"Flickering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little cold draught of wind that blew into them from out of that pit, and we looked into it. I held the torch so that its flickering blaze went to the bottom, and as we saw what was there a ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... bishop found words with which to respond. He turned affrighted glances in supplication to his judges one after the other, but, not one face met his with even the consolation of mere pity. The torches, flickering in the wind, lent them, on the contrary, a savage and terrible expression. Then at last he mingled his voice with the voices that were praying ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Barton and Wilson drew near the fire, and talked together in whispers. They sat on the floor, for chairs there were none; the sole table was an old tub turned upside down. They put out the candle and conversed by the flickering firelight. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... three o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize save women who have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures as Julie's can feel ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... or some of the functionaries in the towns looking up the government gazette, or children at their lessons. Night sets in at six o'clock. A single dim dip candle is then lighted, in the better houses, set up high, so as to shed a weak, flickering light over the whole room, not sufficient to read by. The natives sit about and gossip till between eight and nine, then ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by day; we see, surrounding the narrow raft illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; from the great night without, a chill blast breaks in upon our refuge; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... A flickering rosy red dyed the young heiress' cheeks as she gazed upon Atwater's nervous, elegant figure pacing to and fro in the dusky library. "Miss Alice," said the physician, "When I dismiss Witherspoon and the officer, it will be only to send them to take two persons into custody. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... knew no more until I was awakened by the challenge of a sentry in the distance; then after a pause, a second challenge from the officer of our own guard. Another pause, and a priest stood bowing before us, the flickering light from the fire playing upon his shaven head and face, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... dull, foggy night. A neighboring church clock slowly struck the hour. The flickering light of the two candles showed fitful phantom shadows in the lofty room. These were the ancestors of Charles, standing back ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the taper. Looking into the cavity, by the dim and flickering light, they both detected a dark object at the bottom of it. 'I think I can reach the thing,' the manager remarked, 'if I lie down, and put my hand ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... descending, he took off the mask that had covered his face, and the cloak in which he had been wrapped, and, rolling them into a bundle, he concealed it in a drawer fixed under the first step of the staircase, and which was visible only to initiated eyes. In the flickering light of the lamp the beholder might have discerned his tall, slender form, and youthful countenance, whose manly expression contrasted with his long golden hair. He hastened down-stairs, and crossed ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... island we were soon to visit, once the refuge of Tadusac, the old river pirate, so he told us, with a cave now haunted by some ghost. We started for the shore near ten o'clock, the innkeeper leading us with a lantern, its light flickering in a west wind. The sky was cloudy, the night dark. Our host lent us the lantern, kindly offering to build a bonfire on the beach at eleven, to light ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... a steep hill-side, and on the top dismounted and sat upon a boulder, looking over a vast tract of lovely country to infinite blue distances. As ever in moments of stress, he had chosen the height, with wide horizons, fresh-blowing winds, far spaces of sunlight; and in the flickering shade of the thinly foliaged trees he took off his helmet, baring his head to the breeze. And it could be seen that the grey about the temples had been increasing, while the strong lines on the face had deepened already, as if it had gone hardly ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... grovelling in the dust like slaves; Let the meek glow-worm glisten in the dew; I ask to lift my taper to the sky As they who hold their lamps above their heads, Trusting the larger currents up aloft, Rather than crossing eddies round their breast, Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I dreaded asking how far he was going; but another passenger—under the influence of the human nosegay he was constrained to inhale—summed up the courage to pop the question, and received a reply which extinguished in my breast the last flickering ray of Hope's dim taper—"Sair, I vosh go to Nashveele." Only conceive the horror of being squashed into such a neighbour for twenty-one long hours, and over a road that necessarily kept jerking the unwashed and polecatty head into your face ten times in a minute! Who that has bowels of compassion ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... says Olga, with an adorable smile that reaches him through the flickering flashes of the firelight. "The baby!" He is bending over her, and with a light caressing touch she brushes back the hair from his temples. "In a year, nay, in a month, once we are separated, you will ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... turned down the left-hand corridor and started along it, counting his footsteps. Rushes rustled beneath his feet, and the flickering light of wall-torches gave him a series of grotesque shadows. He saw no one: all the servants were in the banquet hall, pouring wine and ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... his chamber with one light burning, making a mixing in a bowl that should drive the Pestilence away, when through his door there blew a draught that set the light a-flickering. ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... to brighten with the reflection of the coming dawn in the sky, and the flickering fire of Vesuvius was waxing sickly and pale; and while all the high points of rocks were turning of a rosy purple, in the weird depths of the gorge were yet the unbroken shadows and stillness of night. But at the earliest peep of dawn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... entirely under Hark's influence, the strangers were no bar to their discussion. Eleven hours they remained there, in anxious consultation: one can imagine those dusky faces, beneath the funereal woods, and amid the flickering of pine-knot torches, preparing that stern revenge whose shuddering echoes should ring through the land so long. Two things were at last decided: to begin their work that night; and to begin it with a massacre so swift and irresistible ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... night, being too tired to sleep well. Many times I saw the moon shadows of spruce branches trembling on the tent walls, and the flickering shadows of the dying camp-fire. I heard the melodious tinkle of the bells on the hobbled horses. Bossy bawled often—a discordant break in the serenity of the night. Occasionally ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... is surrounded with very handsome ramparts, or boulevards, planted with fine trees, and the principal streets have avenues, in one of which the large market is held, which has a picturesque effect—the high poplars and spreading acacias throwing their flickering shadows on groups of peasants in lively-coloured costumes, giving a brilliancy and life to the scene, which is not found in the other parts of the remarkably dull town of Louis XIV. Rochefort is the third ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... The old tar was certainly well worth looking at. Tall, broad-shouldered, active, with his brown hard face framed in iron-gray hair and beard—a pleasant twinkle in the keen blue eyes that looked out from beneath his bushy brows, and a kindly smile flickering over his rugged features ever and anon, like sunshine upon a bare moor—he looked the very model of one of those sturdy old sea-dogs who held their own against England's stoutest "hearts of oak" in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mourned for the lambs. At length, through all difficulty and danger, when his light had spent itself, and his strength had wellnigh spent itself too, his feet touched the old highroad. There were flickering torches and many people and loud cries around the church, as there had been four hundred years before, when the last sacrament had been said in the valley for the hunter-king doomed to perish above. His mother, being sleepless and anxious, had risen long before it was dawn, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... gust of wind, mixed with melted snow, beat against Adrienne's face, swept roughly into the room, and soon extinguished the flickering and smoky light of the lamp. Thus, plunged in profound darkness, with her hands clinging to the bars that were placed across the window, Mdlle. de Cardoville yielded at length to the full influence of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... fitfully trying some strain of which they were not certain. Then they stopped playing and talked, and their voices sounded goblin-like in their dark recess, where candles were carried about in an uncertain wavering manner, reminding Ruth of the flickering zigzag motion ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... it's come!" she said, advancing into the-room. Her face shone in the pallid, flickering light of the intermittent flashes, and the loafers at the bar shrank away from ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... another example: I have a tame pigeon which has a great affection for me. It sits on my shoulder and squats down with its wings out as birds do when courting, pecking me to make me take notice of it, and flickering its wings. I like to hold it so that it can't move its wings, because I imagine this increases its excitement. If it struggles, or seems to dislike my holding it, I ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... three o'clock they drove out into the cold, frosty morning. Amid question and answer the flickering stars paled and sought their sky-blue beds, and the good mother sun began to weave golden curtains about them out of sparkling rays of light, so that their chaste retirement, their innocent sleep, might not be sullied by the eyes of curious sinners. Jack ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... forgotten. The image of Maggie's baby was dead, hidden, buried deep down in her mind. She closed her eyes. Her head was thrown back, motionless, ecstatic under Maggie's flickering fingers as they plaited her thin ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... to enhance the excess of terror. The shuddering horror and convulsive clinging were beyond control, and were renewed whenever a fresh glare broke out from the burning house; to turn him away from the window, or to put up blinds and curtains made it worse, for the shadows of the trees, flickering mysteriously, seemed still more terrific. His sister screamed with excitement and delight at each brighter burst of flame, till she suddenly laid down her head and fell fast asleep; but still his ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there in the shadow and shine Of the flickering fire of the winter night, Figures in colour and design Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, Half darkness and ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... sing-song, chattering voice they had heard so faintly on the summit of the island broke out close at hand. In the red, flickering light of a burning pine torch the frightened girl saw a man in a broad-brimmed hat and loose, flapping upper garment bending over Chess with a club ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... down at her quizzically, under rapidly flickering eyelids. She sat silent, wishing with all her heart that he would ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... help us? It is character which is destiny. If you came back with that weak chin and flickering eye, not all the experience of all the ages would save you ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... scarcely look at it. And the women were dazed, like creatures dazzled by too much light. The light was still on their faces, like a blindness, a reeling, like a transfiguration. The men were bringing wine, on a little tin tray, leaning with their proud, vivid loins, their faces flickering with the same subtle smile. Meanwhile, Maria Fiori was splashing water, much water, on the red floor. There was the smell of water among the glowing, transfigured men and women who sat gleaming in another world, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... not answer. He was tired and now the reaction from the strain had begun, was glad to indulge his bodily and mental lassitude. The springy branches on which he lay were comfortable and the camp, with the red firelight flickering on the trunks and Carrie sitting by the hearth-logs, had a curious charm. She, so to speak, dominated the tranquil picture and gave her rude surroundings a homelike touch. On other expeditions, when Carrie was not there, Jim had thought about his camp as a place at which one ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... not answer at once. He had turned and was looking from the window. It was snowing now very hard, and twilight, under the edges of torn gray clouds was creeping over the Square; he could barely see the flickering lights ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... Abbey Church of Saint Denis. He hid himself here, to avoid being watched, and when the huge nave was closed, and all the attendants had left, he rushed forward and flung himself at full length upon the tombstone which covers the vast royal vault. By the flickering light of the lamps, he mourned the passing hence of so accomplished a woman, murdered in the flower of her youth. He called her by name, telling her once more of his deep and fervent love. Next day, he wandered about in great pain, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a warm hand-clasp, and Cardo left his father sitting by the flickering candle, which had burnt ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... have come quickly, so great was the refreshment I experienced in the morning when my eyes opened and, looking through mosquito curtains (themselves symbols of the South), were delighted by the play of the sunlight flickering along the flower-papered wall. The impulse in me was to jump out of bed at once and to throw open les croisees. And what did I see? Tall palm trees in the garden, and above them a dim, alluring sky, and beyond them a blue sea in almost the same tone as the sky. And what did ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... "gentleman buccaneer" was not living up to the full measure of his reputation in the dare-devil field, as Lidgerwood was not slow to observe. His replies to Miss Brewster and the others were not always coherent, and his face, seen in the flickering firelight, was almost ghastly. True, the talk was low-toned and fragmentary; desultory enough to require little of any member of the group sitting around the smouldering fire on the spur embankment. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... A path that brings me through the frost Of winter, when the moon is tossed In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak The tattered ice, whereunder is A fire-flickering window-space; And in the light, with lips to kiss, A fair ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... toward him. Her hair of gold, unconfined, streamed over the pillow; one fair round arm, from which her night-robe had slipped back, was clasped around her head, and a flickering ray of light, finding access at the window, played upon her face and neck with the strangest ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... last, by forms of earthly semblance led, They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed. No pomp was there, no glory shone around On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground; One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed, In that poor cell the Lord of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... detached a fly from his leader, hooked it into the proper compartment of his fly-book, and hesitated over his selection of another to take its place. Absorption was writ deep on his gross countenance, and he recognized the intruder by the briefest of flickering glances and the slightest ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... the drawing-room and looking on the courtyard, and gazed thence at those three pictures, as if it were all a delirament, till out of them Effie stepped in person, and danced, trilling to herself, through the groups, flashing, sparkling, flickering, and disappeared. Oh, but Mrs. Strathsay's eyes gleamed in a proud pleasure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had ever seen, it was no longer a flat disk, but the entrance to a long, black tunnel, endless and narrow. I wanted to enter the tunnel and—Quickly I shifted my gaze. A gas tube rectifier caught my attention. This was like the meter face, only worse. A cloud of intense blue, flickering, shimmering—As I stared at it the cloud seemed to be expanding, growing, forever flickering and shimmering until it became vast, it filled the universe, pulsating with energy, it was a kind of blue I had never seen before.... I had never ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... the fire threw a flickering light, fitfully outlining their figures, making those faces, so familiar to each other, a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... time the shadows move up closer to him, the fire flickering on the blackened log as the spirit clings to a body dying; the wind falls till only the deep breathing of the sleeper is heard, and the loud ticking of the clock—it strikes two with a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... were too weak and hungry to make any exertion beyond that absolutely necessary. On cold days everybody seemed totally benumbed. The camp would be silent and still. Little groups everywhere hovered for hours, moody and sullen, over diminutive, flickering fires, made with one poor handful of splinters. When the sun shone, more activity was visible. Boys wandered around, hunted up their friends, and saw what gaps death—always busiest during the cold spells—had made in the ranks of their acquaintances. During the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... begins. Before that, when the mind is quite unformed and dream-like, and consists chiefly of broken and scattered rays, and when distinct self-consciousness is hardly yet developed, then the presences imagined in Nature are merely flickering and intermittent phantoms, and their propitiation and placation comes more properly under, the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... everyone is the series of gorgeously coloured pictures afforded by each of the four plays. For instance, no one can ever forget the opening of "The Valkyrie"—the inside of Hunding's house built round the tree, the half-dead fire flickering, while we listen to the steady roar of the night wind as the tempest rushes angrily through the forest—nor the scene that follows, when through the open door we see all the splendours of the fresh spring moonlight ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Nasmyth was stirred by what he had heard, and with his pipe he pointed to Mattawa, as the flickering firelight fell upon ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... Niagara while he was doing net drill outside the middle gas-chamber at sunrise. The Zeppelin was flying very high at the time, and far below he saw the water in the gorge marbled with froth and then away to the west the great crescent of the Canadian Fall shining, flickering and foaming in the level sunlight and sending up a deep, incessant thudding rumble to the sky. The air-fleet was keeping station in an enormous crescent, with its horns pointing south-westward, a long array of shining monsters ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... There was a fire near-by, but the flickering of the flames concealed more than they revealed of the face above him. He found the words ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... push had sent him. The lantern burned dimly, and time was speeding, so 'twould be an ill thing to waste it upon a dead man. Steadying his nerves by an effort, Fawkes took out the watch which Winter had given him, and bending toward the flickering light studied the dial. The hour was at hand; in five minutes the great clock in the tower of St. Paul would mark the stroke of eleven, and he ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... gigantic, towering to the ridge-pole as he set the camp-torch in its socket on the flooring." She passed her slim hand across her eyes. "It was like an unreal scene—a fevered vision of two phantoms in the smoky, lurid lustre of the torch. Boyd stood there dark against the light, edged with flickering flame as with a mantle, figure and visage scintilant with Lucifer's own beauty—and Lana, her proud head drooping, and her sad, young eyes fixed on me—Oh, Euan!" She stood pressing down both eyelids with her fingers, motionless; then, with a quick-drawn breath ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of the drive. She climbed the stone steps quickly, remarking the queer look of her blue silk skirt and blue shoes upon the stone, dusty with the boots of the day, under the light of an occasional jet of flickering gas. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... heaved tumultuous sighs, And forth the fire of fury broke Like flame that flashes through the smoke. Like some fierce snake the hero stood: His bow recalled the expanded hood, And in his shaft-head bright and keen The flickering of its tongue was seen: And in his own all-conquering might The venom of its deadly bite. Prince Angad marked his angry look, And every hope his heart forsook. Then, his large eyes with fury red, To Angad ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... where you could go to-night. Ashland's a good twenty-five miles from here. But you'll be all right. Mom Wallis 'll look out for you. She isn't much of a looker, but she has a kind heart. She pulled me through once when I was just about flickering out. Come on. You'll be pretty tired. We better be getting back. Mom Wallis 'll make you comfortable, and then you can get off good and ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... dripped lay in black patches upon the sand. Then I saw, without understanding, the cause of my phantom,—a ruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite. I misinterpreted this, fancied it was a reflection of my flickering lamp, and turned again to the stores in the shed. I went on rummaging among them, as well as a one-armed man could, finding this convenient thing and that, and putting them aside for to-morrow's launch. My movements were slow, and the time passed ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... resolved to ask Peria about them. He could not find the little bags of coin which he expected; but he found the watch, lying covered in a corner of the case. He drew it out and, stepping toward the flickering candle, opened it, gazing fixedly at the little silhouette cut round to fit in the back ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... sounds torture me: I see them in my brain; They spin a flickering web of living threads, Like butterflies upon the garden beds, Nets of bright sound. I follow them: in vain. I must not brush the least dust from their wings: They die of a touch; but I must capture them, Or they will turn to a caressing flame, And lick ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... her, and I watched her with my wild-beast eyes. If I had seen one paltering with duty—if I had witnessed one flickering shadow of untruth in word or action—if, more than all things, my woman's instinct had ever been conscious of the faintest speck of impurity in thought, or word, or look, my old hate would have flamed out with ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... waves rolled up, curled, rolled into wreaths and hooks and drops of foam, which flecked the dark green curves with silvery bells. First appeared a living dragon with fire-darting eyes, long flickering moustaches, glittering scales of green all ruffled, with terrible spines erect, and the joints of the fore-paws curling out jets of red fire. This living creature was the helmet of the Sea King. Next appeared ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... like finest flour penetrating every hole and corner—flickering up beneath one's head covering, pricking ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... emulated the stranger in lighting a mahogany-colored cigar with an ornamental band which Buckley moved toward his lips before the swiftly approaching conflagration. Gordon drove with his mind pleasantly vacant, lulled by the monotonous miles of road flickering through his vision, the shifting forms of distant peaks, virid vistas, nearby trees and bushes, all saturated in ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... are the usual "goose-flesh" accompaniments of haunted rooms, secret doors, sliding panels, mysterious figures behind old pictures, and a subterranean passage leading to a vault, dark and creepy as a tomb. Here the heroine finds a chest with blood-stained papers. By the light of a flickering candle she reads, with chills and shivering, the record of long-buried crimes. At the psychologic moment the little candle suddenly goes out. Then out of the darkness a cold, clammy hand—ugh! Foolish as such stories seem to us now, they show, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... man portrayed the autumn day, the fruit as golden as the sunshine, a strong, hopeful man, who had passed away in a far-distant land, but who was still a living presence to both. Amy looked at the picture in the flickering blaze until her eyes were blinded with tears. But such drops fall on the heart like rain and dew, producing ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Benjamin Franklin! He was one of the old original pioneers, I think. I disremember exactly what he is celebrated for, but I think it was a flying a—oh, yes, flying a kite, that's it. The publisher mentioned it. He was out one day flying a kite, you know, like boys do nowadays, and while she was a-flickering up in the sky, and he was giving her more string, an apple fell off a tree and hit him on the head; then he discovered the attraction of gravitation, I think they call it. Smart, wasn't it? Now, if you or me'd 'a' ben hit, it'd just made us mad, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... opened wide the windows, and the light spring wind blew through the room fresh with the dews of night. Outside, the moon was riding among her clouds; the night was white. The budding trees shook their twigs together in the garden. Inside the room, firelight and lamplight, each flickering much because of the wind, mingled with the moonlight, but did not wholly obscure its misty presence. They all stood there—the minister, the doctor, the grey-haired daughters sobbing, looking and longing for one glance of recognition, the nurse, and ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... his head, the flickering flame of the wick in an iron oil-lamp that rested in a niche of the wall exaggerating to ferocity the frown ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... mean the large fires of America, consisting of three or four oak trees, containing a load of wood each, besides many large boughs and branches, altogether forming a fire some twenty or thirty feet long, with flames flickering up twice as high as one's head. At a certain distance from this blazing pile you may perceive what in another situation would be considered as a large coffee-pot (before this huge fire it makes a very diminutive appearance). It ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of a great feeling of compassion for this strangely beautiful creature. Knowing as he did of the hundred-eyed monster of the British Secret Service that was watching her, he found himself thinking how frail, how helpless, how unprotected she looked, lying there in the flickering light of the fire. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... nearer; and presently it resolved itself into a chorus of voices. The lynx made several convulsive bounds, wrenching desperately to free his imprisoned limb; then, recognizing the inevitable, he crouched again, shuddering but dangerous, his tufted ears flattened upon his back, his eyes flickering green, every tooth and claw bared for the last battle. But the carcajou merely stiffened up her fur, in a rage at the prospective interruption of her hunting. She knew well that the dreadful, melancholy cry was the voice of the wolf-pack. But the wolves were not on her trail, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... young child Heracles. Then these twain crawled forth, writhing their ravenous bellies along the ground, and still from their eyes a baleful fire was shining as they came, and they spat out their deadly venom. But when with their flickering tongues they were drawing near the children, then Alcmena's dear babes wakened, by the will of Zeus that knows all things, and there was a bright light in the chamber. Then truly one child, even Iphicles, screamed out straightway, when he beheld the hideous monsters above the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... quay of Saumur in the dusk of the evening, when the flickering tapers of the temperate town are going out one by one. Roars of merriment greet you as you approach the cavernous city of the suburb. There the entertainments of the inhabitants are only about to begin. You see moving ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... head in hands, watching the flickering light in the altar stand. "Ha! 'A woman and a man of small comprehension: these are hard to govern.' Ko[u]shi (Confucius) says it. This Chu[u]dayu has played the fool to the Tono Sama's extravagances." The bell of Gekkeiji began to strike the hour of the watch. It came clear and mournful across ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... positively disgraceful the way Delia fetched and carried for this person already, and looked, all the while, as if she could hardly keep from dancing for very joy at the privilege. Well, this governess needn't think that Nan was the kind to be won over by a few smiles and some flickering dimples. When Nan said a thing she meant it and she stuck to it, too. She wasn't a turn-coat like some ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... were not of that bright hot colour which issue from a furnace, but were of a delicate pale red, flickering and playing about in the most curious way imaginable, sometimes blazing up to the height of a mile or so, and then sinking down to a few hundred feet. The heat at the distance I was then from it was rather pleasant than oppressive; ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... heap of filthy straw in one corner constituted its sole furnishing. Through a grating in the door came the flickering light of a lamp burning in the corridor, while outer air was admitted by a small iron-barred opening in one of the side walls some six feet above the floor. The place reeked with dampness, and, in spite of these openings, its air was foul and stifling. A few minutes after Ridge entered ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... and irreverence of your crude countrymen. They must be in your eyes as far from grace as that American who visited one of the ancient temples of India. After a long journey through winding corridors of marble, he was brought to a single flickering light set in a jeweled recess in the wall. "And what is this?" said the tourist. "That, sir," replied the guide, "is the sacred fire which was lighted 2,000 years ago and never has been out." "Never been out? What nonsense! Poof! Well, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... topographical panorama of such diversified character: it has reminiscences of history and poetry to lead us through the retrospect of chivalrous ages, princely contests for crowns that rarely sat lightly on their wearers, and the last flickering hopes of defeated ambition and ill-starred fortune. Yet, how powerfully, not to say painfully, are these pages in the chronicles of human actions, when contrasted with the broad volume of nature, as spread before us in this picture. Alas! what is the majesty of the mightiest of the kings that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... lay back on the small bunk, his nerves yammering from the steady barrage, lights still flickering green and red in his eyes. His body was limp, his mind functioning slowly, sluggishly. His eyelids were still heavy from the drugs, his wrists and forehead burning and sore where the electrodes had been attached. His muscles hardly responded when he tried to move, his strength completely ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... Loveday's speech into gestures. Being answered with a nod of the head and a few hasty foreign words, they began to lead the stranger away in their midst. As he turned to go, he glanced for the last time at me with a strange flickering smile, at which my heart grew sick. Uncle Loveday lingered behind to adjure Joe to be careful of me as we went up the cliff, and then, with a promise that he would run in to see mother later in the day, trotted after the rest. They passed ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the neighboring church clock, striking the hour, seemed to beat on her heart as it smote relentlessly the girl's returning consciousness. Then she took up the work again, and the needle, with whose little point in pain and sickness and consuming solitude, in darkness, desolation, and flickering, fainting faith, she pricked back ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... one side, instead of such torches or other lights as would generally be employed. From the top of the city wall and gate, these lanterns now shone down like the glimmering fires of innumerable glowworms, while, through the dusky twilight, lit up by their flickering rays, the soft white snowflakes fell steadily and quietly. The dim light and the falling snow combined to transform the brave defenders into so many ghost-like shapes. One such weird figure could be descried, leaning silent and motionless against the parapet at the top ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... he could never find the Cricket in the dark. So he crawled out of bed and lighted a candle, blinking a few moments in its flickering flame. ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... In ocean earth sinks; From the skies are cast The sparkling stars; Fire-reek rageth Around Time's nurse, And flickering flames ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... irony in the prophet's description of the poor flickering spot of light in the black waste and of its swift dying out. The travellers without a watch-fire are defenceless from midnight prowlers. How full of solemn truth about godless lives the vivid outline ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and paved without a causeway—for it was built when there were no vehicles in Orkney—and crooked as the inside of a whelk shell, suggesting starlight smuggling and romantic meetings. In the windows and obscure corners of the passages dim lamps peeped forth in the darkness, and the flickering firelight in the houses fell upon the stones through the open doorways, whereat sailors stood smoking their pipes and ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... oiled paper that had replaced the panes of a shattered window in a house which no longer had a second story I caught sight of a flickering light. I boldly knocked on ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... not without resourcefulness," Miss Sallie returned with a flickering smile. "You may have a carte blanche to choose your ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... anxiously waiting for the whole carcass. If I ask, "Where shall vitality be sought?" Echo answers "Where?" If I ask, "Where shall I look for hope?" the very breath of the question extinguishes the flickering taper. Who, then, can shadow forth the fate that is reserved for this tropical gem of the ocean, where all around is so dark and louring?... A low voice, borne on a western breeze, whispers in my ear—"I ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... bringing Ora to this horrible end. Detis was dead; the Nomad was hopelessly beyond repair for many days, even if they could make their escape and locate it; Nazu had saved his own skin, and they were left to the mercy of these vibration-crazed brutes who waited there in the flickering red twilight all around him. It was a revolting ending for an adventure ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... as from ghastly wounds it ran In trickling streamlets down Mount Gilboa's side. (i) As ebbs and flows the sea with troubled throb 'Twixt shore and shore, or as the thistle-down Halts in the eddies of the summer wind In trembling doubt, so do the flickering souls Of dying men float fearingly between The earth and unseen worlds that lie beyond. So hung the life of Saul, whose bitter cup, Still at his lips, contained its bitterest dregs. Prostrate he lay, by bloody sword transfixed; ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... fiction out may trick her, And in paste gems and frippery deck her; Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker I've found her still, Ay wavering like the willow-wicker, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... speeches had become the order of the day. As for the old mother, she sat about the kitchen or the garden all day, murmuring threats and spells against Martha Pillamon. There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigour and intensity where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay. And the uncanny part of it was that some horrid unwholesome power seemed to be ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... electrified at her appearance. White as a bone, her beautiful violet eyes full of haunting fear; her hair, torn down by the wind and flickering in long black strands about her face, far below her waist, she looked like a wraith ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sorely." . . . "The heresy was seen glimmering here and there," says another contemporary witness [Florimond de Raimond in his Histoire de l'Heresie], "but it appeared and disappeared like a nightly meteor which has but a flickering brightness."—At bottom this reserve was quite in conformity with the mental condition of that class, or as one might he inclined to say, that circle of Reformers at court. Luther and Zwingle had distinctly declared war on the papacy; Henry VIII. had with a flourish separated England from the Romish ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... cattle were munching with closed eyes and attentive ears. The heat played over the ground, flickering, gasping, like a fish in water. There was a heavy, stupefying humming in the air; the sound came ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... tall cocoanut-palms marched in endless procession along the white beach; now past hills where groups of bamboos swung back and forth in the warm breeze, and feathery palms and plantains, the sunlight flickering through their leaves, showed myriad tints of green and gold and misty gray; these in turn giving place to some volcanic mountain, bare and desolate. Then for hours there would be no land at all, only the wonderful horizonless blue of water and sky, the sunlight on the waves so dazzlingly bright ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... light appeared between her and the bridge, flickering about like an ignis-fatuus or jack-o'-lantern. Nellie felt like taking to the tree again, but she bravely stood her ground until she could satisfy her ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... had lost her headway, the screw was stopped, and a drift lead was dropped into the water. A sharp lookout had been kept, and some flickering lights had been reported. The weather had become cloudy since noon, but there was no ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... it was, rather, as if the shadow, lifting entirely for a flickering moment, revealed something unconscious, something almost innocent, almost pitiful: it was as if, liberated, he saw beauty for a moment and put out his hands to it, like a child putting out its hands to touch the moon, believing that it was as near to ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... wherein they stored all their gold and silver, and sunk it in the river near the old bridge. But they all perished without recovering it. Many years afterwards, a man who was passing by in the evening saw a small flame flickering in the air. He laid his pipe on a stone and followed the flame; but it disappeared, and on going to pick up his pipe, he found it gone, and money lying on the stone. But afterwards, whenever he passed the stone, he found money. His companions advised him to consult a magician with respect ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... whereon they ride, to sink at last, And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife, That should their days, surviving perils past, Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast With sorrow and supineness, and so die; Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste With its own flickering, or a sword laid by, Which eats ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... but could no longer maintain his ground there, ordered shells to be thrown into the city to dislodge the enemy. Thick black columns of smoke were presently seen rising from several points; these were soon lighted at intervals by flickering flashes, then by sparks, and at last, long spires of flame burst from all parts. It was like a great number of distinct fires. It was not long before they united and formed but one vast blaze, which whirling about as it rose, covered Smolensk, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... October fifteenth, but Polly's decision was still in abeyance. She wished to have one of her long, quiet talks with her aunt before "shifting her holding ground," she said, and that could only be up in Middie's Haven, cuddled upon a hassock beside Mrs. Harold's easy chair, with the logs lazily flickering upon the brass andirons. So the ensuing two days in Washington were given over to sightseeing and "a general blow-out," as Captain Stewart termed it, insisting that he could not have another for months ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... at him, with that elusive, remote flickering back in her eyes, but she only said, "Be sure and come take me out to dinner. To-night I can eat. And don't forget your overcoat. And listen—don't you dare go into Himebaugh's till I can ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... react to, those most valuable in stirring us up. Scenery, the grandeur of the outer world, finally depress the most of us, and we can bear these things best in company. Who has not, on a long railroad journey, watched with weariness and flickering interest valley and hill and meadow swing by and then sat up with energy and definite attention as a human being passed along on some rural road? Lacking these stimuli there is monotony and monotony always ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... started across lots when he made a discovery that aroused his curiosity a little. There was a queer sort of light flickering beyond him. He quickly realized that some person must be walking the same way as he was, and carrying one of those useful little hand-electric torches, which he seemed to be moving this way and ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... half an hour the three moved slowly along the tunnel, which made many twists and turns and sometimes slanted downward and sometimes upward. Finally Cap'n Bill stopped short, with an exclamation of disappointment, and held the flickering candle far ahead ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the elements Don Alonso beheld undismayed. Boldly he urged on his men, whilst the power of the storm increasing apace, presented additional obstacles to their progress. Nearer the tempest advanced, and the flickering sudden gleams of lightning were succeeded by closely repeated sheets of sulphurous and liquid fire, which in serpentine corruscations illumined those scenes of carnage and devastation, while loud and prolonged peals sounded like ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... flock with persevering industry, and receiving the reward of his exertions in the approbation of his master. On returning to the humble cottage at night, he partakes of the "shepherd's scanty fare;" and then, coiled up before the flickering light of a few collected sticks, cold and shivering with wet, he awakes to greet his master at the first glimmering of morn, and is ready to renew his toils. Poor dog! what a lesson do you afford to those who are incapable of ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... still sitting in the same chair. The lamp was fluttering to extinction, the flame leaping spasmodically, dying down till it seemed that it had gone out, and then again suddenly flickering up with little clicking bursts of flame. The air ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... twilight dawned; and morn by morn the lark Shot up and shrilled in flickering gyres, but I Lay silent in the muffled cage of life: And twilight gloomed; and broader-grown the bowers Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, Star after Star, arose and fell; but I, Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay Quite sundered from the moving Universe, Nor knew what ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... me, you will be a Daniel, and you will speak the truth unto princes, and they will conspire to take your life; but the Lord will protect you.—Now I can safely leave, for I see lightnings flash from your eyes and tongues of fire flickering over your head. (As he is leaving.) There comes the Lord of Flies: don't let him ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... of the firs looked like spectres, and upon the upturned face of the dead soldier fell flakes of snow like congealed tears. Under the flickering of the torch-flames, blown about by the north wind, the hero seemed at times to move again, and a wild desire came to Andras to leap down into the grave and snatch away the body. He was an orphan now, his mother having died when he was an infant, and he was alone in the world, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... rooming-houses, and was directed to two or three, which he visited with as little success. Standing again in the outside darkness he pondered what to do. He thought perhaps his friend might be known at the livery stable, and going there he asked again. The stableman knew no such a fellow, and by the flickering lantern-light he saw the look of disappointment and concern ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... the bank of the brook still dripping from the spring, her wet black hair clinging to her shapely back and her tawny skin glistening in flickering light and shade, she was for all the world my conception of Mother Eve before even leaves were modesty. Her nudity was a custom only at this time, for when she reappeared to aid Exploding Eggs in preparing my breakfast she always wore ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... moan came from behind a bulkhead door at one end of the control room. I listened, and again the sound was repeated. With the lighter still flickering in my hands, I got to my feet. The bulkhead door was jammed, but I found a heavy telargeium spanner-wrench on the floor, and with a strength which frightened me—a strength which could have come only by some upset condition of gravitation—I soon crashed the door open. I had no sooner done it, however, ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... effect of his death. Hyde declared that under any of the other contemporary leadersTaylor, Kimball, Orson Hyde, or Pratt: "Mormonism will decline. Brigham is its tun; this is its daytime." Stenhouse asserted that, "Theocracy will die out with Brigham's flickering flame of life; and, when he is laid in the tomb, many who are silent now will curse his memory for the cruel suffering that his ambition caused them to endure." But all such prophecies remain unfulfilled. Young's death caused no more revolution ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and, quickly striking a light, placed between himself and a flickering oil lamp a small glass globe filled with water. He sat down upon his bench and commenced work in earnest on an unfinished pair of shoes. He hammered, and pulled, and stretched, and pegged, and sewed, and ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... all my way, I yield my flickering torch to thee; My heart restores its borrowed ray, That in thy sunshine's blaze its ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... into the village, I heard the church clock chime the half-hour. Half-past four. We had come well. A moment later I had stopped at the old inn's door. Except for a flickering light, visible between the curtains of the Cromwell room, the place was in darkness. I clambered stiffly out and felt for the key I had asked for. A Yale lock in the studded door! Never mind. This door is only a reproduction. The ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... and the western end had lattice-work extending to the tops of the pillars, with the leaves and tendrils of a large grape-vine that had been planted many years before at the corner, running over, twisting and interlacing in the lattice, and making a pleasant flickering shade of the summer sunshine on the floor of the piazza. A few birds, not yet thoroughly exhausted by the noonday heat, were chirping in the thick branches of the fruit-trees near, and the drowsy hum and chirp of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Queen of Sheba on her visit to the King of Judea. But on the left, one of these large boxes, entirely empty, attracts attention by reason of its curious decoration, lighted from the back by a Moorish lantern. Over the whole assembly is an impalpable and floating dust, the flickering of the gas, that odour that mingles with all the pleasures of Paris, its little sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive, accompanying the movement of opened fans. And then, too, ennui, a gloomy ennui, the ennui of seeing the same faces always in the same places, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... out into the corridor, then walked sedately under the flickering lamps toward the commandant's rooms. That yellow-visaged man jumped up from behind his ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the brief daylight was flickering out (the air had begun to nip with a threat of frost) he once more presented himself at Lowndes Mansions. In the meantime he had seen Polly Sparkes, informed her of what was happening, and received her promise that she would take no step until he could communicate ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... wing Against life's tender flickering flame; No tropic gloom in terror came; Slow waning as a summer-spring The soul breathed out herself, and slept, And to the end her ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... collar turned down over his doublet, his eyes dark with emotion, his voice vibrating hoarsely as he pleaded with the licensed highwayman of England. Around, is the ring of strong visages, rustic but brainy, frowning, agitated, eager, angry; and the flame of the candles flickering ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... wonders of science, for the scene was horrible and weird, suggestive to the Baggara—chiefs and Mullahs—of magic in its most awful guise. For as they stood spellbound there by the strange light which played about as if some hissing, fiery dragon were flickering its lambent tongue in and out of its glistening jaws, not only were the faces and busy hands of the Hakim and his assistants seen moving rapidly, but directly after there, in a faint glare, was the bare torso ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... twist of flame on the hearth, that had served our friends so well, would soon burn itself out; it was already flickering, and, if left alone, the room would soon be in darkness again, and the situation would ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... in Hawthorne's Note-books, where he proposes a story or sketch the scene of which is "to be laid within the light of a street lantern; the time, when the lamp is near going out; and the catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam." "The Lady of the Ship" is very nearly historical. "Prisoners of War" rests on the actual adventures of two St. Ives men, Thomas Williams and John Short, in the years 1804-1814. "Frozen Margit" and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of evening, the fire was lighted and the cloth laid within range of its flickering shadows. The night breeze had sprung up and from outside the sloping embankment they caught the sound of the waves breaking on the beach. True to their promise, the minister and Dr. Brice appeared at the time appointed and were eagerly ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... was standing there he perceived a flickering light approaching him. The light was evidently that of an ordinary hand-lantern, and from the swinging motion it was easy to divine that it was being carried by some one who was ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Italian in her habits, had withdrawn from this, and crouched on a little tabouret, leaning forward to rest her elbows on a chair in front of her, her chin propped upon her palms. The silence was absolute. The light of lamp and fire mingled and cast flickering shadows and fingers of light into the dark recesses of the antechamber. The air was tainted with the smell of iodine, carbolic, and various antiseptics; but the door leading into the Princess' bedroom was closed, and the portiere also drawn across it. Young Tremont, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... scent-bottle, was interested. "I never heard him speak about a Miss Percival," she said. She used a careless tone, but her flickering eyelids betrayed her. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... only know he stands Pale, at the touch of their long-severed hands, Then to a flickering smile his ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... that the light on the classroom screen, which had been flickering green and white, suddenly ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... against the flickering glow of the fire, and only seen against it, came creeping figures; and I suppose that some dull glitter of steel from helms or sword hilts betrayed us to them, for word was muttered among them, and the rattle of stones shifted by bare feet ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler |
