"Stealthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had seized him body and soul, but not in the embrace of love with which it held Bill. Obviously he had taken the line of least resistance to perdition. He had forgotten the world of men; in reality he was no longer of it. Bill read the truth—a familiar truth in the North—in his crafty, stealthy, ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... within the great wall of Omdurman, into the arsenal, into the treasury, into the mosque, into the Khalifa's house itself, the spies and secret agents of the Government—disguised as traders, as warriors, or as women—worked their stealthy way. Sometimes the road by the Nile was blocked, and the messengers must toil across the deserts to Darfur, and so by a tremendous journey creep into Omdurman. At others a trader might work his way from Suakin or from the Italian ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... was a grewsome old shell any way, full of unaccountable noises after dark—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... stealthy, but there was an almost more than Indian stealthiness about this canoe-man's movements. Noiselessly, as the twilight deepened into darkness, the canoe glided out of a secluded cove not far from the camp; noiselessly the paddle dipped into the water, and the canoe passed like a ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... P. Donner Houghton The Camp Attacked by Indians Our Stealthy Foes Governor L.W. Boggs Corral Such as was Formed by Each Section for the Protection of its Cattle Fort Laramie as it Appeared When Visited by the Donner Party Chimney Rock John Baptiste Trubode Frances Donner (Mrs. Wm. R. Wilder) Georgia Ann Donner (Mrs. W.A. Babcock) March of the Caravan United ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... Kidder, Kiddier, Pedder, now pedlar, are from bag, kid, related to kit, and the obsolete ped, basket; cf. Leaper, Chapter XV. The badger, who dealt especially in corn, was unpopular with the rural population, and it is possible that his name was given to the stealthy animal formerly called the bawson (Chapter I.), brock or gray (Chapter XXIII). That Badger is a nickname taken from the animal is chronologically improbable, as the word is first recorded in ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Bright! Miss Lilywhite, I see you hiding in the croft! By yon steep stair of ruddy light The sun is climbing fast aloft; What makes the stealthy, creeping chill That hangs about the morning still?" Tinkle, tinkle in the pail: "Some one saunters up the vale, Pauses at the brook awhile, Dawdles at the meadow stile— Well! if loitering be a crime, Some one takes his ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the girl asked herself that question when she heard it—a padding, stealthy, creeping noise that made her clutch the bed clothes and ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... it all now,—the slow and stealthy approach of the boat from the little sloop out in the river (it had disappeared round the bend, he noticed), Blodgett's quiet watch at the foot of the path, the approach of the men, Blodgett's challenge, the first one shot dead as he came up, the ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... few moments of intense listening. Graveling reached out his hand and took a cigar from a box which had been placed upon the table. Henneford and his neighbour exchanged glances, which culminated in a stealthy wink. Alone at the table David Ross sat like a figure of stone, his mouth a little open, something of ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the threshold of the doorway. He turned and looked back at Warden, puzzled, for it seemed to him that Warden was defying him; and he seemed to feel the atmosphere of complacence that surrounded the man. His manner hinted of secret knowledge—strongly; it gave Lawler an impression of something stealthy, clandestine. Warden's business methods were not like Lefingwell's. Lefingwell had been bluff, frank, and sincere; there was something in Warden's manner that seemed to exude craft and guile. The contrast between the two men was sharp, acute, startling; and Lawler descended the stairs feeling ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... some language Paul knew not, a fierce gleam in her eyes. Dmitry abased himself almost to the floor, and departing quickly, returned with sticks and lit a blazing pine-log fire in the open grate. Then he threw some powder into it, and with stealthy haste drew all the orchid-silk curtains, and departed from the room. A strange divine scent presently rose in the air, and over Paul seemed to steal a spell. The lady crept still nearer, and then with infinite sweetness, all her docility ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... picture from his mind. Her breath warmed the air around him throughout the day, and made him hasten home. At table at home they had secret signs that referred to their secret world. They were living in the first love of youth with all its sweet secrecy, and smiled at one another in youthful, stealthy comprehension, as though the whole world were watching them and must learn nothing. If their feet touched under the table, their eyes met and Ellen would blush like a young girl. Her affection was so great that she could not bear it to be known, even to themselves. A red flame ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... was awakened by a noise that frightened me. All was still, but instantly there flashed through my mind tales of murdered travelers, and I was almost paralyzed with fear when again I heard that stealthy, sliding noise, just like Carlota Juanita's old slippers. The fire had burned down, but just then the moon came from behind a cloud and shone through the window upon Carlota Juanita, who was asleep with her mouth open. I could also see a pine ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... than one passage at arms between her and my mother, and nothing intensifies feeling like the icy breath of persecution. How charming was her greeting, "Here you are, little rogue!" when curiosity had taught me how to glide with stealthy snake-like movements to her room. She felt that I loved her, and this childish affection was welcome as a ray of sunshine in the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... about the natural, modest, healthy half-nudity of Japanese toiling under a summer sun. He saw cathedrals and churches in vast number, and near to them the palaces of vice, and establishments enriched by the stealthy sale of artistic obscenities. He listened to sermons by great preachers; and he heard blasphemies against all faith and love by priest—haters. He saw the circles of wealth, and the circles of poverty, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... she was behind the screen, stealing into the room, her head thrust forward, her lips parted, a peculiar glitter in her eyes. For a moment I stood rigid. The sight of her fascinated me—there was something so wholly animal-like in the stealthy triumph of her tiptoe approach. I recovered myself just in time. One more step, a turn of her head, and she would have seen Grooten. My finger pressed down the catch of the lamp, and a sudden darkness ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scent struck terror into the stoutest hearts, and men who had never before shrunk from danger in any open form now feared to show their faces, dared not sleep in their own houses, nor, except by stealth, visit their own families. At dead of night, as well as in the blaze of day, stealthy descents would be made upon the place, the houses surrounded and strict search made. One hour the streets would be deserted, the next every corner bristled with rude soldiery, flinging insults and imprecations on the feeble old men and defenceless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... the chiefs of my people. The brave love the brave, and his son sends the Chief as a guide for his brother, By the way of the Wakpa Wakan[AR] to the Chief at the Lake of the Spirits. As light as the foot-steps of dawn are the feet of the stealthy Tamdoka; He fears not the Maza Wakan;[AS] he is sly as the fox of the forest. When he dances the dance of red war howl the wolves by the broad Mini-ya-ta,[AT] For they scent on the south-wind afar their feast on the bones of Ojibways." Thrice the Chief puffed the red ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... half-hour passed, then the snow creaked under stealthy footsteps and a shadow stole past the window. Antkowa seized a piece of wood and stood by the door which was flung wide open; a small boy of ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Marg'et Ann was conscious sometimes of a change in him; he went often and restlessly to see Squire Kirkendall, who kept an underground railroad station, and not infrequently a runaway negro was harbored at the Morrisons'. Strange to say, these frightened and stealthy visitors, dirty and repulsive though they were, excited no fear in the minds of the children, to whom the slave had become almost an ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... and has held A thousand Treshams—never one like her! No lighter of the signal-lamp her quick Foul breath near quenches in hot eagerness To mix with breath as foul! no loosener O' the lattice, practised in the stealthy tread, The low voice and the noiseless come-and-go! Not one composer of the bacchant's mien Into—what you thought Mildred's, in ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... his arm cautiously under it. Joy! there were his boots, his poor old boots, the source of all his trouble. He grabbed them delightedly, and rose. At the same instant his candle went out, and his heart almost stood still with terror, for, close by him he heard the sound of stealthy footsteps, and ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... not far. I had often and often observed the capabilities of the sand-hills for protracted ambush or stealthy advances and retreats; and, not ten yards from the scene of the scuffle, plumped down again upon the grass. The lantern had fallen and gone out. But what was my astonishment to see Northmour slip at a bound into the pavilion, and hear him bar the door behind him with a clang ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instant, made cautious and stealthy by alarm, Gale drew Mercedes deeper into the gloom of the shrubbery. Sharp pricks from thorns warned him that he was pressing into a cactus growth, and he protected Mercedes as best he could. She was shaking as one with a sever ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... she deemed, if thou Madest these wondrous things." And lowly now As she would kneel, she drew anigh. But he Cried, shrinking, "Nay, I made them not." And she Low questioned, "Eblis, tell me who then, did make Them all. Who set the creeping hooded snake And stealthy pard within the thorny brake, And spread the sea, and wreathed the waterfall With foam? Who reared the hoar hills, towering tall Above the lands?" With eyes wild flashing, low He groaned: "O Lilith, ask me not. My foe He was—he ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... so much of the unpaid bronze-smith as of divers weightier debts. On the evening in question he had ordered Bias, the sly Thracian, out of the room; with his own hands had barred the door and closed the lattice; then with stealthy step thrust back the scarlet wall tapestry to disclose a small door let into the plaster. A key made the door open into a cupboard, out of which Democrates drew a brass-bound box of no great size, which he carried gingerly to a table and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... To the damp funeral smell of the flowers at the altar, there has been added the cacodorous scents of forty or fifty different brands of talcum and rice powder. It begins to grow warm in the church, and a number of women open their vanity bags and duck down for stealthy dabs at their noses. Others, more reverent, suffer the agony of augmenting shines. One, a trickster, has concealed powder in her pocket handkerchief, and applies it dexterously while ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... when Time with stealthy tread Lays the rich garden waste, The woodland berry ripe and red Fails not ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... the farther shore. With steady strokes of the muffled oars, the two boats made their way toward the two brigs that could just be seen outlined against the sky. Elliott, in the first boat, directed the movements of his men, and restrained the too enthusiastic. So stealthy was the approach, that the foremost boat was fairly alongside of the "Detroit" before the British took the alarm. Then the quick hail of the sentry brought an answering pistol-shot from Elliott; and, amid volleys of musketry, the assailants clambered up the sides of the brigs, and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... alarming sense of presage grew upon him as his eyes went from this face to Imogen's—so still, so cold, so unanswering, lightened, as if from a vail of heavy cloud, by that stealthy, baleful, illuminating glance. In Imogen's whole bearing he read renouncement, but renouncement, in her hand, would assuredly prove a scourge for her mother's shoulders. For the time that they must be ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... this statuesque figure with a stealthy tread, and plucking a long spear of grass tickled the bronzed neck. The hand of the plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly, and at this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of laughter and fearing lest it explode, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... over the spring, Hagen with stealthy steps crept near and drew the hero's sword and quiver out of his reach. Stealthy still, he seized the spear which rested against the linden tree. Then while Siegfried drank of the cool, clear water, Hagen stabbed him, straight through ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... O auspicious King, that seeing the doleful state of these twain, my sire was filled with ruth and longed to fall upon the ogre sword in hand; however, not being able to cope with him he restrained his wrath and remained on stealthy watch. The giant having drained all the pitchers of wine and devoured half of the barbacued bullock presently addressed himself to the lady and said, "O loveliest of Princesses, how long wilt thou prove thee coy ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... life she was wielding, first in the name of her husband, and then in that of her son, no mean share in the absolute government of the Roman world. But meanwhile that same unerring retribution, whose stealthy footsteps in the rear of the triumphant criminal we can track through page after page of history, was stealing nearer and nearer to her with uplifted hand. When she had reached the dizzy pinnacle of gratified love and pride to which she had waded through so many a deed of sin and blood, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... two stout gipsy lads, who peered down at him from a little farther on, and then drew softly away to shelter themselves among the bushes and ferns till they were beyond hearing. When, stooping low, they ran off towards the wood, but in a stealthy furtive manner as if they were trying to stalk some wild animal and cut it off farther on, where the place was most solitary ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... 'em pulled it off successful, and they was snuggled up on a marble bench gettin' real well acquainted—maybe callin' each other by their first names and whisperin' mushy sentiments in the moonshine—when the heavy villain enters with stealthy tread. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... to robe himself, and if he looked noble in his armour he will look still more so in a doublet. When night comes he will sup with the king, queen, and princess; and all the time he will never take his eyes off her, stealing stealthy glances, unnoticed by those present, and she will do the same, and with equal cautiousness, being, as I have said, a damsel of great discretion. The tables being removed, suddenly through the door of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... errand of mercy, and soon had the timid little old maid in the more congenial atmosphere of the parlor, where little by little, though in a very stealthy and underhand way, the talk grew more general, and the restraint slackened more and more, until sewing and reading were both forgotten and the fun became fast and furious, culminating in the sudden appearance of Jake Dexter dressed up as an ancient and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... With swift stealthy tread, Johnston was moving through the dense forests of the wild region to the south. His army had been rapidly recruited to approximately forty thousand effective men. Beauregard had been detached from the East ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... there by day, and slept at night. Within were beds, chairs, a round table, a fine hanging lamp, and portraits of the royal family of Hawaii. Queen Victoria proves nothing; Kalakaua and Mrs. Bishop are diagnostic; and the truth is we were the stealthy tenants of the parsonage. On the day of our arrival Maka was away; faithless trustees unlocked his doors; and the dear rigorous man, the sworn foe of liquor and tobacco, returned to find his verandah littered with cigarettes and his parlour horrible with bottles. He made but ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... done this for the eighth time, and was cursing under my breath, when on a sudden I heard a stealthy footfall coming ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... The dog began to bark again, but it was easy to distinguish his sharp yelps of excitement and defiance from the earlier notes of alarmed suspicion. In fact, Joey himself was the first to discover the stealthy approach of the Indians. Courtenay and Tollemache, who took the middle watch, from midnight to 4 A.M., had failed to note the presence of several canoes on the ink-black surface of the bay until the dog warned them by growling, and ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... give up using those miserable stunted jargons, those Ghetto languages which we still employ, for these were the stealthy tongues of prisoners. Our national teachers will give due attention to this matter; and the language which proves itself to be of greatest utility for general intercourse will be adopted without compulsion as our national tongue. Our community of race ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... sound of a stealthy step below. Tom drew his head from the window. Standing in the shadow of the frame he could see a young girl emerge ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... in each boat, they dropped gently alongside one of the double-masted lateen vessels, and Mesty stepped on board. He peeped down in the cabin, and perceived a man lying on the lockers; he came up in his stealthy manner, closed the hatch softly, and said, "all right." Jack left Gascoigne to take out this vessel, which he did very successfully, for it was very dark; and although there were sentries posted not far off, their eyes and ears ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 983, How shall it be then, the same stealthy blow?...]—He means, I think, "the same as that with which I have already murdered an unsuspecting man to-day," but Electra for her own purposes ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... on the river front a shadowy figure was stirring. His movements were stealthy. His moccasined feet gave out no sound. But there was sound. It was the muffled grating of something being slid over the gravelly beach at the water's edge. Then came a gentle splash of water. It was scarcely more than the sound of a leaping fish. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... of them behind me in the person of a wretched drudge, who, after running to and fro all day till midnight, and moping in his stealthy winks of sleep upon the stairs betweenwhiles, was washing the dark passages at four o'clock in the morning; and went upon my way with a grateful heart that I was not doomed to live where slavery was, and had never had my senses blunted to its wrongs and horrors ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... in that stupendous place. Everything in me seemed to have stopped moving, too—my blood and my heart. And, in the listening pause, there came again unmistakably, soft, stealthy footsteps, sounding beyond the heavy curtain of the door—sounding as if creatures were gathering in those dark rooms that lay between me ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... must perish immediately on his first sally into the world. To preserve Siegfried for the enterprise to which he has destined him he makes a grotesque attempt to teach him fear. He appeals to his experience of the terrors of the forest, of its dark places, of its threatening noises its stealthy ambushes, its sinister flickering lights its heart-tightening ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... It was worse, in a way, than the ordeal of the day before, this stealthy, noiseless approach. And in her panic she first thought of springing from her chair and reaching a distance which the chain would keep him from following. Yet it was very strange. Black Bart in his wildest days ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... the hard-headed, money-making men of Caxton joined the movement started by the boasting old soldier and although for the moment they vied with him in stealthy creepings through the streets to secret meetings and in mysterious mutterings behind hands the movement subsided as suddenly as it had begun and only left its ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... he climbed to the tower of the Old North Church By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,— By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... in that old packet, each one worse than the last, I believe—four voyages after nuts, and palm-oil, and enormous square logs of mahogany, and cages of snarling leopards and screaming parrots, and tanks of stealthy serpents. I used to wonder who found it worth while to hire us to bring such bizarre and useless things into England. Once one of the twenty-five hundred weight barrels of palm oil slipped from the slings ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... ears, are out on the drifts learning to use the snow-shoes which Percy and Olga sent down to them for Christmas. Dinkie has made himself a spear by lashing his broken-bladed jack-knife to the handle of my headless dutch-hoe and has converted himself into a stealthy Iluit stalking a polar bear in the form of poor old Scotty, who can't quite understand why he is being driven so relentlessly from crevice to Arctic crevice. They have also built an igloo, and indulged in what is apparently marriage ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the room, and, proceeding to the wood-shed, hastily possessed himself of the musket. In a stealthy manner he crept with it through a field behind the house, until he got into ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... enter an AOI and immediately control the operational/environmental signatures both individually and in the aggregate. As needed, line and non-line-of-sight weapons of near pin-point accuracy would be delivered across the entire area of operation. Stealthy UAVs and mobile robotics systems, together with decoys, would be deployed in large numbers for surveillance, targeting, strike, and deception and would produce their own impact of electronic Shock and ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... most strikingly illustrated when, after a few years' absence, we return to the scenes of our youth. We plunged into the current of the world, buoyant and vigorous; our thoughts have been occupied every hour, and we have not noticed the stealthy shadow of time. But we come back to that early spot, and look around. Lo! The companions of our youth have grown into dignified men,—the active and influential citizens of the ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... banks of the Pawnee, quietly awaiting our approach, and prepared to greet us with their well-known war-whoop? These were questions that were probably suggested to the mind of each individual of my command. If we were discovered approaching in the stealthy, suspicious manner which characterized our movements, the hour being midnight, it would require a more confiding nature than that of the Indian to assign a friendly or peaceful motive to our conduct. The same flashes of moonlight which gave us hurried glimpses of the village ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... of doing so, he heard a stealthy but rapid step. The first glance showed him a sinewy warrior, moving softly across the planking from the other end of the cabin and coming directly ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... reticence now, each revolving the problematic disclosure of their secret, each canvassing the question whether the pursuer himself was aware of his betrayal of his stealthy proximity. Not till they had reached the ford of the river did they venture on a low-toned colloquy. The driver paused in midstream and stepped out on the pole between the horses to let down the check-reins, as the team manifested ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... away the smile from her careworn face this morning. With the baby in her arms she carefully descended the ladder, having put the door-key into the bag round her neck along with the key of the box and her last half-crown. Then with stealthy steps she stole along under the houses, hushing Robin, who was inclined to make an unnecessary clatter in his shoes; but fortunately the inhabitants of Angel Court were not early risers, and Meg was off in good time, so they ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... heed of these two faces, and what with feeling conscious that the stealthy occupation must set some mark on her own, Bella soon began to think that there was not a candid or a natural face among them all but Mrs Boffin's. None the less because it was far less radiant than of yore, faithfully ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... that they were followed; at different times he thought he heard in the thicket the cracking of branches, rattling of leaves, and finally the sound of stealthy steps. These noises always ceased on his stopping, and began again the moment he resumed his walk. He thought, a moment later, he saw the shadow of a man pass rapidly among the underwood behind them. The ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... Queenborough, Bart., and Eleanor his wife. It was purely the manner of the curate's advances that took my fancy: in the mere fact of them there was nothing remarkable. For all the men in the house (and a good many outside) made covert. stealthy, and indirect steps in the same direction; for Trix (as her friends called her) was, if not wise, at least pretty and witty, displaying to the material eye a charming figure, and to the mental a delicate heartlessness—both attributes which ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... his stealthy approach—little by little—until finally he was within thirty or forty yards of the edge of the water, along which the great wild-fowl were scattered. Rob nudged him to get up and throw, but Skookie knew his ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... street heard other steps behind them. They turned and looked back through the gloom, whereon the sound of the following steps died away. They pushed on again, and so, unless the echo deceived them, did those quick, stealthy steps. Then, as though by common consent, though no one gave the word, they broke into a run and gained the end of the street, which they now saw led into a large open space lit by the light of the great moon, that broke suddenly through the veil of ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... delicacy of hand and foot, in the purple sheen on straight-falling masses of blue-black hair, and, more than all else, in the long, dark eye, full and soft, yet alight with a slumbering fire. France, too, was responsible for somewhat in Tannis. It gave her a light step in place of the stealthy half-breed shuffle, it arched her red upper lip into a more tremulous bow, it lent a note of laughter to her voice and a sprightlier wit to her tongue. As for her red-headed Scotch grandfather, he had bequeathed her a somewhat ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... walk in the Green Forest. It was a beautiful morning, and Mr. Otter went farther than he intended. He was just trying to make up his mind whether to turn back or go just a little farther, when he heard stealthy footsteps behind him. He looked over his shoulder, and what he saw helped him to make up his mind in a hurry. There, creeping over the frozen snow, was Mr. Lynx, and the sides of Mr. Lynx were very thin, and the eyes of Mr. Lynx looked very hungry and fierce, and the claws of Mr. Lynx were very ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... hours, the conspirators, provided with a duplicate key to the professor's door, made a stealthy attempt to open it, but found his key on the inside and were unable to open the door, but woke the victim, who, however, dared not raise an alarm. One of the smaller students tried to climb in through the ventilator, but this was nailed down, and then as a last resort the "smoking machine" ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... these dreadful streets, these stricken homes took on an aspect more sinister and forbidding in the half-light. Behind those flapping curtains were pits of gloom full of unimagined terrors whence came unearthly sounds, stealthy rustlings, groans and sighs and sobbing voices. If ghosts did flit behind those crumbling walls, surely they were very ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... decorate our cells with souvenirs of art and domesticity, to soften our sitting-down appliances with cushions, to drape the curtain of modesty before the grating of restriction, to carpet our stone flooring, to supply our leisure hours with literary nourishment, to secrete stealthy cakes and apples for bodily solace, to enjoy surreptitious and not over-hazardous corridor outings when others are locked up, to write and receive any sort of letters at any times, without having them first read and stamped by ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... after them unseen, and this he did until he became convinced that they were fairly in the Company Canal and gliding up its dark colonnade in the direction whence they had evidently come. Then he returned to his cabin and with rifle cocked and with slow, stealthy step entered it, and in headlong haste began to prepare to leave it for ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... of death had shadowed that cottage for two days, and now it was desolate indeed. The stealthy tread of those who came to gaze upon the dead and prepare its burial, no longer broke the solemn hush that brooded over the dwelling. The departed was in truth the departed—they had borne her over the threshold of her home, and laid her remains in the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... But while the alternation of her hot and cold fits drove her most devoted courtiers out of patience, there was one symptom that remained invariable throughout all her paroxysms, the rigidity with which her hand was locked. Walsingham, stealthy enough when an advantage was to be gained by subtlety, was manful and determined in his dealings with his friends; and he had more than once been offended with Elizabeth's want of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the night with the white beams of the moon sifting down through the swaying boughs upon her blanched face? But her beauty merely frightened her the more in her terrible loneliness, where the only sound she heard was the stealthy whisperings of the breeze among the leaves, as if all the shadows up yonder were weaving some plot against her, while at times a low inarticulate moan or some sudden crackling of dry twigs floated to her out of the impenetrable ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... dwelt. She was proud of belonging to him. She had felt upheld by the consciousness through years of waiting, and now he more than realized her hopes, and she could have wept for exulting joy. Yet it was a strange, stealthy break with all she had to leave behind. The light to which he belonged seemed strange, chill, dazzling light, and she shivered at the thought of it, as if the new world, new ideas, and new requirements could only be endured with him to shield her and help her on. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his hand in warning. Footsteps approached the tepee with something strangely stealthy in their tread, and Clarke, turning his head, listened with a curious expression. Then he looked at Harding and as the steps drew nearer the American's lips set tight. His pose grew tense, but it was more expressive of determination than alarm. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... knew if it was a dog it would have come nearer. I slept under the cart the first night, but was conscious of its presence as the cattle were restless. On the fourth day of its enforced company, I met a little caravan of carts owned by a Frenchman who was with the half breeds. I told him of my stealthy companion, and he sent some of the half breeds after it with their bows and arrows. They followed it four miles into a swamp and then lost it. They seemed suspicious about this particular animal, and went after it half heartedly. The trader gave me a piece of dough ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... a chance to rest a little, Bessie had stopped her work to talk to Zara, and neither of the two girls heard a stealthy rustling among the leaves back of the woodshed, nor saw a grinning face that appeared around the corner. The first warning that they had that they were not alone came when a long arm reached out suddenly and a skinny, powerful hand grasped Zara's ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... that the Russians would do something at sea, obliged to be at Malta, and other services which I thought the Russian Admiral would have assisted me in—therefore, no blame lies at my door." He took some comfort in contrasting the stealthy return of the French general, with the great armada that accompanied his departure. "No Crusader ever returned with more humility—contrast his going in L'Orient, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... flashed before him the thought of people who kill, of lines of soldiery rushing on trenches, of a stealthy, cowering man who slips through a jail door at dawn, and of a figure he had read of in books—a sinister figure with an ax ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... then. The frequent feast Avoid; for there, with stealthy tread Temptation walks, to lure you on, Till death, at last, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and occasionally peeping from her window upon the moonlit but vacant garden. If she saw him again, would she dare to go down alone? Suddenly she started to her feet with a beating heart! There was the unmistakable sound of a stealthy footstep in the passage, coming towards her room. Was it he? In spite of her high resolves she felt that if the door opened she should scream! She held her breath—the footsteps came nearer—were before ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... see that the whole place was falling to pieces. And it was all wrapped in a dead silence. Away out on the quay was the rattle of chains, the creaking of a windlass, the voices of men and shrill laughter of women, but in there no sound existed. And Spurge suddenly stopped his stealthy creeping forward ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... from night to day, and vice versa, is extraordinarily rapid, occupying but a few minutes; and, even as we stood watching, the pallor strengthened and spread to right and left and upward, suggesting the stealthy but rapid withdrawal of an infinite number of dark gauze curtains from the face of the firmament, until presently the eastern quadrant of the horizon became visible, the pallid sea showing like a surface of molten lead, sluggishly undulating ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... brooding peace of the desert, enwrapped the land, and the inmates of the old Karoo farm had long been at rest; but it was an hour when strange tree-creatures cry with the voices of human beings, and stealthy velvet-footed things prowl through places forbidden by day, and not all who rested at Blue ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... had looked back she would have seen the stealthy opening of doors, the craning of a ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... time I hurried on hopelessly perplexed, and pursued by that stealthy approach. Whatever it was, the Thing either lacked the courage to attack me, or it was waiting to take me at some disadvantage. I kept studiously to the open. At times I would turn and listen; and presently I had half persuaded myself that my pursuer had abandoned ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... Apparently they had not finished yet, for there was surely some faint stir of movement somewhere. Anyhow they respected his legitimate desire for quiet, for the noise, whatever it was, was extremely stealthy and subdued. He thought of his absurd lark about burglars on the night of their arrival, and smiled at the notion. His toupet was in a drawer close to his bed, but he had no substantial impulse to put it on, and make sure that the noise was not anything other than his sisters' ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... they jumped the dividing fence and slipped with stealthy tread around the house to Sarah Jane's cabin ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... comedy of the hypocrite. Coquelin, who remakes his face, as by a prolonged effort of the muscles, for every part, makes, for this part, a great fish's face, heavy, suppressed, with lowered eyelids and a secret mouth, out of which steals at times some stealthy avowal. He has the movements of a great slug, or of a snail, if you will, putting out its head and drawing it back into its shell. The face waits and plots, with a sleepy immobility, covering a hard, indomitable ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... in the opening steps of some dance that seemed oddly and horribly familiar. They made no sound on the stones, this strangely assorted couple. It was all soft and stealthy. And presently, when the air seemed to thicken like smoke, and a red glare as of flame shot through it, he was aware that some one else had joined them and that his hand the mother had released was now ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... whose post I never could find. And here at last is their sentinel—an image of the constant and immortal part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx: I have climbed mountains at night to hear in the distance the stealthy footfall of the winds that chase your sands in forbidden play—our invisible children, O Sphinx, laughing in whispers. My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... therefore placed the two images together in the furnace. When they were thoroughly baked, and life had been breathed into them, hallowed Truth moved on with modest gait; but her imperfect copy remained fixed on the spot. Thence the spurious image, the result of the stealthy work, was called Mendacity,[4] because they say, she has no feet,—an assertion with ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... girl's side, as if perfectly at his ease, yet speaking in quick earnest tones, and drawing her closely to him, Ruby waited until he heard a stealthy tread behind him. Then he sprang up with the speed of thought, uttered a laugh of defiance as the sailors rushed towards him, and leaping wildly off the cliff, fell a height of about fifty feet into ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... precisely with the topographic map made by Gen. Viele. Where he locates buried springs and water-courses, there we find the plague spots of diphtheria and in the same places, on previous maps prepared by the Board of Health, we find other low types and stealthy diseases, such as typhoid and irruptive fevers, and there we shall find them again when the summer and autumnal pestilences have yielded place to those which belong to the indoor poisoned air in the winter. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... no heed of these trivialities, but passed on, as a practical man ought to pass on. But, at the back of the booth he saw a number of children congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at the hidden glories of the place. What did he then behold but his own Louisa peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a beam upon the branches over head. It was evidently not far from morning, and every hope of present escape entirely fled from her bosom. But just as she was yielding to despair, she saw the Indian returning in a stealthy pace, bearing some dark object in his arms. He glided to her side, and beckoned her to leave the snow-canoe, and also to take with her all the robes with which she had been enveloped. She did his bidding, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... for the beasts. The girls sat at the chamber windows, watching the chase. Under a cabbage-leaf, fast asleep, the stray tiger was found. The boy learned in Natural History went over the terrible list of all the fierce animals. "Yes, there were ocelots and cougars and jaguars, peculiarly shy and stealthy in approaching their prey," so the book said. "There was the chibiguasu——" But Jedidiah said he didn't believe his Noah cared for such out-of-the-way beasts; they must have come in since his ark. They had enough to do to catch the regular wild animals, and these at last they found in some ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... of that which his keener senses had already distinguished. A low, stealthy sound came to my ears, not from the direction of Baker Street, but from the back of the very house in which we lay concealed. A door opened and shut. An instant later steps crept down the passage—steps which were meant ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... signs of old. He recognized the sudden stealthy approach that transformed a sun-drenched, friendly plain into an unknown arctic waste. Not for nothing had he been last year one of a search-party to find the bodies of three miners frozen to death not fifty yards from their own cabin. He understood ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... are stealing forth, and so will I. Sorry sight! to view Jabaster, with a stealthy step, skulk like a thing dishonoured! Oh! may the purpose consecrate the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... crossing. If a quarry could only be found in the sand hills, a natural shelter for antelope, Sargent had flattered Dell into believing that his aim was equal to the occasion. The broken nature of the dune country admitted of stealthy approach, and its nearness to the upper camp recommended it as an inviting hunting ground. The disappointment of the first effort, due to moderated weather, was in finding the quarry far afield. A dozen bands were sighted from the protection ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... gloomy mood I plunged along. The prospect was cheerless; for, apart from the comfort that a fire would give, it is necessary, at night, to keep off the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the tread of the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there was one source of profound satisfaction,—the catamount had been killed. Mr. Colvin, the triangulating surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his last official report to the State. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... The voice rang out with passionate stealthy sweetness, finding its way into far recesses of human feeling. Women of perfect poise and with the confident look of luxury and social fame dropped their eyes abstractedly on the opera-glasses lying in their laps, or the programmes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to thee, Hilda! Thou comest with stealthy tread, like the midnight marauder. What news? Does all go well at Ulfstede? But why so sad, Hilda? Thy countenance is not wont to ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... her brother's side of the house, talking about various topics. She hesitated even about her stealthy going through the cellar, lest she should disturb Maria and her possible lover. Now and then she listened. She stood close to the wall. Finally she said, with a puzzled look to Eunice, who was smoothing out her bonnet-strings, "It's queer, but ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and fresh; glades yet unsear'd by hand Of Midas-finger'd Autumn, massy-green; Bird-haunted nooks between, Where feathery ferns, a fairy palmglove, stand, An English-Eastern band:— While e'en the stealthy squirrel o'er the grass Beside me to the beech-clump dares to pass:— In this still precinct of the happy dead, The sanctuary of silence,—Blessed they! I cried, who 'neath the gray Peace of God's house, each in his mounded bed Sleep safe, nor reck ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... poignant dread of something worse than mere robbery. He was seized by an accusing terror that said the Weymouth name and the Weymouth honour were about to be lost. Marse Robert robbing the bank! What else could it mean? The hour of the night, the stealthy visit to the vault, the satchel brought forth full and with expedition and silence, the prowler's rough dress, his solicitous reading of the clock, and noiseless departure—what ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... slept for two hours when the stealthy apprentice let himself quietly into the dark and cheerless house. He bore on his back a heavy bag of flour, and carried on his arm a big basket filled with minor packages gleaned from sleepy shopkeepers, who had been awakened by the lynx-eyed ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... possible that his imagination had, unaided, invented this dreadful doubt—his imagination, which he never controlled, which constantly evaded his will and went off, unfettered, audacious, adventurous, and stealthy, into the infinite world of ideas, bringing back now and then some which were shameless and repulsive, and which it buried in him, in the depths of his soul, in its most fathomless recesses, like something stolen. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... eligible to every office. The first law of Marius was to protect voters from the solicitations of candidates for office. It is significant that the nobles opposed it, though in the end it was carried. Stealthy intrigue was now their safest weapon, but their power was tottering to its fall. Too jealous of each other to submit to the supremacy of one, it only remained for them to be overthrown by some leader ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... firelight, with a stealthy, sidelong movement, glided a doglike animal. It moved with commingled mistrust and daring, cautiously observing the men, its attention fixed on the dogs. One Ear strained the full length of the stick toward the ...
— White Fang • Jack London |
