The Way of an Eagle

There came again the running rattle of rifle-firing from the valley below the fort, and Muriel Roscoe, lying on her couch, pressed both hands to her eyes and shivered. It seemed...

The drawing-room was empty when he entered it, the windows standing flung wide to the night. Strains of dance music were wafted in from somewhere lower down the hill, and he gue...

Olga's recovery, when the crisis of the disease was past, was more rapid than even her father had anticipated; and this fact, combined with a spell of glorious summer weather, m...

The week that followed that first visit of hers was a gradual renewal of life to Muriel. She had come through the darkest part of her trouble, and, thick though the shadows migh...

Luncheon in the low, old-fashioned dining-room at Redlands with its windows facing the open sea, with Olga beaming at the head of the table, would have been a peaceful and pleas...

"Now," said Daisy briskly, "you two will just have to entertain each other for a little while, for I am going up to sit with my son while _ayah_ is off duty."

It was growing very hot in the plains. A faint breeze born at sunset had died away long ago, leaving a wonderful, breathless stillness behind. The man who sat at work on his ver...

Through a great part of the night that followed they tramped steadily southward. The stars were Nick's guide, though as time passed he began to make his way with the confidence...

Out of a deep abyss of darkness in which she seemed to have wandered ceaselessly and comfortlessly for many days, Muriel Roscoe came haltingly back to the surface of things. She...

It was dark when Muriel awoke--so dark that she lay for a while dreamily fancying herself in bed. But this illusion passed very quickly as her brain, refreshed and active, resum...

It was growing late on that same evening when to Daisy, packing in her room with feverish haste, a message was brought that Captain Ratcliffe was waiting, and desired to see her.

"There!" said Daisy, standing back from the table to review her handiwork with her head on one side. "I may be outrageously childish, but if Blake fails to appreciate this maste...

The doctor imparted the news to Nick and Muriel standing outside the door of the sick-room. Nick's reception of it was by no means characteristic. For the first time in her life...

Grange did not press for an explanation. It was not his way. He left her moodily, a frown of deep dissatisfaction upon his handsome face. Daisy did not spend much thought upon h...

Out of a curious numbness that had almost been a swoon there came to her the consciousness of a hand that rapped and rapped and rapped upon the pane. She had fled away to the fa...

"Shouldn't be surprised," said Dr. Jim. "I know there was a ship in distress off Calister yesterday. They damaged the lifeboat trying to reach her. But the wind seems to have go...

"The pleasure of your society, of course." Nick's benignity was unassailable, but there was a sharp edge to it somewhere of which Grange was uneasily aware. "Come along and dine...

She did not utter a single word or move to greet him. Even in that ruddy light she was white to the lips. Her hands were fast gripped together. She did not seem to breathe.

Not another word passed between Daisy and Muriel upon the subject of that night's confidences. There seemed nothing further to be said. Moreover, there was between them a closer...

"Funny, wasn't it?" said Nick, jingling a small handful of coins in front of his fiancée. "Quite a harvest in its way! I had no idea you were so charitable."

Shuddering, she obeyed him. She was lying once more upon her couch of ferns, and he was stooping over her, looking closely into her face. His eyes were extraordinarily bright, l...

It was very hot down on the buzzing race-course, almost intolerably so in the opinion of the girl who sat in Lady Bassett's elegantly-appointed carriage, and looked out with the...

In the centre of the little frontier fort there was a room which one and all of its defenders regarded as sacred. It was an insignificant chamber, narrow as a prison cell and al...

It did not take Dr. Jim long to discover that some trouble or at the least some perplexity was weighing upon his young guest's mind. He also shrewdly remarked that it dated from...

There is no exhaustion more complete or more compelling than the exhaustion of grief, and it is the most restless temperaments that usually suffer from it the most keenly. It is...

It was with unspeakable relief that Muriel learned of Nick's departure. That he had elected to take Olga with him surprised her considerably and caused her some regret. Grange h...

Jim Ratcliffe was in the drawing-room with Daisy when they returned. He scrutinised them both somewhat sharply as they came in, but he made no comment upon their preference for...

The night was very far advanced when Muriel was aroused from her dreams by a sound which she drowsily fancied must have been going on for some time. It did not disturb her very...

The long clatter of an irregular volley of musketry rattled warningly from the naked mountain ridges; over a great grey shoulder of rock the sun sank in a splendid opal glow; fr...

The aromatic scent of the Simla pines literally encircled and pervaded the Bassetts' bungalow, penetrating to every corner. Lady Bassett was wont to pronounce it "distractingly...

It was an unspeakable relief to Muriel that, in congratulating her upon her engagement, Daisy made no reference to Nick. She did not know that this forbearance had been dictated...

Looking back upon the hours that followed that talk with Bobby behind the tamarisks, Muriel could never recall in detail how they passed. She moved in a whirl, all her pulses ra...

Muriel lay awake for hours that night, going over and over that interview with Nick till her tired brain reeled. She was not exactly frightened by this new element that had come...

In spite of Olga's ecstatic welcome, Muriel took her place on the hockey-field that afternoon with a heavy heart. Her long attendance upon Daisy had depressed her. But gradually...

With the morning there came a lull in the tempest though the great waves that spent themselves upon the shore seemed scarcely less mountainous than when they rode before the ful...

Why had he gone? That was the question that vexed Muriel's soul through the long hours that followed her return to the Residency. Lying sleepless on her bed, she racked her wear...

He came in as lightly and unceremoniously as though they had parted but the day before, a smile of greeting upon his humorous, yellow face, words of careless good-fellowship upo...

They were walking back from church together by a muddy field-path, and since neither had much to say at any time, they had accomplished more than half the distance in silence.

"You will be doing nothing of the sort to-night," he returned, with a certain grimness. "The motor has gone back to Redlands for your things. I saw to that an hour ago."

Daisy maintained her resolution on the following day, and though she did not speak again of going downstairs, she insisted that Muriel should return to the hockey-field and resu...

There was a faint quiver in the air as of something coming from afar, a hushed expectancy of something great. A chill breath came off the snows, hovering secretly above the ice-...

Muriel saw very little of her _fiancé_ during the weeks that followed their visit to Redlands. There was not indeed room for him at the cottage at Brethaven which she and Daisy...

The jingling notes of a piano playing an air from a comic opera floated cheerily forth into the magic silence of the Simla pines, and abruptly, almost spasmodically, a cracked v...

A gorgeous sunset lay in dusky, fading crimson upon the Plains, trailing to darkness in the east. The day had been hot and cloudless, but a faint, chill wind had sprung up with...

She awaited him still sitting on the bench and striving vainly to quiet her thumping heart. She heard him come lightly up behind her, but she did not turn her head though she ha...

The news of Nick's return spread like wildfire through the doctor's house, and the whole establishment assembled to greet him. Jim himself came striding out into the rain to sha...

Lady Bassett was still invisible when Muriel returned to the bungalow though breakfast was waiting for them on the verandah. She passed quickly through to her room and commenced...

Muriel did not leave the Residency again until the evening of the State Ball at the palace. Scarcely did she leave her room, pleading intense fatigue as her excuse for this secl...

She could not have said for how long she sat motionless, the slight, inert body clasped against her breast. Vaguely she knew that the night passed, and with it the wondrous sile...

"So you didn't bring Nick after all. That was nice of you," said Daisy Musgrave, with a little, whimsical smile. "I wanted to have you all to myself. The nicest of men can be ho...

The gale that raged along the British coasts that autumn was the wildest that had been known for years. It swelled quite suddenly out of the last breezes of a superb summer, and...

During the whole of that day Muriel awaited in restless expectancy the coming of her _fiancé_. She had not heard from him for nearly a week, and she had not written in the inter...

Lady Bassett considered the decision deplorably headlong, and said so; but her remonstrances were of no avail. Muriel tossed aside her listlessness as resolutely as the ball-dre...

"You can do nothing whatever," he wrote. "Daisy is suffering from a sharp attack of brain fever, caused by the shock of her cousin's death, and I think it advisable that no one...

Nick's fit of virtue evaporated with his third letter, and he got up, feeling that he had spent an unprofitable afternoon. He also discovered that he was thirsty, and while quen...

The merry voice of the doctor's little daughter Olga, aged fourteen, shrilled across the hockey-ground, keen with enthusiasm. She was speeding across the field like a hare to co...

The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."