True Tilda

The boat had given up its search, and returned to shore. The hunt had wound back up the coombe in a body, and thence homeward in the failing light over the heather, breaking up...

The time is next morning, and the first grey hour of daylight. The scene, an unlovely tidal basin crowded with small shipping-- schooners and brigantines dingy with coal-dust, t...

"_O, who lives on the Island, Betwix' the sea an' the sky? --I think it must be a lady, a lady, I think it must be a genuwine lady, She carries her head so high._"--OLD BALLAD.

The rowers in the leading boat were seven--four young men and three young women; and they pulled two to an oar--all but the bowman, a young giant of eighteen or thereabouts, who...

Like most men of fifty or thereabouts, and like every man who finds himself at that age a bachelor rector of a remote country parish, Parson Chichester had collected a number of...

The front door opened, and a slatternly woman in a soiled print dress came shuffling down the flagged pathway to the gate. She wore cloth boots, and Tilda took note that one of...

"_ O, my heart! as white sails shiver, And crowds are passing, and banks stretch wide, How hard to follow, with lips that quiver, That moving speck on the far-off side._"--JEAN...

Mr. Hucks sat in his counting-house, counting out his money--or so much of it as he had collected from his tenantry on his Saturday rounds. It amounted to 12 pounds 2 shillings...

"There _is_ a boy, somewhere at the back of me," the Fat Lady answered; "and a dog too. You can talk to them across me; but I couldn't move, not if I was crushin' them ever so."

"_Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, Three hundred horses as gallant and free, Beheld him escape on the evening tide Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea . . . The stag, t...

Fifty years before, the Hospital of the Good Samaritan had been the pet "charity" of a residential suburb. Factories and slums had since crowded in upon it, ousting the resident...

The artist--he was an extraordinarily tall young man, with a keen hatchet face, restless brown eyes, and straight auburn hair parted accurately in the middle--considered for a m...

"'Ad a row with Gavel this very aft'rnoon. Got the sack, with a week's pay, an' packed up his kit after tea an' 'ooked it. Bess Burton told me all about it, knowin' me an' Bill...

When Tilda awoke at seven o'clock next morning, the _Success to Commerce_ had made three good miles in the cool of the dawn, and come to anchor again (so to speak) outside the g...

At ten o'clock Sam harnessed up again, and shortly before noon our travellers left the waterway by which they had travelled hitherto, and passed out to the right through a cut,...

They spied him at once, for by a lucky chance his lantern--one of the common stable kind, with panes of horn--had fallen from his grasp as he pitched over the edge of the basin....

He stood on the edge of the wharf--a black figure in an Inverness cape-- with his back towards the angle of the store where the children hid. There was no mistaking him. For two...

| | | CHRISTOPHER HUCKS | | | | ANCHOR WHARF, CANAL END BASIN, BURSFIELD | | CANAL CARRIER, LIGHTERMAN, FREIGHTER AND WHARFINGER | | BOAT BUILDER, COAL AND GENERAL MERCHANT | |...

"_Down below the Weir Brake Journeys end in lovers' meeting: You and I our way must take, You and I our way will wend Farther on, my only friend-- Farther on, my more than frien...

Mr. Sam Bossom, having poled back to the towpath, stepped ashore, made fast his bow moorings, stood and watched the two childish figures as they passed up the last slope of the...

"Awake?" asked Mrs. Mortimer's voice from the shadow above the locker. "Well, I'm glad of that, because I want to get to the stove. Sardines," said Mrs. Mortimer, "you can take...

"Look here," said the boy severely, "we haven't searched yet. What's the use of giving in before we've _tried?_ Nobody starves on the Island, I tell you; and--and I can't bear y...

Tilda turned over on her right side--she could do so now without pain-- and lifting herself a little, eyed the occupant of the next bed. The other six beds in the ward were empty.

The spot was a hollow between two grassy meadows, where a brook came winding with a gentle fall, under coverts of hazel, willow and alder, to feed the canal. It was a quite dimi...

"You don't deliver another shovelful till we're out o' this," said Tilda positively, stamping the cover in place and standing upon it for safety. "What's more, if anyone comes a...

All the way along the canal bank Mr. Mortimer continued to carol. Mercurial man! Like all actors he loved applause, but unlike the most of them he was capable of supplying it wh...

"You bet it isn't, at Tizzer's Green. Well, the first job is breakfast, an' after breakfast we'll get Old Jubilee round by the footbridge an' make shift to borrow a cart down at...