"Stealthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attack our premises until some time after the moon was risen, because it would be too dangerous to cross the flooded valleys in the darkness of the night. And, but for this consideration, I must have striven harder against the stealthy approach of slumber. But even so, it was very foolish to abandon watch, especially in such as I, who sleep like any dormouse. Moreover, I had chosen the very worst place in the world for such employment, with a goodly chance of awaking in a ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... to an open space made by a slip of the land into the bed of the river. When Jack Meredith came to this he stepped out of the thicket and stood in the open, awaiting the approach of his stealthy prey. The sound of its footfall was just perceptible, slowly diminishing the distance that divided them. Then the trees were parted, and a tall, fair man stepped forward ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... again, after a stealthy glance back at the house, and putting the tobacco back, he drew out a bottle. "Will you drink the ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... his mode of walking was peculiar, and rather like that of a cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... his eye on the foe, but, with the true instinct of sporting blood, he would take no unfair advantage by stealthy advance on the preoccupied scratcher. He straddled, shook out his glossy ruff, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... hunted them with the utmost diligence; their object was to seize the caciques, and, above all, Cotabanama. They explored all the glens and concealed paths leading into the wild recesses where the fugitives had taken refuge. The Indians were cautious and stealthy in their mode of retreating, treading in each other's foot-prints, so that twenty would make no more track than one, and stepping so lightly as scarce to disturb the herbage; yet there were Spaniards so skilled in hunting Indians, that they could trace them even by the turn of a withered leaf, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... though the old store was full of noises, for the fingers of decay never cease from picking and, in the silence of night, one can best hear their stealthy activities. Little falls of fragments sounded loudly, even echoed, in this great silence. There was almost a perpetual rustle and whisper; and once a thud and skurry, when a rat displaced a piece of mortar which fell from the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... sorrowful, heated, and weary, awoke at daydawn and crept from the side of her sleeping sister to inhale a breath of morning breeze and murmur a morning prayer, as she gazed from her loophole over the woods with a vague, never-quenchable hope of seeing something, she became aware of something very stealthy below—the rustling of a fox, or a hare in the fern mayhap, though she could not see to the bottom of the quarry, but she clung to the bar, craned forward, and beheld far down a shaking of the ivy and white-flowered rowan; then ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... endless, and Theodora, as she looked this way and that with stealthy, fearful glances, felt that the terrors of the darkness almost swallowed up the pain in her ankle. Underneath the rest, moreover, was the anxiety in regard to the delay. She knew the strictness of her father's discipline well ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... tour of the room, peering into nooks and corners in a stealthy, silent way that was most eerie to watch. Miss Chase bore it until at last he went towards Nesta's bed with that cat-like, sinister gait. The horror of his approaching the helpless sleeper at the other side of the room was too much for the girl's strained nerves. His back was towards ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... him a stealthy glance, which the old man's keen look immediately detected. Neither could repress a smile: these good souls understood one another perfectly, and Ramin saw that this was not the Excellent Opportunity ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... and his breath came out of him in spreading shafts of steam. Sheets of flannel and not less than half a dozen quilts and comfortables made a cover, under which the heat of his own blood warmed his body. He became uncomfortably aware of the presence of his head and face, however. He could hear stealthy movements beyond the door, and knew they were barricading it with furniture. Long before daylight a hurried removal of the barricade awoke him. Then he heard a rap at the door, and ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... everywhere throughout the length and breadth of the city, who report to her each circumstance that happens, no matter how trifling,—and doubtless we were followed home,—tracked step by step as we walked together, by one of her stealthy-footed servitors,—in this there would ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... now at the head of a select body of light horse, and with this mobile force he followed in Metellus's tracks. The Romans felt themselves haunted by a phantom enemy who passed with incredible rapidity from point to point, whose stealthy advances were made under cover of the darkness and over trackless wastes, and whose proximity was only known by some sudden and terrible blow dealt at the stragglers from the camp. The death or capture of those who left the lines could neither be hindered nor avenged; for before ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the stealthy rogue vanished from the room when the door of a closet in the rear opened ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... without looking out of the window, he informed himself of what was doing outside, and what progress the vessels made toward their haven. When, however, the schooner poked her slim, low black bows, with her sails down, around the point, he gave one stealthy peep, or glare rather, at her. He took all in at that glance, from the patches of sheet-lead nailed over the shot-holes in her side, to the sawed-off stump of the fore-top-mast; and then he remarked the absence of the boat which was carried amidships, and the few men ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... slowly back to the entrance gate he did not know that the owner of the estate was watching him. From bush to bush Adam crept with the stealthy care of a wild creature, following its prey—never taking his eyes from his victim, save for quick glances here and there to see that he himself was not observed. Not until Pete had passed from sight down the hill ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... had cast him off, a byword, a bad joke. The iridescent plumage of some pigeons, which, emboldened by his stillness, came strutting and pecking on the ground before him, drew his gaze; and, half-unconsciously, he began to trace their likeness on the page before him. While thus engaged he heard a stealthy tread behind him, and felt a breath on his neck as some one leaned above him to inspect his work. In a flash he remembered the beautiful child, the daughter of Mitri, and his heart beat fiercely. The violent change of emotion paralysed him for some seconds; ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... loneliness and vacancy and wandering fancies, he was no longer Sheila's lover, he was a prey to strong desires. In truth, thought Dickie, seeking even now with his deprecatory smile for likenesses and words, the city was full of beasts, silent and stealthy and fanged. That spirit, aloof, maintained its sweet detachment. Beneath its observation Dickie fought with a grim, unreasoning panic that was very like the fear of ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... sharp snapping of twigs and then stealthy, light steps. An animal of some species was moving in the thicket nearby. Naturally I sustained a thrill, and bethought me of the rifle. Then I peered keenly into the red rose shadows of the thicket. The sun was setting now, and though there appeared a clear golden light high ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... roared. In the light the nearer leaves of the surrounding trees showed in strong relief; beyond that copper fretwork all was blackness. Out of the dark came the breathing of the horses, fastened near the tobacco-cask, the croaking of frogs in a marshy place, and all the stealthy, indefinable stir of the forest at night. At times the wind brought a swirl of dead leaves across the ring of light, an owl hooted, or one of the sleeping dogs stirred and raised his head, then sank to dreams again. The tobacco-roller, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the hum of conning over lessons and getting them by heart, the whispered jest and stealthy game, and all the noise and drawl of school; and in the midst of the din sat the poor schoolmaster, the very image of meekness and simplicity, vainly attempting to fix his mind upon the duties of the day, and to forget his little sick ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... glacier grows old it still maintains its stealthy downward motion during every summer. It has reached the shore, and has been pushed, like a huge white tongue, out into ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... it would be better to leave my horse and belongings at the inn at Montoire, in case I should ever wish to make a stealthy departure from ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence; even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the conviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... At last my slaughterous appetite was gratified, and a blue-cow bore witness to the merit of my rifle, if not to my marksmanship. It had cost me a tiresome search, and, being a shy animal, much stealthy tracking. Yet when the beautiful creature lay stretched at my feet it seemed as if I had been guilty of wanton cruelty, and I wished my aim had miscarried, proud as I had just before been of having done execution at what looked to be an impracticably long range. Not improbably I tried to extenuate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... With stealthy tread, creeping like the catamount of his native forests, when he is about to leap upon his prey, the wily and revengeful Indian stole along, holding his rifle in his hand, while each sense was quickened and strained to the utmost. The ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the office one foggy June evening with a copy of The Bulletin that contained a speech by Broderick. It was dusk and Alice had lighted the lamp to read the Washington dispatch as she always did with eager interest, when there came a light, almost stealthy knock at the door. Benito, rather startled, opened it. There stood a Chinese youth of about 18, wrapped in a huge disguising cloak. He bowed low several times, then held forth a letter addressed in brush-fashioned, India-ink ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... remembered her, and sent one stealthy, been and scrutinizing glance into her face; but, finding that imperturbable, he bowed with stately politeness and seemed satisfied that she had not identified him as ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... rising of the blood has ever been seen. The literature of the nation, even the literature of the enlightened minority, has been under harsh Puritan restraints from the beginning, and despite a few stealthy efforts at revolt—usually quite without artistic value or even common honesty, as in the case of the cheap fiction magazines and that of smutty plays on Broadway, and always very short-lived—it shows ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... sleep. The likeness is made stronger by his tufts of feathers, that correspond to the ears of the quadruped,—by his large head,—his round, full, and glaring eyes, set widely apart,—by the extreme contractility of the pupil,—and in his manners, by his lurking and stealthy habit of surprising his victims. His eyes are partially encircled by a disk of feathers that yields a peculiarly significant expression to his face. His hooked bill turned downwards, so as to resemble the nose in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... stealthy step forward; then stopped. The scientific manager suddenly stopped writing, and walked down the shed to the endmost of the dynamos, and began to examine ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Bulwana—I say four, because one day there were four; but the Boers continually shifted their lighter guns from hill to hill—were very different. These creatures are stealthy in their habits, lurking among woods, firing smokeless powder with very little flash; consequently they are very difficult guns to locate. Their favourite diet appeared to be balloons; or, failing them, the Devons in the Helpmakaar Road or the Manchesters in Caesar's Camp. Both of these they ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... which he carried. Thus Badger, Kidder, Kiddier, Pedder, now pedlar, are from bag, kid, related to kit, and the obsolete ped, basket; cf. Leaper, Chapter XV. The badger, who dealt especially in corn, was unpopular with the rural population, and it is possible that his name was given to the stealthy animal formerly called the bawson (Chapter I.), brock or gray (Chapter XXIII). That Badger is a nickname taken from the animal is chronologically improbable, as the word is first recorded in 1523 (New ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... sleep had already fallen upon this primitive little burgh; nothing disturbed this awful silence, excepting now and then the bark of some profligate night-walking dog, or the serenade of some romantic cat. It is true, Wolfert fancied more than once that he heard the sound of a stealthy footfall at a distance behind them; but it might have been merely the echo of their own steps echoing along the quiet streets. He thought also at one time that he saw a tall figure skulking after them—stopping when they stopped, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Although I was glad to hear the sound, yet my gladness was not without admixture. I remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy conduct; and when I saw where it had brought me—among what companions and surrounded by what dangers—I felt ashamed to look ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... throng; while from his frightened wife such an appealing cry rung out that he returned from the vain pursuit, and regaining his place at Honora's side, put her into the carriage. But as he did so he could not refrain from casting a stealthy look behind him, which betrayed to me, if to no one else, that his anger was more on account of the words uttered to Marah than to the tender being clinging to his arm. And a jealous fury took hold of me also, and I should not have been sorry if I had seen him fall then and there, the victim ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... a deep breath and clenched 'his hands together. By the time Mr. Chase came into the room he was able to greet him with a stealthy wink. Mr. Chase, with a humorous twist ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... not Tom the pussy-cat, And yet the other day, With stealthy stride and glistening eye, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... often returned thus from the Piazza, and no stealthy footstep had followed hers homeward with love's persistence and diffidence! She was young, she knew, and she thought not quite dull or hideous; but her spirit was as sole in that melancholy city as if there were no youth but hers in the ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... had departed from him. Who among us is not exposed to the assaults of that pestilence that walketh in darkness? and, alas! who among us can say that he has repelled the contagion? Subtly it creeps over us all, the stealthy intangible vapour, unfelt till it has quenched the lamp which alone lights the darkness of the mine, and clogged to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Commandant), it has held out, under Fouquet's Second, only a few hours; and is gone without remedy! Certain, though incredible. Imbecile Commandant, treacherous Garrison (Austrian deserters mainly), with stealthy Jesuits acting on them: no use asking what. Here is the sad Narrative, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Tyre was in her brother Pygmalion's hands, a monster of guilt unparalleled. Between these madness came; the unnatural brother, blind with lust of gold, and reckless of his sister's love, lays Sychaeus low before the altars with stealthy unsuspected weapon; and for long he hid the deed, and by many a crafty pretence cheated her love-sickness with hollow hope. But in slumber came the very ghost of her unburied husband; lifting up a face pale in wonderful wise, he exposed the merciless ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... face there was something strikingly horrible and subtle. His countenance was the image of a grinning death's-head. Its intelligent, stealthy, and sinister sunken eyes, its depressed nose and heartless fixed grin aroused repulsion. Its bearing of distinct courage alone somewhat reclaimed it. His cloak was thrown back, showing a gold lace ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the corridors—were hushed. Jethro took no thought of these or of time, and sat gazing at the stars in the depths of the sky above the capital dome until a shadow emerged from the black mass of the trees opposite and crossed the street. In a few minutes there were footsteps in the corridor,—stealthy footsteps—and a knock on the door. Jethro got up and opened it, and closed it again and locked it. Then he turned up ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... start as the hand was quickly withdrawn made him look up. Edith Morriston's eyes were fixed with something like fear on an object behind him. An intuition told him what it was before he looked round to see Henshaw, with his characteristic, rather stealthy walk, coming towards them. ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... Dropping the reins, he looked up and down the gulch. Then he drew his rifle from the scabbard and began to hunt for more tracks. As he searched, his movements were no longer those of a white man. His pantomime, stealthy, cautious, was the pantomime of the Indian. He crept up the gulch to a point where it turned sharply. His stealth became the stealth of the coyote. In spite of the leather soles and exaggerated high heels of the boots he wore his movements were ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... convents. The grass grows green in the silent streets. You hear nothing but the chime of bells and the faint echoes of masses. You see on every side bolted doors and barred windows, and, gliding over the mossy pavements, the stealthy-stepping, long-robed priests. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Nigel made a stealthy but rapid movement forward, drawing Naida gently out of the way. Immelan was too quick, however. He swung around, showing the revolver which he had been concealing behind him, and moved to one side until his back was against one of the pillars. By this time, most of ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a little stream, and followed its course between high banks of pine. Suddenly Shalah's movements became stealthy. Crouching in every patch of shade, and crossing open spaces on our bellies, we turned from the stream, surmounted a knoll, and came down on a wooded valley. Shalah looked westwards, held up his hand, and stood poised for a minute like a graven image. Then he grunted and spoke. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with the malice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossible to let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so to speak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloud blown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear a ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... of doing so, he heard a stealthy but rapid step. The first glance showed him a sinewy warrior, moving softly across the planking from the other end of the cabin ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders—women who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror. Belated wanderers upon the mountains spoke of gangs of armed men, masked, stealthy, and noiseless, who flitted by them in the darkness. These tales and rumours took substance and shape, and were corroborated and re-corroborated, until they resolved themselves into a definite name. To this day, in the lonely ranches of the West, the name of the Danite Band, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... day, they came in sight of a long, flat coast, stretching far away towards the Lowlands, where Old AEgir and his daughters—sometimes by wasting warfare, sometimes by stealthy strategy—ever plot and toil to widen the Sea-king's domains. When the sailors saw the green shore rising up, as it were, out of the quiet water, and the wild woodland lying dense and dark beyond, and when they knew that they were nearing the end of their long sea-voyage, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... he lay there listening to the confused sound of whispers, the stealthy shuffling of feet, the quiet opening and closing of a door, and then ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... silent forest thick about him Bobby realized that he was no longer alone. A crackling twig or a loose stone struck by a foot might have warned him. He went slower, glancing restlessly over his shoulder. He saw no one, but that idea of stealthy pursuit persisted. Undoubtedly it was the detective, Howells, who followed him, hoping, perhaps, that he would make some ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... furred to the ears, are out on the drifts learning to use the snow-shoes which Percy and Olga sent down to them for Christmas. Dinkie has made himself a spear by lashing his broken-bladed jack-knife to the handle of my headless dutch-hoe and has converted himself into a stealthy Iluit stalking a polar bear in the form of poor old Scotty, who can't quite understand why he is being driven so relentlessly from crevice to Arctic crevice. They have also built an igloo, and indulged in what is apparently marriage by capture, with the reluctant bride making her repeated ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... mysterious oneness of life has an intensely practical side. In Jesus, and by union with Him, we receive a power that delivers from sin and arrests the stealthy progress of sin's follower, death. Love to Him, the result of fellowship with Him, and the consequence of life received from Him, becomes the motive which makes the redeemed heart delight to do His will, and takes all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the afternoon of the day on which Miss Vanderpoel rode away from West Ways with Lord Westholt, a stealthy and darkly purple cloud rose, lifting its ominous bulk against a chrysoprase and pink horizon. It was the kind of cloud which speaks of but one thing to those who watch clouds, or even casually consider them. So Lady Anstruthers felt ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... July night Janie McNeal and Andy were sitting at their humble meal. The door of the cottage stood open, and the song of evening birds made tender the quiet scene. Suddenly hurried, yet stealthy, steps startled them. Was ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... tell you, are really inseparable from victories like mine. It had taken me a couple of hours to break out of that strong-room; I was devoting a third to the harmless task of simulating the appearance of having broken in; and it was then I heard the fellow's stealthy step. Some might have stood their ground and killed him; more would have bolted into a worse corner than they were in already. I left my candle where it was, crept to meet the poor devil, flattened ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... you with a sidelong stealthy look; her eye never meets yours, and after a furtive regard, it invariably bends its gaze upon the ground. She looks like a person rather above her humble station, and her conduct during her stay in the Penitentiary was so unexceptionable, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Eliza P. Donner Houghton The Camp Attacked by Indians Our Stealthy Foes Governor L.W. Boggs Corral Such as was Formed by Each Section for the Protection of its Cattle Fort Laramie as it Appeared When Visited by the Donner Party Chimney Rock John Baptiste Trubode Frances Donner (Mrs. Wm. R. Wilder) Georgia Ann Donner (Mrs. W.A. Babcock) March ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... humanity. And lights indeed we saw at times that night, and cowered shivering in ditches and mudholes as they flitted to and fro about the marshes. For these, we knew, were no earthly lights, but ghost flares tempting us to destruction—stealthy pale flames of greenish-blue which hovered like ghostly butterflies, and danced on the darkness, and fluttered from place to place as though blown by unfelt winds. And one time, after we had left the dead ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... dreadful?" asked Maggie half fearfully, and casting a stealthy glance at the dim woods, where the night shadows were falling, and whose winding path she must traverse alone on her homeward route. "Was it, then, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... England, in the exercise of their vocation in the angry times of the Sixth Edward and fierce Elizabeth. Yes, in this very house were many of those pale smiling half-foreign priests educated, who, like stealthy grimalkins, traversed green England in all directions; crept into old halls beneath umbrageous rookeries, fanning the dying embers of Popery, with no other hope nor perhaps wish than to perish disembowelled by the bloody hands of the executioner, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and curly maids, Who deftly ply your pails and spades, All you who sturdily take your stand On your pebble-buttressed forts of sand, And thence defy With a fearless eye And a burst of rollicking high-pitched laughter The stealthy trickling waves that lap you And the crested breakers that tumble after To souse and batter you, sting and sap you— All you roll-about rackety little folk, Down-again, up-again, not-a-bit brittle folk, Attend, attend, And let each girl and boy Join in a loud "Ahoy!" For, ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... thought of living there was now intolerable in the new relations he would sustain to the people. What should he do? where go? As he bent fQrward in perplexity, there was a noise again in the cabin-this time the stealthy tread of feet-and before he could turn, a rough voice vibrated threateningly ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... she met the stream which foamed into the stealthy quiet of the wood, and on a large flat stone she sat and was splashed by the noisy water. The larch-trees were alive with feathery green, and their arms waved with the wind, but when Miriam peered through their trunks, all was ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... saw the stealthy movement of the hand, the fondling clutch of the fingers in her hair, and the mad passion burning in the eyes of the man. Quicker than a lynx, the dog had leaped the length of his chain across the sledge. McCready sprang back ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... before my sight, As when the stealthy white fog slips At noonday on the staggering ships; I saw one single spot of light, Your white face, with its ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... amendment of his country's condition. Further, he regained by his virtue the realm that his father's wickedness had lost. He was the first to proclaim the law abolishing manumissions. A slave, to whom he had chanced to grant his freedom, had attempted his life by stealthy treachery, and he exacted a bitter penalty; as though it were just that the guilt of one freedman should be visited upon all. He paid off all men's debts from his own treasury, and contended, so to say, with ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Such stealthy prowling could mean little else than mischief brewing. To both the boys came instantly ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... boy kept on his stealthy approach—little by little—until finally he was within thirty or forty yards of the edge of the water, along which the great wild-fowl were scattered. Rob nudged him to get up and throw, but Skookie knew his own business better. Without uttering a sound he crawled ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Dear to both Englands; near him he Who wore the ring of Canace; But most her heart to rapture leaps Where stood that era-parting bridge, O'er which, with footfall still as dew, The Old Time passed into the New; Where, as your stealthy river creeps, He whispers to his listening weeds Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. 110 Here English law and English thought 'Gainst the self-will of England fought; And here were men (coequal with their fate), Who did great things, unconscious they were great. They dreamed not what a die ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the back seat, the old lady and the young girl remained silent, but this did not prevent them from casting stealthy glances at each other, and striving to distinguish one another's features whenever the vehicle passed in front of some brilliantly lighted shop. They had never met before, and their anxiety to become acquainted was intense, for they each felt that the other would exert a decisive influence upon ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... boudoir was the open patio, and the low murmur of the voices of servants, who still lingered until he should dismiss them for the night. Turning back, he moved silently down the passage, until he reached the narrow arched door to the garden. This he unlocked and opened with the same stealthy caution. The rain had recommenced. Not daring to risk a return to his room, he took from a peg in the recess an old waterproof cloak and "sou'wester" of Peyton's, which still hung there, and passed out into the night, locking the door behind him. To keep the knowledge of his secret patrol ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Lucretia, was smitten with lustful passion; and a few days after he came again to Collatia, and Lucretia entertained him hospitably as her husband's cousin and friend. But at midnight he arose and came with stealthy steps to her bedside: and holding a sword in his right hand, and laying his left hand upon her breast, he bade her yield to his wicked desires; for if not, he would slay her and lay one of her slaves beside her, and would declare that he had taken them in adultery. So for shame ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... herself. The judge moved away with a stealthy uncomfortable air. He didn't half care for this uncanny young woman. A girl who can read people's thoughts like that, a girl who can play with you like a cat with a mouse, oughtn't to be allowed at large in society. She should be shut up in ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... already her name hath grown the talk of the camp. Know that his visit to her the night before last was proclaimed in the Council of the Captains as a theme for jest and rude laughter. By the head of Zeus, how thinkest thou to profit by the stealthy wooings of this black-browed Spartan? Knowest thou not that his laws forbid him to marry Cleonice? Wouldst thou have him dishonour her? Speak out to him as thou speakest to men, and tell him that the maidens of Byzantium are not in the control of the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... head tied up with a shawl, her hands full of garden implements. Doc, stealthy and wild-eyed, was shadowing her steps among ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... freshened zest, Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite;—the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade 145 Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... mournful wall behind me, hung with green weeds, forsaken of the sea, dark tunnels appeared, and secret narrow passages that were clamped and barred. From these at last the stealthy rats came down to nibble me away, and my soul rejoiced thereat and believed that he would be free perforce from the accursed bones to which burial was refused. Very soon the rats ran away a little space and whispered among themselves. They never ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... life were spent in prison. Toward the last she was allowed to live in nominal freedom. But despotism, with savage leer and stealthy step, saw that Fenelon was kept far away. In those declining days, when the shadows were lengthening toward the east, her time and talents were given to teaching the simple rudiments of knowledge to the peasantry, to alleviating ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... awaited her pleasure, she spoke to him in Russian, or some language Paul knew not, a fierce gleam in her eyes. Dmitry abased himself almost to the floor, and departing quickly, returned with sticks and lit a blazing pine-log fire in the open grate. Then he threw some powder into it, and with stealthy haste drew all the orchid-silk curtains, and departed from the room. A strange divine scent presently rose in the air, and over Paul seemed to steal a spell. The lady crept still nearer, and then with infinite sweetness, ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... one box I found a stealthy little collection of secret playthings which it used to be my fond belief that nobody knew of but myself. It may have been Anna's graspingness, when four years of seniority gave her double my age, or Arthur's genial instinct for destructiveness, ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... difference in his father, who nagged at him now and then with all the old spirit. At first he rejoiced in then change, preferring his outward and open warfare to that aforetime stealthy enmity. But soon he almost wished the other back; for the older he grew the more difficult did he find it to endure calmly ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... and so will I. Sorry sight! to view Jabaster, with a stealthy step, skulk like a thing dishonoured! Oh! may the purpose consecrate the deed! ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... dead, and wicked Dreames abuse The Curtain'd sleepe: Witchcraft celebrates Pale Heccats Offrings: and wither'd Murther, Alarum'd by his Centinell, the Wolfe, Whose howle's his Watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquins rauishing sides, towards his designe Moues like a Ghost. Thou sowre and firme-set Earth Heare not my steps, which they may walke, for feare Thy very stones prate of my where-about, And take the present horror ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... one.' The wild young grandson makes answer to this and says, 'You're as rich as rich can be; you have been at no uncommon expense on my account, you're saving up piles of money for my little sister that lives with you in a secret, stealthy, hugger-muggering kind of way and with no manner of enjoyment—why can't you stand a trifle for your grown-up relation?' The jolly old grandfather unto this, retorts, not only that he declines to fork out with that cheerful readiness which is always so agreeable and pleasant in a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... unknown universe! Lurking in the utter darkness of the scarce-fathomed deeps of the ocean, what Kraken may not lie, coil on coil; what strange black, slimy, large-eyed forms do their stealthy hunting in perpetual night by the light of phosphorescent lamps they bear upon their bodies? Many of these there are, every year teaches of new species. The land—oh! the land is all well known, even the Arctic and Antarctic regions no longer hide ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... looking in at the vine-clad opening above with its breaths of air, serpent or hare, or the large face and slow eyes of a browsing buffalo. And as I think, lo! an echo in the house, a dull tramp in the hall, a stealthy tread in the room, a heavy hand upon my shoulder,—I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... indistinct light, we eagerly watched the development of this strange rencontre. The tiger was now crouching low, crawling stealthily round and round the boar, who changed front with every movement of his lithe and sinewy adversary, keeping his determined head and sharp, deadly tusks ever facing his stealthy and treacherous foe. The bristles of the boar's back were up at a right angle from the strong spine. The wedge-shaped head poised on the strong neck and thick rampart of muscular shoulder was bent low, and the whole attitude of the body betokened full alertness and angry resoluteness. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... long woodland ways that led To dells the stealthy twilights tread The west was hot geranium-red; And still, and still, Along old lanes, the locusts sow With clustered curls the May-times know, Out of the crimson afterglow, We heard the homeward cattle low, And then the far-off, far-off woe Of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... had stopped singing in the noonday heat. The breeze had died down. Outdoors, in the house, there was not a sound. She felt as if she must not, could not breathe. The silence, like a stealthy hand, lifted her from her chair, drew her tiptoeing and breathless toward the room in which her father was sitting. She paused at its threshold, looked. There was Hiram, in his chair by the window, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... where it then was. I was only too thankful that it had not overtaken me, for it would have undoubtedly seized me, under such circumstances, with as little ceremony as it would the deer, and have as quickly disposed of me. In the excitement of the chase I should probably not have heard its stealthy approach, and I shuddered as I thought of the narrow escape I had had. Still, I was not quite certain that I was safe. I watched anxiously for what was going to occur. The poor deer did not attempt to escape, but, trembling in every limb, looked at the boa as he ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... her to, because she was reading a book by H.G. Wells to Mother, and anyway all our proceedings were supposed to be going on in the most Stealthy and Silent Secrecy. The moidores and the Persian coin were all that was left of an enormous lot of things which the villainous band had buried,—golden chains, and uncut jewels, and pots of louis d'ors, and church chalices (Jerry says chasubles, but I think not). ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... it was quite conceivable that Carlotta had relations with Yvette, and that, ridden by the old jealousy which had been aroused through the announcement of Rosa's return to the Opera Comique, she was setting herself in an indefinite, clumsy, stealthy, and melodramatic manner to prevent Rosa's appearance ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... would argue or remonstrate. Instead, he said nothing, only sat serenely indifferent, his eyes still on the fire. Stepping around the debris that filled the room, I had placed my hand on the latch, when I heard a stealthy footstep behind me. Brutus was at my elbow. There was a tinkle of a wine glass falling on the hearth. I turned to see my father facing me beside the table I had quitted—the calm modulation gone from his voice, his whole body poised and alert, as though ready to spring ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... of the cunning cat-like Charles Greville, who crept on tiptoe through the world, observing and recording the littleness of men? His stealthy eye missed nothing; and the men whom he flattered and used little thought that the wizened dandy who pleased them with his old-world courtesy was chronicling their weakness and baseness for all time. A nobly patriotic ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... walks on padded claws, The wolf on the hills lays stealthy paws, Feathered birds in the rain-sweet sky At their ease in the air, ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... through all parts of the woods at this season, watching for an opportunity to steal their egg into some nest. One day while sitting on a log, I saw one moving by short flights through the trees and gradually nearing the ground. Its movements were hurried and stealthy. About fifty yards from me it disappeared behind some low brush, and had evidently ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... a whispered aside: "We'll soon arrange that; a word from me will suffice.") Again aloud: "A very difficult matter, sir, very difficult indeed! These recent complications in the Orient compel us to raise our army to its highest effective strength." (Once more in a whisper, with a stealthy pressure of the hand: "Pray give yourself not the slightest concern. I'll speak to his Excellency ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... sang and played by instinct, and Aunt Amy gave them a lesson each every evening, and as the evenings became longer, and winter crept towards them with "stealthy steps and slow," they settled down to ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the instrument, and pretended not to be able either to speak through it or to understand its cacklings. All that might very well be assumed in order to divert suspicion, so Miss Mapp paused by the door to let any of these delinquents get deep in conversation with her friend: a soft and stealthy advance towards the room called the morning-room (a small apartment opening out of the hall, and used chiefly for the bestowal of hats and cloaks and umbrellas) would then enable her to catch one of them red-mouthed, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... With what feelings does the scaly, venomous serpent inspire one when he approaches with slimy track and fetid breath, with stealthy, coil and sickening glare? Think you would not that fascinate with terror, cause a tremble of disgust, and produce insensibility and delirium that such a loathsome reptile should exist and breathe the same air? Yet having now called forth that emotion in its deepest degree, you ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... youth a merry chase. So severe was his attack that he was alternately oppressed by chills of fear and fevers of ecstasy. He lost appetite, and the family began to fear for his sanity. Such a love must find expression some way, and so the daily stealthy notes to the young woman took the form of rhyme. The lovesick youth was revealing considerable facility in this way. It pleased him, and did the buxom young woman ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Cyril and Robert sent the girls to bed and sat up to wait for his return. It soon seemed absurd to await him in a state of wakefulness, but his stealthy tap on the window awoke them readily enough. For he did return, with the pal and the barrow and the sacks. The pal approved of the cats, now dormant in Persian repletion, and they were bundled into the sacks, and taken away on the ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... estimation of his scholars; it weakens instead of strengthening him. Whatever a teacher does in the way of observation of his scholars, should be done openly and aboveboard. And after all, more can be seen in this way, by one who knows how, than by any of the stealthy practices usually resorted to. Darting the eyes about rapidly in one direction and another, is not a good way to make discoveries. Seeing is accomplished, not so much by the activity of the bodily organ, as by mental activity. The man's mind must be awake. This in fact is the secret ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... in the horizon died away, the firing ceased. A second day elapsed, a third and fourth, but no messenger arrived, no Beggar ship appeared, and the sea seemed to be calm; but another terrible power increased, moving with mysterious, stealthy, irresistible might; Death, with his pale companions, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... preparations are made for a spring campaign, which often lasts six or eight weeks. Decoys of wood, sheet-iron, and canvas, boats for decoy-shooting and stealthy approach, warm clothes, caps, and mittens of spotless white, powder by the keg, caps and wads by the thousand, and shot by the bag, boots and moccasons water and frost proof, and a vast variety of small stores for the inner man, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... at the end of the table; her cheek leaned on her hand. By turning her eyes she could see William. Sarah noticed one of these stealthy backward glances and a look of anger crossed her face, and calling to William she asked him when the sweepstakes money would be divided. The question startled William from a reverie of small bets, and he answered that there was no reason why ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... to a stealthy walk. Behind them and beside them was chilly darkness lurking in caverns among black, bare tree-trunks. Before them they could see a nebulous glow and hear the monotonous voice singing the same words ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... nothing to do with such things—the first principle of all genuinely great architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption—against Christians.... These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all "souls," step by step, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... lying down in such a bed would have given him so severe a cold in his head, that he would have nearly sneezed and snuffled it off. Not so in Senegal. Still there were other inconveniences, for Harry had not rested for five minutes, when he heard a stealthy footstep; his heart began to beat. He had learned in his Geography that Senegal was full of wild beasts, as well as the sugar plums the treacherous sailor talked about. He began to wish he had staid in the ship; but if he returned, there was Jack Bowsprit, and there was SUSAN as sure as ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Puddin's he might lure, Into his clutches stealthy; He stole the Puddin' of the poor, The Puddin' ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... before her departure she had a final meeting with Georges at The Phantom,—a farewell meeting, painful and stealthy, and made solemn by the proximity of death. They vowed, however, to love each other always; they agreed upon a method of writing to each other. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... traveling dress, as they were not inclined to leave me, with anxiety, for I was weak enough to wish to make an impression with my elegant bearing and appointments. Being so anatomized, I was oppressed with an indefinite discouragement. Their stealthy, sharp, selfish scrutiny brought out my failures. My dress seemed ill-made; my hair unbecomingly dressed; my best collar and ribbon, which I put on, were nothing to the lace I had just seen falling on the floor. When we descended it was twilight. Ann ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... present and the past, The future seemed a sunlit thing. Still ever deeper and more vast, The changes that he hoped to bring. His was the will to dare and do; But still the stealthy fungus grew. ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... levying the taxes be taken from those who make the appropriations and thrown upon a more distant and less responsible set of public agents, who have power to approach the people by an indirect and stealthy taxation, there is reason to fear that prodigality will soon supersede those characteristics which have thus far made us look with so much pride and confidence to the State governments as the main-stay of our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... underground, perdu [Fr.]; secluded &c 893. undisclosed &c 529, untold &c 527; covert &c (latent) 526; untraceable; mysterious &c (unintelligible) 519. irrevealable^, inviolable; confidential; esoteric; not to be spoken of; unmentionable. obreptitious^, furtive, stealthy, feline; skulking &c v.; surreptitious, underhand, hole and corner; sly &c (cunning) 702; secretive, evasive; reserved, reticent, uncommunicative, buttoned up; close, close as wax; taciturn &c 585. Adv. secretly &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Awakened by some strange consciousness of stealthy movement about the house, she called Belle by name, thinking possibly the girl might be ill and seeking medicine. There was sound of more movement, but no reply. Mrs. Blake's girlhood had been spent on the frontier. She was a stranger to fear. She arose; struck a light and, seeing no one in her room ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... the mass of mines and submarine traps spread ingeniously across the harbor entrance, devoting their attention almost solely to the artillery duel with the dreadnoughts outside, the German cruiser knew naught of the stealthy torpedo from the daring Monitor until it shot suddenly forward below the surface of the water, revealed in the glare of her own searchlight. But it was too late then to avoid the deadly missile and it struck home abaft the engines and directly at the after magazine chambers. With a great ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... ground floor, who drives off to Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too, becomes a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, and sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends' kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore the patience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face, when, behold, a turn of the wheel of fortune, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend. It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social conspiracy, that must needs be ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... there flashed before him the thought of people who kill, of lines of soldiery rushing on trenches, of a stealthy, cowering man who slips through a jail door at dawn, and of a figure he had read of in books—a sinister figure with an ax and a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... them to climb over the stables at their left hand. Some dogs, hearing these quiet, stealthy footfalls, began to bay furiously: and both the youths stayed themselves until the beasts went grumbling and suspicious ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... eye of the man used to danger, had seen his stealthy preparation, and his wrist was caught in ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... how stealthy and noiseless and altogether perfect his maneuvering was. Although the trees that grew about were all small and the bushes bare, and although the white snow gave no background for concealment, he covered himself so perfectly at one time, and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... had unthinkingly reclined upon his back, and this generally brought bad dreams. He woke with a start from a dream, in which it seemed to him that the miners were about to hang Ki Sing from the branch of one of the tall trees near-by, when he detected a stealthy step ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... appear all of one blue; and so it is, blue as a whole, by comparison with other parts of the landscape. But look how that blue is made up. There are black shadows in it under the crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are gray half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone, every tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with individual character in the universal will. Who is there who can do this as ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the Blackbird had a most terrible fright. He and his wife, and some of the young ones, had been hard at work on the ripe strawberries. They had been so busy that they did not hear stealthy footsteps approaching on the sandy gravel till they were quite close to them. Then the birds rose in the air, with shrill cries of alarm, all except Mamma Blackbird, who somehow could not get her head from under the net. She struggled desperately; the gardener was now ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... noonday woods you hear the foraging squirrels, And the long, crashing fall of the half-eaten nut from the tree-top; When the robins are mute, and the yellow-birds, haunting the thistles, Cheep, and twitter, and flit through the dusty lanes and the loppings, When the pheasant booms from your stealthy foot in the cornfield, And the wild-pigeons feed, few and shy, in the scoke-berry bushes; When the weary land lies hushed, like a seer in a vision, And your life seems but the dream of a dream which you cannot remember,— Broken, bewildering, vague, an echo that answers ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... that dream picture: Betty tearing along on her pony; the pioneer plowing in the field; the stealthy approach of the savage; Wetzel and Jonathan watching the river; the deer browsing with the cows in the pasture, and the old fort, grim and menacing on the bluff—all were there as natural as in those times ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... it's great to be here with danger, Here in the weird, death-pregnant dark, In the devil's pasture a stealthy ranger, When the moon is decently hiding. Hark! What was that? Was it just the shiver Of an eerie wind or a clammy hand? The rustle of grass, or the passing quiver Of one of the ghosts of ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... good from evil, of innocence from guilt. On one side of it, in a chamber of light, sat a fair girl, confiding, generous, and deceived only through her excess of every virtue; on the other, wickedness, fell and artful, was approaching with stealthy footsteps through an unseen way, and stood with hand upraised to knock, but incapable of entering in unless that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... attract my attention. He had been brought in that very morning, said to have been kicked by a horse. One of his ribs was broken, and his face badly smashed. He was in great pain, but quite conscious, and he was making stealthy motions to me. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the jaguar is always made from behind, partaking of the stealthy, treacherous character of his tribe; if a herd of animals, or a party of men be passing, it is the last that is always the object of his attack. When he has made choice of his victim, he springs upon the neck, and placing one paw on the back of the head, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... as the roar of the huge retortii was deafening; the two were lost in the heart of an opaque cloud which completely blotted out the copper-hued Atlantean sky. Hot blood surged into Nelson's head while he became aware of ghostly and stealthy figures advancing through the shimmering billows of vapor. Up, up, they came, like dream men, their eyes weird and unreal. Cursing the treachery of their late host, Nelson and Alden watched dozens upon dozens of hoplites come swarming up the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... plain letters, twenty-five circulars reposed in the folds of Julia's nightdresses in her lower bureau drawer. The last thing to be done at night and the first in the morning was the stealthy, whispered reading of one of these documents, lest even after the hundredth time, something wrong should suddenly appear to the eye or ear. They were addressed, they were stamped, and they would be posted to twenty-five families ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... long; for when, having completed my preparations, I found time to again glance aloft at the frowning sky, I observed that the heavy masses of fiery cloud, that had hitherto seemed to be practically motionless, so stealthy were their movements, were now working with a restless, writhing motion, while ever and anon some small detached fragment of vapour would come sweeping rapidly out from the westward athwart the twisting ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... did not long survive the final signing of the treaty. The events of the next few months are curiously instructive as showing the quiet and stealthy way in which a political revolution may be consummated in a thoroughly conservative and constitutional country. Early in the winter session of Parliament Fox brought in his famous bill for organizing the government of the great empire which Clive and Hastings had built up in India. Popular ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... the likeness of a monkey to come from the juggler's vase. Only now it was Abi who emerged from the vase, a terrible Abi, with a red sword in his hand, and Pharaoh's crown upon his head. He leapt from the mouth of the vase, he devoured her with his greedy eyes, with stealthy steps he came to seize her, and she could not stir an inch, something held her ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... into other rooms and, only knowing it was there behind him in case of need, see his way about, visually project for his purpose a comparative clearness. It made him feel, this acquired faculty, like some monstrous stealthy cat; he wondered if he would have glared at these moments with large shining yellow eyes, and what it mightn't verily be, for the poor hard-pressed alter ego, to be confronted with ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... And then, by a stealthy, apparently innocent movement, the knife was out again, sliding along the leather ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... preoccupation of a lover, he found himself again and again recurring to the story he had just heard, until the vengeful spirit of the murdered Doctor seemed to darken and possess the house. He was striving to shake off the feeling, when his attention was attracted to stealthy footsteps in the passage. Could it be Maruja? He rose to his feet, with his eye upon the door. The footsteps ceased—it remained closed. But another door, which had escaped his attention in the darkened corner, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... reconstruct the crime as the next entrant would judge it—the thief gliding in by the window; the collector busy over the examination of his curios; the blow, probably only intended to stun; the hasty theft and stealthy exit. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford |
