The Summit House Mystery; Or, The Earthly Purgatory

There is, perhaps, no more enthralling sound than the far but sure approach of someone who comes unlooked-for to a lonely place. The two men who were keeping vigil became certai...

All the mountains had begun to wear golden caps. Lower down the yellow pod of the wild pea and purple clusters of wild grapes were tangled in the roadside bushes. The sun shone,...

"Innocent--ah, yes, indeed--of any motive, any intent, of any knowledge at the moment of what she was doing. As innocent as any angel of God. Do you think I do not know the hear...

Durgan had ridden down the hills in rather leisurely fashion; now he urged his horse to speed. He had come uncertain how to meet the issue of the day; now he was eager to forest...

Alden looked at Bertha. "Mr. Durgan must read these letters," he said, "because they belong to his wife. You must choose whether you will be a witness to the reading. Yours is a...

Alden began with a stiff, quaint bow to his little audience. It was easy to see that he had fallen into the mannerism of a court. "In making my statement it is not necessary for...

Durgan had still one strong emotion regarding his wife; he was able to feel overwhelming shame on her account, and he dreaded any publicity concerning her behavior. She had alwa...

After a minute Alden sat down wearily on a fallen tree. The wood was close upon them on all sides. The crescent moon, like a golden boat sailing westward, was seen through chink...

Durgan felt that day to be a distinctly happy one. A youth makes many pictures of happiness for himself, and he must have but a poor outfit of hope and imagery whose pictures ar...

Close around the little village of Deer Cove, three mountain steeps looked down in everlasting peace; two upland valleys descended to the village, and held on their fertile slop...

Now he knew her as the chief actor in a story wherein the heights and depths of human passion had been so displayed that it might seem impossible for one mind to habitually hold...

Durgan took the terrier and led him up and down through the bit of sequestered woodland; but the animal, beyond enjoying the unusual festivity of a night walk, exhibited no sens...

Next morning Bertha rode down to the village. Later, Durgan heard that she had visited 'Dolphus, taken pains to get him a more comfortable lodging, and left him a basket of sund...

Adam had beaten his wife, and with good cause. Durgan had himself seen a strange nigger eating Adam's dinner, waited upon by Adam's wife. He found time to explain to his interes...

Durgan left the breeze of the sunrise and the mountains behind him, and after that one first gallop, rode slowly down into the stillness of the lower country and the heat of the...

It was that season in the summer when, in regions remote from fields of harvest, time itself stands still. Nothing is doing in the wild wood. Each young thing is fledged and flo...

The letters Durgan resealed had each borne a different handwriting; they had not all come from New York. The sheets could hardly have been covered with invisible ink, having bee...

At last Alden said, "Mr. Durgan, I came here this morning at the request of my clients and dear friends to make a communication to you. When I have made it you will understand w...

In the southern part of the Appalachian Mountains the tree-clad ridges fold and coil about one another. In this wooded wilderness the trend of each slope, the meandering of each...

Bertha and Durgan were standing in the broad central doorway of the barn. Hay, full of meadow flowers, was piled high to right and left. The air was full of dried pollen, and go...

Durgan felt very curious to know whether Theodore Alden, the well-known lawyer, would appear. He knew little about him except that his name was always in the papers in connectio...

The sun set glorious over the peaks of the Cherokee ridges, and their crimson outline lay dark, like a haven for the silver boat of the descending moon, when Durgan, satchel in...

When Durgan reached the stone platform of the mine, Bertha came out to meet him. She had apparently been sitting alone on some rock in the lateral cutting. She was dressed for r...

The bank shelved: no one could come on the precipice unwarned. Soon they found a travelling boot, and after that, at some distance, another. They felt sure now that the fugitive...

When Durgan had said good-night to the sisters, he made the warm moonlight night an excuse for wandering. He sat down a little way off, able to watch the lights in the house, an...

For a few days after the fire at the summit house some of the mountain folk from far and near took occasion to ride up to the scene of the excitement, "to visit with" the ladies...

Those elemental emotions, the protection of feebleness, the vindication of womanhood tender and motherly, were aroused in Durgan to the heat of passion. In heart he joined hands...

Durgan furnished the wooden hut that stood on the ledge of the cliff between the road and the mine. Adam's wife baked his bread and made his bed. Durgan fell into the fanciful h...

The mountains now burst into midsummer. Bloom, color, and fragrance reigned; also heat and drought. The cups of the tulip tree, the tassels of the chestnut, lit the leafy canopy...

"Oh! Marse Neil, suh; d'you think my pore gal's in de bad place? The min'ster, he come to see me to-day, an' he said as how she was, 'cause she wasn't converted. D'you think so,...

The sisters made all their expeditions on horseback, and, on the upward ride, the horses were commonly breathed on the zigzag of the road which abutted on the mine. Miss Smith,...

When the next day was breaking, Durgan wakened to the sound of footsteps and loud lamenting. Adam, weeping like a heart-broken schoolboy, in terrified haste stumbled into the do...

There was one other house nearer to the mine than Deer Cove. A small farm belonging to "mountain whites" lay on the other side, but cut off from the road by precipice and torren...

A curious group walked slowly up the zig-zag road to the summit house: Durgan and the terrier walked one on each side; the doctor rode behind. There was naught to be said; they...

The sisters, and the good cheer they offered, were the same at breakfast as on the former evening; but the incident of the night had disturbed Durgan's feeling of respect.

Durgan had very naturally tried to fit the circumstances of any of these stories of crime to a domestic tragedy which might have resulted in the hiding of these sisters and in B...