erected at one end of the place and this, with the deal table and lamp and one or two chairs, was all that went to the furnishing of his assembly-room....

The annual flower-show at Fairharbour was one of the chief events of the district, and entailed such a gathering of the County as Vera Fielding would not for worlds have missed....

They went back up the winding glen, and as they went Lord Saltash talked, superbly at his ease, of the doings of the past few weeks, "since you and that naughty Lady Jo dropped...

The sunshine was no less bright or the day less full of summer warmth when they floated out upon the lake a little later. But Juliet's mood had changed. She leaned back on Dick'...

When the great high-powered car from Shale Court stopped at the gate of the blacksmith's cottage on the following morning Mrs. Rickett, who was feeding her young chicks in the y...

Almost in silence they passed up through the dripping garden to the house side by side, Columbus trotting demurely behind. Juliet was still limping, but she would not accept sup...

Juliet, seated under an apple-tree in the tiny orchard that ran beside the road, looked up from her book and saw his thin face peering at her through the hedge. She smiled at hi...

The August dusk had deepened into night when the open car from the Court pulled up at the schoolhouse gate. The school had closed for the summer holidays a day or two before. No...

"I'm not quite sure that I call this fair play," said Saltash with a comical twist of the eyebrows. "I didn't expect all these developments in so short a time."

She covered her emotion with the most herculean efforts at gaiety. She laughed very shakily at the solicitude expressed by Columbus, and told him tremulously how absurd and ridi...

The scent of the gorse in the evening dew was as incense offered to the stars. To Juliet, wandering forth in the twilight after supper with Columbus, the exquisite fragrance was...

The church at Little Shale was very ancient and picturesque. It stood almost opposite to the lodge-gates of Shale Court, the abode of the great Mr. Fielding. Two cracked bells h...

A long, green wave ran up, gleaming like curved glass in the sunlight, and broke in a million sparkles against a shelf of shingle. Above the shingle rose the soft cliffs, clothe...

From the day that Juliet relinquished her perpetual vigil, the improvement in Vera Fielding was almost uninterrupted. She recovered her strength very slowly, but her progress wa...

"Lor' bless you!" said Mrs. Rickett. "There's some folks as thinks young Robin is the plague of the neighbourhood, but there ain't no harm in the lad if he's let alone. It's whe...

Robin was in disgrace. He crouched in a sulky heap in a far corner of the schoolroom, and glowered across the empty desks and benches at his elder brother who sat in the place o...

Robin, sullenly rocking himself to and fro, made no reply for several seconds. Then very suddenly: "He asked me if I'd got a headache and I told him No," he flung out defiantly....

"Everyone to his taste," remarked Green. "But I'd rather be anything under the sun than Mrs. Fielding's paid companion." He glanced at Juliet with a smile as he spoke, but there...

He came to her side. "Don't look so alarmed! It's probably only the heat. Do you know the way to the library? Through that conservatory over there is the shortest cut. I suppose...

"How like my husband!" said Mrs. Fielding impatiently, fidgeting up and down the long drawing-room with a fretful frown on her pretty face. "Why didn't you put a stop to it, Mis...

It was very late that night, and the sea-mist had turned to a drifting rain when the squire sitting reading in his library at the Court was startled by a sudden tapping upon the...

For five days after that burning afternoon of the flower-show Juliet scarcely left Vera Fielding's side. During those five days Vera lay at the point of death, and though her hu...

An ominous darkness brooded over all things as Green walked up the long avenue of Shale Court half-an-hour later. The storm had been long in, gathering, and he judged that he wo...

It was nearly two hours later that Vera sitting alone before her fire turned with a slight start at the sound of her husband's step in the room beyond. She was wearing a pale si...

He moved abruptly as if somehow the conventional words had an edge. He drew out a chair for her. "I am afraid there isn't a great deal of time," he said.

Ten minutes later they went down the dripping avenue in the squire's little car. The drifting fog made an inky blackness of the night, and progress was very slow under the trees.

Juliet and Columbus sat in a sheltered nook on the shore and gazed thoughtfully out to sea. It was a warm morning after a night of tempest, and the beach was strewn with seaweed...

The luncheon-gong rang through the house with a tremendous booming, and Vera Fielding, sitting limply in a chair by her open window, closed her eyes with drawn brows as if the s...