"Watcher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The watcher of birds in the bush soon discovers that they have individual as well as race characteristics. They are not things, but persons,—beings with intellect, affections, and will,—and a strong specific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small measure of personal variation. ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... than thou art. And as for a musket in the ranks, what were that to such offices as not yet a year agone I saw thee fill around the beds of the sick and dying in our first great plague? When had we a tenderer nurse, a more patient watcher? What office was too loathly for thee, what tendence ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... O watcher for the dawn of day, As o'er the mountain peaks afar Hangs in the twilight cold and gray, Like a bright lamp, the morning star! Though slow the daybeams creep along The serried pines which top the hills, And gloomy shadows ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not dare to ask him for a share of what he seemed little disposed to part with. The big boy finished the third piece, and hesitated about the fourth; but no, he was a human being,—no brute. He thrust the remainder into his watcher's hands, and turned his back upon him, so as not to be tantalized. Beasts indeed! Here were two instances of self-denial, nowhere to be matched in the whole animal creation, except in that race which is but little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... by the discovery of Circumstantial Selection: that is to say, of a method by which horrors having every appearance of being elaborately planned by some intelligent contriver are only accidents without any moral significance at all. Suppose a watcher from the stars saw a frightful accident produced by two crowded trains at full speed crashing into one another! How could he conceive that a catastrophe brought about by such elaborate machinery, such ingenious preparation, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... where Aunt Elspeth sat waiting. One threw its gleam over the edge of the cranberry bog from the window where Belle kept faithful vigil—where she would continue to keep it until "the call" came to release the watcher as well as the stricken old soul whose peace she guarded. And up in the big gray house by the break-water, where Tippy was keeping supper hot, a supper fit to set before a king, lights blazed ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was hushed without, and the silence within was broken only by the cricket's chirp, when the lone watcher, the faithful old slave, sat beside the cold, shrouded figure, when the dim light of the chamber of death seemed mingling with the shadows of departed souls, there appeared in the room, like a vision, the tall figure ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the keeper is saturated with a solution made from a strong-smelling herb, to which the animals have great antipathy; and even though they may approach and smell the skin, they soon turn away, without hurting the watcher. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... word Norbert obeyed. His father was alone, and only the man to whom Jean had delegated the task of watcher remained by his bedside. At the sight of his young ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... is not strange that a bought watcher drowses; What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps Who would not sleep for all my draughts of sleep In the last days. When did this ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... eyes picked up the ship flying at a considerable altitude far in the east. For a few seconds he watched it speeding evenly eastward, when, to his horror, he saw the speck dive suddenly downward. The fall seemed interminable to the watcher and he realized how great must have been the altitude of the plane before the drop commenced. Just before it disappeared from sight its downward momentum appeared to abate suddenly, but it was still moving rapidly at a steep angle when it finally ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other one—the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluged—the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... that Margaret could do was to prevail upon him to rest on the drawing-room sofa. Dixon stoutly and bluntly refused to go to bed; and, as for Margaret, it was simply impossible that she should leave her mother, let all the doctors in the world speak of 'husbanding resources,' and 'one watcher only being required.' So, Dixon sat, and stared, and winked, and drooped, and picked herself up again with a jerk, and finally gave up the battle, and fairly snored. Margaret had taken off her gown and tossed it aside with a sort of impatient disgust, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... before. The moment he saw me he poked his snout over my narrow bed-place, but I was too far down for him to get at me, notwithstanding all the efforts he made to effect that object. Still it was not pleasant to have such a watcher over my couch, as I could not help dreading that he might possibly get his claws in and pull me out, and that at all events the moment I sat upright he would give me an embrace, but anything but a friendly one. The moon came out and shone on his bearish eyes, and I saw him licking ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... door, and after listening for some minutes, and being satisfied he was the only watcher under the roof, he gently opened one of the parlour windows and gave the preconcerted signal which he and Dick had agreed upon. Dick was under the window immediately, and after exchanging a few words with Murtough, the latter withdrew, and taking off his boots, and screening with ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... sat Lady Ella, watching him with an expression in which dismay and resolution mingled. Upon the other side of him, upon a little occasional table, was a tray with breakfast things. He was no longer the watcher now, but the watched. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... birdling caged, And in the dark alone, And then methought that he had seen, Some vision from God's throne, The little birdling's eyes were bright, While mine with tears were dim, Had some bright watcher glided by, And ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... at the thought of the fair watcher, the inn door opened, and a waiting-woman entered carrying a small box. As she approached Jasmine she bowed low, and with bated breath thus ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... another watcher for the dawn besides Father Salvierderra. It was Alessandro, who had been restlessly wandering about since midnight, and had finally seated himself under the willow-trees by the brook, at the spot where he had seen Ramona the evening ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... unseen watcher he presented the appearance of a man not impressed by stage settings. After all he was now in the seller's space boots, and it ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... was seen approaching the watcher was to return at once to the camels, take his own animal, and ride to the wady with news as to their strength; the other was to remain on watch until they either retired or set out on the track of the fugitives, when he was to push forward with all speed with the news. ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... from the lighted windows across the way. At last, long after the footsteps of the anxious Virginian had died away in the night, and the lights were extinguished in the house opposite, the silent watcher moved for the first time. Slowly he came to his feet, his eyes still upon the solitary window in which a light had lingered long after all the others ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... alleviation;—and indeed, in some sort, as a necessity. He has "friends here," he admits to himself, "whose kindness is beyond all price, all description;" but his little children, if anything befell him, have no relative within two hundred miles. He is now sole watcher over them; and his very life is so precarious; nay, at any rate, it would appear, he has to leave Falmouth every spring, or run the hazard of worse. Once more, what is to be done? Once more,—and now, as it turned out, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... for Rachel's father— Some twenty dollars only! And yet Linda Saw not the way to pay it on the morrow. He, the poor artisan, on whose account She had incurred the liability, Lay prostrate with a malady, his last, In the small room near by, with little Rachel His only watcher. What could Linda do? At length, with lips compressed, and up and down Moving her head as if to give assent To some resolve, now fixed, she took her seat At the piano,—from her childhood's days So tenderly endeared, and every chord Vibrating to some memory of her ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... a dome of stretched threads and faded flowerets which have fallen from the cluster. This is the watcher's belvedere, her conning-tower. An opening, which is always free, gives access ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... not blasphemous," I tried to tell him. "And I was never more serious in my life. There's even something sacred about it, once you look at it in the right way. Just think of the Shepherd-Dog of the Stars, the vigilant and affectionate Watcher who keeps the wandering worlds in their folds! That's not one bit worse than the lamb idea, only we've got so used to the lamb it doesn't shock us into attention any more. Why, just look at these eyes of Bobs right now. There's more nobility and devotion and trust and ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth At momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts break forth The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... assumed the office of nurse during the day. Gaston entered soon after, and, finding the patient gently slumbering, sat down beside his bed. After a time, Maurice stirred, drew a long breath, and slowly opened his eyes. They met those of his watcher. For some time the invalid gazed at him without speaking, and then said, in a tone ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... shadows into the open moonlit space, and then, to any one watching from the porch, the dark object, drawing nearer and nearer in the bright moonlight, would have soon shaped itself into a boat—an empty boat, the watcher would have said, that had broken from its moorings somewhere up the river;—and the watcher would have heard, through the still, night air, the dull, heavy roar of the mad ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... lane, which was still absolutely empty of human life. He stood there quietly waiting, watching over the ghastly discovery. In about ten minutes the police commissioner and the coroner, followed by two roundsmen with a litter, joined the solitary watcher, and the latter ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... freedom for woman and the ennobling of the race was first seen by Wyoming, on the crest of our continent, and the clarion note was sounded forth, "Equality before the law." For a quarter of a century she was the lone watcher on the heights to sound the tocsin of freedom. At last Colorado, from her splendid snow-covered peaks, answered back in grand accord, "Equality before the law." Then on Utah's brow shone the sun, and she, too, exultantly joined in the trio, "Equality ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... If I have sinned, what have I done to thee, O watcher of men? Why hast thou set me as thy target? And why am I a burden to thee? And why dost thou not pardon my transgression and take away mine iniquity? For now I shall lie down in the dust, When thou shalt seek me, I ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... when he felt the point of the auger coming through, and he himself completed the hole from the outside with his bradawl. This gave an aperture imperceptible on the rough exterior, but large within, and enabled the watcher to see through a much wider angle than he could otherwise have done. Hilliard then once more raised the lid, allowing Merriman to lift the footstool within, where it was destined to act as a ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... the boy's crippled fate, so like his own. Like, and yet unlike—to the casual observer there was a vast difference between the forlorn, poverty-stricken, ragged Archie, and the petted, and pampered, and richly-clad Willie; but to the eye of the unwearied watcher who had witnessed the patience and the goodness of the sick lad, and contrasted it with the petulance and sinfulness of her nephew, the gifts of God ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... immediately beneath him, and there, as upon mutual impulse, they stopped. It was a corner protected from the driving blast by the crumbling mass of cliff that had slipped in the night. The rain was falling heavily again, but neither the two on the shore nor the solitary watcher stretched on the perilous edge of the cliff seemed aware of it. All were intent upon ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... jam of the drive reached the dam at Redding. Orde took Carroll downtown in the buckboard. There a seat by the dam-watcher's little house was given her, back of the brick factory buildings next the power canal, whence for hours she watched the slow onward movement of the sullen brown timbers, the smooth, polished-steel rush of the waters through the chute, the graceful certain movements ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... children. But when all the other Houses were assembled, men looked around, and beheld the place of the Woodlanders that it was empty; and they marvelled that they were thus belated. For now all was ready, and a watcher had gone up to the Tower on the height, and had with him the great Horn of Warning, which could be heard past the Mote-stead and a great way down the Dale: and if he saw foes coming from the East he should blow one blast; if from ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... it! The house opened upon the main street of the village, and there was nearly always a watcher on the look-out for us. Sometimes it was Isaac, our good man-of-all-work, who never failed Ponnamal through the two years he was with us. Then we would hear a call, and Ponnamal (we used to call her the Princess, but dignity gives place to something more human at such moments) would come ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... them, and they won't go," thought the watcher; and the speaker, a stunted-looking Malay with a short, iron-spiked implement, somewhat like the iron of a boat-hook, in his hand, came into sight between the huge pachyderms and the door, shouting and growling at his charge as he waved the hook and ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... white-gowned figure of the lady of the tree step out. He heard her cry "Luigi!" with a voice full of joy and gladness. The two met in quick embrace, and the desolation of the watcher was complete as he heard her speak lovingly to the officer who had at last come back into her life. She spoke in French and—was it because of the language used or of the unusual excitement?—her voice took on a strange elusive quality utterly unlike the richness of the tones Mark loved so well, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... The watcher saw the creature take its prisoner by the arm and lead it back to the enclosure, and even across the distance that separated them from him he could note dejection and utter hopelessness in the bearing of the prisoner, and, too, he ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... surrounded by the very silence and repose, the majesty of Death. Everyone had retired to rest; the curfew had long tolled, and the fires were nearly all out. Only here and there a lighted lattice spoke of a late watcher, who perhaps was searching for the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life, wherewith to turn the grey hairs of age to the flowing locks of youth—the feeble gait of one stricken in years to the vigour and comeliness of manhood. Vain wish! and needless; for why will they ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... say, "Where is thy victory?" Simple thoughts and fancies, which we hardly dare utter, have wonderful power, in great sorrows, to change the whole current of the feelings; for while that soft shower was heard, falling on the grave, it seemed as if a heavenly watcher was in care of the place; and so, leaving them together, it was easy and pleasant ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... lightly loaded, stands perhaps two feet out of water. Above this, carried on rows of posts twenty feet high, comes the first cabin. All between is open to the air on either side; so that, as one of the huge river-monsters passes at night, the watcher on the bank can see the stalwart, black, half-naked bodies of the negro stokers, bending before the glowing furnace doors, and throwing in the soft coal, that issues in clouds of smoke from the towering chimneys seventy feet above. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and uttered a few words in an imperious tone whose effect was to set some one fanning the fire with more energy, when the cracks in the boarded floor began to show, and the watcher above began to get glimpses of ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... a Master, His chief function, we may say, is to perform the greatest act of sacrifice which is known in the Occult Hierarchy, save the act of the One who is called The Great Sacrifice, the Silent Watcher, whose sacrificial act is still greater than the sacrificial acts performed by Those who are spoken of as Masters. This particular act of sacrifice, occurring from time to time at the beginning of a new epoch in religion and civilisation, is performed by one of the Body, who volunteers to start ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... brace and cheer The lonely watcher of the fold, When nights are dark, and foeman near, When visions fade and hearts ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... of Alba" had danced twice in succession with Juliet Capulet, I could bear my role of watcher no longer. Besides, I knew that I had not much time to waste. For the sake of de la Mole, who had run the risk of admitting a stranger, I must vanish before the hour for the masks to fall. When ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the night out, revelling in his enjoyment of the mystery of the coming morning, that phase of the day which never ceases to be unreal, and which calls out of the watcher sentiments and emotions he is a stranger to for the rest of ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the fields was a bit of woodland, and in one corner of that you might, if your eyesight was good, discern here and there a glimpse of white. It was the old burying-ground of Goshen church; and I knew by the strained attitude and intent gaze of the watcher in the door that somewhere in the sunlit space between Aunt Jane's door-step and the little country graveyard, the souls of the living and the dead were keeping a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... during the growing season to see that nothing breaks in to destroy the grain. Often flappers are placed in different parts of the field and a connecting string leads from these to the little house, so that the watcher by pulling this string may frighten the birds away ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... young rowdy, more than half Darkovan, loving the mountains, half-homesick for a non-human world, had been drowned in the chilly, austere young medical student who lost himself in his work. But I, Jason—I had always been the watcher behind, the person Jay Allison dared not be? Why was he ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... sank drearily,—"if you won't let me watch over you, I'll watch without yer leave. I won't bother you none, but I thank God I've got city ways t' meet city ways! I'm plum 'shamed of the way our gals is actin' with the boarders. I'm a good watcher, Janet!" ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... away, where the waters widen, And fade in a mist so soft and blue. For what are you wishing, pretty watcher? That you might sail with the breezes too? That you might dance with the shining ripples Over the waters far away? Ah, little Effie, your eyes may wander, But moored inshore ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... very sweet and precious in spite of the cloud in the east. Why then, I asked, not go back on another morning, when I would have the whole place to myself? If a cloud did not matter much it would matter still less that it was not the day of the year when the red disc flames on the watcher's sight directly over that outstanding stone and casts first a shadow then a ray of light on the altar. In the end I did not say good-bye to the village on that day, but settled down to listen to the tales of my landlady, or rather ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... nod and smile back. Then that happened on which she had counted. The stranger came up into the path, and without seeing the watcher, ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... uncivility). It will be a very pressing necessity that will draw away the time of prayer, no compliment should hinder you to go to it. If ye got a corner alone, that would invite a man that watches unto prayer. He even seeks it when he finds it not offering itself. The watcher unto prayer will steal much of his time from others, and other employments, and he will ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... my calling, Though I sing in magic accents, Though my tear-drops speak lamenting, Though my heart bemoans thine absence. From her grave awakes the mother, To Kullervo speaks these measures: "Thou has still the dog remaining, He will lead thee to the forest; Follow thou the faithful watcher, Let him lead thee to the woodlands, To the farthest woodland border, To the caverns of the wood-nymphs; Kullerwoinen's Victory and Death There the forest maidens linger, They will give thee food and shelter, Give my hero joyful greetings." Kullerwoinen, with his ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... vanishing glimpses among the trees, or else quietly hiding until I went by. So the only way to see them—a beautiful sight they were—was to sit still in hiding, for hours if need be, until they came gliding by, all unconscious of the watcher. ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... opened, and the dead come forth alive; how Faith and Justice will triumph in the end; how you can't bury 'em deep enough, or roll a stun big enough and hard enough before the door, but what, in some calm mornin', the earliest watcher shall see a tall, fair angel standin' where the dead has lain, bearin' the message of the risen Lord, "He ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that the vigilant watcher unclosed her flabby lids, slowly, and without start or exclamation, much as a dozing cat blinks when a redder sparkle from the fire dazzles her out of dreams. One hard wink, one bewildered stare, and Pbillis was ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Kirby's hand, or the thought that he would have used it had the need arose. Would he not then fight just as fiercely to keep, as he had, to gain? Indeed, I had but one fact upon which I might hope to base action—every watcher believed those cards had been stacked, and that Beaucaire was robbed by means of a trick. Yet, could this be proven? Would any one of those men actually swear that he had seen a suspicious move? If not, then what was there left me except a ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... away, lay a thicket or undergrowth, and he watched it incessantly. It seemed to him now that he knew every bush and briar and vine. Presently a briar moved, and then a bush, and then a vine, but they moved against the wind, and the sharp eyes of the watcher saw it. He sank a little lower and the muzzle of his rifle stole forward. He made not the slightest sound, and good eyes, only a few yards away, could not have separated his dark figure from that ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... shifted his position a little, so that the light fell upon the bundle, and then the watcher outside saw the sleeping ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... The watcher trembled where he lay—though he knew they were not spectres. He knew well what they were, and understood the meaning of that extended deployment. They were Indian warriors upon the march. The bright moonlight enabled him to distinguish farther. He saw that they were all full-grown men—that ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... left the on-coming Scipio. The little man moved with bowed head and trailing footsteps. The utter dispiritedness of his gait stirred even the self-centered watcher. But Scipio saw nothing of Sunny Oak. He saw nothing of anything but the despairing picture in his own mind. The ramshackle shanties which lined one side of the trail were passed unheeded. The yapping of the camp dogs at the unusual sight of so deplorable a figure ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... stood upon the vessel's deck recounting to one another the details of the various adventures through which each had passed since they had parted in their London home, there glared at them from beneath scowling brows a hidden watcher upon the shore. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... easily enough, and the underbrush closed behind them, so that, had they been seen, the watcher might have been startled ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the shrillest and tensest report of progress from the gifted watcher, all in a wondrous second of realisation, they turned to look into each other's eyes—and their ecstasy of terror was gone in the quick little self-conscious laughs they gave. It was all at once as if two grown-ups had ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... other side of the fence something moved in the thick brush, and there was a sound of a man's deep chuckle, but the two contestants in the art of making faces were too much occupied to notice anything of their surroundings, and the unknown watcher enjoyed this novel entertainment for ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... came swarming down from out the surrounding hills and turned into a noisy, restless playground the single narrow, irregular street. Then it suddenly became a mad commixture of Babel and hell. At this hour nothing living moved within range of the watcher's vision except a vagrant dog; the heat haze hung along the near-by slopes, while a little spiral of dust rose lazily from the deserted road. But Hampton had no eyes for this dreary prospect; with contracted brows he was viewing again ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... The watcher above rushed to the attack. He was perhaps a thousand yards above his enemy and had certain advantages—a fact which Tam realized. He ceased to climb, flattened and went skimming along the top of the cloud, darting here and there with seeming aimlessness. ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... where we had stood but a minute before, and the whole hull of the "Flying Cloud" with it, blended together in one mass of surging fire. The appearance in the heavens of this strange sight, to a watcher at some rancho, or in the not distant city of San Francisco, if such there were, must have afforded a more vivid illustration of the fall of a blazing star or meteoric wonder than astronomer has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... pausing beside a clump of great oaks. "See, it couldn't be better if it had been made to order. This knoll commands a good view of the marshes and river towards the Everglades, while those trees will hide the watcher from our point, and of course from the convicts' camp. I have got a big, red, bandanna handkerchief which we can use as a flag. When the one on watch sees the Indians coming, he can fasten it to that dead sapling further out. That will ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... profusion, stiffer than that of a Jew on a frosty morning after mist. In short, as Larry soon discovered to his horror, on looking up at the niche, it was no other than Saint Colman himself, who had stept forth, indignant (in all probability) at the stigma cast by the watcher of the dead on the churchyard of which his Saintship was patron. He smiled with a grisly solemnity—just such a smile as you might imagine would play round the lips of a milestone (if it had any,) at the recantation so quickly volunteered by Larry. "Well," said he, "Lawrence Sweeney"—"How well ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... into tears and went out of the room. She sent in the night-watcher, and then Jeff took leave of his mother with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Goddess! Stay my toil, and let the end be good! Latonian glory of the stars, fair watcher of the wood, If ever any gift for me upon thine altars gave My father Hyrtacus; if I for thee the hunting drave; If aught I hung upon thy dome, or set upon thy roof, Give me to break their gathered host, guide thou ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... "can't I keep awake when duty calls me? You needn't be afraid to trust a Sexton, when you need a faithful watcher." ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... says the priest; 'and if you don't take yourself away before the holy watcher's made, I'll send you off in a flame ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, smilingly, restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, implored, appealed (so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to heaven. Winthorpe took his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to soothe, tried to convince him. John drew his arm free, and, employing it to add force and persuasiveness to his speech, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... neglected food as if they hoped he would forget to take it away. Meanwhile the clattering of chains against the harness, the pawing of the horses and the low exclamations of the driver caused me the queerest feelings. Advancing quite unceremoniously upon the watcher by the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... watcher on the outer wall, How wears the night away? I hear the birds of morning call, I see the break of day! Rise, tell ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... I gained my feet, only to see that my watcher did the same; cautiously I advanced toward him, finding that by moving with a shuffling gait I could retain my balance as well as make reasonably rapid progress. As I neared the brute he backed cautiously away from me, and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... starting. "Oh," he went on indifferently, as the watcher moved away from the gate and crossed the road on to the footpath, "he's taken up with the music, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... into the howling darkness, his face was as serene as if he sailed a summer sea. The great waves that dashed their foam over him as he stood were powerless to raise fear in his soul! He stood as one apart—a lonely watcher whom no danger ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... whose ancestors had beyond any doubt crossed the Red Sea with Moses, this new and glittering star, who had but just "made good," or "got over," or "clicked" (my new acquaintance used all these phrases indiscriminately when referring to his own Herschellian triumphs as a watcher of the skies), walked confidently to a distant table which was being held in reserve for her party, and drew off her gloves with the happy anticipatory assurance of one who is about to lunch a little too well. (All this, I should ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... so," replied Edred earnestly. "I fear me we shall find that every door is watched. But if thou art seen, go forward boldly. Let none guess that you suspect aught. Doubtless each watcher is well primed with some excellent reason for being found there. Speak them friendly, and do not ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a little before midnight. She saw one of Jane's hands raised to impose silence. Emma, still sitting by the bedside, slept; her head rested on the pillows. The sick had become the watcher. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Cyril and his fellow-watcher heard a very slight sound, and a figure stepped out from Captain Dowsett's door. The two men crossed at once and joined her. A few low words were spoken, and they moved away together, and turned ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... foot of the top three strong cross-bars will be lashed, to support a corduroy arrangement of perfectly straight level bars, quite close together to form a platform. A thickly folded rug will carpet the rough surface, upon which the watcher will sit upon a low turnstool that will enable him to rest in comfort, and turn without noise in any required direction. A bamboo or other straight stick will be secured as a rail around the platform, upon which some branches may be so arranged as to form a screen that will conceal the watcher from ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... massive elbow of this ledge, our back-trail, ascending into view, curved under shouldering boulders. Blueberry scrub, already turning gold and crimson, grew sparsely on the crag—cover enough for any watcher of the trail. And thither I crept and stretched me out flat in the bushes, where I could see the trail we had lately traversed, and look along it far to our rear as clearly as one sees through a dim and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... placed upon this holy cliff, Pan of the seashore, the watcher here over the fair anchorages of the harbour; and I take care now of the baskets and again of the trawlers off this shore. But sail thou by, O stranger, and in requital of this good service of theirs I will send behind thee a ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... their heads and were next second going clean on to them. It is very difficult, owing to his extraordinary method of progression, to distinguish one part of a galloping vilderbeeste from another; now it is his horns, now his tail, and now his hoofs that present themselves to the watcher's bewildered vision, and now again they all seem to be mixed up together. On came the great herd, making the ground shake beneath their footfall: and after them galloped the mounted Boers, from time to time jumping off their ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... The watcher, who had been standing in a dark recess formed by the presence of heavy velvet curtains draped before the window, now opened the curtains and stepped into the lighted room. He was a tall, lean man ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... strange are the sounds that range Through the chambers of the night; And the watcher who waits by the dim, dark gates, May ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... across the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider, which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... was locked. Fearful lest the grating of the knob should have roused some watcher, he ran down the steps and hurried into the shadow of the banquet hall, where he stood close beside a pillar until he satisfied himself of the objects in the court beyond. He saw an edge of light along the crack of a closed door to the left ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... man stood up, shook his head thoughtfully, and seemed to hesitate. The watcher still kept peering down; then he turned and said: "The white man is old Forty-nine. He comes a bobbin' and a limpin' along with a keg on his back, and a climbin' up the mountain sidewise, like ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... lady bicyclists on the road, fell round Freddy Alexander. He bore it as long as he could, cheering with faltering whoops the invisible and unresponsive pack, and wondering what on earth huntsmen were expected to do on such occasions; then, filled with that horrid conviction which assails the lonely watcher, that the hounds have slipped away at the far side, he put spurs to Mayboy, and cantered down the long flank of the covert to find some one or something. Nothing had happened on the north side, at all events, for there was the faithful Taylour, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... direction he was accustomed to taking from this part of Paris to his apartments, the watcher across the street ran from his hiding-place and hurried on ahead ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... are awash, and their cabins dripping; the lights, which must be watched, instead of being at the top of a firm, dry tower, are perched on reeling masts over which the spray flies thick with every wave, and on which is no shelter for the watcher. During long weeks in the stormy season there is no possible way of escaping from the ship, or of bringing supplies or letters aboard, and the keepers are as thoroughly shut off from their kind as ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... there was the lowing of cows; chirping came from the trees, there was the piping of the magpie, and soon after the deep chuckle of a great kingfisher, followed by burst of; shrieks and jarring calls from a great tree; and it suddenly struck the watcher that there was a pallid light shed from somewhere ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Some lonely watcher waits and weeps, Like me, the step that comes not yet;— Her watch for weary hours is set, While far ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... Then away with you back to him and tell this King of whom I have never heard, though I have a message for a certain Umslopogaas, that Macumazahn, Watcher-by-Night, intends to visit him to-morrow, if he will send a guide at the first light to show the best ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... The solitary watcher shuddered as the metallic sounds floated in from the belfries. Although startled by the dropping of the leaf, he closed the volume, leisurely placing it between the pages as a marker—it, so brittle! so yellow! so typical of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... creep at that word 'Grandpapa,' and also felt the colonel's glance. He seemed to take a pleasure in watching every expression of her countenance, and it did, unfortunately, always convey her feelings to the watcher. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... as though to look for something. Then he would run back and flash some bright thing once, as though in answer to the man on the barrow. It seemed to me very curious. I nudged Hugh's arm, and slipped into the shelter of the cave. For a few moments we watched the signaller. Then, suddenly, the watcher at the road-bend came running back from his little tour up the road, waving his arms, and flashing his bright plate as he ran. We saw him spring to his old place on the wall, and jump from his perch into the ditch. He had some shelter there, for we could see his head peeping out above the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... again after they had been milked, the aged step on the creaking stair—old Peggy's, as she knew. It came to her door; it stopped; the person outside listened for a moment, and then lifted the wooden latch, and looked in. The watcher by the bedside arose, and went to her. Susan would have been glad to see Peggy's face once more, but was far too weak to turn, so she ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... turn, keep a half-hour watch, that is, first one would sit up and try to keep awake for half an hour, after which he would waken the next fellow, who at the end of a half hour would rouse the third, and so on, until 1 o'clock, when the sixth watcher would wake up the entire club. Then we would all creep out the back window in the hall, onto the roof of the rear annex of the schoolhouse, and thence climb down a ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... provision of Bees, as I was wont to do. I have misjudged her needs. The Bee, hitherto her favourite dish, tempts her no longer. In vain does the prey buzz close by, an easy capture within the cage: the watcher does not shift from her post, takes no notice of the windfall. She lives exclusively upon maternal devotion, a commendable but unsubstantial fare. And so I see her pining away from day to day, becoming more and more wrinkled. What is the withered ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the intelligence that Florence and Mabel had accompanied him, and would next evening be present at the wedding. Slowly the last rays of a bright October sun faded in the west, giving no sign of the stormy day which was to succeed. Long after midnight a lone watcher sat by the window in Fanny's room, gazing at the stars, which looked so quietly on from their distant homes, and praying, not for herself, but for Dr. Lacey, that he might be happy with her he had chosen. At last, chilled with the night air, she crept ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... on their upward flight must have borne one another an interesting message, for Honor's guardian spirit had noted the happy smile creeping over her face, as in her dreams she saw the noble hero of her waking reverie—and Guy, as he tossed restlessly on his pillow, betrayed to his "silent watcher" a heart overflowing with a new-born love for a creature to whom he had yet spoken no word. And how those angels must have smiled, knowing, as they did, that 'ere another day had passed those two would have met, to recognize in one another ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the second night, the night of Ramazan, The watcher leaning earthward heard the message of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... live on the ground, and not having the power to escape easily, which birds have, and being more persecuted by man, they do not often disport themselves unrestrainedly in his presence; it is difficult to watch any wild animal without the watcher's presence being known or suspected. Nevertheless, their displays are not so rare as we might imagine. I have more than once detected species, with which I was, or imagined myself to be, well acquainted, disporting themselves in a manner that ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... from me into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which there had seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw it, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of my mother's misery. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and best prepared to labor with success. He had taken her from home, from loved scenes, to die amid strangers; and the responsibility of his position made him, in that period of anguish, a most tender nurse and a most faithful watcher. ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... just now, in her super-excited state, in which she felt she was fighting desperately for others, she was acting far above her ordinary capacity; and she was making decisions so swift that they hardly seemed to proceed from conscious thought. So Barlow, vigilant watcher of faces that he was, saw nothing unusual in ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... one brown arm held aloft. If he made any outcry "Brownie" failed to hear it, but apparently he had, for Phil was turning now and hurrying back with short, quick strokes. But before he had covered half the distance separating him from the other, the watcher on shore uttered an involuntary cry of alarm. Joe was ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Watcher, Menu-Amen,* Lord of eternity, creator of everlastingness,* Lord of praises, chief of the Apts (Karnak and Luxor), firm of horns, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... the startled forest resounded with an agonized scream, so piercing and so appallingly human that all the camp sprang awake. The outcry came but once, sounding from some place not far off, near the water's edge, and in the direction toward which the huge serpent had disappeared. Before the watcher had time to tell the others of what he had seen, one of the boatmen discovered the rut left in the soft ground by the reptile. Thereafter Knowlton kept his own counsel, listening to the excited curses of the men and observing their pallor and their nervous scanning of the shadows. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... defiance, and both besiegers and besieged prepared for a stubborn conflict. Suddenly the watcher from the donjon spied a flurry of dust toward the north, out of the distance came hurrying forms, then the sun played on shield and lance and banneret, and the joyful shout of the watchman in the tower rang out: "Rescue! rescue ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... pride, almost to the extent of making him wish that he really could have been the desperado McEachern fancied him. Never in his life before had he sat still under a challenge, and this espionage had been one. Behind the clumsy watcher, he had seen always the self-satisfied figure of McEachern. If there had been anything subtle about the man from Dodson's, he could have forgiven him; but there was not. Years of practise had left Spike with a sort of sixth ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... hooded Night, like a nun from a convent, drew nigh. Rustled her train, yet no spangles were there. But high on her brow, still shone her pale crescent; haloed by bandelets—violet, red, and yellow. So looked the lone watcher through her rainbow-iris; so ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... by her own mother. Toward night these two women whispered much together, going frequently into the passage where several nurses from other wards met them stealthily. As the night drew on, Mrs. Chester sunk into a fitful sleep, and this encouraged the little watcher, who sat gazing wistfully on her face, scarcely daring to move, though the noise around was unabated. The hours crept on, and darkness gathered over those pauper-couches. Mary looked up through the gloom, and saw her mother creeping softly ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... did not take the additional precaution this time of alternating as watcher and guard. They stood together at the window, and as they saw Mrs. Graham open the door they moved quickly to the window next toward the rear. By the time they reached it, ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... short time, that seemed an age to the helpless watcher, the murderer rose and turned his attention to another dead man, but passing him, came towards Miles, whose spirit turned for one moment to God in an agonising prayer for help. The help came in the form of revived courage. Calm, cool, firm self-possession seemed to overbear all other feelings. ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... when all things have repose, O lonely watcher of the skies, Do you hear the night wind and the sighs Of harps playing unto Love to unclose The pale gates ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... his post with no particular anxiety. Arrived there his uneasiness seemed to revive. The shorter of the two strangers had lagged behind his comrade, and the watcher observed, that he was carrying on a close and earnest inspection of the ground ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... on, whatever the weather; and fearing the young woodpecker might select this day to make his entry into the big world, his faithful watcher donned rainy-day costume, and went out to assist in the operation. The storm did not beat upon his side of the tree, and the youngster still hung out of his hole in the trunk, calling and crying, apparently without the least intention ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... gentleness; the pleasant curves and dimples of mouth and chin had hardened into a sort of determination; even her slight, graceful figure seemed to assume a certain squareness which betokened her resolve to act as her lover would have acted were he the watcher from the ship and she the prisoner pent behind that screen of ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... against such cold as reigned to-day. The man might be frozen ere an officer perceived him. Moreover, as Ivan looked again, something in the recumbent figure suggested the abandon rather of despair than of debauchery.—An instant's hesitation. Then the watcher caught up his own fur coat and cap, ran from the rooms, and, a moment later, was bending over the lonely figure and placing a friendly hand upon ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... prevent the loss of taws one of us was sent ahead to watch for their coming and listen for the faint thud of their fall, while the other three drove from the tee. Then the three came forward while the watcher went back to drive, and I am sorry to say that our keenness in those days led us to disregard certain principles of the sportsman's code of honour which we appreciated better as we grew up. What I mean is that the ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... and sunset with complacency—a cabby, one would venture, without a care in the world and serene in the assurance of a generous pour-boire when he lost his fare. But as for the latter, she made no move; the door of the cab remained closed,—like its occupant's mind, a mystery to the watcher. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... her—give her what she has a right to claim, he ought . . . . Only at present the prospect seems good . . . . He ought of course to wait. Well, the value of the stock I hold has doubled, and it increases. I am a careful watcher of the market. I have friends—brokers and railway Directors. I can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was not surprised; she had surely been waiting for him. They might have agreed long ago to meet here at this hour, and that was why the monk was in such haste. The kiss lasted long. Perhaps only a minute by the watch, but a thousand years of torment to the jealous watcher. This endless time sufficed for her inflamed imagination to paint the picture of the previous moments. Yes, without doubt, here waited for him this maiden with mourning, despairing, broken heart. She waited for her former lover in monk's cowl, who now ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... see that the boy had the good judgment to draw the sash down, as soon as he was in the room. What he would discover there the watcher had no idea. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... serious. Would she, as the darky had affirmed, leave when the tide was once more at its full? Her lying in the outer, instead of in the inner harbor, seemed significant. Time passed; the person on the platform regained the deck and disappeared. In the bushes the watcher ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... was one square solitary tower, in which, day and night, a watcher was stationed. Fall went to the telephone and took down the receiver. He spoke a few words and listened, then he hung up the receiver ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... pole as if he were used to it. In a few minutes the watcher below could barely make him out in the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington |
