"Firelight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think about, to look at on the winter evenings by the firelight: ClA(C)ment's seat by the chimney corner, where he whittled and whistled; Fernand's flute hanging on the wall; the books of Alphonse on the high shelf over the dresser. Claire RenA(C) found that her heart and her eyes would only find comfort if her fingers were busy. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the stranger, but he started not. The soldier leaped to the floor and fired again. The shot entered the heart, pierced the body, and lodged in the wall beyond; and the Colonel beheld the hole where the bullet had entered, and the firelight glimmering through it. And yet the intruder stirred not. Astounded, the Colonel dropped his revolver, and stood face to face ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... moved. Over there, in the darkest part of the room, stood a door that was always locked. It led into the hall, but no one ever used it; near that door something had happened once of which the family are not proud. We do not speak of it. There in the firelight stood the venerable forms of the old chairs; the hands that had made their tapestries lay far beneath the soil, the needles with which they wrought were many separate flakes of rust. No one wove now in that old room—no one but the ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... furnishings were, hand-wrought for use and pleasure. Big chairs invited. Broad couches offered rest. No hunting-trophies, no heads of slaughtered wild things disfigured the walls, as in most bungalows; but the flickering firelight showed pictures that inspired thought and carried lessons home—pictures of toil and of repose, pictures of life, and love, and simple joy—pictures of tragedy, of reality and deep significance. Here one saw Millet's "Sower," ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... a low, split-bottomed chair, her hands folded in her lap and her animated eyes on the dark faces across from her, over whose wrinkled surfaces the dancing firelight chased in ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... camp roof and marches endlessly on. The wind is from the east and the pines sing its song of wild and lonely spaces. Yet one great tree that was old with the wisdom of the world before I was born stretches a limb to the camp window, and in the flicker of the firelight I see it stroke it caressingly with soft leaf fingers and twigs that bend back at the stroke. It is like the hand of a child reaching to its mother's breast with wordless love and tenderness inexpressible. The caress makes a lullaby ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the joy and gladness thou didst send, When I have sat in gracious fellowship In firelight for an evening with a friend. When wine and magic entered at the lip! For laughter which the fates can overthrow Thy mercy doth accord— To Thee, who didst my godlike joy bestow, I lift my ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... ushered into the great stone hall, hung about and carpeted with barbaric skins, he had seen standing by the blazing wood fire in the huge chimney a girl in a riding dress. She raised her head, and the firelight struck upwards on her face, adding a warmth to its bright colours and a dancing light to the depths of her dark eyes. Her hair was drawn backwards from her forehead, and the frank, sweet face revealed to him from the broad ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... chair I saw Rupert in his shirt and trousers, and Henrietta in a petticoat and an out-door jacket, with so white a face that even the firelight seemed to give it no colour, and on her lap was Baby Cecil in his night-gown, with black smut marks on ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... thick spruce was the camp that Thorpe had left a fortnight before. There were two tents there now in place of the one that he and his guide had used. A big fire was burning in front of them. Close to the fire was a long sledge, and fastened to trees just within the outer circle of firelight Kazan saw the shadowy forms and gleaming eyes of his team-mates. He stood stiff and motionless while Thorpe fastened him to a sledge. Once more he was back in his forests—and in command. His mistress was laughing and clapping her hands delightedly in the excitement ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... this the most ardent lover of Nature could scarcely fail to shrink from her cold, pallid face and colder breath. Our return to the home, whose ruddy firelight is seen through the frosted window-panes, will be all the more welcome because we have been shivering so long without. The grace of hospitality has been a characteristic of the master of the house for over half a century, and therefore the reader need not fear to enter, especially at this Christmas-time, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... figure at Powhatan's feet rose and stood with the firelight shining on her face and dark hair and asked in ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... a bearskin on the floor and bade Nefri sleep, and he himself sat long in thought looking upon the embers. And it was quiet in the hut—only he saw by the firelight the boy's bright eye watching him, till he chid him lovingly, saying, "Sleep, Nefri, sleep." And Heiri himself lay down to sleep, for he knew that a weary day ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and came to the firelight. The little one always won her first attention when she came from her ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in at a cottage close by. So I went, and a poor kind widow who lived there with a son consented to put me up. She made a nice fire in the sitting-room, and after warming myself before it, while watching the firelight and shadows playing on the dim walls and ceiling, it came to me that I was not in a cottage, but in a large room with an oak floor and wainscoting. "Do you call this a cottage?" I said to the woman when she came in with tea. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the two indunas simultaneously, with their hands to their mouths. But Tyisandhlu said nothing, though a very humorous gleam seemed to steal over his fine features in the firelight. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Collins would be lurking. Only he had not got Paulette yet, and he would find three men to face before he even saw her. I stooped over her in the dark of Collins's tunnel, where just a knife-edge of the cave firelight cut over the boulder's top. "Keep still, Paulette—and for any sake don't move and kick Collins's devilish explosive he's got stuck in here somewhere," I said, exactly as if I were steady. Which I was not, because it was my unlooked for, heaven-sent chance ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... fire, in a whole dark December afternoon. She knew so much that her knowledge was what fairly kept her there, making her at times more endlessly between the small silk-covered sofa that stood for her in the firelight and the great grey map of Middlesex spread beneath her lookout. To go down, to forsake her refuge, was to meet some of her discoveries half-way, to have to face them or fly before them; whereas they ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... stage setting; the mountain brook, on whose bosom the moon leaves a streak of molten silver, the footlights; while all the myriad voices of the night, harmoniously blended, are the orchestra. Even the birds in their nests, awakened by the firelight, join their sleepy chirpings to ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... that he might exchange the world beyond for this world near at hand. A little fire, a little shelter, and the presence of the woman whom he loved—what more could the world give? He gazed hungrily at the figure of the tall young woman, defined well in the bright firelight. Yearning, he coveted the endurance of the picture, saying again and again to himself, "Would this might last for ever, even ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... intently. The firelight flickered on his face, showing it very grave and still. He did ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... be many minutes," said the Doctor, alighting in front of a comfortable-looking well-kept house, with red gleams of firelight shining from its parlor windows. "Walk the horse up and down to keep the cold off, but ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... one mild night I walked home from a meeting of the Goethe Club in company with the poet Bryant. He and my father had been stanch comrades, and many a time had I studied his Homeric head silhouetted by firelight on our library wall. As we crossed the Park front going from Fifth Avenue east to west, he paused, and leaning on his cane gazed skyward, where the outlines of some buildings, in process of construction on Fifty-ninth Street, and then considered ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... his wife became silent for a time, musing in the firelight, their daughter's special convictions were far from coinciding with theirs, although she, likewise, was silent—a singularity they should have observed. So far were they from a true comprehension of her, they were unaware that she had ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... home before the hen-house door was shut. Faster and faster fell the snow darker and darker grew the night, and colder and colder became poor Blot's little feet as she waded through the drifts. The firelight was shining out into the gloom, as the half-frozen chicken came into the yard, to find all doors shut, and no shelter left for her but the bough of a leafless tree. Too stiff and weak to fly up, she crept as close as possible to the bright glow which shone across the door-step, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... with garlands and tread a frolic measure With the nut-brown island beauties in the firelight by the huts; We would give them rum and kisses; we would hunt for pirate treasure, And bombard the apes with pebbles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... Red sorrel spires—deep drinkers of reddest sun wine—stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-gold tint—the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large—so wide a disc, such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen the movement,—or, if he saw, did not heed it. He did not care to tame her now. The firelight flashed and darkened, the crackling wood breaking the dead silence ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... as was his animosity toward the old lady, he would permit no disrespect to be shown her or hers in his presence. In the garish light of day he looked a trifle less imposing than he had on New Year's eve in the firelight. His long white hair hung straight and dry about his face; baggy wrinkles sagged under his eyes and under his chin. The shoulders that once proudly carried Mark Antony's shining armor now supported a faded velvet breakfast jacket that showed its original color only in patches. But even ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... but to this day it may still be seen at Cammsgill that one of the two artists was less skilful than the other, for Mabel's curves are more angular and without the careless ease of her husband's. What, however, did unskilful fingers matter when the firelight shone upon two happy faces bending over the work close together, aglow with the inner radiance of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... lamp, the cheerful fire, Our Mother's patient look, The firelight on her silver hair, And on the Holy Book;— Where e'er our erring feet may stray, The welcome waits the same,— That light, that look will follow ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... it watched him as he doffed his dogskin cap and buffalo coat. He looked round the room slowly once as though he wished to fix it clearly and deeply in his mind. Then he sat down and held near the firelight the letter the factor had given him. His features grew stern and set as he read it. Once he paused in the reading and looked into the fire, drawing his breath sharply between his teeth. Then he read it to the end without a sign. A pause, and he said aloud: "So this is how ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... city of London was lit up for a second; on other sides of the fire there were trees. Of the faces which came out fresh and vivid as though painted in yellow and red, the most prominent was a girl's face. By a trick of the firelight she seemed to have no body. The oval of the face and hair hung beside the fire with a dark vacuum for background. As if dazed by the glare, her green-blue eyes stared at the flames. Every muscle of her face was taut. There was something ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... stay. As she laid her tired head on the clean pillow that night, and nestling in the warm blankets watched the firelight as the flames leaped and played, she heard the sound of music and merry voices, and thought of the cold, poorly-furnished bed-room, with coarse sheets and soiled pillows, at her lodging place, and of the weary tramp about the streets, and the ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... there was firelight and lamplight and a studious air of peace. The realization of this and a slow incredulity at Chilcote's voluntary renunciation were his first impressions; then his attention was needed for ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... to all who pass, and dreary nights and dreary days go by; but in the happy house, so warm and bright, the little boy plays all day with books and toys. His mother and his father cherish him; he nestles on their knees in the red firelight at night, while they read to him lovely stories, or sing sweet old songs to him,—the happy little boy! And outside I peep over the snow and see a stream of ruddy light from a crack in the window-shutter, and I nod out here alone in the dark, ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... and at the sight of it the whole forty of them laughed also. Even now if I am in my darker humour, or if I have a touch of my old Lithuanian ague, I see in my sleep that ring of dark, savage faces, with their cruel eyes, and the firelight flashing ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came to sit under him every Sunday; and he could have wished her absent; for she diverted his thoughts from piety to the selections of texts applicable in the case of a woman who sat with arms knotted, and the frown of an intemperate schoolgirl forbidden speech; while her pew's firelight startlingly at intervals danced her sinister person into view, as from below. The lady's inaccessible and unconquerable obtuseness to exhortation informed the picture with an evil spirit that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... young-looking for his age; very polished, very well off. There are many girls who would be proud to win such a husband,' said Miss Wendover, glancing at Ida in the firelight. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... partly fallen in. This house was a Papago Indian habitation, and a month before had been occupied by a family that had been murdered or driven off by a roving band of outlaws. A rude corral showed dimly in the edge of firelight, and from a black mass within came the snort and stamp ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... that the flickering firelight revealed, bare alike as to its furnishings and the freshness of its peeled logs, the spaces between which had been "chinked" with clay from the river-bank. Scarcely a thing built of man was in sight which had not been ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... me if I refuse the heroic in little. It is even harder than the other." He broke off, leaning back and looking at her from under his shading hand as if that might protect him from too complete a vision. The firelight was warm on her cheek and hair, her needle once again completed the dear delusion: she sat there, his wife. This was an aspect he forbade, but it would return; ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... seen by the firelight by degrees took their proper form; and I saw that one which I had believed to be an Indian's head was only a tuft of some low growth; that it was a fern and not a crouching enemy just beyond the fire; and the ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... the circle of the firelight, he stopped and strangely enough began to laugh; and he laughed on, boisterously, amazingly, in fact; he laughed until there were tears in his eyes, and until he had to hold to a sapling ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... joy, and firelight is so hopeful, that he had not seen the signs of sore sickness on Flora's face, but the morning light undeceived him, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... to his chamber, and presently returned with a roll of canvass in his hand, which he unfolded and spread before the Proveditore—then, dreading to encounter his father's ridicule, he shrunk back out of the firelight. But the effect produced upon Marcello by the portrait of the old woman, was very different from that anticipated by his son. Scarcely had he cast his eyes upon the unearthly visage, when he started back with an exclamation of horror ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... a cup in and out of the firelight. "I agree, this is most interesting." He was a thin man, with scanty drab gray hair and dark skin, perhaps the result of the mingling of several human races. His eyes were slightly sunken, so that it was difficult in this light to read their expression. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... his way through the cordon of dogs and the inner circle of men until he stood with the firelight flashing in his glossy hair and black eyes, and there, seated upon the edge of one of the bread-boxes, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... firelight of the room sat the young Countess, lost in reverie, hands clasping the gilt arms of her chair. At her feet ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... had come the Boy Scout signal used by all members of the Wolf Patrol. As the bound figure came awkwardly rolling on, Jimmie saw, with what joy may be readily understood, a red head shining in the firelight! Never in all his life had any color looked so good to Jimmie as that brilliant red did at ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... was happening in the priest's dark palace? Peter shivered and pulled his coat tight around him. How good that fire would feel! At last he could stand it no longer. Taking care to keep the firelight from shining on ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... suddenly heard singing in the stillness of the night, then slow footsteps are audible, and the dark figure of a man in a short monkish cassock and a broad-brimmed hat, with a wallet on his shoulders, comes into sight on the road in the crimson firelight. ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Macdonald shuddered and then fell on his face again. The Vision was upon him. "Ah, Lord, it is the bloody hands and feet I see. It is enough." At this Ranald slipped back awe-stricken to the camp. When, after an hour, Macdonald came back into the firelight, his face was pale and wet, but calm, and there was an exalted look in his eyes. His men gazed at him with wonder and awe ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... halted before the Ursuline convent, and the sisters bade them welcome for the night. 'Twas my part to help serve, and he had stroked my hair in tenderness. I had sung to them, and watched his face in the firelight as he listened. Never would I forget that face, nor believe evil of such a man. No! not from the lips of Cassion nor even from ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Lady Victoria came home together in great spirits, laughing and rustling in their silk cloaks as they entered the little drawing-room, and sat down by the fire for a chat. Then Vladimir brought the Duke's note. Margaret read it by the firelight, and her ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Boarding-House I had descended to my days of bread and water. All men were in a common misery. If a hobo managed to get a steak and cook it in the bushes by the railroad track, the smell of it would draw a score of hungry men into the circle of his firelight. It was a trying time, and it took all the fortitude I had to look hopefully forward toward a day when things would begin picking up and the wheels of industry would whirl again. The idle men who had camped by the railroads had drunk ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Yellow Bird nodded. She was not looking at them. In the firelight her eyes were glowing pools. Her body had grown a little tense. Without asking Jolly Roger's permission she placed the tress of Nada's hair in her bosom. "Oo-Mee, the Pigeon," she said again, looking ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... unwelcome documents. Since their last meeting he had half-unconsciously collaborated with events in ridding himself of the burden of Madame Olenska. His hour alone with her by the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy on which the Duke of St. Austrey's intrusion with Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and the Countess's joyous greeting of them, had rather providentially broken. Two days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her reinstatement in the van der Luydens' favour, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... like this of ours this evening—excusable as I grant it to be!—than like the comfort we have always (whatever has happened or has not happened) been able to trust ourselves to enjoy. The comfort,' the Master explained, leaning back in the pleasant lamplight and firelight, holding up his glass and looking round at his marble family, quartered more or less, a monstrous brood, in every room—'the comfort of ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... reached the hut it was quite dark. The melon-field was immersed in gloom, and only the foremost rows of melons shimmered white in the firelight, casting long shadows. The horse stood, snorting, beside the hut, where a bright little fire of dried steppe-grass burnt and crackled. They could hear men talking and women laughing, and one voice, mellow and cheery in tone, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... his own, and all his senses seemed to open to her message. She struck him, in the strangest way, both as his creation and as his inspirer, and she gave him the happiest consciousness of success. If she was so charming, in the red firelight, in her vague, clear-coloured garments, it was because he had made her so, and yet if the weight seemed lifted from his spirit it was because she drew it away. When she bent her deep eyes upon him they seemed to speak of safety and freedom and to make ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... her left hand resting on the edge of the mantelpiece, her right holding up the front of her black skirt. Her right foot rested on the fender curb, thereby displaying a discreet interval of openwork silk stocking and a neatly cut steel-buckled shoe. The many-hued firelight flickered over her dark figure; over the soft lace jabot at her throat and ruffles at her wrists; over her pale profile; and glinted in the heavy masses of her hair. The room, facing east, was cold with ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... presently came, in the keen, wholesome air of the market-place of the little hill-town, was a pleasant contrast to that last effort of his journey. The room in which he sat down to supper, unlike the ordinary Roman inns at that day, was trim and sweet. The firelight danced cheerfully upon the polished, three-wicked lucernae burning cleanly with the best oil, upon the white-washed walls, and the bunches of scarlet carnations set in glass goblets. The white wine of the place put before ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... palm was forcibly slapped across my mouth and his other hand he laid significantly on his dagger, giving me one threatening look. By the firelight I saw his lips mechanically counting the numbers of the enemy and ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... from behind him, and in the glare of the firelight showed them, lying across its palm, a ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... until a late hour, for Madelon proposed tune after tune with nervous ardor when her father and brothers seemed to flag. Nobody paid much attention to Lot; he was too constant a visitor. He settled into a favorite chair of his near the fire, and listened with the firelight playing over his delicate, peaked face. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... chairs close to the fire, and sat quietly in the warmth of it. They could hear the heavy rustle of the leaves as the trees swayed in the wind, and now and then raindrops fell down the chimney and sizzled in the hot coals. The lamps were left unlit, and the firelight made long shadows round the room, flickering over the old polished furniture and the silverware and the dim portraits of ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... soft firelight even the boarding-house sitting-room looked cozy and attractive. The warmth and comfort thawed the heart of the "star" boarder. He turned to the landlady and murmured. "Will you ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... having already lost their money, now feared to lose their lives. Not one responded. All about the coach the scene became one of terrible confusion. Guns were fired, blows fell in every direction. The darkness, but faintly illuminated by the fitful firelight, prevented the brigands from distinguishing their enemies very clearly—a circumstance which favored the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... with dust in the dark there,' it continued, 'that these splendid creatures should glitter all day in the sunshine, and get all the firelight of an evening? We were born to be read as much as they, born to enjoy our share of the good things of this world as much as my Lord Folio, as much as any Honourable Quarto, or fashionable Large Paper. My Brothers, the hour has ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... crossed the channel of the river. They entered the cottage, which exhibited neatness, comfort, and plenty, being amply enriched with pots, pans, and pipkins, and adorned with flitches of bacon and sundry similar ornaments, that gave goodly promise in the firelight that gleamed upon the rafters. A woman, who seemed just old enough to be the boy's mother, had thrown down her spinning wheel in her joy at the sound of Robin's horn, and was bustling with singular alacrity to set forth ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... came home hurriedly, staying just long enough to shave and change his collar. Ethel had on a pretty dress and seemed very cheerful. A strange sinking came over him as he saw the familiar room shining with firelight and the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... while in the front room upstairs a fire was evidently burning in an open grate, the rest of the house being in darkness. Presently a man's figure, tall and well formed, could be seen pacing up and down the room, appearing, vanishing, and reappearing in the wavering firelight. For nearly an hour he continued his perambulation, his hands clasped behind him as though absorbed in deep thought. At last, arousing himself from his revery, the man looked at his watch and vanished, reappearing ten minutes later at the front ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... in the water brought the Chevalier out of his reverie. He leaped from the tub and shone rosily in the firelight, as elegantly proportioned a youth as ever was that fabulous Leander of ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... her woes to the grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful dark hair piled up in clustering masses above a broad white forehead, and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... hands and wrists, apparently amused her, and she sat for some moments with her elbows on her knees, her skirts slightly raised, contemplating them, and curling her toes with evident satisfaction. The firelight playing upon the rich coloring of her face, the fringe of jet-black curls that almost met the thick sweep of eyebrows, and left her only a white strip of forehead, her short upper lip and small chin, rounded but resolute, completed a piquant and striking figure. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a clean hearth; indeed, exquisite cleanliness seemed the very spirit of the household, for the door which was open to the kitchen showed a delicately-white and spotless floor, and bright glittering tins, on which the ruddy firelight danced. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the firelight had disappeared, and only the stars afforded a relief to the darkness, the wall of forest on either hand grew vague ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... unlocked her desk and took out a little pearl ring which had been her mother's. In the firelight she slipped it on to the third finger of her left hand, and sat down again to contemplate it and all that a similar ring given her ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... telegraph instruments. Blount caught a glimpse of shirt-sleeved clerks moving about in the room beyond, and then a door opened beneath him and the vice-president of the Transcontinental Company strode out into the firelight to shake hands with his visitor and to say: "I've been looking for you; I thought you'd come in out of the wet before it was too late, David. Sit down and tell me how much you're going to bleed us for, and I'll ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... was not Maciek was standing in the passage, a shapeless figure, not tall, but bulky. It was wrapped in a soaking wet shawl. Slimakowa stepped back for a moment, but when the firelight fell into the passage, she discerned a human face in the opening of the shawl, copper-coloured, with a broad nose and slanting eyes that were hardly visible ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... was hurt, and the sense of his solicitude suddenly made all the difference to me. My cheap review fluttered off into space, and the best things I had said in it became flat enough beside the brilliancy of his being there. I can see him there still, on my rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his fine, clear face all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. I don't know what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight of my relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips from far ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... grass and mud had been trampled into a clay floor by the hoofs of hundreds of wild animals. But the fact that they were to sleep where at sunrise and at sunset came buffaloes, elephants, and panthers, disturbed the women not at all, and as they bent, laughing, over the iron pots, the firelight shone on their bare shoulders and was reflected from their white teeth and ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... price of a pair of curiously wrought brass candlesticks. The old man has turned from the forge, at which he was working, unmindful of his callers roving among the dusty shelves. Standing there, erect and sturdy, in his shiny leather apron, hammer in hand, with the firelight upon his venerable head, strong arms bared to the elbow, and the square paper cap pushed back from a thoughtful, knotty brow, he stirs strange fancies. One half expects to see him fashioning a gorget or a sword on his anvil. But his is a more ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... upon her third finger the diamond ring George Fordyce had transferred from his own hand to hers, whispering as he did so that she should soon have one worthier of her. Watching the flashing of the stone in the gleaming firelight, she wondered to see tears, matching the diamonds in brilliance, falling on her gown. She did not understand these tears; she did not think herself unhappy, though she felt none of that passionate, trembling joy which happy love, as she had heard and read of it, is entitled to feel. She ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... The firelight flickers on the bark-covered rafters, lighting up the yellow-birch partition between living-room and bedroom downstairs, and plays upon the rustic stairway that leads to the two rooms overhead, as we sit before the hearth in quiet talk. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... a little nearer to the fire, and made him sit down on it. He cast his eye round the cheery room, noting the books and papers that she was using, the evidences of steady work and thought. The firelight leaped and glanced on the ruddy walls, and the coals crackled in the grate; a dash of rain against the window, a blast of wind in the distance, emphasized the contrast between the warmth and light and restfulness within the house, the coldness and ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... was rather trying to our nerves to attempt to read or write there, as we never knew when a lion might spring over the boma, and be on us before we were aware. We therefore kept our rifles within easy reach, and cast many an anxious glance out into the inky darkness beyond the circle of the firelight. On one or two occasions, we found in the morning that the lions had come quite close to the fence; but fortunately they never succeeded ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... chair, or went out towards the little kitchen to lift a lid and smell a most savory stew, or came back to the supper-table to arrange and rearrange what was already faultless in its cleanliness and simplicity, wherever she went and whatever she did, this firelight fell warm about a woman, large and comfortable and handsome, with a motherly look to her person, and an expression that was all kindness in her comely face and dark, soft eyes,—eyes and face and form, though, that might as well have had "Pariah" written all over them, and "leper" stamped ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... "Isn't this simply perfect! The firelight on the wall, and shadows flickering, and then a ghost story to crown everything. Do make it ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... I'd known what mischief I was doing to that mighty delicate machine of mine, you wouldn't have caught me reading by firelight, or studying with a glare of sunshine on my book," said Mac, peering solemnly at a magnified eye-ball; then, pushing it away, he added indignantly, "Why isn't a fellow taught all about his works, and how to manage 'em, and not left ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... urging. It appeared that Flo was not going to run. She walked fast, peering back over her shoulder, and, hanging to Carley's arm, she rounded a large cedar that had obstructed some of the firelight. The gloom was not so thick here. And on the instant Carley espied a low, moving object, somehow furry, and gray in color. She gasped. She could not speak. Her heart gave a mighty throb and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... buoyant cheerfulness, and I daresay would not have succumbed to khaki depression even if he had worn no spurs. But I think the spurs helped him. I know the sight of them helped me when they glittered on the heels of his boots as he tramped along, or glanced in the firelight when he crossed his legs in front ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... the wounded, mingled with the roaring and growling of the great beasts which the noise and firelight had attracted, kept sleep, except in its most fitful form, from the tired eyes. It was a sad and hungry party that lay through the long night praying ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... high dark pillars at the four posts. They had opened wide the windows, and the light spring wind blew through the room fresh with the dews of night. Outside, the moon was riding among her clouds; the night was white. The budding trees shook their twigs together in the garden. Inside the room, firelight and lamplight, each flickering much because of the wind, mingled with the moonlight, but did not wholly obscure its misty presence. They all stood there—the minister, the doctor, the grey-haired daughters sobbing, looking and longing for one glance of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... of the head served to express my meaning. In time he could detect the passing shades of expression in my eyes and understand them. Look at me," said he, laying his hand on my head and watching my eyes as the firelight shone upon them, for it ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... came muffled to d'Alcacer's ears with a changed character, even to the very intonation. Above the white and embroidered scarf her eyes in the firelight transfixed him, black and so steady that even the red sparks of the reflected glare did not move in them. He concealed the strong impression she made. He bowed his ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... serious and final now. For several moments she could think of nothing to say. She busied herself with the teapot. She had filled one cup with hot water till it overflowed, and she emptied it slowly into the slop-basin, trying with all her might not to let him see the trembling of her hand. The firelight and the dimness of the room both helped her. But in any case he would hardly have noticed it. His thoughts were ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... skylight to the February storms, and there was neither heat in it nor running water; but its possession gave me a pleasant sense of proprietorship, and the whole experience seemed a high adventure. I at once sought opportunities to preach and lecture, but these were even rarer than firelight and food. In Albion I had been practically the only licensed preacher available for substitute and special work. In Boston University's three theological classes there were a hundred men, each snatching eagerly at the slightest possibility of employment; and when, despite this competition, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... little curl that had strayed over her eyes. She was not amiss for looks thus, with her long eyelashes lying like a fringe upon her cheeks, her lips open, showing her good white teeth, and the glow of the firelight upon her face; but her attitude and the innocent, happy expression of her features made up a picture which seemed ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... maid has her love story, a little romance that makes her heart young again as she dreams it over in the firelight, and it calls a happy smile ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... on higher things and eternal truths, an old woman is busy at the fire in the corner. Evidently she looks after the material and temporal things of life. She kneels on the hearth and hangs a kettle over the cheerful blaze. The firelight glows on her face and gleams here and there on the brasses hanging in the chimney-piece above. Here is promise of something good to come, and when the philosopher is roused from his musings there will be a hot supper ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... loss and spiritual contact It should be like visiting some familiar scene. One must be able to say: "Yes, this is the tree he loved and wrote about; there is the writing-table by the window that gave him the glimpse he speaks of, of lake and hill; these are the walls on which he liked to see the firelight darting on ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of life's outcasts, one of the drifting lives that have no root. No, no it could not be so. She suddenly conjured up a rosy room, with herself in a beautiful gown, and a handsome man in evening dress who held her in his arms in the firelight, and kissed her. This picture she entitled 'Home.' It would have done for the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... showed consciousness of a spectral presence, the apparition took the form of a cat. The evidence is only that of Richard Bovet, in his Pandemonium; or, the Devil's Cloyster (1684). In Mr. J. G. Wood's Man and Beast, a lady tells a story of being alone, in firelight, playing with a favourite cat, Lady Catherine. Suddenly puss bristled all over, her back rose in an arch, and the lady, looking up, saw a hideously malignant female watching her. Lady Catherine now rushed wildly round the room, leaped at the upper ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... he said presently, after both had sat silent a while in the firelight, 'would you care to go to Madame de ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... soft half-darkness; shadows leaped out of the corners, and chased the gleams of firelight; the tall clock ticked slowly in the corner, and on the hearts of these two fell that content with life and each other which is ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... knowledge that it was Meleese who was trailing behind them on the second sledge! "When you yell like that give me a little warning if you please, Jean," he said, speaking as coolly as though he had not recognized the figure that had come for an instant into the firelight. "It is enough to startle the ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... sneer or an unholy light upon his face. Could I ever forget him? Could I ever look into the face of any other man and call it the dearest in the whole world to me? Ach—I shook my head and gathered my recreant wits together! I'd forget what he said and attribute it to the weird influence of the firelight. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... overshoes, pinned a shawl about her and descended; and their fire was soon burning, their kettle was soon boiling, in defiance of water streams which frequently trickled from the leaves and fell on the coals with a hiss. The firelight shone through slices of clear pink ham put down to broil. Aunt Corinne laid the cloth on a box which Zene took out of the wagon for her, and set the cups and saucers, the sugar and preserves, and little seed cakes which grew tenderer the longer you kept them, all in tempting order. They ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... without and the snowflakes fall thicker and thicker—it yet wants three hours to curfew—but the woods are quite buried in the sombre gloom of a starless night. The central building is evidently well lighted, for we see the firelight through many chinks in the ill-built walls ere we enter, although they have daubed the interstices of the logs whereof it is composed with clay and mud almost as adhesive as mortar. Let us go ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... saw was not the velvet darkness of the night laying against the glass. The firelight which shone through the glazed sash revealed the outlines of a human face ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the capture of Monteith Sterry while trying to steal through the lines. As we have shown, he was identified the instant he was brought into the reflection of the firelight, and such precautions were taken that escape by him was out of ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... Pussy Grey, "I fear you're a wicked one! But wait, I'll light my lantern quick And put my ulster on!" The twirl of a furry paw Was all the firelight saw, And ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... real young man—a young man who possessed a gilt watch-chain. The suspense, as the wintry afternoon drew in, became almost intolerable. Still her aunt did not speak. The sitting-room looked so cosy when tea was laid; the firelight played over the cups; her aunt drew the curtains. On one side there was joy, warmth—all that she could desire; on the other, a forlorn walk in the dark. She had left it until so late that her heart shook at the idea ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the chrysanthemums in a big silver bowl, the purple bloom of the piled-up grapes before Toni, the ruby of the wine in the decanters, the reflections cast by the candles in the shining surface of the uncovered table, the ruddy glow of the firelight playing over Toni's pale-coloured skirts—to the day of his death Owen would be able to recall the scene at will: and never would he forget the chill in his veins as he realized that the girl he had thought a child was a woman ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... boasted that he had killed two cows that morning, and would have killed a third if the dust had not blinded him so that he had to drop his bow and arrows and press both hands against his eyes to stop the pain. The firelight fell upon his wrinkled face and shriveled figure as he sat telling his story with such inimitable gesticulation that every man in the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the open air, outside the tent, and I woke up just as he was carrying Dolly off. I didn't wake up until he'd got out of the firelight, and there wasn't any use calling anyone else. So ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... woman was just going to make her tea. Viola insisted on showing the use of her cozy, and making everybody stay to nurse's impromptu kettledrum, and herself put in the pinches of tea. Dermot chaffed all and sundry; Viola bustled about; Harold sat on the dresser, with his blue eyes gleaming in the firelight with silent amusement and perfect satisfaction, the cat sitting on his shoulder; and nurse, who was firmly persuaded that he had rescued her dear Master Dermot from the fangs of the lion, was delighted to do her best for his entertainment. Viola insisted on displaying all the curiosities—the ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge |
