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Plot   /plɑt/   Listen
Plot

noun
1.
A secret scheme to do something (especially something underhand or illegal).  Synonyms: game, secret plan.  "I saw through his little game from the start"
2.
A small area of ground covered by specific vegetation.  Synonyms: patch, plot of ground, plot of land.  "A cabbage patch" , "A briar patch"
3.
The story that is told in a novel or play or movie etc..
4.
A chart or map showing the movements or progress of an object.



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"Plot" Quotes from Famous Books



... sped noiselessly on into the library, where she secured her book and letter; then fleeing by a door opposite the one she had entered, and up a back stair-way, she reached her own room without exciting the suspicion of any one that she had overheard the plot concerning her. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... readers, though their plots may be improbable and their characters unnatural. The scene of "Ravenshoe" is laid in England, the time is the present, and the men and women are such as may be seen at a flower-show at Chiswick or on the race-course at Epsom on a Derby day. The plot is ingenious, thickly strewn with sudden and startling incidents, though very improbable; but the story flows on in so rapid and animated a current that the reader can never pause long enough for criticism, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... some time for the people to get settled down again, for all had enjoyed the fun with the duck. The boys wanted Freddie to let him out of the box, on the quiet, but Bert overheard the plot and put a stop to it. Then, when the strange youngsters got better acquainted, and learned that the other box contained a little black kitten, they ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope

... respectable young girl, a street-singer. My son was in the society of yours, in a restaurant of a low order. When he heard what the affair was, he energetically protested and tried to hinder the vicomte and his friend Velletri from carrying out their plot. They quarrelled, the vicomte was boxed on the ears and my son was stabbed. They both received what they deserved. What brought me here is another matter. You are aware that I consented to speak to my cousin the Comtesse of Salves in relation to the marriage of her daughter ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... days of delivery of judgment against the City, discovery was made of a plot against the lives of the king and the Duke of York.(1546) This was the famous Rye House Plot, which brought the heads of Lord Russell and Algernon Sydney to the block. Among the minor conspirators were two men who had been employed by Broom, the city coroner, in the recent arrest ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... their loyalty by a row of stones and trees that we call a boundary? Why are men patriots, anyway, except to save their privileges and their government? The primitive patriot had no choice but to fight. He was put down in a little plot of cleared ground hemmed in by mighty forests, and made to hew out a home in a vast world of enemies. But how far we have come from him! The twentieth-century world is a little world. Our earth is like an open book. We have cut through ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... ranks of the enemy, heedless of his own life, yet seeming to escape their shots and sabre cuts by magic, and with Thor strokes beat them to the earth. But yesterday war had been to him a distant rumor, a thing as far from his cottage at Dilworth as if it had been in Europe, but he had revolted at a plot that he had overheard to capture Washington and had warned the general. In revenge the Tories had burned his cottage, and his wife and baby had perished in the flames. All day he had sat beside the smoking ruins, unable to weep, unable to think, unable almost to suffer, except dumbly, for ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... me to? Didn't you say to watch Mabel that time you whispered as I was leaving? You are the funny one. It was you that put the wicked plot in my fair young head," and he sighed in ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... some plot!" snapped Valognes—"some plot of the Jews and Freemasons. It's meant to work up glory ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... rope, staggered to her feet, and braced herself for the shock. He would rise now, and begin staring about, and then he would recognize her. The captain knew what was coming; he was even now planning in his mind the details of the horrible plot of which Jane ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... they all went out to a plot of grass at the cave's mouth, and there they boxed, and ran, and wrestled, and laughed till the stones fell ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... my beads; the word implies A plot, by its ingredients, beef and pyes. The cloyster'd steaks, with salt and pepper, lye Like Nunnes with patches in a monastrie. Prophaneness in a conclave? Nay, much more Idolatrie in crust! Babylon's whore Rak'd from the grave, and bak'd by hanches, then Serv'd up in coffins to unholy men: ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... monitor, was on the watch for them, and let them in by a back door. All lost no time in getting to their dormitories and in undressing and going to bed. Everybody in the crowd was satisfied over the initiations but Nat Poole. His plot to expose Dave and his chums had failed, and ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... implicated in Christopher Love's plot against the Commonwealth. There are several entries in the Calendar of State Papers which refer to his imprisonment. Mr. A.W. Pollard, the editor of Bibliographica, has given a list of them in a note (vol. iii. p. 298) to Mr. Madan's paper on the Thomason Collection ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... after this gay evening, the two young men were labouring together in a plot of ground behind Stevenlaw's Land, which the Doctor had converted into a garden, where he raised, with a view to pharmacy as well as botany, some rare plants, which obtained the place from the vulgar ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... that she has deceived the Italian priest, who knows very little of English, by persuading him that she is the daughter of an English clergyman, and very highly connected in England. You have enough of the story to see the kind of plot regularly carried on. What they expected to gain by passing her off upon us, we cannot tell, unless that they wished to know earlier and more fully our movements. There is an English pervert here just now,—a weak fool, but an educated one,—on ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... to make his front door was in the middle of a smooth plot among some beech trees. Farmer Green's cows had clipped the grass short all around. And Sandy knew that he could have a neat dooryard without being obliged to go to the trouble of cutting the grass himself. But what he liked most of all about the place was that as he stood there ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey

... arduous employment is called "lumbering," and those who engage in it are "lumberers." The word "lumber," in its general sense, applies to all kinds of timber. But though many different trees, such as oak, ash and maple, are cut down, yet the main business is with the pines. And when a suitable plot of ground has been chosen for erecting a saw-mill,' to prepare the boards, 'it is called "pine-land," or a spot ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... morning, weary from working in his plot of garden, Ser Federigo sat on a wooden bench beneath the shelter of his cottage eaves thinking dreamily of the past and of the happiness which might have been his, while the falcon by his side was dreaming ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman

... fake about him bein' modest. You could tell that by the way he colored up, even talkin' to me. Odd sort of a gink he was, with a lot of queer streaks in him that didn't show on the outside. It was more or less entertainin', followin' up the plot of the piece; but all of a sudden Merry gets over his confidential spasm and ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... not; And when the foe doth war and plot Against our souls one very hand, Then, armed with faith, O may we stand Against him as a valiant host, Through comfort of the Holy Ghost. 8. Deliver us from evil, Lord! The days are dark and foes abroad; Redeem us from eternal death; And when we yield our dying breath, Console us, grant ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... had been observed to trot back home for a mile or so after his work in the evening about as fresh as he was when he came trotting down to work in the morning. We found that upon wages of $1.15 a day he had succeeded in buying a small plot of ground, and that he was engaged in putting up the walls of a little house for himself in the morning before starting to work and at night after leaving. He also had the reputation of being exceedingly ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... that there was a plot entered into to have a constitution formed for Kansas, and put in force, without giving the people an opportunity to vote upon it, and that Mr. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... the best: but if this should turn out to be a plot, I fear nothing but a miracle can save me. But, sure the heart of man is not capable of such black deceit. Besides, Mr. Williams has it under his own hand, and he dare not but be in earnest: and then again, though to be sure he has been very wrong to me, yet ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... all a plot, eh?" said Code dejectedly. "I give you credit, Burns, for more brains than I ever supposed you had. What's become of Pete Ellinwood and ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... back. He then accepted the new Constitution, and the Legislative Assembly was elected in 1791. From the first it had no elements of stability, being split up into groups, and subject to the fear of the Paris mob. The King continued to plot with the emigrant nobles against the Constitution, and the foreign armies massed on the frontier. The danger brought on the triumph of the revolutionary spirit in 1792. The Paris commune overwhelmed both the King and the Assembly, and the republic was proclaimed. Then ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... 1785, trouble was caused by a woman tempting (so they said) the neophytes and gentiles to attack the Mission and kill the padres. The plot was discovered, and the corporal in command captured some twenty of the leaders and quelled the uprising without bloodshed. Four of the ringleaders were imprisoned, the others whipped with fifteen or twenty lashes each, and released. The woman was sentenced to perpetual exile, and ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... the King's servants had become very partial to the young huntsmen, and hearing of the trial they were to be put to, he went to them and said: 'The Lion wants to persuade the King that you are only girls'; and then told them all the plot. ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... cellar and put a guard over me until the sheriff could come up in the morning. Christine, there wasn't a single chance for me to prove my innocence. I knew that Uncle Frank and Isaac Perry had arranged the whole devilish plot—how nicely they arranged it, too! It worked out even better than they expected, for I unwittingly damned myself. I never can tell you of my feelings when the whole thing became clear to me. I must leave ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of Summer ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... the first three numbers of Wilkie's story this morning, and have gone minutely through the plot of the rest to the last line. It gives a series of "narratives," but it is a very curious story, wild, and yet domestic, with excellent character in it, and great mystery. It is prepared with extraordinary care, and has every chance of being a hit. It is in many respects much better than anything ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... "The plot thickens," said Peter when Varney turned back, "till I, for one, can't see the drift. However—you've sent for ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... which followed the launching of the Canadian Pacific. The Opposition brought forward various policies, looking to a greater measure of government ownership; the minister of Railways, Andrew G. Blair, resigned in protest; rival railways opposed openly and sometimes by secret plot; two general elections were fought on the issue. But rarely is a government in Canada defeated on a {209} proposal, sound or unsound, to spend untold millions, if the money is to be had at all. The agreement went through, ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... Mr. Oak," Ravenhurst continued, "is who is behind this plot, whether an individual or a group. I want to know identity ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... governor had ringed every State building with bayonets and had telegraphed for more militia. Nobody, not even the sheriff, could enter to search for the assassin: what else could this mean but that there was a conspiracy—that the governor himself knew of the plot to kill and was protecting the slayer? About the State-house, even after the soldiers had taken possession, stood rough-looking men, a wing of the army of intimidation. A mob was forming at the hotel, and when a company of soldiers ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... cry out that this is an overt act of a treasonable conspiracy. Here the bulls, and the pardons, and the crusade, and the Pope, and the thunders of the Vatican are everywhere at work. There is a plot to bring in a foreign power to destroy the Church. Alas! it is not about popes, but about potatoes, that the minds of this unhappy people are agitated. It is not from the spirit of zeal, but the spirit of whiskey, that these wretches act. Is it, then, not conceived possible that a poor clown can ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... stranger story. The cargo consisted of French tapestries, marquetry, silver with foreign crests, rare vases, clocks, costly furniture, and no end of apparelling fit for a queen. The story was that, only for the failure at the last moment of a plot for her deliverance, Marie Antoinette would also have been on the sloop, the plan being that she should be the guest at Wiscasset of the captain's wife until she could be transferred to ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... the slightest difference in the smallest particular. Even now I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I am the victim of some kind of plot or delusion. The house is quiet now and there is nobody about. Before I believe the evidence of my senses—and I have had cause to doubt them more than once—I should like to compare this print with mine. Will you follow me to the gallery, if you ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... tell a tithe of all I know of what took place during the great siege, the incidents might shame the wildest fancies of romance—how intrigue swayed with intrigue there, struggling hilt to hilt; how plot and plot were thwarted by the counterplot; how all trust in man was destroyed in that dark year that Arnold died, and a fiend took his fair ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... The plot was now thickening.—A short distance further lay a little faggot of the same shoots bound together with a strip of bark. Could it have been thrown down by some solitary native, who, alarmed at seeing us, had hurried forward ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... cookery, perhaps of washing, although doors and windows were open. But little Robin Drummond cared for that. Beyond the demure child who had admitted him he caught sight of Mary sitting on the shabby little grass-plot, in a wicker-chair, with a Japanese umbrella over her head. And roses could not have been ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... on earth has G. L. and G. got to do with it? Gad, he's a WONDER!" The longer Culver lived in intimacy with Dumont the greater became to him the mystery of his combination of bigness and littleness, audacity and caution, devil and man. "It gets me," he often reflected, "how a man can plot to rob millions of people in one hour and in the next plan endowments for hospitals and colleges; despise public opinion one minute and the next be courting it like an actor. But that's the way with all these ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... a good plot; it abounds in action; the scenes are equally spirited and realistic, and we can only say we have read it with much pleasure from first to last. The pictures of life on a cattle ranche are most graphically painted, as are the manners of the ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... my friends, how the plot now thickens; and how strangely the complexities of this wonderful human nature of ours begin to develop under our hands. We have seen the blindness and deadness to each other which are our natural inheritance; and, in spite of them, we have ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... meagre description, clumsily made. He staggered to the open window, and looked out. The remnants of the disastrous gale blew in upon him and gave him new life, as it had formerly threatened him with death. He saw that he was in a village of small houses, each cottage standing in its own plot of ground. It was apparently a village of one street, and over the roofs of the houses opposite he saw in the distance the white waves of the sea. What astonished him most was a church with its tapering spire at the end of the street—a wooden ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... must make another book. It was full of interest and romance. The client in those days used to lay bare his soul to his lawyer. Many of the cases were full of romantic interest. The lawyer followed them as he followed the plot of an exciting novel, from the time the plaintiff first opened his door and told his story till the time when he heard the sweetest of all sounds to a lawyer, the voice of the foreman saying: "The jury find for the plaintiff." Next to the "yes," of a woman, that is the sweetest sound, I ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... the extreme artfulness of the plot, but in all wrongdoing there is sooner or later a slip up. Be the plot ever so artful, or however safe the wrongdoing may appear, the unforeseen ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... allied himself to Ali of Argyro-Castron to get rid of his enemies; once free from them, he began to plot against his supplanter. He forgot neither his vindictive projects nor his ambitious schemes. As prudent in execution as bold in design, he took good care not to openly attack a man stronger than himself, and gained by stratagem what he could not obtain by violence. The honest ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... to the first requisite of struggle, "the story's the thing," the judges sought originality, excellence in organization of plot incidents, skill in characterization, power in moving emotions—and, again, they differed over their findings. One member would have awarded the prize to "La Guiablesse" on its original motif—a ship is jealous of a woman—on its masterful employment of suggestion, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... men were soon back again at the house of President Kinggron, and great was the demonstration of joy at the promised success of their malignant plot. ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones

... September 1649, and admitted him to the privy council on the 6th of April 1650. In opposition to Hyde he supported the alliance with the Scottish presbyterians, accompanied Charles to Scotland in June, and allied himself with Argyll, dissuading Charles from joining the royalist plot of October 1650, and being suspected of betraying the plan to the convenanting leaders. In May he had been appointed general of the eastern association in England, and was commissioned to raise forces abroad; and in the following year he was chosen ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... and girls which sprung into immediate popularity. To know the six little Bunkers is to take them at once to your heart, they are so intensely human, so full of fun and cute sayings. Each story has a little plot of its own—one that can be easily followed—and all are written in Miss Hope's most entertaining manner. Clean, wholesome volumes which ought to be on the bookshelf of every child ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... could shake his devotion to Parson. That was secure whatever happened, but towards the other heroes of Parrett's, particularly the seniors, he felt unfriendly. He conceived he must have been the victim of a plot to prevent his steering the schoolhouse boat. It was the only reason he could think of for his ill-luck; and though he never tried to argue it out, it was pretty clear to his own mind some one was at the bottom of it. And if that was so, who more likely than Bloomfield and Game and that ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... the old building, a Late-Gothic structure, as he sketched it twice, once after its fire in 1652. On the other hand, when in 1662 he executes a large decoration for the new town-hall, his work does not agree with the taste of his contemporaries and is returned to him (The Plot of Claudius Civilis, now much cut down, in the Museum at Stockholm). Considering Rembrandt's style of expressing himself in his work, we find many instances to convince us of his preference for the architectural forms of an earlier ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt

... at casually several years before. And I confess that it was with not a little amusement that I employed this device, since I had then recently seen my 'Vignettes of Manhattan' criticized as being "photographic in method." Here again I had no reason to doubt the originality of my plot; and here once more was my confidence shattered, and I was forced to confess that fiction can never hope to ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... searched her cabin. Certain as she was whose stakes she would find marking the claim, it was with a rapidly beating heart that she urged her horse into the valley and across the creek toward the rock wall. Yes, there was a stake! And another! And there was the plot of ground she had laboriously broken at the foot of the wall. She swung from the saddle and examined the spot. The rock fragments she had selected from her father's samples were gone! And now to find the ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... remarkable brilliancy of the writing, and the figure of Millamant. The comedy has no idea in it, beyond the stale one, that so the world goes; and it concludes with the jaded discovery of a document at a convenient season for the descent of the curtain. A plot was an afterthought with Congreve. By the help of a wooden villain (Maskwell) marked Gallows to the flattest eye, he gets a sort of plot in The Double Dealer. {6} His Way of the World might be called The Conquest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... attention of his readers, the novelist must construct a plot and create the characters whose movements shall produce the designed catastrophe, and, by the incidents and dialogue, exhibit the passions, the virtues, the aspirations, the weaknesses, and the villany ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... that it more than once was the divertisement of Charles II., by his own command. This honourable distinction it probably acquired by the influence of the Countess of Castlemaine, then the royal favourite, to whom Dryden addresses some verses on her encouraging this play.—See Vol. XI p. 18.—The plot is borrowed avowedly from the Spanish, and partakes of the unnatural incongruity, common to the dramatic pieces of that nation, as also of the bustle and intrigue, with which they are usually embroiled. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... church. For six brief hours it was suffered to remain, and then, at midnight, agents of Ferdinando, well paid for their profanity, deported all that was mortal of the brilliant "woman whom he hated" to an unknown grave in the paupers' burial plot beyond the city boundary! "For," said he, "we will have none ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... said she, folding up the paper and putting it calmly in her pocket, "I will believe you, and I join the plot. Count upon me. At midnight, did you say? It is Gordon, I see, that you have charged with it. Excellent; he will stick ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... starting from the Goal, Over the shoulders of the flaming Foal Of Heav'n Parwin and Mushtari they flung, In my predestin'd Plot of ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... returned to the library; and soon after the maid, having seen her nicely in bed, and put everything in order for the morning, left her quite alone. And then the wonderful scheme that had flashed into her brain down stairs was thought over and resolutely arranged, and a famous little plot of mischievous benevolence it was, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... I understand!" she cried. "A plot was laid. He was let escape that he might be cornered here—one single man against a whole country. Oh, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... very thing, and the Rochows and Schoenungs and all the reformers have already brought matters to such a pass that the Elector himself presses most urgently for his son's return home, and has even peremptorily required it of him. It is a plot of all the Swedish wellwishers, all the anti-imperialists of this court, believe me. They wish to place the Electoral Prince at their head, and hope by this means to bring it about that the weak and vacillating Elector shall secede from the Emperor and ally himself ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... expected to pay for the grant of perusing a manuscript;' and indeed I could praise without hurting my Conscience, for The Count of Narbonne has considerable merit; the language is very Poetical, and parts of the fable very interesting; the plot managed with art, and the characters well drawn. The love scenes I think are the worst: they are prettily written, and full of flowers, but are rather cold; they have more poetry than passion. I do not mean to detract from Mr. Jephson's merit by this remark; for it does not lessen a poet's ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... continued; "which proves that those two are bound up in a plot to win this game. If Eugene can only find Uncle Felix he intends to get that paper in his possession, by fair ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... informed Mr. Winslow that Wittuwamet, a sachem of one of the Massachusetts tribes of Indians near Weymouth, and several other Indian chiefs, had formed a plot for the purpose of cutting off the two English colonies. Massasoit stated that he had been often urged to join in the conspiracy, but had always refused to do so, and that he had done every thing in his power to prevent it. Mr. Winslow very anxiously inquired into all the particulars, and ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... useful as State's evidence, for this last fellow saves his neck, perhaps, by Fritz Braun's death. It can never be known if he was only Braun's tool or the real inspirer of the crime. He must have found out about the money!" And so the careful lying of mother and son hid forever the reason of Braun's plot. The boy was saved. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... said Cary, with a sigh, looking up at the vast walls of wood and rock which rose range on range for miles. "But it is strange to find you, at least, throwing cold water on a daring plot." ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... arts which our wants had first led us to learn. When we first came the land near Tent House was a bare waste; now it bore fine crops, and was kept as neat as a Swiss farm. At the foot of the hill by the side of Rock Cave was a large plot of ground, which we laid out in beds, and here we grew herbs and shrubs, and such plants as we used for food. Near this we dug a pond, and by means of a sluice which led from the stream, we kept our ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... 'Absalom has become ruler in Hebron.'" With Absalom there went two hundred men from Jerusalem, who were invited and went innocently, knowing nothing at all of what he was going to do. Absalom also sent for Ahithophel, David's adviser, from the city of Giloh, while he was offering the sacrifices. And the plot was strong, for more and more people ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... not a prepossessing spectacle. A long straight road ran between two rows of small and dreary houses. Each house was exactly the same, with its tiny little plot of garden between the front door and the gate. In some of the plots there were indications that the owner was fond of gardening; here a few sweet peas curled lovingly up the sticks put in for them—there some tulips showed signs of nightly ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... the sad consequences of these rebellious courses, and being carefull to prevent the like for the future, have therefore Statute and Ordained, and by these presents Statutes and Ordains, that, if any person or persons shall hereafter Plot, contrive or intend destruction to the King's Majesty, or any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, or any restraint upon his Royal Person, or to deprive, depose, or suspend Him from the stile, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... Opportunity,' a story by Helen Campbell, is in a somewhat lighter vein than are the earlier books of this clever author; but it is none the less interesting and none the less realistic. The plot is unpretentious, and deals with the simplest and most conventional of themes; but the character-drawing is uncommonly strong, especially that of Miss Melinda, which is a remarkably vigorous and interesting transcript from real life, and ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... The peaked hill on the island bears from it N.W. by N.; a remarkable tree, growing upon a coral reef, and quite detached from the neighbouring shrubs, stands just to the northward; and close by it there is a small plot of reedy grass, the only piece of the kind that can be seen hereabout. These marks will shew the place where the pool empties itself into the sea; but the water here is generally salt, as well as that which is in the pool. The casks must therefore ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... himself. On the other side, an honest man who had love for a married woman upon account of her modesty and the wellfavoredness of her children, might, without formality, beg her company of her husband, that he might raise, as it were, from this plot of good ground, worthy and well-allied children for himself. And, indeed, Lycurgus was of a persuasion that children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth, and, therefore, would ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... disguise of unmanly weakness; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the true quality of a man. A conspirator who wanted to be safe was a recreant in disguise. The lover of violence was always trusted, and his opponent suspected. He who succeeded in a plot was deemed knowing, but a still greater master in craft was he who detected one. On the other hand, he who plotted from the first to have nothing to do with plots was a breaker-up of parties and a poltroon who was afraid of the enemy. In a word, he who could outstrip ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... churchyard or cemetery, the widow arranged to bury her dead in the plot of land he had saved from the fire, at the cost of his life. A rough wooden box was made to contain the remains of the brave husband and loving father, and a grave was dug in a corner of the wheatfield. Four or five neighbours, ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... thou a patient looker-on; Judge not the play before the play is done: Her plot hath many changes; every day Speaks a new scene; the last ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... the street before the mansion, and behind it was a sycamore tree of almost equal age and dimensions. It fronted to the south with one end toward the street. From the gate a broad walk of red sandstone separated it from a grass-plot which formed the courtyard, and passed the front door to the office of Mr. Storer. The vestibule of the house, from which a staircase ascended, opened on either side into the dining and drawing rooms. Both had windows towards the courtyard and also opened by glazed doors into ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow

... breath! You've had your fun so far, and now I'm going to have mine. You fellows are all right to sit in dark rooms and plot murder and treason; but you're not made for ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... confront the possibility of a life of renunciation, and, after the manner of Americans of fortune who have no special ties, his mind turned naturally to Europe. "I cannot stay here to annoy her," he thought, and so began to plot for the summer and winter, and, in fancy, was at the second cataract of the Nile before his horse's hoofs, ringing on the asphalt of the stable-yard, recalled ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... unknown ground to plot a map as you go, so that no misunderstanding of notes can arise after. If a squared block cannot be used, at least draw the bearings and distances roughly, writing in the amounts. This should be plotted up accurately in the evening. A photograph may be unintelligible ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... one has now come in Jesus' life. And that one which was actually darkest, in every way, from every view-point darkest, had in it some gleams of light that are not here. Jesus is now a fugitive from the province of Judea. The death plot has been settled upon. There's a ban in Jerusalem on His followers. Already one man has been cut off from synagogue privileges, and become a religious and social outcast. The southerners are pushing the fight against Jesus ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... is, indeed, no lack of humour in the earlier work—the names of Mrs. Jennings, John Dashwood, and the Palmers are enough to assure us of this; but the humorous parts are not nearly so essential to the story as they become in her later novels: the plot is desultory, and the principal characters lack interest. We feel, in the presence of the virtue and sense of Elinor, a rebuke which never affects us in the same way with Jane Bennet, Fanny Price, or Anne Elliot; while Marianne is often exasperating. Edward Ferrars is rather stiff; and Colonel ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... "Among the Zulus and Amatongas." "I heard a story the other day," he says, "which, if the power of writing fiction were possessed by me, I might have worked up into a first-class sensational novel." It is the story that has been woven into the plot of this book. To him also the writer is indebted for the artifice by which Umslopogaas obtained admission to the Swazi stronghold; it was told to Mr. Leslie by the Zulu who performed the feat and thereby ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... Hard Times on the 6th of May. Along the Bayou or Lake St. Joseph were many very fine cotton plantations, and I recall that of a Mr. Bowie, brother-in-law of the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, of Baltimore. The house was very handsome, with a fine, extensive grass-plot in front. We entered the yard, and, leaving our horses with the headquarters escort, walked to the house. On the front-porch I found a magnificent grand-piano, with several satin-covered arm-chairs, in one of which sat a Union ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the houses are built, the little ones play all day long, or paddle in the fountains, warmed with steam-pipes in the winter, and cooled to an agreeable temperature in a summer which has almost lost its terrors for the stay-at-home New-Yorker. Each child has his or her little plot of ground in the roof-garden, where they are taught the once ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... slaked lime as a dressing for soil. In this last connexion, however, it must be remembered that only certain soils are improved by an addition of lime in any shape, and therefore carbide residues must not be used blindly; but if analysis indicates that a particular plot of ground would derive benefit from an application of lime, acetylene lime is precisely as good as any other description. Naturally a residue containing unspent carbide, or contaminated with tarry ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... forget the common laws of personal integrity by allusion to a novel which comes from another college-settlement source. It is a story called, I think, The Burden of Christopher, published three or four years ago,—a clever book withal and rather well written. The plot is simple. A young man, just from his university, inherits a shoe factory which, being imbued with college-settlement sentimentalism, he attempts to operate in accordance with the new religion. Business is dull and he is hard-pressed by competitive houses. An old lady has placed her little fortune ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... assist his cause. In 1696 there was the conspiracy of Sir George Barclay to seize William on the 15th of February. Captain Charnock, one of the conspirators, had been a Fellow of Magdalene. On the 23rd of February the plot was laid before Parliament. There was high excitement throughout the country. Loyal Associations were formed. The Chancellor of the University of Oxford was a fellow-soldier of the King's, and desired to draw strength to his regiment from the enthusiasm of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... all listened to Morton; and she was sorry to leave the table, so interesting was his conversation. But Elsie and Cissy wanted to talk to her, and they marched about the grass plot, their arms about each other's waists; and, while questioning Mildred about herself and telling her about themselves, they frequently looked whither their lovers sat smoking. Sometimes Mildred felt them press her along ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... when they know the authors of the trouble, will regard them with horror," said the royal circular. The authors of the trouble have remained unknown; to his last day M. Turgot believed in the existence of a plot concocted by the Prince of Conti, with the design of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... deceived for a moment as to the nature of her success with the majority of the people whose names twinkled so brightly in the social heavens. She more than suspected the "plot" but cared little for the original impulse of the book's phenomenal success in San Francisco and its distinguished faubourgs. She was square with her pride, her youthful bitterness had its tardy solace, her family name was rescued from obscurity. She knew that this belated triumph ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... all her young friends, like you, Mademoiselle, and also like you formerly, Madame, had commenced her little romance, had sketched her little plot. She had loved, oh truly loved, with a love necessarily confined to the platonic state, the handsome young men with tasty cravats, whom she had seen on days when she walked out. What delightful chapters were sketched upon their brown or fair ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... that a kind of prejudice against my clients may have arisen in your minds; I am not only surprised at it, but I should have been surprised if it had not found its way there. Here is a plot conducted in the most artful and most scandalous manner;—persons of the highest authority imposed upon, dresses bought, and the whole drama got up with the greatest skill. God forbid, that I should for one moment insinuate that ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... Cottages can now be provided by the Rural District Councils and let at nominal rents. Nearly nine millions sterling have been voted for this purpose at low interest, with sinking fund, and up to the present date 47,000 cottages have been built, each with its plot of land, while several thousand ...
— Ireland and Poland - A Comparison • Thomas William Rolleston

... coming alone over this road to-night. He suspected a plot to waylay me, too late to warn me. When he could not do that he came to share the danger. It was like him," he said ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... persuasions which induced Irene to leave you and return to her father. It was I who pointed out to her your great selfishness, and raised in her the longing for revenge! It was I who laid the plot into which ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... twelve inches deep, if the soil will admit, and afterwards open a hole about six inches deep, and twelve wide. Fill it with horse dung, or long litter, about three inches thick, and plant a whole potatoe upon it; shake a little more dung over it, and mould up the earth. In this way the whole plot of ground should be planted, placing the potatoes at least sixteen inches apart. When the young shoots make their appearance, they should have fresh mould drawn round them with a hoe; and if the tender shoots are covered, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... and was ushered in to find his colaborer there before him. He did not look especially pleased, and Julia Cloud caught a glance of intelligence passing between Leslie and Allison, with a sudden revelation of a plot behind it all. During the entire evening she sat quietly, saying little, but her eyes dancing with the fun of it. What children they were, and how she loved them! yes, and what a child she was herself! for she couldn't help ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... that Thomas O'Brien, of Vineyard Cottage, is your brother?' And as Michael put this question he felt the plot was thickening. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Tatham, indignantly, as he rose. "As if the man to profit by the plot would have left that codicil ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... imposed upon; and, if the deception succeeded, those who got it up were curious to know if the venerable statesman would redeem his pledge, and present a petition, no matter who it came from. He was too wily not to detect the plot at the outset; he knew that all was a hoax; but, he resolved to present the paper, and then turn the tables on its authors. [Footnote: Reminiscences of the late John Quincy Adams, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... lost yet. There is still safety before you. I have told the Queen, and she knows of this plot, but is powerless to stay the course of these vampires. She can and will, I know, help you to fly. Leave this place, to-night if possible, and I will see you to the Palatinate, or the Swiss cantons. They cannot touch you there. Mademoiselle, you trusted me once before, trust ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... daguerreotype, snapshot; X-ray photo; movie film, movie; tracing, scan, TV image, video image, image file, graphics, computer graphics, televideo, closed-circuit TV. copy &c. 21; drawing, sketch, drought, draft; plot, chart, figure, scheme. image, likeness, icon, portrait , striking likeness, speaking likeness; very image; effigy, facsimile. figure , figure head; puppet, doll, figurine, aglet[obs3], manikin, lay-figure, model, mammet[obs3], marionette, fantoccini[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Bethlehem and the like, filled the borders; May thorns were in full sweet blossom; and near one another were the two rose bushes, one damask and one white Provence, whence Somerset and Warwick were said to have plucked their fatal badges; while on the opposite side of a broad grass-plot was another bush, looked on as a great curiosity of the best omen, where the roses were streaked with alternate red and white, in honour, as it were, of the union of York ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... a nameless wanton served for epitaph to the man lying in an unmarked grave in the soldiers plot at Fort Regent. With gnashing of teeth did Garcin and Jack Blunt discover that H. R. M.'s Consul had officially aided Justine Delande to remove the valuable ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... registration by your mother's maid, Esther Mawson," said Pratt with a dark look. "I've got her evidence, anyway! And that was all part of a plan—just as a certain something that was enclosed was a part of the same plan—a plot. And now I'll read you the letter—and you'll bear it in mind that I got it by first post that Saturday morning. This is ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... by two grand circular and balustraded flights of steps, the view extends over an immense fish-pond, as long and wide as the grand canal at Versailles, beginning at the foot of a grass-plot which compares well with the finest English lawns, and bordered with beds and baskets now filled with the brilliant flowers of autumn. On either side of the piece of water two gardens, laid out in the French style, display their squares and long straight paths, like brilliant ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... Malays are good Mohammedans, and look upon the slaying of a Christian as a most meritorious act, but at the same time they were too cautious to endanger their plot or their ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... of its bazaars their trail was hopelessly lost. It was useless to appeal to the authorities of the State. Their reputation and the character of their ruler were so bad that it was highly probable that the Rajah and all his counsellors were implicated in the plot. But how to bring it home to them Dermot did not know. By his secret instructions several of the messengers to and from Bhutan were the victims of apparent highway robbery in the hills. But no search of them revealed anything compromising, no ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... say that the cunning which enabled a man to plot with success against an enemy, or still more to discover his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... the lamps to twilight softness, and tried to wait with patience. How long the hours seemed! Surely it must be past midnight. What if Aunt Debby had been detected in her plot? What if the master should come, in her stead? Full of that fear, she tried to open the windows, and found them fastened on the outside. Her heart sank within her; for she had resolved, in the last emergency, to leap out and be crushed on the pavement. Suspense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... soon as the shallop floated and was loaded Standish embarked, sick at heart as he received the slavish homage of Janno, whom he had liked and trusted so much, and who even while he yielded to the plot for the captain's death and that of all his friends really clung to him in love and reverence. Poor Janno, weak but not wicked, his punishment was both swift and stern; for fleeing a little later from the vengeance ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... members and the leaders of the social forces as though they were the veriest street agitators for Socialism. Next he endeavored to have Paul Milukov assassinated, but the assassin repented at the last moment and revealed the plot. Then he gathered together former members of the Black Hundreds and recruited them into the police force and trained them in machine-gun practice. And finally he renewed the energy with which he had begun to organize revolutionary disorders ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... how I can plot," she thought, "and best of all, how I carry off the prize which I need to obtain a station of my ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought and see that things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. This is the history of governments,—one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... from the car. My knees trembled and I felt very sick. I saw the plot now—as I thought. The whole of the story about the papers and the necessity of their being taken to Paris was a blind. With Manderson's money about me, of which he would declare I had robbed him, I was to all appearance attempting ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... you have it, the distance undertaken to be removed, both by the Father and the Son,—(for all this while we can do nothing to help it forward; while the blessed plot is going on, we are posting the faster to our own destruction). And this is the way condescended upon; first, To fill up that wide gap between his divine spiritual nature, and our mortal fleshly nature, it is agreed upon, that the Son shall come ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... was 1608; the parish (Dinton) was, sure enough, in Wiltshire. Myself I have had again to consult an encyclopaedia for both date and place-name, but he remembered the one distinctly and the other vaguely after possibly thirty years. In the same way he could recall the whole plot of a play which he had not seen for half a century. Holcroft's 'Road to Ruin,' thus, was one that he once described to me. He was a master of the art, now wellnigh lost, of "capping verses"; and he had a rare knowledge of the less-known Elizabethan dramatists. In his first Charge occurs a ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... the saddest and most sinful creature may come to a faith in a great forgiving divine love, in a God as good as she has known a man to be, and so in her last hours Mrs. Jackson made a brief outline of the plot for the end of the story. As her latest work, this has a special and ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... Surely that is no motive for murder. My men have investigated Beard's life. There's nothing in it to discredit him in the least. Moreover, we have ascertained that he was entirely devoted to Whitmore's interests. There was a great personal tie between the two men. The fact that he arranged the plot for Whitmore's escape and the substitution of prisoners, is but additional proof of his loyalty to his employer. We haven't a scintilla of evidence to connect him with ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... meet, 15th November, was to see the full purpose of the faction carried into effect. As almost always occurs in such cases, warnings reached the ears of the intended victim. Some of the conspirators, struck with remorse, had so far revealed the plot. Others boasted cynically that they would soon be rid of the oppressor. The Duchess de Rignano conjured the minister to remain at home. Equally solemn and urgent words of warning came from other quarters, and were alike ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... and Mr. Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been brought to bear against the sinners who, between them, had succeeded in making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion to such a plot," he said. "It always happens that they catch the small fry, and let the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... being happy through others—her husband, her children, her friends. Evie's young daughter Alex is the fifth woman in the family, and the drama of The Distaff Side centers chiefly in her and her two suitors who represent such different things. But if the plot belongs to Alex, the honors of the play go to her mother—for seldom has a modern playwright drawn so warm and womanly and endearing a character as Evie. The family life of these people is extraordinarily human, but it is ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden



Words linked to "Plot" :   machinate, conjure, graph, design, intrigue, bed, contrive, piece of land, machination, plan, cabal, conspire, project, scheme, counterplan, parcel of land, story, chart, action, conspiracy, strategy, connive, map, tract, plot of ground, draw, parcel, piece of ground, storyline, garden



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