"Ferret" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acknowledged bully of the school. He was a big, hulking fellow, with a heavy figure and a repulsive face, and small ferret eyes, emitting a cold and baleful light. He was more than a match for any of his fellow-pupils, and availed himself of his superior physical strength to abuse and browbeat the smaller boys. Knowing his strength he ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... those steeds drawn, save Dolon; on my oath 390 I make them thine; enjoy them evermore. He said, and falsely sware, yet him assured. Then Dolon, instant, o'er his shoulder slung His bow elastic, wrapp'd himself around With a grey wolf-skin, to his head a casque 395 Adjusted, coated o'er with ferret's felt, And seizing his sharp javelin, from the host Turn'd right toward the fleet, but was ordain'd To disappoint his sender, and to bring No tidings thence. The throng of Trojan steeds 400 And warriors left, with brisker pace he moved, When brave Ulysses his approach ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... and when once her husband's head were off, might not the Abbe reap his share of the gathered harvest? The stakes were high, but the game was worth the playing, and Rosselot played it with spirit and energy unto the last card. His appearance in court is ever memorable, and as his ferret eyes glinted through glass at the President, he seemed the villain of some Middle Age Romance. His head, poised upon a lean, bony frame, was embellished with a nose thin and sharp as the blade of a knife; his tightly ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... flushed face, bloodshot eyes, and mouth foaming with a species of fury, he mounted his horse, went at full speed to the court-house, made inquiries of everybody who had seen his brother, asked with whom he had last been seen, and left no stone unturned to ferret out the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the day he attempted to dog the young lawyer's steps, hoping thus to ferret out Edith's hiding place; but nothing satisfactory resulted, for Roy, after his hard and somewhat disappointing day, simply repaired to his club, where, after partaking of his dinner and smoking a cigar to soothe his ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a notion that we have, in these parts, a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on; but ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... lean, dry man, with a face like a ferret, forty-five years old, and one of the celebrities of the prisons he had successively lived in since the age of nineteen, knew Jacques Collin well, how and why will ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Vsyevolodovitch sold him all his estate the other day, formerly of two hundred serfs; and as God's above, I'm not lying. I've only just heard it, but it was from a most reliable source. And now you can ferret it out for yourself; I'll ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... it to details of little importance. He would allow no comments which unsettled the minds of readers. In no country was the censorship of the Press more inexorable than in Austria and its dependent States. All that spies and a secret police and priests could do to ferret out associations which had in view a greater liberty, was done; all that soldiers could do to suppress popular insurrection was effected,—and all in the name of religion, since he looked upon free inquiry as logically leading ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... he who met Freistner in Amsterdam and started these negotiations, and I'm damned if I like Fenn, or trust him. Did you see the way he looked at Stenson out of the corners of his eyes, like a little ferret? Stenson was at his best, too. I never ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... coarse, sensuous lips, and hair elaborately and carefully powdered; the other pale and thin-lipped, with the keen eyes of a ferret and a high intellectual forehead, from which the sleek brown hair was ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... account I received from Mr Pengelley. I wish I could tell you more; but I cannot help thinking that something will come of it, and you may depend on me for doing my best to ferret out the truth, as I think you may also on my good brother-in-law. Good-bye for the present, Ben; I don't know whether it will be wise to tell this ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... to stay, if only to ferret out the mystery of this rascally fake!" he thought "But—oh, hang it! this rascally fake is the very breath of life to Dad and Mother. No, Peter Boots, it can't be done! You're out of it all and out of it all you must stay. Clear out of here ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... clothed in semi-military garments, his wooden face perfectly shaved, his iron-grey hair neatly parted and plastered down upon his head with pomade or some equivalent after the old private soldier fashion, and his sharp ferret-like grey eyes taking ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner's schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most honourable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them. That, his position ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... boy," he said. "He cannot be concealed by this wretched woman as the baby was; he is too old for that. The police will ferret him out. But I am greatly concerned for Mr. Hall. That child is the bond which holds him at safe anchorage. Break this bond, and he may drift to sea again. I must ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... humorous monologue Gertrude decides to accept the Burgomaster. She is interrupted in her soliloquy by Lampe, the Beadle, who is a regular old Paul Pry, and boasts to the widow of his smartness and sagacity. According to himself he can ferret out anything, or any one, from a defrauder of the revenue to a thief, an anarchist or a murderer. Then he goes on to say that he intended to serve notice of distraint on Frau Willmers, but had ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... at his cigar as a slight vent to his feelings. "'Killed by a dose of aconitine by a person or persons unknown,' was the jury's verdict, and a nice tangle they have left me to ferret out.'' ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... rare that so many divagations become inevitable. I was obliged to acquaint myself with the circumstances as they forced themselves upon me, and not as if I had been free to ferret them out in accordance with any customary course of procedure. All along I had been impatient to get up-stairs; but first one thing and then another had arisen, demanding immediate attention. We shall ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... this joke struck neither all at once. Sam'l began to smile at it as he turned down the school-wynd, and it came upon Henders while he was in his garden feeding his ferret. Then he slapped his legs gleefully, and explained the conceit to Will'um Byars, who went into the house ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... more than at others, are not known to have anything of the nature of a regularly recurrent rutting season. Nothing of the kind is known in the Dog, nor, so far as we are aware, in the males of the domestic Cat, or the Ferret, all of which seem to be capable of copulation at any time of the year. On the other hand, the males of Seals appear to have a rutting season at the same time as the sexual season of the female." (Marshall and Jolly, "Contributions to the Physiology of Mammalian ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... arrested me. He is still young, tall, broad-shouldered, and his constabulary uniform seems almost too tight for him. His face, square and massive, is pitted with smallpox, his moustache small and fair, and his eyes sharp and ferret-like. The third, who is in mufti, is Mr. N——, the procurer to the Chamber of Judgments.[2] Tall, stout, with an insignificant face, brown eyes, and a brown beard shaved on the chin, he is still a young man. In the town of X——, where he is a stranger, he enjoys a ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... gesture before? Who was this pilgrim who did not cut and wound himself like his companions? Suddenly the three mad dervishes waved their hands towards the matting and shrieked something into his ear. The little man's eyes shot a look at the Khedive. Ismail's ferret eye fastened on him, and a quick fear as of assassination crossed his face as the small dervish ran forward with the other three to the lane of human flesh, where there was still a gap to be filled, and the cry rose up that the Sheikh of the Dosah had left his tent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... incutit, ille metretam. pinguia crura luto, planta mox undique magna calcor et in digito clavus mihi militis haeret. nonne vides quanto celebretur sportula fumo? centum convivae, sequitur sua quemque culina. Corbulo vix ferret tot vasa ingentia, tot res inpositas capiti, quas recto vertice portat servulus infelix et cursu ventilat ignem. scinduntur tunicae sartae modo, longa coruscat serraco veniente abies, atque altera pinum ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... villages, secret societies were formed which the priests chose to call "Freemasonry"; and on the ground that all vows which could not be explained at the confessional were anti-christian, the Archbishop gave strict injunctions to the friars to ferret out the so-called Freemasons. Denunciations by hundreds quickly followed, for the priests willingly availed themselves of this licence to get rid of anti-clericals and others who had displeased them. In the town of Malolos ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... observing the habits of creatures. The following year I carried out my long-intended plan, having induced one of my cousins to join me in it. We made several cages and boxes; and among our captives we numbered a couple of rabbits, a weasel, hedgehog, ferret, and stoat, with a number of pigeons and other birds, and, I may add, three or four snakes. We caught a viper— or, as it is frequently called, an adder—the only venomous creature which exist in England; ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... eye of a squirrel at that distance?" said the Captain, with a knowing wink of his own little ferret eye. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... At such times—and, indeed, all the time unless he was in what he called a "legal trance"—Hedrick was bubbling with good spirits, and when he left his office for politics he could get out in his shirt-sleeves at a primary and peddle tickets, or nose up and down the street like a fat ferret looking for votes. So when Abner Handy announced that he desired to go to the State Senate, to fill an unexpired term for two years, he had Hedrick behind him to give strength and respectability to his candidacy. Between ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the bias of the court so palpable, that it is not worth while to discuss them. The parallel proceedings in the military trial and execution of Francisco Ferret in Barcelona in 1909 caused worldwide indignation, and the illegality of almost every step, according to Spanish law, was shown in numerous articles in the European and American press. Rizal's case was even more brazenly unfair, but Manila was too remote and the news ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... to trick her!" soliloquised he; alluding, it must be owned, to that revered mother. "She wouldn't let me go out to Bill Hook's to-night; though I telled her as it wasn't for no nonsense I wanted to see him, but about that there gray ferret. I will, too! I'll go back the field way, and cut down there. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I know: to-day in the Divan Himself betrayed it: in this city lives One man who knows his name and origin. Now what behoves us is to ferret through The town, and if we make no stint of gold Haply we ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... her, Wopper, and if it should seem to you that they don't treat her well, you let me know.' 'Willum,' says I, 'I will—trust me.' 'Well, then,' says Willum, 'there's one other individooal I want you to ferret out, that's the gentleman—he must be an old gentleman now—that saved my life when I was a lad, Mr Lawrence by name. You try to find him out and if you can do him a good turn, do it.' 'Willum,' says ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... conceited in his opinion of himself, as well as mean and underhand, to look at. According to his own account, he leaves his old trade and joins ours of his own free will and preference. You will no more believe that than I do. My notion is, that he has managed to ferret out some private information in connection with the affairs of one of his master's clients, which makes him rather an awkward customer to keep in the office for the future, and which, at the same time, gives him hold enough over his employer to make ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... suspicion that he leaned to Presbyterianism or to Whiggery. Just under the Judge was a broad table, covered with green cloth and strewn with papers. On the right hand of this were a long array of Crown lawyers, grim, ferret-faced men, each with a sheaf of papers in his hands, which they sniffed through again and again, as though they were so many bloodhounds picking up the trail along which they were to hunt us down. On the other side of the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wasted, but seemed perfectly calm; he had been kept in solitary confinement and had suffered all the hardships of prison life with the resignation of a martyr. In spite, however, of all precautions, the clever Marcasse, who could work his way anywhere like a ferret, had managed to convey to him a letter from Arthur, to which Edmee had added a few words. Authorized by this letter to say everything, he made a statement similar to that made by Patience, and owned that Edmee's first words after the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... amongst the people," says one of these subaltern clubs, "we read to them the decrees, and, through lectures and counsel, we warn them against the publications and intrigues of the aristocrats. We ferret out and track plotters and their machinations. We welcome and advise all complainants; we enforce their demands, when just; finally, we, in some way, attend ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Timothy?" he said to the ferret-faced groom beside him, as he gathered up the reins; and the brown mare, knowing the hand on her mouth, laid herself out to her work. "Handsome young couple as anybody need wish to see. Not much business doing there for me, I fancy, unless it ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... an animal somewhat resembling a ferret, but more nearly allied to the Nilotic ichneumon of Egypt, was a marvellously lithe and active little creature, perfectly tame, and coming as readily as a dog to his name, "Mungo," except when overfed, when he would sleep sometimes for hours, rolled up at the bottom of his cage, or in some dark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... disaster, had been cared for during her first years by the mysterious, grotesque native Martians. When they took her at last to one of the dome cities, she was sent to Earth for rearing. And now she was back on Mars as an undercover agent of the Earth government, seeking to ferret out the rebels known to be engaging in ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... friends that will take the first proper occasion to cut your throat, as all such enemies to moderation ought to be served. It is well you have cleared another person[11] from being author of your cursed libels; though d—mme, perhaps after all, that may be a bamboozle too. However I hope we shall soon ferret you out. Therefore I advise you as a friend, to let fall your pen, and retire betimes; for our patience is now at an end. It is enough to lose our power and employments, without setting the whole nation against us. Consider three years is the life of a party; and d—mme, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... the first volume of it, because it is written in a language that we don't understand. One must read in the different strata, in the pebble-stones, for each separate period. Yes, it is a romance, a very wonderful romance, and we all have our place in it. We grope and ferret about, and yet remain where we are; but the ball keeps turning, without emptying the ocean over us; the clod on which we move about, holds, and does not let us through. And then it's a story that has been acting for thousands ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... there are other cases of this kind, and the Commissioner expresses his determination to ferret them all out, and make a clean sweep of all parties in his department engaged in swindling operations, against the government or ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... and let him turn farmer if he likes, and I'll help him; or it may be that David will hear of something more to his advantage, or perhaps find out some of his other relatives. David is as keen as a ferret, and he'll not let a chance pass of serving the lad." John's patience was seriously tried. He saw seafaring men of various grades pass in and out, corroborating the account of the flourishing business of Paul Kelson, Fluke and Company, ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... conclusion at which he arrived in the words: "I see; this is a trap, and you are a modern highwayman whose stunt will make good Sunday reading in cold print." He wore a sarcastic smile, and his sharp eyes gleamed like a ferret's. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Riverboro girls of her own age was a certain excellently named Minnie Smellie, who was anything but a general favorite. She was a ferret-eyed, blond-haired, spindle-legged little creature whose mind was a cross between that of a parrot and a sheep. She was suspected of copying answers from other girls' slates, although she had never ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... indeed there is in profusion. The rabbit swarms and exults in this life of Southern England. Do you stalk him? He sits and watches you. Do you hunt him with dogs? He thinks it a vast bother about a very little matter. Do you ferret him? He dies, and rejoices to know that so many more will take his place. The rabbit is the sacred emblem of my river, and when we have a symbol, he shall be our symbol. He loves men and eats the things they ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... trappings of that sort to offer you. If you are as sensible as I think you are, you won't mind that when you come to think it over. The only thing I am ashamed of is my money, because I didn't earn it for myself. You can live in palaces still, if you want to, and if you want to be a queen I'll ferret out a kingdom somewhere and buy it, but I am afraid you'll have to be Mrs. Lane behind it all, ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ferret once more!" said he. "I knew him of old in France, where he has done us more harm than a company of men-at-arms. He speaks English as he speaks French, and he is of such daring and cunning that nothing is secret ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had ceased to be a man and had become a ferret. It was no light payment exacted in return for the pleasure of writing about Elaine. He had the ability to live in any place or century he pleased, but he had paid for it by putting his present reality upon precisely the same footing. Detachment was his continually. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... my highest desire to guard you, to make you happy. Give me the right, and every day of my life will prove it. Of course, I saw that Carder had some hold over you. I've spent all my time ever since that day trying to ferret out facts that could give me some hold on him. I haven't found them. The fox has always left himself a loophole. Marry me to-day: now: before we go home. I'm well known in the town yonder. I can arrange it. Marry me, and whatever comes you will ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... place Bacon was leading an army through the woods and swamps of upper Gloucester and Middlesex. He had good reason to believe that it was the Pamunkeys who had made some recent incursions, and he was determined to ferret them out. But it proved a difficult task. His men, tired of wandering here and there, soaked by drenching rains, and half-starved, began to waver. But their dauntless young leader, after permitting many to return, resumed the ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... round-hand, recipes, scraps of poetry, problems in arithmetic and geometry, and among other things, "Tom's Expenses, 1796." A quarter at the High School costs 10/6, "Lattin books," 4/-, school money is 3/-, a ferret 3d., and so on. His sister Polly's expenses are entered in the same book and that young lady's outlay was more formidable. Items for the milliner such as "making up a Bonnet. 3/6," (young ladies still wore bonnets) are frequent. Miss Polly spent 6/- on ear-rings. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... a bootless oath thereto, and aroused Dolon to go. And straightway he cast on his shoulders his crooked bow, and did on thereover the skin of a grey wolf, and on his head a helm of ferret-skin, and took a sharp javelin, and went on his way to the ships from the host. But he was not like to come back from the ships and bring word ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... well, and who have picked up enough English for your purpose. The Poles are marvellous linguists. We will go to-morrow to the headquarters of the Bow Street runners. They are the detectives, you know, and if they cannot at once put their hands upon such a man as we want, they will be able to ferret out half a dozen in twenty-four hours. One of these fellows you must engage to go down to Canterbury and take lodgings there. They are almost always in destitute circumstances, and would be content with very moderate pay, which would not ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... me out!" she said to herself, as she paced the garden with the rapid steps that indicate a distempered spirit. "What right has he to pry into the depths of my mind, and ferret out all that there is of evil in my nature? Well, he goes the surest way to make me hate him. If ever he comes here again, I will run away and hide from all who know me. I would rather be a farm-servant, and rise at daybreak to work in the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... strongly yet modestly benched and seated; as many as Thirteen Hundred chosen Patriots; Assembly Members not a few. Barnave, the two Lameths are seen there; occasionally Mirabeau, perpetually Robespierre; also the ferret-visage of Fouquier-Tinville with other attorneys; Anacharsis of Prussian Scythia, and miscellaneous Patriots,—though all is yet in the most perfectly clean-washed state; decent, nay dignified. President on platform, President's bell are not wanting; oratorical Tribune high-raised; nor ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... way. Then Mr. Henry would think he had escaped, and need never be told of my coenivance. I think he would throw up the agency, if he were; and he's a very clever man. If Ned is in England, Mr. Henry will ferret him out. And, besides, this affair is so blown, I don't think he could return to his profession. What do ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fail to accomplish your end," he said. "Elsie will never marry without her father's consent, and that you will find it utterly impossible to gain. Horace is too sharp to be hoodwinked or deceived, even by you. He will ferret out your whole past, lay bare the whole black record of your rascalities and hypocrisies, and forbid his daughter ever again to hold the slightest communication with you. And she will obey if it kills her ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... one of the quarter-gunners, had eyes like a ferret. Quoin was a little old man-of-war's man, hardly five feet high, with a complexion like a gun-shot wound after it is healed. He was indefatigable in attending to his duties; which consisted in taking care ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... United States Revenue Service by distilling liquors on which they pay no tax. Bert had heard that moonshiners are deadly men, indeed, and that they make little of shooting down the government officers who are sent to ferret out their hiding ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... mystery it's much more satisfactory to get to the bottom of it. Of course, something dreadful must have happened to account for the change in Miss Oliphant. It would be a comfort to know the truth, and, of course, one need never talk of it. By the way, Rosie, you are just the person to ferret this little secret out; you are the right sort of person ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... him. For a second he stopped, and then he was back round the corner, and had swung himself up to a patch of shadow on the crag-side. He looked down and saw his enemy clearly in the moonlight; a long, ferret-faced fellow, with a rifle hung on his back and an ugly crooked knife in his hand. The man looked round, sniffing the air like a stag, and then, satisfied that there was nothing to fear, turned and went on. Lewis, who had been sitting on a sharp ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... stretched out his hand, and ran it over a stack of tin cans. Detroit Jim had been mighty clever! Canned food from the storehouse, enough to last perhaps two weeks! Detroit Jim had had a storehouse job. Twice a day, during the last ten days, the wiry little ferret-faced second-story man had got away with at least one can from the prison commissary. Also he had provided matches, candles, and even a cranky little flashlight. Only chewing tobacco, because you can smell smoke a long way when you are hunting escaped ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... most intimate and influential friends, the story of the odd legacy left him by a "distant relation." At first Mr. Rayne feared greatly that Honor would find the days long and tedious, while he was absent and unable to ferret out distraction for her, but he grew resigned very soon when she assured him how much more to her taste it was to have the quiet hours of the day to herself, and "in fact," she said, "as the occasion presented itself, she would beg ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... found in the field, but among neighbors who were lurking at midnight around the scenes of home. The districts of Albany and Schoharie was infested by Tories, and young Schoolcraft was ever on the qui vive to ferret out this most insidious and cruel of the enemy's power. On one occasion he detected a Tory, who had returned from Canada with a lieutenant's commission in his pocket. He immediately clapped spurs to his horse, and reported him to Gov. George Clinton, the Chairman of the Committee of Safety ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... thin, hectic-looking young man, apparently nineteen or twenty years of age, very small in all his proportions, red ferret eyes, and without the least sign of incipient manhood; but he was very savage, nevertheless. Not being permitted to pummel the boys when the Dominie was in the school-room, he played the tyrant most effectually when he was left commanding officer. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... has his own portrait of Mrs. Grundy, and some idea of the personality she shows to him; but has any one ever tried to ferret out that disagreeable old woman's own position; to find out where she lives and why she has nothing to do but meddle in affairs which do not concern her. Is she a lady? One would imagine she is not. One would also imagine that she lives in a solid well-repaired square brown stone house with ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... prey by stinging them in many places (see page 129 of Fabre's 'Souvenirs,' and page 241) on the lower and softest side of the body—and that to sting a certain segment was found by far the most successful method; and was inherited like the tendency of a bulldog to pin the nose of a bull, or of a ferret to bite the cerebellum. It would not be a very great step in advance to prick the ganglion of its prey only slightly, and thus to give its larvae fresh meat instead of old dried meat. Though Fabre insists so strongly on ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... in evening clothes, seeming a very elegant young gentleman indeed, but his two companions were of grosser type, as far as appearances went: one, Dacey, thin and wiry, with a ferret face; the other, Chicago Red, a brawny ruffian, whose stolid features nevertheless exhibited something ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... call your Secret Service," Julien heard him say, "is a farce. You have no authority, no scope. You are too proud to ferret about as the others do. You sit in dignified ease and wait for information to be brought to you. My good Foster, you must learn to be a man. We ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her own mind for taking Maud back that very evening, but after all, one day was as good as another, and if Jim should once begin on the subject of Maud, who could tell what he might ferret out? He might even insist on himself taking Maud back to her supposed mother and baby sister, and then what would happen? And it would be of no use to keep back her sister's address from him, for ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... something more," he continued, just as it seemed he had finished, and just in time to interrupt Daughtry away from his third attempt to ferret out the true inwardness of the situation on the Mary Turner and of the Ancient Mariner's part in it. "It is mighty nigh five bells, and I should be very pleased to have one of your delicious cocktails ere I ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... and true, that if the woman at the next desk finds that she is annoying our friend, unconsciously she seems to ferret out her most sensitive places and rub them raw with ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... the Middle Ages. He on the other hand—this accursed bastard whose only lot is the scourge—has no idea of waiting. He is always seeking and will never rest. He busies himself with all things between earth and heaven. He is exceedingly curious; will dig, dive, ferret, and poke his nose everywhere. At the consummatum est he only laughs, the little scoffer! He is always saying "Further," or "Forward." Moreover, he is not hard to please. He takes every rebuff; picks up every windfall. For instance, when the Church throws out nature as impure ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... information from the gentleman behind the counter. However, when a man has devoted his life to ferreting out information, the habit of ferreting is apt to be very strong upon him; so I pass the time of day to my fancy-stationer, and then begins to ferret. 'Madame Durski, at Hilton House yonder, is an uncommonly handsome woman,' I throw out, by way of an opening. 'Uncommonly,' replies my fancy-stationer, by which I perceive he knows her. 'A customer of yours, perhaps?' I throw out, promiscuous. 'Yes,' answers my fancy-stationer. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and to steer his way amid the maze, disturbing no ghost or skeleton of family or government, preserving the while a calm punctilio and an exterior of fathomless simplicity. The ambassador of modern Europe is at once a Chesterfield, a Machiavelli, and a Vidocq. He must be a lamb, a lion, and a ferret. He must fly upon the wing of occasion, he must condescend to act as messenger boy to his Prime Minister, he must conduct a business office and a fashionable restaurant and successfully run a ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... class, though he had never known anything nearer it than city beggars. He pictured them as philosophic vagabonds, full of quaint turns of speech, unconscious Borrovians. With these samples his disillusionment was speedy. The party was made up of a ferret-faced man with a red nose, a draggle-tailed woman, and a child in a crazy perambulator. Their conversation was one-sided, for it immediately resolved itself into a whining chronicle of misfortunes and petitions ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... thus happily wedded, Pringle set himself to goad ferret-eyed Creagan and the heavy-jawed sheriff into unwise speech. And inattentive Anastacio had a shrewd surmise at Pringle's design. He knew nothing of the fight at the Gadsden House, but he sensed an unexplained ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... "What is it, sir?" asks Madge. "Anything in rings? What kind?" "Oh, just plain rings," says the man with a great show of indifference, while his eyes ferret among the trinkets on the counter. And then, very calmly: "Oh, these will do, I guess." Two wedding rings, and he spent twenty cents. Madge follows him with her eyes. "That's it," she whispers, "usually the men buy two. One for themselves and one for the girl. Or if it's ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... nowadays, and yet we might do worse, for this specimen is, with all his faults, a man. He dresses carefully in the morning, in his uniform or else in his black suit. When he wants to be specially smart, as, for instance, when he designs a conquest at a birthday-party, he has to ferret among the pawnbrokers for scraps of finery, or secure on loan a fair, full-bottom wig. But he is not so impoverished that he cannot on these occasions give his valet and his barber plenty of work to do preparing his face with razors, perfumes ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... replied, but each made a secret resolution to ferret out Miriam's suspected treachery if it were the last act ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... before the first was spent by Connie in a vain effort to ferret out their plans in order that fore-knowledge might suggest a sufficient safe-guard. The twins, however, were too clever to permit this, and their bloody schemes were wrapped in mystery and buried in secrecy. On the thirty-first of March, Connie labored like a plumber ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... at each other. We knew what we did call him, and were afraid Minora would in time ferret it out and enter it in her note-book. The Man of Wrath looked none too well pleased to be alluded to under his very nose by our ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... "The tourist trade is important. An excellent source of hard currencies." He glowered across at Josip. "These are typical of the weaknesses you must ferret out, Comrade." ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... man of the world) to examine his Podurellae. Whereon (as was to be expected) the roof caved in bodily, smashing the idols, and sending the priests flying out of doors and windows, like rabbits out of a burrow when a ferret goes in. ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... so dark, that, looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighboring church clock ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... surly, thick-set man with a red face and small, cunning eyes like a ferret, had already sized up his fares for two sacre foreigners whom it would be flying in the face of Providence not to cheat, so with ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... outlasted a thousand speculations. Has hate been necessary, and is it still necessary, and will it always be necessary? Is all life a war forever? The rabbit is nimble, lives keenly, is prevented from degenerating into a diseased crawling eater of herbs by the incessant ferret. Without the ferret of war, what would life become?... War is murder truly, but is not ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... stood we could ferret out a house with a veranda in front, built on a terrace and begirt with trees. That was the residence of His Highness; but we turned our eyes in another direction, lest we should be suspected of rude curiosity by this courteous African. I was trying to divine the tally of years ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... good, without you're going to do something. I know; we'll go back and make Magg lend us his ferret, and then ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... likely to take place between such a crew and such a commander. The captain, in his zeal for the health and cleanliness of his ship, would make sweeping visitations to the "lubber nests" of the unlucky "voyageurs" and their companions in misery, ferret them out of their berths, make them air and wash themselves and their accoutrements, and oblige them to stir about briskly ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... (Cheers.) They lived in strange times. A barbarous suggestion had been made to evict them—to turn them out of house and home, by means of what he might call Emergency Ferrets. (Groans, and cries of "Boycott them!") He feared that boycotting a ferret would not do much good. (A squeak—"Why not try rattening?"—and laughter.) Arbitration seemed to him the most politic course under the circumstances. (Cheers.) They were accused of eating young moor-chicks. Well, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... O'Rourke rushed in with two budgets of false registrations which he had been able to ferret out by the aid of the drivers of his grocery wagons. He embraced David, exchanged shots with the major, and departed in high spirits. Then quiet came to the Gray Picket for a time and Kildare plunged ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... have lots of the girls in the afternoon," said Eric. "I do hope that big ferret isn't making his way out. He is a stunner, sir; why, he killed—Ermie, keep your legs away—he has teeth like razors, sir, and once he catches on, he never lets go. He'll suck you to death as likely as not. Now, ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... to his moral impeachment. I think it is never, perhaps, properly considered, that the class generally held up by the press is one and the same with that already noticed under the preceding head—the criminal. Further, news gatherers are at great pains to ferret out and dole out to the public daily whatever serves to excite, and especially whatever shows the moral crookedness of the Negro, and that the years of freedom already enjoyed by him have simply brought forth ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... instance, I remember a private house where I was engaged catching Rats under a floor with ferrets. I went as far as possible on my belly under the floor with two candles in my hands, and I saw the ferret kill a large bitch Rat, about six yards from me against a wall, where neither the dog nor myself could get at it. I finished the job and made out my bill for my services, but in about two or three weeks after they again sent for me, declaring they could not stay in the sitting-room ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... his confession was extracted without much trouble to the good old man, who, seeing at once that Raphael had some weight upon his mind, which he longed to tell, and yet was either too suspicious or too proud to tell, set himself to ferret out the secret, and forgot all his sorrows for the time, as soon as he found a human being to whom he might do good. But Raphael was inexplicably wayward and unlike himself. All his smooth and shallow persiflage, even his shrewd satiric humour, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... journalist to hide under any such pretence to avoid arrest. When the sheriff's spies made inquiries they learned that a lady had carried him away in a public coach early in the morning; but it took three days to ferret out the number of the coach, question the driver, and find the hotel where the debtor was recovering his strength. Thus Marie's prompt action had really gained for Nathan a truce of ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... yer mis'ble young 'un!" grinned a tall boy, strolling by with his hands in his pockets, and his ferret eyes on the sharp ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... She says that it was Duncan who killed poor Henri Perrin, and that some of the half-breeds are determined to avenge the death of their comrade. Now, it cannot be true; and I want you at once to go and ferret out the truth, so as to prove ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman's instinct, she watched over her hero; she was ever busy to track out the meandering paths of his foes, to destroy the nets wherein they wished to entangle his feet. She had even braved the jealous wrath of Bonaparte when it was necessary to ferret out some intrigue of the Directory. The special spy, whom Barras had sent to Italy to watch the movements of Bonaparte, and to give him early reports of every word, Botot, had been received by Josephine with a friendly smile and with great attention; she manifested ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... representative of the dominant race, helpless as a child and completely at the mercy of his native neighbors, In a deliberate lazy way he set himself to torture me as a schoolboy would devote a rapturous half-hour to watching the agonies of an impaled beetle, or as a ferret in a blind burrow might glue himself comfortably to the neck of a rabbit. The burden of his conversation was that there was no escape "of no kind whatever," and that I should stay here till I died and was ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... He would ask, among other things, why Mr. Duncan had not informed him of the loss by cable, and no satisfactory explanation could be given. He would ask, furthermore, why detectives had not been employed to ferret out the mystery, and here again no satisfactory explanation could be given. Prince Duncan knew very well that he had a reason, but it was not one that ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... been observed within the limits of the ancient Media are the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the bear, the beaver, the jackal, the wolf, the wild ass, the ibex or wild goat, the wild sheep, the stag, the antelope, the wild boar, the fox, the hare, the rabbit, the ferret, the rat, the jerboa, the porcupine, the mole, and the marmot. The lion and tiger are exceedingly rare; they seem to be found only in Azerbijan, and we may perhaps best account for their presence there by ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... of what you have already told me," said the commissioner. "Muller, Miss Graumann believes her nephew innocent, contrary to the opinion of the local authorities in G—. She has come to ask for some one from here who could ferret out the truth of this matter. You are free now, and if we find that it can be done without offending ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... at the Crown and Anchor, And Yamen's visage grows blanker and blanker; The lawyers are met at the Anchor and Crown, And Yamen's cheek is a russety brown: Veeshnoo, now thy work proceeds; The solicitor reads, And, merit of merit! Red wax and green ferret Are fixed at the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... trying to develop his narrative sense may find unending exercise in the endeavor to ferret out the various series of events which lie entangled in the confused and apparently unrelated successions of incidents which pass before his observation. When he sees something happen in the street, he will not be satisfied, like the casual looker-on, merely with ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... Hotchkiss was not listening. He stood bent somewhat forward, leaning over the table, and fixed me with his ferret-like eyes. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Perry or Jumbo or themselves or some one, and the Baptis' preacheh was besieged by a tempestuous covey of clamorous amateur lawyers, asking questions, making threats, demanding precedents, ordering the bonds annulled, and especially trying to ferret out any hint of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to sit up for?" pursued my father, keen and sharp as a ferret at a field-rat's hole, or a barrister hunting a witness in those courts of law that were never used by, though ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Sally replied decidedly. "I don't know just what, but something's wrong, and we will have to ferret it out. She's strange, of course, and she doesn't understand us very well. I've seen her look at me as if she thought I were crazy sometimes. She acts as though she didn't like us, but I think she does really. Time's the thing, of course, but it won't do to wait ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... his tone was, "When is this dreadful war going to end?" This, however, is by the way. Herr Ulrich is only an instance of the solidarity of Pan-Germanism. An English or American banker visiting a foreign country attends to his affairs and departs. A German in a similar position is a sort of human ferret. An hotel with us is a place of residence for transient strangers. The Hotel Adlon and others in Berlin are excellent hotels as such, but mixed up with spying upon strangers; Herr Adlon, senior, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... chapels, and fraternities of the city were carried off to the mint; and, in this day of sweeping confiscation, individuals did not forget themselves. Indeed, throughout the country, the French soldier proved that he had the eye of a lynx, the scent of a hound, and the litheness of a ferret after booty, trained to it by the system which makes the war support the war. But Evora has been particularly unlucky. It not only bore its full share of the first burden imposed on the country, but the year after, when the Portuguese, rising too late in armed resistance, lost a ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... pro hominibus admitterentur asini et omnibus asinis stolidiores. Instabant ii quibus hinc aliquid emolumenti metitur, ut moderaretur sententiam, reputans hoc seculum non 20 gignere Paulos aut Hieronymos, sed tales recipiendos quales ea ferret aetas. Perstitit episcopus, negans se requirere Paulos ac Hieronymos, sed asinos pro hominibus non admissurum. Hic confugiendum erat ad extremam machinam. Admota est. Quaenam? 'Si qua 25 coepisti' inquiunt 'visum est pertendere, salaria nobis augeas oportet; alioqui ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... Andy he saw the lad's watch dangling from its chain, fastened to a buttonhole of the youth's vest. Then his ferret-like eyes caught sight of a fine ruby ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... will you drag our acres from the ferret's grip of Matthew Haffigan? How will you persuade Cornelius Doyle to forego the pride of being a small landowner? How will Barney Doran's millrace agree with your motor-boats?... Perhaps I had better vote for an efficient devil ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... of course, was: How soon will Russia be able to mount an army? Probably not very soon, he decided. That fact gave him time to ferret out more information; to become ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff. You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never like HIM. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable, any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... was known, when the town grew inquisitive, and the critics were compelled to ferret out his antecedents, that the new actor had already attained middle age,—that he had been vegetating for years in that obscurest and most miserable of all dramatic positions, the low comedian of a country-theatre,—that he had come timidly to London and accepted at a low salary the post ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... opening a communication with her, but could not find one. At length, however, fortune opened the desired avenue; and, after much hesitation and trembling, she summoned up the courage to avail herself of the offered opportunity. Phillips, in his determination to ferret out the outrage which had been committed on him and his companions, and of the author of which he still entertained no doubt, had, immediately after the trial, commenced a series of rapid journeys to all the nearest villages or trading ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... way to Wilbur's room, but the doctor paused, and regarding her again fixedly, as though he had formed a resolution to ferret the secrets of her ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... minutes later the negro took the pad, the top sheet having been torn off and placed in Kennedy's pocket. He also took a small fee of two dollars. A few minutes later we were ushered into the awful presence of the "Veiled Prophet," a tall, ferret-eyed man in a robe that looked suspiciously like a brocaded dressing-gown ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... bottle of hay, as the saying is; when we lack water, it is useless to go to the source of a dried-up stream and wait for a shower of rain; but to quit all metaphor, and speak plainly—the spy who really means to ferret out the robbers, ought, as much as possible, to dwell amongst them, that he may grasp at every opportunity which presents itself of drawing down upon their heads the sentence of the laws. Upon this principle I acted, and this caused my recruits to say that I made men robbers; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... laminae tenuis, habentem in manubrio inclusum vel alligatum verum diamantem in mensa vel assere erexeris, protinus vt ipsi venenum appropinquabit, stabit tremulans atque sudans. Et notandum, quod per luxuriosum, seu gulosum qui ferret diamantem amitteret virtutem ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... are so cautiously guarded that only the private police can ferret them out. Door upon door is shut against you; or some ingenious panel is slid across your path, and you are unconsciously spirited away through other avenues. The secret signals that gave warning of your approach caused a sudden ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... all? Was there but one cause for each and every one of these peculiarities? Probably, and it was my duty to ferret out this cause. But how should I begin? I remembered what I had read about detectives and their methods, but the help I thus received was small. Subtler methods were demanded here and subtler methods I must find. Meantime, I would hope for another talk with Mayor Packard. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... improved in health, but still having a marked aversion to engaging in any business pursuit. A mysterious case and its solution having been related to him, he resolved to devote his income, now amounting to a million dollars yearly, to amateur detective work. His great-desire was to ferret out and solve mysteries, murders, suicides, robberies, and disappearances that baffled the police and eluded ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... before long. As to the fellows having tumbled into the torrent, I do not believe it. They are not likely to have gone off without our people knowing something about it. They are either in hiding somewhere near Roaring Water,—and if so, I shall soon ferret them out,—or else they have gone away to take squaws from among the Indians, and set ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... the resolution, it will be seen that a principal object of the committee is to examine into, and ferret out, a mass of corruption supposed to have been committed by the commissioners who apportioned the stock of the Bank. I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly unless they have a motive to do otherwise. If this ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... ferret, which he offered to bring, and he thought he could borrow his brother Herbert's fox-terrier, which was ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... and thought took place in a mere fraction of time, and even before Master Freake had pulled up, I was creeping like a ferret from bush to bush to get nearer. Then, just as in his quiet, measured tones he was asking what they wanted, I burst out into the wood, shouting, "Forward, my men, here the villains are!" With the words, I fired my handful of swan-shot clean into the group, and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... have been unacquainted with some previously noticed by Hevelius. Lacaille brought back with him from the Cape a list of forty-two—the first-fruits of observation in Southern skies—arranged in three numerically equal classes;[44] and Messier (nicknamed by Louis XV. the "ferret of comets"), finding such objects a source of extreme perplexity in the pursuit of his chosen game, attempted to eliminate by methodising them, and drew up a catalogue comprising, in 1781, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... not be so sure," retorted Evatt, in evident irritation. "'Twixt thine army service, the ship that fetched thee on, and that miniature, I have more clues than have served to ferret ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... owed to those ferret searching eyes, and those subtly poisonous tongues! But such miseries lurked in the dull shadows of the past. Standing now in the bright sunshine of the present, she forgave the sisters with all her heart, and thought ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... can't help troubling myself. What business have papa, and Kate, and that nasty Ogden, to have a secret between them and I not know it? I feel insulted, and I'll have revenge. I never mean to stop till I ferret out the mystery. I have the strongest conviction I was born to be a member of the detective police, and one of these days the mystery of Mr. Richards will be ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... seated the guests, is a small brick fire-place, on which a charcoal fire is brightly burning, and here Mr. Vartarian's private kahvay-jee is kept busily employed in brewing tiny cups of strong black coffee; another servant constantly visits the fire to ferret out pieces of glowing charcoal with small pipe-lighting tongs, with which he circulates among the guests, supplying a light to the various smokers of cigarettes. A third youth is kept pretty tolerably ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... awakened And shook the world from its shoulders. A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence. The hills open To show a slope of poppies, Ardent, noble, heroic, A flare, a great flame of orange; Giving sleepy, brittle scent That stings the lungs. A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance, answering ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Where was the trunk now? It might be anywhere between the north and south poles in that length of time. Gladys's only hope was now that it had been mislaid and not stolen, and that it would fall into the hands of some honest person who would ferret out ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... would have been, of course, the watch-word and rallying-point, and Peter had a great deal of ground for apprehension that such a one had been extensively organized and was ready to be carried into effect. He immediately set himself at work to ferret out the whole affair, resolving, however, in the first place, to disable Alexis himself from doing any farther mischief by destroying finally and forever all claims on his part to the inheritance ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... I unmasked a battery. I looked straight into her little faded grey eyes, which straggle away from each other as if ashamed of their mutual ferret experiences,—for you know one looks out so, and one turns always up,—and I answered, that my brother had been exceedingly fortunate, as, notwithstanding the numerous matrimonial nets adroitly ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... same old woman that came at Christmas time. She jumped up in the well-house at Anne, and sent her into hysterics. And now they've lost sight of her, just as they did last time, and we want you to help to ferret her ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Suffolk, whence, however, after some trouble, I have been unsuccessful in obtaining a specimen; young stoats or weasels having been sent me instead of it. I could not find a specimen in the British Museum. Some years ago I saw two in Glamorganshire; one escaped me; the other had been killed by a ferret, but unfortunately I neglected to preserve it. Near the same spot last year a pair of them began making their nest, but being disturbed by some workmen employed in clearing out the drain in which they had ensconced themselves, were lost ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... meantime, Horrocks, or, as he was better known amongst his comrades, "the Ferret," was hot upon the trail of the lost cattle. Horrocks bristled with energy at every point, and his men, working with him, had reason to be aware of the fact. It was an old saying amongst them that when "the Ferret" was let loose there was no chance of bits rusting. In other words, his ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... to ferret into this yere myst'ry, we finds thar's a sharp come up from Dallas who claims that Cimmaron's got to pay him what Glidden owes. This yere Dallas party puts said indebtednesses at ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... a record of them by drawing a stroke with chalk for every rat on the red brick wall of the stable, near his ferret-hutch. He only used a few traps—one was set not at a hole, but at a sharp curve of the brook—and the whole of these rats were taken in a part of the brook about 250 or 300 yards in length, just where it ran through a single field. ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... doubt you can guess, but very little to his credit, and quite enough to justify any father in refusing him his daughter's hand; but in this case it is evident to me that De Mussidan is yielding to a secret pressure. We must ferret out some hidden crime in De Croisenois' past which will force him ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... rough voice of the butcher-boy. "Go quietly out the door, turn to the left and there is a spring of good water, which you can scoop up in your hands. Hurry in and shut the door, or some one of the forest-keepers will ferret us out." ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... seen buffeting with the waves, and it was noticed that the funnels of the steamers were missing, having, as we afterwards learned, been blown away by the violent wind and heavy sea. It was about this period that a small vessel—a gunboat, I think it was—the "Ferret," was driven on the rocks in front of the Castle, and dashed to pieces. The crew managed to get off by the boats. For a time it was believed that a boy on the boat had been lost, but he was subsequently rescued. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... it," declares Marcia, who is delighted to ferret out unorthodox loves. "I mean to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the infinite blue above them. And poor Sir Roger, the holder, but not the possessor of all, walked only in a region of sterility, with no sublimer ideas than poachers and trespassers-no more rational enjoyment than the brute indulgence of hunting like a ferret, and seizing his fellow-men like a bulldog. He was a specimen of human nature degenerated, retrograded from the divine to the bestial, through the long operating influences of false notions and institutions, continued beyond their ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... building. Watchers of the strikers had noted the increasing number of officers in civilian dress long after the usual business hours, and Elmendorf, quick to take the alarm, had hastened thither to ferret out the cause. Vain his effort to communicate with his one victim. He was at his desk, and a vigilant ex-sergeant-major of cavalry scowled at the would-be intruder and told him visitors could not enter the clerks' rooms. Vain his effort to extract news along the ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... lymph-channel, or even, by some rare chance, a vein, and are swept away by the stream. Surely now the regular leucocyte cavalry have them at their mercy, and can cut them down at leisure. We little realize the fiendish resourcefulness of the cancer-cell. One such adrift in the body is like a ferret in a rabbit warren; no other cell can face it for an instant. It simply floats unmolested along the lymph-channels until its progress is arrested in some way, when it promptly settles down wherever it may happen to have landed, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... craven impudence; it was as though a lamb had butted me; such daring at the hands of such a dastard implied unchangeable resolve, a great pressure of necessity, and powerful means. I thought of the unknown Carthew, and it sickened me to see this ferret on his trail. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... explained. It remained to decide which inn the doctor had spoken of: an easy piece of work for a Ganimard, a professional ferret, a patient old stager of the police. The number of inns is limited and this one, given the condition of the wounded man, could only be one quite close to Ambrumesy. Ganimard and Sergeant Quevillon ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... might have journeyed peacefully adown the vale of life in perfect good faith with all the world; moreover, they hated a mystery, did these two sister-spinsters, from their own innate frankness and openness of disposition, they said, and considered themselves so much in duty bound to ferret out the solution of any thing which bore the semblance to an enigma, that they gave themselves no rest, poor, self-sacrificing creatures, until they had obtained their object. And well were they rewarded for this indefatigable zeal, for they had the satisfaction of knowing that they had found out ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... useless. Probably no matter what he contrived, the police would ferret her out. There was just one chance though which, properly taken, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... to Rupert Grant, Basil's amateur detective brother, whereupon Basil has to intervene to put matters right. The author does not appear to have been struck by the inconsistency of setting Basil to work to ferret out the doings of his fellow club-members. The book is, in fact, full of joyous inconsistencies. The Agent for Arboreal Villas is clearly unqualified for the membership of the Club. Professor Chadd has no business there either. He is elected on the strength of having invented a ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... plain of understanding. He snapped off mind questing at that instant and huddled where he was, staring up into the blank turquoise of the sky, waiting—for what he did not know. Unless it was for that other mind to follow and ferret out his hiding place, to turn him inside out and wring from him everything he ever knew ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... anyone who suspects the character of the private detective. The general impression seems to be that he performs a very useful and necessary service, that the profession is an honorable one, and that the mass of detectives have only one ambition in life, and that is to ferret out the criminal and to bring him to justice. To denounce detectives as a class appears to most persons as absurdly unreasonable. To speak of them with contempt is to convey the impression that detectives stand in the way of some evil schemes of their detractor. Fiction of a peculiarly American ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... you silly," said Prudence. "Why, suppose we were to lose ourselves, that old mare you are riding would take you home straight as the crow flies. Besides, I have no fancy for that ferret-faced Chintz becoming one of our party. We could never talk freely in ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum |
