"Spy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... William's lines. Such an undertaking was less dangerous then than it would be at the present day; for now, such a reconnoitering party would be discovered from the enemy's encampment, at a great distance, by means of spy-glasses, and a twenty-four-pound shot or a shell would be sent from a battery to blow the party to pieces or drive them away. The only danger then was of being pursued by a detachment of horsemen from the camp, or surrounded by an ambuscade. To guard ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... 'till we reach Cualnge. That man will kill two-thirds of the host in this way.' It is there that the harpers of the Cainbili [Note: Reference obscure. They were wizards of some sort.] from Ossory came to them to amuse them. They thought it was from the Ulstermen to spy on them. They set to hunting them, till they went before them in the forms of deer into the stones at Liac Mor on the north. For they ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... honest drunken Jack Daventry, [poor fellow!—What an unhappy end was his!]—thou knowest, I used to observe, that whenever he rose from an entertainment, which he never did sober, it was his way, as soon as he got to the door, to look round him like a carrier pigeon just thrown up, in order to spy out his course; and then, taking to his heels, he would run all the way home, though it were a mile or two, when he could hardly stand, and must have tumbled on his nose if he had attempted to walk moderately. This then must be my excuse, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... people all told, and they by no means reliable if it comes to a downright hand-to-hand tussle. The question is, what are we to do with you? Should we fail, and you again fall into the hands of the French, your fate is sealed, they will assuredly hang you as a spy on ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... General descend, and appearing again over the edge of the basket, he seemed to be motioning to the breathless hordes below, the story of his failure. Then he dropped out of sight, and when we next saw him, he was reconnoitring the Confederate works through a long black spy-glass. A great laugh went up and down the lines as this cool procedure was observed, and then a cheer of applause ran from group to group. For a moment it was doubtful that the balloon would float in either direction; it seemed to falter, like an irresolute being, and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... frontier experience. Coming to the Rocky Mountains in 1836 in the employ of the American Fur Company, he has since served as hunter, trapper, Indian-fighter, guide to several United States exploring expeditions, and spy in the Mexican war as well as in the war of the rebellion. Antobees still lives on the outskirts of Pueblo, and his scarred and bronzed face, framed by flowing locks of jet-black hair, is familiar to all. The frame that has endured so much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... little trees, pruned them and nursed them and now we were enjoying the fruits of his labor, while he, the dear boy, was away in the prairie wilds of Kansas. I thought of many things as I walked between the rows to spy out every ambushed, not enemy but friend of the palate. With the haul made I filled the china fruit dish and then hallooed for Mary L. and Ann Eliza to see what I had found, and down they came for a feast. I shall send Aaron and Guelma the nicest ones and how I wish my dearest ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... got big forts thar," said Shif'less Sol, "but ef we don't lose our cunnin', an' I don't think we will, we five kin spy among ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... who had been saved by James III when the rest of his favourites were killed, and who had more or less thriven since, though in evil ways, occupying a position at the Court of James IV whom he hated, and acting as spy on his actions, which were all reported to the English Court. Ramsay gives the English Government full information of all that his sovereign is about to do on behalf of the fengit (feigned) boy, and especially of the invasion of England which he is about ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... a sad half-smile on something that her heart chose to hold before her gaze. Certainly, had it not been that such excellence of the photographer's craft could only have been attained by careful posing, one might have said that he had taken an unfair advantage and had permitted his lens to spy upon a lovely lady in the secrecy of her boudoir, whose sole companions were emotions which must remain ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... many of us used to slide off the end into some swampy hole. One of "B" Company's officers was a particular adept at this, and fell into some hole or other almost every night. These parties often managed to add to our general excitement by discovering some real or supposed spy along their route, and on one occasion there was quite a small stir round Cookers Farm by "something which moved, was fired at, and dropped into a trench with a splash, making its escape." A subsequent telephone conversation ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... human mill-wheel, than he felt himself a part of the rim, his brain seemed turning round. At the centre of the wheel he saw a struggling man, and even before he grasped the reason for the popular fury, he felt that he shared it. He did not know if a spy was in question, or if it was some imprudent speaker who had braved the passions of the mob, but as cries rose around him, he realised that he, yes he, Clerambault, had shrieked out: ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... primeval humor and checked by no outward circumstances of law, he achieved a ready facility. Once, for example, while trundling through his town of Shippensburg on the rear platform of a freight train, he chanced to spy a Borough Constable crossing ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... have been consulting with my friend Suliman ben Saoud. The situation here is very serious. As long as you are my guest you are perfectly safe; but if I were to send you away, the assembled notables might suspect you of being a spy, and might accuse me of harbouring a spy. Do you see? They would suppose you were returning to Jerusalem with information for the British. That would have most unpleasant ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... more by suppressing the play than he could possibly have gained by representing it, and that there was something more than natural in the appositeness of his receipt of it. If honest, it was suggested that he had been trapped by a government spy, who had sent him the play, solely that he might deal with it as he did; but it was rather assumed that he had disingenuously curried favour with the authorities, and sold himself for treasury gold. The ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... with the same indomitable coolness; "let us see. Are you not the soldier Fernand who deserted on the eve of the battle of Waterloo? Are you not the Lieutenant Fernand who served as guide and spy to the French army in Spain? Are you not the Captain Fernand who betrayed, sold, and murdered his benefactor, Ali? And have not all these Fernands, united, made Lieutenant-General, the Count of Morcerf, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the strife; the anguish does not die. Stronger the flesh is grown from earthy years, In siege about my soul that upward peers To see and hold its Good. The spirit's eye Approves the better things; but senses spy The passing sweets, spurning the present fears, And take their moment's prize. Ah, then hot tears Deluge my soul, and contrite ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... "You have sold yourself; people find you are getting fatter." Whence it follows that any paper knowing its trade will have only exceedingly thin Attaches; otherwise your Attache will be a mere detached Attache, that is to say, a sort of paid spy, who is mostly a professor of rhetoric or philosophy. He will dine at all tables, with mission to attack political leaders; he runs in and out of newspaper offices, like a dog seeking his master; and, when he has bitten sharply, he becomes the professor ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the men who actually killed Chief Donnelly; for Normando, after his injury, was brought there and I attended him. I learned of his accomplices, where the boy, Gino Cressi, was concealed, and other things. Lucrezia was a spy here among her countrypeople, and Caesar was forever dropping bits of information, though we never dreamed who ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... he was persuaded that Cobham had accused him truly, and reminded him that he had been offered a pension to act as a spy for Spain. Raleigh answered that he submitted himself, and his 'son of tender years, unbrought up,' to ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... a caleche in which he was being conveyed to St. Charles. An equally unhappy incident was the cold-blooded execution, after a mock trial, of one Chartrand, a harmless non-combatant who was accused, without a tittle of evidence, of being a spy. The temper of the country can be gauged by the fact that when it was attempted, some time later, to convict the murderers on clear evidence, it was impossible to obtain a verdict. Jolbert, the alleged murderer of Weir, was never punished, but Francois Nicholas and Amable ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... forest to attack the camp. This it was hoped would be a warning that might deter others. (Throughout the expedition this was the only native who was hanged. Neither was any native shot or otherwise executed when taken prisoner, except a spy at Belinian.) ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... exile (our party desired his death, but the recollection of my father made me ask his life). The King said that he himself would direct the whole affair at Perpignan; yet just before, Joseph, that foul spy, had issued from out of the cabinet du Lys. O Marie! shall I own it? at the moment I heard this, my very soul was tossed. I doubted everything; it seemed to me that the centre of the world was unhinged when I found truth quit the heart of the King. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... nor does the infant in his swaddling clothes reveal to us the man. So it is with species and races; if they are undergoing a process of development, we must wait for the later stages of the process before we judge. The apple is not the crab, but the Northern Spy; the horse is not the mustang, but the Percheron or the German roadster. In estimating any living thing, you take into consideration its possibilities of development; the ideal to which it may attain must always be ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... face the colour of dough, like a man who had just received an arrow in his vitals; then he rushed as if to put out the lamp. But his presence of mind returned before he got that length, and he demanded of me angrily enough how I dared to play the spy on him and come where ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... (Great Kanawha), their boat being made of buffalo skins. They appear by this tradition to have escaped, and in descending the Mississippi to have fallen into the hands of Spaniards. The son died, and the father was sent in a vessel bound for Spain, there to be tried as a British spy; but the Spaniard being captured by an English vessel, our hero was landed at Charleston, whence he reached his frontier home after an absence of over three years. This story differs in many details from the one in Kercheval's ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... that during my former stay in St. Petersburg, people who could talk English at their tables generally did so in order that they might not betray themselves to any spy who might happen to be ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... silent perplexity. "Ye air a fool, 'Genie, an' ye never seen nuthin'. Nobody hev got enny call ter spy on me." ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and was surprised to see her father's face grave and troubled. For Mr. Carew had heard of the shoemaker, and was sure that he was an English spy, and feared that his daughter's friendship with Faith might get the Scotts into ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... new girl," continued Bessie, more boldly, "so I had to speak first. Would you like to play, 'I spy'?" ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pages this morning, with a revise; we spy land, but how to get my catastrophe packed into the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... that, when once the long-suffering of God waited on them, made light of all admonition, and slighted the counsel of making their calling and election sure: would now give thousands of treasures, that they could but spy their names, though last and least among the sons of God. But, I say, how will they fail? how will they faint? how will they die and languish in their souls? when they shall still as they look, see their names wanting. What a pinch will it be to Cain ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... peer and spy, Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees, In dismal nooks he loves to pry, Whose motto evermore is Spes! But ah! the fabled treasure flees; Grown rarer with the fleeting years, In rich men's shelves they take their ease, - ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... for us entered, even Jesus." The forerunner is one who enters into a place where the rest are to follow; one who is sent before to make observations; a scout, a spy. The Levitical high priest was not a forerunner; no one could follow him. But where Christ goes ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... her young friend as if at a given moment to pounce. She knew she shouldn't pounce, she hadn't come out to pounce; yet she felt her attention secretive, all the same, and her observation scientific. She struck herself as hovering like a spy, applying tests, laying traps, concealing signs. This would last, however, only till she should fairly know what was the matter; and to watch was, after all, meanwhile, a way of clinging to the girl, not less than an occupation, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... vice well, And her black spite expel. Which to effect (since no breast is so sure, Or safe, but she'll procure Some way of entrance) we must plant a guard Of thoughts to watch and ward At th' eye and ear, the ports unto the mind, That no strange, or unkind Object arrive there, but the heart, our spy, Give knowledge instantly To wakeful reason, our affections' king: Who, in th' examining, Will quickly taste the treason, and commit Close, the close cause of it. 'Tis the securest policy we have, To make our sense our slave. But this true course is not embraced by many: By many! scarce ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... look around, and spy out the land, and have that luxury of luxuries to sea-voyagers—a land-dinner. And there we saw more natives: Wrinkled old women, with their flat mammals flung over their shoulders, or hanging down in front like the cold-weather drip from the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Mayor of Falaise had not had an easy moment. While scorning to act the spy upon his wife, he was for ever watching her, and keeping an eager and yet scarcely conscious count of ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... The word "spy" being obnoxious in all languages and at all times and in all places, the myriad smaller particles of the Secret System ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... tempted, persecuted, afflicted, sighing, praying saints of the Lord, though your adversaries look upon you now with a disdainful, surly, rugged, proud, and haughty countenance, yet the time shall come when they shall spy you ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... leaping from his bed, and reaching for his trousers. "That's bad. Just when we need the airplane, too, to spy on these rascals. Half a minute, old man, and I'll be with you. Not so devilish easy to get into trousers ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... sentry, answering the question in my look," they are after a spy, it seems, who has been practising here as a barber. They ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... less than has been paid to the like force of Danes since. The riches of our peaceful Wessex were as yet unknown to the vikings, save by hearsay; indeed, it has been said that these three ships came to spy out the land. And then came the question as to which of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... of her fingers to each, in sullen silence, while Enna drew back from the offered hands, muttering, "A set of Yankees come to spy out the nakedness of the land; don't give ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... rich, luxuriant spot, surrounded by desolate fields of scoriae, which renders it difficult of access. We are situated six miles from the sea, sufficiently elevated to give us a commanding view of its vast expanse of waters. We can occasionally spy a sail floating like a speck on its surface. From the shore, the country gradually rises into a range of verdant mountains, whose summits appear to touch the clouds. Proceeding northward toward Hilo, there is a gradual rise, until you reach the Great Volcano, about six ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... not like this old woman at all; she looked so like a spy upon me, or (as sometimes I was frighted to imagine) like one set privately to despatch me out of the world, as might best suit with the circumstance of my lying-in. And when his Highness came the next time to see me, which was not many days, I expostulated a little on ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... forbidden to enter there; you knew you were prying into what was no affair of yours; you knew you were doing wrong, and would displease me; and yet in the face of all this, you deliberately stole into his room like a spy, like a thief, to discover for yourself. Rose Danton, I am ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... soon arranged. Timid Gertie was safely stowed away where she could hold to the chimney if a sudden panic seized her, and the boys graciously posted Jane and Katy on the battlements, otherwise known as the comb of the roof, to man the engines and spy out the landscape. They kicked off their shoes, the better to cling, and pranced around stocking-footed regardless of possible ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... was much interested in the fate of a young Russian spy who had recently come to Tolstoy in the guise of a country schoolmaster, in order to obtain a copy of "Life," which had been interdicted by the censor of the press. After spending the night in talk with Tolstoy, the spy had gone away with a copy of the forbidden manuscript but, unfortunately ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... thought that the Tudor princes and their ministers carried out the spy system to an iniquitous extent,—that it was the great instrument of their Machiavellian policy, introduced by Cromwell, and afterwards developed by Cecil and Walsingham. That both Cromwell and Walsingham availed themselves of secret information, is unquestionable,—as ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... good impossible. Eh? say I'd hide this Jew's oil's cruse— His shop might hold bright gold, engrossible By spy—spring's air takes there no care To wave the ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this "secret passage." He later came to discount heavily the revelations of a professional spy. Long after, he said: "I did not then, nor do I now, believe I should have been assassinated had I gone through Baltimore as first contemplated, but I thought it wise to run no risk where no risk ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... not suffer at their hands; the Republic and the dynasty were impregnable. You simply spied on everybody—including the spies—and ordered summary executions often enough to show that you meant it, and kept the public ignorant: deaf-dumb-blind ignorant. The spy system was simplicity itself; you had only to let things get as tangled and confused as possible until nobody knew who was who. The executions were literally no problem, for guilt or innocence made no matter. And mind-control when there were four newspapers, six ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... ages, for Woodstock and Embro, a district of country where thousands of Scotch families have settled, and where there has been a wave of blessing from the Lord, through the faithful preaching of evangelists in the past year. Therefore we longed to 'spy' the land, not so much to gain an increase of dollars or more cultivated land for our boys, but our object was to find hearts that had been awakened to newness of life; and we trusted that with such our children would be nourished by the sincere milk of the Word, and grow thereby into ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... distinctly unfortunate son of Rob Roy), seems a correct picture. Indeed, James Mor was correctly divined, probably from letters of his published in Scott's "Rob Roy." It does not appear that Stevenson ever saw a number of James's letters in the character of a spy (a spy who appears to be carefully bamboozling his employers), which exist in the Newcastle MSS. in the British Museum. But the James of these letters is the James of "Catriona." The scenes with the advocates of James of the Glens, at Inveraray, read as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affectionately, "don't be a child and try to pass off the fibs boys use to deceive mama with. I know why you came here. Do you imagine you haven't been seen from this very balcony hovering about here every afternoon, lurking in the road like a spy? You ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... cowaird, sir! You spy on mademoiselle and me! Cowair-r-r-d! I will have the satisfaction! Sacre Dieu! You have no doubt told the negro to leap upon my back! I will ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... going by sea, and then all our voyaging would necessarily be by night, for there were Spanish gunboats everywhere patrolling around the shores, but there were innumerable small inlets where we could draw up our boat, lay perdu during the day and spy out the next island to sail ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... and the rain burst in, together with a fury of myowling. But he did not care. It lightened and thundered. But he did not care. He procured a chair of cook's and put it under the window and stood on it, with his back to the window, and twisted forth his body so that he could spy up the roof. The ladies protested that he would be wet through, but he paid no ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... He was called "consul" for the United States at Quebec. He reported, I was told, direct to Mr. Seward at Washington. He was, in fact, the sort of diplomatist whose duties, as he apprehended them, were those of a spy. He was a person disagreeable to look at, as in his odd-coloured trousers, short waistcoat, and dark green dress-coat, with brass buttons, he went elbowing about amongst the ladies and gentlemen promenading the public walk, which commands so beautiful a view over the St. Lawrence, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... in the next, hiding behind that screen. He has been there for the last half-hour. You need play the spy no longer, sir. Have the goodness to step forward and ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... enough to stay there, because there was a patch, of musk melons just over the fence. I moved my remaining eight men to a high piece of ground near the house, and halted, to look over the field of battle. Pulling a spy glass from my pocket, which I had borrowed from the sutler, I surveyed, as near like a general as possible, the situation. On one side of the house was a ravine, which I decided must be held at all hazards, and after studying ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam. We bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... urgency, and, I suppose, reasoning with himself to the effect that he might as well have the money, and then see whether he thought it right to act as a spy upon her or not—the one action did not pledge him to the other, nor yet did she make any conditions with her gift—Pierre went off with her ring; and, after repaying himself his five francs, he was enabled to bring Virginie back two more, so well had he managed his affairs. But, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to the other and drew the curtains tighter. "Sure no one can spy upon us now. It's ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... march through mountains and o'ertopping peaks, Deep vales, defiles of frightful look. At last Leaving the narrow pass and wasted land, They reach the Spanish bourne and make a halt Amid a plain. Meanwhile to Baligant Return his vanguard scouts; a Syrian spy Heralds the news,—"We saw the proud King Carle. His warriors fierce will never fail their King. To arms—Within a moment look for fight!" Baligant cried:—"Good news for our brave hearts! Sound all your trumps and let ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... No doubt, his brothers had been unwilling enough to be embarrassed by his presence, for there is nothing that wild young men dislike more than the constraint put on them by the presence of an innocent youth; and when they found out that this 'milk-sop' of a brother was a spy and a telltale, their wrath blazed up. So Joseph had early experience of the shock which meets all young men who have been brought up in godly households when they come into contact with sin in fellow-clerks, servants, students, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... In his novel, "Catriona," the character of James Mohr Macgregor is wonderfully divined. Once I read some unpublished letters of Catriona's unworthy father, written when he was selling himself as a spy (and lying as he spied) to the Hanoverian usurper. Mr. Stevenson might have written these letters for James Mohr; they might be extracts ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... marvel, which oft e'en now we spy, That when the blood-stain'd murderer comes to the murder'd nigh, The wounds break out a-bleeding; then too the same befell, And thus could each beholder the guilt of ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... I could send for the commissary of police if I chose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises, but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy." ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... was tiresome to them, even their one joy, their son Joseph, was tiresome, but they were still anxious and troubled about his getting on in the world, that was the only thing they cared for now. The old man had become a little childish, but his wife had still all her wits about her, and could spy and pry into every hole and corner, to see that everything was going ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... near when the war was to begin, the Tomtit sent out spies to see who was the leader of the enemy's forces. So the gnat, who was by far the best spy of them all, flew backward and forward in the wood where the enemy's troops were, and at last hid himself under a leaf on a tree ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Napoleon had intercepted a message from the Tsar to the Grand Master containing this news. Plans for the capture of Malta took shape in Bonaparte's mind, and he sent a cousin of the French consul at Malta, Poussielgue by name, to spy out the condition of the island, at the same time ordering Admiral Brueys, on his journey from Corfu to Toulon, to examine the situation of Malta. When the expedition to Egypt was decided upon, the capture of Malta formed part of the instructions ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... ended. They had known such a thing might happen—that was why the Constellation had been made ready for the voyage in secret and had waited for months for the chance to slip through the ring of Gern spy ships; that was why she had raced at full speed, with her communicators silenced so there would be no radiations for the Gerns to find her by. Only forty days more would have brought them to the green ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... said, 'I'm not a police spy, and it's no business of mine to inform against you. I'm willing to keep you out of gaol, but it must be on my own conditions. The first is that you resign this job and clear out. You will write to Mr Colles a letter at ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... lawyer whom you know—had wrapped myself for a night! In short, my life at this day may be summed up in the two words which express the extremes of torment—I love, and I wait! I have in Madame Gobain a faithful spy on the heart I worship. I go every evening to chat with the old woman, to hear from her all that Honorine has done during the day, the lightest word she has spoken, for a single exclamation might betray to me the secrets of that soul which is wilfully deaf and dumb. Honorine ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... to his feet and aimed the contents of a half-emptied glass at Maurice's face. "Take that, you blasted spy!—you Englishman!" he spluttered. "I'll teach you to mix your dirty self in ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... in 1773 was a band led by three young men named McAfee,—typical backwoodsmen, hardy, adventurous, their frontier recklessness and license tempered by the Calvinism they had learned in their rough log home. They were fond of hunting, but they came to spy out the land and see if it could be made into homes for their children; and in their party were several surveyors. They descended the Ohio in dugout canoes, with their rifles, blankets, tomahawks, and fishing-tackle. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... dare more, Monsieur; I dare tell you—you, Gaston de Luynes, spy and bravo of the Cardinal—that your object shall be defeated. That, as God lives, this duel shall still be ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... were going, the siege by the cordon of French guards around Paris had not been raised. To them every civilian was a possible spy. So they let no civilians by. Must one remain for ever in Paris, screened from any view of the great drama? Was there no way of securing a blue card which would open the road to war for an atom of humanity who wanted to see Frenchmen in action and ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope. The message was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came out from the tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets methodically upon the table-cloth in ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for about the twentieth time—now again, as he turned to bend his steps towards Boatbuilder Jago's yard—suddenly and without warning, as a wave the terror took him that in his absence some thief or spy had surprised his hoard. Under its urgency he wheeled right-about and hurried for home, to assure himself ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of fact to say, that he who rests utterly in his action shall belittle not only whatsoever history has recorded, but all which that poet of poets, Mankind, has ever dreamed or fabled of grace and greatness. He shall not peer about with curiosity to spy approbation, or with zeal to defy censure; he shall not know if there be a spectator in the world; his most public deed shall be done in a divine privacy, on which no eye intrudes,—his most private in the boundless publicities of Nature; his deed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... that he built the Palais Royal, or squandered riches with Roman prodigality, or rewarded players, or enriched Marion Delorme, or clad himself in mail before La Rochelle, or persecuted his early friends, or robbed the monasteries, or made a spy of Father Joseph, or exiled the Queen-mother, or kept the King in bondage, or sent his enemies to the scaffold: these things are all against him, and make him appear in a repulsive light. But if he brought order out of confusion, and gave a blow to feudalism, and destroyed anarchies, and promoted ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... minds! 'tis true. O heaven! were man But constant, he were perfect: that one error Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins: Inconstancy falls off ere it begins. What is in Silvia's face, but I may spy More fresh in Julia's with ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... arose, put on a suit of mail, and took a sword with which to defend himself. It is believed that the Chinese were passing straight ahead toward the governor's house and the artillery, guided by the spy whom they brought with them, for they were stealing along the shore forward. This would have meant the total destruction of this city and camp; for your Majesty's houses, being at the extreme end of the point of land made by the sea and the river, were without any defense. The inhabitants ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... was very observant indeed of the object of her quiet affections. Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was naturally given to playing the spy—it was not that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean—it was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or certificated out of her. If her faithful slate had had the latent qualities ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... start clear," said Philip, pacing up and down the room. "Permit me to begin by asking you a question. In which capacity have you come to Monteriano—spy or traitor?" ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... bespoke an acquaintance of some standing. He saw Jeffreys turning over the contents of some of the trays, taking up a book now and then and examining it, and sometimes propping himself up against the doorpost and reading page after page. It was not very entertaining work for the spy; but curiosity is patient, and Jonah as he watched the unconscious reader at a safe distance fortified himself by the conviction that he was watching the working-out of some ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... laughed not too pleasantly. 'Truly,' said he, 'I have heard that Scotsmen are hard bargainers. But considering that I could have you shot out of hand for a spy, I believed I was offering ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the ropes, spars, and sails, than the behaviour of those who work them. Not while they are working them either, but more when they are straying idly along the gangways, or clustered in some corner, and conversing. In short, he appears to be playing spy on them. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... leagued with an attorney, are to determine what may, and what may not, without the terror of a prosecution, issue from a free press. Such was the course pursued: and can you conscientiously say, that, but for this hiring of a spy to make a purchase of this pamphlet for the sole purpose of founding this prosecution upon that very instance of sale, the public would ever have heard of it? Gentlemen, it is a great happiness, and ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... that a youth in such training should consent to fetch and carry, to listen and relate, to play the spy and know no more of his office than that it gave him astonishing thrills of satisfaction, and now and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... attempt of the Government to "get at" us separately in prison, and how we answered the blandishments of the highly "intelligent and refined" persons set on to pump us. One laughed; another told extravagant long-bow stories to the envoy; a third held a sulky silence; a fourth damned the polite spy and bade him hold his jaw—and that was all they ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... case of this kind was given in one of my books, of a gaucho, accompanied by his dog, who was chased and overtaken by a troop of soldiers during one of the civil wars in Uruguay. Suspecting him of being a spy, or, at all events, an enemy, his captors cut his throat, then rode away, calling to the dog to follow them; but the animal refused to leave his dead master's side. Returning to the spot a few days later, they saw the body of the man they had killed ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... she could not keep the tale locked within her breast, and in the night she awoke her husband, and, in her turn, whispered it to him, and thereby compassed her own destruction, and the destruction of her child, my foster-brother. For the man told his friend, and the friend was a spy of Ptolemy's, and thus the tale came ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... head of the people of the Oberland, who descended in thick masses from the mountains; but, on his addressing the brave Senn peasantry in French, according to the malpractice of the Bernese, they mistook him for a French spy and struck him dead in his carriage. The loss of Berne greatly dispirited them and they desisted from further and futile opposition. Steiger escaped. Hotze, a gallant Austrian general, who, mindful of his Swiss origin, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... an old musician Pierre le Noir, his neighbor Oscar Muhlbach, a German spy Bertha le Noir, Pierre's sister General of the German ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... day in the broken ground that borders the road, in the hopes that fortune might throw us in the way of a passing caravan, which it was his intention that we should pillage. At the very dawn of the following clay, a spy, who had been stationed on an adjacent hill, came in great haste to report that he saw clouds of dust rising in the direction of Damgan, and approaching towards us, on ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... is a red or yellow horse-tail. This is the grand medicine scalp of the band. The hostile spy has to steal it. The leader goes around on the morning of the day and whispers to the various braves, "Look out—there's a spy in camp." At length he gets secretly near the one he has selected for spy and whispers, "Look out, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... because they would passively tolerate an intrusion, were forced to harbor another rendezvous of turbulent men. It is said that Enoch Crosby, the famous spy of the Revolution, who is believed to have been Cooper's model for the hero of the novel, "The Spy," came to Quaker Hill during the Revolution, in pursuance of a plan he was at that time following, and got together a band of Tory volunteers, who were planning to join the British army; and delivered ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... Luther Kinnicut, the spy, whom we had come to interview, as well as to see Major Lockwood, and Boyd ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the various people in the room. He wondered if one might not be Hauptmann Schneider, for two of them were captains. The girl he judged to be of the intelligence department—a spy. Her beauty held no appeal for him—without a glimmer of compunction he could have wrung that fair, young neck. She was German and that was enough; but he had other and more important work before ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ramparts one morning, watching the horizon, when I perceived something moving about in a vineyard. It was near the time of vintage, the grapes were ripe, but I was not thinking of that. I thought that a spy was approaching the town, and I organized a complete expedition to catch the prowler. I took command myself, after ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... affair. If I were going to shy a pebble at the head mogul, I'd sure try hard to hit our corpulent friend with the fishy eye. And that," she added, "is what all these cipher messages for Saunders mean, very likely. Baumberger had to have someone here to spy around for him and perhaps help him choose—or at least get together—those eight men. They must have come in on the night train, for I didn't see them. I'll bet they're tough customers, every mother's son of them! Fighters down ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... overpower him; he felt tempted to leave his room and follow his rival secretly—a moment afterward he would be ashamed of his meanness. Was it not enough that he had once, although involuntarily, played the degrading part of a spy! What satisfaction could he derive from such a course? Would he be much benefited when he returned home with rage in his heart and senses, after watching a love-scene between the young pair? This consideration ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a good hider, and was searched for far and wide before Sam's "I spy! I spy!" gave the signal that a bit of the spotty cotton had been seen peeping out from under Purday's big potato-basket in the tool-house, and the whole party flew towards home. Bessie would not aim at Papa, for ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the towers of the church rose against the speck-less azure of the vernal heaven. As he went along, he frowned in a helpless perplexity with the case of Don Ippolito, whom he had begun by doubting for a spy with some incomprehensible motive, and had ended by pitying with a certain degree of amusement and a deep sense of the futility of his compassion. He presently began to think of him with a little disgust, as people commonly think of one ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... spluttering in flames. We glanced into the sky at the shrapnel puffs, and immediately discovered two enemy aeroplanes flying lower than they had ever done before. We could almost see the observers leaning over the fuselage to spy out if the British on Helles were up to the monkey tricks they had played at Suvla. So low were they that all men with rifles—the infantry in their trenches, the A.S.C. drivers from their dumps, the transport men from their ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... two women were drinking and chatting in low tones at another table. My face did not seem to suit them. One of them got up, came toward me, and said: 'You are a police agent; you've come here to play the spy; that's very plain.' I answered that I wasn't a police agent. He replied that I was. I again declared that I wasn't. In short, he swore that he was sure of it, and that my beard was false. So saying, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... I done," he wailed appealingly, "that everybody should spy? A police sergeant gazed at me in a most peculiar way about two minutes ago. What does it mean, ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... eagerly the mother learned from her young tutor—and taught him too. The happiest instinctive faculty was this lady's—a faculty for discerning latent beauties and hidden graces of books, especially books of poetry, as in a walk she would spy out field-flowers and make posies of them, such as no other hand could. She was a critic not by reason but by feeling; the sweetest commentator of those books they read together; and the happiest hours of young Esmond's life, perhaps, were those passed in the company ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the bellowing of Big Aleck, beseeching aid. They advanced cautiously, to spy out what had happened and saw him rolling from side to side, striving to rise, falling back. The woman was ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... to gain time for the re-establishment of law and order. But there need be no armistice tending to dishonor me, and place me under Swedish surveillance in the midst of my own land. No, no Swedish spy, no resident at Kuestrin—that is the condition of my agreeing to the armistice. All else ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... had won the approbation of the South, of leading white citizens, press, and public. In the days of slavery it was a frequent custom on large plantations to use one of the slaves as a kind of stool pigeon to spy upon the others and report their misdeeds. Naturally such persons were hated and despised and looked upon as traitors to their race. Hence, it came about that the praise of a white man was apt to throw suspicion upon the racial loyalty ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... stood for a few moments watching the departure of the two other horsemen, one of whom was a spy and a traitor—for Aaron himself meant to wait here until he could ride home with some knowledge of the outcome of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... went down to the shore, carrying' a spy-glass to look out for the "Canvas Back." There was no certainty about the passing of these sailing packets; a dead calm or a head wind might delay them for days and even weeks; but on this occasion there was no disappointment and no delay, the wind had been fair and the little schooner was ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... said the Prince, sternly, "someone shall suffer for it, depend upon that! But against gentlemen, the proof must be conclusive. Glueck, show him out," and he shut the door upon the unhappy spy. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... very pale as he dropped his hands from Penny's shoulders, but Dundee, from behind the portieres, was not troubling to spy for the moment. He was too indignant with Penny for having withheld from him the vital fact of ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... wit, As 'tis the best, so 'tis most, hard to hit. For it lies all in level to the eye, Where all may judge, and each defect may spy. Humour is that, which every day we meet, And therefore known as every public street; In which, if e'er the poet go astray, You all can point, 'twas there he lost his way. But, what's so common, to make pleasant too, Is more than any wit can always do. For 'tis like ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott |
