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More "Stealthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, "thank you, sir, yes, sir, I will, sir;" and retired from the room, as he had entered it, with his usual stealthy respect and quiet humility; leaving the major to muse and wonder over what ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suggestion of agitation about him anywhere and with nothing furtive or stealthy in his movements, Trencher boldly passed the corner of the desk, crossed the lobby, went along the front of the news stand, where a young woman stood among her wares, and through another set of revolving doors came out upon ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... ascending, we had passed on one side of the rock. We looked about to discover the spot where we had left the guanaco. There it lay; but not a hundred yards from it we saw another animal approaching it by stealthy ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... interpolate on the laws of war a provision that pickets shall not be shot. This provision is, in accordance with our philosophy, founded on Christian principles and the dictates of healthy humanity, for pickets are not active belligerents, and can oppose no force to the stealthy attacks made on them by unseen enemies. To kill a picket is like fighting an unarmed man, a child or a woman. It is eminently right according to the selfish and silly philosophy of writers on national law, but inhuman, and therefore wrong, according ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of Valls had suffered the torments of the treacherous pin-prick, of the stealthy scratching, of the scissors in her braids, and then, on becoming a woman, the odium and scorn of her old-time companions had followed her, embittering the pleasures of the young woman despite her riches. What was the use of being elegant? On the avenues none but her father's friends ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Royalist plotters, to provoke the people into illegality, obstruct the transport of grains. Quick, ye organised Patriot Authorities, armed National Guards, meet together; unite your goodwill; in union is tenfold strength: let the concentred flash of your Patriotism strike stealthy Scoundrelism blind, paralytic, as with a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and sweet-mannered; Estridge sat by Ilse, looking a trifle careworn, as though hospital work were taking it out of him. Marya Lanois was there, too, with her slightly slanting green eyes and her tiger-red hair—attracting from him a curious sort of stealthy admiration, inexplicable to him because he knew he was so ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... The Mexican was not giving him any attention whatever, as far as he could see; on the contrary, he was staring down at the ground as though he, too, were looking for something. Starr gave him another stealthy look, gained nothing from it, and shrugged his ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... witchery and romance. You wander with Lucius across the hills and through the dales of Thessaly. With all the delight of a fresh curiosity you approach its far-seen towns. You journey at midnight under the stars, listening in terror for the howling of the wolves or the stealthy ambush. At other whiles you sit in the robbers' cave and hear the ancient legends of Greece retold. The spring comes on, and 'the little birds chirp and sing their steven melodiously.' Secret raids, ravished brides, valiant rescues, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... chargers. This squadron had been hovering in the neighborhood of the English army for some days, watching for an opportunity to attack them, but without success. Now, foreseeing that Edward would attempt to enter Romorantin, they pushed forward in a stealthy manner to the neighborhood of that town, and placed themselves in ambush at the sides of a narrow and solitary gorge in the mountains, through which they knew the English ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Phillis had done, and ransacked every likely hiding-place of papers or valuables, going through the operation with a rapid dexterity that astounded the old woman's weak mind, and made her ashamed of her own clumsiness. Anticipating the final stealthy look in her direction, the heavy lids fell once again, and were not raised until the rusty bolt passed gratingly into the socket, and she felt that the place was deserted by all save herself and the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... of living things around them—things that moved about, silently and surreptitiously and conveyed the impression of mockery. The hills, the valley, the trees were full of it—the whole place teemed with it—teemed with silent, subtle, stealthy mockery. The senses of the three men were now keenly alive, but a dead weight hung upon their limbs and rendered them useless. And as they stared into the gloom, in sickly fear, the firelight flickered and they saw shadows, such as the moon, when low in the heaven, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... logical for me. I only catch a thought here and there along the page. There is a grandeur even in the subtlety of his mind. He walks with a step so still, that, but for his dignity, it would be stealthy, yet with brow erect and wide, eye grave and deep. He is a man such as I have never known before.' ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... skill in threading the maze with never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him a youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... these things fatten? Mass! I had forgot: I have a right to bark at trespassers. Rare privilege! While every fowl and bush, According to its destiny and nature (Which were they truly mine, my power could alter), Will live, and grow, and take no thought of me. Those firs, before whose stealthy-marching ranks The world-old oaks still dwindle and retreat, If I could stay their poisoned frown, which cows The pale shrunk underwood, and nestled seeds Into an age of sleep, 'twere something: and those men O'er whom that one word 'ownership' uprears me— If I could make ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... following afternoon followed by the stealthy glances of the crew, who had heard something from Henry, and, first getting his beard trimmed at a barber's, walked along to call on Mrs. Gething. She was in, and pleased to see him, and hearing that his crew were also searching, supplied him with another ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... by our gloom, Yon little mourner sits and sighs, His playthings, scatter'd round the room, No more attract his listless eyes. Nutting, his infant task, he plies, On moves with soft and stealthy tread, And call'd, in tone subdued replies, As if he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... of servants, who still lingered until he should dismiss them for the night. Turning back, he moved silently down the passage, until he reached the narrow arched door to the garden. This he unlocked and opened with the same stealthy caution. The rain had recommenced. Not daring to risk a return to his room, he took from a peg in the recess an old waterproof cloak and "sou'wester" of Peyton's, which still hung there, and passed out into the night, locking the door behind him. To keep the knowledge of his secret patrol from ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... no doubt that in this case his alertness was dulled. The fatigue of the march, his dose of fever, his previous night of wakefulness in the canoe, all combined to undermine his guard; and, moreover, the attack of the savages was stealthy in the extreme. Like ghosts, they must have crept back from the bush to reconnoitre their village; like daylight ghosts, they must have surrounded the trader missionary's hut and peered at the sleeping man between the bamboos of the wall, and then made their entrance; and it must ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... sentinel for the remaining hours that he continued on duty. He continued circling about the camp-fire, silent, stealthy, peering here and there, and listening for the first evidence of danger. Nothing of the kind was seen or heard, and he finally came back to the smouldering fire and looked at the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... scarlet wherewith to robe himself, and if he looked noble in his armour he will look still more so in a doublet. When night comes he will sup with the king, queen, and princess; and all the time he will never take his eyes off her, stealing stealthy glances, unnoticed by those present, and she will do the same, and with equal cautiousness, being, as I have said, a damsel of great discretion. The tables being removed, suddenly through the door of the hall there will enter a hideous and diminutive dwarf followed by a fair dame, between ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... with sour grimace, "A gift-horse is not out of place, And, truly! godless cannot be The one who brought such things to me." A parson came, by the mother bidden: He saw, at once, where the game was hidden, And viewed it with a favor stealthy. He spake: "That is the proper view,— Who overcometh, winneth too. The Holy Church has a stomach healthy: Hath eaten many a land as forfeit, And never yet complained of surfeit: The Church alone, beyond all question, Has for ill-gotten goods the ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... other hand to feel at my right wrist, and found that it was clipped in one of a pair of handcuffs, the other being locked in a staple in the wall. I tugged my hardest to loosen this staple, but it held firm. The thing had been so sudden and stealthy that I scarce had time to realise that I was in serious danger, and that, doubtless, Plummer had preceded me, when a light appeared at an angle ahead. It turned the corner, and I perceived, coming toward me, carrying a lamp, the pale man of the eyes, whom I had encountered not an hour before—in ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... hiding place, and, with steps as silent and stealthy as those of a tiger tracking his prey, followed the man. When within a few paces of him he gave a sudden spring and flung himself upon him, burying his knife between his shoulders. Without a sound the man fell forward on his face. Nessus coolly wiped his knife upon the garments ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite;—the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade 145 Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... long breath, and stood looking at the doorway in utter bewilderment. The whole incident had been most perplexing. There was first her stealthy entry, and the suddenness with which she had appeared before him; then those mystic surroundings of her strange, weird figure which had excited his superstitious fancies; then the idea which had ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... butcher, of High Street, Wapping; that his visit to Wapping on the very night of his arrival was prompted by curiosity to know the position of his family, of whom he had not heard for some years; and that his stealthy transactions with the three sisters, and with the brother of Arthur Orton, had no object but that of furnishing them with an inducement to keep the dangerous secret of his true ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... Julius Hannibal, who had allowed himself to be crowded towards the door, stole out and went softly up stairs. With the stealthy motion of a cat, he crept along the hall and opened ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... you have. It isn't available." He bent forward: "Some men, Richling, carry their folly on the surface and their good sense at the bottom,"—he jerked his thumb backward toward the distant Narcisse, and added, with a stealthy frown,—"like that little fool in yonder. He's got plenty of sense, but he doesn't load any of it on deck. Some men carry their sense on top and their ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... With the stealthy tread of a panther, Bert climbed over the improvised rampart, and a few seconds later his form merged into the enveloping darkness and was lost to the view of his anxious friends. They listened with straining ears for any sound of shot or struggle, but the deep ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... on Bulwana—I say four, because one day there were four; but the Boers continually shifted their lighter guns from hill to hill—were very different. These creatures are stealthy in their habits, lurking among woods, firing smokeless powder with very little flash; consequently they are very difficult guns to locate. Their favourite diet appeared to be balloons; or, failing them, the Devons in the Helpmakaar Road or the Manchesters in Caesar's Camp. ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... stealthy rogue vanished from the room when the door of a closet in the rear opened ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... by an effort, he repeated the too familiar name, and baptized the child, bending his head over it afterwards in deep compassion and mental entreaty both for its welfare, and his own guidance in the tissue of wrongdoing thus disclosed. A hasty, stealthy glance at the hands covering the mother's face, showed him the ring on her fourth finger, and as they rose from their knees, he said, 'I am to register this child as Owen ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now bent over the spring, Hagen with stealthy steps crept near and drew the hero's sword and quiver out of his reach. Stealthy still, he seized the spear which rested against the linden tree. Then while Siegfried drank of the cool, clear water, Hagen stabbed him, straight through the little cross of silk ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... was silent. The lights had been darkened for an hour. With stealthy step along the upper hall, and silent footfall on the stairway, the cloaked and hooded figure of Leah approached the sleeping apartment of her father and his wife. The sound of heavy breathing betokened heavy slumber, as she silently turned the door-knob and ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... long woodland ways that led To dells the stealthy twilights tread The west was hot geranium-red; And still, and still, Along old lanes, the locusts sow With clustered curls the May-times know, Out of the crimson afterglow, We heard the homeward cattle low, And then the far-off, far-off woe ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... desperate game for half an hour more. Twice the girl lost the bridle and had to get it again by stealthy wiles, and once she was almost on the point of giving up, ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... kind of start at this, like one thrilled for an instant with a sublime impulse. He cast a quick, stealthy look at Kitty, and then as suddenly withdrew his glance. What had happened to her who was usually dressed so prettily? Alas! true to her resolution, Kitty had again refused Fanny's dresses that morning, and had faithfully ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts, extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears or much hopes for such an ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... scheme to be wealthy, By means that were cunning or stealthy; But we always had the bliss— And what further could we wiss?— To be pleased with ourselves, and be healthy; But we always ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... impotence.—Conscious of my own existence, yet unable to stir a limb in his behalf, alas! even this insignificant portion of thy being, thy Clara, is, like thee, a captive, and, separated from thee, consumes her expiring energies in the agonies of death.—I hear a stealthy step,—a cough—Brackenburg,—'tis he!—Kind, unhappy man, thy destiny remains ever the same; thy love opens to thee the door at night, alas! to ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... accepted,' says Peets, but still haughty; 'I descerns how you gets maladroit through errors over which you has no control. As to this person, who's so full of stealthy cunnin', he's all right. So long as he don't get no licker, no voylence is called for in his case.' An' with that Peets conducts his patient, who's come to ag'in, back to ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... lying down in such a bed would have given him so severe a cold in his head, that he would have nearly sneezed and snuffled it off. Not so in Senegal. Still there were other inconveniences, for Harry had not rested for five minutes, when he heard a stealthy footstep; his heart began to beat. He had learned in his Geography that Senegal was full of wild beasts, as well as the sugar plums the treacherous sailor talked about. He began to wish he had staid in the ship; but if he returned, there was Jack ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... out of bed the following morning at half-after six, I could not but wonder rather nervously what the day might have in store for me. I was obliged to admit that what I was in for looked a bit thick. As I opened my door I heard stealthy footsteps down the hall and looked out in time to observe Cousin Egbert entering his own room. It was not this that startled me. He would have been abroad, I knew, for the ham and eggs that were forbidden him. Yet I stood aghast, for with the lounge-suit of tweeds I had selected the day before ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of all manner of haunted leafage, all those dense fierce growths with which Nature loves to proclaim her luxuriant victory over the work of man's hands—as soon, so to say, as his back is turned for a moment—like a stealthy savage foe ever on the watch in the surrounding darkness and only waiting for the hushing of human voices, for the cessation of human footsteps, to rush in ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... dull lamp, which only made a reddened twilight in the air. The fat woman watched me like a cat, and I fancied that her mouth was like that of a carnivorous beast. The sly old man looked on the ground, but his stealthy eye—like the eye of a cunning magpie—glittered sometimes as he turned it on me. Blackey was most cordial, and soon proposed a song. He obliged first, and warbled some ghastly affair which aimed at being nautical in sentiment. The chorus contained some observations ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... "It's worth five pounds in a police court," he muttered to himself, and knotting up his great hands, which glittered with rings, he approached his companion with his head sunk upon his breast, his eyes flashing from under his dark brows, and the slow, stealthy step of a beast of prey. There was a characteristic refinement of cruelty about his attack, as though he wished to gloat over the helplessness of his victim, and give him time to realize his position ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sweeping, old-world fashion which had done so much to build up his ten thousand a year, and, with the stealthy gait of a man whose life is spent in sick-rooms, he followed the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon the "Forty Thieves" and their officers. This little corps performed nearly all the active service. Their red shirts had become so well known, that the colour was enough to keep the natives at a distance; but although the Baris were now afraid to risk a stand-up fight, they troubled us by their stealthy tactics. It was impossible to say where they were concealed. They were spread all over the country: some hidden in the tall dhurra, others behind bushes. Their favourite place was in the grass and scattered bush on the banks of the river, where they lay in wait for ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... this hundred miles of tunnels that look so much alike? What if he should not intend to come? What if—But, thank Heaven! there he is at last! That is the firm, substantial sound of a mortal footstep; not those stealthy, phantom steps I seemed to hear before! There too is the distant glinting of the red lamplight on the sides of the cave! How long it takes him to get here! There he is at last! Blessed be his black face! how unlike the pale, phosphorescent forms I fancied just a little while ago! How foolish seem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... floundering in the shallow water, and the noise they made prevented their hearing the stealthy ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... can make no such stealthy and sure attack. No matter how subtle her art, she can never hope to quite conceal her intent. Her eyes give her away. They flash and glitter. They have depths. They draw the male gaze into mysterious and sinister recesses. ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... had stopped singing in the noonday heat. The breeze had died down. Outdoors, in the house, there was not a sound. She felt as if she must not, could not breathe. The silence, like a stealthy hand, lifted her from her chair, drew her tiptoeing and breathless toward the room in which her father was sitting. She paused at its threshold, looked. There was Hiram, in his chair by the window, bolt upright, eyes ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... her teardrops as they fall; I flout my daytime fears; I mumble thanks to God for all These gibes and happy jeers. But, when the warning dawn awakes, Begins my wandering; With stealthy strokes through tangled brakes, A ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... a jar in his brain and a chill at his heart. His breath came short, and raising one hand, he stood beating the ground for half a minute with his foot. He gave a stealthy glance around, and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... in that old packet, each one worse than the last, I believe—four voyages after nuts, and palm-oil, and enormous square logs of mahogany, and cages of snarling leopards and screaming parrots, and tanks of stealthy serpents. I used to wonder who found it worth while to hire us to bring such bizarre and useless things into England. Once one of the twenty-five hundred weight barrels of palm oil slipped from the slings and fell on the deck with a soft ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... covered many acres. There were deep, black pools in the unbroken shade; stealthy deer, tapirs, peccaries, and agoutis moved like shadows among the columnar trunks. A stream led from it into the distance that appeared greener and still more cheerful. Overhead, in the gnarled branches and leafy boughs were scores of snowy birds, egrets that had chosen the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... a sad task, and pity would lead us to soften every touch if this could be done in truthfulness. She was but twelve years of age, yet there was scarcely a trace of childhood left in her colorless face. Stealthy and catlike in all her movements, she gave the impression that she could not do the commonest thing except in a sly, cowering manner. Her small greenish-gray eyes appeared to be growing nearer together with the ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... just as the light of day was breaking. It was an engrossing study to observe how skillfully he kept us concealed from view of the enemy, by keeping rolls of the prairie between us. All his movements were like those of a wary animal, stealthy and noiseless. The fact is, the education of a savage is learned from the wild animals on which he lives, and that is what makes him such ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... not know," said Lan-O; "A-Kor says that he believes that it is because their country has never been invaded by a victorious foe. In their stealthy raids never have they been defeated, because they have never waited to face a powerful force; and so they have come to believe themselves invincible, and the other peoples are held in contempt as inferior in valor and the ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... With stealthy, quickened steps Slavin made his way towards it. Tensely they watched him. In each man's mind now was a vague feeling of certainty of something, they knew not what. They saw him reach the boulder, walk round it and stoop, peering at its base for a ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... made objects barely visible in the room. This done, he shuffled his feet slightly to apprise the half-conscious guardian of the ominous house that he was obeying her orders, and vanished in the rear darkness. The dead hush of sleep now reigned over the place. So it seemed, but the stealthy Pepillo was wide awake. He remained motionless, breathless, hidden in the gloom of the second cabin. At length he reappeared, took up the candle, stood awhile listening, then moved cautiously to the edge of the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... was awakened by a noise that frightened me. All was still, but instantly there flashed through my mind tales of murdered travelers, and I was almost paralyzed with fear when again I heard that stealthy, sliding noise, just like Carlota Juanita's old slippers. The fire had burned down, but just then the moon came from behind a cloud and shone through the window upon Carlota Juanita, who was asleep with her mouth open. I could ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... The stealthy hand returned to the sight of all men and fussed among some papers on the desk-top. Major ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... enterprise. In another room lay Cummings and Moriarity, completely dressed. The former, with his habitual sang froid, was whispering to Moriarity, who, somewhat excited, was calmed by his companion's nonchalance, and as the hour for the work drew near became like him. A stealthy step, noiseless as an Indian's, interrupted the conversation, and the faint rap on the door ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... beauty to her grave I saw him moving evermore A stealthy wanderer on the wave, A shrouded shadow on the shore, The worm his bondsman, and the brave ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... weary game-keeper, the chirp of the burying-beetle, the croak of the bat, the wild laughter of the owl and the boom, boom of the frog, deep silence reigned. The crescent moon stole silently above the horizon. Wonderful, significant is that silent, stealthy approach of the moon. Red Head lumbered from his lair and crouched beside the shimmering fire of the furze. A startled grass-snake strove to leap out of the way of the monarch of the woods—- a hurried crunch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... pleasant diversion in leading the youth a merry chase. So severe was his attack that he was alternately oppressed by chills of fear and fevers of ecstasy. He lost appetite, and the family began to fear for his sanity. Such a love must find expression some way, and so the daily stealthy notes to the young woman took the form of rhyme. The lovesick youth was revealing considerable facility in this way. It pleased him, and did the buxom young ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the outlaws would attack our premises until some time after the moon was risen, because it would be too dangerous to cross the flooded valleys in the darkness of the night. And, but for this consideration, I must have striven harder against the stealthy approach of slumber. But even so, it was very foolish to abandon watch, especially in such as I, who sleep like any dormouse. Moreover, I had chosen the very worst place in the world for such employment, with a goodly chance of awaking in ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... a small reception room, he made his way to the library door with a motion that would have reminded you of a great, stealthy cat, and called in ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the stealthy plotter stalks I must be quick too with my counterplot. To wait his onset passively, for him Is sure success, for ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... became convinced that they were fairly in the Company Canal and gliding up its dark colonnade in the direction whence they had evidently come. Then he returned to his cabin and with rifle cocked and with slow, stealthy step entered it, and in headlong haste began to prepare to leave ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... into the moonlight. Three human forms were moving along the wall, towards the entrance of the patio. Their height, their peculiar attitudes, and the stealthy silence of their steps, convinced me they were Indians. The next moment they were lost under the dark shadows ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... guards observed, with stealthy footsteps, creep Into the prince's chamber, and inquire With anxious curiosity, about The Marquis Posa's death. They seized him straight, And questioned him. Urged by the fear of death, He made confession that he bore about ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was so light and dry that it seemed to be on the move all about them. There was a stealthy sound to the whispering particles, too, as though they breathed. "Hush.' Hush-sh-sh!" The old man was made nervous by it. He began to glance back over his shoulder at the faintly objecting mare. When Queenie slipped a little and scrambled in the unstable sand he uttered ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... benumbed and shuddering father, "How she loves my child; they all love her," but the thought made little impression at the time; the mind was too full of terror and woe. The doctor now asked for brandy in a whisper. Mrs. Dodd left the room with stealthy foot, and brought it. He asked for a quill. Julia went with swift, stealthy foot, and brought it. With adroit and tender hands they aided the doctor, and trickled stimulants down her throat. Then sat like statues of grief about the bed; only every now and then eye sought eye, and endeavoured ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... exceedingly trying to their patience. For the darkness soon became so profound that although from time to time there came to their ears certain slight sounds, such as the sudden swish of a bough, or the crackling of withered leaves and twigs, betraying the stealthy movements of some wild creature, they could see nothing, strain their ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... would lay anything he is not five feet five. I will, however, do him the justice of saying that he read the lessons with clearness and good emphasis, and that he strove to prevent his criminal congregation from enjoying the luxury of a stealthy nap. He occasionally furnished them with some amusement by attempting to lead the singing. The melody of his voice, which suggested the croak of an asthmatical raven, threw them into transports of sinister ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... nod of recognition, he crossed to the door of the sleeping-room, and, after looking in, made a gesture, stealthy and cautious, for ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the old store was full of noises, for the fingers of decay never cease from picking and, in the silence of night, one can best hear their stealthy activities. Little falls of fragments sounded loudly, even echoed, in this great silence. There was almost a perpetual rustle and whisper; and once a thud and skurry, when a rat displaced a piece of mortar which fell from the rotting plaster. Dark though the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the gloom. The sharp patter of the rain on leaves had ceased, and from just ahead there came back to us the stealthy padding of feet in wet soil. My hand closed on Hotchkiss' shoulder, and we listened together, warily. The steps were close by, unmistakable. The next flash of lightning showed nothing moving: the house was in full view now, dark and uninviting, looming ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... finish. There had come a stealthy, crumbling step to the door, and in another moment Mukoki and Wabigoon were in ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... lion, and tiger, the largest and most formidable of the terrestrial mammals of the Old World, are not here to be found; but their places are well supplied by the swamp-loving tapir, the voracious alligator, the stealthy puma, and the blood-thirsty jaguar, all well worthy of the sportsman's rifle, or of the snake-visioned native warrior's weapons—for the power of destruction in these animals during life is great, while after death they either furnish valuable ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... most stealthy way, Morgan holding his fork the while as if it were a gun, and we were ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... enter fearlessly, leaving his horse hitched over a branch. We heard him no longer, as he proceeded with that stealthy silence known only to the Indian fighter. We listened, and waited in profound suspense. Not even the crackling of a branch broke the stillness. Full five minutes we waited, and then the sharp crack of a rifle near the centre of the copsewood relieved, us. The next moment was heard ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... girls came downstairs, the landlord's wife took their satchel, and led them over broken sidewalks to the meson, where the street was filled with torches and laden burros and blanketed shadows. Murguia's caravan was forming, making a weird, stealthy scene of activity. Jacqueline picked up a lantern, and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... it was easy enough to move the books silently, and at last she discovered the blue envelope, tucked between two of them. She drew it out without a sound,—careful lest the paper should crackle,—and started to retrace her stealthy steps upstairs again, when she saw the hem of the portiere move the ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... faster they sweep, driven by the strong arms of the rowers and the current. It is a stealthy, noiseless, rapid, tempestuous, dangerous, daring enterprise. They are tossed by the waves, but they glide with the rapidity of a race-horse. Two sentinels stand upon the parapet. A few rods in rear is a regiment of Rebels. A broad lightning-flash ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... chance to rest a little, Bessie had stopped her work to talk to Zara, and neither of the two girls heard a stealthy rustling among the leaves back of the woodshed, nor saw a grinning face that appeared around the corner. The first warning that they had that they were not alone came when a long arm reached out suddenly and a skinny, powerful hand grasped Zara's arm and ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... Fire and Trees, besides the Cat, the Dog and other animals, investing them all with individuality,—making for instance, with characteristic bias, the Dog the faithful friend of his boy and girl companions and the Cat their stealthy enemy. ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... recumbent before the fire. Our beds were already made of black-boy tops, and, therefore we had nothing to do but await the hour of rest. The sun had disappeared, and darkness, closing around us, drew nigher and more nigh every moment, swallowing up object after object in its stealthy advance, and seeming about to overwhelm us in its mysterious obscurity. But John heaped logs of dry wood upon the fire, and nobly we resisted all the powers of Darkness. In the midst of that black solitude, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... on the fenny edge of the wood. It was a small house, added, it appeared, to an ancient brick front adorned with pilasters, perhaps a fragment of some woodland temple. The door-step was overgrown with a stealthy green moss and tufted with giant fennel; and a shutter swinging loose on its hinge gave a glimpse of inner dimness. Odo guessed at once that this was the hunting lodge where Cerveno had found his death; and as he stood looking out across the oozy secrets of the marsh, the fever seemed to hang on ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... champed noisily at their bits. The young woman exchanged a few rapid sentences with the boy, and then returned in the direction from which she came. A man stepped out of a doorway as she neared the corner, accosting her with a stealthy deference that proclaimed him to be anything but an ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... reticence now, each revolving the problematic disclosure of their secret, each canvassing the question whether the pursuer himself was aware of his betrayal of his stealthy proximity. Not till they had reached the ford of the river did they venture on a low-toned colloquy. The driver paused in midstream and stepped out on the pole between the horses to let down the check-reins, as the team manifested ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... listening, still a little dazed with sleep, but nothing disturbed the silence of the wooden building, and it was a moment or two before the moan of the wind forced itself on his perceptions. Then, he thought he heard the trampling of a horse and stealthy footsteps in the mire below, and, springing from his bed, ran to the window. The night was dark, but he could dimly see a few shadowy figures moving towards the house. In another minute he slipped into part of his clothing and ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... Miss Eliot was still there; imagination pictured her weltering in her own gore. Between fear and curiosity and the saving hope that there might be food of some sort in the house, Pudge left his hiding place and began a stealthy approach. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... time, and sat gazing at the stars in the depths of the sky above the capital dome until a shadow emerged from the black mass of the trees opposite and crossed the street. In a few minutes there were footsteps in the corridor,—stealthy footsteps—and a knock on the door. Jethro got up and opened it, and closed it again and locked it. Then he turned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whence weird hoots and bubbling cries and sharp clicks came at night, the stealthy sand marching over the land, the barren slopes of the mountain, and the misshapen rock, gave one's thoughts a twist in the direction of the vague and mysterious. Wylo's continual harping on the wonderful stone renewed the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... with Fouquet for Commandant), it has held out, under Fouquet's Second, only a few hours; and is gone without remedy! Certain, though incredible. Imbecile Commandant, treacherous Garrison (Austrian deserters mainly), with stealthy Jesuits acting on them: no use asking what. Here is the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... said this, Judas, with long and stealthy steps, sprang forward, looking from side to side as he came, until he stopped immediately behind Jesus; then standing on tiptoe he reached over the shoulder of Jesus and kissed him, saying, ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... the Zooelogical Gardens. For he refused to come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with the malice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossible to let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so to speak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloud blown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear a ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... revolved in the secret and guilty recesses of the mind—as when some individual stands between the tempted man and the possession of a fortune, or some other great object of desire—there is religious terror as stealthy, as secret, as unconquerable, as the strongest desire that takes possession of the human heart, to assist always at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... dread of something worse than mere robbery. He was seized by an accusing terror that said the Weymouth name and the Weymouth honour were about to be lost. Marse Robert robbing the bank! What else could it mean? The hour of the night, the stealthy visit to the vault, the satchel brought forth full and with expedition and silence, the prowler's rough dress, his solicitous reading of the clock, and noiseless departure—what else could ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... rudder-post stood Cigole, looking with all the rest at the gathering storm. His face was only half turned, and as usual he watched this with only a furtive glance, for at times his stealthy eyes turned toward Brandon; and he alone of all on board did not seem to be absorbed by ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... swift and stealthy pace, Calenus, gliding under the shade of the trees, reached the chapel, and gently putting back the boughs that completely closed around its rear, settled himself in his concealment; a concealment so complete, what with the fane in front and the trees behind, that no unsuspicious ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... straw near where I stood stopped me suddenly. My skin prickled and began to stir on my head and my feet and hands felt numb with a new fear. I heard stealthy footsteps in the darkness. I stood my ground ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... by the explosion of a heavy shell, or compelled to spring up in answer to the ring of the gong which announced a gas attack, but he might be awakened at two a.m. (a favorite hour for raids) by the outcry of sentries who had been overpowered by the stealthy rush of shadowy figures in the night, and while he got to his feet be killed by the burst of a bomb thrown by men whom he supposed were also fast asleep in their own quarters two or three hundred ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... only listener. Ever and anon while absorbed in the entertainment, or waiting, breathless, for a new note, I was startled by a rustle, and a low "Good evenin' Missis," and glanced up to see a negro stealing along in a stealthy way. It might be a woman with a big bundle or basket on her head, possibly a slouching young man or "boy" with an air of interest in my eccentric proceedings, or a group of youngsters with nothing particular to do, but one and all perfectly silent in movement. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... out of the window, he informed himself of what was doing outside, and what progress the vessels made toward their haven. When, however, the schooner poked her slim, low black bows, with her sails down, around the point, he gave one stealthy peep, or glare rather, at her. He took all in at that glance, from the patches of sheet-lead nailed over the shot-holes in her side, to the sawed-off stump of the fore-top-mast; and then he remarked ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... the great American chipper. There is no other bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military decision as this yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click of a giant gun-lock. Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems to be going about on tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloft in the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but it darts along fences ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... sometime, somewhere, know? It could not be said. Forever that must remain a mystery. And, after all, had Bennett done right in keeping Lloyd from the sick-room? Now that all was over, now that the whole fearful tragedy could be judged somewhat calmly and in the light of reason, the little stealthy ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... stealing forth, and so will I. Sorry sight! to view Jabaster, with a stealthy step, skulk like a thing dishonoured! Oh! may the purpose consecrate the deed! the die ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... suddenly to him through the wood his mother's voice appealing for help, so that he nearly turned, running back. It was a hard, cruel place this world—and all the little ditches and hollows of the wood were running with brown, stealthy water. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... figure stole out from the shadow of one of the side walls, where it had been standing close under a window, listening to all that passed within the building. It followed on a few yards behind the preoccupied man with a stealthy but clumsy gait. Peter heard nothing and saw nothing. His mind and heart were too full to care in the least for anything that was going on about ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... Fair was the chief as the morning-star; His eyes were mild and his words were low, But his heart was stouter than lance or bow; And her young heart flew to her love afar O'er his trail long covered with drifted snow. But she heard a warrior's stealthy tread, And the tall Wakwa appeared, and said— "Is Wiwst afraid of the spirit dread That fires the sky in the fatal north? [26] Behold the mysterious lights. Come forth Some evil threatens,—some danger nears, For the skies are ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... arm seaward; the dip of the oar had a stealthy sound in the deserted dawning. They passed the public gardens and saw the sea widen and the morning quicken. Islands swam up out of silver space, took form and colour, and there between the islands he saw the girl. She had gotten another oar from Giuseppe and stood delighting in the free ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... many acres. There were deep, black pools in the unbroken shade; stealthy deer, tapirs, peccaries, and agoutis moved like shadows among the columnar trunks. A stream led from it into the distance that appeared greener and still more cheerful. Overhead, in the gnarled branches and leafy ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... landscape. But look how that blue is made up. There are black shadows in it under the crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are gray half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone, every tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with individual character in the universal will. Who is there who can do this as Turner ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... they were unaccustomed to seeing gentlemen run naked in such a storm, armed with pistols. This enabled me to reach a place of safety. But the thought struck me that they would return and make search for Leon. I therefore followed them at a stealthy pace and at a safe distance for myself. Leon had crawled through a little gate and into a garden close by, where he found a shelter beneath some larch bushes, and was safe from the vengeance of his pursuers, who several times ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... negroes watch the lighthouse, the trains upon the bridge, The little fisher's village strewn o'er the grassy ridge, The cannoneers that, paddling in stealthy rafts of brush, With their decoys around them, the juicy ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... regulo. Statutes regularo. Stave, in krevi. Stay (to remain) resti. Stay (to stop) haltigi. Stay (a support) subteno. Steadfast konstanta. Steady nesxancelebla. Steak steko, bifsteko. Steal sxteli. Stealth, by kasxe, sekrete. Stealthy kasxa, sekreta. Steam vaporo. Steamboat vaporsxipo. Steam-engine vapormasxino. Steed cxevalo. Steel sxtalo. Steelyard pesilo, pesmasxino. Steep kruta. Steep trempi. Steeple pregxeja turo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... streets, these stricken homes took on an aspect more sinister and forbidding in the half-light. Behind those flapping curtains were pits of gloom full of unimagined terrors whence came unearthly sounds, stealthy rustlings, groans and sighs and sobbing voices. If ghosts did flit behind those crumbling walls, surely they were ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... sound of stealthy footsteps in the room at this moment, and the old duke glanced over his shoulder apprehensively, while Diavolo bent to one side to peer round the chair his grandfather was sitting in, which was between ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was a scarcely audible rustle on the margin of the woods, a dry branch snapped loudly. A little pause succeeded in which the judge's heart stood still. Next a stealthy step sounded in the clearing. The judge had an agonized vision of regulators and lynchers. The beat of his pulse quickened. He knew something of the boisterous horseplay of the frontier. The sheriff had spoken of tar and feathers—very quietly he stood erect and picked ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... was not thinking so much of the unpaid bronze-smith as of divers weightier debts. On the evening in question he had ordered Bias, the sly Thracian, out of the room; with his own hands had barred the door and closed the lattice; then with stealthy step thrust back the scarlet wall tapestry to disclose a small door let into the plaster. A key made the door open into a cupboard, out of which Democrates drew a brass-bound box of no great size, which he carried gingerly to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Not less stealthy is the approach of disease of the hip-joint, of white swelling of the knee, of consumption,—all curable if taken in hand at the very first, all well-nigh hopeless when they have once unmasked their ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... ship began to palpitate as if a great heart were beating within it. She hurried on deck as the siren began to cry. As soon as her head appeared above the top of the companion-way she saw the wharves and houses on shore running away in a peculiarly stealthy fashion; a ship much bigger than the Oriana, whose decks were thronged with stewards and deck-hands cheering and calling out greetings, went by; she dipped her flag to the outgoing Oriana, and Marcella ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the great gate of the city yawned noiselessly, and stealthy and silent the hope of Paris glided into the darkness and was swallowed up ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... she dives under, Another robs her of her amorous theft; The ambush'd fishermen creep forth to plunder, And steal the unwatch'd treasure she has left; Only his void impression dints the sands; Leander is purloin'd by stealthy hands! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... which his guest had witnessed and might spread abroad on his return to Bombay. No, he was really terrified. He interspersed his words with sudden unexpected silences, during which he sat all ears and his face strained to listen, as though he expected to surprise some stealthy movement. But Thresk accounted for it by that decanter on the sideboard, in which the level of the whisky had been so noticeably lowered that evening. He was wrong however, for Ballantyne sprang ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... down stairs quietly, in the darkness of the early spring morning. The clerk's quick ear caught the sound of a stealthy footstep; and in the next minute they were face to face with a man who was ascending ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... on changing. The change was always imperceptible, as is growth, or the stealthy advance of autumn through the woods. From moment to moment one could detect no alteration. Something intangible was taken away; something impalpable added. At the end of an hour we were in the oaks and sycamores; ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... and a faint moonlight showed itself through the window. Almost at the same time the Minister was aware of stealthy soft footings on the stairs without. Noiselessly he approached his open door, and there he saw by the dim skylight a tall figure moving on stockinged feet at the stair-head. Was it a burglar? he thought fearfully. 'No, it was Ringan. But what ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... pigsty, surrounded by a sort of tiny stockade a fathom high, make of split cane, wove into wickerwork between upright rails sunk into the ground; and by the clear moonlight I could, as I lay in my hammock, see an animal larger than an English bulldog, but with the stealthy pace of the cat, crawl on in a crouching attitude until within ten feet of the sty, when it stopped, looked round, and then drew itself back, and made a scrambling jump against the cane defence, hooking on to the top of it by its fore paws. the claws of its hind feet scratching and rasping ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... out of the water and wiped off the suds, casting about stealthy and mysterious glances. Then he rolled a dubious ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... it at her feet, for she wishes to-day to make all whom she sees as happy as herself. A little of the hard look leaves the woman's face as she stoops to pick the flower. Mechanically she follows the carriage, with stealthy steps and bated breath she enters the church, choosing a dark corner where she will not be observed, she sits listening to the clergyman as he proceeds with the marriage rites and not until all is over and the lovely bride is ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... expanse, and in its darkest corner, flitting dimly along, Roland's eyes fell upon certain shadows, at first vague and indistinct, but which soon assumed the human form, marching one after the other in a line, and apparently approaching the very ridge on which he lay, each with the stealthy yet rapid pace of a wild cat. They were but five in number; but the order of their march, the appearance of their bodies seemingly half naked, and the busy intentness with which they pursued the trail left so broad and open by the inexperienced ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the Algonkin name for them, meaning "adder." The French termed them "Mingos," from another Algonkin word meaning "stealthy." The English and Dutch colonists in America knew them as the Five Nations. Their own title was "People of the Long House," as if the five nations were one family housed ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... a regular prank on Kerr's side of the ranch. Watch as he might, Lambert could not prevent the stealthy excursions, the vindictive destruction of the hated barrier. All these breaches were made within a mile on either side of the first cut, sometimes in a single place, again along a stretch, as if the person using the nippers knew when to deliberate ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... that I would only rest; I would not even close my eyes to sleep. I had laid thus as I supposed an hour, listening to the voices of the old people and their sons, as in subdued tones they talked together below. At the end of that time the door opened, and I heard stealthy steps ascending the ladder. My heart, as the saying is, was in my throat, and I could hear its every throb. The steps came nearer and nearer, and as the first foot-fall sounded on the floor of the little passage, which led to my ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... the blue-black sky. The noises of the noiseless woods made themselves heard: the cry of a night hawk, the hooting of an owl, the whirring note of the whip-poor-will; the long, plunging down-rush of a dead branch breaking the boughs below it; even the snapping of twigs as if under the pressure of stealthy feet. These sounds, the most delicate of the sounds he heard, shook him most with fear and hope, and then with despair. The feet could be the feet of his enemies seeking him out, or of his friends coming to succor and save him; then they resolved themselves into the light ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... accomplice 'neath this roof which holds You, Guendolen, you, Austin, and has held A thousand Treshams—never one like her! No lighter of the signal-lamp her quick Foul breath near quenches in hot eagerness To mix with breath as foul! no loosener O' the lattice, practised in the stealthy tread, The low voice and the noiseless come-and-go! Not one composer of the bacchant's mien Into—what you thought Mildred's, in a ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... a pawing of hoofs, But the hunters utter never a word, As the stealthy panther creeps on his prey, So move we in ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... school itself would scarcely essentially deny. Even the two-power standard, if it be a necessity, is in a sense a degrading necessity. Nothing has more alienated many magnanimous minds from Imperial enterprises than the fact that they are always exhibited as stealthy or sudden defenses against a world of cold rapacity and fear. The Boer War, for instance, was colored not so much by the creed that we were doing something right, as by the creed that Boers and Germans ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... There was a deathly stillness in the chamber. The lamp had sunk low and the fire was a gold cavern. Dusk stole on stealthy feet from wall to wall. Aunt Anne did not, it seemed, breathe. Her hands had dropped from Maggie's and her arms lay straight upon the sheet. Her ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... with stealthy tread Lays the rich garden waste, The woodland berry ripe and red Fails not in scent ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... crunch of stealthy footsteps. Springing to his bunk, Wilson secured his revolver and belt—the same taken from the would-be bullion thief he had captured at Bonepile—and stealing to the rear door, slipped out and to the ground just as the strangers approached ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... papers before the sharp old lady who questioned her. But Miss Loach did not look at them immediately. She examined the applicant with such close attention that a faint color tinted the girl's cheeks and she dropped her eyes. But, in her turn, by stealthy glances, Susan Grant tactfully managed to acquaint herself with the looks of her possible mistress. The thoughts of each woman ran ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... goaded by the knowledge that he was, in a measure, under surveillance, which he was sure was instituted by Gallito and Flick and connived at by Hughie; a watchfulness so subtle that it convinced him even while he doubted. He felt often as if he were stalked by some stealthy and implacable animal. This situation, imaginary or real, began to affect his nerves and he would undoubtedly have left had it not been for his mounting passion for Pearl, a passion fanned always to a more ardent flame ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... into the gloom. The sharp patter of the rain on leaves had ceased, and from just ahead there came back to us the stealthy padding of feet in wet soil. My hand closed on Hotchkiss' shoulder, and we listened together, warily. The steps were close by, unmistakable. The next flash of lightning showed nothing moving: the house was in full view now, dark and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it all now,—the slow and stealthy approach of the boat from the little sloop out in the river (it had disappeared round the bend, he noticed), Blodgett's quiet watch at the foot of the path, the approach of the men, Blodgett's challenge, the first one shot dead ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... hearts, and men who had never before shrunk from danger in any open form now feared to show their faces, dared not sleep in their own houses, nor, except by stealth, visit their own families. At dead of night, as well as in the blaze of day, stealthy descents would be made upon the place, the houses surrounded and strict search made. One hour the streets would be deserted, the next every corner bristled with rude soldiery, flinging insults and imprecations on the feeble old men and defenceless women, who, panic-stricken, stood about vainly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... not out of place, And, truly! godless cannot be The one who brought such things to me." A parson came, by the mother bidden: He saw, at once, where the game was hidden, And viewed it with a favor stealthy. He spake: "That is the proper view,— Who overcometh, winneth too. The Holy Church has a stomach healthy: Hath eaten many a land as forfeit, And never yet complained of surfeit: The Church alone, beyond all question, Has for ill-gotten ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... of a stealthy step below. Tom drew his head from the window. Standing in the shadow of the frame he could see a young girl emerge and run ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... so. But your safety is by no means assured. Lying as you did in a doorless room last night, you were at the mercy of Murfrey's knife. And I well know what a stealthy murderer that is. Your danger to-night would be two-fold, for you have made of the old woman a deadly enemy; and of ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... beneath them. With the moon behind them and their long black shadows walking in front, they were such figures as one might expect to meet at night near the Abbot's Beech. I can remember that they had a stealthy way of moving, and that as they approached, the moonshine formed two white diamonds between their legs and the legs ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Time's stayless stealthy swing, Uncompromising rude reality Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning, Who quavered, sank; and now has ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... pushing the darkness from pillar to post, The morning came silent and gray like a ghost Slow up the canal. I leaned from the prow And listened. Not even the bird in distress Screaming above through the wilderness; Not even the stealthy old water-rat now. Only the bell in the fisherman's tower Slow tolling a-sea and telling the hour To kneel to their sweet Santa Barbara For ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... afternoon—how endless and yet how swift! What perilous efforts to leap across the foaming stream at its narrowest points; what escapes from quagmires and possible quicksands; what stealthy creeping through the grass to the edge of a likely pool, and cautious dropping of the line into an unseen depth, and patient waiting for a bite, until the restless little brother, prowling about below, discovers that ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... merely by a knob which anybody could turn, as in most old country towns. He palpitated at the thought that she had fled to him in her trouble as he had fled to her in his. What counterparts they were! He unlatched the door of his room, heard a stealthy rustle on the dark stairs, and in a moment she appeared in the light of his lamp. He went up to seize her hand, and found she was clammy as a marine deity, and that her clothes clung to her like the robes upon the figures in the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... companions; and these, in their turn, shed a grisly light on the bloody enterprise towards which they were set. Nervous and ill at ease, the minister's mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise: the stealthy entrance through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the surprise, the slaughter in the sleeping-chamber. And either because he had lived for days in the victim's company, or was swayed by the arguments he had addressed to another, the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts, extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears or much ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... village was silent, with the moon shining brilliantly down upon the deserted streets, the sound of stealthy footsteps came to me through my window. I pulled the casement open and looked out. There marched four men, with measured steps, bearing a coffin on their shoulders, while Monsieur Laurentie followed them bareheaded. It was my husband's funeral; and I sank upon my knees, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... for it was a stormy night. The door of the bedroom stood wide open. What was that sound coming up the stairs from the hall below? It was certainly not the ticking of the clock. It seemed more like muffled and stealthy footsteps. In an instant Ingred was very wide awake indeed, and listening intently. There it came again! She could not lie still and ignore it. She got out of bed, and with rather shaking knees walked on to the landing and ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... teardrops as they fall; I flout my daytime fears; I mumble thanks to God for all These gibes and happy jeers. But, when the warning dawn awakes, Begins my wandering; With stealthy strokes through tangled ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... she added, giving a stealthy glance out of the corners of her eyes, "you have surprised me. When do you bring your wife home, Count Nobili?" As Nera asked this question she bent over Nobili, so that her breath just swept his ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... So stealthy had been their approach that they had cut the sentry off from us before alarming him, and he fled into the timber in a shower ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... an unpleasing appearance. Her face was very thin, her lips pinched sourly together, her eyes furtive, hungry, malevolent. Her movements were awkward and impatient, and a morbid nervousness kept her constantly starting, with a stealthy ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... ever great!"— Songless sat I by a grove, Pines, like funeral priests of state, Chanted solemn rites above. Dark and glassy far below, The River in his proud vale slept, Eve with olive-shafted bow Like a stealthy archer crept. ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... officers, an occasional Staff Officer, and an occasional most devoted Padre—perform the journey as best they may. Sometimes they skirt a wood or hedge, sometimes they keep under the lee of an embankment, sometimes they proceed across the open, with the stealthy caution of persons playing musical chairs, ready to sit down in the nearest shell-crater the moment the music—in the form of a visitation ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... that Puddin's he might lure, Into his clutches stealthy; He stole the Puddin' of the poor, The Puddin' ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... moments of intense listening. Graveling reached out his hand and took a cigar from a box which had been placed upon the table. Henneford and his neighbour exchanged glances, which culminated in a stealthy wink. Alone at the table David Ross sat like a figure of stone, his mouth a little open, something of the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... our domination, and of the puppet thrust upon them by us, seems to have found its origin in a deeper feeling. The patriotism of a savage race is marked by features repulsive to civilised communities, but through the ruthless cruelty of the indiscriminate massacre, the treachery of the stealthy stab, and the lightly broken pledges, there may shine out the noblest virtue that a virile people can possess. A semi-barbarian nation whose manhood pours out its blood like water in stubborn resistance against ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... Prussian Minister at Dresden, to find some proper Menzel, and bestir himself. How Mahlzahn has found his Menzel, and has bestirred himself, we saw. Thief-keys were made to pattern in Berlin; first set did not fit, second did; and stealthy Menzel gains admittance to that Chamber of the Archives, can steal thither on shoes of felt when occasion serves, and copy what you wish,—for a consideration. Intermittently, since about Easter-Fair, 1753. Three persons are cognizant ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... said Lan-O; "A-Kor says that he believes that it is because their country has never been invaded by a victorious foe. In their stealthy raids never have they been defeated, because they have never waited to face a powerful force; and so they have come to believe themselves invincible, and the other peoples are held in contempt as inferior in valor and the ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... spring of the river was loud upon it, owls hooted and chuckled, now and then a fox in the thickets barked. There are many sounds in the open country at night; sounds of whirring pinions, of stealthy feet, of shrill, lone cries, of breaking twigs, of breaking ferns, of little rivulets unheard by day, of timid creatures taking courage in the dark. But to these sounds she was used; she could give a name to every one of them. She heard now ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... The frequent feast Avoid; for there, with stealthy tread Temptation walks, to lure you on, Till death, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... temptingly, at the same time slowly backing away from her. The little midget and his hatful succeeded, where big man and boys had failed. The mare came cautiously up and was about to put her nose into the cap, when Jack's stealthy and sudden effort to seize the bridle made her start sidewise away from him. But here Donald leaped forward at the other side, and caught her before she ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Fox into a small reception room, he made his way to the library door with a motion that would have reminded you of a great, stealthy cat, and called in a ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... hurry westward! In the dark of this to-night My poor soul that hastens rest-ward 'With the Lamb' will find the light; Death is coming — and I hear him, Soft and stealthy cometh he; But I do not believe I fear him, God is now so close ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... into the citadel, and might even in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall, and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... weird hoots and bubbling cries and sharp clicks came at night, the stealthy sand marching over the land, the barren slopes of the mountain, and the misshapen rock, gave one's thoughts a twist in the direction of the vague and mysterious. Wylo's continual harping on the wonderful stone renewed the old longing for ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward, Beside the wood, a Gipsy band are camped; And there they'll sleep the summer night away. By stealthy holes their ragged, brawny brood Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest Of sticks and pales to make their evening fire. Untutored things scarce brought beneath the laws And meek provisions of this ancient State. Yet is it wise, with wealth and power like hers, To let so many ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Hell itself were peace when matched with them. To trust none but those I have bought, to buy none worth trusting! To see a traitor in every smile, poison in every dish, a dagger in every hand! To lie awake at night, listening from hour to hour for the stealthy creeping of the murderer, for the laying of the damned mine! You are all spies! you are all spies! You worst of all—you, my own son! Which of you is it who hides these bloody proclamations under my own pillow, or at the table ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... Moonlighter led his men in stealthy retreat from an overwhelming force of troopers armed to the teeth. Tracks had to be covered and diversions created, and there was much hiding behind logs and in clumps of scrub; indeed, the police were only foiled at length ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... accompanied our day's excursion, was to be our guard of honor on the lonely road. A body-servant accompanied him, likewise mounted. Don Antonito rode a milk-white Cuban pony, whose gait was soft, swift, and stealthy as that of a phantom horse. His master might have carried a brimming glass in either hand, without spilling a drop, or might have played chess, or written love-letters on his back, so smoothly did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... related to kit, and the obsolete ped, basket; cf. Leaper, Chapter XV. The badger, who dealt especially in corn, was unpopular with the rural population, and it is possible that his name was given to the stealthy animal formerly called the bawson (Chapter I.), brock or gray (Chapter XXIII). That Badger is a nickname taken from the animal is chronologically improbable, as the word is first recorded in 1523 (New ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration? As I peep into George II's St. James's, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that godless old king yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing. Discoursing about what?—about righteousness and judgement? Whilst ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... speak through it or to understand its cacklings. All that might very well be assumed in order to divert suspicion, so Miss Mapp paused by the door to let any of these delinquents get deep in conversation with her friend: a soft and stealthy advance towards the room called the morning-room (a small apartment opening out of the hall, and used chiefly for the bestowal of hats and cloaks and umbrellas) would then enable her to catch one of them red-mouthed, or at any rate to overhear fragments of conversation ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... whispered back, 'Here!' but found voice for nothing further, for at that instant I heard a sound proceeding from the depths of darkness in front of me, and was so struck with terror that I fell back against the staircase, just as he passed me and entered the room from which that stealthy noise ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... companion vanished from the grasses of the pleasaunce than the pursuers emerged from the shelter of a yew screen and ran into the open, staring after the departing pair. Yet these pursuers were no stealthy enemies, but merely creatures spurred by an irresistible curiosity. One was stout and red faced and inclined to breathe hard after the fatigues of the chase. The other was slim and smooth, with ripe cheeks ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... gentleman of considerable bulk, which gave one of my learned friends, who was the first to take him in hand, the opportunity of saying, that he was a "witness of great weight," a remark which caused much laughter—even the Chairman of the Committee, a somewhat austere person, indulging in a stealthy smile at the ingenious sally. Such waggish flashes as this, I need scarcely say, were most welcome, and afforded, when they came, a pleasant relief to the necessary dryness that characterised, perforce, the proceedings. As the hands ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... to my assistance. He did not move or reply, but continued shouting and shrieking at the top of his voice. What was my horror just then to see a huge elephant, with trunk uplifted, burst out from among the trees on one side, while, at the same moment, a large lion approached with stealthy steps on the other. I gave myself up for lost, expecting to be carried off in the jaws of the lion, or trampled to death by the feet of the elephant. Toko sat immovable, with his rifle levelled at the lion's head, and just as the brute was about to make its fatal spring ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... these robins. A little before them will come two other blood-relations, Mr. and Mrs. Brownthrasher, who, notwithstanding their family connection with the high toned woodthrush and jolly, honest robin, are stealthy in their manner, and will skulk away before you as if ashamed of something. When the musical fit is on them, however, they will sing openly from the loftiest tree-top, and with a sweetness, too, that few birds ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... sooner did the Sioux behold their former prisoner, Ah-kre-nay, standing with dignified calmness at the door of his own wigwam, than their self-possession at once returned, and the whole party surrounded him in silence, casting, meanwhile, envious but stealthy looks round his romantic retreat. An aged warrior, after a due period of silence, advanced and addressed ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... since the day when Therese had gone to the Rue Saint-Victor to convey to Laurent the idea of murder. Prudence had kept them apart. Barely had they, at long intervals, ventured on a pressure of the hand, or a stealthy kiss. After the murder of Camille, they had restrained their passion, awaiting the nuptial night. This had at last arrived, and now they remained anxiously face to face, overcome ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... feature of his case that his melancholy is not of the sort which softens and refines the nature. There is no suggestion of saintliness about it. In fact, I am convinced that this long-tailed thrush has a constitutional taint of vulgarity. His stealthy, underhand manner is one mark of this, and the same thing comes out again in his music. Full of passion as his singing is (and we have hardly anything to compare with it in this regard), yet the listener cannot help smiling now and then; the very ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... demoralizing satisfaction of finding herself in possession of a sum of money which she need not put into the common fund, but could spend as she chose, without consulting Evelina, and then the excitement of her stealthy trips abroad, undertaken on the rare occasions when she could trump up a pretext for leaving the shop; since, as a rule, it was Evelina who took the bundles to the dyer's, and delivered the purchases ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... the night was dark. Thanks to the exceptionally supple nature of my hands, I succeeded in drawing the right hand out of my handcuffs, and, after an hour or so of stealthy and anxious work, I managed to unloose the cord that bound Mansing's feet. I whispered to him to get up slowly and to push the sword toward me with his foot until I could reach it. If successful in this, I could soon cut my bonds and those fastening Mansing's hands, and with a weapon in ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... side on the back seat, the old lady and the young girl remained silent, but this did not prevent them from casting stealthy glances at each other, and striving to distinguish one another's features whenever the vehicle passed in front of some brilliantly lighted shop. They had never met before, and their anxiety to become acquainted was intense, for they each felt that the other would exert a decisive influence upon ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... forth, and so will I. Sorry sight! to view Jabaster, with a stealthy step, skulk like a thing dishonoured! Oh! may the purpose consecrate the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... below, whose post I never could find. And here at last is their sentinel—an image of the constant and immortal part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx: I have climbed mountains at night to hear in the distance the stealthy footfall of the winds that chase your sands in forbidden play—our invisible children, O Sphinx, laughing in whispers. My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... antelope, sometimes called also rojh. At last my slaughterous appetite was gratified, and a blue-cow bore witness to the merit of my rifle, if not to my marksmanship. It had cost me a tiresome search, and, being a shy animal, much stealthy tracking. Yet when the beautiful creature lay stretched at my feet it seemed as if I had been guilty of wanton cruelty, and I wished my aim had miscarried, proud as I had just before been of having done execution at what looked to be an impracticably long range. Not improbably ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... in the most stealthy way, Morgan holding his fork the while as if it were a gun, and we were advancing upon ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... with dead wood, and near by was a growth of low and brittle bushes. I gathered the withered branches, and broke fagots from the bushes; then into the press of dark and stealthy forms I threw a great crooked stick, shouting as I did so, and threatening with my arms. They turned and fled, but presently they were back again. Again I frightened them away, and again they returned. I had flint and steel and tinder box; when I had scared them from ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... everywhere throughout the length and breadth of the city, who report to her each circumstance that happens, no matter how trifling,—and doubtless we were followed home,—tracked step by step as we walked together, by one of her stealthy-footed servitors,—in this ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... that evening later than usual. Towards midnight the summer silence was broken by the shuddering of a low, melancholy wind among the trees. We all felt the sudden chill in the atmosphere, but the Count was the first to notice the stealthy rising of the wind. He stopped while he was lighting my candle for me, and ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... up, showing that the owner of the pair of eyes was an Indian. Seeing that he was discovered, and that if he turned to run he would certainly be shot, the savage came forward sulkily and sat down beside the fire. Jasper asked him why he came there in that stealthy manner like a sly fox. The Indian said he was merely travelling by night, and had come on the camp unexpectedly. Not knowing who was there, he had ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... wheeled blindly and fled in terror stumbling through the swamp, hearing strange sounds and feeling stealthy creeping hands and arms and whispering voices. On he toiled in mad haste, struggling toward the road and losing it until finally beneath the shadows of a mighty oak he sank exhausted. There he lay a while trembling and at last ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the sunset,—a more or less stealthy one, it must be confessed, out of the corner of his eye. Sunsets were not ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... detection he had hung round the Wheelers night after night for a glimpse of the girl for whom he was enduring all these hardships, but without success. He became a prey to nervousness and, unable to endure the suspense any longer, determined to pay a stealthy visit to Wapping and ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... sitting on the shore near the boat. Both of you had taken a stroll, and were out of sight. I heard stealthy steps, and looking up was frightened to see Paul Lanier. He spoke very gently, begging my pardon for the intrusion. Then Paul said: 'I have heard of your trouble, Miss Webster, and came to offer my sympathy and help. Father and I will be able to render you ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... unknown universe! Lurking in the utter darkness of the scarce-fathomed deeps of the ocean, what Kraken may not lie, coil on coil; what strange black, slimy, large-eyed forms do their stealthy hunting in perpetual night by the light of phosphorescent lamps they bear upon their bodies? Many of these there are, every year teaches of new species. The land—oh! the land is all well known, even the Arctic and Antarctic regions no longer hide their secrets, but the ocean is inscrutable. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... all invitations and lived himself the life of a hermit. He was very seldom at home, the blinds were nearly always drawn, and the place looked deserted. The only sign of life was an occasional glimpse of faithful Oku, the Japanese butler, who, with downcast eyes and stealthy tread, sometimes made a sortie in search of food or other ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... his dressing gown fell away from his throat and showed the knotting of the great cords that ran down into his shoulders, and his dark eyes glittered under their heavy, black brows, while his mouth was twisted and white. Then, as I looked, something happened. A stealthy padding of feet came around the house from the garden and up the back steps, under the budding rose vine that was climbing through the trellis as if to clutch at the light, and a huge figure loomed ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that probably Andrew Zane was making stealthy visits to Agnes, and we applied a test to her. To our astonishment we found she had only seen him once since the murder, and that was the night the bodies ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... so killed, as 'twere by stealthy blow, Chelindo viewed, to avenge his brother slain, He charged, intent the prince to overthrow; But he seized fast his courser by the rein, And, thence to rise not, laid the charger low, Destined no more to feed on hay or grain; For at one stroke, so matchless was his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... With a stealthy step he entered, Round the lodge in wild disorder Threw the household things about him, Piled together in confusion Bowls of wood and earthen kettles, Robes of buffalo and beaver, Skins of otter, lynx, and ermine, As an insult to Nokomis, As a ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... work in Joan that day, nothing but troubled speculation on what form Hector Hall's revenge would take, and when the stealthy blow of his resentment would fall. Try as he would, Mackenzie could not fasten her mind upon the books. She would begin with a brave resolution, only to wander away, the book closed presently upon her thumb, her eyes searching the hazy hills where ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... nor hurry of engines, nor whisper of the cyclist's wheel, nor foot upon a road, to overcome that light but resounding note. Silent are feet on the grassy brink, like the innocent, stealthy soles of the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... stir near at hand caused Emsden to turn his head. Just above him, on a rugged slope where no trees grew save a scraggy cedar here and there amidst the shelving ledges of rock outcropping through the soft verdant turf, he saw a stealthy, furtive shape; he was aware of a hasty cowed glance over the shoulder, and then a stretching of supple limbs in flight. Before he himself hardly knew it the sharp crack of his rifle rang out,—the aim was ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... bed, but he did not sleep. He lay in the berth in the darkness, listening intently as the train rushed out of Paris across the plains of France. Once or twice, as the hours passed, he heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor outside, and once the faintest possible little click told that the latch of his door had been lifted to make sure that the bolt was still shot home ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... tried to thank them all. It was noticed that the smile did not give way even to the tears, although it was tinged with a pathetic expression that proved wonderfully affecting. He concealed the offerings with a stealthy motion, as if ashamed of his weakness in accepting them, and then hurried away ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... made a slight noise, which caught Robertson's quick ear, as he lay on his buffalo-hide pallet. Jumping up he saw the gate open, and dusky figures gliding into the yard with stealthy swiftness. At his cry of "Indians," and the report of his piece, the settlers sprang up, every man grasping the loaded arm by which he slept. From each log cabin the rifles cracked and flashed; and though the Indians were actually in the yard they had no cover, and the sudden and unexpected ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... dome sublime From golden censers in the hands of Time— Where through the smoke some sculptured saint appears Crowned with the glories of historic years; Before whose shrine whole races tell their beads— From whose pale front each sordid thought recedes, Gliding away like white and stealthy ghost, As Memory rears it's consecrated Host, As blood and body of a sacred name Make the last ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... is always made from behind, partaking of the stealthy treacherous character of his tribe; if a herd of animals, or a party of men be passing, it is the last that is always the object of his attack. When he has made choice of his victim, he springs upon the neck, and placing one paw upon ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... was laden with omens of war. The air seemed charged with the acrid smell of burnt powder. The muffled beat of drums, the smothered boom of artillery, the subdued clash of steel meeting steel, the stealthy tramp of armed men, seemed to ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... pleasure, she spoke to him in Russian, or some language Paul knew not, a fierce gleam in her eyes. Dmitry abased himself almost to the floor, and departing quickly, returned with sticks and lit a blazing pine-log fire in the open grate. Then he threw some powder into it, and with stealthy haste drew all the orchid-silk curtains, and departed from the room. A strange divine scent presently rose in the air, and over Paul seemed to steal a spell. The lady crept still nearer, and then with infinite sweetness, all her docility of the ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... it had not overtaken me, for it would have undoubtedly seized me, under such circumstances, with as little ceremony as it would the deer, and have as quickly disposed of me. In the excitement of the chase I should probably not have heard its stealthy approach, and I shuddered as I thought of the narrow escape I had had. Still, I was not quite certain that I was safe. I watched anxiously for what was going to occur. The poor deer did not attempt to escape, but, trembling in every limb, looked at the boa ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... all were well, and if their coming would make any inconvenience. Then the telegram to Bannan, and the arrival, to find him awaiting them with the best horse the stable afforded; and, finally, their stealthy entrance at the back door. All had been triumphantly successful, and as Rita told her story, she laughed and clapped her hands with the glee of a child, while every face ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... together in the furnace. When they were thoroughly baked, and life had been breathed into them, hallowed Truth moved on with modest gait; but her imperfect copy remained fixed on the spot. Thence the spurious image, the result of the stealthy work, was called Mendacity,[4] because they say, she has no feet,—an assertion with which I ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... this that a stealthy step was heard on the gravel path and Phoebe hurried to the door. Copernicus came in with a low word of greeting and followed the ghostly shadow of his hostess ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... passed through the whole room with her slow, stealthy tread, let the light fall upon every article of furniture and the floor, examined all the objects that lay upon the table, and then, after one last threatening look at the beds of the two ladies, went slowly out. She stopped again at the cribs of the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... died out upon the hearth—she entered cautiously, and after glancing through the shaded porch began to dress. She had donned her clothing and taken up her shoes preparatory to going back to the shelter of the cornfield, when she thought she heard a stealthy footstep on the porch. Her heart stood still with terror. She listened breathlessly. It came again. There was no doubt of it now—a slow, stealthy step! A board creaked, and then all was still. Again! Thank God it was a bare foot! Her heart took ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... breakfast? She sniffed the air. "I think I can smell ham and cornbread," she said aloud, and laughed, partly at the absurdity of her fancy, chiefly at the idea of such attractive food. She aggravated her hunger by letting her imagination loose upon the glorious possibilities. A stealthy fluttering brought her glance back to the point where the hen had disappeared. The hen reappeared, hastened down the path and through the weeds, and rejoined the flock in the yard with an air which seemed to say, "No, indeed, I've been right here ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and, while talking in low tones, did not for a moment forget their surroundings. They had lived too long in the perilous wilderness to forget that there was never a moment when a pioneer was absolutely safe from the fierce or stealthy red man. ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too, becomes a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, and sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends' kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore the patience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face, when, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... walls. He had been shot and nearly killed by a bandit, gored by a bull, dragged by a frightened horse, and bitten by a bear. Upon one lonely excursion far from any settlement, he had been followed by a huge, stealthy, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... a wonder, had ceased—for breath, perhaps—and sat speechless and startled, for noiseless and stealthy as a cat, with long strides, 'Tonio had skirted the edge of the veranda, and with agile spring was at the back of Lilian's chair. There he swooped instantly. There was sound of strident, rasping sk-r-r-r-rr: then a lightning snap, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... woods concealing our approach. Beyond that we dared not proceed, as the country was so open that we might easily have been seen had we made the attempt. The band, accordingly, here left their horses under charge of five of their number, and as soon as it was dusk they commenced their stealthy approach to the camp. Sigenok and another young and active Indian undertook to look after me. Not a word was spoken after we set out—not a leaf was moved, scarcely a blade of grass was uselessly pressed down. On ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... sassafras leaves from the bushes beside the way. From the ditch on the left a brown toad hopped slowly into the dust of the road. On the worm-eaten rails of the fence, on the other side, a gray lizard glided swiftly like a stealthy shadow of the leaves of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... suddenly through unsuspected gates and alleys; ponderous stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the glittering waves. There was life and motion everywhere, and yet everywhere there was a hush, a stealthy sort of stillness, that was suggestive of secret enterprises of bravoes and of lovers; and clad half in moonbeams and half in mysterious shadows, the grim old mansions of the Republic seemed to have an expression about them of having an eye out for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ethel stared at them from under her pillow with amazement. At first they stood motionless beside the door. Then, closing it noiselessly, they advanced into the room. Their quaint clothes, long pigtails and red eyes together with their stealthy movements and the hour of midnight, created an uncanny atmosphere in the room, and for the first time in her life Ethel began to understand what nerves mean. Never in her life had her pulses jumped and throbbed as they were doing now. She controlled her inclination ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... instantly from the land of dreams to the stern reality that the dusky imp outside has himself dropped off to sleep. A pardonable imprecation, delivered in loud, threatening tones; or, in the case of a person vengefully inclined, or once too often made a victim, a stealthy visit to the open door, a well-aimed boot, and the pendulous punkah again swings to and fro, banishing the newly awakened prickly heat, and fanning the recumbent figure on the charpoy with grateful breezes that quickly send him off to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... clock can strike thirteen. He did not fall asleep again, but he lay in his bed, listening. There was a peculiar ticking noise in the sitting-room, and then a loud bang, as if a piece of furniture had cracked. Directly afterwards he heard stealthy footsteps, and then the clock began to strike again; and it struck and struck, fifty times—a hundred times. It really ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... the coffin was carried down the long winding path above the deep-water reach, where Michael and Francis at Christmas had heard the sound of stealthy rowing, and on to the boat that awaited it to ferry it across to the church. There was high tide, and, as they passed over the estuary, the stillness of supreme noon bore to them the tolling of the bell. The mourners from the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... eyes that night, nor did Mr. Linton: indeed, we never went to bed; and the servants were all up long before the usual hour, moving through the house with stealthy tread, and exchanging whispers as they encountered each other in their vocations. Every one was active but Miss Isabella; and they began to remark how sound she slept: her brother, too, asked if she had risen, and seemed impatient for her presence, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... over into the highway. But he did not see a female form flitting furtively from the negro-quarters in the rear, toward the house; and a shade of suspicion might have crossed his mind, had he glanced back a moment later and beheld that form approach the lighted window with stealthy, cautious steps, and peer long and intently through the partially drawn curtains upon the scene within, then, stooping low, glide along the moonlit wall and disappear beneath the short flight of wooden steps that led ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... laid a scheme to be wealthy, By means that were cunning or stealthy; But we always had the bliss— And what further could we wiss?— To be pleased with ourselves, and be healthy; But we always ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... O my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep; My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn. Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep The stealthy silver moccasins of morn. There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light; It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world; And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night Back in ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... I fancied I did feel something more than the governor's plain initials. There was still a light in the hall. If I could but bring that spoon within its illumination! All was silent; and I ventured to descend step after step—not as I had bounded up, but with the stealthy pace of a thief, and the plate growing heavier and heavier in my pocket. At length I was near enough to see, in spite of a dimness that had gathered over my eyes; and, with a sensation of absolute faintness, I beheld upon the spoon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... once more in his stealthy fashion, and took from the mantelpiece a small bottle of nerve-tabloids which he had forgotten, and slipped them into his pocket, and then went out into the dark again. Once he paused at the entrance of the corridor and listened attentively, and then crept down the garden path ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... woman, made objects barely visible in the room. This done, he shuffled his feet slightly to apprise the half-conscious guardian of the ominous house that he was obeying her orders, and vanished in the rear darkness. The dead hush of sleep now reigned over the place. So it seemed, but the stealthy Pepillo was wide awake. He remained motionless, breathless, hidden in the gloom of the second cabin. At length he reappeared, took up the candle, stood awhile listening, then moved cautiously to the edge of the counter, behind which the woman slept in ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
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