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Dusk   Listen
noun
Dusk  n.  
1.
Imperfect obscurity; a middle degree between light and darkness; twilight; as, the dusk of the evening.
2.
A darkish color. "Whose duck set off the whiteness of the skin."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dusk" Quotes from Famous Books



... with reverberations from house to house, and the regular tramp of martial footsteps, it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with shouldered matchlocks, and matches burning, so as to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a machine, that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next, moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a party of mounted ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... line attached to each, of about thirty yards' length. The line was a cotton one, with copper wire twisted in it; and to each line, at the distance of every six feet, was attached a strong gimp hook, baited with a dead minnow. The lines were laid down at dusk, with a weight at the end of about half a pound. A boat was chartered, and the lines visited at intervals the half part of the night. By drawing the line, it was easy to detect if an eel was on the line. The result was ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... dusk on Sravan 17th, Nalini entered his palanquin, arrayed in a beautiful costume of Benares silk. The wedding procession set out forthwith, amid a mighty blowing of conch-shells and beating of drums. At 8 P.M. it reached the bride's abode, where her ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... There is a long faint distant line of hills on the horizon. The time appears to be just after sunset, when the sky is still full of a pale liquid light, before objects have lost their colour, but are just beginning to be tinged with dusk. In the road stands the figure of a man, with his back turned, his hand shading his eyes as he gazes out across the plain. He appears to be a wayfarer, and to be weary but not dispirited. There is a look of serene and sober ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the window curtains were drawn, though it was scarcely dusk without, and candles brought; then the ices were served, and then the coffee; and then the clock on the mantelpiece, as if it took malicious satisfaction in the fleetness with which Time (wreathed ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger's face followed him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life—of life that mattered. Jigger would go out to "Souf Afriker" with all his life before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life behind him, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... before him, with its lights twinkling in the early dusk, and its spires and domes melting into the evening air, it seemed to Philip as if years had elapsed since he left the city. On reaching Paris he drove to his hotel, where he found several letters lying on the table. He did not trouble himself even to glance ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Dusk was gathering in the streets of the great American metropolis, the street lights were beginning to gleam, laborers were homeward bound from ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... in, Harry saw a lot of the younger men who lived in the square playing tennis. It was still broad daylight, although, at home, dusk would have fallen. But this was England at the end of July and the beginning of August, and the light of day would hold until ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske

... rate, Surajah, we will do nothing until it is getting dusk. See! There are some peasants, with three bullocks, coming down the valley, and there are four armed horsemen riding behind them. We will go back to those bushes, a hundred yards behind us, and sleep there until sunset; ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... Baxters the late supper was over and the girls had not sat at the table with their father, having eaten earlier, by themselves. The hired men had gone home to sleep. Patty had retired to the solitude of her bedroom almost at dusk, quite worn out with the heat, and Waitstill sat under the peach tree in the corner of her own little garden, tatting, and thinking of her interview with Ivory's mother. She sat there until nearly eight o'clock, trying vainly to put together the puzzling details of Lois Boynton's conversation, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the dusk he sings, And the joy of another day Is folded in peace and borne On the drift of years ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... investigations did not suffice, and one evening, at dusk, he summoned all his resolution, and, going on foot to the Prefecture de Police, humbly begged employment from the officials there. He was not very favorably received, for applicants were numerous. But he pleaded his cause so adroitly that at last he was charged with some trifling ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... at the home of Nelly and of Frank. The city heats of summer drive you to the country. You ramble, with a little kindling of old desires and memories, over the hill-sides that once bounded your boyish vision. Here you netted the wild rabbits, as they came out at dusk to feed; there, upon that tall chestnut, you cruelly maimed your first captive squirrel. The old maples are even now scarred with the rude cuts you gave them in ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... luxurious fauteuils at the further end of the room and a third stood between them, his thick, well-formed legs somewhat apart and his hands clasped behind him. The sun was shining in upon them through a side-window, and I can see the three faces now—one in the dusk, one in the light, and one cut across by the shadow. Of those at the sides, I recall the reddish nose and dark, flashing eyes of the one, and the hard, austere face of the other, with the high coat-collars and many-wreathed ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... he needed the pay, he would not have touched it. As it was, a third of it went into his tool-bag. The appalling magnitude of the task never worried him—nor, for the matter of that, his fellow-workers. Master and men went toiling from dawn to dusk under a spell, busy, tireless as gnomes, faithful as knights to their trust. Their zeal was quick with the devotion to a cause that went out with coat-armour. Rough weather might chill one iron, but another was plucked from the fire ere the first was cold. There never ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... for dusk when he reached the Ferry. Jimmy was away, and Han, in high dudgeon, brought the boat over in answer to Leander's hail. He had grouse to dress for supper, inconsiderately flung in upon him at the last moment by the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... against, and these consisted of nearly all the school children in the town. It had always been, and was still, a favourite amusement for the children to "Sing for Pitter Nilken." The game was carried on in the following manner. Boys and girls all assembled, the more the merrier, generally in the dusk of the evening, and sneaked quietly down into the alley at the back of the Worses' house, and when they got under Samuelsen's shop-window, they began ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... pair of oars (all that was allowed to them) put off for the shore, from which they were then ten miles distant. Had the weather continued calm, as it was when the boat left the ship, she would have made the shore by dusk; but unhappily a strong gale of wind set in shortly after her departure, and she was seen by Soto and his gang struggling with the billows and approaching night, at such a distance from the land as she could not possibly accomplish ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... The dusk had thickened into darkness while they thus conversed, and the outline and surface of the mansion gradually disappeared. The windows, which had before been as black blots on a lighter expanse of wall, became illuminated, and were transfigured ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... ever seen, when she had first looked upon it in the early morn after her homecoming. Now, as she paced up and down the veranda—for she was in a restless mood—her mind went back to that bridal homecoming. They had not arrived at the head-station till after dusk, but it had been visible from the plain a long way off, and she had examined it with ardent curiosity through her field-glasses in ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... in her head, and a squint in her eye, At the dusk of the day, when her choler is high, The bairns, nay, the team I 've unhalter'd, they fly, And leave the reception for me. O hi, O hu, she 's sad for scolding, O hi, O hu, she 's too mad for holding, O hi, O hu, her arms I 'm cold in, And but ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... call them Nowar, and you will find that the Arab women of the villages are careful to keep an eye on their little children when the gypsies are around. They often steal children in the towns and cities, when they can find them straying away from home at dusk, and then sell them as servants in Moslem families. Last year we were all greatly interested in a story of this kind, which I know you will be glad ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... neighbourhood gossip and the latest tidings which had filtered through from Quebec or Montreal. There was an incessant clatter all day long, to which the captive fowls, with their feet bundled together but with throats at full liberty, contributed their noisy share. As dusk drew near there was a general handshaking, and the carrioles scurried off along the highway. Every one called his neighbour a friend, and the people of each seigneury were ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... no chance, gathered his papers, and leaving the room, wandered away to his former refuge when miserable, that long desolate stretch of barren sand between the mouths of the two rivers. Here he wandered till long after the dusk had deepened into night.—A sound as of one singing came across the links, and drew nearer and nearer. He turned in the direction of it, for something in the tones reminded him of Kate; and he almost believed the song was her nurse's ghostly ballad. But ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... glad to get my money back!" Helen sighed as they reached the circus grounds, over which dusk was settling, for it was now ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c., &c. We thought we had got into fairy-land. But that went off (as it never came again; while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets); and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, &c. I shall never forget ye, how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment; ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... diorama, seen for one instant on the background of my own consciousness, and abolished into black nonentity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down in front of it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... himself; and very gladly would he have gone into the stable in the hope of a greeting from old Jonathan; but he would not willingly meet "the mistress!" Nimrod should take him to his old stall; there he would tie him up, and flee from the place! The evening was now come, and in the dusk he would ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... Toward dusk of the day upon which the mad king of Lutha had been found, a dust-covered horseman reined in before the great gate of the castle of Prince Ludwig von der Tann. The unsettled political conditions which overhung the little kingdom of Lutha were evident in the return ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the body of the document, and on this being pointed out, the General came to the conclusion that we were not trying to impose on him. He thereupon cancelled his previous order, and decided that, as dusk was already falling, we might remain at Mantes that night, and resume our journey on the morrow at 5.45 a.m., in the charge ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... parleying had it confirmed by him. It was then too late to advise Lambton, and in fact I could not properly have done so, as the information had been given me under pledge of secrecy. Accompanied by my private secretary, Dr. P. L. Sherman, I hastened to Caloocan, where we arrived just at dusk, having had to run the gantlet of numerous inquisitive ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... light of a November afternoon faded rapidly into the dusk of a November evening. Far over the countryside housewives put up their cottage shutters, lit their lamps, and made the customary remark that the days were drawing in. In barn yards and poultry-runs ...
— When William Came • Saki

... un-European dress had always been displeasing, almost monstrous. Her stature, her gestures, her general carriage struck his eye as absurdly incongruous with a Malay costume, too ample, too free, too bold—offensive. To Mrs. Travers, Jorgenson, in the dusk of the passage, had the aspect of a dim white ghost, and he chilled her ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... a.m. two companies of Scots Guards, by order of Major-General Colvile, fell back from where they were on the plain, and forming up along the river bank prolonged the line of the 1st Coldstream to the south-west. At dusk a handful of officers and men succeeded in making their way to the Scots Guards' machine gun which had been silenced in the morning, and brought it back, together with one or two wounded men of the detachment who lay around it. At intervals during the day the ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... fanged meridian vermin, Shrill gnats that crowd the dusk, Night-moths whose nestling ermine Smells foul of mould and musk, Blind flesh-flies hatched by dark and hampered ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... found favour. The choice has always been of the language of children. Let us suppose that the flock of winged Loves worshipping Venus in the Titian picture, and the noble child that rides his lion erect with a background of Venetian gloomy dusk, may be the inspirers of those prattlings. "See then thy selfe likewise art lyttle made," says Spenser's ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... the robings of glory, Those in the gloom of defeat; All with the battle-blood gory, In the dusk of eternity meet; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the laurel, the Blue; Under ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... a thoroughly Southern distaste for labour, he found it by no means inconvenient or unpleasant to have so much time at his disposal. His newspaper in the morning, a good book, a stroll upon the fashionable promenade, and a ride at dusk, enabled him to dispose of his time without being oppressed ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... It took till dusk to reach Centerville, and the rain never stopped long enough to catch its breath, but kept at it, all day long. Such a first night out as that was! The men slept, or rather stood in the rain all night for sleep was out of the question. No wood could be procured, so no fires were built ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... wilderness and lonely places, and are often dimly perplext, are often troubled we know not how or why: some forgotten reminiscence in us is aroused, some memory, not our own, but yet our heritage is perturbed, footsteps that have immemorially sunk in ancient dusk move furtively along obscure corridors in our brain, the ancestral hunter or fisher awakes, the primitive hillman or woodlander communicates again with old forgotten intimacies and the secret oracular things of lost wisdoms. This ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... ammunition he can't get away. He'll be moving his guns quickly enough when we get ours on to them.' But, as the official report afterwards observed, with just annoyance at the enemy's refusal to recognize that the action was finished: 'During the whole of the afternoon and till dusk the enemy continued to shell the captured position with surprising intensity, considering what had been heard of his shortage in gun-ammunition.' What happened, in ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... branches overhead, the deep accumulation of dead leaves underfoot, the fluttering of wings, the low cooing of pigeons, and all the mystery and wonder of the wood, brought a sense of awe, as on entering a mighty minster in the dusk. But this wore away presently, and Glory began to sing. Her pure voice echoed in the fragrant air, and the happiness so long pent up and starved seemed to bubble in every word ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... had set; indeed, it was already so dusk that the lower or sea-end of the street was lost from sight. There was a little fog or smoke-wreath in the air, with an odour of burning weeds, and that first frosty feeling of the autumn that makes us think of glowing fires and the comfort of long winter evenings ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... the short, bright winter afternoon, and at dusk reached his second stopping-place, where he took an early tea, changed his horse, and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... did. Considering they had nine people and two motors, and several suitcases to look after, they displayed admirable expedition in getting started, and just at dusk they came upon the brilliant radiance of the lights ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... Dusk had deepened. The star-glow was upon the river, placid there in its serene approach to the rough passage beyond. He sat there, the wind lifting the hair upon his forehead, pondering what ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... satisfyingly, refreshingly, with a sort of primitive, retarded sense of loneliness and violence. But she had none of the formalism or the self-consciousness of grief, and I was almost surprised to see her standing there in the first dusk with her hands full of flowers, smiling at me with her reddened eyes. Her white face, in the frame of her mantilla, looked longer, leaner than usual. I had had an idea that she would be a good deal disgusted with me—would consider that I ought to have been on the spot to advise her, to help her; ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... inflicted heavy loss on the enemy. Meanwhile units of other brigades were putting up a gallant fight against great odds, each unit generally with one or both flanks unsupported. At Ennetieres, which formed rather a salient, the Sherwood Foresters held out all day, but were attacked at dusk by three battalions and practically annihilated or captured, only the CO., Adjutant, Q.M. and 250 other ranks remaining the ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden

... Sire, and his three Sons With thir four Wives, and God made fast the dore. Meanwhile the Southwind rose, & with black wings Wide hovering, all the Clouds together drove From under Heav'n; the Hills to their supplie Vapour, and Exhalation dusk and moist, Sent up amain; and now the thick'nd Skie Like a dark Ceeling stood; down rush'd the Rain Impetuous, and continu'd till the Earth 740 No more was seen; the floating Vessel swum Uplifted; and secure ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... I was passing down the Nile with a heart more heavy than the great stone that served as anchor on the barge, we moored at dusk on the third night by the side of a vessel that was sailing up Nile with a strong northerly wind. On board this boat was an officer whom I had known at the Court of Pharaoh Meneptah, travelling to Thebes on duty. This man seemed so much afraid ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... indistinctly saw the lovers coming slowly down through the grove. Dusk had fallen and soon the cloak of night would be over ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... are creeping from beneath their budscales to meet the goddess of spring half way, and every warm day in March coaxes them a little farther. Meanwhile the staminate catkins of the hazel are lengthening and the pistillate buds are swelling, as the sun presses farther northward at the dawn and the dusk of each day, pushing back the gray walls of the canon of night, that the river of day may ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... touched; or, should a woman be killed in a vendetta, even by the merest accident, the shame would be unspeakable. The murderers and their families, or even their clan, would be blotted out, for in such revenge all would join. Keco's wife never leaves his side after dusk, and, you see, she has saved his life once already within his knowledge; ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... out after dinner. He said he had to see a man. He did not mention his name. He came back at dusk. I was on the veranda. He was walking as usual—perfectly straight. But one hand was pressed to ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... along the crests of the cliffs that hemmed in the canyon-like valley, there were groves of tangled trees, tenanted by great flocks of wild turkeys. Once my brother made two really remarkable shots at a pair of these great birds. It was at dusk, and they were flying directly overhead from one cliff to the other. He had in his hand a thirty-eight calibre Ballard rifle, and, as the gobblers winged their way heavily by, he brought both down with two successive bullets. ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... three very strange old ladies," said Quicksilver, laughing. "They have but one eye among them, and only one tooth. Moreover, you must find them out by starlight or in the dusk of the evening, for they never show themselves by the light either of ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... largest of the several sequoia groves in the Sequoia National Park. You have entered, say, in the dusk of the night before, and after breakfast wander planless among the trees. On every side rise the huge pines and firs, their dark columns springing from the tangled brush to support the cathedral roof above. Here an enormous purplish-red column draws and holds your astonished ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... beyond measure by the assurance, and with impetuous haste, he took his leave and went off; convinced at heart of the gratification of his wishes. He continued, up to the time of dusk, a prey to keen expectation; and, when indeed darkness fell, he felt his way into the Jung mansion, availing himself of the moment, when the doors were being closed, to slip into the corridor, where everything was actually ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... the windows of the hall therewith, and lo! they grew yellow and bright with some fire without, as if a new fiery day had been born out of the dusk of the summer night; for the light that shone through the windows out-did the candle-light in the hall. Ralph started thereat and laid his right hand to the place of his sword, which indeed he had left with the chamberlain; but the monk laughed and said: "Fear nothing, lord; there ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... might expect hard work and plenty of it all that day. There would be no chance for him to experiment with his Universal Detector. About dusk, Harvey Thurman, his assistant, came into the wireless room to relieve him ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... dusk when she left the Doctor's door; he would have attended, but she begged to be alone. It was an April evening, the chilliness of the earth just yielding to the coming summer; the frogs clamorous in all the near pools, and filling the air with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... butcher's cat Are seldom far apart— From dawn when clouds surmount the air, Piled like a beauty's powdered hair, Till dusk, when down the misty square Rumbles the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... darkish kitchen of the mill, the labourer's wife was talking shrilly to Hermione and Gerald, who stood, he in white and she in a glistening bluish foulard, strangely luminous in the dusk of the room; whilst from the cages on the walls, a dozen or more canaries sang at the top of their voices. The cages were all placed round a small square window at the back, where the sunshine came in, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... the ears of lovers in the fern, while the deer stole by. The bracken grove of irretrievable delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and earth! The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph at summer dusk. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... examined it to his heart's content, he gave it to his clerk to copy, and called on each of the signers in turn to answer for his act. Christiern with his Cabinet then withdrew, leaving the patriot leaders in the great hall guarded by a body of Danish soldiers. At dusk two Danish officers entered with lanterns, "like Judas Iscariot" says a contemporary, and the doomed magnates were led out to the tower and thrown into prison to await the morn. When day broke, Christiern ordered the trumpets sounded and proclamation made that no citizen ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... fight unfettered when the cannon roll, And haply, Wanderer, when the hosts go home, Thou only still in Aveluy shalt roam, Haunting the crumbled windmill at Gavrelle And fling thy bombs across the silent lea, Drink with shy peasants at St. Catherine's Well And in the dusk go home with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... became dusk the solitude of my room grew intolerable to me, and I wandered through the house seeking for companionship, and yet starting off in a different direction, if the sound of steps or of voices drew near to me. At last I found my way unobserved into the drawing-room, and sat there, or paced up and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... the long, sultry night, when out—'(He shuddered as he said)— 'On yonder field I lay among the festering heaps of dead; With awful faces close to mine, and clots of bloody hair, And dead eyes gleaming through the dusk with such a rigid stare; Through all my pain, O mother mine! I only prayed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... dusk, as Mr. Gunn, somewhat abstracted, stood apart at the drawing-room window. Marie hoped he had enjoyed himself while skating; her stupid cold had kept her indoors. She had amused herself rambling about ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... determined to see her parents once more, and all their habits were so familiar to her that she had no fear of accomplishing her desire unknown to them. She timed her movements so well that she arrived at a small wayside station near St. Penfer about dusk. No one noticed her, and she sped swiftly across the cliff-path, until it touched the path leading downward to her ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... a three-tined candlestick, into narrow trails. Warwick halted beside the centre of the three that led to the creek they were obliged to cross. Just for an instant he stood watching, gazing into the deep-blue dusk of the deeper jungle. Twilight was falling softly. The trails soon vanished into shadow—patches of deep gloom, relieved here and there by a bright leaf that reflected the last twilight rays. A living creature coughed and rustled away in the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... he went forward, stood to greet him, her gown, sleeveless, neckless, taking the bluish tinge that early twilight gives to snow, a tinge that deepened to dusk about her eyes and in her hair. She gave him her hand and at once he felt a balm poured into his tortured heart. After all, men were born to hurt and ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... read it over and returned to her seat. Decision was lacking. Her interpretation of the threat had taken strong hold upon her, but she could not decide what best to do. Her fine eyes were troubled as she gazed out into the growing dusk. Dared she go to ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... Jonas took up his vigil. He left his chair at nine o'clock to telephone Charley Abbott that the Secretary had gone to New York, then he returned to his place. Noon came, afternoon waned. As dusk drew on again, Jonas went once more to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... insignificant in the popularity of the village was the church bell. The Indians loved music, and this bell charmed them. On still nights the savages in distant towns could hear at dusk the deep-toned, mellow notes of the bell summoning the worshipers to the evening service. Its ringing clang, so strange, so sweet, so solemn, breaking the vast dead wilderness quiet, haunted the savage ear as though it were a call ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... good as his word. He returned to the little room, in which he had confined the Marquis, within an hour after he had left him. It was then nearly supper-time and dusk was fast settling upon the gloomy countryside. An unwonted calm had fallen upon land and sea after the sharp blow of the previous night, but the sky was still gray and there was promise of more rain, ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... That evening's dusk had deepened into blue night when the two cousins, each with a scant, uneasy dinner eaten, met by appointment in the alley behind their mutual grandfather's place of residence, and, having climbed the ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... one evening just before dusk, with the intention of skating a short distance up the Kennebec, which glided directly before the door. The night was beautifully clear with the light of the full moon and millions of stars. Light also came glinting from ice and snow-wreath and incrusted branches, as the eye followed ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... prose, as represented by the lowly worm, has also its exalted moments. "The last fish I caught was with a worm," says the honest Walton, and so say I. It was the last evening of last August. The dusk was settling deep upon a tiny meadow, scarcely ten rods from end to end. The rank bog grass, already drenched with dew, bent over the narrow, deep little brook so closely that it could not be fished except with a double-shotted, baited hook, dropped ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry

... "I had better send all the others in, for they might surprise us. Let these young sahibs hide themselves again; then we will go in, and I will call in your attendants. Later, when it is dusk, you will plead heat, and come out here with me again, and then I can bring some robes to disguise the sahibs; that is, if your highness has ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... think best, sergeant. My shoulder is smarting a good deal, and I shall be all the better for a few more hours' rest myself. It will soon be getting dusk, so I will go down and get another supply of water at once, and then we can do a good twelve hours' sleep without fear of being called up for outpost duty. We have got three or four nights' sleep ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... to dusk; the only change visible in the spectral world of pale yellow-white mist was the appearance in the sky of a number of small, detached bulbous-looking clouds of a dusky blue-gray. They had not drifted hither, for there was no wind. They had only appeared. They were absolutely motionless. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... little heaving pants, at her tea to cool it. Her thoughts were with a new hat and some red roses with which she would trim it; she looked out with little shivers of content at the falling winter's dusk: Anne the kitchen-maid scoured the pans; her bony frame seemed to rattle as she scrubbed with her red hands; she was happy because she was hungry and there would be a beef-steak pudding for dinner. She sang ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... dusk of the evening preceding Woodward's intended marriage, an individual came to Mr. Lindsay's house and requested to see Mr. Woodward. That gentleman came down, and immediately recognized the person who had, for such a length of time, frightened ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... dusk as Monsignor Masterman passed down the corridor a few minutes later; and he paused a moment to glance out upon the London street through the tall window at the end. Not that there was anything particular to be seen there; indeed the street, at the moment he looked, was entirely empty. But he ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... like a paroli at faro, and that the rain has cried itself to death; unless the first would dispose of all the highwaymen, footpads, and housebreakers, or the latter drown them, for nobody hereabouts dare stir after dusk, nor be secure at home. When you have any interval Of Your little campaigns, I shall hope to see ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... began to sing aloud in a falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception, never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the song of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and more under the spell of this artless warbling, listening and waiting for some articulate air, and still disappointed; and when at last I asked him what it was he sang—"Oh," cried he, "I am just singing!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in the evening to play at cricket with the officers of the Actaeon, I found all the Russian cavalry horses had been turned out to graze. They are sorry steeds, supplied for the Cossacks by the Sultan; they seemed, however, to enjoy this liberty very much. Just before dusk, some Russian soldiers came down to catch them, and we amused ourselves with observing their motions. In vain they drove them from one side to the other, and into all the corners of this extensive pasture-ground; it was of no use, they would not be caught ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... stared at the lady by the railings and at Sir George holding the boy, whose white but grinning face was just visible in the growing dusk. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... arrows upon his back while the other carried a gun under his blanket. Nearly all the people of the other village had crossed the river, and the chief of the Rees, whose name was Bald Eagle, went home with his wife last of all. It was about dusk as they entered their bullhide boat, and the two Sioux stood there ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... began to grow dusk, and the sun sank behind the mountains; gradually it became cooler on the hill, and the grass grew wet with dew. Then Ferko buried his face in the ground till his eyes were damp with dew-drops, and in a moment he saw clearer than he had ever done in ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... Dusk was falling. From the bunk-house rose the tinkling notes of a mandolin; after a few preliminary chords, the player, a Mexican, began a love-song in Spanish. The distant chimes of Mission bells sounded softly on ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... be for some artist; Darius, in the early dusk of morning, not waiting for footmen or chariot, hastening to the den, all flushed and nervous and in dishabille, and looking through the crevices of the cage to see what had become of his prime-minister! "What, no sound!" he says: "Daniel is surely devoured, and the lions are sleeping ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... the arch of ice at the source of the Arveron, and we went in the dusk to see a manufactory of cloth, made by a single individual peasant—the machinery for spinning, carding, weaving, and all made, woodwork and ironwork, by his own hands. He had in his youth worked in some manufactory in Dauphine. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... do but that the old man must seek his revenge at the earliest possible moment, so when dawn broke he was already following the trail of the malicious raider. All day he trailed it through the snow, and just before dusk the tracks told him that he was very near his quarry; but rather than run the risk of firing in a poor light, he decided not to despatch ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... Dusk was creeping up the hillside, but there was still a little light among the misty pines, and the girl flashed a quick glance at him. He seemed diffident, but it was evident that he did not wish her to go, and once more she felt that ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... so the Three Kings rode into the West, Through the dusk of night over hill and dell, And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast, And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest, With the people they met at some ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... for weeks. It was she who came to me at length; came to the studio alone, one afternoon at dusk. She had—what shall I say?—a veiled manner; as though she had dropped a fine gauze between us. I ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... large tortoise-shell pins, a gold lace fillet, and a rose over each ear. It was no more to her than a bit of black ribbon to a young girl. Old rose and young rose mingled delicately in the silks and gauzes of her gown; here and there a topaz flashed rose from her bodice and from the dusk of her bared neck. There was a fine dusk in her whiteness and in the rose of her face, and in the purplish streaks under her eyes, and deeper dusks about the roots of her hair. And gold sprang out of her darkness there; gold and bronze and copper gleamed and glowed and flamed on every ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... many were also moving, that she could not get away; and Mr. Knightley thought he saw another collection of letters anxiously pushed towards her, and resolutely swept away by her unexamined. She was afterwards looking for her shawl—Frank Churchill was looking also—it was growing dusk, and the room was in confusion; and how they parted, Mr. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... was set, and when he was a bit easier we settled round the fire, and he told us that his name was Edgar Linley, and he was an artist, and had been painting the angry sunset that had come before that night's storm, and got caught in the dusk and so lost his way, as many do on our Downs at home, some not so lucky as him to see a ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... hear. When the day of execution came, a great throng of men gathered in the market-place for to see the same. And when all was done,"—Wilfred evidently shrank from any lingering over the harrowing details—"when the dusk fell, and the prisoners had suffered their torments, such as yet overlived were left bound on the wheel to die there. Left, amid the jeers and mockings of the fool [foolish] throng, which dispersed not, but waited to behold ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... far away I think I almost hear A horn's faint echo through the dusk-hour's veil As in the happy, golden days of yore— Mayhap, e'en now upon this magic mere Frail shallops will flit by and mermaids pale Will lure us back to ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones

... vine-clad slope the argent river dreams; The roses almost hide the house from view; A snow-peak of the Winterberg in crimson splendor gleams; The shadow deepens down on the karroo. He seeks the lily-scented dusk beneath the orange tree; His pipe in silence glows and fades and glows; And then two little maids come out and climb upon his knee, And one is like the lily, ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... village, no student in the University, knew his history. No young lady in the Corinna Institute had ever had a word from him. Sometimes, as the boats of the University or the Institute were returning at dusk, their rowers would see the canoe stealing into the shadows as they drew near it. Sometimes on a moonlight night, when a party of the young ladies were out upon the lake, they would see the white canoe gliding ghost-like in the distance. And it had happened more than once that when a boat's ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... simultaneously three lamps. In this I had repeated the arrangement used by me for years in my city apartment. I have a demand for light somewhere in my make-up, and no reason for not indulging it. There flashed out of the dusk a large lamp upon my writing-table, a tall floor-lamp beside the piano, and a reading-lamp on a stand beside my bed at the far end of the room. All three were shaded in a smoke-blue and rose-color effect that long since ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... thee do men report Lean, dusk, a gipsy: I alone nut-brown. Violets and pencilled hyacinths are swart, Yet first of flowers they're chosen for a crown. As goats pursue the clover, wolves the goat, And cranes the ploughman, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... the hills, sagging down in the irregularities till it reaches the river-bed, where it flies apart in strands of sand. The twilight leans upon the opposite ridge, painting its undulations in inconceivably delicate shades of subdued color. Although the night is coming on, the clear-obscure of that dusk, like a limpid pool, reveals all beneath. A road ascending the southern hill cuts through a loamy crust a yellow line, which creeps upward, winding in and out, till nothing is seen of it but a break in the trees set clear against the sky. No art of engineer wrought these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... loyal friendship of the poet was given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a man of irreproachable character, of unimpeachable morality, or of unswerving austerity. But he was as different from the Sandwiches and the Dashwoods as dawn is different from dusk, and in enumerating all of the many arguments that are to be accumulated in defence of Wilkes, not the least weighty arguments are that while on the one hand he earned the hatred of Sandwich and of Dashwood, on the other hand he earned the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna, which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league under a burning ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... orders to suspend a superb Mistletoe bough in the publishing-office. PUNCH will be in attendance from daylight till dusk. To prevent confusion, the salutes will he distributed according ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... fault whatever, he had received a rough pressure from his rider's knees, and a sharp dig from the spurs. The first sergeant was old Jeremiah Wilson, and the prisoner, standing to the "front and center" in the gathering dusk, and hearing his fate ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... Mrs. Kelsey's protests that night after supper, Alma tripped about the kitchen and pantry wiping the dishes and putting them away. At dusk father, mother, and daughter seated themselves ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... voice answered, "Anahaili{COMBINING BREVE}hi, killed at sunrise, and Igakizhi, killed at dusk, by the People of the Earth. They went in search of meat, and the hunters shot arrows into them. We are sorry, but they were told to be careful and did not heed. It is too late to help them now; let us ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... map, yellow with age, hanging on the wall. The conversation ended underneath a lamp-post on a street curbing, and it was rainy and dark and cold. And yet when I think of that conversation, sitting here in the brown chill dusk, I see color, I ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty

... Alice called upon Abby Miles, and talked about everything except the subject she most wanted to talk about, and then, as Abby usually had a Sunday evening caller, Alice came home at dusk. Never before had the house seemed so lonesome, and as she sat on the porch and tried to talk with Aunt ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... befell them was dense wintry fog, in the dusk of which they lay with lowered sail on a sullen sea for a day and a night. When the change came, it brought with it the blowing of a fierce gale with a plague of sleet and hail-stones, and they were chased out of the fog, and ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... sea, the gusty sky of yesterday having hardened into delicate flakes of pearly cloud, like the sand on some wave-beaten beach. It was all infinitely soft and refreshing to the eye, that outspread pastoral landscape, seen in a low dusk, like the dusk of a ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... luncheon, all reeking with wet, at the King's Head,—so that a little money might be legitimately spent in the cause. Then, at two, they sallied out again, vainly endeavouring to make their twenty calls within the hour. About four, when it was beginning to be dusk, they were very tired, and Silverbridge had ventured to suggest that as they were all wet through, and as there was to be another meeting in the Assembly Room that night, and as nobody in that part of the town seemed to be at home, they might perhaps be allowed to adjourn for the present. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... all insensibly reappeared, and the trees on the summits were defined against the skies in the rising glow. The sun freed itself with a graceful spring from the ribbons of flame and ochre and sapphire. Its vivid light took level lines from hill to hill and flowed into the vales. The dusk dispersed, day mastered Nature. A sharp breeze crisped the air, the birds sang, life wakened everywhere. But the girl had hardly time to cast her eyes over the whole of this wondrous landscape before, by a phenomenon not infrequent in these ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... I have no power to refuse you anything," was her loving answer; "but I know it is all your thought for me, Raby," pressing closer to him in the empty dusk, for there were no curious eyes upon them—only night-moths wheeling round them. "Are you never afraid of what you are doing; do you not fear that I ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny: visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as strangely as they come. Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; here, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... too late, however, to take any active steps that night. It was settled that the next morning the flotilla, with some parade, should proceed down the river, while they, with Dick Needham and a picked crew, should lie hid in the smallest boat till dusk the next evening; then they were to land and try and ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... the House of Mammon his priesthood stands alert By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt, Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure, And they be found ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... almost dusk, and he came back to the present world with a start. His first thought was of Ruth and the rapturous prospect of seeing her on the morrow; a swift doubt followed as to whether a white tie or a black one was proper; then a sudden fear that he had forgotten ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice



Words linked to "Dusk" :   eventide, crepuscule, darken, night, even, hour, dusky, crepuscle, fall, gloam, time of day, evening, gloaming, eve, nightfall, evenfall



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