"Muffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Well—we'd best be gettin' on—no tellin' how soon they may find you're gone." Once more the big Yankee bowed his back to the task in hand and a silence fell, broken only by the faint sound of the muffled oars and the swirl of water along the sides. Not even the thrill of the escape could keep the two tired boys awake, and it was nearly an hour later that they were roused by voices calling at no great distance. A tall black mass on which showed a single moving ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... The muffled notes of the gong swelled out brazenly through the silent house. They echoed down the softly carpeted corridors to the library where the master of the house sat at his desk. For days he had been immersed in the figures of the new issue which Hornaway's, the vast engineering business of his creation, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... dismal moan. It was a weird noise—worse than positive howling, and the dog himself seemed distressfully conscious that he was expressing something strange and unnatural. Two or three times he repeated this eerie muffled cry—then, lying down again, he put his nose between his great paws, and, with a deep shivering sigh, appeared to resign himself to the inevitable. There followed several moments of tense silence. Then came a sudden dull thud overhead, as of a heavy ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... unmistakable signs of a large automobile coming up the drive. It chugged as far as the front-door and then stood panting like an impatient steam-engine, while the chauffeur, a person of medium height, well muffled in his automobile coat, his features concealed behind his goggles, and his mouth covered by his collar, rapped loudly on the front-door, once, ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... much nearer than Paris had supposed, and we should not have been greatly surprised to find them in the streets next morning. It was an Algerian horseman, however, muffled up in his dingy white and looking rather chilly, who was riding past the window as ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... consummated retribution. The doors of the palace are thrown open, and disclose in the chamber the two dead bodies laid side by side on one bed. Orestes orders the servants to unfold the garment in whose capacious folds his father was muffled when he was slain, that it may be seen by all; the chorus recognise on it the stains of blood, and mourn afresh the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes, feeling his mind already becoming confused, seizes the first moment ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and steadily. A tall form, apparently of a woman, dressed in a long white robe, appeared in one of the streams of light, threw its arms over its head, gave a wild cry—which, notwithstanding its wildness and force, had a muffled sound, as if many folds, either of matter or of space, intervened—and fell at full length along the moonlight. Amidst the thrill of agony which shook me at the cry, I rushed forward, and, kneeling beside the prostrate figure, discovered that, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... day, however, the battalion remained on the bank of the canal resting; and during the afternoon the mist, which had never entirely cleared away, returned, and a thick grey fog muffled the marshlands. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... doctor, "the love of a great-hearted lady." The muffled bell of a telephone interrupted. "Excuse me." He picked up the receiver. "Is that you, Heron? ... Can you see a friend of mine this afternoon? ... At four-thirty?" Sir Willoughby looked at Valerie with raised eyebrows. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the hotel android ran the cleaner over the living room. Presently even that ceased, and Tommy lay relaxed and inert, sleepily watching the curtains blow in and out at the open window. Thirty stories above the street the noises were pleasantly muffled and remote, and his senses drifted aimlessly to and fro ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... slower and slower, into the blackness of night it seemed. There was no moon, and the men had turned off the lights. There was nothing but a pocket flash which one of them carried, and turned on now and again to show them the way. The engine too was muffled and went snuffing along through the night like a blind thing that had been gagged. Billy began to wonder if he would ever find his legs useful again. Sharp pains shot through his joints, and he became aware of sleep dropping upon his straining eyes like a ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... allow two shipwrecked lads to enter the house for shelter on such a day; and it seemed well nigh impossible that his tale of the place being too full to hold us could be true. However, we started to walk. On our way we met four horsemen going towards the house, closely muffled up in cloaks." ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... This cloud seemed to palpitate, as though made of a million beating wings. Down below he could hear the clatter of wooden clogs on the cobble stones, as people were running in a panic to the Town Hall. The big bell of it began to ring, but in a muffled way as though borne down by the cloud. The student guessed that a meeting was ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... coat on, like the coats gentlemen wear when they go to the theatre, and something muffled round his throat, and his hat pulled down ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... heard the buzzing of the engine. It seemed to her to hold a jeering note. The outer door was open, and an icy draught blew over her face as she knelt there waiting for Jerry. She broke off again to listen, and heard the muffled sounds of wheels in the snow. Then came the note of the hooter, mockingly distinct; and then the hum of the engine receding from the house. The outer door banged, and the icy ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... character may be tolerably imitated by pronouncing the syllables lubb, dup. One sound is heard immediately after the other, then there is a pause, then come the two sounds again. The first is a dull, muffled sound, known as the "first sound," followed at once by a short and sharper sound, known as the "second sound" of ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... the muffled response. Droom hesitated a moment, looking first at Eddie and then toward the window. Slowly he unbolted the door. A small A. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... thinking how much he would like to tie his little sledge behind a cart, when a big sledge, painted white, drove by. In it sat some one muffled in a white fur coat and cap. Twice the sledge drove round ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... gave what seemed to be an infinitely muffled cry of exultation, so faint that it was hardly a whisper; then he leaned closer and pored over Joe Cumberland with a lighted eye. One might have thought that the doctor was gloating over the ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... couldn't have said what I felt about her except that she was undefended; from the first of my sitting with her there after dinner, under the stars—that was a week at Folkestone of balmy nights and muffled tides and crowded chairs—I became aware both that protection was wholly absent from her life and that she was wholly ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... deadly peril, he roused himself with ever-increasing effort; again and again his head sank. Then suddenly it seemed that all was well. How could he have fancied that he was out amongst the snow? The sound of the gale still thundered in his ears, but dully, muffled by thick walls, and he stood in a bedroom wherein burned a cheerful fire. On the bed lay a man, who presently, with a start, sat up, looked at him, and lay down again. Three times this happened, but the fourth time the man in bed got ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... certain exceptions, such as doctors, urgent Government service, etc., vehicles were not permitted in the streets and highways on those days. Soldiers passing through the streets on service carried their guns with the muzzles pointing to the ground. The church bells were tolled with muffled hammers; hence, the vibration of the metal being checked, the peal sounded like the beating of so many tin cans. The shops were closed, and, so far as was practicable, every outward appearance of care for worldly concerns was extinguished, whilst it was ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... was the Indian woman's muffled ejaculation as she peered out into the night. But she had promised her lover to come to him when supper was over, and she would not break faith with him even if it were at the peril of her life. The next moment she went out, as did the red light in the Girl's ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... of a due size were preparing for the Archaeologia![212] Gough never forgave himself nor Steevens for this flagrant act of ineptitude. On every occasion in the Gentleman's Magazine, when compelled to notice this illustrious imposition, he always struck out his own name, and muffled himself up under his titular office of "The Director!" Gough never knew that this "modern antique" was only a piece of retaliation. In reviewing Masters's Life of Baker he found two heads, one scratched down from painted glass by George Steevens, who would have passed it off for a portrait ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... deep into the pockets of his shabby trousers and quickened his pace. His fingers closed mechanically around a roll of bills, of very respectable size, in the depths of his right-hand pocket. The gesture caused a litter of small change to give forth a muffled jingle. A sense of shame crept over ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the advisability of vying with her enemy, Madame Beattie, to the disgust of Esther, came down cloaked and muffled to the chin and took the one automobile to be had for hire in Addington. She was whirled away, where Esther had no idea. She was whirled back again at something after ten, hoarse yet immensely tickled. But Reardon knew what she had done and he telephoned ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... hearts in our throats, and staring out toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through. It was late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shape of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears, and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback; and it seemed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb, like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts, after his will,— Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... when, for some meteorological reason, the wind would relapse into fierce gusts and then suddenly stop, to be succeeded by intense stillness. "Dead calm, up with the wireless masts!" Every one hastily dashed for his burberrys, and soon a crowd of muffled figures would emerge through the veranda exit, dragging ropes, blocks, picks, and shovels. There was no time to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... There was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the cliff-side—pines, undergrowth, and all—slid down into the road below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Vera as a Bacchante crowned with vine leaves, laughing saucily; Vera draped as a devote, with drooping eyes and hands crossed meekly upon her bosom. Sometimes she would be in a ball-dress, with lace about her white shoulders; sometimes muffled up in winter sables, her head covered with a fur cap. But always she was beautiful, always a young queen, even in these poor, fading photographs, that could give but a faint idea of her loveliness to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... lose their heads; there was a sudden clatter of tusks, a muffled, indescribable sound, half squeal, half roar; a fountain of feathery snow, and two shots close ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... sound of falling rocks below, a fierce shaking of the suspended rope, and then a muffled voice sang out an order, "H'ist away, and be dommed ter yer." Brown devoted himself assiduously to the creaking windlass, although never able entirely to remove his attention from that bright-robed, slender figure standing so closely at his side. For one brief second he vaguely wondered ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... downtown warehouse district helped. They had several specially designed, highly sensitive directional microphones aimed at the building from carefully selected spots around the area, trying to pick up the muffled sounds of speech or motion within the warehouse. The watchmen in buildings nearby had been warned off for the time being so that their footsteps wouldn't ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of midnight approached the men were mustered on deck, the cable was cut, and the muffled sweeps got out. These sweeps were immensely large oars, each requiring a couple of men to work it. In a few minutes we entered the mouth of the creek, which was indeed the mouth of a small river, and took about half-an-hour ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... while, I could hear the sound of their mingling voices coming up the long flight of marble steps, across the wide piazza, and then they came soft and muffled from the drawing-room below. At first, forgetful of self, I sympathized in their joy. I rejoiced for my benefactress, I rejoiced for the tender and affectionate Edith. But after sitting there a long time alone, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... through the glass. It placed me in a position, however, where I could, with a push of my foot, close the door and shut us into the vestibule, so that her clamor, which had broken forth again, might be muffled. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... out of Aunt Prue's hands. She herself, as Cap'n Ira had warned her, was cast, face downward, into the half-filled clothes basket. The blue dress was whirled high in the air, skirt downward. Before the old man was warned by Prudence's muffled scream that something had gone wrong, the starched dress plumped down over his head and shoulders, and he was bound fast and blinded ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... a look measured the space yet to be covered, the distance of the foe, and the rate at which he was coming. Nor less did they measure the danger. They too heard its warning, the muffled roar as of rocks and trees snatched up and grinding to atoms in the inner ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... certainly have been a scuffle, and as the daughter of the murdered man heard his cry for help—which was what Sylvia did hear—she would certainly have heard the noise of a rough-and-tumble struggle such as Norman would have made when fighting for his life. But that single muffled cry was all that had been heard, and then probably the brooch had been pinned on the mouth to seal it for ever. Later the man had been slowly strangled, and in the sight of ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... you please take your place in the boat with me? I am sure that there are boats coming along. Of course the oars are muffled, and there is enough sea on to prevent us hearing the splash. I think the noise I heard was caused by one of the ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... silhouettes on the pavement, quaint patterns of fantastic designs thrown up in high relief by the arc-light above. From the dark foggy throat of St. James's Street came the tinkle of a cycle bell. On so still a night the noise seemed bizarre and out of place. Then the cycle loomed in sight; the rider, muffled and humped over the front wheel, might have been a man or a woman. As the cyclist flashed by something white and gleaming dropped into the road, and the single word "Come" seemed to cut like a knife through the fog. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... stage, or I'm d—nably mistaken." And indeed we may forgive this his suspicion; for such was the agility and strength of our heroe, that he was, perhaps, a match for one of the first-rate boxers, and could, with great ease, have beaten all the muffled[*] graduates ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... hands round her slender waist as if to smooth some trifling wrinkle in her gown, turning sideways to see if its folds fell properly, and as she did so, she caught sight of the king on the couch behind her. The carpet had so muffled the sound of his steps that he had slipped in softly ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... voices. But he heard other sounds. He heard the creaking of a heavy rolling door. He heard a sound as if it were being bolted or fastened on the inside. Then he heard the slamming of another door and a muffled, metallic sound as of someone locking it on the outside. Then he heard footsteps, fainter, fainter.... Then he heard a sound which seemed to him familiar. He could not liken it to anything in particular, but it sounded familiar, a kind of clanking, metallic sound. Then he heard a voice say, "Let ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and their tears had importance only from the fact that each word they spoke and each tear they shed fell into this gulf, and were at times so strangely resonant there as to lead one to think that the gulf must be vast if tear or word, as it fell, could send forth so confused and muffled a sound. ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Fenwick's rooms without the chance of discovery. He was lounging in the hall, smoking innumerable cigarettes, when Fenwick himself came down the stairs. Obviously the man was going on a journey, for he was closely muffled up in a big fur coat, and behind him came a servant, carrying two bags and a railway rug. It was a little gloomy in the lobby, so Venner was enabled to watch what was going on without being seen himself. He did not fail to note a certain strained anxiety that rested on Fenwick's face. The man ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... planking Percy could hear him open the little door and crawl up into the bow. Then his faint, muffled voice reached the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... could give me shelter. The scene was a solemn one, and reminded me of a description in Whittier's Snow-Bound. All the stock came round the cabin with mute appeals for shelter. Sheep dogs got in, and would not be kicked out. Men went out muffled up, and came back shivering and shaking the snow from their feet. The churn was put by the stove. Later on, a most pleasant settler, on his way to Denver, came in his wagon having been snow blocked two miles off, where he had been obliged to leave it and bring ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... upon the snow at its base. The face of Big Lena framed by flying strands of flaxen hair appeared for a moment above the wall, and then the sound of a shot rang sharp and clear. The face disappeared, and from beyond the wall came the muffled thud of a heavy body ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... him that here, more than anywhere else, the bush rangers had made a great effort to throw anyone who might be pursuing them off the trail. He had no doubt that the bush rangers had muffled their horses' hoofs with cloth, and had proceeded with the greatest care through the bush, so as to avoid breaking a single twig in their passage; and the only reason for such greater caution could be that it was here, and here ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... herself. For until all the inmates of the castle had retired to rest, naught could she learn of the mystery, or of the stranger who had come to the castle. But once within her own apartments, where she was no longer watched and guarded as of yore, she quickly, at Dame Bragwaine's bidding, muffled herself to the eyes, and creeping softly down a flight of secret stairs, she got out of the castle by a private passage-way and reached the spot where 'The Swan' lay moored, and where Sir Ganhardine awaited her with his message ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... silent!" shouted Judge Wetherell. "This is entirely out of order!" Then he quickly covered his face with his handkerchief. "Proceed!" he directed in a muffled tone. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... du Maine, thanks to the perfidy of the Abbe Dubois, had had time to hide away all their papers, and to arrange together the different parts they should play. Madame du Maine, supported by her sex and birth, muffled herself up in her dignity, when replying to the questions addressed to her, of which just as many, and no more, were read to the replying counsel as pleased the Abbe Dubois; and strongly accusing Cellamare and others; protected as much as possible her friends, her husband above all, by ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... wood-carvers an occasional indefinite figure moved, groping among last night's tools, or an old woman in a red sari washed a brass dish over the shallow open drain that ran past her door. At the tonga terminus, below the Mall, a couple of coughing syces, muffled in their blankets, pulled one of these vehicles out of the shed. They pushed it about sleepily, with clumsy futility; nothing else stirred or spoke at all in Simla. Nothing disturbed Miss Anderson asleep in ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Alresford a mysterious stranger, who put up at the Swan Hotel in that little town, and said that his name was Taylor. He was a man of bulk and eccentric attire. He wrapped himself in large greatcoats, muffled his neck and chin in thick shawls, and wore a cap with a peak of unusual dimensions, which, when it was pulled down, covered a considerable portion of his features. The stranger, at first very reserved, soon showed signs of coming out of his shell. He sent for Rous, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... you understand. You will be a different person from what you were when last there," he went on, in a muffled voice. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... to two thousand feet they headed across Florida Strait, with Paul at the throttle. It was a real joy to be looking through the glass panels of the airplane's cabin once more, to hear the muffled roar of her engine and propeller, and to realize that probably before dark they would be across the five hundred miles of blue waters of the Caribbean and hovering over the world-famous ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... looked like a rudely-constructed imitation of the Rialto Bridge at Venice, seen through a haze of darkness, slanting rain, faintly-beaming coach-lamps, pushing and heaving men, panting led horses, passengers muffled up and umbrellaed, conductor leading and directing. Then came the reharnessing of the horses, the reassembling of the passengers, the remounting of the "insides," the reclambering to his seat of the alert banquette "outside" (after a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and wild plans of rescue were suggested and discussed and disputed. Everyone condemned the coal company for what had happened, but over all there were the white-faced women and the silent children; the muffled sobs, the tears, and the agony of silent wet eyes that spoke more pain than all the tragedies that ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Almost every season a solitary quail visits us, and, unseen among the currant bushes, alls Bob White, Bob White, as if he were playing at hide-and-seek with that imaginary being. A rarer visitant is the turtle-dove, whose pleasant coo (something like the muffled crow of a cock from a coop covered with snow) I have sometimes heard, and whom I once had the good luck to see close by me in the mulberry-tree. The wild-pigeon, once numerous, I have not seen for many years.(1) Of ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... presently a door banged like muffled thunder somewhere beyond the sacristy, and simultaneously he heard a pair of boots going down ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... in boats close together. The night was very dark. They could just see that high, rugged, black cliffs towered up above them, and that they were entering a little cove or harbour, through a narrow entrance which put them in mind of a huge mouse-trap. The boats had muffled oars; not a sound was heard; but had any one been on the lookout, the phosphorescent flashes as the blades touched the water would have betrayed them. The boats reached some black slippery rocks. The crews, led by their officers, leaped out, leaving two boat-keepers in each; and, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... clutched the brave girl's throat so that the cry on her lips died in a gasp. But the relief gave Rod his opportunity. With a tremendous effort he reached his pistol holster, drew out the gun, and pressed it close up against his assailant's body. There was a muffled report and with a shriek of agony the Indian pitched backward. Hearing the shot and seeing the effect upon his comrade, the second Indian released his hold on Minnetaki and ran for the forest. Rod, seeing Minnetaki fall in a sobbing, ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... by the Divine help, I have carried that load. My health to-day is as firm as usual; and I thank God that such forces of heart and brain as He has given me are unabated. The chronic catarrh that long ago muffled my ears to many a strain of sweet music, has never made me too deaf to hear the sweet accents of your love. But I understand my constitution well enough to know that I could not carry the undivided load of this great church a great while longer without the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... awful warriors!" shivering as the war-cries followed the muffled roar of the great drum. "If found, he will be slain! Do you think there is any hope for him, mother? And he ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... his cushions and pressed his hands to his mouth. His shoulders heaved, and a curious muffled sound emerged from his lips. He tried to strangle it, tried to frown, to choke the inclination in his throat, but it was of no avail: laugh he must, and laugh he did, his slight form shaking with merriment, the tears rising in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and dragging me across the floor, hurled me into the passage; lying breathless and half-stunned, I heard the slam of the door, the rattle of a bolt and thereafter the sound of his voice, hoarse and muffled and very evil to be heard. I was upon my knees and groping for my hat when powerful arms caught me and lifted me to ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... am glad, now that I know what is going to happen to me, that I had last week on shipboard, with Richard Hall bombarding my cardiac regions with his honest eyes and booming voice discreetly muffled to accord with the moonlight and the quiet places around the deck. I may never get that sort of a joy-drink again, but it was so well done that it will help me to administer the same to others when the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a gentle rushing. Sometimes its song would almost cease, and then break out again, tinkle, babble, and rush, all at once. At the bottom of the hill they came to a small river, into which the brook flowed with a muffled but merry sound. Along the surface of the river, darkly clear below them in the moonlight, they floated; now, where it widened out into a little lake, they would hover for a moment over a bed of ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... came a dull, muffled thud-thud-thud-thud. Already Chippewa, Wisconsin, had learned to recognise it. Grand Avenue, none too crowded on this mid-week night, pressed to the curb to see. Down the street they stared toward the moving mass that came steadily nearer. The listless group on the corner stiffened into ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... France. From the Spanish frontier the report of heavy firing was audible for hours, apparently coming from a point between Oyarzun and Renteria. First one could distinguish the faint spatter of musketry, and afterwards the undeniable muffled roar of artillery. Then came a succession of sustained rolls as of volley-firing. About noon the action must have been at its height. The distant din was subsequently to be caught only at long intervals, as if changes of position were in course of being effected; but at three ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... to be married in April! Cara was conscious of a muffled stab of pain. But she felt no active rebellion. With a wistful sense of resignation she recognised that his life and hers were separate and apart. She herself had sundered them more than ten years ago. But now, at last, Eliot ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... dark, and we met no one else except a young man, whom I had occasionally seen about of evenings. He was rather odd looking, being invariably muffled up in a large cloak and a ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Hartford and neighboring towns all ornaments, mirrors, and pictures were muffled with napkins and cloths at the time of the funerals, and sometimes the window-shutters were kept closed in the front of the house and tied together with black for a year, as was the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... reappeared with his companions, looking somewhat pale and anxious, and shouted to us to get back. Following our retreat to a certain distance, unwinding a wire as he came, presently he stopped and pressed the button of a battery which he held in his hand. There was a muffled explosion and a tremor of the soil like to that of an earthquake, while from the mouth of the shaft ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the Infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome! Your sorrows O people, are his peace! Your bells, and bands, and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; God makes it echo joy and triumph there. Pass ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... going, Papa, muffled up with such a burden? Come and eat the fresh grass with me, and throw wicked Brother Rabbit ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... came muffled from his breast, where she had buried her head in the convulsions of her trembling at the moment when her modesty went down in the fierce battle with a higher pain. But the plea which seemed to give her the right to cling the closer made the man to draw apart. It was the old deep tragedy ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... me," he returned, in the same muffled voice; but she would not be repulsed. She swept back the dark hair from his forehead and kissed him. Did she not share his sufferings? Could any one sympathize with him as she could? "Oh, if mother were only here," she sighed, feeling her inability to comfort ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... into the great distances which suggest eternal things. From the darkness, as from the mouth of a mighty cavern, rose a wind, not strong, very pure, very keen, which seemed dashed with the spray of water. Now and then an Arab passed muffled in burnous and hood, a fold of linen held to his mouth. The noise of ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... bugle call, the troops mustered on parade in full uniform. The prisoner in irons was brought forward and marched round the hollow square, accompanied by muffled drums. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the water in a mill-race, to turn the wheels of workshop and factory. Before Springer's a great arm of this human mill-stream eddied inward, to be lost in another moment in the vortex of the wide black doors, whence issued muffled sounds of the pandemonium within. At the last moment I hesitated, obsessed once more with the indefinable horror of it all. Again there was the strong impulse to run away—far, far away from Springer's and from Thompson Street, when suddenly the old monody began to ring in my ears, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... wound in and out among the trees, and so it happened that Rosemary heard muffled footsteps before she saw him coming. A wayfaring squirrel, the first of his family to venture out, scampered madly up a tree and looked down upon the girl with questioning, fearful eyes. She rose from the log and looked up, with her hands ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... muffled against him. She was clinging to him very tightly. He could feel her fingers straining upon each other. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... she thought she must run some whither ... she climbed over a Five-Bar-Gate, and ran along the Highway up a Hill ... as far as a Place called Hackney-Lane, where she look'd behind her, and saw a little Old Woman Muffled in a Riding-hood." This dame had asked whither she was going, had told her to pluck some sticks from an oak tree, had bade her bundle them in her gown, and, last and most wonderful, had given her a large crooked pin.[27] Mrs. Gardiner, so the account ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... This reflection was prompted by the lateness of the hour. The Wauters who was to sing the music of the Night from the Enchanted Flute, on her way home from her theatre, had just entered, completely muffled in ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... course Lizzie Tuoey, their former servant, was no more, and they had an ashy-black African woman. Some one was sobbing in the front room—the terrible sobs of a suffocating grief. There was a voice, too, a man's, but muffled, so that I couldn't make out any words. That died away, and the thin, bright tones of a child followed; then a storm of knocking, and blowing on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... held his breath, and waited for his enemy to overtake him. He could hear Overman's heavy breathing at each muffled step. When he approached so close he could feel the movement of his body in the air, he suddenly sprang on him, plunging the dagger in his body, and bore him to the floor, knocking the blower from the grate ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... a mirky night, when the thick air seemed too clotted and moist to break into hurly-burly of storm, and yet too heavy and dank to throw off the black envelope of fog and cloud. The black, oleaginous water seemed to slope from the muffled oar in a gluey, shining wave, and the heavy ripple at the bow of their boat parted in a long, adhesive roll, sloping away, but not breaking into froth or glisten of electric fire. The air and the sea seemed brooding in a heavy, hopeless misery, and the strange sense of plundering, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... behold on earth; and then he pictured the shivering and naked soul, forced from the reluctant clay, wandering through cheerless space to the intermediate tortures, which the Church taught that none were so pure as not for a whole to undergo; and hearing, as it wandered, the knell of the muffled bells and the burst of unavailing prayer. At length ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder than ever. The band was playing in the upper stand, though all the sound it made for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged last sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled ticking of some monstrous clock. Frozen people stood erect, strange, silent, self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenading upon the grass. I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in the act of leaping, and watched the slow movement of his ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... drawing as might be with the abounding masculine figures in evening dress. Many of these appeared in the march itself, along with the sailors, the Indian chiefs and the young blades out of Perugino. Giles passed by as a Florentine noble of the late Quattrocento, in a black silk robe that muffled his slight indifference to a function familiar from many repetitions. Little O'Grady wore his plaster-flecked blue blouse over his shabby brown suit and hardily announced himself as Phidias. Medora walked with a languid grace as a Druid priestess, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... was peace, save in the hearts of savage man. The Blackfoot camp was buried in slumber. Only the sentinels were on the alert. Suddenly one of these—like the war-horse, who is said to scent the battle from afar—pricked his ears, distended his nostrils, and listened. A low, muffled, thunderous sort of pattering on the plain in front. It might be a herd of buffaloes. The sentinel stood transfixed. The humps of buffaloes are large, but they do not usually attain to the size of men! The sentinel clapped his hand to his mouth, and gave vent to a yell which ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... I heard you," Micheals said in a muffled voice, his eyes still closed. "You found ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... of the dears?" whispered Rose, as the little troop marched slowly by to the muffled roll of the drums, every flag and sword held low, all the little heads uncovered, and the childish faces very sober as the leafy shadows ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... The muffled figure of her husband made a hasty sign in the affirmative; and the false stranger and the little nurse being in their places, the old horse moved off. Boxer, the unconscious Boxer, running on before, running back, running ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... evident in nasal expression and muffled words, spoken through half-closed teeth. We were not meant to speak in that unbeautiful manner, nor were we meant to gesticulate wildly as some of our drawing-room orators persist in doing-to the amusement of everyone else concerned. When you ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... coachman, sometimes in a sheepskin coat; and a footman, a dandy, with a cockade. Well-fed horses in saddle-cloths fly through the frost at the rate of twenty versts an hour; in the carriages sit ladies muffled in round cloaks, and carefully tending their flowers and head-dresses. Every thing from the horse- trappings, the carriages, the gutta-percha wheels, the cloth of the coachman's coat, to the stockings, shoes, flowers, velvet, gloves, and perfumes,—every thing is made by those ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Milk; and, of course, those who had been scarcely better than jewed out of it were determined to obtain it again at all hazards;—they were never famous for scrupulosity. The Duke of X. was aware of this, and, for a time, the gem had lain idle, its glory muffled in a casket; but finally, on some grand occasion, a few months prior to the period of which I have spoken above, it was determined to set it in the Duchess's coronet. Accordingly, one day, it was given by her son, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... from behind him attracted his attention and he turned to see her standing in a corner of the great room, holding a lamp in her hand and looking towards him. Her gold breastplate and crown were gone, with every other ornament, and she was clad, or rather muffled in robes of pure white fitted with a kind of nun's hood which lay back upon her shoulders. Also on her arm she carried a shawl or veil. Standing thus, all undecked, with her long hair fastened in a simple knot, she still looked very beautiful, more so than she had ever been, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... came up the muffled voice of Ned. "But I've got a rush of blood to the head. Pull now! Pull for all you're worth, all of you. If you slip we're all gone. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... circumspect voices, and the busy rustle of a steel pen in the hand of Sturm, the quiet of the room had a tolerably constant background of sound in a subdued whisper punctuated by muffled clicks, emanating from the bronze casket that housed ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... hearing and seeing stead, old lad. Thou art tall across thy belly and not otherwise, and thy wind, belike, is none of the best, and but for me thou wouldst have been amidst the thickest of the throng, and have heard words muffled by Kentish bellies and seen little but swinky woollen elbows and greasy plates and jacks. Look no more on the ground, as though thou sawest a hare, but let thine eyes and thine ears be busy to gather tidings to ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris |
