International Short Stories: English

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William Patten
P.F. Collier & Son, 1910
 

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Page 221 - If your mind revolt against hanging, it will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the window or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while as that. And, besides, if I understand her appearance, my niece has something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a want of politeness to a lady?
Page 226 - ... incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising sun. Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously. "Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough; "the night has been so long! Alas, what shall we say to my uncle when he returns? " "What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
Page 219 - ... anger of God. I looked for much confusion ; for how could I tell whether he was willing to take me for his wife on these sharp terms ? He might have been trifling with me from the first ; or I might have made myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly I had not looked for such a shameful punishment as this ! I could not think that God would let a girl be so disgraced before a young man. And now I have told you all ; and I can scarcely hope that you will not despise me.
Page 224 - ... she added, with a quaver. "Most certainly," he answered with a smile. "Let me sit beside you as if I were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible.
Page 224 - ... face to face, with persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as brave as Hercules or as wise as Solomon, he is soon forgotten. It is not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights around him, in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any one of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered. No, no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark and...
Page 227 - ... in the corridor showed that the retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an end. ' ' After all that you have heard ? " she whispered, leaning towards him with her lips and eyes. "I have heard nothing,
Page 210 - So thinking, he drew his sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise, it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment, continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges, until it stood wide open on a black interior. When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things;...
Page 216 - The tapers, of which there must have been half a hundred burning on the altar, were unmercifully blown about; and the light went through many different phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the altar knelt a young girl richly attired as a bride. A chill settled over Denis as he observed her costume ; he fought with desperate energy against the conclusion that was being thrust upon his mind ; it could not — it should not — be as he feared.
Page 208 - ... from his way. For Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk ; and he went warily and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation. He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn ; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre....
Page 208 - ... good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town% The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad ; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth ; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway ; and where the air is brighter,...

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