"Footfall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so appealingly, you will hear the dull clank of chains, see the glare of vacant eyes, and shudder at the pale, cadaverous faces of beings tortured with starvation. A low, hoarse whisper, asks you for bread; a listless countenance quickens at your footfall. Oh! could you but feel the emotion that has touched that shrunken form which so despondingly waits the coming of a messenger of mercy. That system of cruelty to prisoners which so disgraced England during the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... waited for a moment, but no more signals came from the window. Instead a heavy footfall sounded outside the door and a man they had not seen before stepped ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... A distinct footfall. She raised herself on her elbow and peered into the shadows. Far over at the other side of the chamber—it seemed an infinite distance just then—stood a figure. Grace looked at it calmly. She had never been a coward and she was not frightened now, only she wondered who could be ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... well, waiting for the element to filter into its basin, in order to fill her buckets, while her ear listened in dull attention to the hum of the moving crowd without. A halberdier paced the open gallery at the head of the Giant's Stairs, and, here and there, the footfall of other sentinels might be heard among the hollow and ponderous arches of the long corridors. No light was shed from the windows; but the entire building presented a fit emblem of that mysterious power ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... appearance; and in the tone of his voice, and in his glance, and in the whole man, there was something racy,—a flavor of the humorist. His step was that of an aged man, and he put his stick down very decidedly at every footfall; though as he afterwards told me that he was only fifty-two, he need not yet have been infirm. But perhaps he has had the gout; his feet, however, are by no means swollen, but unusually small. Dr. ——— introduced him as Mr. Douglas Jerrold, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... through the long passages as veiled figures slowly and noiselessly passed towards the chapel to their private devotions. Scarcely a footfall reached the ear, nor sound of any kind, except the sweet voice of Mere Madelaine de St. Borgia. Like the flow of a full stream in the still moonlight, she sang her canticle of praise to the guardian of the house, before ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the call of the sentry at half-past twelve o'clock. A few minutes later there was a sharp, sudden report, as of a pistol, somewhere down the row; then as she sprang to the window she heard a stifled cry; then all was silence again—unless—was it fancy? She felt, rather than heard, a running footfall. Excited, startled, she hastily threw on a wrapper and shawl and ran in to Grace, who was sleeping quietly as before. Looking out on the parade, she could hear men running rapidly over from the guard-house. Something terrible had happened she now felt sure. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... forever alert and ubiquitous. I heard them in abysses, upon peaks, and in wildernesses. They trod upon my nerves; they crushed sleep from my soul. I closed my ears in vain; I fled without refuge; I prayed without avail. The patter of little children, the footfall of the maiden, the elastic pace of the youth, the racking limp of the cripple, the veteran hobbling upon his wooden stump, the confused tread of crowds, the steady tramp of soldiers—these tortured me by ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... hovered round his mother like some gentle spirit; saying but little, yet evincing in every glance of his expressive blue eyes, and in every noiseless footfall, the deep sorrow which lay in the recesses of his young heart. When he spoke it was in accents of tenderness and sympathy for his mother; and though he never talked as Arthur did of the approaching ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... no footfall might reach the ears of any above, he groped his way along the rough stone wall. Upon reaching a depression in the masonry, he took up from its hiding place a lantern, a rude affair formed of iron, pierced by countless holes, and within it a tallow candle, which, when he lighted it, sputtered fitfully ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... extreme depression. Indeed, so forlorn, and so much out of repair did he look, that little Virginia, whose first idea had been to run away and lock herself in her room, was filled with pity, and determined to try and comfort him. So light was her footfall, and so deep his melancholy, that he was not aware of her presence till ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the halls and marble stairways, ruin of time in the fretted screens, and broken cisterns holding nothing but dry earth. Nothing there now but the lion and the lizard, not even the ghost of a light footfall, or the tinkle of glass bangles on ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... she relapsed into silence, trembling and listening to a heavy footfall which was approaching up the stairs. Suddenly father Bijard brutally opened the door. As usual he was far gone, and his eyes shone with the furious madness imparted by the vitriol he had swallowed. When he perceived Lalie in bed, he tapped on his thighs ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... recrossed the Rhine. A funeral procession, so we seemed, Upon the long bridge that had rung so oft To our victorious feet!... What since has coursed We know not, gentlemen. But this we know, That Germany echoes no French footfall! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... footfall sounded. In the darkness out there someone blundered into a piece of wicker furniture and disturbed it with a small scraping sound, all but inaudible, but to the thief as loud as the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... and Mary Whittaker still remained in the weaver's cottage. The cowed look in her eyes passed gradually away, though it would come back whenever a man's footfall was heard in the street outside, and a cold fear seized her at the thought that Learoyd was at hand to demand her return to the farm. But he never came, and Mary grew more and more at ease in her new surroundings. The change from the roomy farmstead, with its wide horizons of moors and woods, ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... the back from the north wind by a bank, on which spring here and there flowers and weeds entwined; while its front, turned to the south's warm breath, is enlivened by a few statues, round the pedestals of which creep the vine and honey-suckle. Though the footfall of time is scarcely heard on the soft moss, which oozes in patches from the broad terrace where princes trod, the hand of desolation seemed to be busy here; and as I looked around me, and observed how each relic ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to think about the future, and almost to forget Andy and the possible and very great peril of the present, when, shortly before the hour of one, all her senses were preternaturally excited by the sound of a footfall. It was a very soft footfall—the noise made by a bare foot. Nora heard it just where the shadow was deepest. She stood up now; she knew that, from her present position, the one who was making this dead sort of heavy sound could not possibly see her. She waited, her breath coming hard and ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... not, beauties vanish; Whither I follow her, beauties flee; Is there no method to tell her in Spanish June's twice June since she breathed it with me? Come, bud, show me the least of her traces, 45 Treasure my lady's lightest footfall! —Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces— Roses, you are not ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... wing an intimation that things were not as they had been before; that an influence adverse to himself was at work behind the ashlared face of inner wall which confronted him. Perhaps this was because he never saw Paula at the windows, or heard her footfall in that half of the building given over to himself and his myrmidons. There was really no reason other than a sentimental one why he should see her. The uninhabited part of the castle was almost an independent ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the slightest pulsation, while a thermometer shows the rise and fall of the temperature at every moment during the period; and by an arrangement of the wing, the circulation of the blood is recorded. A more delicate experiment can hardly be imagined, as a strong breath, a sneeze, or a footfall will cause the subject of the experiment to recover enough to respire several times; and the effect of this on the machine can be imagined when it is known that though, while in this condition, they produce no effect ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... The sails of the skiff flapped noisily and the water slapped her sides. They rested breathless—waiting an event which might warn them to be off into hiding in the fog. But no disquieting sound came from the schooner—no startled exclamation, no hail, no footfall: nothing but the creaking of the anchor chain and the rattle of the blocks aloft. A schooner loomed up and shot past like ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... of it my ear caught the regular footfall of troops, and a squad of infantry came swinging round the corner. I supposed it to be a patrol sent to clear the streets and restore order. A small man in civilian dress—a Portuguese, by his look—walked gingerly beside the sergeant in charge, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and forwards, I heard a little noise outside, a light footfall on the stairs or landing. I stood still, my heart seeming to knock about inside my chest as if it wanted to leap out between the ribs. Then I went to the door and threw it wide open. She stood there just outside. The light from within fell upon her, and my eyes ran over her, questioning, devouring, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... evidently meant to take no advantage, to let her pass him if she wished to do so. Audrey could read this determination in his averted face. Most likely he wished her to think that his abstraction was too great to allow him to notice her light footfall; he would make it easy for her to pass him—a man's eyes can only see what they are looking at. But this time Audrey's prudence counselled her in vain; her soft heart would not allow her to go past ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... chant that, no doubt, would have been immeasurably funny to the cold-hearted and the sane, but it brought the tears to my eyes and rendered the rafters just above my head a work of lace, far away. And at these devotions I might have remained for hours had not a sharp footfall smote upon my ear. I hastened down stairs, and at the entrance of the passage stood Chyd Lundsford, looking about, slowly lashing ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... heard a soft footfall, and swerving in his saddle he turned and struck with all his might in the face of a man who leaped at him, at the same time grasping the uplifted wrist with his other hand. A curse and the tinkle of thin steel on the pavement accompanied the fall of his opponent. Bending ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... rough trampled earth; the smell all about him was not of roses, but of dust-bins, and there were no nightingales—but far away he could hear that restless roar that is the voice of London, and near at hand the foolish song and unsteady footfall of a man going home from the "Cat and Whistle." He scratched a cross on the hard ground with a broken bit of a plate to mark the spot, got up and crept on hands and knees to the house, climbed in and found the room where ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... devoted to the reception of guests, empty at this hour, he sat down and read the report of the trial. The fools had made out a case that looked black enough. And for a long time, on the thick soft carpet which let out no sound of footfall, he paced up and down, thinking. He might see the defending counsel, might surely do that as an expert who thought there had been miscarriage of justice. They must appeal; a petition too might be started in the last event. The thing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of birds silent in the coppice, and hardly a leaf astir in the huge beeches that fling their cool shade over the grass. Afar off a gilded vane flares out above the grey Jacobean gables of Knoll, the chime of a village clock falls faintly on the ear, but there is no voice or footfall of living thing to break the silence as I turn over leaf after leaf of the little book I have brought with me from the bustle of town to this still retreat, a book that is the record of a broken life, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... both hands, I now descended the stairs, and at the sound of my footfall he glanced up, started, and then came ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... other phrase in such instances) by doing all manner of skilful needlework; they were middle-aged women, gentle-natured, and so thoroughly subdued to the hopelessness of their lot that scarcely ever could even their footfall be heard as they went up and down stairs; their voices were always sunk to a soft murmur. Just now no infant wailing came from the Byasses' regions. Kirkwood enjoyed a sense of restfulness, intenser, perhaps, for the momentary disappointment ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... voice and footfall, and felt, as he always did, a vague pleasure in her advent. Whatever of life came into his chamber of suffering came through her. She brought him daily such intelligences as she thought conducive to his recovery; and it must be acknowledged that it was not always her "humour to be ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... happen in the flat before long. The air of the room proclaimed this fact. And plainly Barber was uneasy, for he stalked about, starting nervously whenever Father Pat shut the watch, or when a footfall sounded beyond the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... her own fault? If so, the greater pathos. The lonely souls that hold out timid hands to an unheeding world have their meed of interior comfort even here, while the sons of consolation wait on the thresh-hold for their footfall: but God help the soul that bars its own door! It is kicking against the pricks of Divine ordinance, the ordinance of a triune God; whether it be the dweller in crowded street or tenement who is proud to say, "I keep myself to myself," or Seneca writing in pitiful complacency, ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... was immaterial to me, it would probably satisfy the Hamilton family; and, after a few minutes' consultation in the sick-room, be returned with the conclusion that I might enter the room, but that no loud word must be spoken, nor the sound of a footfall permitted. ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... illimitable sand-dunes. They trekked in single file and by the aid of the stars and a compass easily kept their eastward course. The murmur of the surf grew fainter and fainter until not a sound broke the stillness, the soft footfall of the camels being inaudible even to the men who led them. Halloran had enjoined silence for some reason, and he stopped his brother irritably when that usually irrepressible youth started to whistle feebly. With an occasional rest ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... answer to my silent call, a footstep! My hands dropped into my lap. A man stood near. I did not look up; I knew who he was. We need hear but once the footfall of certain people and always after know instantly if they are near. A voice: "Miss Gilder, do ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... went forward. He stepped into the hall close behind the General, and suddenly glanced down. He could hardly believe his ears. Was he growing deaf? There walked the General ahead of him, and little Jim could not hear a footfall, neither could he hear his ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... that of a wounded lioness, the Countess, taking no notice of the doctor's presence, rushed from the room. Her rapid footfall could be heard on the stairs, and the rustle of her silken skirts against the banisters. As soon as he was left alone, the doctor rose from his seat with a cynical smile ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... each other with unchanging faces, and neither spoke. Some people know that dead silence which descends while fate's great hand is working in the dark, and men hold their breath and shut their eyes, listening speechless for the dull footfall ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of leaves; the fresh breath of the salt ocean. In the darkness, he could see only a semi-circling mass of foliage under the sombre sky, no other houses nor sign of such. He could not even hear the rumbling of the Sydney streets nor the hoarse whispering of the crowded city; not even a single footfall on the road they had come down. For the faint lap-lap-lapping of water filled the pauses, when the puffy breeze failed to play on its leafy pipes. Here a Mazzini might hide himself and here the malcontents of Sydney might gather in safety to plot and plan for the overthrow of a hateful ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... dasher invites them at all, at all?), it is well known that many a milkmaid on a May morning has seen fairy cows browsing along the banks of lakes,—cows that vanish into thin mist at the sound of human footfall. ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... room, seeing nothing but her own gliding shadow, hearing nothing but her own stealthy footfall in the midnight stillness of the house. After mechanically putting the keys away in their former hiding-place, she looked toward her bed, and turned away from it, shuddering. The warning remembrance of what she had suffered that morning in the garden was vividly ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... her suddenly she heard a footfall, a new footfall, not that of the long, stealthy stride of Martha, who was called the Mare, and swung round upon her heel ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... prevailing calm, burning steadily behind their glass screens and turning the neighboring leaves into the tenderest emerald. Here and there, in the sombre row of houses stretching along Beacon Street, an illuminated window gilded a few square feet of darkness; and now and then a footfall sounded on a distant pavement. The pulse of the ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Him from heaven; benevolence followed His steps wherever He went on earth. The journeys of the Divine Philanthropist were marked by tears of thankfulness, and breathings of grateful love. The helpless, the blind, the lame, the desolate, rejoiced at the sound of His footfall. Truly might it be said of Him, "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me." (Job, xxix. 11.) All suffering hearts were a magnet to Jesus. It was not more His ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... gave a quicker throb, for surely that was a faint sound in the path, though too far off for her to perceive the cause. She could not tell its precise nature, but fancied it was the footfall of some animal. She took several quick steps forward on tiptoe, with head extended, peering and listening, with all her senses at ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... into an apartment new to him. It was not very large, but most luxurious; a fountain played in the centre, and the floor was covered with the skins of panthers, dressed with the hair, so that no footfall could be heard. The room was an ante-chamber to the princess's boudoir, for on one side there was no door, but an ample curtain of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... footsteps sounded overhead, and then gently he tried the door of the other lodger. Mr. Jaggs had not yet bolted the door, and the spy pushed it open and looked. What he saw satisfied him, for he pulled the door tight again, and as the footfall of old Jaggs came nearer the door, the donkey-boy flew ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... your part. You alone of all of us can cackle with the exact imitation of an old hen: get behind that tree at once and watch the yard. Don't forget to cackle for your life if you even see the shadow of a footfall. Nora, my pretty birdie, you must be the thrush for the nonce; here, take your post, watch the lawn and the front avenue. Now then, girls, the rest of us can see what spoils ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Neranya hoisted into his cage, the rajah emerged upon the balcony to see him for the first time since the last amputation. Neranya had been lying panting and helpless on the floor of his cage, but when his quick ear caught the sound of the rajah's footfall he squirmed about until he had brought the back of his head against the railing, elevating his eyes above his chest, and enabling him to peer through the open-work of the cage. Thus the two deadly enemies faced each other. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... followed him! Since the night he had flung himself out of her house, tortured in every nerve, she had not for a moment left him. When he walked through the house, she followed him, her stealthy footfall sounding just the merest fraction of a second after his. He avoided the bare polished floors and walked on the rugs whenever possible, that he might not hear that soft, slow step so plainly. Ralph had ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sunshine and the shower: in the other no sound but the passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... seen wayfarers disappear; the sounds of sliding locks and closing shutters are heard here and there; the houses have shut themselves up, the night-bound town becomes a desert profound. I can hear nothing now but my own footfall. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... astonishment—with desire. How wonderful, you say, that church tower covered with its flowers; that altar covered with flowers not gathered and placed in vases, but with Nature's own hand arranging an offering to the living God. These streets that sound no footfall of an angry multitude, but that listen to the footfall of a quiet nature—yes, it is beautiful in the early morning. But stay there until the later afternoon, when the fog begins to gather; stay there until night-time, when the miasma begins to ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... horsemen richly clad, Armed with long spears and silver-halted blades, Seizing pachalic power by a swift blow. But labour, having brought him gold, brings fears. The weight of wealth has made his footfall staid; He longs for order, settled government, And stands, a stern upholder, ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... perplexity. Then with her mind still thoroughly unawakened, her heart began suddenly to pitch and lurch like a frightened horse whose rider has not even remotely sensed as yet the approach of an unwonted footfall. "What—did—you—say?" she repeated worriedly. "Just exactly what was it that you said? I guess—maybe—I didn't understand just exactly what ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... halted close to the window, rose more distinctly upon his ear. It was the sound of a voice engaged in some sort of monotonous reading or reciting, and it seemed first to advance to the window near which he stood and then to recede. He soon discovered that it was accompanied by a soft but regular footfall. It was plain that somebody—some woman, evidently—was pacing the floor of the room to which this window belonged, and that she was repeating poetry, either to herself or to some silent listener. As she came near the window, Stretton heard the words of an old ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... retreated, Timokles with a last hope kept one hand pushing against this wall. But they reached the other corner, and turned, without any revelation of an opening. The leopard walked leisurely, but steadily. Softly the footsteps of Timokles and the beast sounded in the room, one footfall answering another. Backward, backward, went Timokles—now a turn of a corner—backward, backward. Another corner. This was the wall by which the leopard had slept. Backward, backward! The lad could not pause, but now, as he neared the end of ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... colors, just above its gradual soft approach. It passed them, already halfway across the great room. I saw then that its stature was that of ordinary men. The prolonged booming of the clock died away. I heard the footfall, shuffling upon the polished boards. I heard another sound—a voice, low and monotonous, droning as in prayer. The figure was speaking. It was a woman. And she carried in both hands before her a small object that faintly shimmered—a glass of water. ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... close. I loved him dear, Too dear, I know; but never till he came Had known the leap of joy, the fire of flame Upon the heart he gave me, Paris the bright, Whose memory was music and his sight Fragrance, whose nearness made my footfall dance, Whose touch was fever, and his burning glance Faintness and blindness; in whose light my life Centred; who was the sun, and I, false wife, The foolish flower that turns whereso he wheels Over the broad ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... girl that he must be awakened by the creaking of the floor under her light footfall. With heart in mouth she stole up to the bedstead, and gently pulling the door still wider ajar, peeped in, in the hope of seeing the mail-bag and being ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... window-seat she hesitated for a moment, looked out at the clear, wintry night, and then slipped down the stairs so lightly that even the cushioned velvet carpet took no impress of her footfall. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... approached for the vessel to arrive in New York a shivering nervousness took possession of him. He would stand behind the door by the hour listening for her lightest footfall, hoping against hope that, after all, her heart would soften toward him. One thought absorbed him: would she betray him, and if so, when and where? Would it be to the First Officer—the friend of Hobson—or would she wait until they reached ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... there is coming an answer to her summons. What was it? On the stairs, not the stairs that led downwards to the kitchen, but the stairs that led upwards to the single story of bed-chambers above, was heard a creaking sound. Next was heard most distinctly a footfall: one, two, three, four, five stairs were slowly and distinctly descended. Then the dreadful footsteps were heard advancing along the little narrow passage to the door. The steps—oh heavens! whose ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... dingy undusted drawing-room, filled with evening sunshine and the green-dyed light that penetrated the leaves overhanging the long French windows. I sat down and waited on and on, occasionally aware of a creaking footfall overhead. At last the door opened a little, and the great face I had once known peered round at me. For it was enormously changed; mainly, I think, because the old eyes had rather suddenly failed, and so a kind of stillness and darkness lay over ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Surely he had been alone. Who ever came to this corridor? He looked up and down its dingy length, but saw no one. He must have been mistaken. Then he listened. The wind swept wailing through its accustomed approaches; shutters and windows shook with the blast, but no footfall was to be heard. He turned to the diamond-paned lattice, and again watched the drops trickling from the nose of the water-spout. No one had spoken. Again he yawned prodigiously, but brought his jaws together with a snap which might have damaged ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... days for the little boy's friends, and sorriest for Fido. Poor, honest Fido, how lonesome he was and how he moped about! How each sudden sound, how each footfall, startled him! How he sat all those days upon the front door-stoop, with his eyes fixed on the fence-corner and his rough brown ears cocked up as if he expected each moment to see two chubby arms stretched ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... were open, but with the sultry breath of August little din of business came into the room; the place was very quiet. The house was empty and still; seldom a footfall could be heard overhead. Clam was busy, up stairs and down, but she went with a light step when she pleased, and she pleased it now. It was a relief to have the change of falling night; and then the breeze from the sea began to come in at the windows and freshen the hot rooms; and twilight ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... and handed his gun up to him. The Doctor made his way out on the branch to the spot where it extended beyond the wall, and there sat, straining his eyes into the darkness. Half an hour passed, and then he heard a light footfall ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... play at that." And so after some rude jests, and laughter, and a few more oaths, I heard Charlie (or at any rate somebody) coming toward me, with a loose and not too sober footfall. As he reeled a little in his gait, and I would not move from his way one inch, after his talk of Lorna, but only longed to grasp him (if common sense permitted it), his braided coat came against my thumb, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... petted, set down, and taken up again like a kitten. Her small feet, as I heard them on the gravel, made a light sound essentially their own, that harmonized with the rustle of her dress, producing a feminine music which stamped itself on the heart, and remained distinct from the footfall of a thousand other women. Her gait bore all the quarterings of her race with so much pride, that, in the street, the least respectful working man would have made way for her. Gay and tender, haughty and imposing, it was impossible to understand her, excepting ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high- shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,—the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when I saw the coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested,—motionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... anguish he called the name aloud. So absorbed and preoccupied in his grief had he been that he was not aware of a figure softly moving along the balcony in the shadow. He did not hear a footfall coming through the open window that gave into the room. He did not realize that he had an auditor to his words, a witness to his grief, until a touch soft as a snowflake fell upon his fair head and a voice for which he languished whispered in ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... plain—made, in the night of ages, to last and be transmitted. I feel as if I ought to 'tip' some custode for my glimpse of it. She has been told everything in the world and has never perceived anything, and the echoes of her education respond awfully to the rash footfall—I mean the casual remark—in the cold Valhalla of her memory. Mrs. Wimbush delights in her wit and says there's nothing so charming as to hear Mr. Paraday draw it out. He's perpetually detailed for this job, and he tells me it has a peculiarly exhausting effect. Every one's beginning—at ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... but blindly vent his hankering in this daily drum-parade, till on a day early in loveliest May, when the trilliums had fringed his log with silver stars, and he had drummed and longed, then drummed again, his keen ear caught a sound, a gentle footfall in the brush. He turned to a statue and watched; he knew he had been watched. Could it be possible? Yes! there it was—a form—another—a shy little lady grouse, now bashfully seeking to hide. In a moment he was by her side. His whole nature swamped by a new feeling—burnt up with thirst—a ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... believe this much: that I for my part feel sure (except sometimes by daylight) that I was not more than half asleep when a footfall seemed to come in the path, and waked me entirely. It didn't sound,—only seemed to come. I believe, then, that I woke, roused up on my elbow, and stared over at the opening among the bamboos where the path came into the clearing. Some one moved down the bank, and drew ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... sun-glass, he found his chief subject for consideration to be the choice of a club at which to lunch. There, in the solitude of the deserted smoking-room, where the heat was tempered, the glare shut out, and the very footfall subdued, he thought of the little hotel in University Place. Because human society had mysterious unwritten laws, the woman he loved was forced to steal away from the freshness and peace of green fields and sweeping river, to take refuge amid the noisome ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... truth," said the Queen's voice behind them. They had not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating. Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate and dragged her weary body forward. "Can you suggest ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... going to the drawer in the dining-room where the linen was kept, he secured and held against a ragged wound a napkin, He was nauseated and faint. His rage, killed, as it were, at its height, left him with a sensation of emptiness and degradation. The silence— after the last audible dragging footfall of Fanny slowly mounting the stairs—was appalling: it was as though all the noise of all the world, concentrated in his head, had been stopped at once and forever. He removed the sop from the cut, and the bleeding promptly took ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... child of the lonesome, pale-gray latter years, child of the soft and happy South. And how the dreamer of the spheres must have loved this strange little house. Every night the hollow boards of its porch must have echoed to his footfall, and every morn the great rising sun must have sent its rays through the little window, and bathed the lovely tresses of the dream-child in mystical yellow. And perhaps there was laughter within the walls of that house—laughter and merriment ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Maid has not come hither," said the Brooklet in reply; "I've listened for her footfall ere the stars were in the sky; The Fountain has been singing of a Maid, with eyes so bright You may read the cherished secrets of her bosom ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... their footmarks on the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... little grizzled perhaps, but modest and unassuming; wiry, alert, lightning-quick, with a wrist of steel and a heart of gold; and he was about to ascend the stairs of an unknown house at Blois in total darkness. He went up, crouching, ready for anything, without a footfall, not even causing a hideous creak; and gained the top in safety. Here he turned into an obscure passage, and at the end of it beheld, through an open door, a little room in which a dark-eyed lady sat writing in a book by the light of ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... succession last year I spent a half-hour observing his frisky gambols on the hillside across the dingle below my porch, as he jumped apparently for mice in the sloping rowen-field. How quickly he responded to my slightest interruption of voice or footfall, running to the cover of ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... that time was over. He was glad that she was at home again, safe from those—Some one was moving near him, passing within twenty feet. Whoever it was was stepping cautiously but blunderingly. It was not Cameron, then. He was a footfall only, not even an outline. Before Pink could decide on a line of action, the sound ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Our footfall echoed on the metal grids as we hurried along. I felt depressed and oppressed. As though prying eyes were upon me. We walked for a time in silence, each of us busy with memory of what ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... edge of the drive, paused, listening with every faculty alert. There was no sound but the muted soughing of the night wind in the trees—not a footfall, not the clap of a hoof or the echo of a motor's whine. She moved on a yard or two, and found herself suddenly in the harsh glare of an arc-lamp. This decided her; she might as well go forward as retreat, now that she had shown herself. She darted at a run across the road and gained the paved ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... her. She could not find the time and place where she had seen the eyes that, in the palace, had filled her with mislike and abhorrence as they looked upon the Queen. Again and again in her fitful sleep had she dreamt of him, and a sense of foreboding was heavy upon her—she seemed to hear the footfall of coming disaster. The anxiety of her soul lent an unnatural brightness to her eyes; so that more than one enamoured courtier made essay to engage her in conversation, and paid her deferential compliment when the Queen's eyes were not turned her way. Come to the dais, she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the flakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted up. An army might have marched from end to end and not a footfall given the alarm. If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw the island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim white spars, on the black ground of the river. High up overhead the snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hoarse, and Nell declared I was in danger of being sued for scandal. What more could we do? To dispel the drowsiness that was stealing over me, I got up, walked up and down the floor, and then drew up the blind, and gazed out into the deserted street. Not a footfall to be heard, neither man's nor beast's; nothing but patter, patter, patter. At length, after standing fully fifteen minutes—oh, joyful sound!—a coming footstep, firm and quick. My first thought was ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... there when there came a very low tap at the door. She started up and listened. She had heard no footfall on the stairs, and it was, she thought, impossible that any one should have come up without her hearing the steps. Peter Steinmarc creaked whenever he went along the passages, and neither did her aunt ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... the grave and, scurrying away sadly and silently, leave the dead one in the company of the spirits of darkness. Henceforth this, the resting place of one who was beloved in life, possibly of a loving wife, or of a darling child, will be eschewed as a place of terror where stalk with silent footfall and dark-visaged face the foul ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... great, we experience a desire to revert to old habits. We say that old associations crowd upon us. Let a Trinity man, after thirty years absence from Cambridge, pace for five minutes in the cloister of Neville's Court, and listen to the echo of his footfall, as it licks up against the end of the cloister, or let an old Johnian stand wherever he likes in the third Court of St. John's, in either case he will find the thirty years drop out of his life, as if they were half-an-hour; his life will have rolled back upon itself, to the ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... hooks; But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power Had filled the house with Druid heaviness; And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe Had come as in the old times to counsel her, Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old, To that small chamber by the outer gate. The porter slept although he sat upright With still and stony limbs and open eyes. Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise Broke from his parted lips and broke again, She laid a hand on either of his shoulders, ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... he lay thus, after some while he heard a swift, light footfall, the whisper of mail, and knew that she stood above him; yet he heeded not, wherefore at last she spake, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... distinct as it drew nearer; presently he recognized it,—the regular footfall of some man or boy plodding along the path. That path!—a recollection flashed through his mind. No one knew that short cut up the mountain but him and Barney; they had worn the path with their trampings back and forth from the ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... clearing, Jack thought he heard a soft footfall in their rear. He turned, and saw, to his surprise, that the native woman was a short distance behind them, with ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... meddle, as usual. Even if he returned, she could not know with certainty how much of a part hazard had played on the landing above, where she already heard the distant sounds of Sylvia's voice mingling with Siward's, then a light footfall or two, and silence. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... jumped to his feet and ran to the door, where he sniffed at the crack over the threshold. His aspect was fierce and threatening. He uttered low growls and then two short barks. Those in the room heard a soft moccasined footfall outside. The next instant the door opened wide and a tall ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... come?" said Elsie, when she heard, with her fine sense quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light footfall on the stair, with a cadence unlike that of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Sir Beverley had stood at that same window waiting and listening in the spring twilight for the beloved footfall of the woman who was never again to enter his house. They had had a disagreement, he had spoken harshly, he had been foolishly, absurdly jealous; for her wonderful beauty, her quick, foreign charm drew all the world. But, returning from a long ride that ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... 'what if I bring him alone out of the palace, to some quiet corner of the Park - the Flying Mercury, for instance? Gordon can be posted in the thicket; the carriage wait behind the temple; not a cry, not a scuffle, not a footfall; simply, the Prince vanishes! - What do you say? Am I an able ally? Are my BEAUX YUEX of service? Ah, Heinrich, do not lose your Anna! - ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and bare, it had an air of neatness and order as if unused. Even the forlorn little bed of straw looked as if no one had slept on it. Laura was so disappointed that she knew not what to do; but, too tired to make any search, she was about turning away when a light footfall arrested her, and she saw the figure of a weeping child coming towards the hut. Evidently this was the elder of the two children, for she had the same brown hair Grim had spoken of, but she was so much overcome ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... legend invest every turn and footfall of the Eternal City, and there are few that are not founded on what the church has always called supernatural manifestations, but which the new age is learning to recognize as occurrences under ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... men halted, and listened, and they could catch the distant footfall of the patrols echoing in some far-off corridor. That reassured them. They ceased to fancy the smell of burning and to be victimized by the illusion that a little tongue of flame ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... dust hung like a fog above the road, not only for this day, but for all days between the big rains. Each night, however, the cold heavy dews drew it down, cooling but never congealing it. From under the first footfall the next day it rose again. When the gods, or the elements, or Providence, arranged the world as a fit habitation for man, India and Burma were made the dust-bins. And as water finds its levels, so will dust, earthly and human, the quick and ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath |
