"Uncertainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... example and hurriedly made their way on foot toward their one hope of refuge. When they reached the house Betty started to knock, then paused uncertainly, her hand uplifted. For above the beat of the rain and the shrill whine of the wind came a strain of music, mournful, yet exquisitely beautiful. Amazed, forgetful of their discomfort, the girls listened while ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... of Titus, two of the legionaries simultaneously let fly their javelins. But the mute, hobbling uncertainly, was not a steady mark and under the whistle of arrows received and sent, he blundered up the causeway leading to the Gate of the Old Wall, and the portal slowly and ponderously closed ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... her sharp chin uncertainly again. "There's no 'ell fire in it. An' there ain't no blime laid on Godamighty." (The word as she uttered it seemed to have no connection whatever with her usual colloquial invocation of the Deity.) "When a dray run over little Billy an' crushed ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... coming from the bright sunlight into the semi-darkness of the salon, blinked uncertainly, tried to distinguish his surroundings. She, on the contrary, distinguished very clearly a stiff, wooden figure, grizzly whiskers, a protruding under-jaw, one of those brigands of the Law whom we meet in the outskirts of the Palais de Justice, and who seem to have been ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... time to wonder, the racket ceased, and from the street filtered voices in altercation. Listening, Kirkwood's pulses quickened, and he laughed uncertainly for pure relief, retreating to the door and putting an ear to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Pacific exit on a miniature horse, packed away my baggage on his cargo mule and left me to walk unhampered. A highway some fifty feet wide and white with dust struck off uncertainly toward the southwest, a splendid highway once, built for automobiles by the combined efforts of the government and an American mining company farther up in the hills, but now suffered to fall here and there into a disrepair that made it as useless for such traffic as a mountain trail. The ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... his hair. "Things had gone wrong somehow," he said, uncertainly, "I don't know why. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... to feed by the roadside like the Bohemians," said Ghysbrecht, and his hand went into his purse; but it did not seem at home there; it fumbled uncertainly, afraid too large a coin might stick to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... squaw to warm 's heart—warm 's heart." He swayed a little as he spoke, and Teganouan took a short step forward; but the chief drew himself up and came slowly across the patch of moonlight. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and they rolled uncertainly from one to another of the little group before him. His coarse black hair was matted and tangled, and the eagle feathers that at the council had stood erect from his head now drooped, straggling, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... to believe all this?" Lilas demanded, uncertainly. "Why, these confessions are probably phony. You dictated them yourself, for all I know. Anyhow, they don't mean ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... it and though the hour was late a maid answered. She came to the door timidly, uncertainly, as ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... at home. The rooms showed that attempts had been made at tidying them. Parts of the wreckage of the day before had been repaired by an unskilful hand. A chair or two and the table, stood uncertainly upon legs. The floor had been newly swept. Too, the blue ribbons had been restored to the curtains, and the lambrequin, with its immense sheaves of yellow wheat and red roses of equal size, had been returned, in a worn and sorry state, ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... much for a silly trifle of that kind, then, I don't mind doing it," she uncertainly and doubtingly answered. "But you can't really care for a word from me? you only say so—I ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... personally acquired; for the commerce of Kittery Point perished long ago, and the fishing fleets that used to fit out from her wharves have almost as long ago passed to Gloucester. All that is left of the fishing interest is the weir outside which supplies, fitfully and uncertainly, the fish shipped fresh to the nearest markets. But in spite of this the tint taken from the suns and winds of the sea lingers on the local complexion; and the local manner is that freer and easier manner of people who have known other ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the irregular surface of the Moon, and from several Parallaxes, that unless the Dichotomy happen in the Nonagesimus of the Ecliptick, and that in the Meridian, &c. all which happen so very seldom, that it is almost impossible to make them otherwise then uncertainly. Besides, we are not yet certain, but that there may be somewhat about the Moon analogus to the Air about the Earth, which may cause a refraction of the light of the Sun, and consequently make a great difference in the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... all uncertainly touching the character of the stranger ceased. By that time, however, both vessels were entering the Mona Passage; the brig well to windward, on the Porto Rico side; while the ship was so far to leeward as to be compelled to keep everything close-hauled, in order to weather the island. The hull ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... present. Her scenery they cannot dispense with. Her very inadequacies and absurdities of climate involve a beauty which unites Northern sharpness of outline with Southern grace of form and color. The short and fervid summer owns charms denied a longer one. Spring comes uncertainly and lingeringly, but it holds in many of its days an exquisite and brooding tenderness no words can render, as elusive as that half- defined outline on budding twigs against the sky—not leaves, but the shadow and promise of leaves to be. The turf of the high pasture-lands springing under ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... then picture, however vaguely and uncertainly, the growth of a ballad. It is well known that the folklores of the various races of the world exhibit common features, and that the beliefs, superstitions, tales, even conventionalities of expression, of one race, are found to present constant and remarkable similarities to those of another. ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... among the dogs and threw herself down on the crusted snow, passing one arm over a shaggy back. The animal looked at her, uncertainly, but suddenly he passed a big moist tongue over her face. Could he have realized that her saving grace might avert condign punishment? The girl petted him as Stefan turned the toboggan and its load ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... She looked at him uncertainly. "I never knew what it meant before I came here," she told him shyly. "There is no time for beautiful things in my life. It's very, very drab and ugly. And I am very discontented. I ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... guess I can," Allen began uncertainly. Then he continued: "But you can just better believe if there is a chance in the world, I'll ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... back uncertainly. He had heard that formula before, but it had always been delivered to the newly wed. He was afraid the doctor was under a ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... a compact little budget and slipped them into her pocket, and as she rose and looked about uncertainly, she heard her aunt Minerva calling to her from the house that it was high time to go and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... while. "Honey, it's dark, it's dark. Something happened.... I don't remember," he put his hand uncertainly to his head, "I can't remember very ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... barn-door when he reached it, watching his lips for a stray word as a dog might, but not speaking. He unhitched the horse, put him in his stall, and pushed the wagon under cover,—then stopped, looking at her uncertainly. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Miss Lessways. Hilda—Mr Edwin Clayhanger." Janet drew the dark girl towards her as the latter hovered uncertainly in the middle of the room, her face forced into the look of elaborate negligence conventionally assumed by every self-respecting person who waits to be introduced. She took Edwin's hand limply, and failed to meet his glance. Her features ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... from the room, into the hallway, out of the door, and down the stoop to Fortieth Street. He looked about uncertainly, then espied across the way a tailor shop, where the light of the late workman still burned. Monty hurried thither and asked the use of the telephone upon ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... by Epictetus and Cornutus. Seneca contradicted himself on the subject. Marcus Aurelius never rose beyond a vague and mournful aspiration. Those who believed in a future world believed it faintly and uncertainly, and even when they accepted it as a fact, they shrank from proposing it as a motive. The whole system of stoical ethics, which carried self-sacrifice to a point that has scarcely been equalled, and exercised an influence which has rarely been surpassed, was evolved ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... weaken our energy nor flatten our hopes, nor dim our confidence, and, at the last we shall reach the mark, and, as we touch it, we shall find dropping on our surprised and humble heads the crown of life which they receive who have so run, not as uncertainly, but doing this one thing, pressing towards the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... if nothing better is to be obtained in the town, we will do as some of our ancient ancestors have done before us, we will 'lodge without, in the streets,'" and gathering up the wraps she walked out of the house, closely followed by Elsie, and more uncertainly by Lancy. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... wrappers was a pocket memorandum book, a simple thing of cheap red leather. Some one laughed uncertainly. Satherwaite, very red, ran his finger over the edges of the leaves, examined it long, as though he had never seen anything like it before, and placed it ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... his lantern, for he ran full tilt into Jim, who stood the shock with such firmness that the older man staggered back, and danced uncertainly to recover his balance. Deacon Amos Whittle stuttered uncertain remarks, as was his wont when startled. "It is only Jim Dodge," said Jim. "Guess your lantern sort of blinded ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and uncertainly to reclaim part of her ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... along through the mass of passengers and friends and relatives, who acted, some of them, too dazed and confused to move aside, and mounted the stairs leading to the upper decks. When they emerged into the open air, the Fremont man paused uncertainly, puffing, to ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... this time, and her eyes were wide with fright. She looked about desperately from Bartley to the door, then to the windows, and back again to Bartley. She rose uncertainly, touched his hair with her hand, then sank back upon ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... up to his eyes with one many-jointed claw, while his other three forelimbs gestured uncertainly. Finally he seized the note-pad and wrote, "Do not understand monstrous, please forgive. They do for more change, so not to make each other ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... looking more than his fifty-five years, sat alone, smoking this cigar, and Martie, greeting him prettily, was relieved to find that she must not at once face the ladies of the house. Rather uncertainly she took off her hat, but did not remove the becoming blue sweater. She sat erect in a low, comfortable armchair whose inviting curves made her rigid attitude unnatural and difficult, and talked to the Judge. The old man liked all fresh young girls, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the 1st of April was an ideal spring day. During the morning the brow of Storm King, still clothed with snow, was shrouded in mist, through which the light broke uncertainly in gleams of watery sunshine. A succession of showers took place, but so slight and mild that they were scarcely heeded by the busy workers; there was almost a profusion of half-formed rainbows; and atmosphere and cloud so blended that it was hard ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... police are particularly keen that we should look over any old letters of hers; they think that we might find some kind of clue. But I don't believe she kept her letters—why should she? I don't keep mine. However, I've promised to do the job myself——" he looked uncertainly at Vanderlyn. "Would you mind, Grid, coming with me into Peggy's room? Of course Plimmer, that's her maid, you know, will help us. She knows where Peggy keeps all ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... that strange thrill, half of pain, half of pleasure, and the lights of the theatre seemed moving before her uncertainly, as things look when one falls from a height. Almost unconsciously she spoke, hardly knowing that she turned her head, and that her dark eyes rested upon Giovanni's ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... a pause, and then LILY struggles to her feet and holds out her hand to JEYES uncertainly, and at once he rises and takes her in his arms. FARNCOMBE also rises and, standing behind the settee, turns his back to JEYES ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... retorted the furious Getz. "And YOU—you 'll lose your job at next Board Meetin', Saturday night! So you might as well pack your trunk! Here!" He laid his hand on Tillie's arm, but Fairchilds drew her to him and held his arm about her waist, while Absalom, darkly scowling, stood uncertainly by. ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... faces. But Carol burst into merry laughter, close upon his reverent "Amen,"—and after one awful glare at her sister, Prudence joined in. This gaiety communicated itself to the others and soon it was a rollicking group around the parsonage table. Mr. Morgan himself smiled uncertainly. He was puzzled. More, he was embarrassed. But as soon as Carol could get her breath, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... the traveller was on the point of dismounting, I fired my arquebus in the air, and so terrified his horse that it galloped after the fleeing maiden. Its rider was also well frightened, for, though he drew rein uncertainly when he saw me possess myself of his luncheon, when I fired again (though purposely wide of the mark) both travellers resumed their flight, nor paused until they had ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... say. "Come in. You all know Dad, don't you, folks?" He would sit down, uncertainly. At first he had attempted to expound, as had been his wont in the old house on Ellis. "I want to say, here and now, that this country's got to ..." But they went on, heedless of him. They interrupted or refused, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... State regulate singing, dancing, street-music, concerts in the house, looking out at windows, standing on balconies, eating, drinking, dressing, love-making? "It would be better done to learn that the law must needs be frivolous which goes to restrain things uncertainly, and yet equally, working to good and to evil. And, were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing." Besides, suppression even of such tangible things as books by a Censorship was really impracticable, and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... industry and power, before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade away. The ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern builders; and, from the wonders which time has spared, we may conjecture, though uncertainly, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... man disappeared, Pat, standing uncertainly in the middle of the corral, followed him with a look in his eyes that hinted of vague memories that would not down. And well he might be flicked with vague memories. For he was at last returned to the brief cradle ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... half-minded to flee, yet held by some pitying desire to help; then she saw him reach forward and grope his way uncertainly to the window. In his progress he stumbled against a chair; he had to feel for ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... man ahead of you. Ears told you he was tripping over fallen timber or sloshing in knee-deep bog hole. Hard breathing told the story of exertion. Only above and forward was there a faint streak of starlight that uncertainly led us on and on south toward the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... flushed, and he looked up uncertainly at the goggles. "He used to teach, I told you," was the evasive answer, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... o'clock of a cold November evening, with gusts of rain splattering upon the pavement, when a young man proceeded uncertainly along Gissing Street, stopping now and then to look at shop windows as though doubtful of his way. At the warm and shining face of a French rotisserie he halted to compare the number enamelled on the transom with a memorandum ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... of the knob. Still she hesitated to reply. Uncertainly she moved toward the nearest wall-sconce and lifted her hand to the switch. She was sadly confused and unstrung, her thoughts awhirl and nerves ajangle. The last thing she wished just then was to meet and talk ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... had been known to call out in her harsh voice, 'It's no good asking Sophia about them. She simply doesn't understand the best bits! She is jeune fille still, she always will be!' Sophia, blushing a little, would feel herself richly complimented, and the ladies laughed, Mrs. Batty uncertainly, having no ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... answer, but, taking the child by the arm, dragged him gently away from his mother. With his other hand he sought in his pocket for a handkerchief. But he was a lone man, without a housekeeper, and the handkerchief was missing. The child looked from one to the other, laughing uncertainly, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... away the lynx paused and the trapper could see the muscles of its powerful hind legs gather for the spring. His own muscles braced instinctively to meet it. But strangely the animal's attention wavered. It sniffed the air uncertainly. An instant later there came a furious barking and a yell which seemed to shatter the silence as a delicate vase is shattered by a blow. The lynx shrank back and with one bound melted into the shadows of the forest. At the same moment Pal, closely followed by his master, ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... there in her dainty Parisian gown and bonnet, shaking her pretty head uncertainly, a smile on her lips, her small, gloved ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... "I've got a full house," and pulled away, O'Rourke pitched forward, and Harley P. advanced uncertainly toward him, firing as he came, and when the gun was empty and Borax O'Rourke as dead as Cheops, the gambler stood over his man and hurled the gun ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... man—he hardly seemed to know what to do next. He took off his dripping coat, threw it in a heap in one corner and turned back uncertainly to ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... the train at Torquay station, Ashurst wandered uncertainly along the front, for he did not know this particular queen of English watering places. Having little sense of what he had on, he was quite unconscious of being remarkable among its inhabitants, and strode along in his rough Norfolk jacket, dusty ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... immediately with a tall, thin bottle. It was mellow Rhine wine, the gift of a merchant of Naples, that the doctor was saving for an extraordinary occasion. She filled four glasses, and, raising hers, looked around her uncertainly. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... say it again," said Joe, entreatingly. She was not used to entreating so much as to commanding, and her voice quavered uncertainly. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... which her generous successor and superior gives her in Northanger Abbey, and more also—for Miss Austen, naturally enough, was not taking the view-point of literary history. But it has been said that Fanny herself possessed her gift in two senses uncertainly—first, in that she did not very clearly perceive what it was, and, secondly, in that she soon lost grip of it. It is, therefore, not wonderful that few others caught the trick from her for a long time—for indeed ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... he was a man of his word. He walked straight out of the Casino; but uncertainly, feebly, as a man who has received a staggering blow between the eyes, as a man who has been pitched into a mountain-pool in January, as a somnambulist who has wakened to find himself on the edge of ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... still in His Heaven, behind the clouds—while she clung as a drowning mariner—the more desperately for her weakness—to the spar of this faith in the wreck of her happiness, though the love to which her whole being had moved in rhythmic content was as a lost star, glimmering uncertainly ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... my own had flitted by, and the gondoliers had warned each other at every turning with hoarse, lugubrious cries; the lines of balconied palaces had never ended;—here and there at their doors larger craft were moored, with dim figures of men moving uncertainly about on them. At last we had passed abruptly out of the Grand Canal into one of the smaller channels, and from comparative light into a darkness only remotely affected by some far-streaming corner lamp. But always the pallid, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... seemed to break up the order of his prearranged consolations, and he sat looking at her uncertainly. Then he said, with his sweet smile: "That's not true ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... Stuart rose uncertainly from his chair and surveyed the tiny clock face with a startled expression of bewilderment ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... and three or four of the crew came running aft at this juncture, with some indefinite idea of interfering; then paused, gazing uncertainly from one to the other, evidently undecided as to what action, if any, they ought to take. They looked at the mate; and the mate looked ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... manner of God and of nature, by abridging or scanting those means, which books freely permitted are, both to the trial of virtue and the exercise of truth? It would be better done, to learn that the law must needs be frivolous, which goes to restrain things, uncertainly and yet equally working to good and to evil. And were I the chooser, a dream of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... half asleep, for I came back to myself with a start and sprang to my feet. Jacqueline had risen upon her knees; she flung her arms out wildly, and suddenly she caught her breath and screamed, and stood up, and ran uncertainly toward me, with hands ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... thought Donald uncertainly. "I can't understand it at all. He said he was coming in to his old shanty on this fork of the Beaver when the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... you, but that's impossible," she said uncertainly. "I have friends, too; but they can't help me. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... course of thinking apart from action has destroyed Hamlet's very capacity for belief.... In presence of the spirit he is himself 'a spirit,' and believes in the immortality of the soul. When left to his private thoughts he wavers uncertainly to and fro; death is a sleep; a sleep, it may be, troubled with dreams.... He is incapable of certitude.... After his fashion (that of one who relieves himself by speech rather than by deeds) he ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... was rising to sprint for the slowly moving liner, he heard a smooth rushing noise. He whirled. The slide was opening in the wall. A mob of Ganymedans were pouring through. They paused uncertainly a moment, then, as they spied him, there was ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... uncertainly; he took it with a manner so gentle and considerate that she ventured, hesitatingly, something about seeing him again. To which he replied, pleasantly conventional, and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... when the organisation of them is complete. In the advance of the correspondence, each more complex class of phenomena which the organism acquires the power of recognising is responded to at first irregularly and uncertainly; and there is then a weak remembrance of the relations. By multiplication of experiences this remembrance becomes stronger, and the response more certain. By further multiplication of experiences the internal relations ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... probably won't want to use it for food, but white people as fine-blooded as we have been compelled to. It's better than starving. But I was thinking about a fire. If we ever find any fuel where we're going—wherever that is—" she smiled a trifle uncertainly, "we'll need some oil to help start the fire if the fuel is ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... came into her cheeks as she looked, but after holding the parcel uncertainly for a moment, she laid it down again, and proceeded to open other letters and boxes, leaving this particular one to the last. An onlooker would have been puzzled to decide whether it was more dread or expectation which prompted this decision; and perhaps Darsie ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... stalk—or stamp—she stopped. Standing uncertainly just outside her door was a strange man, strangely attired. Jane clutched her kimono ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... here, had been seen there, in the farthest corners of the earth, preaching, contending, suffering, prevailing. Affection did not stay to scrutinize. As when some member of a family among ourselves is absent in some far place from which sure news of him comes slowly and uncertainly; if he has been in the army, on some dangerous expedition, or at sea, or anywhere where real or imaginary dangers stimulate anxiety; or when one is gone away from us altogether—fallen perhaps in battle—and when the story of his end can be collected but fitfully from strangers who only ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... his seat as he spoke, for there was a broad straight piece of river before them; and as the boat came on he pointed his revolver uncertainly in the mist and fired. 'Confound you!' roared Peter, 'don't draw their fire yet! Probably our best chance is that they don't know for ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... like a bridge and lifting back, rimmed in moraine, far and away to the great white dome. And it was all wrapped in a fine Alpine splendor, so that she stopped beside me in a sort of hushed wonder to look. But I could hear her breath, laboring hard and quick, and she rocked uncertainly on her feet. I laid my hand on her arm to steady her. It was time we turned back. For half an hour I had been gathering courage to tell her so. While I hesitated, allowing her a few minutes to take in the glory, the setter ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... when the other scrambled up, he side-stepped the first rush, and knocked the man down again with a blow of his fist. This time he stayed down. Then other men—three or four of them—came out of the hotel, stood uncertainly a few seconds, and Hazel ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... exceed two yards away from me, but came shuffling uncertainly forward, feeling gingerly for footing in the blackness along the rock-strewn bank. His outstretched hand touched me, startling us both, before we were aware of our ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... uncertainly and looked at Joe as though he wanted to speak to him privately. Jim saw the look ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... struggle after life—in this world that God so loved, shall find our longings satisfied; the one yearning cry of our heart shall be stilled. The poet shall touch the stars, whose pale light now shines so uncertainly upon his brow; the painter shall put upon canvas a beauty too deep for words; the worshipper of nature shall thrill with the knowledge of unspoken secrets; the seeker after truth shall learn the mysteries of heaven. ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... should be objective even about a hospital. It's his business to stir others' emotions and not let his own be stirred. But that was no good, Mel Hastings told himself. No good at all when it was Alice who was here somewhere, balanced uncertainly ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... admonished it, as a matter of form, from far off, then sharply, summarily, from a lessening distance. The woodstack was puzzled, vaguely worried. It stopped, dubiously moved to one side, and pursued its cautious way a little uncertainly. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... deathly sick. "I think I'll go to my room," she said, rising uncertainly and forcing herself toward ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... the paper and looked at it uncertainly. "I don't sign any paper till I know what I'm signing. I want time to—to go ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... The professor eyed him uncertainly. He looked at the great, singing pines that laced their branches together high over their heads. Fred, he thought, had made a mistake when he hired experienced miners to do this work. It might be ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... before we were to start I went with Mr. Stewart and Mr. Haynes to meet the train. We were expecting the professor. But the only passenger who got off was a slight, gray-eyed girl. She looked about her uncertainly for a moment and then went into the depot while we returned to the hotel. Just as I started up the steps my eyes were gladdened by the sight of Mrs. O'Shaughnessy in her buckboard trotting merrily up the street. She waved her hand to us and drove up. Clyde took her team to the livery barn and ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... for death let go its hold upon him. Little by little, very faintly and flickeringly and very uncertainly at the first, life returned to the poor little body, and reason to the tormented, heated little brain. Moufflou was his physician; Moufflou, who, himself a skeleton under his matted curls, would not stir from his side and looked ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... She began to search her mind for an answer. Then she smiled uncertainly, a wan, small smile. It was very clear; what she had lost was all interest in life and all hope for the brave to-morrow. Nothing remained of all those lovely dreams which she had built up by day and night about the figure of Pierre le Rouge. He was ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... choices in the third series for July 17, but he was working very uncertainly and it seemed rather a matter of good luck than good management that he succeeded in presenting this perfect series: For this reason and also because it did not seem feasible to have Sunday intervene between the final and perfect regular series and the control series, an ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... moment I thought it was Lois who stood there so white and still, looking at me with grey, unfathomable eyes; then I stepped forward uncertainly, bending in silence over the narrow, sun-tanned hand that lay inert under the respectful but trembling ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... appeared just above the surface of the bunk between Trigger's pillow and the wall. It dropped with a small thump and stood balanced uncertainly. Trigger slept on. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... smiled uncertainly. She determined to speak out, to be like the man crude and direct. When she had her mind fixed and ready Margaret and McGregor were already half way down the gravel walk to the gate and the opportunity to distinguish herself ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... valanced brown skirt—for at that time and in that place it had not yet occurred to any woman that pockets were a superfluity—a private half-sovereign lay in the inmost compartment of her purse; this coin was destined to recompense Mr. Cannon. Her free hand went up to the heavy chignon that hung uncertainly beneath her bonnet—a gesture of coquetry which she ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... What he called his "working" smile begged of you not to be cross with him. His simplicity was apparently so hopeless, his confidence in whomever he addressed so complete, that often even the man he was pursuing felt for him a pitying contempt. Now as he stood uncertainly in the hall of the hotel, his helplessness moved the proud lady clerk to shake her cylinders of false hair sympathetically, the German waiters to regard his predicament with respect; even the proprietor, Mr. Gerridge himself, was ill at ease. Ford returned to his room, on the second ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... exclamation, an exclamation uttered as though the words had affrighted her. Whereafter, with quivering lips, she began hesitantly and uncertainly to fumble in ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... their generation. They have been summarily and loosely put aside, sometimes avowedly, more often still by implication. Even by those who accepted and maintained them, they have often been touched uncertainly and formally, as if people thought that they were doing a duty, but would like much better to talk about other things which really attracted and filled their minds. In the long course of theological war for the last two centuries, it is hardly too much to say that miracles, as a subject ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... half way down the middle aisle, opposite a pew, the faint flush of his lantern falling on the nearest upturned face. A long thin candle was fastened to this pew. The firefly of a taper, held aloft in his trembling hand, flickered uncertainly like a moth, and rested on the top of this candle. Then the wick kindled and burned. As its rays felt their way over the vast interior, struggling up into the dark roof, reaching the gilded ornaments on the side altar enshrouded in gloom, glinting on the silver of the hanging lamps, a plaintive ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The words swam uncertainly before Lancelot's eyes, but he got through them all at last. He felt chilled and numbed. He averted his face as he handed the letter back to Mary ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... maitre d'hotel was composing the menu for the evening, against the walls three colored waiters lounged sleepily, and on a platform at a piano a pale youth with drugged eyes was with one hand picking an accompaniment. As Wharton paused uncertainly the young man, disdaining his audience, in a shrill, nasal tenor ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... said Mrs. Peterkin, rather uncertainly, "Suppose we ask the lady from Philadelphia what is best ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... time without a word, his face bent down and hidden by his clasped hands, only now and then unable to repress a start or shudder at some fresh disclosure; and when it was ended, he stood up, gazed round, and walked uncertainly, as if he did not know where he was. His next impulse was to throw himself on his knee beside his grandfather, and caress him as he used to when a child. The 'good-night' was spoken, and Guy was shut into his room, with his ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... read the letter right through twice. Then, slowly, deliberately, she folded it up and put it back in its envelope. Uncertainly she looked at her little silk handbag. No, she could not put it there, where she kept her purse, her engagement book, her handkerchief. For the moment, at any rate, it would be safest elsewhere. With a quick furtive movement she thrust it into her bodice, ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... it was not the Father Damaso of heretofore, so vigorous and alert. He walked uncertainly, and he was ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... will do." Herrick watched him as he hesitated, uncertainly. "Don't let me detain you." He held the door ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... sing a series of introductory songs. She was very striking, as Isabelle and Mrs. Lawton had foreseen that she would be,—rather bizarrely dressed in a white and gold costume that she had designed herself, with a girdle of old stones strung loosely about her waist. She was nervous and sang uncertainly at first so that Vickers had to favor her in his accompaniment. He could see the trembling of her white arm beside him. The Cycle of the Cities came near the end of the programme, and when Vickers took his seat to play the accompaniments, he was aware that a ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... own right hand moved uncertainly, for he would have liked to make the salute in return, only ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... front stairs, but once at the bottom, she paused uncertainly. She had no idea where the dining-room was. Then she heard voices not far away and she followed the sound into the library, where she found Ross and Elinor in front of a gloriously burning wood fire. But they were both garbed ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... swayed uncertainly, dazed and gasping, while her hair, shaken loose from its knot, slowly cascaded over one shoulder. Then stumbling, groping, with a hand on a chair, against the frame of the door, she went out ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Mary laughed uncertainly and slammed the door; and it was not until then that Flora Lockhart moved or uttered a sound. She sprang to her feet, her clear eyes ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... him money for it? Do you think I might give him something?" she asked, looking uncertainly at the artist, who, on hands and knees and with tongue protruding, was putting a green head on a red bird, too absorbed ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to if it bores you. I mean you needn't do it as a favor." The words tumbled out in haste, and though he tried to keep his face casual it screwed up uncertainly. Anthony was compelled to protest: "Bore me? I should ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... stood before him smiling rather uncertainly. The sweetness and cleanness of that smile after his recent ordeal washed over his tortured mind like a cooling astringent, and he smiled gratefully up at her. She put a cool palm on his forehead and as she started to withdraw it he clutched it in an emaciated ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... on that fallen pine, smoking and listening to the unseen drama in the bottoms over there beyond the hill, his hopes ever rising, and with these hopes a gratifying sense of achievement and triumph. Once or twice the dog bayed uncertainly. Once or twice the man yelled, it seemed to him with lessened confidence. Once it sounded as if the hound had sat down on his haunches, raised his muzzle on high, and poured out to heaven his perplexity. Tom had seen them do that. Then another silence, as if ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... year occurred the revolution in the mother country, which had tired of the old corrupt despotism. Isabella II was driven into exile and the country left to waver about uncertainly for several years, passing through all the stages of government from red radicalism to absolute conservatism, finally adjusting itself to the middle course of constitutional monarchism. During the effervescent and ephemeral republic there was ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... He laughed uncertainly and paused, thoughtful, his eyes vacant, fixed upon the retrospect that was a grim prospect ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the tenor of her woe, Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly. By this short schedule Collatine may know Her grief, but not her grief's true quality; She dares not thereof make discovery, Lest he should hold it her own gross abuse, Ere she with blood had stain'd her ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... was greatly pleased. I believe in me he saw his first bona-fide settler, and when I rose to go he even lifted one of the crosses of Trinidad and, before my envious eyes, regarded it uncertainly. ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... "Father," said Miss Dodan, uncertainly, while she formed her hand into an improvised tube, and looked through it on the peaceful scene at our feet, "has been telling me of my birthplace in Devonshire. It must be very beautiful, more beautiful than it is here. But there is no sea, and it seems to me now that I should die without it; ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the cellar, "but, please, don't be gone very ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... at the tight-lipped, elderly face, like the face of a wise and distrustful gnome, and held the pen uncertainly above the cheque form. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... had it, and had is the past tense, so—" Jack's voice trailed off uncertainly, and Ozma, seeing he was embarrassed, ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... if she were constrained by a power greater than her will to fulfil a sinister prophecy. Yet now and then she would stop and wonder if she might not break the spell by doing things differently from the way she had dreamed them. Her hand grasped the knob of the door uncertainly, and she swung it to and fro on its creaking hinges, while her mind seemed likewise to sway hither and thither. Should she fasten the door and push the bureau against it, as it had been in the dream, or should she leave door and windows gaping wide for them? And then, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... stood behind his horse, looking at the pistol. The white soldier came quite near, and at his voice Two Whistles moved slowly out from behind the horse, and listened to the cool words as the soldier repeated his command. The Indian was pointing his pistol uncertainly, and he looked at the soldier's coat and buttons, and the straps on the shoulders, and the bright steel sabre, and the white man's blue eyes; then Two Whistles looked at his own naked, clotted body, and, turning the pistol against himself, fired it ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister |
