The Witch's Head

Ernest reached the Government office and registered his name, and in due course received “her Majesty’s gracious pardon and indemnity from and against all actions, proceedings,...

About nine o’clock on the morning following Mazooku’s oration, a young lady came running up the stairs of the principal Plymouth hotel, and burst into a private sitting-room, li...

Mr. Alston, Ernest, and Jeremy had very good sport among the elephants, killing in all nineteen bulls. It was during this expedition that an incident occurred which in its effec...

When Mr. Alston and Ernest found themselves safe upon Transvaal soil, they determined to give up the idea of following any more big game for the present, and to content themselv...

Alston’s Horse soon reached the ridge, past which the Undi were commencing to run, at a distance of about three hundred and fifty yards, and the order was given to dismount and...

Mr. Alston and Ernest carried out their plans as regarded sport. They went up to Lydenburg and had a month’s wilderbeeste and blesbok shooting within three days’ “trek” with an...

A month had passed since Mr. de Talor had crept, utterly crushed, from the presence of the man whom Providence had appointed to mete out to him his due. During this time Mr. Car...

Dorothy and Ernest got back to Dum’s Ness just in time to dress for dinner, for since Ernest and Jeremy had come back, Dorothy, whose will in that house was law, had instituted...

Ernest and Jeremy did not let the grass grow under their feet. They guessed that there would soon be a great deal of recruiting for various corps, and so set to work at once to...

Dorothy, in her note to Ernest that he received by the mail previous to the one that brought the letters which at a single blow laid the hope and promise of his life in the dust...

Ernest did not sleep well that night: the scene of the evening haunted his dreams, and he awoke with a sense of oppression that impartially follows on the heels of misfortune, f...

Two months or so after Ernest’s flight there came a letter from him to Mr. Cardus in answer to the one sent by his uncle. He thanked his uncle warmly for his kindness, and more...

In due course Jeremy duly fitted up “the witch,” as the mysterious head came to be called at Dum’s Ness in her air-tight cabinet, which he lengthened till it looked like a clock...

When Mr. Cardus came half an hour or so later to take his place at the dinner-table—for in those days they dined in the middle of the day at Dum’s Ness—he was not in a good mood...

Ernest blushed too, from sympathy probably, and went to pick up a bough that lay beneath a stunted oak-tree which grew in the ruins of the abbey, on the spot where once the alta...

A YOUNG man of that ardent, impetuous, intelligent mind which makes him charming and a thing to love, as contrasted with the young man of the sober, cautious, moneymaking mind (...

Mr. de Talor owed his great wealth not to his own talents, but to a lucky secret in the manufacture of the grease used on railways discovered by his father. Talor _pre_ had been...

Let us try and discover. Dorothy and Ernest were together all day long. They only separated when Mazooku came to lead the latter off to bed. At breakfast-time he led him back ag...

“A credit! I’ll tell you what, it is an awful thing to kill a man like that. I often see his face as he fell, at night in my sleep.”

Rising with a sigh, he made his last preparations, inwardly determining that, if he was to die, he would die in a way befitting an English gentleman. There should be no sign of...

The Zulu attack on Pretoria ultimately turned out only to have existed in the minds of two mad Kafirs, who dressed themselves up after the fashion of chiefs, and personating two...

When Mr. Alston and Ernest reached the hotel, there was still a quarter of an hour to elapse before the _table d’hôte_, so, after washing his hands and putting on a black coat,...

When Ernest woke on the morning after the ball it was ten o’clock, and he had a severe headache. This—the headache—was his first impression, but presently his eye fell upon a wi...

They both followed him into his room, wondering what was the matter. He sat down and so did they, and then, as was his habit, letting his eyes stray over every part of their per...

There are some scenes, trivial enough perhaps in themselves, that yet retain a peculiar power of standing out in sharp relief, as we cast our mind’s eye down the long vista of o...

“Not myself, indeed! Would you be yourself, I wonder, if you knew that the woman who had pinned all your soul to her bosom, as though it were a ribbon, was going to marry anothe...

The Reverend James Plowden was born of rich but honest parents in the sugar-broking way. He was one of a large family, who were objects of anxious thought to Mr. and Mrs. Plowde...

When last we saw Eva she had just become privately engaged to the Reverend James Plowden. But the marriage was not to take place till the following spring, and the following spr...

When, on leaving Cambridge, Jeremy got back to Dum’s Ness, Mr. Cardus received him with his usual semi-contemptuous coldness, a mental attitude that often nearly drove the young...

Within an hour of the departure of Lieutenant Jasper, Eva heard a fly draw up at the door. Then came an interval and the sound of two people walking up the steps, one of whom st...

Kesterwick is a primitive place, and has no railway station nearer than Raffham, four miles off. Ernest was expected by the midday train, and Dorothy and her brother went to mee...

Two days after the pilot-boat, flitting away from the vessel’s side like some silent-flighted bird, had vanished into the night, Florence Ceswick happened to be walking past the...

Miss Ceswick’s seizure turned out to be even worse than was anticipated. Once she appeared to regain consciousness, and began to mutter something; then she sank back into a torp...

And so it came to pass that Ernest’s letter remained unanswered. But Mr. Cardus, Dorothy, and Jeremy all wrote. Mr. Cardus’s letter was very kind and considerate. It expressed h...

When Mr. Alston, Jeremy, and Ernest emerged from the back street in which was the house they had visited into one of the principal thoroughfares of Pretoria, they came upon a cu...

“He’s going to fall in love with her,” she said to herself, “and no wonder; any man would: she is ‘pretty all over,’ as he said, and what more does a man look at? I wish that _s...

It was an April evening; off the south coast of England. The sun had just made up his mind to struggle out from behind a particularly black shower-cloud, and give that part of t...

When Mr. Cardus left the sitting-room where he had been talking to Ernest, he passed down a passage in the rambling old house which led him into a courtyard. On the farther side...

Mr. Plowden was not a suitor to let the grass grow under his feet. As he once took the trouble to explain to Florence, he considered that there was nothing like boldness in wooi...

Eva Plowden could scarcely be said to be a happy woman. A refined woman who has deliberately married one man when she loves another is not as a rule happy afterwards, unless, in...

The end of August came, as it has come so many thousand times since this globe gave its first turn in space, as it will come for many thousand times more, till at last, its appo...

It was very peaceful, that life at Kesterwick, after all the fierce racket and excitement of the past years. Indeed, as day succeeded day, and brought nothing to disturb his dar...

Ernest advanced a step or two and looked his uncle in the face. He was a noble-looking lad of about thirteen, with large dark eyes, black hair that curled over his head, and the...

Cheer after cheer arose from the Englishmen around, and angry curses from the Dutchmen, as Jeremy turned to look at the senseless carcass of the giant. But, even as he turned, e...

Midnight came, and the camp was sunk in sleep. Up to the sky, whither it was decreed their spirits should pass before the dark closed in again and hid their mangled corpses, flo...

Jeremy kept his word. On the appointed day he appeared ready, as he expressed it, to “tackle that bloke Halford.” What is more, he appeared with his hair cut, a decent suit of c...

Ernest was always easily touched by kindness, especially now that his nerves were shaken, and his heart softened by misfortune, and his eyes filled with tears at Jeremy’s words....

Some years passed before Eva Plowden returned to Kesterwick, and then she was carried thither. Alive she did not return, nor during all those years did she and Ernest ever meet.

“Swell out, sad harmonies, From the slow cadence of the gathering years; For Life is bitter-sweet, yet bounds the flood Of human fears. A death-crowned queen, from her hid thron...