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More "Crouch" Quotes from Famous Books



... foe or friend. Earl Svein's distress I well can guess, When flight he was compelled to take: His fortunes I will ne'er forsake, Though I lie here In chains a year, In thy great vessel all forlorn, To crouch to thee I still will scorn: I still will say, No milder sway Than from thy foe this land e'er knew: To him, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... crow gayly; the caw of the big black crow flapping overhead with ragged wing has a cheery tone. All living creatures feel the tingle and throb of the great tide of life that sweeps in with the returning sun. See yonder two dogs, how they frolic, how they crouch and wheel and charge and roll each other over and pretend to bite. "Pure mongrels," both of them, and as happy as if they were the most aristocratic of Irish setters! See near by the tree full of flowers that ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... drear mood Of envious sloth, and proud decrepitude; No faith, no art, no king, no priest, no God; While round the freezing founts of life in snarling ring, Crouch'd on the bareworn sod, Babbling about the unreturning spring, And whining for dead gods, who cannot save, The toothless systems shiver to ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... we can know really though not fully, of whom we can be sure with a certitude which is as deep as the certitude of our own personal being; that He has brought to us a God before whom we do not need to crouch far off, that He has brought to us a God whom we can trust. Very significant is it that Christianity alone puts the very heart of religion in the act of trust. Other religions put it in dread, worship, service, and the like. Jesus Christ alone says, the bond between men and God is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... of them have worked round," whispered the doctor. "Keep cool. They cannot know we are so near. Hist! crouch down." ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... was her cue? But, of course, she must have spoken already—it was inconceivable otherwise. Then why had the prince not acted at once, summarily? His excellency was not one to hesitate about drastic measures. Mr. Heatherbloom could not solve the riddle at all. He could only crouch back farther ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Cromwell like himself Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... of the island where the population is comparatively numerous, these monkeys become so familiarised with the presence of man as to exhibit the utmost daring and indifference. A flock of them will take possession of a Palmyra palm; and so effectually can they crouch and conceal themselves among the leaves that, on the slightest alarm, the whole party becomes invisible in an instant. The presence of a dog, however, excites such an irrepressible curiosity that, in order to watch his movements, they never ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... the avenues of huge beeches it was as quiet, cool, and solemn as a church, only the little birds fluttered around and pecked in the gravel paths. In front of the castle, just under the windows, there was a large bush in full bloom. Thither I used to go in the early morning, and crouch down beneath the branches where I could watch the windows, for I had not the courage to appear in the open. Thence I sometimes saw the Lady fair in a snow-white robe come, still drowsy and warm, to the open window. She would stand there braiding her dark-brown hair, gazing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... and determines to postpone his next nap until after the stoppage. Again the bugle sounds lustily forth, and rouses the cottager's wife and children, who peep out at the house door, and watch the coach till it turns the corner, when they once more crouch round the blazing fire, and throw on another log of wood against father comes home; while father himself, a full mile off, has just exchanged a friendly nod with the coachman, and turned round to take a good long stare at the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... face. Not for a paradise of peace would I touch the loathsome thing again to hide it in the shadows. I could neither take my eyes from it nor put my hands upon it. Like the basilisk of fable it held my gaze charmed, fixed it, bound it fast. Crouch as I might in the remotest corner, cover my face in my mantle, still that searching, penetrating thing pierced all obstacles, glared ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... "I dree I droppit it;" only, instead of standing, the girls forming the ring sit, or rather crouch in a sort of working-tailor attitude. One girl, occupying the centre, is "it." A second girl is on the outside. Immediately the ring ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... behind one of those sixty-horsepower Panhandles. When cars didn't come along often enough, they'd all turn out and chase jack-rabbits. They wasn't much fun at that. After a short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down plumb terrified, while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal dances ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... difficult sometimes to distinguish between the living and the slaughtered—they both lie so silently in their little kennels in the earthen bank. You push on—especially if you are doing observation work, till you are past your own front line and out in No Man's Land. You have to crouch and move warily now. Zing! A bullet from a German sniper. You laugh and whisper, "A near one, that." My first trip to the trenches was up to No Man's Land. I went in the early dawn and came to a Madame ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... gets up, with the devil in his eye, and a revolver in his hand, followed by the yellow dog, with every tooth showing, and swings open the door. No one there! But as the man opened the door, that yellow dog, that had been so chipper before, suddenly begins to crouch and step backward, step by step, trembling and shivering, and at last crouches down in the chimney, without even so much as looking at his master. The man slams the door shut again, but there ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... hair of the body—or resting where the hair roots would naturally be, in the case of a hairless skin. These seem to report directly to the solar-plexus, which then acts quickly by reflex action on the other parts of the body, causing an instinctive feeling to either fly the scene or else to crouch and hide oneself. This feeling, as may be seen at once, is an inheritance from our savage ancestors, or perhaps from our lowly-animal ancestral roots. It is a most unpleasant feeling, and the race escapes much discomfort by reason of ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... foot of this bold range of heights near where the little river Thouet runs into the broad and rapid Loire. A massive-looking old chteau perched on the summit of an isolated crag stands out grandly against the clear sky and dominates the town, the older houses of which crouch at the foot of the lofty hill and climb its steepest sides. The restored antique Htel de Ville, in the pointed style, with its elegant windows, graceful belfry, and florid wrought-iron balconies, stands back from the quay bordering the Loire. In the rear is the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... into a room, the mice would scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes. With these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the street-door, to be as near living people as he could; and would remain there, listening and counting the hours, until the Jew ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... me, if they choose-I care But little for their scoffings. I may sink For moments; but I rise again, nor shrink From doing what the faithful heart inspires. I will not falter, fawn, nor crouch, nor wink, At what high-mounted wealth or power desires; I have a loftier aim, to which ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... legs together into a more natural attitude, it took a step or two, stumbled, and then dropped upon its knees, made another effort to rise, but failed, and doubled its hind-legs under it, to crouch so that the two barrels rested on the sand; and then the poor beast uttered a long hoarse sigh as if of relief, while for a time it made no further ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... not one constant difference can be pointed out between their structure and that of the smaller races of dogs. They agree closely in habits: jackals, when tamed and called by their {25} master, wag their tails, crouch, and throw themselves on their backs; they smell at the tails of dogs, and void their urine sideways.[26] A number of excellent naturalists, from the time of Gueldenstaedt to that of Ehrenberg, Hemprich, and Cretzschmar, have expressed themselves in the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... that line. They fell like flies on a tanglefoot sheet, and back they wavered into the trench. But there was no shelter for them there, as it had ceased to be an abiding place, because their dead and wounded comrades were piled in it clear up to the brink, and there was no place for them to stoop or crouch to ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... raise The blood of God-like Brute) their heads do proudly bear: And having crown'd themselves sole regents of the air (Another war with Heaven as though they meant to make) Did seem in great disdain the bold affront to take, That any petty hill upon the English side, Should dare, not (with a crouch) to veil unto their pride. When Wrekin, as a hill his proper worth that knew, And understood from whence their insolency grew, For all that they appear'd so terrible in sight, Yet would not once forego a jot that was his right, And when they ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... cave. The beast that held her crouched and the creature that faced it crouched also, and growled—as hideously as the other. Pan-at-lee trembled. This was no Ho-don and though she feared the Ho-don she feared this thing more, with its catlike crouch and its beastly growls. She was lost—that Pan-at-lee knew. The two things might fight for her, but whichever won she was lost. Perhaps, during the battle, if it came to that, she might find the opportunity to throw ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... one he had married. And she demurely confessed to him that Mrs. Hall and several others of the matrons had enthusiastically admired her form one day when in for a cold dip in Carmel river. They had got around her, and called her Venus, and made her crouch and assume different poses. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... shivered. For instinctively he knew this to be the gray stallion, the cross-bred, that had trampled the form beside him. His first impulse was to mount Pat and spur him in a race for life; his second impulse was to crouch in hiding in the hope of escaping the keen scrutiny of that merciless demon. He chose the race. Springing to his feet, he leaped for Pat, and he grasped the saddle-horn. In his haste he slipped, lost his stirrup, and fell back headlong. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... fret till your proud heart break; Go show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for, from this day forth, I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, When ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... half-hearted sort of way. My poor horse stood as near the fire as he could, without any food, and shivering, and I was constantly standing up and clapping my arms and stamping my feet if the fire got low, then, when a bit warmed, I would crouch inside my den and sometimes I dozed, only to waken up from sheer cold and resume my exercise. After some hours I had the satisfaction to notice that the snow had ceased falling, and a brighter night, with frost, had ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... f)—Ortrud is planning vengeance, and the theme of Lohengrin's warning and threat to Elsa is presently heard; that warning gives her the hint as to the way of achieving vengeance. Ortrud and Telramund, outcast, crouch there in the night; Ortrud deeply scheming, Frederick, poor dupe, madly fuming, while the lights blaze at the palace windows, and the trumpets sound out as the feast proceeds within. He rages, and a theme (f) quoted is abruptly transformed ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... the goddess may touch her soul with the wing of fire and make her great and give her vision of things that have been and that shall be. More I dare not tell you now; indeed I can barely hear, and the song is hard to understand. Crouch down, for the moon rises, and pray that the mules may not stir. Presently she will go, and we ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... which astonished and frightened us so, was not, I do assure you, the landing of foreign spirits, nor the loom of a lugger at twilight in the gloom of the winter moonrise. That which made as crouch in by the fire, or draw the bed-clothes over us, and try to think of something else, was a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... secret aching for distraction; and she was surprised how well they took it—how, indeed, they seemed to like it, as though they knew that they were doing her good. In one cottage, where she had long noticed with pitying wonder a white-faced, black-eyed girl, who seemed to crouch away from everyone, she even received a request. It was delivered with terrified secrecy in a back-yard, out of Mrs. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... within measurable distance of the knights and ladies who lived and played and loved in the many-towered city of which one could gain so clear a view from the topmost branches of the hickory tree in the upper pasture. She liked to crouch in the elder bushes where a lane, winding and green-arched, crossed a corner of the cornfield, and to wait, through the long, still summer mornings for Lancelot or Galahad or Tristram or some other of her friends to come pricking his way ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... building, which is vast and of various ages, from the Plantagenets to the Guelphs, rises on a terrace, from which, on the side opposite to the town, you descend into a well-timbered inclosure, called the Home Park. Further on, the forest again appears; the deer again crouch in their fern, or glance along the vistas; nor does this green domain terminate till it touches the vast and purple moors that divide the kingdoms of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... education combine to fit this dog for our service: the pointer will act without any great degree of instruction, and the setter will crouch; but the Sheep Dog, especially if he has the example of an older one, will, almost without the teaching of his master, become everything he could wish, and be obedient to every order, even to the slightest motion of the hand. If the shepherd's dog be but with his master, he appears to be perfectly ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... behind the ledge changed their positions after nearly every shot. And Hal and Noll, after the warm, uncomfortable experience of having bullets fan their faces persistently, found it advisable to crouch low and dart here and there, firing from ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... near some outdoor cross. The form crouch survives in "Crutched Friars." Hence also the ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... not have deserted them, only the arrival of the farmer had averted a tragedy in the sumac. He did not learn to use caution for himself; but after that, if a gun came down the shining river, he sent a warning "Chip!" to his mate, telling her to crouch low in her nest and keep very quiet, and then, in broken waves of flight, and with chirp and flutter, he exposed himself until he had lured danger from ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... deadly little fighting rockets, and they never failed to interest him. But there wasn't time to admire them now. He went back up the ladder with two strong heaves, found the right ladder, and dropped down without touching. His knees flexed to take up the shock. He came out of the crouch facing a black-clad Planeteer sergeant ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... the fierce woman points to the flag. "Do you see that axe hanging from a thread? You are all cowards! Let me act alone." And the Prince nobly replies, "Philippine, battles are fought in the sunlight; men of our renown, men of my stamp, do not crouch down in the dark shadow of a plot." And the Catanaise again shows the flag. "Do you see the axe falling ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... armed and ready to resist the strangers with a shower of their swift arrows. Then Kenric knew that there was to be no chance of a peaceful parley, and he made no more ado but drew his galleys inshore, and bidding his men crouch down in the shelter of their bulwarks he assailed the islanders with such volleys of well-directed arrows that they soon began to retreat towards their stronghold, leaving several dead and wounded lying upon ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... surviving part of his family, they being all scattered abroad. Mr. Sheridan seems more his child than any one of his own, and I believe he likes being near him and his grandchildren." [Footnote: In the Memoirs of Mrs. Crouch I find the following anecdote:—"Poor Mr. Linley after the death of one of his sons, when seated at the harpsichord in Drury-Lane theatre, in order to accompany the vocal parts of an interesting little piece taken ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... them into the sarcastic words, "They return at evening; they growl like a dog, and compass the city" (or "go their rounds in the city"). One sees them stealing through the darkness, like the troops of vicious curs that infest Eastern cities, and hears their smothered threatenings as they crouch in the shadow of the unlighted streets. Then growing bolder, as the night deepens and sleep falls on the silent houses: "Behold they pour out with their mouth, swords (are) in their lips, for 'who hears'?" In magnificent contrast ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... kindling torches or fires in either camp frustrated every effort of discovery. Hoarser and wilder grew the whirlwind with the waning hours, till even the steel-clad men-at-arms stationed on the walls moved before it, and were compelled to crouch down till its violence had passed. Favored by the elements, Hereford proceeded to execute his measures, heedless alike of the joyful surprise his sudden appearance occasioned, and of the tale of division and discord which Hugo and Fitz-Ernest had reported as ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... the night? - Night with pestilent breath Feeds us, children of death, Clothes us close with her gloom. Rapine and famine and fright Crouch at our feet and are fed. Earth where we pass is a tomb, Life where we triumph ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... down in the shade, while the shikarees made a long examination of the ground all round the hillside, to be sure that he had not left the ravine. They came back with the news that no traces could be discovered, and that, beyond a doubt, he was still there. A tiger will crouch up in an exceedingly small clump of grass or bush, and will sometimes almost allow himself to be trodden on before moving. However, we determined to have one more search, and if that should prove unsuccessful, to send off to Jubbalpore for some more of the men to come out with elephants, while we ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... for Tayoga," he said to Robert. "Just when you and Willet were boasting most about him this winter rain had to come and he was no more than fairly started. He'll have to hunt a den somewhere in the forest and crouch in it ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... breath, Mac drew himself into a crouch and regarded the offending wire. His flashlight still operated, and he could see the heavy insulation which had been scraped away. No charring; then it must have been the extension rods that had scissored through the insulation. The wire hung together ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing

... that looked afar From their still region of perpetual snow, Over the little smokes and stirs of men: His head was bowed with gathered flakes of years, As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, But something triumphed in his brow and eye, Which whoso saw it, could not see and crouch: Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused, Brooding his eyried thoughts; then, as an eagle Circles smooth-winged above the wind-vexed woods, So wheeled his soul into the air of song High o'er the stormy ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... Parthians, and were spreading the Persian power in the East, under their king Sapor, who conquered Mesopotamia, and on the banks of the Euphrates defeated Valerian in a terrible battle at Edessa. Valerian was made prisoner, and kept as a wretched slave, who was forced to crouch down that Sapor might climb up by his back when mounting on horseback; and when he died, his skin was dyed purple, stuffed, and ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... straight, pawing madly, and threatening even to fall backward. I saw that I had, indeed, selected a wicked one; for in every bound and spring, in every curvet and leap, the object was clearly to unseat the rider. At one instant he would crouch, as if to lie down, and then bound up several feet in the air, with a toss up of his haunches that almost sent me over the head. At another he would spring from side to side, writhing and twisting like a fish, till the saddle seemed actually slipping away from his lithe body. Not only did I resist ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... stalks its prey, and sometimes lies in wait for it beside a game-trail or drinking pool—very rarely indeed does it crouch on the limb of a tree. When excited by the presence of game it is sometimes very bold. Willis once fired at some bighorn sheep, on a steep mountain-side; he missed, and immediately after his shot, a cougar made a dash into the midst of ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... Fire, that would ascend The brightest Heauen of Inuention: A Kingdome for a Stage, Princes to Act, And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene. Then should the Warlike Harry, like himselfe, Assume the Port of Mars, and at his heeles (Leasht in, like Hounds) should Famine, Sword, and Fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, Gentles all: The flat vnraysed Spirits, that hath dar'd, On this vnworthy Scaffold, to bring forth So great an Obiect. Can this Cock-Pit hold The vastie fields of France? Or may we cramme Within ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... through which he made his way at leisure was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... smoke, especially at first, was borne away upward by the blower's suction, and for some minutes Alice was able to help Coquenil with the new barricade. They built this directly in front of the iron door, with only space enough between it and the door to allow them to crouch behind it; they made it about five feet long and three feet high. Coquenil would have made it higher, but there was no time; indeed, he had to do the last part of the work alone, for Alice sank back overcome by ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... the offer, the hostess took it herself, and see-sawed on it nearly the whole time. It was a very awkward, high-legged, crouch-backed rocking-chair, and shamefully unprovided with anything in the form of ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... and flushing cheek Told the clansmen's fierce emotion, and they harder drew their breath, For their souls were strong within them, stronger than the grasp of death. Soon we heard a challenge-trumpet sounding in the pass below, And the distant tramp of horses, and the voices of the foe; Down we crouch'd amid the bracken, till the Lowland ranks drew near, Panting like the hounds in summer when they scent the stately deer. From the dark defile emerging, next we saw the squadrons come, Leslie's foot and Leven's troopers marching to the tuck of drum; Through the scatter'd wood ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... report of the arguments on the Erie case before the Assembly Committee on Railroads, Mr. BURT is said to have stated his belief that Mr. CROUCH is a contributor to PUNCHINELLO. Our best thanks are due to Mr. BURT for his "first-rate notice," though, at the same time, we wish to inform him that no contributor of the name of CROUCH has hitherto made his appearance in these columns. To speak plainly, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... to the south of the fort and make for his house. But something is putting up the birds over yonder. Ah, I hear the sound of steps! Crouch down here among the sumach, until we see who it is who walks so ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... with good chests and arms, well-knit and gracefully poised by habitually having to creep and crouch, and run and fight. Sunburnt to a deep bronze, one ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... alongside of you and I tell you honestly there are times when the bravest of us get the creeps. We were in our new home, and had to see about some shelters. We would dig into the side of the parapet just enough for a man to crouch up into. I can tell you that although it was clammy and wet it seemed like heaven to us at times. Well, there was an attack planned for the 28th of April. The night of the 28th we dug a jumping off trench and it was understood that "D" Co. should form the left flank ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis

... Kempsford and Lechlade the Thames and the canal are apt to get in the way, but once clear of these impediments a very open country is entered, either of grass and flying fences or light plough and stone walls. Another style of country is that round Hannington and Crouch. In old days, before wire was known, this used to be the best grass country in the V.W.H., but nowadays you must "look before you leap." With a good fox, however, hounds may take you into the best of the old Berkshire vale, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... that sea, in Rio is partly made true; for here, at the mouth, stands one of Hercules' Pillars, the Sugar-Loaf Mountain, one thousand feet high, inclining over a little, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. At its base crouch, like mastiffs, the batteries of Jose and Theodosia; while opposite, you are ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... to the tiresome duties, and laborious functions of government; but he blessed the Lord that henceforward no more homage was to be paid, no more court to be made, but to him alone, to whom they were justly due. Disdaining as he did the servile adoration usually paid to a minister, he could never crouch before the power of the two Cardinals who succeeded each other: he neither worshipped the arbitrary power of the one, nor gave his approbation to the artifices of the other; he had never received anything from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... himself much about them. At night the Trocadero has become a fashionable lounge for the cocottes, who still honour us with their presence. The line of the Prussian batteries and the flash of their guns can be seen. The hissing, too, of the bombs can be heard, when the cocottes crouch by their swains in affected dread. It is like Cremorne, with its ladies and its fireworks. Since yesterday morning, too, St. Denis has been bombarded. Most of its inhabitants have taken refuge in Paris, but it will be a pity ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... a place.' She looked round, and decided to crouch down on the floor, near the wall. 'They say in the village that you have a lot of money now; I thought you might want ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... of roads and tracks, across a champaign country, and the slope up to the top of Yarlet Bank now lay before us. I led the way, skulking behind such poor cover as the gaunt hedgerows provided, and, when only a hundred paces from the top, I asked her to crouch down, awaiting my signal to advance, while I crept forward on my hands and knees to the edge of the road which here climbed the brow of the hill through a deep cutting, along either margin of which ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... wind compelled him to crouch close to the ground, and just as he rose a jagged flash of lightning turned the blackness into a purple glare. Ned's eyes happened to be resting on the channel between the two islands, and in that brief instant of light he saw a boat gliding ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... Heaven design'd To please, improve, instruct, reform mankind; To make dejected Virtue nobly rise Above the towering pitch of splendid Vice; To make pale Vice, abash'd, her head hang down, And, trembling, crouch at Virtue's awful frown. Now arm'd with wrath, she bids eternal shame, 320 With strictest justice, brand the villain's name; Now in the milder garb of ridicule She sports, and pleases while she wounds ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... Standing he found amid his warlike steeds And well-built cars; beside him, Sthenelus, The son of Capaneus; Atrides saw, And thus address'd him with reproachful words: "Alas! thou son of Tydeus, wise and bold, Why crouch with fear? why thus appall'd survey The pass of war? not so had Tydeus crouch'd; His hand was ever ready from their foes To guard his comrades; so, at least, they say Whose eyes beheld his labours; I myself ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... morning we waited in vain for the sunrise? I tried to picture my own emotions as the truth was slowly borne in upon me that some unprecedented calamity had silently and without any premonition befallen the whole world of men. Would one crouch in a terror of apprehension? I could not see it that way. I believed that I should be trembling with a furious excitement, stirred to the very depths by so inspiring and adventurous a miracle. I had forsaken my speculation and was indulging in the philosophical reflection that a real ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... the howling of the wolves, a strange sound, differing altogether from the voices of the latter. It was a kind of continued snort, uttered in a low and querulous tone; and when uttered, it always caused Jeanette to start, and Marengo to crouch closer to them. Could it be the voice of the cougar? or, more fearful thought still, the snort of the grizzly bear? The latter was not unlikely. They were now in a region where these fierce animals are to be met with; and just in such a ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... while it is the slowest and most expensive means of making bottles, is by far the most picturesque. Imagine a long, low, dark building—dark as far as daylight is concerned, but weirdly lit by orange and scarlet flashes from the great furnaces that crouch in its shelter. At the front of each of these squatting monsters, men, silhouetted against the fierce glow from the doors, move about like puppets on wires—any noise they may make is drowned in the mastering roar of the fire. A worker thrusts a long ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... Nero's father. "There will be many of us lions in the jungle; perhaps others, like you, who are going out for the first time. You must be brave and strong. Remember the lessons your mother and I have taught you. Crouch down and jump hard. Strike hard with your paws and dig deep with your sharp claws. That is what they are for—to help you hunt so that you may get things to eat. Now ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum

... That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the range of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we find a warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away. "Stoop low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until the ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... was something between a tiger and a boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low, watch his prey a long while, spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a mass of louis, and then rest tranquilly like a snake in process of digestion, impassible, methodical, and cold. No one saw him pass without a feeling of ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... cable had parted when he tried to anchor her. It was a great trial to lose the ship. Well, he would have to face it. He fetches a deep sigh now and then. Cloete almost sorry he had come on board, because to be on that wreck keeps his chest in a tight band all the time. They crouch out of the wind under the port boat, a little apart from the men. The life-boat had gone away after putting Cloete on board, but was coming back next high water to take off the crew if no attempt at getting the ship afloat ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... a low voice; "crouch down so as not to show yourselves. As the savages hope to surprise us, we must surprise them. Ned, run down and tell Mary and Fanny that we may have to fire the guns, but that they must not be alarmed, as we are sure ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... the most credulous race of men alive. They are all believers in what is called information, and information is simply the betting man's name for gossip. The friend is speaking in a low but excited voice to his companions, who crouch over towards him in order to catch information not meant for the rest of the room. He tells how he had just been in to buy a paper at his newsagent's, and how his newsagent had been calling on his solicitor that morning, and the solicitor told him that ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... in another hill, was a rocky alcove that in earlier days had been the den of some wild animal. It was carpeted with old dead leaves, and it faced the east, while the wind and the snow came from the southwest. It was only a hollow, running back three or four feet, and one must crouch to enter; but except near the door there was no snow in it, and the storm drove ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the left. R.C. stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my knees and opened my lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I saw R.C. stiffen, then crouch a little. He leaned forward—his eyes had the look of a falcon. Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of my eye the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... know thy sin. It was not fear; Easily may a man crouch down for fear, And yet rise up on firmer knees, and face The hailing storm of the world with graver courage. But prudence, prudence is the deadly sin, And one that groweth deep into a life, With hardening roots that clutch about the breast. For this refuses faith in the unknown powers Within man's ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... perpendicular ladders, and at last pulled themselves through a small hole into the ball. There is room, I think, there for a dozen people, if well packed, not to stand, walk, or sit, however; these things the nature of the place forbids. It is a strange feeling, they say, to crouch in this little apartment and hear the wind roaring and shaking the golden cross above. The whole ball shakes somewhat, and by a sudden movement one can produce ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen

... eager. The animal came chasing down the slope, and stopped ten feet away to crouch and bark frantically at the shadow in the gloom. ...
— The Hoofer • Walter M. Miller

... Well, a man must be an honest man, even if there be no way but ruin! God knows, as we've all heard my father say a hundred times from the pulpit, there's no ruin but dishonesty! For poverty and hard work, he's a poor creature would crouch for those!" ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... once. We had often talked, over our camp-fire, of such an event as unexpectedly meeting a lion face to face; and Peterkin, who knew a good deal about such matters, had said that in such a case a man's only chance was to crouch and stare the lion out of countenance. We laughed at this; but he assured us positively that he had himself seen it done to tigers in India, and added that if a man turned and ran his destruction would be certain. To fire straight in the face of a lion in such a position would ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... second of doubt. The men were after them! Rick saw Scotty crouch as an Arab charged, saw the Arab go headlong through the air as Scotty caught him in a judo throw. Then Rick and Hassan were fighting ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... orchards, the gardens and the hedgerows; black, charred ruins, gaunt and ghostlike, marked the spots where homes had stood. The vines had been cut and torn away, and the despoiled hills seemed to crouch down like bereaved mothers under the pitiless gaze of the myriad eyes ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... sight, when he instantly pounced upon it as if starved. To make him altogether happy I put a screen around one corner of his cage, behind which were his dishes, and after that it was very droll to see him crouch behind that and eat, every moment or two stretching up to glance over the top and see if I had moved. If I stirred as though about to leave my chair, he at once whisked to the upper perch as if he had ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... motionless; it was like a declaration of war. In one or two of her fragmentary rehearsals upstairs she had supposed she would say something conventional to begin with. But the reality struck conventionality clean out of the realm of the possible. Her silent pause there was as significant as the crouch of a hound; and she perceived that it was recognized to be so by the other that was there. There was in him that quick, silent alertness she had expected: half defiant, half timid, as of a fierce beast ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... thick-clustered group of peasants with hands outstretched where a thin column of smoke rises straight. Autumn skies and foliage tell of chill in the air. The colors burn in dying leaves, in the sky, in fruit and grapes. A man is bringing a burden of fagots. Men of bovine anatomy crouch before the fire, their backs arched, their cheeks bulging, as they blow it into flame. These folk are all primitive, candid in their animalism, Samsons in limb and muscle. Brangwyn's mastery of anatomy is notable, and he builds his men with every ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... lee of the dry torrent's steeper banks he might crouch, and watch these strange, grey masses pass and pass in safety till the wind fell, and it became possible to escape. And there for a long time he crouched, watching the strange, grey, ragged masses trail their streamers across his ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... directed. "Go right on by him and don't anyone look at him. Cap'n, better crouch down. He knows you, but he doesn't ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... then the great Cardinal spiders do so click there, are so like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is inveterately superstitious, will not abide there. The hall, with its enclosing galleries, and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. So they heard, nay crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful treachery which, as far as their country is concerned, has been a thing apart in our annals, in 'my Lady's' closet. Englishmen are turbulent, ambitious, unscrupulous; but the craft of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... describe. A bystander, had there been one, could not have seen what was finally done or how it was done. Father Beret's sword seemed to be revolving—it was a halo in front of Hamilton for a mere point of time. The old priest seemed to crouch and then make a quick motion as if about to leap backward. A wrench and a snip, as of something violently jerked from a fastening, were followed by a semicircular flight of Hamilton's rapier over Father Beret's head to stick in the ground ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... mankind than the extinction of human servitude. True, that horrible relic of antiquity has not yet been wholly obliterated from the world, but the nineteenth century has dealt upon it such staggering and fatal blows as have driven it from all the high places of civilization and made it crouch in obscure corners and unenlightened regions on the outskirts of paganism. Slavery has not indeed been extinguished; but it is scotched, and must expire. According to the tendency of things, the sun in his course at the middle ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... right,—only too right. Yet even while they crouch to the tyrant's sabre, how bitterly they need release! even while they crucify their teachers and their saviours, how little they know what they do! They may forsake themselves; but they ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... shoulders of a huge pike. Wainamoinen kills this fish, and from its bones and sinews fashions the first harp, an instrument so wonderful that none but he can play it, but, whenever he touches its strings, trees dance about him, wild animals crouch at his feet, and the hearts of men are filled ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Liban rose from the crouch where it had lain entranced. Before her stood the phantom figure of Laeg. All in the house save herself were asleep, but with the conscious sleep of the Sidhe, and their shades spoke welcome to Laeg, each saying ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... forward; she seemed to crouch as if she wanted to get out of sight. Christina suddenly stopped and looked at her for an answer. Anna fingered her splashed apron; she tried to speak, but a lump rose in her throat, and she could not see for the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... at the success that his gigantic brain conceived a startling idea for the entrance of the ghost, which was neither more nor less than for Ben to crouch under the stage, in the very hole where Johnny had come to grief, and at the proper time to rise up in a ghostly fashion, which must surely be very effective. Ben was disposed to object to this hiding under the flooring, ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... effectual means of answering his just complaints." "And can it be possible," I asked, "that justice will not in the end be done to this unfortunate gentleman?" "Depend upon it," replied Clifford, "he is too honest ever to gain redress. If he would crouch and truckle to his persecutors, he might not only be set at liberty, but all that they have robbed him of would be returned. This, however, he never will do. He, poor fellow! expects that when the operation of the Habeas Corpus act is restored, he will be able to bring his cruel ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... the pier to see the boats make the harbour, which, not a little to our disappointment, they never fail to do. There are huge buttresses of stone against the pier-head, behind which the new comer imagines he may crouch in perfect safety, till the third wave comes in and convinces him to the contrary. No one ever dreams of 'burning' him off—giving him one word of warning of that unpleasant contingency; for to behold a fellow creature more drenched and dripping than ourselves is ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... Maiden's Heart bobbed his head two or three times, and, motioning to us to crouch down, he crept quietly over to the inner wall of the ramparts ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... It was weird to crouch there alone, with the great balloon swaying over my head, each plunge threatening to dislodge me from the seat to which I clung, the cords and the wicker-work straining and creaking, and the swish of the silk sounding like ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... the van and the freemen, 15 —He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering—not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. 20 Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... never fawn or crouch," said Juba; "I will be lord and master in my own soul. Every faculty shall be mine; there ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... the dog which had warned him of many dangers abroad, and helped him faithfully with his work at home; and nothing could be clearer to Skorro than that he was to crouch on the thwarts of the boat, with his nose close to Hund's face, and not to let Hund stir till Oddo came back. Then Oddo ran, and wakened his grandfather, who made all haste to rise and dress. Erica now lived in Peder's house. She had taken her ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... would have to move fast. Taking a dangerous chance, he rose to a half-crouch and dashed to one of the small white huts only a hundred feet away. With a final glance at the thinning crowd of escaping men around the ship, he ran straight for an open ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... low crouch'd he, And he doff'd his cap, and he bended his knee, "Now lithe and listen, Sir Bray, to me: Lady Alice sits lonely in bower and hall, Her sighs they rise, and her tears they fall. She sits alone, And she makes her moan; Dance and song, She considers quite wrong; ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... whistle overhead. Then the coats would be unbuttoned, and the bull's-eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge, windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand of the links, or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight them with inappropriate talk. Woe is me that I cannot give some specimens!... But the talk was but a condiment, and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... sergeant had held up a hand once more. This was the signal to advance. Now, as the men moved forward, the formation was not kept. Each for himself reached the crater in his own way and time. Down in this basin men could crouch without fear of being seen should the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock

... merry laughter; then would Maggie clap her hands with glee, thinking it fine sport; but when a whole blast burst at once upon the house, and seemed desperately to struggle through every crevice, she would crouch with fear, and upbraid the winds ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins

... pressed out with long practising.' He was very particular about the position of his hands when playing, and as a rule he kept his body quite still. When conducting, however, his movements were constant and curious. At a pianissimo passage 'he would crouch down so as to be hidden by the desk, and then, as the crescendo increased, would gradually rise, beating all the time, until at the fortissimo he would spring into the air with his arms extended, as if wishing ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... We are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges, were they infinitely more important, would not alter our opinion of an event which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... admiration and approval of the multitudes for his bold attempt. The tomb of Clement XIII. rests on a high basement of grayish marble, in the middle of which opens a door of the Doric style, giving access to the vault. The two world-renowned marble lions crouch upon the steps, watching the sarcophagus; Religion stands on the left, holding a cross in the right hand; while the Genius of Death, with an inverted torch, is seen reclining on the opposite side. It is a graceful, but slightly ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... around into the channel those behind her ports had a clean sweep of the Adventurer's bridge deck and a fusillade of shots swept across the forty or fifty yards dividing the boats. Steve and Wink had dropped below the rail, while, in the cabins, the others were taking good care to crouch beneath the level of the ports. Some eight shots were fired, but, although several took effect on various parts of the bridge, the fact that the Adventurer was now plunging around in a half-circle at a full twelve ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... it, a good deal happier than I've been for the past several days, and I am wishing them both a world of joy. I'm having one myself, and I find it well worth having. I could shake you, Carol, for playing such a trick on me. I can just see you crouch down and giggle when you read this. You wait, my lady. My turn is coming. I think I'll run down to Mount Mark next week to see my uncle—he's not very well. Don't have ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... and we urged him on; There was one chance left, and you have but one, Halt! jump to the ground, and shoot your horse; Crouch under his carcase, and take your chance, And if the steers in their frantic course Don't batter you both to pieces at once, You may thank your star; if not, good-by To the quickening kiss and the long-drawn sigh, And the open air and the open sky, In Texas, down by the ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... And yet these anomalies are plentiful. They are everywhere,—in houses, in churches, in stores, in town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,—extensive sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... am told, was the guard-chamber, where it used to crouch by the fireside. The sentry, so the story runs, got so accustomed to seeing it, that they ceased to be afraid; but, as they believed it to be of evil origin, waiting for an opportunity to seize them, they were very particular ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... had been so engaged that they did not see a woman enter the bar from behind, and crouch down beside Lady Jane, a woman whom the latter touched affectionately on the shoulder and whispered to once or twice, while she watched ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... THE BACKHAND VOLLEY. The body position and weight control and balance are the same as in the forehand volley. The crouch is more pronounced as the hitting plane is lower. The head of the racquet is firmly blocked by the stiff, locked wrist. The eyes are centered on the ball, which has just left ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... moment there seemed some movement on board the submarine. Tom could see his father looking from the conning tower, and the aged inventor seemed to be making some motions. Then Tom understood. Mr. Swift was directing his son and Captain Weston to crouch down. The lad did so, pulling the sailor after him. Then Tom saw the bow electric gun run out, and aimed at the mass of sharks, most of whom were congregated about the dead one. Into the midst of the monsters was fired a number of small projectiles, which could be used ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... will be your grave, and that is no end for one who has been called a god! Men, let alone gods, should die fighting, whether it be with other men, with wild beasts, with snakes, or with devils. Think now, if your master, the Deliverer, saw you crouch thus like a toad before an adder, how he would laugh and say, 'Ho! I thought this man brave. Ho! he talked very loud about fighting the Water Dweller, he who came of a line of warriors; but now I laugh at him, for I see that he is but a cross-bred ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... by design and of purpose suppressed He did his work, but he had not his reward Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks Peace-at-any-price party The busy devil of petty economy Thought that all was too little for him Weary of ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... had she been alone, but where Shirley went she would go. She glanced at the weapon on the sideboard, but left it behind her, and presently stood at her friend's side. They dared not look over the wall, for fear of being seen; they were obliged to crouch behind it. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... sepulchre. A mournful silence instantly prevailed. All eyes were turned upon the destined victim, whose destruction seemed inevitable. But the pity of the multitude was soon converted into astonishment, when they beheld the lion, instead of destroying its defenceless enemy, crouch submissively at his feet, fawn upon him as a faithful dog would do upon his master, and rejoice over him as a mother that unexpectedly recovers her offspring. The governor of the town, who was present, then called out with a loud voice, and ordered ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... Confutation they also quote concerning the sons of Eli that after the loss of the high-priesthood, they were to seek the one part pertaining to the priests, 1 Sam. 2, 36 [the text reads: Every one that is left in thine house shall come and crouch him for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priest's offices (German: Lieber, lass mich zu einem Priesterteil) that I may eat a piece of bread]. Here they say that the use ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... the rocks for curlew, sending Beatrice, who knew the coast by heart, a mile round or more to some headland in order to put them on the wing. Then she would come back, springing towards him from rock to rock, and crouch down beneath a neighbouring seaweed-covered boulder, and they would talk together in whispers, or perhaps they would not talk at all, for fear lest they should frighten the flighting birds. And Geoffrey would first search the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... tell the story which once we loved to tell. "Good will! Good will!" we read it, and "Peace!"—we hear the name, And crouch among the ruins, and watch the cruel flame, And hear the children crying, and turn our eyes away— For them there's neither bread nor home ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... then she would throw off the bed-clothes, and sit up with her hands round her knees, a white and rigid figure lit by the solitary candle beside her. Then again she would feel the chill of the autumn night, and crouch down shivering among the bed-clothes, pining for a sleep that would not come. Instead of sleep, she could do nothing but rehearse the scene with Ellesborough again and again. She watched the alterations in his face—she heard the changes in his ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... her, impatient for her death: he had, by his own skill and industry, made himself not only independent, but rich. After Patty was gone, he with the true spirit of a British merchant declared, that he was as independent in his sentiments as in his fortune; that he would not crouch or fawn to man or woman, peer or prince, in his majesty's dominions; no, not even to his own aunt. He wished his old aunt Crumpe, he said, to live and enjoy all she had as long as she could; and if she chose to leave it to him after her death, well and good; he should ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... of the convict murderer turned pale at the sound, and at the sight of the glowing eye-balls his ugly teeth clattered against each other. Nevertheless, the instinct of self-preservation made him crouch low, deadly knife in hand, to receive the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... do—'twould have let the cat too much out of the bag to have put the birds where we stand. Whereas, there is a fine hypocrisy about us. Consider—am not I the type of heroism, of magnanimity? Well, compelling me, the heroic, the magnanimous, now to stand here upon my hind-legs, and now to crouch quietly down, like a pet kitten over-fed with new milk,—any state roguery is passed off as the greatest piece of single-minded honesty upon the mere strength of my character—if I may so say it, upon my legendary reputation. Now, as for you, though you are a lie, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... crouch to-day, and worship The old Past, whose life is fled, Hush your voice to tender reverence; Crowned he lies, but cold and dead: For the Present reigns our monarch, With an added weight of hours; Honour her, for she is mighty! Honour her, for ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... fire another shot at us," replied Powell Seaton, "then Hepton and I will crouch over the forward deck-house, rifles ready, and fire at the flash of the third shot. We'll keep within the law, but we won't stand for any determined piracy that we ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... as a wooden latch. I had to shut it again for fear the warder would see it and begin to search and sound the alarm at once. Just as I'd done this he came down the passage. I had only time to crouch down in the shadow when he passed me. That was right; now he would not be back ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... wall at their back assured protection from above, but upon the opposite cliff summit, and easily within rifle range, the cunning foe early discovered lodgment, and from that safe vantage-point poured down a merciless fire, causing each man to crouch lower behind his protecting bowlder. No motion could be ventured without its checking bullet, yet hour after hour the besieged held their ground, and with ever-ready rifles left more than one reckless brave dead among the rocks. The longed-for night came dark and early at the bottom of that ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... the giant was booming. The desperate savage, passed sleeping from his father and his father's father, had awaked, and awaked to kill. I could read the sinister intent in the crouch of his shoulders. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... employment. It is a course of study, 'lively, audible, and full of vent.' They have the organ of wonder and the organ of fear in a prominent degree. The first requires new objects of admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings: the second makes them crouch to power wherever its shifting standard appears, and willing to curry favour with all parties, and ready to betray any out of sheer weakness and servility. I do not think they mean any harm: at least, I can look at this obliquity with indifference in my own particular ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... When one appears therewith, the urchins know Good sport's at hand; they fling their stones and mud, Sure of their game. But most the wisdom shows Upon the unbelievers' selves; they learn Their proper rank; crouch, cringe, and hide,—lay by Their insolence of self-esteem; no more Flaunt forth in rich attire, but in dull weeds, Slovenly donned, would slink past unobserved; Bow servile necks and crook obsequious knees, Chin sunk in hollow chest, eyes fixed on earth Or blinking sidewise, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... shanties stood, ran at the other end of the hill. I struck the spruit or rivulet that was fed by this spring, being guided to it by the murmur of the water, and followed up its bank till I heard a sound which caused me to crouch ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... might have been prolonged, could yet have had but one termination, and the whole party would have fallen. At this moment, however, a gust-of wind, more furious than any which they had before experienced, swept along the gorge, and the very wolves had to crouch on their stomachs to prevent themselves being hurled by its fury into the ravine below. Then even above the storm a deep roar was heard. It grew louder and louder. The wolves, as if struck with terror, leaped to their feet, and ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... knife from the scarf knotted about his waist in Moro fashion, his knees bending under him in a tigerish crouch as he slowly circled toward his powerful enemy. Malabanan drew his great bolo with a contemptuous sneer at the little Moro and before Terry could have interfered had he wished, they leaped at each other. Matak dodged down under the first awful sweep of the gleaming bolo and as he came up he struck ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... must crouch beneath our master's table and snap eagerly at the crumbs that fall. If in our scramble for these crumbs we make too much noise, we are violently kicked and driven out of doors, where, in the sleet and snow, we must whimper and whine ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... the following device: A small knob of earth covered with rushes stood in the water close to the bank. Both the fishers were to crouch behind these rushes; the Fox was to move the water very gently with the end of his long brush, and withdraw it so soon as the Trout's attention should have been drawn to that point; and the Cat was to hold her right paw underneath, and be ready, so soon as the fish should come over it, to ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... "Inez, you crouch like a guilty being before me! Surely you have done nothing to blush for. Yet stranger step was never taken by a reasonable being. Inez, raise your head, and tell me what induced you to venture in this desolate region, alone, unprotected, and ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... tiny things suddenly become important. The sky is green and opaque Down there where the blind hills glide. Tattered trees stagger into the distance. Drunken meadows spin in a circle, And all the surfaces become gray and wise... Only villages crouch glowingly: red stars— ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... There was a cry of terror—the blended voice of man and horse, startling the night and causing Harold to crouch with instinctive horror close to the dripping rock. There was a rush of wind and the bounding by of a dark whirling body, which rolled over and over, tearing over the sharp angles of the cliff, and scattering the loose fragments ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... distance from the ladder, about three quarters of the way up and set a little way back, there was a big stone missing from the inner wall, leaving a space just large enough to crouch in. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... BACON, whose sagacious eye Pierc'd through the gloom of dark Philosophy, And to the World unveil'd her awful face, Crouch'd a low, servile Courtier in disgrace. There PULTENEY, who the first stout bulwark stood Of British Freedom 'gainst the torrent flood Of dire Corruption, having stemm'd the wave, Shook off the Patriot, and became the Slave. ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe

... up her feet and winked fast with excitement as she watched the "shiny man" fondle the great cats, lie down among them, pull open their red mouths, and make them leap over him or crouch at his feet as he snapped the long whip. When he fired the gun and they all fell as if dead, she with difficulty suppressed a small scream and clapped her hands over her ears; but poor Billy never minded it a bit, for he was pale and quaking ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... a lover lives through every member of him in the joy of a moonlight ride. Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A true lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over muddy stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike all the strings of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... down to the edge of the Buxey," he said, "before the tide turns, or we shall have it against us, and with this wind we should never be able to stem it, but should be swept up the Crouch. At present it is helping us, and with a couple of hours' rowing we may save it to ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... control our destiny has not hitherto been recognized. Without windows there would be no ghost stories, for how could the rain beat on the pane, or the wind come in short gusts through the cracks? Neither would there be melodrama, for how could the heroine crouch on the floor if there were no sudden flashes of lighting or falling snow to gaze at through the window? What poems have been written by just looking through a window; and as for literature in general, who does not remember ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... as I did crouch there, hidden, I saw something come very quiet out of the bushes that did grow beyond the fire-hole; and it was great, and crept, and was noways coloured but by greyness in all its parts. And the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... reward for his pains. Racked with rheumatism and burnt up with fever, Lenox had almost reached the end of his tether; and through the awful hours of delirium, Zyarulla could only crouch, helpless, by the bedside; listening, listening to the hoarse, hurried mutterings, of which he could understand nothing beyond the frequent ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... all the upland pastures the strong winds gallop free, Trampling down the flowered stalks sleepy in the sun, Whirl away in blue and gold all their finery, Till naked crouch the gentle hosts where ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts

... her daughter (down for she was still carrying her), in one corner of the cell which was not visible from without. She made her crouch down, arranged her carefully so that neither foot nor hand projected from the shadow, untied her black hair which she spread over her white robe to conceal it, placed in front of her her jug and her paving stone, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... failing, he reared up perfectly straight, pawing madly, and threatening even to fall backward. I saw that I had, indeed, selected a wicked one; for in every bound and spring, in every curvet and leap, the object was clearly to unseat the rider. At one instant he would crouch, as if to lie down, and then bound up several feet in the air, with a toss up of his haunches that almost sent me over the head. At another he would spring from side to side, writhing and twisting like a fish, till the saddle seemed actually slipping away from his lithe body. Not only did I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... but paced up and down and round the long table—I see him as never seated, but always on the move, a weary Wandering Jew of the classe; but in particular I hear him recite to us the combat with the Moors from Le Cid and show us how Talma, describing it, seemed to crouch down on his haunches in order to spring up again terrifically to the height of "Nous nous levons alors!" which M. Bonnefons rendered as if on the carpet there fifty men at least had leaped to their feet. But he threw off these broken lights ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... cold, and with weariness spent, You droop in your saddle, or crouch in your tent; Can you feel that the love so entire, so true, The love that we dreamed of,—is all things to you? That come what there may,—desolation or loss, The prick of the thorn, or the weight of the cross— ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston

... generations in bloody toil have built against the wicked exercise of unlawful power has been torn away by a parricidal hand. Every man to-day from the proudest in his mansion to the humblest in his cabin—all stand at the mercy of one man, and the fawning minions who crouch before ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... south door of Rat Hell in the daytime, while the diggers were at labor in the dark north end. During these visits the digger would watch the intruders with his head sticking out of the tunnel, while the others would crouch behind the low stone fenders, or crawl quickly under the straw. This was, however, so uninviting a place that the Confederates made this visit as brief as a nominal compliance with their orders permitted, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... decoration, and one abacus serves, in most cases, for all. The double group, Fig. XXVII., is the simplest possible type of the arrangement. In the richer Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the capitals of the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with small nominal abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry the serviceable abacus of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rouen. There is, however, evident ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... his anger; The very helpers of the sea-dragon[209] crouch under him. How much less shall I answer him, And choose out my words to ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... the harvest Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence Not many more than two hundred Catholics were executed Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts Not distinguished for their docility Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch Not safe for politicians to call each other hard names Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers Obscure ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable attitude ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; .. then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... sarcastic words, "They return at evening; they growl like a dog, and compass the city" (or "go their rounds in the city"). One sees them stealing through the darkness, like the troops of vicious curs that infest Eastern cities, and hears their smothered threatenings as they crouch in the shadow of the unlighted streets. Then growing bolder, as the night deepens and sleep falls on the silent houses: "Behold they pour out with their mouth, swords (are) in their lips, for 'who hears'?" In magnificent contrast with these ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... pike. Wainamoinen kills this fish, and from its bones and sinews fashions the first harp, an instrument so wonderful that none but he can play it, but, whenever he touches its strings, trees dance about him, wild animals crouch at his feet, and the hearts of men are ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Freedom's hands.[oc] The Whirlwind's wrath, the Earthquake's shock, 50 Have left untouched her hoary rock, The keystone of a land, which still, Though fall'n, looks proudly on that hill, The landmark to the double tide That purpling rolls on either side, As if their waters chafed to meet, Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet. But could the blood before her shed Since first Timoleon's brother bled,[339] Or baffled Persia's despot fled, 60 Arise from out the Earth which drank The stream of Slaughter as it sank, That sanguine Ocean would ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... our levies dispersed in spite of all the king's entreaties, came the news that the Danish fleet had turned and was in the Crouch river in Essex, whence already the host had begun their march inland across Mercia in the old way. And so for the fifth time Eadmund strove to gather all England to him, and his summons was well obeyed. The thanes and their men gathered ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... devil. When the corpses were taken away to be buried, the survivors grumbled. A dead man, they said, was a good screen and a good stool. Why, when there was so abundant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, were people to be exposed to the cold air, and forced to crouch on the moist ground?"—Macaulay's History of England, People's ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... they drew their cimeters, and ran toward the Prince (for such his every action proclaimed him to be). When this high-born personage saw them coming with drawn blades, his countenance flushed, and his eyes sparkled with rage. Drawing his flashing sword, he shouted, "Crouch, varlets! Lie with the dust, ye dogs!" and ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... thrilling news, but had changed her mind as its obvious advantages flashed across her. She had not been able to resist making use of it to play a ghost trick. The little chamber which she had so unexpectedly brought to light was only just big enough to crouch in, and had probably been made in the troublous times of the Stuarts as a place of temporary concealment when the Abbey was searched by soldiers. Unfortunately it was ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... commotion from the high-flung cave. The beast that held her crouched and the creature that faced it crouched also, and growled—as hideously as the other. Pan-at-lee trembled. This was no Ho-don and though she feared the Ho-don she feared this thing more, with its catlike crouch and its beastly growls. She was lost—that Pan-at-lee knew. The two things might fight for her, but whichever won she was lost. Perhaps, during the battle, if it came to that, she might find the opportunity to throw herself over ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the left. R.C. stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my knees and opened my lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I saw R.C. stiffen, then crouch a little. He leaned forward—his eyes had the look of a falcon. Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of my ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... trickery, and deceit in national affairs are the signs of decadence in States and precede convulsions or paralysis. To bully the weak and crouch to the strong, is the policy of nations governed by small mediocrity. The tricks of the canvass for office are re-enacted in Senates. The Executive becomes the dispenser of patronage, chiefly to the most unworthy; and men are bribed with offices instead of money, to the greater ruin of the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... spiders do so click there, are so like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is inveterately superstitious, will not abide there. The hall, with its enclosing galleries, and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. So they heard, nay crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful treachery which, as far as their country is concerned, has been a thing apart in our annals, in 'my Lady's' closet. Englishmen are turbulent, ambitious, unscrupulous; but the craft of Maitland, Duke of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... his hand in caution upon the bare shoulder next him, and they both crouch closer in the shadow and listen. All is quiet, except groans and stertorous breathing ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... said Stair Garland sharply, "there—on the top of the rock. Crouch down! Do not move till I give you leave." Then he began to wade out, and as he went she saw him assure himself that his sheath-knife moved sweetly in its scabbard with the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... not have quitted the house had she been alone, but where Shirley went she would go. She glanced at the weapon on the sideboard, but left it behind her, and presently stood at her friend's side. They dared not look over the wall, for fear of being seen; they were obliged to crouch behind it. They ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... dress is mottled and tinted exactly like the lichens which cover the stones of the higher mountains; while young unfledged plovers are spotted so as exactly to resemble the beach pebbles among which they crouch for protection, as beautifully exhibited in one of the cases of British birds in the Natural History Museum ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... you love. You are all that stands between her and the black rebels. Now take this sword in your right hand and the pistol in your left. Lean forward a little. There! Now don't move; you've got just the pose I want. Ricky, crouch down by the side of his chair with your arm up so that you can touch his hand. You're terrified. There's ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... the blower's suction, and for some minutes Alice was able to help Coquenil with the new barricade. They built this directly in front of the iron door, with only space enough between it and the door to allow them to crouch behind it; they made it about five feet long and three feet high. Coquenil would have made it higher, but there was no time; indeed, he had to do the last part of the work alone, for Alice sank back overcome by ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... Of envious sloth, and proud decrepitude; No faith, no art, no king, no priest, no God; While round the freezing founts of life in snarling ring, Crouch'd on the bareworn sod, Babbling about the unreturning spring, And whining for dead gods, who cannot save, The toothless systems shiver ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... right. Yet even while they crouch to the tyrant's sabre, how bitterly they need release! even while they crucify their teachers and their saviours, how little they know what they do! They may forsake themselves; but ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... apparently been quite transformed. Hansen could do nothing with him. Whether it was that he was sick for Tomaso, whom he adored, or that he stewed in a black rage over the blows and pitchforkings, hitherto unknown to him, no one could surely say. He would do nothing but crouch, brooding, sullen and dangerous, at the back of his cage. Hansen noted the green light flickering fitfully across his pale, wide eyes, and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... town. On the quayside all was ordered haste. Mooring ropes were cast off with a minimum of shouting, and the larger ships moved slowly down the harbour towards the open sea. The few small vessels left seemed to crouch under the dock walls. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... flash of lightning. The next minute the flashes came so quickly that the forest seemed turned into one vast temple, whose black pillars supported a ceiling of flame, and as the deafening detonations shook the earth around them, they were glad to crouch as quickly as they could in a recess formed at the foot of a gigantic tree which sent out flat buttresses on every side, more buttresses passing down ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... feet and winked fast with excitement as she watched the "shiny man" fondle the great cats, lie down among them, pull open their red mouths, and make them leap over him or crouch at his feet as he snapped the long whip. When he fired the gun and they all fell as if dead, she with difficulty suppressed a small scream and clapped her hands over her ears; but poor Billy never minded it a bit, for he was pale and quaking with the fear of "heaven's ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... his vassals out (Like boys escaped from school) with song and shout? Kind and unkind, his Maker's final freak, Part we deride the child, part dread the antique! See where his gang, like frogs, among the dew Crouch at their duty, an unquiet crew; Adjust their staring kilts; and their swift eyes Turn still to him who sits to supervise. He in the midst, perched on a fallen tree, Eyes them at labour; and, guitar on knee, Now ministers alarm, now scatters joy, Now twangs a halting chord, now tweaks ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... strife, and Time is to be taken by the throat. Then shall few men match your sublime fury. But what if you see a vulture, visible only to yourselves, hovering over the house you are gaily led by the torch to inhabit? Will you not crouch and be cowards? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... this room won't sell for more than half my demands, so we must have the bedsteads and bedding and a chest of drawers or so; and as the old woman in there won't ever be able to pay me more rent, she and all of you must turn out with what remains! So now, Crouch and ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... surely been her own, but that she had striven to avoid, that she had beaten back as spectres and unreal, that she had even denied, tricking, or trying to trick, her terrible sense of truth. His brutality had made the delicacy in her crouch and sicken. It had been almost intolerable to her, to see her friend, Emile, thus driven out into the open, like one naked, to be laughed at, condemned, held up, that the wild folly, the almost insane absurdity of his secret self might be seen and understood even by ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... lice. . . . Three or four kicks or blows with a stick were not half so injurious to a poor man's family, nor to himself, as being devoured by six rolls of handwriting."—"The nobility," says St. Simon, in his day, "has become another people with no choice left it but to crouch down in mortal and ruinous indolence, which renders it a burden and contemptible, or to go and be killed in warfare; subject to the insults of clerks, secretaries of the state and the secretaries of intendants." Such are the complaints of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... for his pains. Racked with rheumatism and burnt up with fever, Lenox had almost reached the end of his tether; and through the awful hours of delirium, Zyarulla could only crouch, helpless, by the bedside; listening, listening to the hoarse, hurried mutterings, of which he could understand nothing beyond the frequent recurrence of the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... the slightest warning Regina caught her arms from behind and threw her to her knees, so that she was forced to crouch down, her head almost touching the floor. She was no more than a child in the peasant woman's hands as soon as she was fairly caught. But she did not scream, and she seemed to be keeping ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... company with the deceased for a year or thereabouts. I said I would marry her when I had money enough. She said I had money enough now. We had a quarrel. She refused to walk out with me any more; she wouldn't draw me my beer; she took up with my fellow-servant, David Crouch. I went to her on the Saturday, and said I would marry her as soon as we could be asked in church if she would give up Crouch. She laughed at me. She turned me out of the wash-house, and the rest of them ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... attitude, will often throw others into this attitude, though the maker of the warning sound may be invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct of the hen is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger signal causes them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is not less familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens, or a sheep with her lambs, can doubt that such "dumb animals" are influenced in their behavior by suggestive sounds. The important questions are, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... con ceit ed: proud, vain. con fess: to own; to admit. coun cil: a small body called together for a trial, or to decide a matter. court ier (court' yer): an attendant at the court of a prince. crime: a wicked act punishable by law. crouch: to stoop low. ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... Nearly all the men of note in England followed Edmund's banner, for, now that his abilities were proved, there was a general enthusiasm in his favour. So all the rank and title of the realm stood by him when he drew up his army hard by the little river Crouch, near Assingdun, in Essex, then ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... shot at us," replied Powell Seaton, "then Hepton and I will crouch over the forward deck-house, rifles ready, and fire at the flash of the third shot. We'll keep within the law, but we won't stand for any determined piracy that we have the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... his gates. He buries himself and companion in a thick grove of cedars, and they crouch to the very ground. Oh, how humble is the lord of millions! How all the endowments of the world fall off from a man in his last extremity! He shivers, he trembles—yea, he prays! Through his bloodshot eyes he catches some glimpses of a God—of a merciful God ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... proceeded to explain to him all about the litters. He had to crouch down and come close to the wire netting, whilst she gave him minute details. The mother does, with big restless ears, eyed him askance, panting and motionless with fear. Then, in one hutch, he saw ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... very charming; that ordinary standards were not rigidly applied to the extraordinarily fascinating. When Katie was laughingly telling of one of the Major's most interesting flirtations Ann's eyes had seemed to crouch back in that queer way they had. Katie had had an odd sense of Ann's disapproving of her—disapproving of her for her not disapproving of him. More than once Ann had given her that ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... in mechanical things. When the phonograph was first put on the market he had one in his office at 1127 Broadway. Once in London he found a mechanical tiger that growled, walked, and even clawed. He enjoyed watching it crouch ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... and Roddy came in. Mark carried Sarah in his arms. They stood by the bed and looked at her; their faces pressed close. Roddy had been crying; but Mark and Dank were excited. They climbed on to the bed and kissed her. They made Sarah crouch down close beside her and held her there. They spoke very ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... Scott seemed to exert over almost all dumb creatures. A little Blenheim cocker, "one of the smallest, beautifullest, and tiniest of lapdogs," with which Carlyle was well acquainted, and which was also one of the shyest of dogs, that would crouch towards his mistress and draw back "with angry timidity" if any one did but look at him admiringly, once met in the street "a tall, singular, busy-looking man," who halted by. The dog ran towards him and began "fawning, frisking, licking at his feet;" and every time he saw Sir Walter ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... his father had purchased for Jess at the store. When once again upon the wharf, they stood and talked for a few minutes. What they said Eben could not make out, but presently he heard his father calling his name. This caused him to crouch lower upon the ground, fearful lest he should be observed. One of the quarrymen then spoke and motioned his hand in the direction the boy had gone. Eben heard the amused laughter which followed, and he fully comprehended its meaning. They ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... ladders, and at last pulled themselves through a small hole into the ball. There is room, I think, there for a dozen people, if well packed, not to stand, walk, or sit, however; these things the nature of the place forbids. It is a strange feeling, they say, to crouch in this little apartment and hear the wind roaring and shaking the golden cross above. The whole ball shakes somewhat, and by a sudden movement one can ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen

... to the bank, two on each side. When we pass the guards above we must crouch down in the water and stay against the bank. We must go very slow. Waves or movement of ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery

... so terrific that we had to crouch against the rocks. I thought we must be in the heart of "The Land of the Wind," and that this was the worst country I had ever come to. I almost believed that the wind had obtained the mastery over the world, and chaos was coming again. But after a few hours these ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... Croisset struck at the bait which Howland threw out to him. He leaned a little forward, a hand quivering on his knife, his eyes flashing fire. Involuntarily the engineer recoiled from that animal-like crouch, from the black rage which was growing each instant in the half-breed's face. Yet Croisset spoke softly and without excitement, even while his shoulders and arms were twitching like a ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood

... what was fabled of the entrance to that sea, in Rio is partly made true; for here, at the mouth, stands one of Hercules' Pillars, the Sugar-Loaf Mountain, one thousand feet high, inclining over a little, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. At its base crouch, like mastiffs, the batteries of Jose and Theodosia; while opposite, you are menaced by ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... slack, and pots (p. 077) at our men from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the range of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we find a warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away. "Stoop low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... They crouch in their corner and weave their web of pale hours, they count their coins sitting in the dust and ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore

... "Crouch low to the rocks, lad, and go easy," cried I, when my wits came back again; "that's a tongue it doesn't do to quarrel with. The dirty skunks—to fire on unarmed men! But we'll return it, Dolly; as I live I'll fire a dozen for every ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... it—how, indeed, they seemed to like it, as though they knew that they were doing her good. In one cottage, where she had long noticed with pitying wonder a white-faced, black-eyed girl, who seemed to crouch away from everyone, she even received a request. It was delivered with terrified secrecy in a back-yard, out ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... endowed with strong memory, the beasts soon learned that their teeth and claws were powerless when directed against this invulnerable being. Hence, their terrified submission reached to such a point that, in his public representations, their master could make them crouch and cower at his feet by the least movement of a little ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... attention to were he was leadin' me," said Barling, "what I wanted to find out was what he was up to! Presently he turned in at a gate. I was closer up than I meant to be, and he swung in so sudden that I had to drop quick and crouch behind the masonry of the front garden wall. My leave pass must a' dropped out o' my pocket and through the railin's ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... hide that damning little wafer-flame. When one appears therewith, the urchins know Good sport's at hand; they fling their stones and mud, Sure of their game. But most the wisdom shows Upon the unbelievers' selves; they learn Their proper rank; crouch, cringe, and hide,—lay by Their insolence of self-esteem; no more Flaunt forth in rich attire, but in dull weeds, Slovenly donned, would slink past unobserved; Bow servile necks and crook obsequious knees, Chin sunk in hollow chest, eyes fixed on earth Or blinking ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... so delighted at the success that his gigantic brain conceived a startling idea for the entrance of the ghost, which was neither more nor less than for Ben to crouch under the stage, in the very hole where Johnny had come to grief, and at the proper time to rise up in a ghostly fashion, which must surely be very effective. Ben was disposed to object to this hiding under the flooring, more especially since he would be enveloped in the sheet, ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... When the sun is high, these spectres sleep: From the glance of noon, they shrink with dread, And hide 'mid the bones of the ghastly dead. Where the surf is hushed, and the light is dull, In the hollow tube and the whitened skull, They crouch in fear or in whispers wail, For the lingering night, and the coming gale. But at even-tide, when the shore is dim, And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim, They rise on the wing of the freshened breeze, And flit with the wind ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... we tell the story which once we loved to tell. "Good will! Good will!" we read it, and "Peace!"—we hear the name, And crouch among the ruins, and watch the cruel flame, And hear the children crying, and turn our eyes away— For them there's neither bread nor home this happy ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... grosser adulation, and enjoin lower submission. Neither our virtues nor vices are all our own. If there were no cowardice, there would be little insolence; pride cannot rise to any great degree, but by the concurrence of blandishment or the sufferance of tameness. The wretch who would shrink and crouch before one that should dart his eyes upon him with the spirit of natural equality, becomes capricious and tyrannical when he sees himself approached with a downcast look, and hears the soft address of awe and servility. To those who are willing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... feel just the same way. The storm is coming fast and it is going to be a big one. The sun is entirely hidden already, and the air is growing dark. We'll crouch against the wall, Ned, and keep our rifles, powder and ourselves as dry as possible. There goes the thunder, growling away, and here's the lightning! Whew, but ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the way they had come, looking, looking everywhere. Round the canoe she went at a safe distance, searching among the grass and lily pads, calling him softly to come out. But he was very near the canoe, and very much frightened; the only effect of her calls was to make him crouch closer against the grass stems, while the bright little eyes, grown large with fear, were ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above in the serene ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... VOLLEY. The body position and weight control and balance are the same as in the forehand volley. The crouch is more pronounced as the hitting plane is lower. The head of the racquet is firmly blocked by the stiff, locked wrist. The eyes are centered on the ball, which has ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... are passing a prune-orchard, when, as though for our especial benefit, a couple of peasants working there begin singing aloud, and with evident enthusiasm, some national melody, and as they observe not our presence, at my suggestion we crouch behind a convenient clump of bushes and for several minutes are favored with as fine a duet as I have heard for many a day; but the situation becomes too ridiculous for Igali, and it finally sends him ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... best nose in a fog—seemed as if he could sniff things as they went by or came on dead ahead. After a while the captain would send him out with the bow-watch in thick weather, and there he'd crouch, his nose restin' on the rail, his eyes peerin' ahead. Once he got on to a brigantine comin' bow on minutes before the lookout could see her—smelt her, the men said, just as he used to smell the sheep lost on ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... oftenest in dreams. "O God! I carn' stand this," he said, and crept back from the rocks to the grass and crouched down, and suddenly wild sorrow for the death of Kurt, Kurt the brave, Kurt the kindly, came to his help and he broke from whimpering to weeping. He ceased to crouch; he sprawled upon the grass and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... throat and got a choking hold. He whirled his heavy body with all his might, tore lose, and broke to his feet. Staggering back to the wall, he saw Red Perris crouch in the door and then spring in again. Hervey struck out with all his might but felt the blow glance and then the coiling arms were around him again. Once again, in the crashing fall to the floor, the hold of Perris was broken and Hervey leaped away for the ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... next pair by a thick-clustered group of peasants with hands outstretched where a thin column of smoke rises straight. Autumn skies and foliage tell of chill in the air. The colors burn in dying leaves, in the sky, in fruit and grapes. A man is bringing a burden of fagots. Men of bovine anatomy crouch before the fire, their backs arched, their cheeks bulging, as they blow it into flame. These folk are all primitive, candid in their animalism, Samsons in limb and muscle. Brangwyn's mastery of anatomy is notable, and he builds his men with ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... more definite sound. A step was coming along the passage. A certain bruise on the hip told Shorthouse that the pistol in his pocket was ready for use and he drew it out quickly and cocked it. Then he just had time to slip over the edge of the bed and crouch down on the floor when the step halted on the threshold of the room. The bed was thus between him and the open door. The window was at ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... about us timidly. No well-conducted suburban shrubbery would think of assuming autumn tints before the ladies have got into their fall fashions. Indeed none of our chaste trees will even shed their leaves while any one is watching; and they crouch modestly in the shade of our massive garages. They have been taught their place. In Marathon it is a worse sin to have your lawn uncut than to have your books or your hair uncut. I have been aware of indignant eyes because I let my back garden run wild. And yet I flatter ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... squatting, waiting for his master to call him. He had polished the yellow shoes and placed them by the door, and now he had nothing to do but wait. It was freezing cold, but there he was, as motionless as a sculptured image, and as patient. It troubled me. I wanted to say to him, "Don't crouch there like that and freeze; nobody requires it of you; stir around and get warm." But I hadn't the words. I thought of saying 'jeldy jow', but I couldn't remember what it meant, so I didn't say it. I knew another phrase, but it wouldn't come to my mind. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... lions turned their huge, intrepid heads; to their jowls wide creases came. There was a glitter of fangs, a shiver that moved the mane, a flight of arrows, mounting murmurs; the crouch of beasts preparing to spring, a deafening roar, and, abruptly, a tumultuous mass, the suddenness of knives, the snap of bones, the cry of the agonized, the fury of beasts transfixed, the shrieks of the mangled, a combat hand to fang, from which lions ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... one into the wheels of the next, so fastening them together. Then they dug a hole in the centre of this fortification and in it put the women and children. They threw the earth in little mounds, behind which they could crouch and shoot. By morning the fortification was complete. The sentries, who had been watching all night, now gave warning that a band of Indians was approaching. Thirty of the hunters mounted and rode forward to meet them. Some of the Indians were in advance ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister

... others behind, and in any case we could not be better placed than on this rock; from here we might defy a whole tribe of savages. Besides, we do not yet know that they will stop here. Both of you crouch down. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... choice lies between witnessing this deed and—Swart Piet or—Death. Nay, you need not witness it even, if you will do as I tell you. Presently, when I give the word, loosen the bar of the door-board, then crouch by the hole and utter a low cry of fear, calling to the man on guard for help. He will enter and see me, whereon you can creep through the door-hole and wait without, leaving me to deal with him. If I succeed I will ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... out!" he snarled, bounding violently to his feet and dropping back to a crouch; but when he met Bunker Hill's steely eyes he mumbled something ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... must do what they can. A sentimentalist may discern on these vases not only the gay designs with which they ornamented them, but their own dim faces looking wan from the windows of some huge old homestead, a world too wide for the shrunken family. All April long the door-yard trees crouch and shudder in the sour east, all June they rain canker-worms upon the roof, and then in autumn choke the eaves with a fall of tattered and hectic foliage. From the window the fading sisters gaze upon the unnatural liveliness of the summer streets through which the summer boarders ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... deck, and cast themselves in the long cane chairs amidships. Still all curiosity to hear further details on the ingenious piece of espionage against my own nation, I took off my shoes and crept up to a spot where I could crouch concealed and overhear their conversation, for the Italian night was calm and still. They talked mainly about affairs in Finland, and with some of Oberg's expressions of opinion Polovstoff ventured to differ. This aroused the Baron's anger, and I knew from the cold sarcasm of his remarks, ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... distinct, farther off they were black and ghostlike. Perhaps for this reason Miss McMurtry at first made no sign, though believing she saw a small object dart forth from the shelter of the pine trees, run a few steps, crouch down and then getting up again run on ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... youth in my service, whose head was full of the legends and superstitions of the country. He always went with me into the forest; in fact, I could not get him to go alone, and whenever we heard any of the strange noises mentioned above. he used to tremble with fear. He would crouch down behind me, and beg of me to turn back; his alarm ceasing only after he had made a charm to protect us from the Curupira. For this purpose, he took a young palm leaf, plaited it, and formed it into a ring, which he hung to ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... the handcuffs were kept out of sight. One by one we ascended the steps, entered the narrow passage in the van, and huddled ourselves into the narrower boxes. They were so small that no ordinary-sized man could sit upon the little bench at the back. I was obliged to crouch on one ham diagonally, my shoulders stretching from corner to corner. Half a dozen holes were bored through the floor, and there was a space between the side of the box and the roof of the van, which sloped away like an eave. Probably the ventilation was ample, yet I felt stifled, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... said Frank, restraining the dog as it sought to bound towards its mistress. Being harnessed to the sledge, this was a very improper proceeding and was rebuked accordingly; so Chimo was fain to crouch on the snow and look back at Edith as Frank placed her in the sledge, and arranged the deerskin robes ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... the end, And thou be but their thrall and their bondsmen, who wert born for their very friend: For few things from the Gods are hidden, and the hearts of men they know, And how that none rejoiceth to quail and crouch alow. ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... something! Being so cold and wanting to rush in and crouch over a fire put it clean out of my head. He must be thinking me a perfect beast!" She ran to the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... began, "I shall. Ta-meri, thou knowest that as a sculptor I work within limits. The stature of mine art must crouch under the bounds of the ritual. It is not boasting if I say that I see, with brave eyes, that Egypt insults herself when she creates horrors in stone and says, 'This is my idea of art.' And these things are not human; ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... doubt, That hales her forth and feedeth her with nought. Simplicity and plainness, you I love! Hence, double diligence, thou mean'st deceit: Those that now serpent-like creep on the ground, And seem to eat the dust, they crouch so low— If they be disappointed of their prey, Most traitorously will trace their nails and sting. Yea, such as, like[98] the lapwing, build their nests In a man's dung, come up by drudgery, Will be the first that, like that foolish bird, Will follow him with yelling and false cries. Well[99] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... of this bold range of heights near where the little river Thouet runs into the broad and rapid Loire. A massive-looking old chteau perched on the summit of an isolated crag stands out grandly against the clear sky and dominates the town, the older houses of which crouch at the foot of the lofty hill and climb its steepest sides. The restored antique Htel de Ville, in the pointed style, with its elegant windows, graceful belfry, and florid wrought-iron balconies, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... invalids, and to keep me from piercing to the very marrow of their bones, men cut down forests for their fires and explore the mines of continents for coal to feed their furnaces. Under my breath the nations crouch in sepulchers. Don't you ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... now occurred to me was to get out at my sitting-room window on to this roof, to creep along noiselessly till I reached that part of it which was immediately over the library window, and to crouch down between the flower-pots, with my ear against the outer railing. If Sir Percival and the Count sat and smoked to-night, as I had seen them sitting and smoking many nights before, with their chairs close at the open window, and their ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... more than those storms which are peculiar to our milder climates. The tempest-voice of the wind was now in dreadful accordance! with its power. Poor Kennedy, who fortunately knew every step of the rugged road along which he struggled and staggered, was frequently obliged to crouch himself and hold by the projecting crags about him, lest the strength of the blast might hurl him over the rocky precipices by the edges of which the road went. With great difficulty, however, and not less ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leashed in like hounds, should Famine, Sword and Fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... mother; I cannot," was Betty's reply. "Fayther'll do no good; if Sammul sees him coming, he'll just step out of the road, or crouch him down behind summat till he's gone by. I must go myself; he'll not be afraid of me. Oh, sure he'll ne'er go right away without one 'Good-bye' to his own sister! Maybe he'll wait about till he sees me; and, please the Lord, if I can only light on ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... without hesitation to some splendid specimen of the race, of which everybody else was afraid, to stroke him, or offer food; when the noble creature, with that fine perception often so remarkably manifested by dogs and children, would look up in her face, and then return her caress, and crouch down at her feet in love and confidence. Her own two beautiful little spaniels were her constant companions in her walks; their happy gambols were always ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... stealthily towards a hummock, behind which he caused them to crouch until the walrus should dive. This it did in a few minutes, and then they all rushed from their place of concealment towards another hummock that lay about fifty yards from, the hole. Just as they reached it and crouched, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... tiresome duties, and laborious functions of government; but he blessed the Lord that henceforward no more homage was to be paid, no more court to be made, but to him alone, to whom they were justly due. Disdaining as he did the servile adoration usually paid to a minister, he could never crouch before the power of the two Cardinals who succeeded each other: he neither worshipped the arbitrary power of the one, nor gave his approbation to the artifices of the other; he had never received anything from Cardinal Richelieu but an abbey, which, on account of his rank, could not be refused ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... knelt in a corner, against one of his rough bookcases, bowed to the ground as though a mountain had come upon him unawares, and now and then he beat his forehead against the parchment bindings of his favourite folio Muratori, as certain wild beasts crouch on their knees and with a swinging of slow despair strike their heads against the bars of their cage many times ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... have to move fast. Taking a dangerous chance, he rose to a half-crouch and dashed to one of the small white huts only a hundred feet away. With a final glance at the thinning crowd of escaping men around the ship, he ran straight for an open window, ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... of the way! with your knavish schemes! You trembling and trading pack! Crouch away in the dark, like a sneaking hound That its master ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... mighty neck,— Let fall his bow and clanging spear, and gazed Dilate with ecstasy; nor marked the dogs Hush their deep tongues, draw close, and ring him round, And fix upon him strange, red, hungry eyes, And crouch to spring. This for a moment. Then It seemed his strong knees faltered, and he sank. Then I cried out,—for straight a shuddering stag Sprang one wild leap over the dogs; but they Fastened upon his flanks with a long yell, And reached his throat; and that ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... about its face. Not for a paradise of peace would I touch the loathsome thing again to hide it in the shadows. I could neither take my eyes from it nor put my hands upon it. Like the basilisk of fable it held my gaze charmed, fixed it, bound it fast. Crouch as I might in the remotest corner, cover my face in my mantle, still that searching, penetrating thing pierced all obstacles, glared grisly ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... and glaring, when a blustering north-easter is blowing down it, the Valley of Rocks is a bitter and inhospitable spot; I have been glad to go into the sheep-fold and crouch under the lee of the stone wall for a moment's respite from the wind and the stinging particles of sharp dust that it flung in my face as I battled up the road. Once, in such a wind, I climbed the Castle Rock, and squeezed ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... but do mightily inveigh against Sir Roger Cuttance, and would never have my Lord to carry him to sea again, as being a man that hath done my Lord more hurt than ever he can repair by his ill advice, and disobliging every body. He will by no means seem to crouch to my Lord, but says that he hath as good blood in his veins as any man, though not so good a title, but that he will do nothing to wrong or prejudice my Lord, and I hope he will not, nor I believe can; but he tells me that Sir E. Spragg and Utber are the men that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods Are still again, the frighted bird comes back And plumes her wings; but thy sweet waters run Crimson with blood. Then, as the sun goes down, Amid the deepening twilight I descry Figures of men that crouch and creep unheard, And bear away the dead. The next day's shower Shall wash the tokens of ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... cup its glow, Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow,— The diamond dew-drops sparkling through the sand, Scooped by the Arab in his sunburnt hand, Or the dark streamlet oozing from the snow, Where creep and crouch the shuddering Esquimaux; Ay, in the stream that, ere again we meet, Shall burst the pavement, glistening at our feet, And, stealing silent from its leafy hills, Thread all our alleys with its thousand rills,— In each pale draught if generous feeling blend, And o'er the goblet friend ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... what would be the effect on us all if one morning we waited in vain for the sunrise? I tried to picture my own emotions as the truth was slowly borne in upon me that some unprecedented calamity had silently and without any premonition befallen the whole world of men. Would one crouch in a terror of apprehension? I could not see it that way. I believed that I should be trembling with a furious excitement, stirred to the very depths by so inspiring and adventurous a miracle. I had forsaken my speculation and was indulging in the philosophical reflection ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... the inner part of the hollow knob in the center. It is always held in an upright position, the transverse piece being on top, at the left side of the warrior, who never presents the front of his person to the enemy. To protect the feet and legs he must crouch down. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... the silly tench doth fly, And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish; Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by; These fleet afloat while those do fill the dish. There is a time even for the worms to creep. And suck the dew while all ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... excellent, no virtue, no station, can avert;" a terror which seeks to regulate not only political but private concerns, which causes even the Bishops of his own faith who dare to oppose him without the means of support, and such men as Sir William Somerville, to crouch under his denunciations, and at his behest to violate what must be the dictates of their own consciences, in order to purchase immunity from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... circle's edge. At a signal from the Sultan the door of the cage is opened and the great striped cat, its yellow eyes glaring malevolently, its stiffened tail nervously sweeping the ground, slips forth on padded feet to crouch defiantly in the center of the extemporized arena. Occasionally, but very occasionally, the beast becomes intimidated at sight of the waiting spearmen and the breathless throng beyond them, but usually it is only a matter ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... shall sit with my back to the door. You go out one by one so far as our friends can make out. Crouch very low to be on the safe side. They mustn't see you through ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany

... out to those gallant fellows splashing through the river at the disputed ford. He felt as though he must shut his eyes so as not to see what was fated to occur; but for the life of him he could not. Some power beyond his control forced him to continue to crouch there and stare with all his might and main, as though he must omit no small detail of the ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... knife. It was after seven o'clock, and the crescent moon hung low by the ridge, waiting for the sun to take its complete departure before setting in for its night's joy-ride up the sky. It was eight before Pan finished his slow browsing in his bowl and came over to crouch with me out on the ledge of rock that overlooked the world below us. Clusters of lights in nests of gray smoke were dotted around over the valley, and I knew the nearest one was Riverfield; indeed I could see ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... is what he told Miss Griselda, and she never thought to ask him more. But I'll tell you how we could get to hear more about him, I think, ma'am. From what Miss Griselda says, I believe he is staying at Mr. Crouch's farm, and that, you know, ma'am, belongs to my Lady Lavander, though it is a good way from Merrybrow Hall. My lady is pretty sure to know about the child, for she knows all that goes on among her tenants, and I remember hearing that a little gentleman and his nurse had come to ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth

... a Sanctuary frees thy toung And gives thee childish liberty of speech, Which els would fawne and crouch at Burbons frowne. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... descended like a ponderous rock, and he realized that he was in the grip of the very redskin about whom he had been meditating. The miscreant had managed to crouch behind a rocky protuberance, and then made a sudden leap upon the shoulders of the hunter. As the Apache's scheme had miscarried thus far, and instead of being backed up by the other warriors, he was left alone to fight it out, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... of the wilds, not guilty but protective. In such surroundings he had been born, there he had spent most of his days. You could read it in the crouch, the quiet, unwasted movements, the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... Miss Knapp," I said. "They're coming. Stand close behind me, and crouch down if they get ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... escape punishment was to escape accusation; and few slaves had the fortune to do either, under the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just proud enough to demand the most debasing homage of the slave, and quite servile enough to crouch, himself, at the feet of the master. He was ambitious enough to be contented with nothing short of the highest rank of overseers, and persevering enough to reach the height of his ambition. He was cruel enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... of life and death, and she prays that the goddess may touch her soul with the wing of fire and make her great and give her vision of things that have been and that shall be. More I dare not tell you now; indeed I can barely hear, and the song is hard to understand. Crouch down, for the moon rises, and pray that the mules may not stir. Presently she will go, and we can fly the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... Minchin some money and went away, and for several days Sara would neither touch the doll, nor her breakfast, nor her dinner, nor her tea, and would do nothing but crouch in a small corner by the window and cry. She cried so much, indeed, that she made herself ill. She was a queer little child, with old-fashioned ways and strong feelings, and she had adored her papa, and could not be made to think that India and an interesting ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... there are still many who know little beyond the bare fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess, her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad of history ignore it ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... city parks, famished, benumbed and mute, Two hundred thousand refugees, homeless and destitute! Upon the hard, cold ground they crouch—the wrecks of Pomp and Pride; Milady and the city waifs are huddled side by side. And there, 'neath shelter rude and frail, we hear the new-born infants wail, While' nations read the tragic tale—how ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... lee of the dry torrent's steeper banks, he might crouch and watch these strange, grey masses pass and pass in safety till the wind fell, and it became possible to escape. And there for a long time he crouched, watching the strange, grey, ragged masses trail their streamers ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... from behind and slightly to the left of him, so he drew his left-hand weapon and spun to the left as he dropped to a crouch. He had turned almost completely around, drawn his gun, and fired three shots before the other man had ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... waste, but the coarser fragments as well, and is hurling them along at Empire State Express velocity. One might as well try to face a hail of leaden bullets. It is a cruel blast that neither animal nor human being can withstand. The camels crouch with their heads pointing away from the wind and nostrils close to the ground; their drivers lie prone with faces in little ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... us is, if viewed aright, but an outward sign of those good things which a new country has produced for its people. Men and women do not beg in the States; they do not offend you with tattered rags; they do not complain to heaven of starvation; they do not crouch to the ground for half-pence. If poor, they are not abject in their poverty. They read and write. They walk like human beings made in God's form. They know that they are men and women, owing it to themselves and to the world that they should earn their bread by their labor, but feeling that when ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... from Hell) Begone, foul visitants to upper air! Back to your dens! nor stain the sunny earth By shadows thrown from forms so foul—Crouch in! Proserpine, child of light, is not ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... distinguish between the living and the slaughtered—they both lie so silently in their little kennels in the earthen bank. You push on—especially if you are doing observation work, till you are past your own front line and out in No Man's Land. You have to crouch and move warily now. Zing! A bullet from a German sniper. You laugh and whisper, "A near one, that." My first trip to the trenches was up to No Man's Land. I went in the early dawn and came to a Madame Tussaud's show of ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... "Maid, arise!" As I passed by, I saw Him strike a rock, and torrents of tears gushed out: I beheld a tree, with its sacred burden, and the serpent-poison ceased to inflame: I saw the iron swim against its natural bent, and the lion crouch as though it beheld an angel of God with a flaming sword. Again, the seas made a passage for the sacramental hosts, and the waters shrank away before the touch of the Priestly feet, making a passage through the depths. No; it is still ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... again crouch round the fire. Officers and privates press together for warmth. Other stragglers arrive, and sit at the backs of the first. With the progress of the night the stars come out in unusual brilliancy, Sirius ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... then, ye jades! Now crouch, ye kings of greatest Asia, And tremble, when ye hear this scourge will come That whips down cities and controlleth crowns, Adding their wealth and treasure to my store. The Euxine sea, north to Natolia; The Terrene, west; the Caspian, north north-east; And on the south, Sinus Arabicus; ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... the armament which he whom you call Sabat Jung is already preparing to invade your dominions, when every hair of an Englishman's head that you have injured will have to be reckoned for. And it will be well for you if, among all those who crouch before you, you find any to fight for you ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... dragging it out of the line of fire that came through the door. The Girl saw his peril and sprang to help him. He had no time to urge her back. In ten seconds he had the stove close to the wall, and almost forcibly he made her crouch down ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... at once. We had often talked, over our camp-fire, of such an event as unexpectedly meeting a lion face to face; and Peterkin, who knew a good deal about such matters, had said that in such a case a man's only chance was to crouch and stare the lion out of countenance. We laughed at this; but he assured us positively that he had himself seen it done to tigers in India, and added that if a man turned and ran his destruction would be certain. To fire straight in the face of a lion in such a ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... match that the grinning and stealthily silent Bobby had ever seen. Johnson, with a true "tiger crouch" which he could not have avoided if he had wished, began dancing around and around the spherical body of Mr. Trimmer, without science and without precaution, keeping his two arms going like windmills, and occasionally landing a light blow upon ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... to fit this dog for our service: the pointer will act without any great degree of instruction, and the setter will crouch; but the Sheep Dog, especially if he has the example of an older one, will, almost without the teaching of his master, become everything he could wish, and be obedient to every order, even to the slightest motion of the hand. If the shepherd's ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... and cowardly heart shall perish, and shall not parry the thrust of death by flight, though it bury itself in a valley, or crouch in darkling dens. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... toward the village she would have seen a man, only a few rods distant, walking somewhat unsteadily toward the house. He stopped abruptly and raised his hand in amazement as he saw the woman, knife in hand, hurry across the road and crouch behind the wall. He ran toward her calling "Mother!" but the baying of the hound drowned his voice. Before he could reach her she sprang to her feet just as the dog rose into the air from the opposite side of the wall. She was exactly in front of it. The beast uttered a howl of terror as the ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... was narrow, and in spots so low that it was necessary for a man to crouch almost to the ground. Cleggett, because he did not wish to reveal his presence, did not flash his lantern; there were stretches where he might have stood almost erect and made quicker progress, if he had found them with the light. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time! Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray 'Lead us into no such temptation, Lord!' Yea, but, O Thou, whose servants are the bold, Lead such temptations by the head and hair, Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, That so he may do ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber in this manner to my breast. At such times, although I longed ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... crone; "hast thou ever spared man in thy hatred, or woman in thy lust? Ah, grovel in the dust!—crouch—crouch!—wild beast as thou art! whose sleek skin and beautiful hues have taught the unwary to be blind to the talons that rend, and the grinders that devour;—crouch, that the foot of the old and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... came to know every secret spring and hidden dell in the whole surrounding wall of the valley. They learned all the trails and cow-paths; but nothing delighted them more than to essay the roughest and most impossible rides, where they were glad to crouch and crawl along the narrowest deer-runs, Bob and Mab struggling and forcing their way along behind. Back from their rides they brought the seeds and bulbs of wild flowers to plant in favoring nooks on the ranch. Along the foot trail which led down the side of the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... as in the morning. He knelt in a corner, against one of his rough bookcases, bowed to the ground as though a mountain had come upon him unawares, and now and then he beat his forehead against the parchment bindings of his favourite folio Muratori, as certain wild beasts crouch on their knees and with a swinging of slow despair strike their heads against the bars of their cage many ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... at his gates. He buries himself and companion in a thick grove of cedars, and they crouch to the very ground. Oh, how humble is the lord of millions! How all the endowments of the world fall off from a man in his last extremity! He shivers, he trembles—yea, he prays! Through his bloodshot eyes he catches some glimpses of a God—of a merciful ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... something descended like a ponderous rock, and he realized that he was in the grip of the very redskin about whom he had been meditating. The miscreant had managed to crouch behind a rocky protuberance, and then made a sudden leap upon the shoulders of the hunter. As the Apache's scheme had miscarried thus far, and instead of being backed up by the other warriors, he was left ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... the hour," said Rebecca, "that has taught such art to the House of Israel! but adversity bends the heart as fire bends the stubborn steel, and those who are no longer their own governors, and the denizens of their own free independent state, must crouch before strangers. It is our curse, Sir Knight, deserved, doubtless, by our own misdeeds and those of our fathers; but you—you who boast your freedom as your birthright, how much deeper is your disgrace when you ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Beauvallet. Beside you is the girl you love. You are all that stands between her and the black rebels. Now take this sword in your right hand and the pistol in your left. Lean forward a little. There! Now don't move; you've got just the pose I want. Ricky, crouch down by the side of his chair with your arm up so that you can touch his hand. You're terrified. There's death, horrible death, ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... poor men's prayers. That dolt destruction is she without doubt, That hales her forth and feedeth her with nought. Simplicity and plainness, you I love! Hence, double diligence, thou mean'st deceit: Those that now serpent-like creep on the ground, And seem to eat the dust, they crouch so low— If they be disappointed of their prey, Most traitorously will trace their nails and sting. Yea, such as, like[98] the lapwing, build their nests In a man's dung, come up by drudgery, Will be the first that, like that foolish bird, Will ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... much that I should be a little out of the way, saying that without their Register they were not a Committee, which I took in some dudgeon, and see clearly that I must keep myself at a little distance with them and not crouch, or else I shall never keep myself up even with them. So home and wrote letters by the post. This evening my wife come home from christening Mrs. Hunt's son, his name John, and a merchant in Mark Lane came along ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Lane dropped lightly to the floor, inside the room, in battle-crouch. A 3V set was yammering. A girl screamed. Lane's hand shot out automatically. A finger vibrated. Out of the corner of his eye, Lane saw the girl fold to the floor. There was no one else in the room. Lane, still in a crouch, chewed ...
— Mutineer • Robert J. Shea

... were necessary on the part of the trio, for during that time they were screened from the view of their quarry by the intervening clump of bush; but upon reaching the extremity of this they were obliged to crouch low, and sometimes even to go down on their knees in the long grass to avoid detection. The elephants were still busily feeding, as could easily be seen by the occasional violent movement of the branches of the trees, while one or another of them occasionally gave vent to his feelings ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... summer rose, That brighter in the dew-drop glows, 515 The bashful maiden's cheek appeared, For Douglas spoke and Malcolm heard. The flush of shame-faced joy to hide, The hounds, the hawk, her cares divide; The loved caresses of the maid 520 The dogs with crouch and whimper paid; And, at her whistle, on her hand The falcon took his favorite stand, Closed his dark wing, relaxed his eye, Nor, though unhooded, sought to fly. 525 And, trust, while in such guise she stood, Like fabled Goddess of the wood, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the top of the steps. She was in a half-crouch, knife ready. "I'll kill the King and I'll drink from his throat!" she cried hoarsely. "No man kicks me except for love. Has he forgotten that I am the foster-daughter ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... with rational ideas, pen in hand he can transmit them to his fellows far away, or to generations unborn. Heir and lord of earth and ocean, his hands enable him to possess and control the same, without which, notwithstanding all his reason, he could do neither, but would have to crouch beneath the superior strength of the brute, and fly for shelter to crags inaccessible ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... him by the hand and led him on tiptoe to the terrace, making him crouch down close to the open French window. The "Pastorale" was louder here. It never ceased, but returned again and again with the delicious monotony that made it memorable and wove a spell round those who loved it. As he listened to it, Maurice fancied he could ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... daylight Clonderriff, for all Mr. Considine's labours, was a sordid collection of cabins, whitened without, but full of peat-smoke and the odours of cattle within. The cabins stood on the brow of a hill. In winter they seemed to crouch beneath a sweeping wind—and the grass thatchings would have been whirled away if they had not been kept in position by ropes that were weighted with stones. The small irregular plots in which the villagers grew their potatoes were bounded by dry walls through crevices of which the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... Grandet was something between a tiger and a boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low, watch his prey a long while, spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a mass of louis, and then rest tranquilly like a snake in process of digestion, impassible, methodical, and cold. No one saw ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... sky. Under that colossal threatened impact he crouched down to the deck. Above him, falling upon him like a bolt from the blue, was a winged hawk unthinkably vaster than the one he had encountered. But in his crouch was no hint of cower. His crouch was a gathering together, an assembling of all the parts of him under the rule of the spirit of him, for the spring upward to meet in mid career this monstrous, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... went she would go. She glanced at the weapon on the sideboard, but left it behind her, and presently stood at her friend's side. They dared not look over the wall, for fear of being seen; they were obliged to crouch behind it. They heard ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... building; so that it was not unusual for a sergeant and several men to enter the south door of Rat Hell in the daytime, while the diggers were at labor in the dark north end. During these visits the digger would watch the intruders with his head sticking out of the tunnel, while the others would crouch behind the low stone fenders, or crawl quickly under the straw. This was, however, so uninviting a place that the Confederates made this visit as brief as a nominal compliance with their orders permitted, and they did not often venture into the ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... virtues nor vices are all our own. If there were no cowardice, there would be little insolence; pride cannot rise to any great degree, but by the concurrence of blandishment or the sufferance of tameness. The wretch who would shrink and crouch before one that should dart his eyes upon him with the spirit of natural equality, becomes capricious and tyrannical when he sees himself approached with a downcast look, and hears the soft address of awe and servility. To those who are willing to purchase favour by cringes and compliance, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... round the long table—I see him as never seated, but always on the move, a weary Wandering Jew of the classe; but in particular I hear him recite to us the combat with the Moors from Le Cid and show us how Talma, describing it, seemed to crouch down on his haunches in order to spring up again terrifically to the height of "Nous nous levons alors!" which M. Bonnefons rendered as if on the carpet there fifty men at least had leaped to their feet. But he threw off these broken lights with ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... care on the points of his toes, and came to a stop about four feet from me. I began to wonder what Rooksby would have thought of this sort of thing, to wonder why Castro himself found it necessary to crouch for such a long time. Up above, the hum of many people, still laughing, still talking, faded a little out of mind. I understood, horribly, how possible it would be to die within those few feet of them. Castro's eyes ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... oft at the nunnery gate, As the darkness fell over the village, Would a swart savage crouch and await, With the patience of devilish hate, A chance to ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... than those storms which are peculiar to our milder climates. The tempest-voice of the wind was now in dreadful accordance! with its power. Poor Kennedy, who fortunately knew every step of the rugged road along which he struggled and staggered, was frequently obliged to crouch himself and hold by the projecting crags about him, lest the strength of the blast might hurl him over the rocky precipices by the edges of which the road went. With great difficulty, however, and not less ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... why should I mingle in Fashion's full herd? Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules? Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd? Why search for delight, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... turned to close the door, I discovered that there was no door to close, nor was there even a curtain to screen me from view. The bed, however, was an old-fashioned wooden affair with a big solid footboard, so I concluded that in case of any one passing the doorway, I could crouch behind the foot of the bed. Then, when I blew out my candle, I got a great surprise, for lo and behold! I could see all over the house! I could see "Paw and Maw" getting undressed, Athabasca saying her prayers, and the half-breed maids ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... Palgrave no good to crouch ignominiously on the step of the car which Oldershaw drove ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Being so cold and wanting to rush in and crouch over a fire put it clean out of my head. He must be thinking me a perfect beast!" She ran to ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... drinking whisky and exchanging tips. They belong to the most credulous race of men alive. They are all believers in what is called information, and information is simply the betting man's name for gossip. The friend is speaking in a low but excited voice to his companions, who crouch over towards him in order to catch information not meant for the rest of the room. He tells how he had just been in to buy a paper at his newsagent's, and how his newsagent had been calling on his solicitor that morning, and the solicitor told him ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... ed: proud, vain. con fess: to own; to admit. coun cil: a small body called together for a trial, or to decide a matter. court ier (court' yer): an attendant at the court of a prince. crime: a wicked act punishable by law. crouch: to stoop low. ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... coach at anything," broke in a third. "I never saw a fellow who seemed able to make such a record at all sorts of sports. Who would have thought that he could face Bascomb? Look! Rains is going to start! See him crouch for the run! He is like a young ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... the bee sucks there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I crouch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... with a giddy blankness, and found myself outside a bare windowless wall in Charin again, the night sky starred and cold. The acrid smell of the Ghost Wind was thinning in the streets, but I had to crouch in a cranny of the wall when a final rustling horde of Ya-men, the last of their receding tide, rustled down the street. I found my way to my lodging in a filthy chak hostel, and threw myself ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... so quietly out from the mound, the small birds that unnoticed have come to roost in the bushes will hear it and fly off in alarm. The rabbits that are near the hedge rush in; those that are far from home crouch in the furrows and the bunches. Crossing the open field, they suddenly start as it seems from under your feet—one white tail goes dapping up and down this way, another jerks over the 'lands' that way. The moonbeams now glisten ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... first shame over, all that would might fall. No Henry! Yet I merely sit and think The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have crept Out of myself. A Mildred that has lost Her lover—oh, I dare not look upon Such woe! I crouch away from it! 'Tis she, Mildred, will break her heart, not I! The world Forsakes me: only Henry's left me—left? When I have lost him, for he does not come, And I sit stupidly... Oh Heaven, break up This worse than anguish, this mad apathy, By ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning

... even consorting with wolves, interbreeding with them, assuming their gregarious habits, and changing the characteristic bark into a dismal wolf-like howl. The wolf and the jackal when tamed answer to their master's call, wag their tails, lick his hands, crouch, jump round him to be caressed, and throw themselves on their backs in submission. When in high spirits they run round in circles or in a figure of eight, with their tails between their legs. Their howl becomes a business-like bark. They smell ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... tides, Old bulls in their whiskers and pomp And sleek little brides. Yet others come visiting me Than grey seal or bird; Men come in the night from the sea And utter no word. Wet weed clings to bosom and hair; Their faces are drawn; They crouch by the embers and stare And go with the dawn To sleep in my garden, the swell flowing over them Like a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various

... who was completely under his control, said these words of grave import and high wisdom: 'Thou hast spoken most magnanimously. It could scarcely be unexpected from one like thee. Listen to me as I disclose the expedient I have hit upon for benefiting both of us. I will crouch myself beneath thy body. I am exceedingly frightened at the mongoose. Do thou save me. Kill me not. I am competent to rescue thee. Protect me also from the owl, for that wretch too wishes to seize me for his prey. I shall cut the noose that entangles thee. I swear by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... yards from the hut the major and I shared in one of the narrowest escapes that have befallen me in France. We heard the shell coming just in time to crouch. According to Meddings, who stood in the doorway of the hut, it fell ten yards from us. Smothered with earth, we moved forward rapidly immediately ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... years from the introduction of drill-holes for blasting by Caspar Weindel in Hungary, to the invention of the first practicable steam percussion drill by J. J. Crouch of Philadelphia, in 1849, all drilling was done by hand. Since Crouch's time a host of mechanical drills to be actuated by all sorts of power have come forward, and even yet the machine-drill has not reached a stage of development where it can displace hand-work under all conditions. Steam-power ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... off for some distant shelter. If there is no apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible, they hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some clumpy bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... enough, and presently I came across one half of them. By this time about fourteen people, men as well as women, were looking for them. The gale was terrific, and when the gusts came the only thing to do was to crouch down. It was a comical sight, and I wish I could have photographed it. I was caught hold of several times by one of the elder girls and held when the gusts came. I promised a pot of jam to the one who ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... gestures and the expression of the nurse or mother when using the word sink into the infant mind, and when that sound or word is heard there is an instant response, as in the case of a warning note or cry uttered by a parent bird which causes the young to fly away or crouch ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... has that strength gone, which thou didst formerly possess? Thou saidst, I ween, that thou, with thy kindred and thy brothers, couldst defend the city without the forces and allies. Now I can neither see nor perceive any of these; but they crouch down, like dogs but a lion: we, on the contrary, who are here mere allies, bear the brunt of the fight. Even I, being thine ally, have come from a very great distance; for far off is Lycia, at lying Xanthus, where I ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... who lived near some outdoor cross. The form crouch survives in "Crutched Friars." Hence ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... among his ewes That with their lambs are unafraid Of him and keen-eyed dogs; They crouch close in about his feet Whene'er the coyote's cry Or bear's low growl Falls tingling on the timid ear. Himself thrusts gun to elbow-place And peers amid the dust-dressed sage And scented chaparral so dense, To glimpse the fiery eyeballs Of the prowler of the hills; While all awatch ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... tapestried walls: then the great Cardinal spiders do so click there, are so like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is inveterately superstitious, will not abide there. The hall, with its enclosing galleries, and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. So they heard, nay crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful treachery which, as far as their country is concerned, has been a thing apart in our annals, in 'my Lady's' closet. Englishmen are turbulent, ambitious, unscrupulous; but the craft of Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale—the subtlety of Ashley, seem hardly conceivable ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... conditions which resulted were unspeakable, especially in the little barrios, or groups of houses, placed close together, helter-skelter, on wet, swampy ground and reached by means of runways not worthy even of the name of alleys, as one often had to crouch to ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... somebody stir," said Wildney; "we haven't been half quiet enough. Here! let's crouch down in ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... since." She did not give way to tears, for the worst grief can not weep. She continued: "I went to the saloon, where I thought most like he would be. It was about twenty minutes after twelve; but the saloon, that man's saloon"—pointing to the saloonkeeper, who now wanted to crouch out of sight—"was still open, and my husband and these two policemen were standing at the bar drinking together. I stepped up to my husband and asked him to go home with me; but the men laughed at him, and the saloonkeeper ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... was not. The tree sparrow actually does not show half the preference for trees that its familiar little counterpart does, but rather keeps to low bushes when not on the ground, where we usually find it. It does not crouch upon the ground like the chippy, but with a lordly carriage holds itself erect as it nimbly runs over the frozen crust. Sheltered from the high, wintry winds in the furrows and dry ditches of ploughed fields, a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... rain tears like a woman's. At times as ye look back down the path of life, or when ye are old and gather yourselves together to crouch before the fire, because for you the sun has no more heat, ye will think of how we stood shoulder to shoulder, in that great battle which thy wise words planned, Macumazahn; of how thou wast the point of the horn that galled Twala's flank, Bougwan; whilst thou stood in the ring of the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... Jacobins of Paris to usurp supreme dominion over the republic was brought to the knowledge of the Convention; and again Barere spoke with warmth against the new tyranny which afflicted France, and declared that the people of the departments would never crouch beneath the tyranny of one ambitious city. He even proposed a resolution to the effect that the Convention would exert against the demagogues of the capital the same energy which had been exerted against the tyrant Louis. We are ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... like fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife; if ye are men, follow me! strike down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work as did your sires at old Thermopyl! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that ye do crouch and cower like base-born slaves, beneath your master's lash? O! comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we must die, let us die under the open sky, by the bright waters, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Blackwater and Crouch in Essex, is a great stretch of land, flat for the most part and rather dreary, which, however, to judge from what they have left us, our ancestors thought of much importance because of its situation, its trade and the corn it grew. So it came ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... woods-boss quickly covered, ripped a sizzling left into the latter's midriff. Rondeau grunted and dropped his guard, with the result that Bryce's great fists played a devil's tattoo on his countenance before he could crouch and cover. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... bushes, chasing the rabbits into their holes; and then, as if apologising for this wild getting rid of a superabundance of animal spirits kept low in the mournful old house, he would come as soon as she sat quietly down, crouch close up to her, and lay his head on her knee, to gaze up in her face, blinking his eyes, and not moving again perhaps ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... the turn. And it was instinct, quickened and guided by desperation, that made him dart like a rose-tinted flash up the steps to the stoop of an old-fashioned residence standing just beyond the corner, spring inside the storm doors, draw them to behind him, and crouch there, hidden, as ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... Isles, twenty-six; the boot of Tzar Peter, thirty. Long live that Tzar who was great, and long live his boot, which was still greater! Ladies, take the advice of a friend; make a mistake in your neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle love. It has been said, error is human; I say, error is love. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zephine, O Josephine, face ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... of her fragmentary rehearsals upstairs she had supposed she would say something conventional to begin with. But the reality struck conventionality clean out of the realm of the possible. Her silent pause there was as significant as the crouch of a hound; and she perceived that it was recognized to be so by the other that was there. There was in him that quick, silent alertness she had expected: half defiant, half timid, as of a fierce beast ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... mere trick of mine; that I had told him to charge when he sprang up. She knew his eyes so little as to think he displayed regard for rather than respect for my command. She could not see that he begged me piteously to know why he must crouch there at a couple of strange inconsequential feet and see the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... and below, the footmen had no chance of escape but in crossing the river and ascending a steep bluff, on its opposite side. In attempting this several lost their lives. John McLain was killed about thirty yards from the brow of the hill.—James Ralston, when a little farther up it, and James Crouch was wounded after having nearly reached its summit, yet he got safely off and returned to the fort on the next day. John Nelson, after crossing over, endeavored to escape down the river; but being there met by a stout warrior, he too was killed, after a severe struggle. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... marched, through vaults of flowery smilax, where lianas with strange and gorgeous blossoms snared our feet in their twining ropy stems. Enormous bats fluttered in our faces, rattlesnakes rattled around us, and bears and carcajous—those little tigers that crouch on the branches of trees, and leap without warning on their prey—made the latter part of our journey full of strange perils and difficulties. For after travelling for twenty-seven days, we crossed the Alleghany mountains, and got into a tract ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me of my ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... Civilisation was saved, but at what a price! The tide of popular feeling turned and ebbed almost as fast as it had risen. Imprudent and obstinate opposition to reasonable demands had brought on anarchy; and as soon as men had a near view of anarchy they fled in terror to crouch at the feet of despotism. To the dominion of mobs armed with pikes succeeded the sterner and more lasting dominion of disciplined armies. The Papacy rose from its debasement; rose more intolerant and insolent than before; intolerant ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... shall march prospering,—not thro' his presence Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... thought it prudent to crouch down in the clothes and pretend to be asleep, while the kind Princess got up and ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... neighborhood, and so are you men as sentries," whispered Lieutenant Overton. "Our other men, up the river and down, must imagine that we have taken care of the tug, if the craft needed such attention, and so the other men are holding their own posts according to their orders. Now, come on, men. Crouch low and make no noise. If you see me run for the pier follow ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... How I wanted to crawl out to the trench under the wagons where our men were keeping up a steady but irregular fire! Each was shooting on his own whenever he saw a man to pull trigger on. But mother suspected me, for she made me crouch down and keep right ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... would whistle overhead and burst in our vicinity. We would crouch against the earthen walls while the shell fragments ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... king Sapor, who conquered Mesopotamia, and on the banks of the Euphrates defeated Valerian in a terrible battle at Edessa. Valerian was made prisoner, and kept as a wretched slave, who was forced to crouch down that Sapor might climb up by his back when mounting on horseback; and when he died, his skin was dyed purple, stuffed, and hung ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... earliest forms of superstition. The anthropologist calls it "fetichism" when he finds it among primitive peoples. When the same notion is propounded by advanced thinkers, we call it "advanced thought." We attribute to the Thing a malignant purpose and an irresistible potency, and we crouch before it as if it were our master. When the Thing is set going, we observe its direction with awe-struck resignation, just as people once drew omens from the flight of birds. What are we that we should interfere with the ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... You yourself are a beacon against the course you advise. Let us contrast each other. You took the straight path, I the crooked. You, my superior in fortune; you, infinitely above me in genius; you, born to command and never to crouch: how do we stand now, each in the prime of life? You, with a barren and profitless reputation; without rank, without power, almost without the hope of power. I—but you know not my new dignity—I, in the Cabinet of England's ministry, vast fortunes opening to my gaze, the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... night? - Night with pestilent breath Feeds us, children of death, Clothes us close with her gloom. Rapine and famine and fright Crouch at our feet and are fed. Earth where we pass is a tomb, Life where we ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... on it next month. Also a nice, new building is going up next door to it on that little, secret, walled jungle that Ely Crouch used to misname his garden. I'm glad of it, too. I ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the first time, to catch sight of each other, and while the brave bearing the rude lantern still maintained his slow movements, searching well as he came, the other Indians came in advance, giving the fugitives barely time in which to crouch down ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... lightness of his heart he absolutely tried to be civil with Cornelius. But Cornelius became wildly jovial in response, and it was almost more than he could stand, he says, to hear his little squeaks of false laughter, to see him wriggle and blink, and suddenly catch hold of his chin and crouch low over the table with a distracted stare. The girl did not show herself, and Jim retired early. When he rose to say good-night, Cornelius jumped up, knocking his chair over, and ducked out of sight as if to pick up something he had dropped. His good-night came huskily from under ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... have let the cat too much out of the bag to have put the birds where we stand. Whereas, there is a fine hypocrisy about us. Consider—am not I the type of heroism, of magnanimity? Well, compelling me, the heroic, the magnanimous, now to stand here upon my hind-legs, and now to crouch quietly down, like a pet kitten over-fed with new milk,—any state roguery is passed off as the greatest piece of single-minded honesty upon the mere strength of my character—if I may so say it, upon my legendary reputation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... terrible kriss-knives, with jeweled handles. Over his shoulder he carried a spear. How he drummed on that shield! He hurled his knives into the air, and cleverly caught them before they fell. He seemed to pursue a foe; to crouch like a boy scout; to listen; to follow the track; to meet the foe; to battle for his life and country. At last he seemed to conquer with a wild yell, just as he was hurled backward and his shield was thrown aside. All this, while we held our breath in excitement, he acted in his strange, ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson

... head—that seam marks the sliding panel. She may come again when she sees the top of my umbrella over the wall. Listen! That's her step. She has some one with her—crouch down close. There's only room for her head. You may see her then without her attendant knowing you are here. Quick! she is sliding ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... weapon stood.[8] Achilles next, hurl'd his long shadow'd spear, And struck AEneas on the utmost verge Of his broad shield, where thinnest lay the brass, 340 And thinnest the ox-hide. The Pelian ash Started right through the buckler, and it rang. AEneas crouch'd terrified, and his shield Thrust farther from him; but the rapid beam Bursting both borders of the ample disk, 345 Glanced o'er his back, and plunged into the soil. He 'scaped it, and he stood; but, as he stood, With horror ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... want for San Francisco!" exclaimed the impulsive B. T. Crouch, who had kindled into a generous enthusiasm under ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... and the infamous scheme plotted during the last three months against the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendome and his daughter. Unfortunately, it was too late. I was obliged, in order not to be seen from the yacht, to crouch in the cleft of a rock and did not reach land until mid-day. By the time that I had been to a fisherman's cabin, exchanged my clothes for his and come on here, it was three o'clock. On my arrival. I learnt that Angelique's marriage was celebrated ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... picturesque old facade, to which you pick your way through a narrow and tortuous street, - a street terminating, a little be- yond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant Gothic doorway is let into the rusty-red brick-work, and strange little beasts crouch at the angles of the windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduated gable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large surface of brick, lifted out of the shadow of the street, looks yellow and faded. The whole thing is disfigured and decayed; but it is a capital subject ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... the sergeant had held up a hand once more. This was the signal to advance. Now, as the men moved forward, the formation was not kept. Each for himself reached the crater in his own way and time. Down in this basin men could crouch without fear of being seen should ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock

... a perfect understanding had been established between Boulanger and their new guide, and they seemed to need a few signs only to express their meaning. A good many whispers, however, were necessary in order to make Isidore crouch down in the middle of the largest canoe without upsetting the frail craft, but as soon as he had done so his companions stepped lightly in, one at each end, and the next moment they were silently ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... must palter, falter, cringe, and shrink, And when the bully threatens, crouch or fly.— There are who tell me with a shuddering eye That war's red cup is Satan's chosen drink. Who shall gainsay them? Verily I do think War is as hateful almost, and well-nigh As ghastly, as this terrible Peace whereby ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... he caused it to be newly bound, and his coat of arms fixed upon it. She said, however, that Sir John might have it for 40 pounds, but that she would not take a farthing less, adding that he had already offered her 30 pounds in her own house, but that she had refused the sum. Mr. Gilbert Crouch, who was negotiating for Sir John, in explaining the matter to Dugdale, said that if Sir John Cotton had "so great a mind to the book, he were better give this other 10 pounds than run the charge ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... Linda would not stay in the room. Oh! if she might crouch away where she, too, could shed tears over the changed Castle O'Shanaghgan. For what did she and her father want with a furniture-shop? Must she, for all the rest of her days, live in a sort of feather-bed house? Must ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... wrath, the Earthquake's shock, 50 Have left untouched her hoary rock, The keystone of a land, which still, Though fall'n, looks proudly on that hill, The landmark to the double tide That purpling rolls on either side, As if their waters chafed to meet, Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet. But could the blood before her shed Since first Timoleon's brother bled,[339] Or baffled Persia's despot fled, 60 Arise from out the Earth which drank The stream of Slaughter as it sank, That sanguine Ocean would o'erflow Her ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... a good deal out there in the sunshine. The women and the older man talked floridly. Il Duro crouched at the feast in his curious fashion—he had strangely flexible loins, upon which he seemed to crouch forward. But he was separate, like an animal that remains quite single, no ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... But Albion's cliffs are out at heel; And Patience can endure no more To hear the Belgic lion roar. Give up the phrase of haughty Gaul, But proud Iberia soundly maul: Restore the ships by Philip taken, And make him crouch to save his bacon. Nassau, who got the name of Glorious, Because he never was victorious, A hanger-on has always been; For old acquaintance bring him in. To Walpole you might lend a line, But much I fear he's in decline; And if you chance to come too late, When ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... mood Of envious sloth, and proud decrepitude; No faith, no art, no king, no priest, no God; While round the freezing founts of life in snarling ring, Crouch'd on the bareworn sod, Babbling about the unreturning spring, And whining for dead gods, who cannot save, The toothless systems shiver to ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... are served. They begin to drop through, and it looks serious for those who crouch within. Certainly they cannot hold ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... touch the loathsome thing again to hide it in the shadows. I could neither take my eyes from it nor put my hands upon it. Like the basilisk of fable it held my gaze charmed, fixed it, bound it fast. Crouch as I might in the remotest corner, cover my face in my mantle, still that searching, penetrating thing pierced all obstacles, glared grisly and ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... act, as the only effectual means of answering his just complaints." "And can it be possible," I asked, "that justice will not in the end be done to this unfortunate gentleman?" "Depend upon it," replied Clifford, "he is too honest ever to gain redress. If he would crouch and truckle to his persecutors, he might not only be set at liberty, but all that they have robbed him of would be returned. This, however, he never will do. He, poor fellow! expects that when the operation of the Habeas Corpus act is restored, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... see the assassin crouch and fire, I see his victim fall,—expire; I see the murderer creeping nigher To strip the dead. He turns the head,—the face! The son ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... something even of the riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too—not a black one with gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... helped. He came dressed like an Arab woman, and pretended to be old and lame, so that he could crouch down and use a stick as he walked, to disguise his height. Bakta waited—and we had no more than ten minutes to say everything. Ten hours wouldn't have been enough!—but we were in danger every instant, and he was ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... again, and the man went on. He had peculiar mannerisms on the platform. His lanky form was never still for an instant. He hurried from one end of the stage to the other; he would crouch and bend as if he were going to spring upon the audience, a long, skinny finger would be shaken before their faces, or pointed as if to drive his words into their hearts. His speech was a torrent of epigram, sarcasm, invective. He ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... by a liberal allowance of "narrow squeaks," I get back to my own bit of trench; and tobogganing down where I erroneously think the clay steps are, I at last reach my dug-out, and entering on all fours, crouch amongst the damp tobacco leaves and straw and light ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... curlew, sending Beatrice, who knew the coast by heart, a mile round or more to some headland in order to put them on the wing. Then she would come back, springing towards him from rock to rock, and crouch down beneath a neighbouring seaweed-covered boulder, and they would talk together in whispers, or perhaps they would not talk at all, for fear lest they should frighten the flighting birds. And Geoffrey would first search the heavens for curlew or duck, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... notice that naturally fell to her share, she obtained the more. Never intruding between Eveena and myself, she alone was not wholly unwelcome to share our accidental privacy when, in the peristyle or the grounds, the others left us temporarily alone. On such occasions she would often draw near and crouch at my feet or by Eveena's side, curling herself like a kitten upon the turf or among the cushions, often resting her little head upon Eveena's knee or mine; generally silent, but never so silent as to seem ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... went the low, almost whispered and repeated order down the line, "crouch low and do not hurry. A hundred yards ahead is a position from which we can rake the rascals with a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... or lapwings, are numerous enough on the Cotswolds. They are wonderfully difficult to circumvent, nevertheless. You crouch down under a wall, while your men go ever so far round to drive them to you; but it is the rarest thing in the world to bag one. Their eggs are very difficult to find in the breeding season. It is the male bird that, like a terrified and anxious mother, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... range, the silly tench doth fly, And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish; Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by; These fleet afloat while those do fill the dish. There is a time even for the worms to creep. And suck the dew while all their ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... specially interested in the outlook over the river. A platform four feet wide was built against the palisade the same distance from the top. It was reached at intervals by flights of narrow steps, and here in case of attack the riflemen would crouch and fire from their hidden breastwork. Close by and under the high bank flowed the river, a broad, deep stream, bearing the discharge from those mighty inland seas, the upper chain of the Great Lakes. The current of the river, deep, blue and placid and the forests ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... explored, and they came to know every secret spring and hidden dell in the whole surrounding wall of the valley. They learned all the trails and cow-paths; but nothing delighted them more than to essay the roughest and most impossible rides, where they were glad to crouch and crawl along the narrowest deer-runs, Bob and Mab struggling and forcing their way along behind. Back from their rides they brought the seeds and bulbs of wild flowers to plant in favoring nooks ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... door. He did not fill it as the burly shoulders of Silent had done. He seemed almost as slender as a girl, and infinitely boyish in his grace—a strange figure, surely, to make all these hardened fighters of the mountain-desert crouch, and stiffen their fingers around the butts of their revolvers! His eyes were upon Silent, and how they lighted! His face changed as the face of the great god Pan must have altered when he blew into the instrument of reeds and made perfect music, ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... now intensely cold and the wind was blowing almost a gale. He was glad when he reached something of a hollow, where he could crouch down and regain ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... [They all crouch behind bushes with guns in readiness. The horses' hoofs are plainly heard, and then the sound of voices singing "Spur On." The sound comes nearer, then ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.

... papa gave Miss Minchin some money and went away, and for several days Sara would neither touch the doll, nor her breakfast, nor her dinner, nor her tea, and would do nothing but crouch in a small corner by the window and cry. She cried so much, indeed, that she made herself ill. She was a queer little child, with old-fashioned ways and strong feelings, and she had adored her papa, and could not be made to think that India and an interesting bungalow ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... mustang flew, and we urged him on; There was one chance left, and you have but one, Halt! jump to the ground, and shoot your horse; Crouch under his carcase, and take your chance, And if the steers in their frantic course Don't batter you both to pieces at once, You may thank your star; if not, good-by To the quickening kiss and the long-drawn ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... me and Peter shalt thou grovelling lie, And crouch before the Papal dignity.— Sound trumpets, then; for thus Saint Peter's heir, From Bruno's back, ascends Saint Peter's chair. [A flourish while he ascends.] Thus, as the gods creep on with feet of wool, Long ere with iron hands they punish men, So shall our sleeping ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... could he mean by these words? No actor on earth could dissemble like this. His whole manner was utterly unlike the manner of a man just detected in a terrible crime. He seemed rather to reproach me, indeed, than to crouch; to be shocked ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... incident we are passing a prune-orchard, when, as though for our especial benefit, a couple of peasants working there begin singing aloud, and with evident enthusiasm, some national melody, and as they observe not our presence, at my suggestion we crouch behind a convenient clump of bushes and for several minutes are favored with as fine a duet as I have heard for many a day; but the situation becomes too ridiculous for Igali, and it finally sends him into a roar of laughter that causes ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... Ruskin and many other of the nineteenth-century philosophic artists, idealised warfare. His warriors are not clad in khaki; they do not crouch behind muddy earthworks. They are of the days before the shrapnel shell and Maxim gun; they wear bright steel armour, wield the sword and lance, and by preference they ride on horseback. Indeed, they are ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare

... of noon, or with the low harvest-moon slanting blue and white shadows, sharp and uncanny, across its surface, the water flows steadily from its dark birthplace, clear, cheerful, bright. The hills crouch attentive on its edge, shaggy with shadows; from the grim rocks ferns and mosses sleep out delicate color unmolested, the red-bearded grass drops its seed unshaken. The sweetbrier trails its pink fingers through the water. They know what the bright little river means, as well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... short pause had been made merely to take breath. The winds took a new direction; and the bark, still held by its anchors, swung wide off from its former position, tending in towards the mountains of Savoy. During the first burst of this new blast, even Maso was glad to crouch to the deck, for millions of infinitely fine particles were lifted from the lake, and driven on with the atmosphere with a violence to take away his breath. The danger of being swept before the furious tide of the driving element was also an accident ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... clearing, flooding the whitened ground with a dazzling radiance. Running, stumbling, falling, struggling through brush and brake and brier-choked marsh, I saw ahead of me three Oneida Indians swiftly cross my path to the creek's edge and crouch, scanning the opposite shore. Almost immediately the Rangers Murphy, Renard, and Elerson emerged from the snowy bushes beside them; and at the same instant I saw Walter Butler ride up on the opposite side of the creek, glance backward, then calmly draw bridle in plain sight. He was fey; ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... amazement of all present Tabu-Tabu sprang lightly backward and avoided the blow. His footwork was excellent and McGuffey remarked as much to Captain Scraggs. But when Tabu-Tabu put up his hands after the most approved method of self-defense and dropped into a "crouch," McGuffey could no ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... away to be buried, the survivors grumbled. A dead man, they said, was a good screen and a good stool. Why, when there was so abundant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, were people to be exposed to the cold air, and forced to crouch on the moist ground?"—Macaulay's History of England, People's Ed. part viii. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... seemed to grasp the idea that much was forgiven the very charming; that ordinary standards were not rigidly applied to the extraordinarily fascinating. When Katie was laughingly telling of one of the Major's most interesting flirtations Ann's eyes had seemed to crouch back in that queer way they had. Katie had had an odd sense of Ann's disapproving of her—disapproving of her for her not disapproving of him. More than once Ann had given her that sense ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He now evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty spring upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with him. But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... bundle into hunks with his knife. It was after seven o'clock, and the crescent moon hung low by the ridge, waiting for the sun to take its complete departure before setting in for its night's joy-ride up the sky. It was eight before Pan finished his slow browsing in his bowl and came over to crouch with me out on the ledge of rock that overlooked the world below us. Clusters of lights in nests of gray smoke were dotted around over the valley, and I knew the nearest one was Riverfield; indeed I could see a bunch of lights a little way apart from the rest, ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... it! Well, a man must be an honest man, even if there be no way but ruin! God knows, as we've all heard my father say a hundred times from the pulpit, there's no ruin but dishonesty! For poverty and hard work, he's a poor creature would crouch for those!" ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... would hear it yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... ground in the forest also began to show signs of life. A hedgehog crept sleepily through the underbrush; a little weasel dragged his supple body forth from a crevice in the rocks no broader than a quill. Little hares darted with cautious leaps out from the bushes, stopping in front of each to crouch down and lay their ears back, until finally, growing more brave, they mounted the ridge by the cornfield and danced and played together, using their fore paws to strike one another in sport. The Hunter took care not to disturb these little animals. Finally a slender roe stepped out of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... to sleep as peacefully in our graves as he does in his. When James turned his angry eye and raised his quick voice and foot, his worshipper slunk away, humbled and afraid, angry with himself for making him angry; anxious by any means to crouch back into his favor, and a kind look or word. Is that the way we take His displeasure, even when we can't think, as Rab couldn't, we were immediately to blame? It is, as the old worthy says, something to trust our God in the dark, as the dog ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... bullet dodging, and star shell shirking, accompanied by a liberal allowance of "narrow squeaks," I get back to my own bit of trench; and tobogganing down where I erroneously think the clay steps are, I at last reach my dug-out, and entering on all fours, crouch amongst the damp tobacco leaves and ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... whiteness and beauty of his feet, that did not seem formed to tread the furrows, or follow the cattle or the plough, as his dress seemed to suggest. The curate, who was ahead of the rest, made signs to them to crouch down, or hide themselves behind a rock. This done, they all gazed at the beautiful youth, who was clad in a grey jacket, and wore breeches and hose of the same cloth, with a grey hunting-cap on his head. Having washed his delicate feet, he wiped them with a handkerchief which he took ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... Strand I turn, And down a dark lane to the quiet river, One stream of silver under the full moon, And think of how cold searchlights flare and burn Over dank trenches where men crouch and shiver. Humming, to keep their hearts up, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... (Con' al): an Irish lad. con ceit ed: proud, vain. con fess: to own; to admit. coun cil: a small body called together for a trial, or to decide a matter. court ier (court' yer): an attendant at the court of a prince. crime: a wicked act punishable by law. crouch: ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... so brightly that the children in the garden did not break off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black shadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of a magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the whole tree had ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... map of greater London, a map on which the town proper shows as a dark, irregularly rounded patch against the whiteness of suburban districts, and just on the northern limit of the vast network of streets you will distinguish the name of Crouch End. Another decade, and the dark patch will have spread greatly further; for the present, Crouch End is still able to remind one that it was in the country a very short time ago. The streets have a smell of newness, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... and take them to the residency," said Bob; and as the boat touched the shore they stood back for the girls to leap in, and then crouch down with their arms around each other's neck, sobbing with joy as they felt ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... bundles of cooked food ready for him. But for a plain man, the only thing to do is to cultivate the soil and plant, and when he returns from his work let him light his oven, and when the food is cooked let the husband and the wife crouch about the hearth ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... hairy, and the fingers 'strong and short, and pressed out with long practising.' He was very particular about the position of his hands when playing, and as a rule he kept his body quite still. When conducting, however, his movements were constant and curious. At a pianissimo passage 'he would crouch down so as to be hidden by the desk, and then, as the crescendo increased, would gradually rise, beating all the time, until at the fortissimo he would spring into the air with his arms extended, as if wishing to ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... Party Fitz Roy School, Crouch End. Ashdown Northern Party Ashdown House, Forest Row, Sussex. Brighton & Hove Reserve, Cape Evans Brighton & Hove High School, (Girls). Bromyard Do. Grammar, Bromyard. Marlborough Do. The College, Marlborough. Bristol Mr. Ponting Colchester House, Bristol. (photographic artist) ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... out from the mound, the small birds that unnoticed have come to roost in the bushes will hear it and fly off in alarm. The rabbits that are near the hedge rush in; those that are far from home crouch in the furrows and the bunches. Crossing the open field, they suddenly start as it seems from under your feet—one white tail goes dapping up and down this way, another jerks over the 'lands' that way. The moonbeams now glisten on the double-barrel; ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... well-conducted suburban shrubbery would think of assuming autumn tints before the ladies have got into their fall fashions. Indeed none of our chaste trees will even shed their leaves while any one is watching; and they crouch modestly in the shade of our massive garages. They have been taught their place. In Marathon it is a worse sin to have your lawn uncut than to have your books or your hair uncut. I have been aware of indignant eyes because I let my back garden ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... now he thinks that they were two pieces of wood, crossing each other, and making the framework on which the leather of the shield was stretched. The hero could grasp the cross-bar, at the centre of gravity, in his left hand, rest the lower rim of the shield on the ground, and crouch behind it (XI. 593; XIII 157). In neither passage cited is anything said about resting the lower rim "on the ground," and in the second passage the warrior is actually advancing. In this attitude, however-grounding the lower rim of ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... two administrations. Several numbers of the Guardian containing that dissertation were requested for the Government House, and ... were sent to England.... But when both my position and myself stand virtually ... impugned by proclamation, I am neither the sycophant nor the renegade to crouch down under unmerited imputations, come from whence they may, even though I should suffer imprisonment and ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... against the course you advise. Let us contrast each other. You took the straight path, I the crooked. You, my superior in fortune; you, infinitely above me in genius; you, born to command and never to crouch: how do we stand now, each in the prime of life? You, with a barren and profitless reputation; without rank, without power, almost without the hope of power. I—but you know not my new dignity—I, in the Cabinet ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a great trial to lose the ship. Well, he would have to face it. He fetches a deep sigh now and then. Cloete almost sorry he had come on board, because to be on that wreck keeps his chest in a tight band all the time. They crouch out of the wind under the port boat, a little apart from the men. The life-boat had gone away after putting Cloete on board, but was coming back next high water to take off the crew if no attempt at getting the ship afloat could be made. Dusk was falling; winter's day; black sky; wind ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... can only, in the modern phrase, 'know what they like,' or follow humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped superiors. But in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows signs of true power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or quarrel with them, according to their own tempers. To the merchants they submit silently, as to just and capable judges. And look what men these are, who submit. Donatello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca! If men like these submit to the ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... fierce blast of wind compelled him to crouch close to the ground, and just as he rose a jagged flash of lightning turned the blackness into a purple glare. Ned's eyes happened to be resting on the channel between the two islands, and in that brief instant of light he saw a boat gliding swiftly down the current, cutting ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... heart went out to those gallant fellows splashing through the river at the disputed ford. He felt as though he must shut his eyes so as not to see what was fated to occur; but for the life of him he could not. Some power beyond his control forced him to continue to crouch there and stare with all his might and main, as though he must omit no small detail of ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... and whose blade was keen. Nor did they hear the noiseless tread with which the girl again approached the door, swung wider now to admit the passage of her tense, lithe body. Nor did they see her crouch for a spring with the tight-clutched knife upraised and the gleaming slitlike eyes focused upon a point mid-way between Lapierre's shoulder-blades as his arm unconsciously came to rest upon the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... Regina caught her arms from behind and threw her to her knees, so that she was forced to crouch down, her head almost touching the floor. She was no more than a child in the peasant woman's hands as soon as she was fairly caught. But she did not scream, and she seemed to be keeping ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... was thus quietly sleeping, the prince Gracious was engaged in a hunt through the forest by torch-light. The fawn, pursued fiercely by the dogs, came trembling with terror to crouch down near the brook by which Rosalie was sleeping. The dogs and gamekeepers sprang forward after the fawn. Suddenly the dogs ceased barking and grouped themselves silently around Rosalie. The prince dismounted from his horse to set ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... functions of government; but he blessed the Lord that henceforward no more homage was to be paid, no more court to be made, but to him alone, to whom they were justly due. Disdaining as he did the servile adoration usually paid to a minister, he could never crouch before the power of the two Cardinals who succeeded each other: he neither worshipped the arbitrary power of the one, nor gave his approbation to the artifices of the other; he had never received anything from Cardinal Richelieu but an ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... merchant, in a small way, at Turnham Green. Marian had felt the family attitude a good deal, and the Reynoldses were sorry for many things that had been said, when the coal merchant saved money and took up land on building leases in the neighbourhood of Crouch End, greatly to his advantage, as it appeared. Nobody had thought that Nixon could ever do very much; but he and his wife had been living for years in a beautiful house at Barnet, with bow-windows, shrubs, and a paddock, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... reach of a despoiling human hand, we see masses of the odorous narcissus, though whence they draw their sustenance it is hard to tell. At length we reach the entrance of the Grotto, and here, at a signal from our boatman, we crouch down low in the body of the boat, whilst our rower, skilfully taking advantage of a gentle surging wave, guides our craft with his hands through an opening in the sheer wall, so low that the gunwales grate against the rocky surface of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... defeat. Far up on the mountain-side they looked and saw death pursuing death. They saw Morrison climbing higher and higher, saw him strain his eyes ever ahead, never behind, saw them rest on two figures, saw Morrison crouch behind a rock and a shimmer of light creep along the barrel of his levelled rifle. The eyes seemed eager as they rested on another figure above him that stretched forth a steady hand; saw jets of flame spring from two guns. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... only effectual means of answering his just complaints." "And can it be possible," I asked, "that justice will not in the end be done to this unfortunate gentleman?" "Depend upon it," replied Clifford, "he is too honest ever to gain redress. If he would crouch and truckle to his persecutors, he might not only be set at liberty, but all that they have robbed him of would be returned. This, however, he never will do. He, poor fellow! expects that when the operation of the Habeas Corpus act is restored, he will be able to bring ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... half crouch, Dancy's right hand began to steal back under the skirt of his long black coat. At that the major flung up the muzzle of his weapon so that it pointed skyward, and he braced his left arm at his side in the attitude you have seen in the pictures of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... beauty, the horror had faded. No longer on the heights, she was in a trivial room in Harlem. She was awake. She was absolutely alone. None the less something that was nothing, something invisible, inaudible, intangible, imperceptible, something emanating from the depths where events crouch, prepared to pounce, had touched her. She knew it, she felt it. Her impulse was to scream, to rush away. But from what? It was all imaginary. Common-sense, that can be so traitorous, told her that. Then, immediately, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... shadeless and glaring, when a blustering north-easter is blowing down it, the Valley of Rocks is a bitter and inhospitable spot; I have been glad to go into the sheep-fold and crouch under the lee of the stone wall for a moment's respite from the wind and the stinging particles of sharp dust that it flung in my face as I battled up the road. Once, in such a wind, I climbed the Castle Rock, and squeezed myself between two great ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... swiftness of the one with the grim, fell ferocity of purpose of the other. The powerful rowdy was lying upon his back in the red dust, swinging flail-like blows into empty air, and upon him, in leopard-like crouch, pressing him to the earth, the man whom he had so wantonly attacked. And his throat was compressed in those brown, lean, muscular fingers, as in a claw of steel. It was horrible. His eyes were starting from his head; his ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... below, the footmen had no chance of escape but in crossing the river and ascending a steep bluff, on its opposite side. In attempting this several lost their lives. John McLain was killed about thirty yards from the brow of the hill.—James Ralston, when a little farther up it, and James Crouch was wounded after having nearly reached its summit, yet he got safely off and returned to the fort on the next day. John Nelson, after crossing over, endeavored to escape down the river; but being there met by a stout warrior, he too ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... long, vicious swing at the ball, will be easily deceived by a slow ball, much more readily than one who "snaps" or hits with a short, quick stroke; one who strides long must necessarily stoop or crouch, and is in bad form to hit a high ball; if he swings his bat always in a horizontal plane, he will not be able to hit a shoulder or knee ball as well as one who swings in a perpendicular plane, i.e., who "cuts" under at a low ball and "chops" ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... Peter, to bind and to loose!—Royal Princess of the land, take the sword of St. Paul, to smite and to shear! There is darkness in thy destiny;—but not in these towers, not under the rule of their haughty mistress, shall that destiny be closed—In other lands the lioness may crouch to the power of the tigress, but not in her own—not in Scotland shall the Queen of Scotland long remain captive—nor is the fate of the royal Stuart in the hands of the traitor Douglas. Let the Lady of Lochleven ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... assent. They had been so engaged that they did not see a woman enter the bar from behind, and crouch down beside Lady Jane, a woman whom the latter touched affectionately on the shoulder and whispered to once or twice, while she watched the preparations for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... became eager. The animal came chasing down the slope, and stopped ten feet away to crouch and bark frantically at the shadow in the gloom. He ...
— The Hoofer • Walter M. Miller

... of a maddened lion the Major bowed himself, caught his man in a mighty wrestler's grip and flung him broadcast into the coleus bed. The words that went with the fierce attack made Ardea crouch and shiver and take refuge behind the great dog. Japheth Pettigrass jumped down from his step-ladder and went to help the engineer out of the flower bed. The Major had sworn himself to a stand, but the fine old face was a terrifying mask ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... been alone, but where Shirley went she would go. She glanced at the weapon on the sideboard, but left it behind her, and presently stood at her friend's side. They dared not look over the wall, for fear of being seen; they were obliged to crouch behind it. They heard ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... in his mind. I assured him that American opinion was optimistic in regard to the chances of the Allies, and strolled away. Hardly had I gone ten feet, when a "seventy-seven" shell, arriving without warning, went Zip-bang, and, turning to crouch to the wall, I saw the sentry crumple up in the mud. It was as if he were a rubber effigy of a man blown up with air, and some one had suddenly ripped the envelope. His rifle fell from him, and he, bending from the waist, leaned face down into the mud. I was the first to get to ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... so violent he often looked, expecting to see it shattered to atoms. Since he left no one has been put into this room, but the noises continue, and are heard throughout the house. Even the dogs cannot be coaxed into this room, and if forced into it, they crouch with marked signs ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... made life interesting to be within measurable distance of the knights and ladies who lived and played and loved in the many-towered city of which one could gain so clear a view from the topmost branches of the hickory tree in the upper pasture. She liked to crouch in the elder bushes where a lane, winding and green-arched, crossed a corner of the cornfield, and to wait, through the long, still summer mornings for Lancelot or Galahad or Tristram or some other of her friends to come pricking his way through ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... my eyes rain tears like a woman's. At times as ye look back down the path of life, or when ye are old and gather yourselves together to crouch before the fire, because for you the sun has no more heat, ye will think of how we stood shoulder to shoulder, in that great battle which thy wise words planned, Macumazahn; of how thou wast the point ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... is peopled by these legendary forms with their never-dying souls. They lurk in every corner and peer out from every crevice. They hide behind the trees, and sometimes in the moonlight we see them looking out at us as we walk along the path. They crouch among interlacing vines and look at us through the lacy screen with eyes in which slumber the traditions of ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... his weight, was an agile man. Clutching the shelf beneath, he worked his way along to the right, gradually creeping further and further into the darkened room, until at last he could draw his feet through the opening and crouch sideways ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... trouble him so much, for he felt stunned, and a great deal of what passed was dreamy, and seen as if through a mist. But one thing he knew, and that was that he would have some little warning of the attack, for the lion would crouch and gather its hind-legs well under it before it made ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... dawned the day of vengeance, Of restoration. Innocence is dragged To light by heaven from the grave's midnight gloom. The haughty Godunow, my deadly foe, Must crouch and sue for mercy at my feet; Oh, now my ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... their footsteps afar. They come swiftly, but they will not find their prey. They are the last of the Danites, and they are in hiding here amid these mountains, but they have not forgotten how to strike and destroy. Crouch low, keep still, and you ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... Ross pulled out of the water once more, to crouch shivering on a ledge only lapped now and then by wavelets. He had found a temporary refuge, but his good fortune did not quiet his fears. Had that been Ashe on the shore? And why had the swimmer been so summarily executed by ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... jaw with his right, and when the woods-boss quickly covered, ripped a sizzling left into the latter's midriff. Rondeau grunted and dropped his guard, with the result that Bryce's great fists played a devil's tattoo on his countenance before he could crouch and cover. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... extravagances of tyranny. And this is all that Spain now possesses. The Spaniards, however, resist, not because they are Spaniards, but because they are men. Still, even while they resist, they revere. While they will rise up against a vexatious impost, they crouch before a system of which the impost is the smallest evil. They smite the tax-gatherer, but fall prostrate at the feet of the contemptible prince for whom the tax-gatherer plies his craft; they will even revile the troublesome and importunate monk, or sometimes they will scoff at ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... did not fill it as the burly shoulders of Silent had done. He seemed almost as slender as a girl, and infinitely boyish in his grace—a strange figure, surely, to make all these hardened fighters of the mountain-desert crouch, and stiffen their fingers around the butts of their revolvers! His eyes were upon Silent, and how they lighted! His face changed as the face of the great god Pan must have altered when he blew into the ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... men!" Dolly gasped. "Quick, we must hide!" And, catching his hand as impulsively as a startled child, she drew him behind a hedge of boxwood. "Crouch down low!" she cried. "We must not let them ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... it is an exceedingly picturesque old facade, to which you pick your way through a narrow and tortuous street—a street terminating, a little beyond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant Gothic doorway is let into the rusty-red brickwork, and strange little beasts crouch at the angles of the windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduated gable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large surface of brick, lifted out of the shadow of the street, looks yellow and faded. The whole thing is disfigured and decayed; but ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... "Miss Crouch!" he cried, clutching the back of the chair. A slow flush of anger mounted to his brow. "Are you responsible for ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... men as wild. These paths led through tangles of fallen trees and tumbled rocks, beneath dark, overhanging pines where winter's snows melted not till midsummer, and the sun's rays were strange and alien. Men who sought to traverse these ways had to crouch and crawl or climb. Through them no horse or ox or beast of burden had ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... makes beasts of prey and their usual victims crouch together. Benefits received touch generous hearts. But the legionaries on board had no such sentiments. Paul's helpfulness was forgotten. A still more ignoble exhibition of the instinct of self- preservation than the sailors had shown dictated that cowardly, cruel suggestion to kill the prisoners. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... at the top of the steps. She was in a half-crouch, knife ready. "I'll kill the King and I'll drink from his throat!" she cried hoarsely. "No man kicks me except for love. Has he forgotten that I am the foster-daughter ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... and over the hill, Over the heath and heather, I seek for the spot where the dawn-wind sleeps, And slips from its night-bound tether. Is it here? Is it there? Pray tell me where The morning zephyrs tarry, That I may bide Where they crouch and hide, And sip ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... in the avenues of huge beeches it was as quiet, cool, and solemn as a church, only the little birds fluttered around and pecked in the gravel paths. In front of the castle, just under the windows, there was a large bush in full bloom. Thither I used to go in the early morning, and crouch down beneath the branches where I could watch the windows, for I had not the courage to appear in the open. Thence I sometimes saw the Lady fair in a snow-white robe come, still drowsy and warm, to the open window. She would stand there braiding her dark-brown hair, gazing abroad over ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... leader, until at the reef the two lines joined, forming the circle. Then the contraction of the circle began, the poor frightened fish harried shoreward by the streaks of concussion that smote the water. In the same fashion elephants are driven through the jungle by motes of men who crouch in the long grasses or behind trees and make strange noises. Already the palisade of legs had been built. We could see the heads of the women, in a long line, dotting the placid surface of the lagoon. The tallest ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... I knew all: the reasons for my abduction, the means employed, the object in view and the infamous scheme plotted during the last three months against the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendome and his daughter. Unfortunately, it was too late. I was obliged, in order not to be seen from the yacht, to crouch in the cleft of a rock and did not reach land until mid-day. By the time that I had been to a fisherman's cabin, exchanged my clothes for his and come on here, it was three o'clock. On my arrival. I learnt that Angelique's marriage was ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... feat of pedestrianism was performed, by a man of the name of Williams, steward to Mr. Crouch. He was backed for twenty guineas, to go twenty miles in two hours. He started at Hammersmith, and did the distance in unfavourable weather, in seven minutes within the given time. His track was from Colnbrook, and to return to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... spies have not already told you of the armament which he whom you call Sabat Jung is already preparing to invade your dominions, when every hair of an Englishman's head that you have injured will have to be reckoned for. And it will be well for you if, among all those who crouch before you, you find any to fight for ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... each other; and that behind every human eye there lies an undiscovered country, as mysterious, as fascinating, as that which Alice found behind the looking-glass,—a country like, and yet unlike, the one we know, where dreams grow beautiful as tropic plants, and passions crouch like wild beasts in ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... a second of doubt. The men were after them! Rick saw Scotty crouch as an Arab charged, saw the Arab go headlong through the air as Scotty caught him in a judo throw. Then Rick and Hassan were fighting ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin









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