Category: Crime, Thrillers and Mystery
We doubt if there is anywhere on the sea board of England another stretch of coast so wild and rugged, and so forbidding of aspect to navigators, as is that of Headlandshire--probably so called because of its numerous bold headlands overlooking the Irish Sea.
We doubt if there is anywhere on the sea board of England another stretch of coast so wild and rugged, and so forbidding of aspect to navigators, as is that of Headlandshire--pr...
2. CHAPTER II.Sir William Chester came home to England to die. He had felt it when leaving India; he had felt it on the voyage, and he had become assured of it ere long after he had reached t...
3. CHAPTER III.Six years, lacking only the weeks from the 1st of September to the middle of November, have passed since we stood by the death-bed of Sir William Chester. The changes in that ti...
4. CHAPTER IV.On the morning following his meeting with the smuggler chief in the wood our hero was up with the sun, if not a little before it. But, early as it was, his mother was up still e...
5. CHAPTER V.While the unfortunate sloop-of-war lay jammed in between two jagged sunken rocks of the terrible reef, with rocks ahead of her, and rocks astern and rocks on every hand; and whi...
6. CHAPTER VI.When Percy reached the castle he found Cordelia all ready for her ramble, with her maid in waiting to attend her. Mary Seymour was this maid’s name, a cheery-faced, intelligent,...
7. CHAPTER VII.While Cordelia turned to speak with her maid, our hero, having shaken himself to make sure that he was awake and in possession of his sober senses, looked forward to see how far...
8. CHAPTER VIII.The old earl had suffered terribly when the tempest and the night had come, and his darling was known to be absent in the forest, or on the wild crag; but when the swift messeng...
9. CHAPTER IX.The earl felt two warm, loving arms around his neck, and a dear, treasured head pillowed on his bosom. By and by he looked up, and met the earnest, beseeching gaze of his beauti...
10. CHAPTER X.Our hero looked straight into the face of the man before him, and he saw there not only the unmistakable signs of drink, but he saw, too, a fierce, ungovernable anger. The dark,...
11. CHAPTER XI.Having discovered so much, our hero could not be content to leave the place without knowing something more. He did not expect that he could explore to any great extent without t...
12. CHAPTER XII.“Maitland,” said the earl, with a look upon the youth full of confidence and esteem, “the time has come when I must speak frankly with you; and I shall trust that you will be eq...
13. CHAPTER XIII.Our explorers made but one stop on the way back, and that was at the old wine cask. Percy rinsed the silver cup, and having refilled it he handed it to the earl to taste. The ol...
14. CHAPTER XIV.What Percy had discovered on the supper-table, standing near to his own plate, was only a wine bottle. But it was a very peculiar bottle--that is, in his eyes. It might not have...
15. CHAPTER XV.Two days passed after our hero’s removal to the inn, and not a sign from old Donald. Percy had visited the castle and reported progress to the earl. He told how the pirate chief...
16. CHAPTER XVI.As our heroine heard the address of the chief to his comrades, and then saw the latter move toward her, she looked to see a possible way of escape, but there was none. There was...
17. CHAPTER XVII.During the afternoon the former ventured down to the shore of the cove, at the point where he had once been in the habit of keeping a boat of his own, and there remained until h...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.The aged earl, when he had come to a realizing sense of the horror of the situation, sank back with a groan of the deepest, bitterest agony, and covered his face with his hands...