"Ominously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before one o'clock, the principal electrified the assembled students by saying, in a voice that was ominously quiet and cool: ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... dropped, and Malcolm shook his head ominously when Ronald acknowledged to him that his suspicions were so far right that none of the officers had sent the men to him. The next day, as the regiment was passing through a thick wood, and Ronald was riding with Captain ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... must tell you, for I want to be absolutely honest." So Charlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the Park. "I don't want to pretend, and I can't pretend a moment longer. You may think of me what you will, but I don't care. I knew I shouldn't and I find now how little. I came back for this. Not really for anything else. For this," she repeated ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... is a vigorous calling down. Well, that ought not to be so difficult!" and the dark eyes snapped ominously. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... a thunderclap, a half-dozen voices somewhere in the Quad gave the yell. Craig stopped speaking and looked at the class, who gazed back at him. A man with his back to the windows stood up and looked out. The seats creaked ominously. Then, like grass after a breeze, the whole class rose and craned necks at ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... favor was Googoo. That aristocratic bull-pup was still irreconcilably hostile. When Albert attempted to pet him he appeared to be planning to devour the caressing hand, and when rebuked by his mistress retired beneath a davenport, growling ominously. Even when ignominiously expelled from the room he growled and cast longing backward glances at the Speranza ankles. No, Googoo did not dissemble; Albert was perfectly sure of his standing in ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... which had been for some time risen, presented a strange and alarming aspect. She seemed red as blood; and directly across her centre there went a black bar—a bar so ominously and intensely black, that it was impossible to look upon it without experiencing something like what one might be supposed to feel in the presence of a supernatural appearance; at the performance of some magic or unnatural rite, where the sorcerer, by ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... and Hope entered, followed by Bud Haines. The girl's head was high; her cheeks were red; her eyes glittered ominously. ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... unpacked trail kept him two days behind all the way to Forty Mile. And here the weather favored. It was time for a big cold snap, and he gambled on it, cutting down the weight of grub for dogs and men. The men of Forty Mile shook their heads ominously, and demanded to know what he would do if the snow ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... were flashing, and her mouth was twitching ominously. She was a jolly enough fair-weather comrade, but she could be uncommonly ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... nor Vera joined. Paulina Karpovna might be eccentric, but that did not excuse either the loonish amusement of the people assembled or the old man's attacks. Raisky remained gloomily silent, and shifted his feet ominously. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... talk very much more on their way to Upper Woburn Place. They found Ethel and Oliver standing on the steps of Mr. Brooke's house, evidently waiting for the truants. It struck Lesley as she came up that Oliver Trent's brow was ominously dark, and that Ethel's pretty, saucy face wore an expression of something ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a dull flush surged up under the tan of the girl's cheeks, and her eyes sparkled ominously. Then she returned to her rocker ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... again to set the world aghast as the mob of La Commune. As we stood disconcerted by their intent gaze, they put their heads together and talked in low and rapid tones; then their spokesman approached us, a man of polite bearing but ominously stern. He was not a clumsy fellow, but darkly forceful and direct, a man capable of a quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was the grim tiger in their eyes and from the soft paw the swift protrusion of the cruel claw. One thought of the wild revolutionary song, "Ca ca, ca ira, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... shall not Devils laugh! The curate deliberates. The black satin bunch ceases to simmer. He in her shadow changes from a beaming cock-robin to an inquisitive sparrow. Eyes multiply questions: lips have no reply. Time ominously shakes his chain, and in the pause a sound of mockery stings ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Knowing this and also knowing the general efficiency of England's public servants and system, I was rather loath to stick my head into it. That penalty for being caught—seven years' penal servitude—loomed ominously, for penal servitude in England is plain hell. Also, I knew that although no passports are required in England, they still know pretty well what is going on, especially in regard to foreigners. It is easy to get into England, but deuced hard ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... friend, who was the engineer of the Newfoundland cable, showed great presence of mind, and to his coolness and skill, I think, is due the remedying of the evil. By rope stoppers the cable was at length brought to a standstill, and it strained most ominously, perspiring at every part great tar drops. But it held together long enough to put the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... drew herself up and regarded him with sparkling eyes. One small foot began to tap the floor ominously. Then she broke into a ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... look on. All women will admit that; all men swear to it!" said La Corriveau, in a harsh voice that grated ominously, like the door of hell which she was opening with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... diminished number of his men, and met the ill-suppressed groans and lamentations of those who had, at the first alarm of the English, sought shelter and protection in the castle; their ill-suppressed entreaties that he would struggle no longer against such odds grated harshly and ominously on his ear; but sternly he turned from them to the men-at-arms, and in their steadfast bravery and joyous acclamations found some ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... employed in the conquest and the subsequent behavior of the conquerors were true to the old Spanish nature, so succinctly characterized by a plain-spoken Englishman of Mary's reign, when the war-cry of Castile encircled the globe and even hovered ominously near the "sceptered isle," when in the intoxication of power character stands out so sharply defined: "They be verye wyse and politicke, and can, thorowe ther wysdome, reform and brydell theyr owne natures for a tyme, and applye ther conditions ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... but professing to have forgotten the words. The bridegroom swallowed the bait with avidity. "Why," said he, "they begin with 'The 'orn of the 'unter is 'eard on the 'ill.'" F.B. stroked his Dundrearies while his dark eyes twinkled. The bride's eyes flashed ominously, but there seemed to be nothing she ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... in front of the frightened pony lay coiled a gigantic rattlesnake, its ugly head and tail raised and its rattles singing ominously. Two more steps and the pony would ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... for her sanguine anticipation of freedom seemed useless and wasted. Her confidence was no longer fatuous. He admitted in entirety the truth of her last words. If all Israel—nay, if but part, if but its leaders were as able and determined as she, did Meneptah guess his peril? Was not Egypt most ominously menaced? He remembered that he had been amused at his father's perturbation over the Israelitish unrest, but he vindicated Mentu then and there. Furthermore, if all Israel were like unto her, what heinous injustice had been perpetrated upon an able ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... give the whole thing away. If he didn't want to they'd make him come through if they laid their eyes on him. They've got more tricks than a Chinese mandarin to make a man talk. Stands to reason he'll tell 'em. If he can talk when they git here," he added ominously, standing half-way between the table and the door to the corridor, his hand opening and closing suggestively. "The crew'd settle his hash if I didn't. They ain't fools. They know what's ahead of 'em in Japan. You, Rainey, git busy with that log. That gunboat'll have a boat alongside this ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... sad, she seemed to darken his mind with the wings that beat ominously. He had a right to liberty, to break the chain, because he was the stronger. He had spent his life in the struggle for glory, and glory was a delusion, if it brought only cold respect from his fellows, if it could not be exchanged ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... eager to put its phrases to the test of action. It gives and takes hard blows,—aims not only to be upright in deed, but downright in word,—silences with a "Thus saith the Lord" all palliations of convenient sins,—scowls ominously at every attempt to reconcile the old feud between the right and the expedient and make them socially shake hands,—and when cant taints the air, clears it with good wholesome rage and execration. On the virtues of this stubborn conscientiousness it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... one. To-day's promised to be a far worse one, and then laughed at us as a proper cosmic joke. The wind, during the night, had so eased that by nine in the morning we had all our topgallant-sails set. By ten we were rolling in a dead calm. By eleven the stuff began making up ominously in the south'ard. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... her that he has. A pause in the conversation with his father has enabled him to hear everything. Barbara has just time to note that his brow is black and his lips ominously compressed before she sees him advance toward ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... landscape, which had been dressed like a prodigal, in purple and gold, now appeared like a Quaker, in dusky grey; and the trees by the road-side grew black as undertakers or physicians, and, bending their solemn heads to each other, whispered ominously among themselves; and the mists hung on the common; and the cottage lights went out one by one; and the earth and heaven grew black, but for some twinkling useless stars, which freckled the ebon countenance of the latter; and the air grew colder; and about two o'clock the moon appeared, a dismal ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... de l'Elysee-des-Beaux-Arts I met crowds of people, some lying on the ground; here a battalion standing at ease but ready to march; and at the entrance of the Rue Blanche and the Rue Fontaine were some stones, ominously posed one on the other, indicating symptoms of a barricade. In the Rue des Abbesses I counted three cannons and a mitrailleuse, menacing the Rue des Martyrs. In the Rue des Acacias, a man had been arrested, and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... was dark as pitch. I had left Nokomee asleep in her chamber. I had avoided Holaf, who still kept a kind of amused watch over my activities, and I was free. Free to explore that weird city of plodding lives, of strange unexplained sounds, of ominously ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... mouth and drained it to the very dregs. Then he stretched his long arm up to the shelf, and took down another. He was now in a better humour, and began to talk of all sorts of things. But every time he laughed, Eilert felt queer, for the Draug's mouth gaped ominously wide, and showed a greenish pointed row of teeth, with a long interval between each tooth, so that they resembled ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... the bare top of the rock, with ten thousand circling birds screaming to her in the air above, and with two men creeping up to her with a big black camera that clicked ominously. She let the multitude scream, and with threatening beak watched the two men come on. A motherless baby, spying her, ran down the rock squealing for his life. She spread a wing, put her bill behind him and shoved him quickly in out of sight with her own baby. The man with the camera saw the act, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... errand. As he mentioned Morton Bassett's name the huge editor's face grew blank for a moment; then he was shaken with mirth that passed from faint quivers until his whole frame was convulsed. His rickety chair trembled and rattled ominously. It was noiseless laughter so far as any vocal manifestations were concerned; but it shook the gigantic editor as though he were a mould of jelly. He closed his eyes, but otherwise his fat face ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Chicago's "toughs," who would have hooted and jeered, perhaps, at sight of polished brasses and natty uniforms, recoil bewildered before this gang of silent and disciplined "jay-hawkers." Steadily, silently, ominously, the train rolls along. As it is rounding a curve several ugly-looking fellows are seen running at speed towards the switch-lever at the next street-crossing. Excitedly the railway man clutches Drummond's elbow and points. Two troopers ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... and fell again into silence. To all appearances, he was willing to wait here indefinitely, forgetful of the pail of milk, toward which the sun was now creeping ominously close. The way back home seemed long and weary at that moment. His lip drooped still more laxly, as he sat looking ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... fingers through his hair, in all directions; his features fidgetting and distorting themselves ominously, while ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... denied that the situation was critical in the extreme. Long-headed diplomatists of the conservative school shook their heads ominously. They hinted that there might be only too much truth in the current Catholic saying that the Medici family was destined to be fatal to Christendom. Under Leo the Tenth Germany was lost to the papacy, under Clement the Eighth England had ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... while he closed the door that shut this madman from his sight, he longed and yet dreaded to hear his Majesty's first words. Should he—had he time to—rush forth and spread abroad the news of Gregoriev's fall, before the broken man should issue from that ominously quiet room? Fortunately for himself, the master of ceremonies was hardly of an adventurous disposition. He cogitated the matter till he felt it too late to perform the errand and get back in time to see Gregoriev's expression as he emerged from the Presence. Nevertheless, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... with her hand laid beseechingly on his arm, she looked trustfully into his eyes. Under her glance his face changed ominously, and a dark look came into ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... other,—the one the head, the other the heart of Italy. As head and heart made up the perfect life, so death was not complete until Heaven welcomed both. It seemed also strange, that on the night after Mrs. Browning's decease an unexpected comet should glare ominously out of the sky. For the moment we were superstitious, and believed in it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... I was determined to treat you honourably, as you came to me through a friend of Miss Gurney's. But for her, you would have gone where your contemporaries go—into the waste-paper basket. They serve no purpose—luminous or otherwise." He chuckled ominously. "I had the knife ready for you. But if you want to know why I paused in the deed of destruction, it was because I was fascinated, positively fascinated by the abominations of your illustrator. And so, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... towards her. His audacity, if it had been a finer courage, would have been splendid, and as it was she helplessly obeyed him, as if she were his patient, and must do so. "If I were superstitious I should say that you receive me ominously," he said, fixing his gray ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ominously, like a great pigeon, purple and congested with rage. Strutting to the new-comer, he glared insolently up ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... she first ogled the superscription, and then the seal, very ominously, and twice made as if she would have broken the missive open, but her heart seemed as often to fail her. At length she laid it down—heaved a long deep sigh—took off her spectacles, which appeared dim—wiped them, put them on again, and making a sudden effort, tore open the letter, read it hastily ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... stranger approached the doorway to the mill. The rain was falling in blinding sheets. Ominously the thunder roared. Vivid flashes of lightning shot the heavens. The watchman, coming suddenly from the doorway, his hat brim pulled low over his eyes, passed within a couple of paces of ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... head ominously. "He is very bad, sir; badder than ever, I do think. She sits up wi' him best part ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... passion had not yet struck him, he could thus afford to be amused at the ebullitions of jealousy that rolled so ominously into the young hearts of the chums. "Black as thunderclouds were their faces," he said, "as they saw these sweet young ladies, whom they in their callow affections would already wholly monopolise, kissed by a dozen ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... Diavolo called upon me. Needless to say he found me in the seventh heaven. I had been walking about the house, unable to settle to anything, and when I heard he had come I thought it was to congratulate me, and I hurried down; but the first glimpse of his face caused my heart to contract ominously. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the road. Others clutched their bodies, and the blood drained between their fingers. One dropped dead at my feet. I came home with that in my mind; and the next sunrise, hearing unusual sounds outside, I lifted the blind to a dawn which was cold and ominously scarlet behind skeleton trees. I saw beneath the trees a company of my young neighbours, already in khaki, getting used to the harshness of sergeants, and to the routine of those implacable circumstances which would take them to ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual and imparted to him by angelical ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that potent cordial which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Syndic's face, grey a moment before, was dangerously suffused with blood. The cane that had inflicted the bruise Louis still wore across his visage, quivered ominously. Public as the bridge was, open to obloquy and remark as an assault must lay him, Blondel was within an inch of striking the lad again. "Well? Well?" he repeated. "Is that all ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Agatha smiling; calmly and prepared to give up her morning to the discussion of some knotty point in dress or infantile education. But she soon perceived that Emma's pretty face was too ominously important for anything short of that gravest interest of feminine life—matrimony; or ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... supplied by troops of trumpeting elephants, tigers with tails lashing, bloated serpents dangling ominously from the overhanging tree branches, while bands of lean and angular monkeys jabbered and ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the farmer who was seeking him and who just then ominously walked across to where Henchard was standing, and he looked into the room and at her. "I like staying; but I fear I must go!" he said. "Business ought not to be neglected, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... men; moreover, that great power of self-compression which gives to hypocrites time to reflect, and gather themselves up to take a spring. He guessed that Fouquet was going to meet the blow he was about to deal him. His eyes glittered ominously. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... finish, and while my fingers wrought at the frame, my ears regaled themselves with listening to the crescendos and cadences of a voice haranguing in the neighbouring classe, in tones that waxed momentarily more unquiet, more ominously varied. There was a good strong partition-wall between me and the gathering storm, as well as a facile means of flight through the glass-door to the court, in case it swept this way; so I am afraid I derived more amusement than alarm from these thickening symptoms. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and young, squaws and papooses, every one deserted the little settlement by the river and went in wild haste up the eastward hills to look upon this strange wonder. It was a lowering day with overcast skies and water of a sullen gray and with ominously little wind. In speechless wonder the Indians stood gazing, for there indeed were three white-sailed ships, moving slowly before the lazy breeze, stanch little fishing vessels of English build, come to see whether this unexplored ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... long minute. Stella's blue eyes, which were actually more staring than pretty, began to cloud ominously. Instinctively she sensed that Janice was not with ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... not very long before the boys, who had mounted aloft with their glass to watch the deck of the foe, were able to announce that boats were being manned for lowering, and the tortuous nature of the channel now began to lead the schooner ominously near; but both the skipper and the mate were of opinion that at the rate they were sailing they would be able to evade ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... former was the name of a shepherd's dog, and the latter was the name of the cat belonging to an old woman who occupied a small cottage adjoining to the tower. Both the names sounded strangely and ominously in the ears of the President, and sorely did he tax his wits as to what they implied. Every day he heard them, and every time he heard them he meditated more and more as to the species of beings they denominated. Still remaining in the belief that he was in the hands of evil powers, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... It was, 'I could not dream, my dear Arthur,' et-cetera. On the second day he was visibly aggravated. It was, 'But, my dear Arthur, confess now, was it not I who offered you the Lancashire relish first?' On the third day he was ominously calm. It was, 'You had better help yourself to the Lancashire relish, Arthur.' On the fourth day he was frankly fierce. It was, 'By heaven, Arthur, if you don't take some Lancashire relish...." And the only words in Arthur's vocabulary all that time wore, 'After you! After you!' On the fifth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... attempted to kill her, so that she should not be able to marry!' And I concluded with these words: 'Now, monsieur, you have only to tell me in confidence the name of the murderer!'—The words I had uttered must have struck him ominously, for when I turned my eyes on him, I saw that his face was haggard, the perspiration standing on his forehead, and terror showing in ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... meet him," said the Southerner ominously, "on my word of honor—" "Wait a moment," broke in the other sharply. "Don't commit yourself until you've heard me. Just around the corner from here is a cuartel. It isn't a nice clean jail like ours at home. Fleas are ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the lasso impinged upon the granite, small particles were breaking and falling ominously. Scarcely daring to breathe, as she felt how the man was toiling up from the maw of the chasm, Beth could not bear to look where he must ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... shake his head ominously and his countenance become more and more depressed, this true friend tried to brighten him up a bit by feigning to take deep interest in a subject that to him was absolutely the driest ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him, at the sky ominously clouded, at the valley below, already deepening into shadow; and, doing so, suddenly he heard ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... luncheon?" he demanded. Matt nodded. "Tell him to come in here. I want to see him," Cappy continued ominously. "And you ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... scarcely read the mysterious billet than I felt that I had done wrong. I was humbled and abashed in my own eyes, and the riddle appeared as difficult of solution as ever. My uncle's voice sounded as ominously in my ears as the stroke of a death-bell, as he called me sharply by name. Hastily refolding the note, I went into his study, and placed it on the table before him, with an averted glance and trembling hand. I dreaded lest his keen, clear eye should read guilt in my conscious face. Fortunately for ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... pall—seemed enveloping, smothering her. No faintest breath of air stirred the piny needles above her, nor ruffled the surface of the river, whose black waters, far below, flowed broad and deep and silent—smoothly—like a river of oil. Ominously hushed, secretive, it slipped out of the motionless dark. Silently portentous, it faded again into the dark, the mysterious half-dark, where the gradually deepening twilight blended the distance into the enshrouding ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... fare, excessive toil, and broken sleep were telling ominously on the strength of the garrison when, on the ninth of May, Murray, as he sat pondering over the fire at his quarters in St. Louis Street, was interrupted by an officer who came to tell him that there was a ship-of-war in the Basin beating up towards the town. Murray started from his revery, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... a Southern Brigadier General on a little sorrel horse had barred the way. His bulging forehead with its sombre blue eyes hung ominously over the pommel ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... NOT croak ominously from the battlements as he entered. And the housekeeper, although neither "stately" nor "tall," nor full of reminiscences of "his late lordship, the present Earl's father," was very sensible and practical. The Barbarian could, of course, have his choice of rooms—but—she ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... push on. As soon as the carters heard we were thus left helpless a panic seized them, and it was with great difficulty they could be persuaded to harness their animals. All this time the crowd had been becoming more dense, as we could see through the cracks of the gate, and were ominously quiet. Hints had been given us of coming danger, but that was all; none spoke of what all felt,—that we were probably going to ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... light and the crackle of the tindery fuel, Miss Bab refilled her apron, and fed the fire till the chimney began to rumble ominously, sparks to fly out at the top, and soot and swallows' nests to come tumbling down upon the hearth. Then, scared at what she had done, the little mischief-maker hastily buried her fire, swept up the rubbish, and ran off, thinking ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... well now, with rosy love in their sky; but delays are dangerous," said some people, shaking their heads ominously. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... as he was not used to opposition. For a moment his tawny moustache worked ominously, but he reflected, "For Danusia's sake!" and restrained himself. Moreover, Zbyszko, who wanted above all things that the conversation might be concluded as soon as possible, and felt sure that Jurand would repeat it to ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... for a costume which, he ventured to think, was as suitable as any other for a gentleman at that hour of the morning, he bade them be seated and listened to what the speaker had to say—blinking ominously the while through his spectacles, like an owl with the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... arrives; the first bell rings; locks, bolts, and bars clank in ungrateful medley; rumbling voices are heard within the hollow-sounding aisles; whispers from above chime ominously with the dull shuffle rumbling from below. "Seven more cases,—how it rages!" grumbles a monotonous voice, and the gate opens at the warden's touch. "Who's here?" he demands, with stern countenance unchanged, as he shrugs his formidable shoulders. "I see, (he continues, quickly), you ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... availing himself of the opportune moment, dealt the fatal blow. The minister fell, bedewing with his blood the steps at the very threshold of the legislative chamber. As the details of the murder were related to the members, they remained ominously silent. Not one of them uttered a word in condemnation of this monstrous crime. They proceeded at once to the business of the day. Although in the open space at the foot of the stairs which led to the assembly hall the civic guard was stationed in arms, nobody arrested, or showed ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... doing this, they firmly believed they were placing all this paper to be had out of the reach of Mr. Little, who would be ruined by being unable to deliver the stock at the time, and in the quantities agreed upon. His friends shook their heads ominously, and declared that his enemies had been "one too many" for him this time; but the "Great Bear," as he was called, kept his own counsel. When the day for the delivery of the stock arrived, his enemies were jubilant, and all Wall street was in ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... more slowly, his eyes following her as she vanished, then turning to me with a rather pitiful apprehension—a look like that I remember to have seen (some hundreds of years ago) on the face of a freshman, glancing up from his book to find his doorway ominously filling ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... was given at less than a score of years, were the two fatigued and weary travellers who stood guarding a small heap of gloves, books, handkerchiefs, and shawls? Two of the officials held up the passports to us, pointed to the blank page, shook their heads ominously; the third took the passports, put them into his vest pocket, buttoned up his coat, and motioned ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... of timber that I had seen since crossing the Zoji La. Lower down there were a few more, then stunted specimens of the pencil cedar, and the mountains began to show a shade of green on their lower slopes. Butterflies appeared also, and a vulture, a grand bird on the wing, hovered ominously over us for some miles, and was succeeded by an equally ominous raven. On the excellent bridle-track cut on the face of the precipices which overhang the Bhaga, there is in nine miles only one spot in which it is possible ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... room. When she did so the two younger girls looked at their elder sister. Betty's face was very white, and her chest was working ominously. ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... witnesses, they can make a better case of it than the second mate did. I spoke to Milne after breakfast, and told him that he should be above such nonsense, and that as an officer he ought to set the men a better example. He shook his weatherbeaten head ominously, but answered with characteristic caution, "Mebbe aye, mebbe na, Doctor," he said; "I didna ca' it a ghaist. I canna' say I preen my faith in sea-bogles an' the like, though there's a mony as claims to ha' seen a' that and waur. I'm no easy feared, but maybe your ain bluid would run a bit cauld, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... elevator in commission in the great gloomy rotunda of the office building, and the watchman who ran her up made a terrible noise shutting the gate after he had let her out on the fifteenth floor. The dim marble corridor echoed her footfalls ominously, and when she reached the door to his outer office and tried it, she found it locked. The next door down the corridor was the one that led directly into his private office, and here the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... continued. Highways were blocked up, while roads less frequented were rendered wholly impassable. The oldest inhabitants of Oakland had "never seen the like before," and they shook their gray heads ominously as over and adown the New England mountains the howling wind swept furiously, now shrieking exultingly as one by one the huge forest trees bent before its power, and again dying away in a low, sad wail, as it shook the casement of some low-roofed ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... But the events of that past time, when her father's merciless conduct had driven her out of his house, returned ominously to her memory. She said to herself: "Is a day coming when I shall leave him again?" It was coming—and she ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... Atheistic Government (near two centuries now, since the blessed restoration of his Sacred Majesty, and Defender of the Faith, Charles Second), I reckon that we have pretty well exhausted what of 'firm earth' there was for us to march on;—and are now, very ominously, shuddering, reeling, and let us hope trying to recoil, on the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Racey, in a voice ominously calm and level, "if you don't shut yore trap I'll shore wrastle you down ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... terrible siege of '71, when the last German was gone, and our houses had breasted the ordeal of the Commune, I was sent to the South. The Superior thought my cheeks were ominously hollow, and suspected threats of consumption in my cough. So I was to go to the Mediterranean, and try its milder air. I liked the change. Paris, with its gloss of noisy gayety and its substance of sceptical heartlessness, was repugnant to me. Perhaps ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... was beginning again. Unwillingly the remembrance of the outer world beat back into Billy's mind. Unhappily he became aware that the room appeared blackened with young men in evening clothes, staring ominously his way. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... fate's decree; Then shall your name in adamant be writ, In records that defy the tooth of time, By nations sav'd, resounding your applause. While deep beyond your monument's proud base, In black oblivion's kennel, shall be trod Their execrable names, who, high in power, And deep in guilt, most ominously shine, (The meteors of the state!) give vice her head, To license lewd let loose the public rein; Quench every spark of conscience in the land, And triumph in the profligate's applause: Or who to the first bidder sell their souls, Their ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... himself forced to write to Mr. Cox demanding a cheque for thirty-five pounds, to meet Saturday's treasury and the current expenses of the following week. The cheque arrived, but the letter that came with it read very ominously ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... listen with tacit approval. "Well, well," answered the duke, carelessly, "all my servants are alike to me. You may dine at one table, or at twenty, if you can so arrange it. But whatever the number"—here his voice rose ominously, and his eye flashed with anger—"you, sirrah, shall dine at the lowest!" The great question of the "tables" was crushed. Sometimes—after the fashion of Haroun al Raschid, though not in disguise—he would steal down quietly and unperceived, through the out-of-the-way holes ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for?" "Told you so..." "Bloomin' shame..."—"We've got to say somethink about that," screeched Donkin from the rear.—"Never mind, Jim—we will see you righted," cried several together. An elderly seaman stepped to the front. "D'ye mean to say, sir," he asked, ominously, "that a sick chap ain't allowed to get well in this 'ere hooker?" Behind him Donkin whispered excitedly amongst a staring crowd where no one spared him a glance, but Captain Allistoun shook a forefinger at the angry ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... reign was ominously signalised by the loss of the frontier fortresses Mudkal and Raichur. Firishtah[265] states that the Adil Shah had, some time before the death of Krishna Deva, made preparations to recover possession of ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... be obeyed. So off went the cutter, every man armed to the teeth, the lieutenant-commanding having secret instructions, and the midshipmen attending looking ominously wise, though, in truth, they could not tell what ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... considered Mrs. Field a woman of the same rigid circumspectness of attitude, and when she found Jennie calling there she was outwardly calm but inwardly irritated. "This is Mrs. Kane, Mrs. Baker," said Mrs. Field, introducing her guests with a smiling countenance. Mrs. Baker looked at Jennie ominously. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... rung loudly enough—so—again, a little louder, did he venture to ring. Again he waited. There seemed something threatening in the great brass plate on the door, out of which "QUIRK, GAMMON, AND SNAP" appeared to look at him ominously. While he thought of it, by the way, there was something very serious and stern in all their faces—he wondered that he had not noticed it before. What a drunken beast he had been to go on in their presence as he had! thought he; then Huckaback's image flitted across his disturbed fancy. "Ah!" ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... riding up were strangers in those parts; they were ominously accoutred and they spoke words that old Felice had never heard before. Yes, as you have already guessed, they were German cavalry-men. A battle was impending, and they needed ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... submarine lost trim, and the deck tilted ominously. In the face of material danger—danger from a source he understood—the commander became cool ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... are, doubtless, but too faithful witnesses; this is the most terrible of all my great troubles! This fatal blow completely overwhelms me! When suspicions raged within me, it was Heaven itself, vaguely but ominously foretelling ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... way out, wagging his head and growling ominously. "There's only one more miracle that CAN happen," he said to me, over his shoulder. "The next thing you'll do, Mr. Franklin, will be to pay me back that seven-and-sixpence you borrowed of me when ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... by the Supervisor's casual tone; there was something ominously calm in his manner, something which expressed an almost dangerous interest in ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... standpoint, the French warfare in Spain appeared utterly disastrous.[37] Regiments melted away like ice before an April sun; desertions became ominously numerous, and disease laid thousands low. Guerrilla warfare demoralized the regular forces. The new conscripts at first showed a noisy zeal, but they had been torn too young from their home nurture, and had neither strength nor power of resistance. The troops from vassal kingdoms ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... came, A moment paused,—then, like a flash of flame, The stag in splendor dawned upon his sight, And sniffed the crystal air with keen delight. Upon the morning breeze the piercing twang Of taut-drawn bowstring ominously rang, While with a moan the noble creature sank In pain and terror on the reedy bank. Beneath a haughty hemlock's spicy shade The hero stanched the wound his shaft had made; With leathern thong the stag's slight limbs he bound, And striding ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... mammoth saw with huge teeth, irregular, sharp. The power of old-time volcanoes made all of that land, and those sharp saw-teeth, pointing toward the sky, are the destroyers of long ago, cold and dead now, but telling ominously of the ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... time for Winter fires. I wonder what set it going," said Jowett, shaking his head ominously. "Something wrong with the furnace, I s'pose," returned Osterhaut. "Probably trying the first heatup ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Sahvah," he said anxiously as he saw her lying so ominously still on the bed, "you haf not been trying to push somevon across de top of Lake Erie, haf you?" Sahwah smiled faintly. A ray of sunlight seemed to have entered the room with the doctor, also a gust of wind. He had thrown his hat right into a bouquet ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... Lord Saxthorpe," Mr. Fentolin declared smoothly. "All the same, this Hague Conference is a most mysterious affair. The papers this morning are ominously silent about the fleet. From the tangle of messages we have picked up, I should say, without a doubt, that some form of mobilisation is going on in the North Sea. If Lady Saxthorpe thinks it warm enough, shall we take our coffee ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had always used his flash light which was now so much needed and out of commission. The cellar was large, running under the whole house, with heavy rafters and looming coal pits. A scurrying rat started a few lumps of coal in the slide, and a cobwebby rope hung ominously from one cross beam, giving him a passing shudder. It seemed as if the spirit of the past had arisen to challenge his entrance thus. He took a few steps forward toward a dim staircase he sighted at the farther end, and then a sudden noise ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... superscribed with Detur meliori, it should never be forgotten, is so far from having any pacific tendencies, that originally, according to the eldest of Greek fables, it was [Greek: Eris], Eris, the goddess of dissension, no peace-making divinity, who threw upon a wedding-table the fatal apple thus ominously labelled. Meliori! in that one word went to wreck the harmony of the company. But for France, for the famous kingdom of the Fleur-de-lys, for the first-born child of Christianity, always so prone by her gentry to this sword-right, Nature herself had been silenced through a long millennium by ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that, the doctor had put Daisy in her chair, and with Logan at the other end of it, had set off to reach shelter. It grew very dark; and it was sultrily still in the woods. Not a leaf trembled on its stem. The steps of the two chair-bearers sounded ominously in the entire hush of everything. The gloom still deepened. The doctor and Logan with swift, steady strides carried the chair along at a goodly rate; not as it had come in the morning. In the midst ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... dwelling-place, naturally resented his eviction. Public disapproval was excited by the summary commandeering of a well-known official residence; and when, following upon their keeper's ejection, the stag-hounds and hare-coursers were removed from the Jaegerhaus, the Stuttgarters murmured ominously. It had long been a highly prized privilege of the townsfolk to repair, each Sunday and Feast-day, to view the hounds—in fact, this custom had become one of their social entertainments. The burghers and their families ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and high overhead they heard the tree-tops creak ominously. Once in a while a tree branch would unload itself, sending down a great mass of snow on their heads. But they pushed on, determined to rest no more until the others of the ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... put the child abruptly aside, and leaving valise and horse at the Bachelors' Quarters, walked with determined steps and frowning visage down the track to the veranda. There, his wife was standing, very pale, very erect, her eyes glittering ominously. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Nowshera had mutinied and broken open the magazine. The military force in the Peshawar valley had been considerably weakened by the withdrawal of the 27th Foot and Corps of Guides; it was evident that disaffection was rapidly spreading, and what was still more alarming was the ominously restless feelings amongst the principal tribes on the frontier. Nicholson encountered considerable difficulty in raising local levies, and there was a general unwillingness to enlist. Our disasters in Kabul in 1841-42 ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... surprise, and his face darkened ominously. He scanned the desk on which he remembered placing his own twenty-dollar bill, and it was ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... voice, said: 'The prayers of the congregation are earnestly sought for His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, who is now most seriously ill.' This was on December the tenth. For the next few days the Prince hovered between life and death. The crisis came on the fourteenth, which, ominously enough, was the anniversary of the death of the Prince Consort. But, whilst the superstitious shook their heads, the Princess clung desperately and believingly to the hope that the text had brought her. And that day, ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... thank him for the wish, but suddenly found I could not control my voice, so lay there in silence and with throat contracted, looking at this man whose marred young life lay all behind him, and whose future, even to me, lowered strangely and ominously veiled. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... brought an ashen, drawn look to the face of the Old Senior Surgeon, and a tired-out droop to his shoulders and eyes. She began to notice that the nurses eyed him pityingly whenever he came into the ward, and the house surgeon shook his head ominously. She wondered what it meant; she wondered more when he came at last to remind her of ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... entered the judgment-hall. Nilus the treasurer showed him to the governor's raised seat, but an overpowering bashfulness kept him from taking this position of honor. It was with a burning brow, and looks so ominously dark that the assembly gazed at him with timid astonishment, that he opened the proceedings with a few broken sentences. He himself scarcely knew what he was saying, and heard his own voice as vaguely as though ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... almost as great as its brilliancy, I should like to say a word, and that word, I confess, one of uncompromising hostility. There are a great many things which might be said against the spirit of the Rubaiyat, and against its prodigious influence. But one matter of indictment towers ominously above the rest—a genuine disgrace to it, a genuine calamity to us. This is the terrible blow that this great poem has struck against sociability and the joy of life. Some one called Omar "the sad, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... been rank ingratitude in one who so very unequivocally got his bread by them. About this time, his remarks on the subject of taxation, however, were singularly caustic, and well applied. He railed at the public debt, as a public curse, and ominously predicted the dissolution of society, in consequence of the burdens and incumbrances it was hourly accumulating on the already overloaded ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... rolled ominously. Siegmund bent to kiss Sieglinde and disappeared in the blackness of the storm. All the heavens and earth spoke of war and death. The air grew thick with vapours, and lightning cleft the hills. Siegmund ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Dilke's reading went on with feverish energy. The dangerous rival was closely watched. "Shee has been sitting up till ominously late hours for some nights past. His father came up last night and left again to-night, but I fear he did not make his son waste much time." The competitors were straining then for a college law prize, but the letter goes on ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... said ominously. "I want to look at it. I haven't got it all yet. And I'll return it ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Saturday evening, owing to the exceptionally large number awaiting their turn in the church. On reaching home about half-past eight on a spring evening, she became aware of her father standing in the dusk at the garden gate, holding an ominously slender walking-stick in his hand. With this he proceeded to deal several far from gentle strokes upon the girl's shoulders, regardless of ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... they have folded their arms and gone to sleep again. I am, of course, gratified by your favourable appreciation of my effort, but I differ with you as to its result. The surging waves of Northern faction and fanaticism already break ominously against our time-honoured constitutional dykes, and if the South would strengthen her bulwarks, there is no time to ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... again, in deep silence, they were assisted down, and into the little boat that rocked ominously as they entered it. There the women crouched together over the child unable to see one another, Anne returning the clasp of a hand on hers, believing it Mrs. Labadie's, till on Lauzun's exclaiming, "Est ce que j'incommode sa Majeste?" ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nathaniel Hellbeam sat ominously calm and unruffled while Elas Peterman told of his meeting with Bull Sternford. He gave no sign whatever. There was just the flicker of a smile of appreciation of Bull's effrontery when he heard ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... hands and feet almost numb. The snow in the open was already as high as the horses' knees. There was no wind, only that silent sweeping of the heavens. In the depths the high branches of the redwoods groaned ominously under the stiffening ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... in sight now but the gray sea, broken into waves that were beginning to curl, white and angry. Behind them the darkness was split with jagged forks of lightning. The thunder rolled heavily and ominously in the distance, with occasional ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... killing him outright. He has overheard one of his guards muttering to the other, that such is not the chiefs intention, adding some words which make the assurance little consolatory. "Worse than death" is the fragment of a sentence borne ominously ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... they object to the king the bringing in of foreigners, when themselves entertain such an army of Hebrews? This Cromwell is never so valorous as when he is making speeches for the association, which nevertheless he doth somewhat ominously with his neck awry, holding up his ear as if he expected Mahomet's pigeon to come and prompt him. He should be a bird of prey too by his bloody beak; his nose is able to try a young eagle, whether she be lawfully begotten. But all is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... weight. The man at the ferry-boat gave us an extra binding up, and by going cautiously we got home, though we feared every moment would be our last, as regards driving, as the bound-up parts creaked most ominously all the way, and we fully expected at every rough bit to go in half. The horse is generally so quiet that we never mind where we leave him standing. I luckily have just given A—— a new carriage, which will come in very handy. It is to be a "democrat," double seats, and ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... in the air. At the rail of the trim yacht Seamew lounged Swanson, her burly first officer, pipe in mouth. He was evidently angry, for his heavy features were dark and lowering and his deep-set blue eyes glittered ominously. But the boy who faced him from the wharf was ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... man no better, and wise Dr. Brown shook his head ominously. He was a regular grave-yard doctor, and I thought it a pity to set up the deacon's tomb-stone while yet he breathed. His poor wife was taking on terribly (as Aunt Hildy expressed it). When Deacon Grover saw Louis he tried to speak. Louis went ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... The wind had risen since the morning hours, and whistled ominously through the tall forest trees; the clouds grew darker and heavier, and the damp air was growing rawer and colder every moment. The sunshine of yesterday was forgotten in the gloom of to-day. The fresh green leaves, torn by the rising storm from the tall, waving branches, ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... they think they can drive us off that way, they're going to have to get that brilliant intelligence of theirs into action," Simpson said ominously. "We'll bring enough equipment down there to mine them out of ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... No. 13—ominously labelled "Mt. Moriah"—I voyaged toward West Philadelphia. It was a keen day, the first snow of winter had fallen, and sparkling gushes of chill swept inward every time the side doors opened. The conductor, who gets the full benefit of this ventilation, was feeling ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... mouth of some one of the many calm bayous which flow silently throughout St. Tammany parish into the lake. Small wonder that the cry of dismay went up now, for Nott's Point was black, with a lurid light overhead, and the roar of the grim southeast wind came ominously over ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... were up betimes the next morning, May 2d, for the clans were to gather, and the day would hardly be long enough for all it was to hold. The day began ominously. As Kiangan is a sort of headquarters, it has a guard-house for the service of short imprisonments, a post-and-rail affair made of bamboo under the cuartel. For while our administration is kindly, these mountaineers from the first have had to learn, if not to feel as yet, that they must ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... that things, whatever they were, had gone wrong. With an extremely ready sympathy, which in nice youngsters goes often with a joyous temperament, he felt sorry for the great Presence he called "The Chief," and also for the Assistant Commissioner, whose face appeared to him more ominously wooden than ever before, and quite wonderfully long. "What a queer, foreign-looking chap he is," he thought to himself, smiling from a distance with friendly buoyancy. And directly they came together he began to talk with the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Hood's resentment might have taken is problematical; but as the German's words left his mouth the electric lights suddenly went out and the windows rattled ominously. At the same moment each occupant of the room felt himself sway slightly toward the east wall, on which appeared a bright yellow glow. Instinctively they all turned to the window which faced the north. The whole sky was flooded with an orange-yellow ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... reached Bartlett & Bangs' on the outskirts of the city, the big manufacturing plant was ominously still. The only sign of life about the place was at the wide entrance doors at the end of the yards, where a group of men were talking and ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... once that we are generally too apt to run into premature classification—the error of all imperfect knowledge; and into unreasonable exclusiveness—the vice of it. We spoil the shining surface of life by our black lines drawn through and through, as if ominously for a game of the fox and goose. For my part, however imperfect my practice may be, I am intimately convinced—and more and more since my long seclusion—that to live in a house with windows on every side, so as to catch both the morning and evening sunshine, is the best ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... strikes ominously on my ear. Someone from this neighborhood, I forget who, was in Nersae since the roads became fit for travelling this spring and returned from there, or perhaps some wayfarer from Nersae stopped with someone hereabouts. At any rate we ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... impatiently to be driven out afield, and the poultry kept up an importunate querulous reminder of deferred feeding-time; the yard pump, which usually made discordant music at frequent intervals during the early morning, was to-day ominously silent. In the house itself there was a coming and going of scuttering footsteps, a rushing and dying away of hurried voices, and long, uneasy stillnesses. Crefton finished his dressing and made his ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Corner, and their still wiser old wives, looked at me askance, as 'neath the thorn-apple tree I built my playhouse and baked my little loaves of mud bread. But when, forgetful of others, I talked aloud to myriads of little folks, unseen 'tis true, but still real to me, they shook their gray heads ominously, and whispering to my mother said, "Mark our words, that girl will one day be crazy. In ten years more she will be an inmate of ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... something of the chill Russian fatalism. He was dignified but sodden, with a depression that seemed to blow from the bleak Siberian steppes. His wife was already receiving the adieus of their guests. She was smouldering ominously, uncertain where the blame lay, but certain there was blame. Criminal blame! I could read as much in her narrowed eyes as she tried for aplomb ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... who I am," said the visitor. "Suffice to say that I am myself. You'll know my name soon enough. In fact, you will pronounce it involuntarily the first thing when you wake in the morning, and then—" Here he shook his head ominously, and I felt myself grow rigid with fright in my chair. "Now for the final trick," he said, after a moment's pause. "Think of where you would most like to be at this moment, and I'll exert my power to put you there. Only ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... followed. In 1783, a haughty petition was addressed to the throne, on behalf of the Roman Catholics, by an association that arrogated to itself the style and title of a congress. No man could suppose that a designation so ominously significant had been chosen by accident; and by the English government it was received, as it was meant, for an insult and a menace. What came next? The French revolution. All flesh moved under that inspiration. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... foremost. We can hold in our minds every thread of Mr. Wilkie Collins' web, or of M. Fortune du Boisgobey's, or of M. Gaboriau's—all great weavers of intrigues. But Dickens goes about darkening his intrigue, giving it an extra knot, an extra twist, hinting here, ominously laughing there, till we get mystified and bored, and give ourselves up to the fun of the humours, indifferent to the destinies of villains and victims. Look at "Edwin Drood." A constant war about the plot rages in the magazines. I believe, for one, that Edwin Drood ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... to be on the sly about saying "Good bye" to this host of yours. When, however, it was absolutely necessary to be gone, De Quincey forthwith insisted on accompanying his guest. What, then, was to be done? Ominously the sky looked down upon them, momently threatening a storm. No resource was there but to give the man his way, and accept his offer of companionship for a short distance, painfully conscious though you are of the fact that every step taken forwards must, during this same ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was quiet, ominously quiet. The queer noise had jarred his nerves, and now he began to wonder if there was not some menace about ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... next day yet another chief and his men departed. Bakahenzie knew that they were like a herd of goats and that to stop the stampede he must adopt desperate measures. To quell the restlessness which murmured ominously throughout the camp he called another meeting as soon as the news had come of the last desertion. While the drum tapped out the summons Bakahenzie sat muttering his most impressive spells alone, endeavouring to discover a plausible excuse for some sort of excitement ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... hat. "I guess I better be goin'," he said, a lump rising ominously in his throat. He got the gate open and made his way half dazed around the corner. As he did so, he saw a procession of small Ridders bearing ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... the very peculiarities of his voice and pronunciation received the homage of imitation. One point alone caused a little—in certain quarters not a little—shaking of heads, we are told by John Ramsay of Ochtertyre. The distinguished professor was a friend of "Hume the atheist"; he was himself ominously reticent on religious subjects; he did not conduct a Sunday class on Christian evidences like Hutcheson; he would often too be seen openly smiling during divine service in his place in the College ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... perfidious and mysterious form under which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power; [Footnote: Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their territories.] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... rose out of an inch or two of snow. It was plain that there was no chance of Daly's alighting uninjured there. One of the men had brought a train-hand's lantern, and they followed the curve of the trestle, which rose, black and ominously high, against the moonlight. It was not very dark among the trees and the beam of the lantern flickered across the rocks and fallen trunks, but they found nothing, and presently came to the ice, where the ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... imagination can conceive; and at the same time the earth appeared to leap beneath our feet, then swayed to and fro with an oscillating motion: the panes of glass rattled in the windows, the beams of the flooring above creaked ominously; lamps, chandeliers and girandoles vibrated and trembled like animated creatures. The great bells of the cathedral suddenly rang out a spontaneous peal of alarm with a sonorous, awe-inspiring clang, while ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... apparently, had been left. Of women I saw scarcely any—old men, with long dirty black or grizzled beards, yellow skins, peaked black caps, and filthy black gowns clutched about their thin bodies. They watched us, silently, ominously, maliciously. They crept from door to door, stole up the stone steps and vanished, appeared, as it seemed, right beneath our horses' feet and disappeared. If we caught them with our eyes they bowed with a loathsome, trembling ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Lady Myrtle?' she said. 'At least I mean,' and she grew a little confused, for the old lady remained rather ominously silent, 'you think it is a nice letter, don't you? It seems to me to show peculiarly good feeling and good taste, for it cannot have been an easy letter ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth |
