"Watcher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the jam of the drive reached the dam at Redding. Orde took Carroll downtown in the buckboard. There a seat by the dam-watcher's little house was given her, back of the brick factory buildings next the power canal, whence for hours she watched the slow onward movement of the sullen brown timbers, the smooth, polished-steel rush of the waters through the chute, the graceful certain ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the unrisen sun shimmered above the mountain ranges of the horizon, and streamed toward the zenith in a panoply of harmonious hues, colorful promise of the May morning's joyous mood. Of a sudden, under the soothing influence, the watcher became listener as well. His ears noted with delight the glad singing of the birds in the wood around about. His glance caught the white gleam of the tiny belled blossoms that clustered on a crooked sour-wood ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... god Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said, Death is too rude, too obvious a key To solve one single secret in a ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... as if he were used to it. In a few minutes the watcher below could barely make him out ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... into the court and Matthew was there the moment the horses stopped. The Director was there, too; not to lose any time and yet not be tardy, he had put a watcher at the door to let him know when the carriage was approaching. The Director was very polite and lifted his cousin out of the carriage, greeting her heartily. Then he helped Miss Grideelen to dismount, thanking her warmly for coming. He told her how glad he was that she had been willing to ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... herself at the thought of the fair watcher, the inn door opened, and a waiting-woman entered carrying a small box. As she approached Jasmine she bowed low, and with ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... that he might interrupt the flow of her speech as little as possible. When he returned along this road, he would come alone and for the last time, and so, that his memory of her might be full, he would be no more than her auditor and watcher. Just to have her by his side, her arm in his, and hear her ... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... down the field and back again, near the watcher. Suddenly the bright thing dropped, reaching the ground before it was discovered. Three or four crows swooped upon it, and a lively scrimmage began for its possession. In the midst of the struggle a small crow shot under the contestants, and before they ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the asscension of our Lord, tombs have opened, and the dead come forth alive; how Faith and Justice will triumph in the end; how you can't bury 'em deep enough, or roll a stun big enough and hard enough before the door, but what, in some calm mornin', the earliest watcher shall see a tall, fair angel standin' where the dead has lain, bearin' the message of the risen Lord, "He ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... fire of affliction, beats now for all humanity. Hearts whose love and gratitude God has given me the power to win, say, out of the fulness of their love for me, that a ministering angel is among them in woman's guise; that no hand is half so lavish in its gifts, no heart so full of sympathy, no watcher's form so constant beside the couch of pain. The sick follow me with murmured prayer and blessing; and wounded soldiers turn to kiss my shadow as I pass. Yet ever as the twilight falls I steal away to listen to the night wind's moaning, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... watcher's sight, Baring her bosom to the wanton sea, The lordly ship sweeps onward in her might, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... been to the undertaker, and was now upon his way to another officer in the train of mourning—a female functionary, a nurse, and watcher, and performer of nameless offices about the persons of the dead—whom he had recommended. Her name, as Mr Pecksniff gathered from a scrap of writing in his hand, was Gamp; her residence in Kingsgate Street, High ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... house the night dragged along slowly to the grim watcher, and the man huddled in the corner stirred uneasily and babbled, ofttimes crying out in horror at the vivid dreams of his disordered mind. Pacing ceaselessly from window to window, crack to crack, when the moon came up, Mr. Connors ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... silence, hiding hard your folly; soon shall you loosen the flood-gates of his speech; and society will even thank you for it; for, bore as the chatterer may oft-times be, still he does the frank companion's duty; and at any rate is vastly preferable to the dull, unwarmed, unsympathetic watcher at the festal board, who sits there to exhibit his painted waistcoat instead of the heart that should be in it, and patiently waits, with a snakish eye and a bitter tongue, to aid conversation ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... they know about it who talk of something else beyond? It is for the ignorant, common people that a future life has been invented, but who really believes in it? What watcher in the cemetery has seen Death leave his tomb and hold consultation with a priest? In olden times there were fantoms; they are interdicted by the police in civilized cities and no cries are now heard issuing from the earth except from those buried in haste. Who has ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Spring where you may find the Spirits that you seek; but I too, like her, will give a gift to aid you. Take this sunbeam from my crown; it will cheer and brighten the most gloomy path through which you pass. Farewell! I shall carry tidings of you to the watcher by the sea, if in my journey round the world I ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... got to set down," and the watcher squatted upon the floor, bracing against the wall. His dulling perceptions were sufficiently acute to detect shuffling footsteps on the porch and the ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... near to the watcher, that he could hear the pretty, eager, flaxen-haired, savage-faced little woman muttering to herself as she scraped and shovelled. He could, after a fashion, speak the Taal, and knew her more distinct ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... destiny," few are those who pass the venerable site of the first colony in Virginia, Jamestown, without paying a tribute of a sigh, and perchance a tear, to that solitary tower which is still standing a mute watcher amid the few almost illegible tombs,—all that are left of a busy population long departed;—the germ, however, of a great nation, whose name is even now ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... he became more himself. His loneliness did not strike him so keenly. He felt that after all there was great satisfaction to be drawn from a watcher's observance of men. Isolated as he was he was enabled to look on men and things more critically than he otherwise ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... moment, and its close connection with this newly-made acquaintance. Instinctively she turned towards Ron, and the two pairs of brown eyes met, and flashed a message of mischief, affection, and secret understanding—a glance which made the watcher sigh with a sudden realisation of his own lost youth, his bald head, and increasing bulk. They were only a pair of children, these newcomers; kindly, affectionate, light-hearted children, whose companionship would be a tonic to a lonely, tired man. The broad cherubic ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... gulf in the relative ages of brothers and sisters. You have only to figure it out in the case of Rosalie to realise how far behind she was always left, and why, though one of a family of six, she occupied a position outside the group and was a watcher of them rather than a sharer with them. She was four when Robert the next above her was ten, which is a baby against a sturdy and well-developed giant; when she was eight Robert was fourteen, which is a greater gulf than the first; when she was twelve Robert ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... around him was very still, too. Freddy could hear the plash of the waves on the beach, the rustle of the wind through the dwarf trees, the whir of wings as some sea bird took its swift flight above the broken roof. But within there was a solemn hush, that to the small watcher seemed quite appalling. ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... kettle-watcher, the place no longer held him: he could be a whiner, he clomb into every nook: their conflict was his bane, as he the penalty must pay; and the day sad, when he must from the swine die, from all good things, which he ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... resting almost doubled over with his head on pillows before him, either slumber or exhaustion, so still, that his mother had yielded to urgent persuasion, and lain down in the next room to sleep in the dreamless repose of the overworn watcher. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Gulwings' messenger, watching him covertly from behind a newspaper over on the far side of the lobby, that the plan had failed. The signal he had so confidently expected to give—a trick of relighting his cigar and flipping the match into the air—would have conveyed to the watcher the information that all augured well. The latter's job then would have been to get up from his chair and step outside and bear the word to Sig Gulwing, who, letter-perfect in the part of the conspiring telegraph manager, would promptly enter and present himself to Marr, and by Marr be ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... islands have I been, Which bards, in fealty to Apollo, hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold; Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... staircase which leads to the triforium a small chamber has been constructed in the thickness of the wall, lighted by two loop-holes, one of which looks towards the altar, the other across the church. This has been supposed to be a penitential cell for disobedient Templars, but it was more probably a watcher's chamber, used as a safeguard against possible theft. The three altars seem to have been at first entirely open to the body of the church, the idea being that the whole building was a chancel or choir. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the space ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... pillows with a smile of deep content, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again Ida had gone, and Mrs. Burleigh had taken her place as watcher. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... these proceedings; and presently Two-Eyes came and awoke her, saying, "Ah, sister! you are a good watcher, but come, let us go home now." When they reached home Two-Eyes again ate nothing; and her sister told her mother she knew now why the haughty hussy would not eat their victuals. "When she is out in the meadow," said her ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... from youth to age with a host of happy, tender associations; the pipes playing in one of the fishing-boats; the reel danced on board an attendant steamer; the bonfires on the coast—nothing was too trivial to escape the interested watcher, or was lost upon her, Queen ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... its solemn responsibilities still met him; its earnest duties still confronted him, and, though he sometimes felt like a weary watcher at the gates of death, longing to catch a glimpse of her shining robes and the radiant light of her glorified face, yet her knew it was his work ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Greek mythology a daughter of INACHOS (q. v.), beloved by Zeus, whom Hera out of jealousy changed into a heifer and set the hundred-eyed Argus to watch, but when Zeus had by Hermes slain the watcher, Hera sent a gadfly to goad over the world, over which she ranged distractedly till she reached Egypt, where Osiris married her, and was in connection ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... all. For she knew that the next step must be the last step in her old life, and towards a new life, whatever that might be. A great sigh of relief broke from her as she heard his door open and shut, and silence fell on everything, that palpable silence which seems to press upon the night-watcher with merciless, smothering weight. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which hung loose upon the muscular frame, to be convinced of the cruel fact. Here, abandoned and alone, lay the master of the house, with nothing better than a pair of spaniels for his companions, and neither nurse nor watcher, wife nor friend, to help him towards recovery, or to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... favorite dogs, Wotan and Mark, burst through the bushes that surround the grave and joined the mourners. One of these pets is buried near him, and on the slab is the inscription: "Here lies in peace Wahnfried's faithful watcher and friend—the good ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... and the dread of the watcher changed to another feeling as he saw distinctly one of the outer doors of the residence open and Daisy Fern's form come out. Without glancing to the right or the left she walked in the direction where the negro was waiting. For an instant, overcome by his ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... her close to her heart and began crooning so sweetly that Owen was enraptured more than ever. Here was a revelation, and it had come upon him as suddenly as a shooting star bursts upon the vision of the night watcher, and goes swiftly speeding down the heavens amid the spangled hosts of ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... past noon, and the members of the Junta, for such did the assembly style itself, were beginning to wax impatient for the arrival of the Count, without whom the business for which they had met could not be proceeded with, when the watcher upon the hill gave the concerted signal by waving his cap in the air, uttering at the same time one of those far-sounding cries, peculiar to the inhabitants of mountainous regions. Upon this announcement, the Carlists ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... made any outcry "Brownie" failed to hear it, but apparently he had, for Phil was turning now and hurrying back with short, quick strokes. But before he had covered half the distance separating him from the other, the watcher on shore uttered an involuntary cry of alarm. Joe was ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... within every one else—there is a dual personality: not a good and a bad, as is so often shallowly said; but one that does, and another that watches. The doer seems to me to be myself; the watcher, he who stands, like an idler at the rail of a bridge, carelessly, even indifferently, observing the tide of my thought and action that flows beneath,—who is he? I do not know. But I do know that I have no control over him,—over his cynical smile, or his lip curling in good-natured ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... her, she did not know what, but this little watcher's sleep was always of the lightest, and she had not long fallen asleep, her eyelashes still wet with tears for Angelot. The window creaked as she opened it, leaning out ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... till his gaze plunged into one of those abysms of blackness where no star shines, and the ghastliness of the distance suggested flooded in upon him. This lost and shivering sensation, when the world itself seems to shrink away and send the watcher spinning into the void, is vouchsafed to the astronomer only at rare moments, and from it an escape is offered by exact and intricate calculations. Even figures that climb into the millions, incomprehensible as they may be, offer some consolation ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... up betimes, and deferring his visit to Duncan's friends until he had seen the trunks removed, he made his way again to the express office and took up his position as a watcher. ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... all the servants out of the sick-room and constituted herself nurse, watcher, and chambermaid, if she lay down at all it was only after leaving a substitute charged to call her upon the slightest occasion. Light and quick of step, strong and gentle of hand, patient, tireless, and tender, she showed herself an angel of ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... evening watch. Many curious quadruped birds, about the size of large bears, and similar in shape, having bear-shaped heads, and several creatures that looked like the dragons, flew about them in the moonlight; but neither watcher fired a shot, as the creatures showed no desire to make an attack. All these species seemed to belong to the owl or bat tribe, for they roamed abroad ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... he suddenly came, the watcher, had there been one, would have looked at him expectantly, for an eagle, bristling with weapons, so to speak, fierce-eyed, mighty, and scowling, came flapping heavily across the white-fretted bay. There is expression in birds, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... vision a carriage, drawn by two dripping, sorry-looking nags, drew up under the slight shelter of an elm-tree about fifty yards away from the house. From it emerged eight fellows in rain-coats, while the tall, long-nosed watcher whom Neil had seen at the corner joined them and made his report. The group looked toward Livingston's window and Neil ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and their rugged litheness. Fairer, all, were the rest, paler of skin, more loose of muscle, shown by the very way they bent to their work. Their garments, too, as they drew nearer brought a smile to the watcher's lips, a smile of memory. Those coats, brave in their gilt braid, had assuredly come across seas. Thus might one behold them ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... nod and smile back. Then that happened on which she had counted. The stranger came up into the path, and without seeing the watcher, ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... come thick and fast from the grim watcher on the rocks above, and troop after troop of Mounted Infantry go scouring away to the attack. It is a running fight. Kopje after kopje, as the Boers push on, breaks into fire and is left extinct behind. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... the foolish warrior who travels in the day. The wise one knows that war-parties may be out, or that some camp watcher sitting on a hill may see him far off and may try to kill him. Mika'pi was not one of these foolish persons. He was brave and cautious, and he had powerful helpers. Some have said that he was helped by the ghosts. When he started to war against ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher in the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... had, by some fiendish trick, succeeded in overcoming his powerful watcher, and he was now removing all trace of the body, preparatory to his own flight to the ends of ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... addressed to the captive herself, but to him who watches outside. After an interchange of ordinary salutation, and an inquiry by the watcher as to what is wanted—this evidently in tone of surprise—the soft voice responds, "I want to speak ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... extent of making him wish that he really could have been the desperado McEachern fancied him. Never in his life before had he sat still under a challenge, and this espionage had been one. Behind the clumsy watcher, he had seen always the self-satisfied figure of McEachern. If there had been anything subtle about the man from Dodson's, he could have forgiven him; but there was not. Years of practise had left Spike with a sort of sixth sense as regarded representatives of the law. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... discovery. The letters might prove a great deal; for the moment he was obliged to leave them unread, since his time might prove to be very short. Down he went, light out, pausing in the big living-room to listen for some sound from the watcher ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... and precious in spite of the cloud in the east. Why then, I asked, not go back on another morning, when I would have the whole place to myself? If a cloud did not matter much it would matter still less that it was not the day of the year when the red disc flames on the watcher's sight directly over that outstanding stone and casts first a shadow then a ray of light on the altar. In the end I did not say good-bye to the village on that day, but settled down to listen to the tales of my landlady, or rather to another instalment of her life-story and to further chapters ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... of the upstart king of Thebes. Till the arrival of Agamemnon, they occupy our attention, as the prophetic organ, not commissioned indeed but employed by heaven, to proclaim the impending horrors. Succeeding to the brief intimation of the watcher who opens the play, they seem oppressed with forebodings of woe and crime which they can neither justify nor analyse. The expression of their anxiety forms the stream in which the plot flows—every thing, even news of joy, takes a colouring ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... keen eyes picked up the ship flying at a considerable altitude far in the east. For a few seconds he watched it speeding evenly eastward, when, to his horror, he saw the speck dive suddenly downward. The fall seemed interminable to the watcher and he realized how great must have been the altitude of the plane before the drop commenced. Just before it disappeared from sight its downward momentum appeared to abate suddenly, but it was still moving rapidly at a steep angle when it finally ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... luck, or the good heart that the colonel put into his friend's customers, the results were always the same. Singular as it may seem, his cheery word just at the right time tided over the critical moment many an uncertain watcher at the "ticker," often to an enlargement of his bank account. Nor would he allow any one to pay him for any service of this kind, even though he had spent days engrossed in ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... prowess in the battle-field, who had, in his old age, become a monk. When this man went to take up his abode upon the mountains, his only son (for he had formerly lived as a married man in the world) would on no account leave him, but lived there also, assisting his father in his duties as watcher, and in the exercises of prayer and penitence, fully equalling the example that was now afforded him as he had formerly done his ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... up to burn brightly, and Jomar, as before, lay fast asleep beside it; but between Helgi and the blaze stood the old seer and the hooded and cloaked form of a woman. Her face was hidden, but her back, the watcher thought, promised well. She was tall, and seemed young, and her movements, as she held out her hands to the flames, or half turned to address the old man, had grace and the marks of good birth. They talked so ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... the river with an odd jerking movement, which the steersman soon corrected. And a man who had been watching on the bridge half a mile farther down the river hurried into the town. A second watcher at an open window in the tall house next to the Posada de los Reyes on the Paseo del Ebro closed his ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... in peaceful and innocent slumber. Mrs. Browning understood this well, when she wrote her beautiful poem interpreting the thoughts of "the Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus." Hopes and fears, joy and pity, are alternately stirred in the heart of the watcher, as she bends over the tiny face, scanning every change that flits across it. Each verse suggests ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... dooryard and the Palace Street beyond. The street was lit by torches, and people were going to the ball in coaches and chariots, on foot and in painted chairs. They went gayly, light of heart, fine of person, a free and generous folk. Laughter floated over to the silent watcher, and the torchlight gave her glimpses of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... dying embers, still she listened. The red embers faded into white, the dark forest with its sunny glades and long retreating vistas, the hills, and rocks, and clouds, and waterfalls, that had risen among them at the watcher's will, changed to dull grey ashes, and the dim dawn of the summer morning, gleamed in at last upon the weary sleeper. The baby still nestled in her arms, the golden hair of the child gleaming among the dark curls of the elder sister as their cheeks lay close together. Graeme moaned and murmured ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... the pleasant curves and dimples of mouth and chin had hardened into a sort of determination; even her slight, graceful figure seemed to assume a certain squareness which betokened her resolve to act as her lover would have acted were he the watcher from the ship and she the prisoner pent behind that screen of rock and ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Nelson, so zealous a watcher Through months-long of cruizing, Thy foes may elide thee a moment, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... smile, would have given a very different impression of my qualities. I have been thus liberal in my confessions, in order that parents may see that their duties do not terminate where those of the schoolmaster begin; that the schoolmaster himself must be taken to task, and the watcher watched. I had been placed in one of the first boarding-schools near town; a most liberal stipend had been paid with me; I had every description of master; yet, after all this outlay of money, which is not dross—and waste of time, which is beyond ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... old Ephraim had watched the last of the merry-makers vanish through the gateway, even gray haired Hans and Griselda joining their fellow employees on this trip to the circus. The watcher's disappointment was almost more than he could bear. His love of junketing was like a child's and for many days, as he drove his bays about the countryside, he had gloated over the brilliant posters which heralded the coming of "The Greatest Show on Earth." He had even invited Aunt Malinda ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... and the wall-like edge of the shower could be seen moving rapidly away before the wind. The tars on the "Constitution" watched eagerly to see the British fleet appear. Farther and farther receded the gray curtain, and yet no ships could be seen. "Where are they?" was the thought of every eager watcher on the deck of the "Constitution." At last they appeared, so far in the distance as to be practically out of the chase. Two were even hull down; while one was barely visible, a mere ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... The hills tumble this way and that; below is the great weald of Sussex, blue with vapour, spotted with gold fields, level as a landscape by Hobbema; Chanctonbury Ring stands up like a gaunt watcher; its crown of trees is pressed upon its brow, ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... near the rice fields, and in this someone watches every day during the growing season to see that nothing breaks in to destroy the grain. Often flappers are placed in different parts of the field and a connecting string leads from these to the little house, so that the watcher by pulling this string may frighten the birds away ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... or bankruptcy the situation is much more intense. Every mouse hole has its alert whiskered watcher, and after a delay of a few days for decency, such pressure is brought to bear that surviving relatives rarely have the courage to stand pat. Probably a change of surroundings is ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... corners. The search was apparently fruitless, for presently he crammed the papers back into the drawers with the same feverish haste, and, walking rapidly across the room, passed out of the view of the watcher on the other side, for the picture which hung on the inside wall prevented Colwyn seeing beyond the foot of the bed. Although the innkeeper could not now be seen, the sound of his stealthy quick movements, and the flickering lights cast ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... attention?" said the rough voice of a workman, carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of Providence saying to the watcher: "What are you meddling with? Think of your own duty; and leave these Parisians ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... sound of shell and drum, While many mourners bow in silent grief, And widows, orphans raise a loud lament As for a father, a protector lost; And as the flames lick up the fragrant oils, And whirl and hiss around that wasting form, An eager watcher from a better world Welcomes her husband to her open arms, The cumbrous load of pomp and power cast off, While waiting devas and the happy throng His power protected and his bounty blessed With joy conduct his unaccustomed steps ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... any unseen watcher he presented the appearance of a man not impressed by stage settings. After all he was now in the seller's space boots, and it ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... on yon lettered stone? whose ashes rest beneath? That thus you come with flowers to deck the mournful home of death; And thou—why darkens so thy brow with grief's untimely gloom? Thou art fitter for a bride than for a watcher by the tomb! ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... shepherd's hut, far up the heights, which the smoke of battle could not reach, and where the din of deadly strife came almost softly, like the muttering of distant thunder, a young woman sat on the edge of a couch gazing wistfully at the beautiful countenance of a dead girl. The watcher was so very pale, wan, and haggard, that, but for her attitude and the motion of her great dark eyes, she also might have been mistaken for one of the dead. It was Marika, who escaped with only a slight flesh-wound ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... too, when he came into the room, was too much taken up with what he realized to be the perils of his case to observe the little watcher in the corner, though he walked past her so close that his coat brushed her shoulder, sending along her nerves, like a faint electric shock, a sensation so novel and so exquisite that it made her suddenly close her eyes to steady ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... disrupted. Three great bulbs were now drifting. The wind was carrying them out toward the bay. They were coming down in a long, smooth descent. The plane shot like a winged rocket at the fourth great, shining ball. To the watcher, aghast with sudden hope, it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feet Haunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind, Art thou a watcher stealing to entreat Prayer and ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... o'clock signs of life next door appeared to the anxious watcher in the Lathrop kitchen window, and one minute later she was on her way across. She found the front door, which was commonly open, to be uncommonly shut, and was forced to rap loudly and wait lengthily ere the survivor of the Fire-Sale came to ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... was in his place, and in another moment a long whoop came ringing down the glen, and the shrill yelping rally of the hounds as they all opened on a view together! Fiercer and wilder grew the hubbub! And now the eager watcher might hear the brushwood torn in all directions by the impetuous passage of the wild ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... nations bear no trace Of all the sunshine so far foretold; The cannon speaks in the teacher's place; The age is weary with work and gold; And high hopes wither, and memories wane; On hearths and altars the fires are dead; But that brave faith hath not lived in vain; And this is all that our watcher said. ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... author, as the chief factor in the domestic drama,—yet most of all it pleases me to remember him as he appeared when under the spell of the prairies he loved so well. Tramping the fields in search of prairie-chicken or quail, a patient watcher in the rushes of a duck-pond, or merely lying flat on his back in the sunshine,—he was a being transformed. For he had in him much of the primitive man and his whole nature responded to the "call of the wild." But ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... and takes his place as a watcher. There is nothing to do but administer a few drops of medicine every half-hour. The evening is warm and he sits by the open window, trying not to think, telling himself that in honor he has no right to for ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not. Oblivious equally of Byrd and of her more distant watchers, the English girl passed from "Hunt the Slipper" to "A Cold and Frosty Morning," and from that to story-telling, as absorbed as her small companions, or as her watcher-in-chief. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... the watcher stole downstairs, feeling as if he must for at least a few moments get into the outer world. His eyes were heavy with his vigil, yet there was no sleep behind them, and he could not bear to be long away lest a change come suddenly. The old man had not ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... emotions. He turned up the light, adjusted his tie and smoothed his hair before the mirror over the mantelpiece, and ran upstairs to the drawing-room. Outside the door he paused, looking now like the expectant watcher on the platform. Faintly he heard Ellen Berstoun's voice, and the same look came into his eyes as when he caught the distant roaring of the train. He straightened his neck, banished all expression from his face as a soldier ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... have no watcher in his bedroom, though; she was determined to do everything but turn him an' lift him herself, but there was al'ays one or two settin' round to keep the fires goin' an' make sure there was enough cooked up. I swan, I never see a woman so happy ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... musings, up in the light watcher's bunk, underneath the lantern, as, smoking a pipe of rest, he listened complacently to the hissing ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires. This blessing of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple, direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there are of a hard and terrible kind. [Footnote: ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... darkness. Here he paused and looked down upon the strange scene below. Hundreds of camp-fires, large and small, emitted their fitful ruddy glow, while beyond, the lights of a score of anchored ships were reflected in the wind-ruffled water. A murmur of many voices drifted up to the silent watcher on the brow of the hill, mingled with shrill cries of children, and the sound of beating hammers, as weary men worked ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... went by. Whatever pangs of remorse, whatever longing she endured, she remained faithful to the resolution that she would not give way to temptation again. But every night brought the lonely watcher to ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... oppressive. Two watched while the other two slept. John appeared in his element. At the least sign of disturbance in any quarter, his hand was up, and to further attract attention his hand would be laid upon the arm of his fellow watcher. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... Kings had given a hall-watch, As men heard recounted: for the king of the Danemen He did special service, gave the giant a watcher: And the prince of the ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... and those who did, without noting, the sorrowing woman, who, leaning against a bale of goods, with one hand shading her eyes, and the other pressed hard upon her heart, watching the receding boat, until it turned a bend in the river, and was hidden from her sight. Yet no watcher borne away upon the boat, nor any sorrowing one left upon the shore, turned away, as the last traces of the loved ones faded, with a heavier heart, or a feeling of such utter loneliness as did poor Hasty. Despairingly, she ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... his little stick above his head. A boy should always protect a girl, his father had often said, so he was not going to let the beast harm his tiny sister. The panther crouched lower. The watcher in the bushes saw the powerful limbs gathering under the spotted body for the fatal spring. Every muscle and sinew was tense for the last rush and leap, as the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... locked. Fearful lest the grating of the knob should have roused some watcher, he ran down the steps and hurried into the shadow of the banquet hall, where he stood close beside a pillar until he satisfied himself of the objects in the court beyond. He saw an edge of light along the crack of a closed door to the left on the ground floor of the selamlik, and ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... change. Just at first it was hardly noticeable. But it swiftly developed, and the shrewd mind of the watcher in the hills realized that the days of halcyon were passing all too swiftly. Men were no longer satisfied ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... for example, than as a constant watcher for the dawn, and for the London mail that in summer months entered about dawn into the lawny thickets of Marlborough Forest, couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have become known to myself? Yet Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and person that perhaps in my whole life I have ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Watcher? In the book of the dissertation that is explained from this passage, 1 Sam. xxviii. 16, "And ...
— Hebrew Literature
... not what, I lay still and simulated heavy breathing; for it was evident to me that I must be partly visible to the watcher, so bright was the night. For ten—twenty—thirty seconds he studied me in absolute silence, that gaunt thing so like a mummy; and, my eyes partly closed, I watched him, breathing heavily all the time. Then making no more noise than ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... all that Margaret could do was to prevail upon him to rest on the drawing-room sofa. Dixon stoutly and bluntly refused to go to bed; and, as for Margaret, it was simply impossible that she should leave her mother, let all the doctors in the world speak of 'husbanding resources,' and 'one watcher only being required.' So, Dixon sat, and stared, and winked, and drooped, and picked herself up again with a jerk, and finally gave up the battle, and fairly snored. Margaret had taken off her gown and tossed it aside with a ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sitters was a young lady in white muslin, who listened somewhat impatiently to the remarks of her companion, an elderly, rubicund personage, whom the merest stranger could have pronounced to be her father. The watcher evinced no signs of moving, and it became evident that affairs were not so simple as they first had seemed. The tall farmer was in fact no accidental spectator, and he stood by premeditation close to the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... That watcher among the clouds would have seen a great distribution of khaki-uniformed men and khaki-painted material over the whole of the sunken area of Holland. He would have marked the long trains, packed with men or piled with great guns and war material, creeping ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... The watcher turned from the White City across the Potomac and slowly walked into his rose garden. Even in September the riot of color was beyond description. In the splendor of the full Southern moon could be seen all shades from deep blood ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... quiet lane, which was still absolutely empty of human life. He stood there quietly waiting, watching over the ghastly discovery. In about ten minutes the police commissioner and the coroner, followed by two roundsmen with a litter, joined the solitary watcher, and the latter could return to ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... 4 and 5, had been a bit startled at first at seeing, soon after dawn, shadowy forms rising slowly from the black depths of the valley, hovering uncertainly along the edge of the mesa until they could make out the lone figure of the morning watcher, then slowly, cautiously, and with gestures of amity and suppliance, drawing gradually nearer. Sturdy Germans and mercurial Celts were, at the start, disposed to "shoo" away these specters as being hostile, or at least incongruous. But officers and men were soon made to see ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... events and the clamor of details; for eyes anointed they might resolve themselves into Moyturas and Camlans endlessly fought; into magical weapons magically forged; into Cuculains battling eternally at the Watcher's Ford, he alone withstanding the great host of this world's invaders, while all his companions are under a druid sleep. . . . It is the most splendid scene or incident in the Tann Bo Cuailgne; and I cannot think of it, but it calls up before my mind's eye another picture: that ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... brougham. The soft hues of a twilight sky, in which the stars were beginning to appear, fell on his face and showed it ashy pale; but he was absorbed in his own sad and bitter thoughts,—lost in his own inward contemplation of the love which consumed him,—and he saw nothing of that hidden watcher in the semi-gloom, gazing at him with such fierce eyes of hate as might have intimidated even the bravest man. He entered his carriage and was rapidly driven away, and the shadow,—no other than Sergius Thord,—stumbling ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... they mingle with the white clouds above, and, were we near enough, we might possibly hear the tones of the reviving music, as it melts; but as the sun goes fairly down, the music hushes, the beautiful tints fade and die, the palace becomes a dark spot again, and the poor little watcher within sighs forth her disappointment and composes herself ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... book at random, and with deepened color and a disturbed countenance had done as he was bidden. Surprise, pleasure, astonishment, delight,—all these the watcher saw in ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... the folk, * With a wrist whereon Ottars abound; And to eye of watcher it seems * Gold ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... sticks, delivering his bit of an aria a dozen times or more, in a most rapturous way, he would suddenly dive into certain secret passages among the dead branches, when he was instantly lost to sight. Then, in a few seconds, a close watcher might sometimes see him pass like a shadow, under the cottage, which stood up on corner posts, dart out the farther side, and fly ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... prologue is spoken, not by a character in the piece, nor by a decently clothed abstraction like the figures of Luxury and Poverty which speak the prologue of the Trinummus, but by the star Arcturus, watcher and tempest-bearer. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... came. The morning wore on to noon, the noon to night, and still the lonely watcher paced up and down. Toward night the tempest abated, and the turmoil of the sea subsided somewhat. The gray clouds broke and let through a slant mist of yellow sunshine as the sun departed, and the storm was over. Its work was done; and as the clouds fled in ragged ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... so, he was just in time to see a face vanish from view. In fact, he barely caught a fleeting glimpse of it, and yet Hugh felt perfectly sure that he had not alarmed the watcher in any way. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... broke the ground adjacent to the Fork to the westward of the stream. Once, indeed, he saw the figures of the hunters, painted dark against the sky, rise over a distant swell and disappear just as one of them turned and waved a signal in dumb show to the solitary watcher on the hill. ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... one of her flashes of splendour, like something that takes fire on an instant; like the faint and distant star which flames into sudden glory before the watcher's telescope. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... to find that it was a complete break in the wall of rock, not more than four feet wide, and continuing on a steady incline to the summit of the ridge. At the mouth of this fissure his mysterious watcher had taken off his snow-shoes and Rod could see where he had climbed up the narrow ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; LeConte speeds it to the westering peaks. The high rills wake and run, the birds begin. But down ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... But Roland, the camp watcher, the sentinel of the desert, Roland, the hunter, the soldier, knew all those sounds; they were ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... small, selfish, envious, malicious spirit; people were cross, and they knew not why; felt injured, and they knew not why; the days were harder than those dreadful ones when fire and candle were never out, and every one was a watcher in ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was still in the air but over it now was draped the net, the rocks in its fringes weighing it down in spite of its jerky attempts to rise. In its struggles to be free, it might almost have led the watcher to believe that it had intelligence of a sort. Now the mermen were coming out of the stream, picking up rocks as they advanced. And a hail of stones flew through the air, while others of the sea people sprang to catch the dangling ends of the net and ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... of woodland, and in one corner of that you might, if your eyesight was good, discern here and there a glimpse of white. It was the old burying-ground of Goshen church; and I knew by the strained attitude and intent gaze of the watcher in the door that somewhere in the sunlit space between Aunt Jane's door-step and the little country graveyard, the souls of the living and the dead were keeping a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... this homage. The bird warbles a gay answer to the well-known voice, the flower repays the careful cultivator by displaying its richest tints, the star twinkles a bright "good evening" to the lonely watcher, and yet withal there is an unsatisfied longing in the lover's heart, to which neither can respond; the desire to be loved! Hence, the perfect peace of reciprocated love. If its laws are violated, nature ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... stones and pieces of bricks with low, leaning walls surrounding it, and the halves of hollow houses; and eyeing it round a comer, one old tower of the cathedral, as though still gazing over its congregation of houses, a mined, melancholy watcher. Over the bricks lie tracks, but no more streets. It is about the middle of the town, a hawk goes over, calling as though he flew over the waste, and as though the waste were his. The breeze that carries him opens old shutters and flaps them to again. Old, useless hinges ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... the barns in the saddle, de Spain saw him gradually recede into the long desert perspective, the perspective which almost alone enabled the watcher to realize as he curtained his eyes behind their long, steady lashes from the blazing sun, that it was a good bit of a way to the foot of the great outpost of ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... something of a lee that reached out almost a mile from shore. From the watcher's eyrie the line of demarcation was sharply drawn; they could see the point at which the white crests of the wind-whipped wavelets ceased and the water became smoother. Did she but venture as far southward ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... corroboration of his host, and Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him as he turned his glance on Mr. Lavington. One could not look at Lavington without seeing the presence at his back, and it was clear that, the next minute, some change in Mr. Grisben's expression must give his watcher a clue. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... after all is to light the lamp, and watch to see that it does not burn dimly, or go out. In the long nights of winter the watcher is relieved after a number of hours, but he must not leave the room on any pretence until his comrade comes to take his place. He must not sleep, nor even take his ease; his attention is to be fixed on the light alone. The night experiences of such men must sometimes be startling, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... whatever to indicate that events were breeding in that peaceful scene, and that adventure was creeping close upon the watcher. He went in from his fourth or fifth inspection, and took ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower |
