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More "Keyhole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ridiculous, it was maddening,—but it was true. Patty was locked in a room and could not get out. She hadn't heard a key turn, but it must have done so. Peeping in the keyhole, she could see that the key was in the ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... budge when they pushed against it, and there was just light enough to make out the large keyhole of a massive inset lock. Jason probed lightly with the pick and curled his lip ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... shouting abuse at them through the keyhole; and the three friends then met in conference ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... hands fell a little lower, to a different surface. It was a short wooden door. She pushed against it, gently, but it did not yield. She felt it across and up and down. There was no latch and she could find no keyhole. Again she pushed, this time with all her strength. Jerking suddenly, the door opened inwards, and Ellenor, leaning against it, fell forward over the high threshold into pitch darkness. She felt a blinding blow and a sickening pain, ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... furious painter, who still continued his song of oaths and execrations, and made sundry efforts to break open the door. Chagrined as our hero was, he could not help laughing when he heard how the patient had been treated; and his indignation changing into compassion, he called to him through the keyhole, desiring to know the reason of his distracted behaviour. Pallet no sooner recognized his voice than, lowering his own to a whimpering tone, "My dear friend!" said he, "I have at last detected the ruffians who have persecuted me so much. I caught ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... happened that a gentleman was now living in Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who he was, the sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see how it looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains close, and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be sure there was nobody in the entry,—just to see how it looked, she had taken out an envelope and written on the back of it Mrs. Manilla Veneer. It made her head swim and her knees tremble. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... after some reflection, must proceed from the small servant, who always had a cold from damp living. Looking intently that way one night, he plainly distinguished an eye gleaming and glistening at the keyhole; and having now no doubt that his suspicions were correct, he stole softly to the door, and pounced upon her before she was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... along the wall until he came to the cellar door and found the keyhole. After much fumbling he got the key in, turned it, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... ostensibly gone to Brussels, something happened to produce an explosion. She found a letter in his pocket, a photograph, a trinket, que sais-je? At any rate there was a grand scene. I didn't listen at the keyhole, and I don't know what was said; but I've reason to believe that my poor brother was hauled over the coals as I fancy none of his ancestors have ever been—even by angry ladies who weren't ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... Tom. "Ain't possible. There ain't neither handle nor knob inside, to pull on. No lock nor keyhole in it, neither. Must be barred on the outside. That's another reason for thinkin' it was built for ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... So that, one afternoon, while Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson were out for a walk, and while Daddy Jacques was away, he entered the latter by the vestibule window. He was alone, and, being in no hurry, he began examining the furniture. One of the pieces, resembling a safe, had a very small keyhole. That interested him! He had with him the little key with the brass head, and, associating one with the other, he tried the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... of Elizabeth's room, knelt down and tried to look through the keyhole. The inside key was there, which seemed to confirm ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... by the nightmare man, a kind of evil spirit, struggling with one. It is prevented by placing a sharp knife under the pillow, and stuffing the keyhole with ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... arose as soon as the door closed behind the constable, and stuffed a piece of damp sponge into the keyhole; he then returned and took a ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... I batter at a senseless door, I'll to the keyhole train my tortured ear. (Listening.) Dead silence!... is it over—or, to come? Hark! was not that the click of meeting shears?... Again! and followed by the sullen thud of thumbs that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... far as possible. Then she took down the old elephant-gun from the wall, and finding Piet's pouch and the bullets, she loaded it and laid it on the table. All the time the Kafirs made no sign, and from the keyhole she saw them still sitting in silence, ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... inflated at first, to all the successive degrees of loose bagginess as he leads the reckless young man he has originally contracted with from dazzling pleasure to pleasure, till at last he is a mere shrivelled silver string such as you could almost draw through a keyhole. That was the striking moral, for the young man, however regaled, had been somehow "sold"; which we hadn't in the least been, who had had all his pleasures and none of his penalty, whatever this ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Sewer! Here's this morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's the New York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers! Here's full particulars of the patriotic Locofoco movement yesterday, in which the Whigs were so chawed up; and the last ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... two who said he entered by that door-that small door down the passage, sahib, where there is no light. It is a teak door, bolted and with no keyhole on the outside." ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... of his pocket, and when he tried it in the keyhole it fitted exactly. He turned it, the door flew open, and Teddy ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... but he could not in that darkness fit it into the padlock; and he asked me if I had any matches. I had a little silver box of wax vestas in my pocket, and struck one to help him in his search for the keyhole which he found to have been covered by the escutcheon. Before I threw the match away I held it up and glanced back across the garden. The shadows leaped and stiffened to attention, and I flung the match away, but ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... done?" said Bill. " It's no use knockin', because they'd look through the keyhole and refuse to come out, and, not bein' burglars, we can't bust the door in. It seems to me that there's nothin' for it but to give ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... the combatants, for the other fled, squeaking as with pain. While I listened, with strained attention, for the next episode in this queer drama, expecting that now would come another assault upon the window, to my unbounded surprise I heard a key thrust in the keyhole, the lock turned, and the front door thrown open with a furious bang. It was closed as loudly as it was opened. Then the door of the room in which I was, was dashed open, with the same display of excitement, and of clamour, footsteps ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... it yet, Gogol," he said in a fatherly way. "When once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they will not care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we should have had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don't seem to know anything ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... had to use, but use them she must; and after discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away on her "souliers de silence," and glide ghost-like through the house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every keyhole, listening behind ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... chair for the purpose on Nogam's first night in the room; whether or no, it was not in character that, having established this precedent, Nogam should depart from it. And in any event, the coat-draped chair effectually eclipsed a possible keyhole view of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Coles, the botanist, writes: 'It is said, yea, and believed, that Moonwort will open the locks wherewith dwelling-houses are made fast, if it be put into the keyhole.' And Culpeper, the herbalist, writes thus: 'Moonwort is a herb which, they say, will open locks and unshoe such horses as tread upon it. This some laugh to scorn, and these no small fools neither; but country people that I know call it Unshoe-the-horse. Besides, I have heard commanders say that ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... he was examining began upon the brass work on the right-hand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four inches, where it had scratched the varnish ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... If you are present and hear me, please step to this door and look into the keyhole. It is a friend, who will aid you, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the front-door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wish them to climb in at the window, or creep through the pantry, or, worst of all, float through the keyhole, and catch me in undress. So I believe that in all worlds thoughts will be the subjects of volition,—more accurately expressed when expression is desired, but just as entirely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... anything that isn't cash down on the nail—with the money locked up in a safety deposit vault. By the sheerest good luck, the Mormon president of the S. L & E. happened to be in New York at the time when Adair had his ear to the Transcontinental keyhole. Adair hunted him up and made a hypothetical case of a sure thing: if our Western Extension and the Transcontinental, standard-gauged, should be knocking at the Green Butte door at the same time, what would the S. L & E. do? The Mormon ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... chill of death seemed to strike upon him. No light stole through crack or keyhole—all was darkness and silence—and he sank upon his knees, to remain motionless for a few minutes, and then rise firmer of purpose ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... as they saw the little tailor, they said to themselves, "A little fellow like this could creep through a keyhole, and aid us greatly." So one ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... line with it lay the two penitentiaries. Lines of lofty palisades ran round the settlement, giving it the appearance of a fortified town. These palisades were built for the purpose of warding off the terrific blasts of wind, which, shrieking through the long and narrow bay as through the keyhole of a door, had in former times tore off roofs and levelled boat-sheds. The little town was set, as it were, in defiance of Nature, at the very extreme of civilization, and its inhabitants maintained perpetual warfare with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... have war intelligence to communicate, it is best to believe that every person has ears, and that every door has a keyhole. I learn from this letter that the Scotian sailed from Glasgow, and the Arran from Leith. The agent is of the opinion that both these steamers are fitted out by the same owners, who have formed a company, apparently to furnish the South with gunboats for its navy, as well as ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... there, directly, and bring this lady's bill, d'ye hear—d'ye hear?' 'Cert'nly, Sir,' replied Sam, who had answered Wardle's violent ringing of the bell with a degree of celerity which must have appeared marvellous to anybody who didn't know that his eye had been applied to the outside of the keyhole ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... reformed temperance lecturer. I went to his shop to get shaved, but he was absent. I could smell hair oil through the keyhole, but the Colonel was not in his slab-inlaid emporium. He had been preparing another lecture on temperance, and was at that moment studying the habits of his adversary at a neighboring gin palace. I sat down ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... with ivy. Behind the wall the wind rustled amid the pines and oaks like the vague murmur of a coming storm. And there, at the end of the narrow path, half hidden by the ivy, was the little gate he was seeking. He cautiously brushed aside the leaves and felt for the keyhole; but, just as he was about to insert the key, which burned in his feverish ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an ordinary 6 inch rim-lock of English manufacture. At a short distance it looks like a superior article; the follower and keyhole appear as if they were bushed with brass. But let us take it to pieces, and see what we can find. The follower is a rough casting, not turned at the bearings, and is in no sense a fit. The screw holes are not countersunk, ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... indeed by chance, for it was cunningly hidden. Whatever the danger, he must enter the garden again in search for his comrade. The door was shut, and as he felt along it from top to bottom, touching no latch nor handle, nor keyhole even, he realized that entrance that way was barred. The door only opened from within. He had stepped back to consider how, and at what point, he could best scale the wall, when a slight movement close beside him caused him to stand ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... wondering for a few minutes before I stretched out my hand and felt that I was in my bed, and as I lay there, I suddenly saw in the darkness the shape of my door formed by four faint streaks of light which grew brighter, and directly after there was the sharp point of light where the keyhole ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... was no answer, and she was just stooping down to call through the keyhole when she saw that the wall-paper was nothing but a vine growing on a trellis, and the door only a little rustic gate leading through it. "And, dear me!—where has the furniture gone to?" she exclaimed, for the curly chairs had changed into flower-pot stands, and the bed ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... was mysterious, very, and I cannot make it out now. My first thought was, that he must have had airy wings, and after he had come they had disappeared. My second thought was that he was so very little as to be able to come through the keyhole, and increased rapidly in size, just as it says in the Bible that a grain of mustard-seed springs to be so large a tree that the fowls of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... don't believe it," said Will, through the keyhole, "all you have to do is to come down and see for yourself. We've got everything fixed up O. K. all right. But say! when are you fellows—I mean girls—going to ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... am I, slaving day and night to support Beale, and when I try to get into my own house his infernal dog barks at me. Upon my Sam it's hard!" He brooded for a moment on the injustice of things. "Here, let me get to the keyhole. I'll reason with ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... above the whistling wind, I heard the welcome rain,— A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The keyhole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... blankets were taken from the bed and hung over the door, that no ray of light from the room might be visible in the hall, through either crack or keyhole. ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... door leading into the room marked with a cross in the plan drawn for me by Q. It was a rough affair, made of pine boards rudely painted. Pausing before it, I listened. All was still. Raising the latch, I endeavored to enter. The door was locked. Pausing again, I bent my ear to the keyhole. Not a sound came from within; the grave itself could not have been stiller. Awe-struck and irresolute, I looked about me and questioned what I had best do. Suddenly I remembered that, in the plan Q had given me, I had seen intimation of another door leading into this ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... gratification. She sought the close physical contact of the young children in her care. She would lie on her bed naked, with two or three naked children, make them suck her breasts and press them to every part of her body. Her conduct was discovered by means of other children who peeped through the keyhole, and she was placed under Penta for treatment. In this case the loss of moral and mental inhibition, due probably to troubles of the climacteric, led to indulgence, under abnormal conditions, in those primitive contacts which are normally ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... know. Maybe I can help you. The box was an old, old box. It was of mahogany, heavy, bound with brass, with neither key nor keyhole, and only those who had been shown how could open it. Is ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... on our ears. It seemed to come through the keyhole, and resembled the contemptuous sniff with which Elizabeth always expresses incredulity. But, of course, it ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... out of order, neither can I discover what occasioned the disturbance. However, I went to bed, grumbling against Tenterden Street,[102] and all its works. If there was no entrance but the keyhole, I should warrant myself against the ghosts. We have a set of idle fellows called workmen about us, which is a better way of accounting for nocturnal noises than any that is to be found in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... prisoners through the keyhole; and if they had made the least attempt to set the house ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... case, there is the gentleman who is returning home late at night, from a Freemasons' dinner, and who, noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks through the keyhole. He sees the ghost of a 'grey sister' kissing the ghost of a brown monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and frightened that he faints on the spot, and is discovered there the next morning, lying in a heap against the ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... she exclaimed, "what else could any one do? I heard the row and,—shall I admit it?—peeped through the keyhole. I couldn't see anything, so I opened the door softly and heard something of what was going on. This old revolver was lying on your dressing-table, but I had an awful hunt for the cartridges. Whoever ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as though he would rather ascend to where he could at least enjoy the sunshine than go further down where it became darker and colder. They walked a considerable distance along dark passages, and halted in front of a rickety iron door. A huge key was thrust into the keyhole and slowly the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... After some moments, light foot-steps approached the door, and the voice of Sinang said through the keyhole: ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... slender hand-vice, with a very powerful grip, and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vice, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied some more laudanum into Simon's glass,—having first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... plaster, was here let into the wall. What could be the object of it? With a fresh nail the boy began to scratch off the paint from the surface of the disk, in order to determine whether it were actually iron, or some other metal; in so doing a small movable lid, like the screen of a keyhole, was pushed aside, disclosing a little round aperture underneath. Archibald pushed the nail into it, thereby informing himself that the hole went straight into the wall, for a distance greater than the length of the nail; but how much greater, and what was at the ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... upstairs to peep through a keyhole, and it strikes her mother that John has been saying something. They are on too good terms to make an apology necessary. She observes blandly, 'John, I haven't ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... during which Irene, holding her handkerchief to her lips, crept to the connecting door and stood with her ear close to the keyhole. She held her breath. The pounding of her heart seemed to fill the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... now speaking in a lower tone and he put his ear to the keyhole, to catch what they might say. Then, of a sudden, the door opened and he found ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... lay in irons, no doubt upon some rocks, or shores. If only the day would dawn! As I stood awhile, before entering the corridor through another shattered doorway, the glimmer of a light caught my eye. It came from the door upon the farther side of the lobby, seeming to shine through the keyhole. As I watched, the door opened and let in a blast of wind that shook the broken woodwork; it also let in the figure of a man, and that man, seen dimly in the shades of the light he carried, was Holgate. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... with pain and fear. She did not like the strange shadows on the dimly lit stairs. From behind the doors, now closed, came the heavy breathing of sleepers who had gone to their beds on rising from the table. A faint laugh was heard from one room, while a slender thread of light filtered through the keyhole of the old lady who was still busy with her dolls, cutting out the gauze dresses with squeaking scissors. A child was crying on the next floor, and the smell from the sinks was worse than ever and seemed something tangible amid this silent darkness. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the back bed-room door was a damp place, as if that part of the floor had been newly washed; and when led by curiosity, I peeped through the keyhole of the haunted chamber, my eye distinctly saw an open razor lying on ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... probably an ambush into which he was heading—but without this place, he had no chance of resting. He stared at the numbers painted on the dirty red doors, and went on up a second flight of stairs. The number he wanted was at the end of the hall, dimly lighted. He dropped to the keyhole, but found it had been filled long ago, probably when the Yale lock ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... afore yer honourable coort, brawly kens the laws. Elspeth Mowdiewort didna soop yer kirk an wait till yer session meetings war ower for thirty year in my ain man's time withoot kennin' a' the laws. A keyhole's a most amazin' convenient thing by whiles, an' I was suppler in gettin' up aff my hunkers then ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... in which I detected her confirmed my unpleasant suspicion. From the corner of the gallery I one day saw her, when she thought I was out and all quiet, with her ear at the keyhole of papa's study, as we used to call the sitting-room next his bed-room. Her eyes were turned in the direction of the stairs, from which only she apprehended surprise. Her great mouth was open, and her ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... upstairs, appearing again in a few minutes to announce that he had obeyed instructions and the lady had not answered. "But," he added, "one would say that an all little light came through the keyhole." ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... food. He had walked silently when he left his post; no one waiting in the room where the tray was could have heard him, he felt sure. Then how did that person know the instant he stepped away? He could not have been spied on through the keyhole of the door since no keyhole was there; the fastening on the other side was simply that of primitive bar. But that he had been spied on he was confident. Well, why not? The house was old and no doubt had known no end of intrigue in its time. The walls were thick enough ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... with my finger. The key was not in the lock. I knelt down, and looked through the keyhole. The next instant, I was up again on my feet, wild and giddy ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... and leave me locked in," called the poor prisoner through the keyhole. "Don't you go a-forgetting of me, Miss Ermie, or I'll be found a moldified skeleton here, by and by." Susy's tone was tearful, and Ermie's piteous entreaties to her to hush were scarcely listened to. Footsteps were heard coming ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... they venture, in dirt and in gloom, To peep at the door of the wonderful room Such stories are told about, none of them true!— The keyhole itself ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... bedstead aside; beneath each of the posts is a brass plate, as if to support the weight, but it is that upon the left, nearest to the wall, which must serve your turn—press the corner of the plate, and it will spring up and show a keyhole, which this key will open. You will then lift a concealed trap-door, and in a cavity of the floor you will discover a small chest. Bring it hither; it shall accompany our journey, and it will be hard if the contents cannot purchase me a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... one night after her master had gone to the enchanted room, Cherry crept up to the door, and instead of only listening at it as usual, she knelt down and peeped through the keyhole, which, for once, ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... eyes the bully watched the first assistant disappear into the office with the compositions. Then, looking to make sure that he was not observed, he stole up to the door and applied his ear to the keyhole. What he heard ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... the Sophomores to trouble the Freshmen is to blow smoke into their rooms until they are compelled to leave, or, in other words, until they are smoked out. When assafoetida is mingled with the tobacco, the sensation which ensues, as the foul effluvium is gently wafted through the keyhole, is anything but pleasing to the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... sun was pouring in hot and bright; but a slender line of light lay across the blackness like a long finger, and I knew the moon was shining in at the windows of the shed chamber. I did a thing I had never done before in my life; that silver finger came through the keyhole, and it drew me to it. I ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... Zuleika on the threshold. A glance at the Duke's face when she showed the visitor up was enough to acquaint her with the state of his heart. And she did not, for confirming her intuition, need the two or three opportunities she took of listening at the keyhole. What in the course of those informal audiences did surprise her—so much indeed that she could hardly believe her ear—was that it was possible for a woman not to love the Duke. Her jealousy of "that Miss Dobson" was for a while swallowed up in her ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... would not have risked my neck and your peace of mind by such a suspicious means of ingress as the window; but if you will take the trouble to notice, the door is thick, and I am composed of too solid flesh to whisk through the keyhole; so I had to make my appearance ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... peeped through the keyhole; then she peeped through the window. Then she lifted the latch and peeped through the doorway; and, seeing nobody in the house, she walked in. And when she saw the porridge cooling on the table ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... thieves, having come to lodge in a public-house, with a view to robbing it, asked permission to pass the night by the fire, and obtained it. But when the house was quiet the servant girl, suspecting mischief, crept downstairs, and looked through the keyhole. She saw the men open a sack, and take out a dry withered hand. They anointed the fingers with some unguents, and lighted them. Each finger flamed, but the thumb they could not light—that was because one of the household was ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... one entrance to the place, an exaggerated keyhole, to carry out the similitude of the safe-door alluded to. The ground floor was occupied by the ordinary offices of the company; all the strong-rooms and safes lay in the steel-cased basement. This was reached both by a lift and ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... sir, wishes to know, with her respectful service, if she may have a word with you." Before father could reply mother told him to bring her. The housekeeper could not have been far off—that kind are generally near a keyhole—for she came at once. When she came in, she stood at the door curtseying and looking ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... letter this minute, Stella," he said in an almost inarticulate voice through the keyhole, he was so shaken with passion. "Open the door and let Martha hand it to me. ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... might be, but as I could see no way of finding out, and felt no special concern over his identity or purposes, I rose and left the office. As I stepped into the hall I discovered that somebody had a deeper curiosity than I. A man was stooping to the keyhole of Doddridge Knapp's room in the endeavor to see or hear. As he heard the sound of my opening door he started up, and with a bound, was around the turn of the hall and pattering ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... toilet, she heard her mother's voice in the room. This was unlucky; she must pass through that room to go out. She sat down and fretted at this delay. And then, as the baroness appeared to be very animated, Rose went to the keyhole, and listened. Their mother was telling Josephine how she had questioned Rose, and how Rose had told her an untruth, and how she had made that young lady write to Edouard, etc.; in short, the very thing Rose wanted to conceal ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... was forced, much against my will, to venture to the door and knock, in a hesitating manner, not being sure but what my answer might be the mouth of a carbine. However it was not so, for I heard a pattering of feet and a whispering going on, and then a shrill voice through the keyhole, asking, "Who's there?" ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... do not wish forgiveness. Many of you would much rather not have holiness. You do not want to have God. The promises of the Gospel go clean over your heads, and are as impotent to influence you as the wind whistling through a keyhole, because you have never been aware of the wants to which these promises correspond, and do not understand what it is that you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... commanded the early retirement of her family, strongly excited Lydia's curiosity, and determined her, if possible, to discover the mystery of their meeting. Approaching without shoes the room in which the conference was held, and placing her ear to the keyhole, she heard the order read for the troops to quit the city on the night of the 4th, to attack the American army encamped at White Marsh. Returning immediately to her room, she laid herself down, but, in a little while, a loud knocking at the door, which for some time she pretended not ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... more and more fidgety. From time to time he turned towards my companion, as though about to speak, yet always changing his mind at the last moment. Once he went over and opened the door suddenly, apparently to see if any one were listening at the keyhole, for he disappeared a moment between the two doors, and I then heard him open the outer one. He stood there for some seconds and made a noise as though he were sniffing the air like a dog. Then he closed both doors cautiously and came back to the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... lips, her hands, and then released her, standing in the door and listening to her footsteps as they went up the winding stairs and out into the hall beyond—the dark, gloomy hall, where no light was, save a single ray, shining through the keyhole of ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Shop! And what has he for sale? False evidence meant to weight Justice's scale, Eavesdroppings, astute fabrications, The figments of vile keyhole varlets, the fudge Of venal vindictiveness. Faugh! the foul sludge Reeks rank as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... her to the communicating door, cautiously listened, then looked through the keyhole. The silence within was oppressive, but the flickering bougie warned me that I must make an effort, and without allowing myself time to think I hastily turned the key and opened ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... key has been used here lately," replied the other. "I can see marks around the keyhole to tell that. Chances are, they had one made to fit the door. A smart fellow could take an impression of the lock with wax, or something, and a locksmith would make him ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Marcus Wilkeson was idly turning the pages of a blue-and-gold favorite, the doorbell rang. In accordance with some mysterious law of acoustics, the sound was full three minutes descending the kitchen staircase, entering the keyhole of the kitchen door, and striking on the tympanum of Mash, the cook, who was sitting by the fire, reading the twenty-fifth chapter of "The Buttery and the Boudoir: A Tale of Real Life." When Mash became fully conscious (which was not till the end of the chapter) that the bell had rung, she expelled ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... closed, she was terribly frightened. She put the white kitten down and sprang on top of the trunk and scratched with all her might, but scratching did no good. Then she jumped down and reached up to the keyhole, but that was too small for even a mouse to pass through, and ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... bed, Tabitha pressed her ear to the keyhole to catch the rest of this interesting conversation, but as she listened, her face paled and a rebellious look came into the expressive ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... neighboring prior; ever since which the room has been nailed up, and branded with the name of the adultery-chamber. The ghost of Lady Frances is supposed to walk here: some prying maids of the family formerly reported that they saw a lady in a farthingale through the keyhole; but this matter was hushed up, and the servants forbid ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... law to administer "slight corporal punishment" to our servants, it being left entirely to individual taste to decide what "slight" shall be, and my neighbour really seems to enjoy using this privilege, judging from the way she talks about it. I would give much to be able to peep through a keyhole and see the dauntless little lady, terrible in her wrath and dignity, standing on tiptoe to box the ears of some great strapping girl big enough ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... condition that God has invented and arbitrarily imposed. The necessity of it is lodged deep in the very nature of the case. Air cannot get to the lungs of a mouse in an air-pump. Light cannot come into a room where all the shutters are up and the keyhole stopped. If a man chooses to perch himself on some little stool of his own, with glass legs to it, and to take away his hand from the conductor, no electricity will come to him. If I choose to lock my lips, Jesus Christ does not prise open my clenched teeth to put the bread ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Adam Adams tried the door and found it locked. More interested than ever, the detective, just avoiding Mrs. Morse, who was passing through the hallway, slipped Into the adjoining room, and finding, as he had imagined, a door between the two, applied his eye to the keyhole. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... alternative suggested itself. If he himself were unable to enter the stable he would take measures to prevent the entrance of any other person. There was no difficulty about that and when five minutes later he strolled down the road toward the inn it was with the comforting reflection that the keyhole of the padlock was entirely filled up with clay and grit in such a manner that no key could ever ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... of a rather long interval, he turned round, as he heard nothing more, and, as he raised his eyes towards the door of his chamber, he saw a light through the keyhole. This light formed a sort of sinister star in the blackness of the door and the wall. There was evidently some one there, who was holding a candle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Fred. is quite down with the scarlet fever. Potiphar says I mustn't expose myself, so I don't go into the room; but Mrs. Jollup, the nurse, tells me through the keyhole how he is. Mr. P. sleeps in the room next the nursery, so as not to carry the infection to me. He looks very solemn as he walks down town. I hope it won't spoil Fred's complexion. I should be so sorry to have him a little fright! ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... began to appear, and the white phantom of a church. We could rather feel than see the houses, for the night was so dark, and, though here was evidently a village, there was no sign of a light anywhere, not so much as a bright keyhole; nothing but hushed, shuttered shapes of deeper black in the general darkness. So English villages must have looked, muffled up in darkness, at the sound of the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... head. A grown person could not have passed through without stooping almost double. It was very narrow, too, and no one who was not slender could have squeezed through it. In this door there was a little black keyhole, with no key in it, but it was always locked. Letitia knew that her Aunt Peggy kept the key in some very safe place, but she would never show it to her, ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... shall I say of those poor men that are plagued with the pox and the gout? O how often have we seen them, even immediately after they were anointed and thoroughly greased, till their faces did glister like the keyhole of a powdering tub, their teeth dance like the jacks of a pair of little organs or virginals when they are played upon, and that they foamed from their very throats like a boar which the mongrel mastiff-hounds have driven in and overthrown amongst the toils,—what did they then? ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... major thus reflected, he kept coming nearer and nearer to the individual I lurking at the keyhole of every story. Only he had to go home, else how was his ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... afternoon." Madame L. then told me that while the young man was clean, sober, and industrious, he had been found rummaging among her husband's official papers, in a room which he was forbidden to enter, and had been caught several times listening at the keyhole of doors while private conferences ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... in the street outside by a large body of their fellow-citizens, who had accompanied them to the Palace, and who had been spending the time since their departure in listening by turns at the keyhole of the front-door. But as the Hall of Audience was at the other side of the Palace, and cut off from the front-door by two other doors, a flight of stairs, and a long passage, they had not heard very much of what had gone on ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mudge? who had been listening at the keyhole, but not in an audible voice. "Perhaps he will be again, if I get him back. I thought that letter was from Paul. I must get hold of ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... occasionally hitching his chair a trifle nearer to the door in the agony of impatience. By the time Jackson returned from the village with word that a copy of Town Truth was not to be had until the next day, he was so close to the door that if any one had happened to stick a hat pin through the keyhole at precisely the right instant it would have punctured his left ear with ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the door that opened into the entry, and locked that softly and bolted it carefully. Then he turned the key so that the wards filled the keyhole, and taking out his handkerchief he hung it over the knob of the door, so that it fell across the keyhole, and no eye could by any chance ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... she was gliding on to death, entering its portals and descending with gentle moderation. At last, summoning all her strength for a final effort, she dragged herself as far as the hall door; but it was impossible for her to lift her head to the keyhole, impossible to cry out. And she would have died where she lay had not Adele, as she was passing in the morning, heard a groan, and, in her alarm, fetched a locksmith to open the door, and afterward a midwife to attend ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... him, stumbling against the furniture in her haste, and by the uncertain light. The door was not open, but the cuckoo had got through it—"by the keyhole, I dare say," thought Griselda; "he can 'scrooge' himself up any way"—for a faint "Cuckoo" was to be heard on its other side. In a moment Griselda had opened it, and was speeding down the long passage in the dark, guided ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... and closed the door; Jurgis, who was as sharp as he, observed that he took the key out of the lock, in order that he might peer through the keyhole. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... a snicker followed the sneeze. And by that time Grandaddy Beaver and his friends guessed who was inside the building. It was Ferdinand Frog; and he had been watching his callers all the time, through the keyhole, and listening to everything ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... I did. So I did," answered the professor sharply. " I often find myself liking that kind of a boy in college. Don't I know them-those lads with their beer and their poker games in the dead of the night with a towel hung over the keyhole. Their habits are often vicious enough, but something remains in them through it all and they may go away and do great things. This happens. We know it. It happens with confusing insistence. It destroys theo- ries. There-there isn't much to say about it. And sometimes ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the door, pushed violently against it, and I believe would willingly have broken it open; but finding her good intentions, I set my shoulder to the panel, taking care not to impede the light through the keyhole, which my valet tells me was inspected by her. She ruminated a few seconds and then went away; incredulous and high ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... they were spying on me. I cast a glance around the walls, the furniture, the ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify suspicion. I heard persons moving about outside my door. I had no doubt they were looking through the keyhole. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... said, 'To the keyhole let's creep, "There can be no harm just in one little peep! "We are women—besides, there are none to behold us! "If he wished us to leave it, he shouldn't have ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Margaret in an agony. She makes wild signs to him, pointing towards the closed doors as she does so. A nice girl, we all know, would rather die than put her ear to a keyhole, even if by doing so she could save her neck from the scaffold; but the very best of girls might by chance be leaning against a door through the chinks of which sounds might enter from the room beyond it. "She'll hear you!" ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... side of my waistcoat and supported the weight of my keys in my side trouser pocket. I confess it was an inconvenient arrangement. It was impossible to unlock my portmanteau without either half undressing, or kneeling down so as to bring the end of the chain on a level with the keyhole, or else standing the portmanteau on a chair or table to bring it up to the key. But it was undoubtedly the smart way of carrying keys. So the tailor said, and so one or two friends in whom I confided also ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... right enough," whispered Dave, who a moment later was crouching low and looking through a large keyhole devoid of a key. "There he goes into the room where the two ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... little slip from grace and there you were! Sure, and the priests were as wrong as the scientists. It must be Heaven that's easy to crash, for the front door of Hades is shut fast without even a keyhole to peep through." ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl suddenly, "you wouldn't have listened and creaked at the keyhole last night. And more than likely you'd have gotten that ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... with astonishing swiftness to the staircase, looked down, then fixed his black eyes with a kind of animal ferocity upon the closed door of the Judge's office until he reached it, and laid one of his little red ears to the keyhole. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... at the keyhole. It could not have been the wind, by the way, for there was no wind that night. Something else than the wind whistled in at the keyhole, sighed through into the room as much like a long-drawn breath as anything, and fell with a slight clink ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Katherine, an honest woman out of Lady Macbeth and a benevolent old gentleman out of Shylock. I have seen French players cast as the servants of Petruchio invade "The Taming of the Shrew" with a comic pantomime in which they fought for their turns at the keyhole of Petruchio's bedroom wherein Kate was being subjected to a little off-stage taming. It would have amused Shakespeare immoderately, I imagine, and certainly it would have surprised him. Until his piece is spoken, even the author cannot tell—and ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... it observed very attentively, then put a piece of wood in the keyhole, and tried to turn it round. Having been scratched by a cat with which it was playing, it could never be induced to touch pussy again. It untied knots easily, and regularly practised upon the shoes of those who came near. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... staple fixed in the centre of the desk. A piece of ornamental iron-work is fixed to the upright. It is made to represent a lock, but is in reality a mere plate of metal, and the tongue, which looks as though it were intended to move, is only an ornament, and is pierced by the keyhole. The lock is sunk in the thickness of the wood, behind this plate, and the bar, which terminates in a knob, is provided with two nicks, into which the bolts of the lock are shot when the key is turned (fig. 56). Between each pair of desks there is a ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... the course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper—such was the compromising name of the avenging boy—announced "Mr. Gargery!" I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the street a faint light shone under a slit between two boards. There was no door near it, no keyhole or shutter. The American thundered at the boards with a tin of jam which he took out of his pocket. The noise was monstrous in the blackness, but the town had heard noises more monstrous than that, and it lay in a barred ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... good idea," Nan had replied, laughing at her, "if there were only some furniture to pile. What are you doing, Bess? You aren't stuffing cotton in the keyhole?" ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... The level may then be worked out approximately by points above and below on the stream, for accurate reading, hold the aneroid face up, gently tap it, and read; then face down similarly, and take the mean. Guard that the wind does not blow against any keyhole in ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... as I was ready to go, he gravely escorted me to the door and bowed me out. I dropped my ear to the keyhole and heard the chink of the guineas. William clearly had a very pretty appreciation of the best means of keeping himself agoing. A suaver, defter rascal I have never ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... hot flash of a pistol from the keyhole, and a bullet smacked against the wall between us. We hurled ourselves against the door. It was massive, but rotten with age. With a splintering and rending it gave way before us. We rushed in, weapons in hand, to find ourselves in an ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well. But the door closed with absolute tightness; it had not even a keyhole. His cries came to us ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... most noticeable feature is that it permits the use of a very small key, though the number of combinations possible is still enormous (several millions). In our illustrations (Figs. 219, 220, 221) we show the mechanism controlling the turning of the key. The keyhole is a narrow twisted slot in the face of a cylinder, G (Fig. 219), which revolves inside a larger fixed cylinder, F. As the key is pushed in, the notches in its upper edge raise up the pins A^1, B^1, C^1, D^1, E^1, until their tops exactly reach the surface of G, which can now be revolved ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... been shut up for several years. Yet voices were heard about the place, the lilacs nodded over the high wall as if they said, "We could tell fine secrets if we chose," and the mullein outside the gate made haste to reach the keyhole that it might peep in and see what was ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... had erected ere he left the chambers. "Why that?" reflected Gideon. "It seems entirely irresponsible." And drawing near, he gingerly demolished it. "A key," he thought. "Why that? And why so conspicuously placed?" He made the circuit of the instrument, and perceived the keyhole at the back. "Aha! this is what the key is for," said he. "They wanted me to look inside. Stranger and stranger." And with that he turned the key and raised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night Deleah slipped from her own warm bed to stand, an anxious little figure, shivering in her nightgown, her dark curls streaming down her back, a suspensive ear to the keyhole of her mother's door. People fainted because they had heart disease. Of heart disease they also died. She dared not go in, because papa was there, but waited, trembling with cold and fear, until her ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... kept an eye on what was going on, send his wife to bed; then he pressed now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole in order to try and discover what he called "the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... methods he inserted a piece of strong wire into the keyhole, thinking to pick the lock by that ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... after taking a few steps, returned just in time to see Henri let in—not a woman, but a man. Chicot put his eye to the large keyhole. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... not say anything, Billie," Nellie Bane warned her. "They're probably listening at the keyhole or something." ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... been a sound like a soft thump; but he could see nothing on account of intervening desks. But, all the same, Wrench's tom-cat had leaped gently down to the floor, and from there he bounded on to one of the lines of desks, along which he stole very carefully, pausing to sniff at each keyhole as he leaned over, fully aware as he was that several of these desks were used as menageries, in addition to a very favourite one where he had paused more than once on account of the delicious black-beetly odour stealing up through the cracks, ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... Suite 32 lasted until nearly midnight, with Dyckman painfully shadowing the corridor and sweating like a furnace laborer, though the night was more than autumn cool. The door was thick, the transom was closed, and the keyhole commanded nothing but a square of blank wall opposite in the electric-lighted sitting-room of the suite. Hence the bookkeeper could only guess what we ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... in his mind, Field crossed the hall and tried the dining-room door. He was not altogether surprised to find the door locked. He listened at the keyhole, but he could not hear anything whatever. Furthermore, the application of an eye to the keyhole disclosed the fact that the room was in darkness. Despite his courage a thrill ran down the spine of the inspector. There was some more than usually ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... it for you," said Cashel. She gave him the key, and he seized one of the bars of the gate with his left hand, and stooped as though he wanted to look into the keyhole. Yet he opened it ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... a pistol with me, your honour," Mike said. "I have seen doors blown in, by firing a gun through the keyhole." ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... genus, remarkable as it is, seems hitherto to have escaped notice. It is distinguishable from Catenicella, in the first place, by the anomalous circumstance that each cell is furnished with two or more, usually three, distinct keyhole-shaped mouths, and is doubtless inhabited by three distinct individuals. Whether these are separated from each other by internal partitions is unknown, but the closest examination of cells rendered transparent by means of acid fails to discover such. In cells ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... heart, Myra could hear no sound from the other side of her locked and bolted door, and the handle did not move again. Slipping out of bed after a few minutes, she stole noiselessly across the room and, dropping on one knee, put her ear to the keyhole and listened, but heard no sound save the throbbing ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... great, black forest waiting until the giant came back from killing her seven brothers. He would return with their seven heads swinging pitifully from his girdle, and, when he reached the castle gates, he would gnash his teeth through the keyhole with a noise like the grinding together of great rocks, and would poke his head through the fanlight of the door, and say, fee-faw-fum in a voice of such exceeding loudness that the castle would be shaken ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... it up to her! He ran back into the house and stole upstairs. Outside her room he listened with all his might, but could hear nothing; then tapped softly with one nail, and, putting his mouth to the keyhole, whispered: "Sylvia!" Again and again he whispered her name. He even tried the handle, meaning to open the door an inch, but it was bolted. Once he thought he heard a noise like sobbing, and this made him still more wretched. At last he gave it up; she would not come, would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Ash Goblin that few ever seek his door, and when he heard upon it the sharp knock of Black Shadow, he started with surprise. He crept across the dingy floor, and put his bulging eye to the keyhole to peer through, and discover who stood without. His astonishment at seeing Black Shadow was great, for never had she sought him out before, but he knew that he had no reason to fear her, so he ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... of Chadron made her distrustful at once of Major King. There must be some scheming and plotting afoot. She went down and stood in the hall again, not even above bending to listen at the keyhole. Chadron was talking again. She felt that he must have been talking all the time that she had been away. It must be an unworthy cause that needed so ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... up the stairs. When they got to the door they were afraid to open it. Mother Stina bent down and peeped through the keyhole. Presently she gave ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... if they was so many flies. I don't have any unnecessary words, but I put 'em down quick, I can tell you, when they talk to me. No; it's quite nice these days. I lock my door, and they can only call me names through the keyhole, and I sit inside, just like a lady, mending socks. Mr. Torpenhow wears his socks out ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... descending the garret stairs, and patrolling the house. In vain the doors of the upper entry had been locked; the ghost either carried a duplicate key in its pocket, or availed itself of a ghost's immemorial privilege of coming through the keyhole, and promenaded as before, with a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for the answer!" he shouted through the keyhole, and, falling back, he took up his stand against the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... you don't believe it," said Will, through the keyhole, "all you have to do is to come down and see for yourself. We've got everything fixed up O. K. all right. But say! when are you fellows—I ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... trial was appointed to take place next morning in the beautiful hall of the Divinity School. Owing to the insertion overnight—by a mischievous undergraduate or other sympathiser with the day's heroine—of some obstacle in the keyhole, the door could not be opened, and the lock had to be forced, which delayed the proceedings for an hour. The judges meanwhile returned to their lodgings. This initial difficulty surmounted, at eight o'clock on Tuesday, 3rd March, Mary Blandy was placed at the bar to answer the ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... used, becomes indispensable in any home carpenter chest, yet it is safe to say that not one in ten contains it. A scroll saw is much more useful than a keyhole saw for sawing small and irregular holes, and many fancy knick-knacks, such as brackets, bookracks and shelves ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... shadowy depths of the dark pit, it gave a spot of brightness, even with its flamed turned so low. It was now silent behind the closed doors; the weary laborers had gone to sleep after eating. However, there was a soft laugh from Mademoiselle Clemence's room and a ray of light shone through the keyhole of Mademoiselle Remanjou's door. She was still busy cutting out dresses for the dolls. Downstairs at Madame Gaudron's, a child was crying. The sinks on the landings smelled more offensive than ever in the midst of the darkness ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... What's that paper oil the table? (She picks up a journal in a coloured wrapper.) Society Snippets, the Organ of the Upper Ten. One Penny. The very thing I wanted. It's such a comfort to know who's who. (She opens it and reads sundry paragraphs headed "Through the Keyhole.") Now how funny this is! Here's the very same thing about the dulness of the Season that she said. That shows she must be really in it. And a note about Lady NEURALINE being about to recruit at Homburg. And another about her reputation for eccentricity, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... on the dirty staircase so he mounted slowly up till he stood in front of his own door. Slowly, like one making an effort that was almost painful to him he searched for his key and drew it out. His hand shook as he inserted the key into the keyhole. He tried to steady his hand, but he could not control its furtive and perpetual movement. When the door was open he struck a match, and lit a candle that stood on a chair in the dingy and narrow lobby. Then he turned round wearily to shut the door. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... got up to give him the key but she could not find it either. She was much surprised. Quickly, she ran to the bedroom door and peered through the keyhole, standing motionless until her eye grew accustomed to the darkness within. Without drawing away, she said: "You damned Blondie. Son of a bitch! ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... sullen in his manners, he was, in every respect, a true specimen of the whole class of mischief-makers, wherever they are to be found. His mischief consisted, as usual, in such exploits as stopping up the keyhole, upsetting the teacher's inkstand, or fixing something to his desk to make a ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... he heard a low sound, like the wind in a distant keyhole—or, as it might be (and it seemed more like it), the moaning of a child in pain, it knows ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the hole clear. Never had it occurred to me that I should be so looked at, although I had often looked through a key-hole myself, at women. The cook made this clear to me, by standing in the tub and requesting me to look at her through the keyhole. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... stood with his wife before the locked gate, there rose from behind it a snarling, nasal, somewhat mocking voice. "Starry—don't groan so much. Take the keys from Oxheady's coat pockets, or else go stick your nose in the keyhole, and so unlock the gate. The people have been standing and waiting a long time." "People!" cried the anxious voice of the man called Nose Star, "I thought there was only one! I beg you, Fool—dear Jaekel Fool—look out and see ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and last time since I have known him he forgot his discretion, and instead of going away quietly, and treating the man with contempt, he began kicking at the door, calling the man a scoundrel, &c., and between the intervals of kicking, roaring through the keyhole, "Bring out your diploma; do you hear, you impostor?" and then fell to work kicking again. "Bring out your forged ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the weight of my keys in my side trouser pocket. I confess it was an inconvenient arrangement. It was impossible to unlock my portmanteau without either half undressing, or kneeling down so as to bring the end of the chain on a level with the keyhole, or else standing the portmanteau on a chair or table to bring it up to the key. But it was undoubtedly the smart way of carrying keys. So the tailor said, and so one or two friends in whom ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... potato. Why those plainclothes men are always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling round her ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... sailors with one paw lifted up. He would at other times wander between the decks, looking at everything going forward; and when he had been shut in the cabin he has frequently been observed standing on his hind legs looking through the keyhole of the door, in order to watch the proceedings which were carried on. I have a great respect for Snob, who is still alive, and I have no doubt his curiosity is ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... not to be shaken in her resolve, and leaving the study room a little before one o'clock she settled herself in Helen Richard's cupboard to watch. Fortunately for Judith's plan Helen was in the Infirmary with a sore throat and through the keyhole of her cupboard Judith had a clear view ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... into another part of the cellar, used as a room for storing supplies needed in their trade. Past barrels and boxes she went to another stairway and breathlessly ascended it. At the top of eight or nine steps a door barred progress. Very carefully she found the keyhole, fitted in the key, and by infinitesimal degrees unlocked ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar's treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet, and the next moment he was in the cell, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... called, her mouth at the keyhole, "who took 'em? Your mother? Why? But she can't keep you in that way. Never mind. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... in her room!" she cried, pointing an accusing finger at the white-faced and shaking Amy. "I peeped through the keyhole, and it was a candle burning on her table. She said she didn't ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... got back, we found that Carlo had nearly gnawed his way through the bed-room door, and was growling horribly at the boots and the chambermaid through the keyhole. Charming dog! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... Saturday evenings. When I returned, about half-past ten it was, I knocked at the door of his bedroom. He didn't answer, and I walked away softly, so as not to disturb him in case he'd gone to sleep already. The hall was dark, and as I went through it I saw a ray of light coming from the keyhole of the Professor's study. That surprised me, because he never worked as late as that before. I thought it over a moment, then I crept up and looked through ...
— The Case of the Golden Bullet • Grace Isabel Colbron, and Augusta Groner
... dispensation." Poor General Harrison lived to be one of the witnesses so slaughtered. The practical good sense of Cromwell is worth noting, the English understanding struggling against Judaic trammels. Williams gives us another peep through the keyhole of the past: "It pleased the Lord to call me for some time & with some persons to practice the Hebrew, the Greeke, Latine, French & Dutch. The secretarie of the Councell (Mr Milton) for my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages. Grammar rules ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and remained for two whole days without opening the door of his room. It was in vain that Clotilde, at last becoming alarmed, knocked loudly at the door. There was no answer. Martine went in her turn and begged monsieur, through the keyhole, at least to tell her if he needed anything. A deathlike silence reigned; the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... "No, I knew they wouldn't. She was sure she had taken it up night before last, but I knew she hadn't. Where's my key?—Oh, yes—stand back and get out of my light so I can find the keyhole. It's dark enough as it is. That's right. Now come inside. You can wait for her better in here than out on these steps. Look, will you! There's her coffee just as she left it. She hasn't had a crumb to eat to-day. What do you want to see her about? The rest of the work? ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ma'am, it's awful to call you so early," came wailing through the keyhole, "but there's so much to do yet . . . and oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, I'm skeered it's going to rain and I wish you'd get up and tell me you think it ain't." Anne flew to the window, hoping against hope that Charlotta the Fourth was ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... amid the pines and oaks like the vague murmur of a coming storm. And there, at the end of the narrow path, half hidden by the ivy, was the little gate he was seeking. He cautiously brushed aside the leaves and felt for the keyhole; but, just as he was about to insert the key, which burned in his feverish fingers, he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... evilly in the flickering light. He took up the candle and walked coolly down the wide corridor. The sureness of his step could have originated only in the perfect knowledge of the topography of the hotel. He paused before a door, his ear to the keyhole. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... through a keyhole," replied Mr. Squires. "Angie was up at the cottage last night to get something she had left in an upstairs hall closet. She just happened to stoop over to pick up something on the floor right in front of Mrs. Smith's door. The strangest thing occurred. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... lit stairs. From behind the doors, now closed, came the heavy breathing of sleepers who had gone to their beds on rising from the table. A faint laugh was heard from one room, while a slender thread of light filtered through the keyhole of the old lady who was still busy with her dolls, cutting out the gauze dresses with squeaking scissors. A child was crying on the next floor, and the smell from the sinks was worse than ever and seemed something tangible amid this ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... inside," she said, "my floor is bare." He stood now in the neat, low-ceiled housekeeper's parlor. Rosalie turned up the gas, and indicated by a gesture that he was to stand still. Elaborately, she closed the registers, plugged the keyhole with her key, and set ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... vapours, the beasts of the forest are again in movement, again their ravenous appetite returns, and they lose no time in ranging the woods, seeking how and where they may gratify it. Then it is these large Mares, silent as a woman that listens at a keyhole—silent as a catacomb, is all at once endowed with life,—is filled with strange noises, like an aviary, and becomes, as night falls, a common centre to which the hungry and thirsty cavalcade direct ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the upright. It is made to represent a lock, but is in reality a mere plate of metal, and the tongue, which looks as though it were intended to move, is only an ornament, and is pierced by the keyhole. The lock is sunk in the thickness of the wood, behind this plate, and the bar, which terminates in a knob, is provided with two nicks, into which the bolts of the lock are shot when the key is turned (fig. 56). Between each pair of desks there is a ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... unproductive, labour. The bread ordinance had not increased our respect for "benevolent" despotism. Any chance of setting at naught the absolute prepensities of our legislators (with a watering-can or by judicious keyhole stuffing, to hide the light) ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... did. So I did," answered the professor sharply. " I often find myself liking that kind of a boy in college. Don't I know them-those lads with their beer and their poker games in the dead of the night with a towel hung over the keyhole. Their habits are often vicious enough, but something remains in them through it all and they may go away and do great things. This happens. We know it. It happens with confusing insistence. It destroys theo- ries. There-there isn't much to say about it. And sometimes we like this kind ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... exact place on the map. The level may then be worked out approximately by points above and below on the stream, for accurate reading, hold the aneroid face up, gently tap it, and read; then face down similarly, and take the mean. Guard that the wind does not blow against any keyhole in the case. ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... had been carried down the Dyle!—However, the enemy's lines lie between them. They will meet no more. The Calvinist colonel has doubtless his daughter under lock and key; and his highness has too much work cut out for him by his rebels, to have time for peeping through the keyhole.—So now, good-night.—For love-tales are apt to beget drowsiness; and i'faith we must be a-foot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... young rogue, while they held their collogue, With his ear to the keyhole was listenin', And he muttered in fright, while his features turned white, 'What the divil and ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... some opiate Had stung and dulled my brain, a state Acute and slumbrous. It grew late. We stopped, a house stood silent, dark. The old man scratched a match, the spark Lit up the keyhole of a door, We entered straight upon a floor White with finest powdered sand Carefully sifted, one might stand Muddy and dripping, and yet no trace Would stain the boards of this kitchen-place. From the chimney, red eyes sparked the gloom, And a cricket's chirp filled all the room. My host ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... inquiries into the digestive apparatus of whales, and that Noah sealed up a letter in an empty bottle, that news in regard to him might not be wanting in case of the worst. They had else been super or subter human. I conceive, also, that, as there are certain persons who continually peep and pry at the keyhole of that mysterious door through which, sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, because they have no means of conveying ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... again and stared at the door, and again he said slowly: "Well, I never, in all my born'd days! That beats me all holler! What a thing a keyhole ith! But that feller in town ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... weariness, lack of muscular as well as mental control, often creates altitudinous illusion. Of this condition I had an example while guiding a party of three women and one man to the top of Long's Peak. We climbed above timberline, headed through Storm Pass, and finally reached Keyhole without a single incident to mar the perfect day. The ladies were new, but plucky, climbers; the man ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... said he entered by that door-that small door down the passage, sahib, where there is no light. It is a teak door, bolted and with no keyhole on the outside." ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... the direction of the door, which it occurred to him, after some reflection, must proceed from the small servant, who always had a cold from damp living. Looking intently that way one night, he plainly distinguished an eye gleaming and glistening at the keyhole; and having now no doubt that his suspicions were correct, he stole softly to the door, and pounced upon her before she was aware of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... heard a thud somewhere in the house. To open the door, he had first to lift the curtain; he did so with his face over his shoulder. The merest trickle of light, earning through the keyhole and one or two cracks, was enough for his eyes to see her plainly, all black, down on her knees, with her head and arms flung on the foot of the bed—all black in the desolation of a mourning sinner. What was this? A suspicion that there were ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... I did not tell a lie,' but even as she denied it, I could see through the keyhole that in her grief at the charge, and her dread of punishment, she ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... "At the—keyhole?" She was proceeding warily now; her mind, as in a game of hide-and-seek, was on tiptoe, in expectation of discovering me ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the skin of the eyelids filled slightly, and drawn naturally around them. Hang the head up as high as possible out of the way, and also because the room is always warmest near the ceiling; two centre-bit holes of different sizes, forming a kind of keyhole, may be drilled in the centre of the neck-block, or strong wire bolted in the form of a loop near the top to hang ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... downstairs for a quarter of an hour, and then, going to the bed-room again, discovered that the door was locked. Through the keyhole the housekeeper informed him that it was the captain's orders, and begged him to go away as the latter was now ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... tried the door; then bent down and examined the keyhole. The key was inside, and a light was burning in the room. Janet stood up suddenly. Her lips were ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the keyhole. It could not have been the wind, by the way, for there was no wind that night. Something else than the wind whistled in at the keyhole, sighed through into the room as much like a long-drawn breath as anything, and fell with a slight clink ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... keyhole she caught a glimpse of her mother's big body standing beside the alcove. She was bent over it, and from the movement of her back, it could be seen that she had got hold of the old woman. Granny was ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... He said archly, "And a very proper altar-piece is here, Madam!" Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped. The Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed. He replied, "he would not whistle the word of God through the keyhole." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... centre, and taking key from the bedroom side, places it in keyhole on side of door in view of the audience. He turns the key several times. He takes the revolver from his left hip pocket and holding it in his right hand, rehearses shooting under his left arm through his coat which he holds from him ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... out; but, after taking a few steps, returned just in time to see Henri let in—not a woman, but a man. Chicot put his eye to the large keyhole. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... but listen at the keyhole. Well,—all was fair in war. And to the Chapter-house door she went, guarded by Ranald and some of his housecarles, and listened, with a beating heart. She heard words now incomprehensible. That men who most of them lived no better than ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... is, 22 inches long by 5 inches at its widest point. Next cut out along the pencil line with a pair of shears. Now lay the paper outline on a plank and mark out the pattern on the wood. Repeat this process with three more planks. When this is done, cut out the boards with a keyhole saw. ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... announced, "listening at the keyhole, to hear what you said to my friend! I heard, and I will answer you. Dolly Fayre no more took that earring, than you did, Mr. Fenn, and I'm inclined to think from your manner, that ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... open so suddenly that three of the men fell back. The fourth, who had been calling his blasphemies through the keyhole of the door, remained yet on his knees. In the doorway, where they had looked to find an infirm old man, stood a French colonel in his battle array, the gleaming sword in his hand. The apparition was so sudden, so unexpected, that they stood for the moment terror-stricken. Did they think ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... through an empty keyhole; and my lamp, held close, not only showed that the door was locked, but that the lock was one with which an unskilled hand might tamper for hours without result. I dealt it a hearty kick by way of a test. The heavy timber did not budge; there was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... answered to his own; somewhere in the room it sounded; there was no mistaking it, though the exact direction was difficult to tell, for while Tim said it was through the keyhole, Judy declared positively that it came from the door of the big, broken cupboard opposite. Maria ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... your viewpoint!" I roared angrily. "Has anybody ever stopped to consider mine?" I did not give a hoot that they could wind me around a doorknob and tuck my feet in the keyhole. Sure, I was grateful for their aid to Catherine. But why didn't someone stop to think of the poor benighted case who was in the accident ward? The bird that had been traipsing all over hell's footstool trying to get a ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... the instrument in the small keyhole and turned it cautiously first one way and then the other. There was a sharp click followed by another. He turned the handle and the door of ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... nor affrighted; not expectant of any pain. Then why so ghastly pale? And why, moreover, Septimius, did you listen so earnestly for any sound in Aunt Keziah's chamber? Why did you creep on tiptoe, once, twice, three times, up to the old woman's chamber, and put your ear to the keyhole, and listen breathlessly? Well; it must have been that he was subconscious that he was trying a bold experiment, and that he had taken this poor old woman to be the medium of it, in the hope, of ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... length, with his lips close to the keyhole and in German, "please do not talk so loud. I can overhear all you say in the next room. Besides, it is very late, and ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... town were long rows of cottages, principally tenanted by farm-labourers and working-men. The outer door of each of these cottages opened into the sitting-room without any passage intervening, so that any boy so disposed, by placing one eye at the keyhole, could see all the inmates of the room. Leslie had observed this during his various ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... to watch him. He bent down. With a swift turn of his brown wrists he secured the door and pulled the key out of the lock. She opened her lips to call out something to him, but when she saw him look at the key doubtfully, then towards her, she said nothing. And he put it back into the keyhole. When he did that she sighed. Perhaps a doubt had again come into his young mind. But, if so, it had come too late. He slipped away ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... a sobbing; without touching the latch he cautiously looked through the keyhole. He saw a marvellous thing! The Judge and Robak were kneeling on the floor in each other's embrace, and were weeping hot tears; Robak was kissing the Judge's hands, while the Judge, weeping, embraced Robak around the neck; finally, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... was imprisoned, and of the length of those days I can convey no idea to any one. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance. On the fifth night Peggotty came to my door and whispered my name through the keyhole. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... I say of those poor men that are plagued with the pox and the gout? O how often have we seen them, even immediately after they were anointed and thoroughly greased, till their faces did glister like the keyhole of a powdering tub, their teeth dance like the jacks of a pair of little organs or virginals when they are played upon, and that they foamed from their very throats like a boar which the mongrel mastiff-hounds have driven in and overthrown amongst the toils,—what did ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... made her distrustful at once of Major King. There must be some scheming and plotting afoot. She went down and stood in the hall again, not even above bending to listen at the keyhole. Chadron was talking again. She felt that he must have been talking all the time that she had been away. It must be an unworthy cause that needed ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... hath committed a message to his servant, he sends a second after him to listen how it is delivered. He is his own secretary, and of his own counsel for what he hath, for what he purposeth. And when he tells over his bags, looks through the keyhole to see if he have any hidden witness, and asks aloud, Who is there? when no man hears him. He borrows money when he needs not, for fear lest others should borrow of him. He is ever timorous and cowardly, and asks every man's errand at the door ere he opens. After ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... see the position of the legs beneath the table. He then walked round the room and examined everything with minute attention, particularly the key of the door, which Sir James had replaced in its position on the inside. The keyhole on both sides of the door came in ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... poet, with a smile, "I peeped through the keyhole, before going to bed, and I beheld the most delicious dame in her shift that ever made a bed ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... I have, with these two eyes—at least with one of them, applied to the keyhole half an hour ago. Her servants passed me in; a ducat or two ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... their word for it as it's all fancy, and give over praying. Now, suppose I'm told as there's a man living over at Sunnyside as is able and willing to give me everything I want, if I only ask him. I go to his door, and knock; but he don't let me see him. I say through the keyhole, 'I want a loaf of bread.' He opens the door just so far as to make room for his hand, and there's a loaf of bread in it for me. I go to him again, and tell him through the door as I wants some medicine to cure one of my children as is sick. The hand is put out with medicine in ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... she cried delightedly. "Just think of you coming all the way across the ocean and knowing that just the same as we do. I used to listen at the keyhole when Mrs. Francis had company, and I was there helping Camilla. Dr. Clay sang ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... used to transport them on his back, which lengthened or shortened according to the number of witches he was desirous of accommodating. No witch, when proceeding to the sabbath, could get out by a door or window, were she to try ever so much. Their general mode of ingress was by the keyhole, and of egress by the chimney, up which they flew, broom and all, with the greatest ease. To prevent the absence of the witches from being noticed by their neighbours, some inferior demon was commanded to assume ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... shakings, Kyan produced a key. The minister snatched it from his trembling fingers, felt for the keyhole and threw the door open. The little room was almost as dark as the hall and quite as still. There was a distinct smell of old clothes ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... higher than her head. A grown person could not have passed through without stooping almost double. It was very narrow, too, and no one who was not slender could have squeezed through it. In this door there was a little black keyhole, with no key in it, but it was always locked. Letitia knew that her Aunt Peggy kept the key in some very safe place, but she would never show it to her, nor unlock ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... don't! You hurt. Here, cut up some o' that dacklum and warm it, and stick it on. Then one on 'em said he looked through the keyhole one day, and saw the doctor sharpening his knife; and that set mother off crying, and she sets down on a doorstep, and goes on till she made me wild; and the more she cried and said she'd take me away the more they danced about, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... acted on his instructions. From the other side of the door came the sharp sound of the bolt as it was shot back, and at the same time the light ceased to shine through the keyhole. A moment later the handle ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the farmyard gate he locked and bolted it behind him. But the lock was very stiff, and in turning and pulling out the key, his black hat got pushed on one side, so that a little of the magic escaped, and filtered back through the keyhole. ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... come to the heart of the question. For some years past you have confided in me—more fully than I really cared about. While your husband was alive I often found it rather painful to be always looking at him through the keyhole, so to speak. But this confidence justifies ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... but Saul signed him to remain. They carefully closed all the doors, and spoke together for quite a while. But no matter how low they spoke, the frolicsome Lija, Raphael's daughter, put her little nose to the closed door, and her dark eye to the keyhole, and often heard repeated the names of Meir and Mera, Witebski's daughter first, and then her own name and that of a certain Leopold, Pani Hannah's cousin. She sprang from the door covered with blushes, half-confused, and half-seized with a secret joy, and ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... cried a thick voice, the words sounding as if spoken through a big keyhole. "An' I say, you chaps, look heah; de massa say you make a row in dah I ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... Knapp's visitor might be, but as I could see no way of finding out, and felt no special concern over his identity or purposes, I rose and left the office. As I stepped into the hall I discovered that somebody had a deeper curiosity than I. A man was stooping to the keyhole of Doddridge Knapp's room in the endeavor to see or hear. As he heard the sound of my opening door he started up, and with a bound, was around the turn of the hall ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... they saw the little tailor, they said to themselves, "A little fellow like this could creep through a keyhole, and aid us ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... of departure, renewing his offer to carry Mr. Caryll to town in his chaise. Meanwhile, Mr. Caryll was behaving curiously. He was tiptoeing towards the door, along the wall, where he was out of line with the keyhole. He reached it suddenly, and abruptly pulled it open. There was a squeal, and Mr. Green rolled forward into the room. Mr. Caryll kicked him out again before he could rise, and called Leduc to throw him outside. And that was the last they saw of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... discovering immediately another door which his eyes had missed in the earlier glow of the match,—a narrow door open to the left, of thick wood, with heavy iron hinges, the flanges of which formed the braces of the door itself. He blew out the candle and put it into his pocket. Peering through the keyhole and seeing nothing, he lifted the latch and ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... door a hand thrust at him a piece of paper, and the door slammed to so sharply that Luiz stepped back. Then approaching cringingly the keyhole, in a ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... closed the door, when he was at his post of observation; so that it was rendered utterly impossible for my mother to whisper a word or make a sign, to caution her paramour against committing both her and himself. I lost no time in taking up my position at the chamber door, and availed myself of the keyhole as a convenient channel for both seeing and hearing. I saw that my mother was very pale and seemed ill at ease, and I did not wonder at it, for her position was an extremely painful and embarrassing one. She well knew that my father's eye was upon her, watching her slightest movement; she ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Rev. S. Baring Gould:—"Two magicians having come to lodge in a public-house with a view to robbing it, asked permission to pass the night by the fire, and obtained it. When the house was quiet, the servant-girl, suspecting mischief, crept downstairs and looked through the keyhole. She saw the men open a sack, and take out a dry, withered hand. They anointed the fingers with some unguent, and lighted them. Each finger flamed, but the thumb they could not light; that was because one of the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... met Fifi, who was tipping toward the dining-room to discover, by the frank method of ear and keyhole, how the grim and resolute collector ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... am going into my room, to lock the door, and call the verse through the keyhole. But you must promise not to say a word to ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... youthful Emile, had been fastened upon her window until the light disappeared, and even the Holy Mission Church of San Jose had assured itself of the dear child's safety with a large and supple ear at her keyhole. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... came the sounds of grief. He approached it cautiously, still holding the poker in his hands, and noticed that there was no key in the lock. The woman, whoever she might be, was locked in, as he and his comrades had been; but the empty keyhole gave him an idea. He blew through it, making a sort of whistling sound with his puckered lips. The crying ceased, all save an occasional low, half-smothered sob, as if the woman were making a supreme effort ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... it became almost worn out; it was therefore determined that a beautiful silver-gilt Virgin and Child should be supplied by a first-rate artist which should cover the original relic within. This was remarkably well executed by Cornaro, and a small aperture like a keyhole of a door has been left, which is covered by a slide; this is moved upon one side when required, and enables the pilgrim to kiss through the hole a piece of rather brown-looking wood, which is the present ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... little Fred. is quite down with the scarlet fever. Potiphar says I mustn't expose myself, so I don't go into the room; but Mrs. Jollup, the nurse, tells me through the keyhole how he is. Mr. P. sleeps in the room next the nursery, so as not to carry the infection to me. He looks very solemn as he walks down town. I hope it won't spoil Fred's complexion. I should be so sorry to have him a little fright! Poor ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... barricaded the inner door from the kitchens by putting tables and chairs against it. At length a parley was called, and Ford shouted his conditions through the keyhole. The besieged then learned that the distant village was still unaware of their peril. Ford offered to let them all go forth free, if now they would yield ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... ante-election pledges, petitions rammed in ahead of every roll-call, lobby committees from the farmers' associations tramping around the State House in their cowhide boots, and a good government angel peeking in at every committee-room keyhole! Jeemsrollickins! Jim Blaine, himself, couldn't play the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Pokonoket Pokonoket in stormy weather Toby and the crazy loon Toby ran till he was out of breath The patchwork woman The patchwork girl Julia was arrested on Christmas Day Julia entertains the ambassador through the keyhole The grandmothers enjoy the Chinese toys "Six"—she began feebly "What!" said Squire Bean suddenly Little Patience obeys the squire's summons Watching for the coach "Just look here!" said Willy's sweet voice The little ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... not being obeyed by the men who guarded the entrance, the dwarf began to abuse them. A considerable interval elapsed; the hunchback, who dared not go into the room himself, compromised by kneeling before the keyhole; at the foot of the stairs stood the girl, her strained gaze fastened ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the blind and lock the door," he commanded her through the keyhole. "The back door is locked already, so ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... business! Jimmie Dale dropped on his knees before the door that faced the head of the stairs, and placed his ear to the panel. Noiselessly he tried the door. It was locked. He was smiling that merciless smile again in the darkness, as his deft, slim fingers worked at the keyhole. He was not too late this time! Old Jake was there, and—yes, Thorold, too. They were even now haggling over the pendant—he could hear them quite distinctly now with the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... after her master had gone to the enchanted room, Cherry crept up to the door, and instead of only listening at it as usual, she knelt down and peeped through the keyhole, which, for once, ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... height of a man's head an old brass dial was nailed to the gray boards. Roughly lettered in lampblack beneath it were the words, "Clocks Mended." They climbed the shaky stairs to a landing, supported by long braces, and whereon was a broad door, with latch and keyhole in its ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... firmly, without any particular amount of sound, and I was left in the dark. I groped my way to it, irritably, to find it locked on the outside. I shook it frantically, and was rewarded by a sibilant whisper through the keyhole. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tired: You'll have to lie down and keep quiet. Isabel will look after you." It speaks to the complete overthrow of Lawrence's ideas that for the last hour he had not recollected Isabel's existence. "And we shall have to wait till Bernard raises the siege: one can't bawl explanations through a keyhole. Besides, I must wire to Lucian." He slipped his hand under her arm. "Would you like this good girl of yours to come ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... valet, and followed him to the door, in order to close it after him; and when he had done so, looking straight before him, he happened to see in the keyhole of the adjoining apartment the paper which Bragelonne had slipped in there as he left. "What is ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from the keyhole without a doubt, and stooping, Lady Markham repeated her question, placing her ear close to the keyhole, as she ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... had drest for me, while she was sitting in her elbow-chair, her head supported with pillows. With these in my hands, I used to go to the door of the room in which I had seen her in her last illness; and after trying to open it, and peeping through the keyhole, from whence I could just see a glimpse of the crimson curtains, I used to sit down on the stool before the door, and play with my doll, and sometimes sing to it mamma's pretty song, of "Balow my babe;" ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... public portion of his suite, and Mr. Staines listened. He listened at varying distances from the door, and in his last position it would have required the most delicate of scientific instruments to measure the distance between his ear and the keyhole. He heard nothing save the wail of a Bones distraught, and the firm "No's" of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... this room, in spite of the village street outside. It was dinner-time, and all were within doors or out at their affairs; and except for the stamp of a horse now and again, and the scream of the wind in the keyhole and between the windows, there was little to hear. And in the lad's ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the Citation Amendment (Scotland) Act, which has put an end to keyhole citations in small debt cases throughout Scotland, we may remark that Mr. Anderson aimed, in introducing this measure, at the amelioration of the poorer classes, on whom the keyhole system pressed with undue severity. Previous to the passing of the new Act the officer appointed to ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... the key is inserted, the strike, the plate attached opposite the selvage, (often left out as in drawer-locks, but essential in hook-bolt locks, and self-locking locks,) and the escutcheon, the plate around the keyhole. ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... expected this bear to get loose and eat him, but that could not spoil his pleasure in seeing the bear stand on his hind-legs and open his red mouth, as I have seen bears do when you wound them up by a keyhole in the side. In fact, a toy bear is very much like a real bear, and safer to have round. The boys were always wanting to go and look at this bear, but he was not so exciting as the daily arrival of the Dayton packet. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... stayed there, it might be an hour. Well, I could not a think what could make so shy an' resarved a gentleman as Mr. Aram admit these 'ere wild madcaps like at that hour; an' I lay awake a thinking an' a thinking, till I heard the door open agin, an' I went to listen at the keyhole, an' Mr. Clarke said: 'It will soon be morning, and we must get off.' They then all three left the house. But I could not sleep, an' I got up afore five o'clock; and about that hour Mr. Aram an' Mr. Houseman returned, and they both glowered at ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... therefore, and there is always amusement. So the only housework which the boy san does really willingly, is to dust the door, polish the handle, wipe the threshold;—anything in fact which brings him into the propinquity of the keyhole. What he observes or overhears, he exchanges with another boy san; and the hall porter or the head waiter generally serves as Chief Intelligence Bureau, and is always in touch with ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... key. When I reached the door of the passage, the brute snarled at me savagely, and I fully believe would have sprung upon me and torn me limb from limb, had not his masters called him off. I trembled so with agitation that I could scarcely apply the key to the keyhole. Luckily the light did not fall on me, or ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing was out of order, neither can I discover what occasioned the disturbance. However, I went to bed, grumbling against Tenterden Street,[102] and all its works. If there was no entrance but the keyhole, I should warrant myself against the ghosts. We have a set of idle fellows called workmen about us, which is a better way of accounting for nocturnal noises than any that is to be found ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... was maddening,—but it was true. Patty was locked in a room and could not get out. She hadn't heard a key turn, but it must have done so. Peeping in the keyhole, she could see that the key was in the ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... happily beside "The Whole Duty of Man." I seem to see the wide eyes of the Negro wander past the Bishop's broadcloth to where the swinging glass doors of the cabinet glow in the sunlight. A little blue fly is trying to cross the yawning keyhole. He marches briskly up to it, peers into the chasm in a surprised sort of way, and rubs his feelers reflectively; then he essays its depths, and, finding it bottomless, draws back again. The dark-faced priest finds himself wondering if the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... I stole gently down to the scullery and applied the spectroscope to the keyhole. To my mingled amazement and ecstasy, I perceived a large dome-shaped fabric blocking up the entire back garden. Roughly speaking, it seemed to be about the size of a full-grown sperm whale. A faint heaving was perceptible in the mass, ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... of theirs." So the captain tacked across the square and reached his own staircase, up which he stumbled with the worthy Huxter at his heels. Costigan had a key of his own, which Huxter inserted into the keyhole for him, so that there was no need to call up little Mr. Bows from the sleep into which the old musician had not long since fallen, and Huxter having aided to disrobe his tipsy patient, and ascertained that no bones were broken, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... listened at the sitting-room doors, and through the keyhole of the parlour we heard a noise of some one moving, and then in a soft whistle the tune of the "Would ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... story, Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do to keep 'em from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through a pane of glass. They was seven deep at the keyhole. They was out of their minds about him and ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... in a straight, plain dressing-gown, her hair in two long plaits down her back, tapped softly in the dead of night at her mother's door, and in a blood-curdling whisper called her name through the keyhole. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... who had kept an eye on what was going on, send his wife to bed; then he pressed now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole in order to try and discover what he called "the mysteries ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... was protracted. Round and round the keyhole did a shaky, unsteady hand guide the wandering key. It scratched above, it dug at the door beneath, while the low indistinct murmur of one repeated word reached me within. At last, in sheer pity, I got up and opened the door from the inside. Howard came unsteadily over the threshold, and ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... shapes of clustered houses began to appear, and the white phantom of a church. We could rather feel than see the houses, for the night was so dark, and, though here was evidently a village, there was no sign of a light anywhere, not so much as a bright keyhole; nothing but hushed, shuttered shapes of deeper black in the general darkness. So English villages must have looked, muffled up in darkness, at the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... week days the shutters of this grim apartment were kept closed, and an inquisitive eye, applied to the keyhole, could just faintly discern the portrait in crayon of the late Mr. Handsomebody, presiding, like some whiskered ghost, over the revels of the stuffed birds in the glass ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... was Mr. Urbain. You say he was walking up and down, outside the room. Perhaps he looked through the keyhole. But no; I think that with his mother he would ...
— The American • Henry James
... one colour with the robe he wore. From underneath that vestment forth he drew Two keys of metal twain: the one was gold, Its fellow silver. With the pallid first, And next the burnish'd, he so ply'd the gate, As to content me well. 'Whenever one Faileth of these, that in the keyhole straight It turn not, to this alley then expect Access in vain.' Such were the words he spake, 'One is more precious; but the other needs Skill and sagacity, large share of each, Ere its good task to disengage the knot Be worthily perform'd. From Peter these I ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... kitchen, Tilly Slowboy was rapping at the Stranger's door; which was only removed from it by a few steps. One of her very red eyes (for Tilly had been crying all night long, because her mistress cried) was at the keyhole; and she was knocking very loud; and ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... after, Dorcas, who had planted herself where she could see her lady's door open, had the curiosity to go look through the keyhole, having a misgiving, as she said, that the lady might offer some violence to herself, in the mood she had been in all day; and finding the key in the door, which was not very usual, she tapped at it three or four times, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
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