"Devilry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and persisted in that belief cursing Spanish devilry until Cahusac crawled up out of the dark bowels of the ship, and stood ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... task in the vulgar manner usual with people of her low class, about my complaining to you; so she evidently knew that I had written to you on the subject. All the devilry began again yesterday morning, but I made short work of it by throwing the heavy arm-chair beside my bed at B.'s head, which procured me peace for the rest of the day. They always take their revenge on me when I write to you, or when they discover ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... but as I only too well knew would be the case, I was obliged to look at last, and, as I anticipated, I underwent a most violent shock. In lieu of a face I saw a raw and shining polyp, a mass of waving, tossing, pulpy radicles from whose centre shone two long, obliquely set, pale eyes, ablaze with devilry and malice. The thing, after the nature of all terrifying phantasms, was endowed with hypnotic properties, and directly its eyes rested on me I became numb; my muscles slept while my faculties ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... force of the projected blow by a defensive-offensive against Ypres. The attack was not their real offensive for 1915, but they developed the habit of distracting attention from their main objectives by decking out their subsidiary operations with some new devilry of ingenuity; and just as in 1918 they bombarded Paris with guns having a range of 75 miles when their real objective was the British front, so in 1915, when their main effort was against the Russians, they treated the defenders of ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... it fair play!" And he came after his own hat quickly but cautiously, with burning eyes. The hat had seemed at first to droop and dawdle as in ostentatious langour on the sunny lawn; but the wind again freshening and rising, it went dancing down the garden with the devilry of a pas de quatre. The eccentric went bounding after it with kangaroo leaps and bursts of breathless speech, of which it was not always easy to pick up the thread: "Fair play, fair play... sport of kings... chase their crowns... quite humane... tramontana... cardinals chase ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... him up in a moment, and added of her own devilry a trumpet and banner. She set out from Charing Cross bravely enough, and a trumpeter being an unwonted spectacle, the eyes of all the town were clapped upon her. Yet none knew her until she reached Bishopsgate, where an orange-wench set up the cry, 'Moll Cutpurse on horseback!' Instantly the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... charm of it lingered after it had passed. Her eyes were green like Billy's, only softer. They had a great deal of sweetness in them, and a spice—just a spice of devilry as well. The rest of the face would have been quite unremarkable, but the laughter-loving mouth and pointed chin wholly redeemed it from the commonplace. She was a little brown thing like a woodland creature, and her dainty air and ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... police office, I heard particulars of at least half a dozen cases of unoffending people being ruthlessly ridden down, and Heaven only knows how many more there may be of which the details are not yet to hand. The sheer devilry of his progress is simply amazing. What it comes to is this, Sutgrove. If I can't get hold of him within the next week I may as well resign the force at once. If I don't resign I shall be dismissed, ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... gleam leaped up in Piers' eyes—the gleam that had invariably heralded some piece of especial devilry in the days ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... if not forward, yet round? Not altogether so:—much, to the experienced eye, is not what it seems! Chancery and certain other Law-Courts seem nothing; yet in fact they are, the worst of them, something: chimneys for the devilry and contention of men to escape by;—a very considerable something! Parliament too has its tasks, if thou wilt look; fit to wear-out the lives of toughest men. The celebrated Kilkenny Cats, through their tumultuous ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... things are not to blame. They only walk in the way that is shown them. Many of them are to be much pitied, for they honestly wish to withdraw from the world, only to find themselves in ten times worse worlds of sensuality and all other devilry. O my God! if I might I would fain speak of some of the occasions of sin from which Thou didst deliver me, and how I threw myself into them again. And of the risks I ran of utterly shipwrecking my character and good name and from which Thou didst rescue me. O Lord of my soul! ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... wild waste of slaughter, I've sniffed up the sepulchre's scent, I've doated on devilry's daughter, And murmur'd much more than I meant; I've paused at Penelope's portal, So strange are the sights that I've seen, And mighty's the mind of the mortal Who ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... rushed back again like a flock of glib-tongued and playful monkeys. I could not comprehend a word they said; but the bevy squealed with quite as much pleasure as if I did, and peered into my eyes for answers, with impish devilry ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Devilry, devil's work:—traces of such you might fancy were to be found in a certain manuscript volume taken from an old monastic library in France at the Revolution. It presented a strange example of a cold and very reasonable spirit disturbed suddenly, thrown ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... time to establish discipline, the men were well behaved, and did not dare to disobey the orders of their chiefs. It was only when special orders for "frightfulness" had been issued, or when officers in subordinate command let their men get out of hand, or led the way to devilry by their own viciousness of action, that the rank and file of the enemy's army ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... sad spirit that travailed against itself. Oddly enough his progress was rapid. He soon outpointed in brilliancy and deftness the most talented of the group of Liszt's young people, and once, after playing the Mephisto Walzer with abounding devilry, Liszt cried, "Bravo, child," and then muttered, "And how he ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... by Deborah under her palm-tree, 'The people willingly offered themselves.' Hence came courage, devotion, victory. With their lives in their hands they flung themselves on the foe, and nothing could stand against the onset of men who recked not of themselves. There is one grand thing even about the devilry of war—the transcendent self-abnegation with which, however poor and unworthy may be the cause, a man casts himself away, 'what time the foeman's line is broke.' The poorest, vulgarest, most animal natures rise for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... for effect, they spilled so little blood!" Thus Lucas, speaking with as cool devilry as if he still commanded the situation. Vigo could not know what he meant but he asked no questions; instead, bade Lucas hold ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... brought you here?" said Harkaway. "What fresh act of devilry had you in contemplation when you got on ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... said Tom; "but, I say, Mark," he whispered, "you keep an eye on him whenever you can, so that none of the fellows play him any tricks. They'd do so, though they knew he was dying, out of devilry." ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... veldt as a Lord Mayor's procession would have of catching a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. The enemy are watching us now from a rise a few miles away, waiting for our next move, and probably discussing some devilry or other they are up to. The line of our march is blotted out already. Where we camp one day they camp the next. They are all round and about us like water round a ship, parting before our bows and reuniting round our stern. Our passage ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... like the empty shell of a man. But there—in those seas—the incident was rare enough to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence, which, unless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman and the bringing of worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of devilry. This view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time I was aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound merely; but in a moment it shaped itself into distinct words . . . "in utter disregard of their plain duty," it said. The next sentence escaped me somehow, and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... I could distinctly hear their conversation. I suppose it was the devil who tempted me to put a bullet through the man's heart. He was an enemy to the flag under which I fought, but he was no enemy to me—I had no right to become his executioner; but still the desire to kill him, for the mere devilry of the thing, came so strongly upon me that I no longer tried to resist it. I rose slowly upon my knees; the moon was shining very bright at the time, both he and his companion were too earnestly engaged to see me, and I deliberately ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... light?" he cried violently. "Eh?" He added something in which the words "Old hag's devilry!" were alone audible. "Do you hear?" he continued, more coherently. "Why don't you light? What black games are you playing, I'd like to ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... gamblers, out of sheer devilry and diversion, similarly attach their stuffs, and gallop over the ground with the prints trailing fifty yards behind them. In the frenzied frolic that had seized hold of them they forgot their slain comrades, still unburied. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... so over-proud as not to confess when they are in fault; and from what happened, I am free to admit, that James, harmless as a sucking dove, was no match in such a matter for the like of Cursecowl, who was a perfect incarnation, for devilry and cunning, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... ready to make an end of the villain then and there; for I smelt falsehood and devilry in every word he spoke. But I waited to let him say his say out first. There was little fear in the dark night, and the unsteady flare of the torches, of his ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... he swung round, and, springing into the saddle, went off at a gallop, leaving me staring after him, wondering what devilry lay behind his words. I watched him till he rounded the elbow of the wood that lay without the gates, and then, sheathing my sword, went ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... about the country beating up old ruins and fossils and things. There's an Archaeological Society in the school, run by him. It goes out on half-holidays, prowling about, and is allowed to break bounds and generally steep itself to the eyebrows in reckless devilry. And, mark you, laddie, if you belong to the Archaeological Society you get off cricket. To get off cricket," said Psmith, dusting his right trouser-leg, "was the dream of my youth and the aspiration ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... alacrity he recovered himself and, shaking me feebly by the hand, bade me good-bye, promising to see that my message was properly delivered. When he had gone I laid myself back in my chair for a good think. The situation was a peculiar one in every way. If he were up to some devilry I had probably warned him. If not, why had he betrayed himself ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... the least sign of devilry, or out-facingness, or insolence in that lean shadowy steady head; and yet he himself was compelled to sidle his glance away, so much the face shook him. He closed his eyes, too, as a cat does after exchanging too direct a scrutiny with ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... "Some devilry of his own. Don't you know, Uncle Joseph, these fellows gain credit, and money too, by hunting out cases of disloyalty to the Empire. It is dirty work; officials like the Prefect do not always care to soil their hands with it. I have heard ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... this is my mother, Elizabeth. Boh a warse offender than either on us stonds afore yo. This woman is Nance Redferne, grandowter of the owd hag, Mother Chattox. Ey charge her wi' makin' wax images, an' stickin' pins in 'em, wi' intent to kill folk. Hoo wad ha' kilt me mysel', wi' her devilry, if ey hadna bin too strong for her—an' that's why hoo bears me malice, an' has betrayed me to Squoire Nicholas Assheton. Seize her, an' ca' me ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... daring; and the result of it was that, long before ten, Mr. Silas Q. Scuddamore presented himself in unimpeachable attire at the door of the Bullier Ball Rooms, and paid his entry money with a sense of reckless devilry that was ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... policemen: but (the Lord be praised) I was too much for him. There are legal formalities to fulfil yet; and I won't budge an inch, Lois, not one inch, my dear, till he's fulfilled every one of them. Mark my words, child, that boy's up to some devilry.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... to leave their untasted meal just as they were in the very act, so to speak, of putting it into their mouths, and with its tantalising taste and smell vexing them all the more, that the 'old man' only roused them out again from sheer malice and devilry, to make another fresh tack or short board, with the object of 'hazing' or driving them, as only slaves and sailors can be driven in these days by a ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... wife, Miss Forrest; let me call you by your name, and I will wipe the blood from this knife, I will destroy every evidence of the dark deed. Justin Blake shall not lie in a prison cell; his name shall not be a synonym for devilry; he shall not ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... that Lord Stanley consulted a lady friend, and the two together succeeded in frustrating the infamous design. This sordid and callous rascal tried hard to lead people to suppose that he and Burton were hand and glove in various kinds of devilry, and a favourite phrase in his mouth was "I and Burton are great scamps." Percy Smythe [161] then an official under Lord Stratford, commented on hearing the saying: "No, that won't do, —— is a real scamp, but Burton is only wild." One story put abroad ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... unconventional behaviour. When they want to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom. Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba, with a dash of the second. Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome stranger who ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Imperialism. It is the grim expression of a faith that is everlasting, of a love that shall endure the shocks of years, and all the cunning devilry of such as the Barbarous Huns. Hence this little book. It is an inspiration of the Dardanelles, where I met many of our Australasian friends. It is not an official history. I have, in my own way, endeavoured to picture what like these warring Bohemians are. ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... her deliberate enjoyment of him. Daring and reckless and dangerous they knew it was, their game, each playing with fire, not with love. A sort of defiance of all the world possessed her in it—she would kiss him just because she wanted to. And a dare-devilry in him, like a cynicism, a cut at everything he pretended to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... points, with things that Browning had seen. Pippa Passes has, among Browning's dramas, the same kind of peculiar interest which belongs to the Tempest and to Faust among Shakespeare's and Goethe's. Faery and devilry were not Browning's affair; but, within the limits of his resolute humanism, Pippa Passes is an ideal construction, shadowing forth, under the semblance of a single definite bit of life, the controlling elements, as Browning imagined them, in all life. For Browning, too, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... malignant, or bitter, or sardonic about that smile. No devilry of delight at their confusion. No base abandonment of the whole countenance to mirth, but a curious one-sided smile, implying delicacies, reservations. A slow smile, reminiscent, ruminant, appreciative; it ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Perryman. How much?'—looking 'ard at my 'at all the time. I guessed she was up to some devilry, so I thought I would put her wrong a bit. 'A guinea, ma'am,' says I. She looks at my 'at again and says, 'Mr. Perryman, you've been took in. Twelve-and-six would have been more than enough for that 'at.' 'Oh,' says I to myself, 'you've been ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... He would not see the tenants when they came to him, and had not even returned a visit except Mr. De Baron's. Why had he come there at all? That was the question which all the Brothershire people asked of each other, and which no one could answer. Mr. Price suggested that it was just devilry,—to make everybody unhappy. Mrs. Toff thought that it was the woman's doing,—because she wanted to steal silver mugs, miniatures, and such like treasures. Mr. Waddy, the vicar of the parish, said that it was "a trial," having probably some idea in his own mind that the Marquis ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... story of Old Jeffrey. The explanations have been, trickery by servants (Priestley), contagious hallucinations (Coleridge), devilry (Southey), and trickery by Hetty Wesley (Dr. Salmon, of Trinity College, Dublin). Dr. Salmon points out that there is no evidence from Hetty; that she was a lively, humorous girl, and he conceives that she began to frighten the maids, and only reluctantly ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... beauty. But for them, how many more years of enjoyment might I have drawn from the Socratic Dialogues, from the Apology, and from the Republic! Think of it! It was not till four years ago that I read Thucydides and had my soul shaken by the supreme wickedness, the intellectual devilry of the Melian controversy. How I thrilled at the awful picture of the supreme tragedy at Syracuse! How I saw! How I perished with the Greek warriors standing to arms on the shore, and watching in their ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... with a dog-like devotion; he went to church; he was shy and reserved, and he held a mediocre position in a firm of envelope-makers in the City. But he had a romantic soul, and whenever the public craving for envelopes fell off—and that is seldom—he used to allay his secret passion for danger, devilry and excitement by writing sensational novels. One of these was recently published, and John Antony is now dead. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... Davy's signs aright; but you see they did mean mischief, and plenty of it too, for they no sooner appears aloft than a fine ship and her crew goes down close alongside of us; and as soon as that bit of work was over, away they go somewhere else to light up the scene of further devilry, I make no manner ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... my back on a red-hot rack, They comb my nerves with wire, They poison with pain the blood of my brain Till the Devils of Devilry tire; They spit from Above on the name of my Love, They call my Love a liar; But they can't undo the joy I knew When ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... went on Durwent, 'and though the blackguard had discarded her, he grew jealous, and began his devilry again. She did not tell me, but I know for a long time she was as true to me as I was to her. Then they went to Paris—I believe he promised to marry her there. A week later I got a letter from her, begging forgiveness. He had left her, she said, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... tares were sown. Sleep, whom he had counted his ally, proved herself neutral. She was content to knit up the sleeve of care. That her handmaidens as fast unravelled it was none of her business. After a week of this devilry, Anthony groaned. Then he set his teeth, and, pleading insomnia, obtained permission to walk abroad after supper. With Patch at his heels, he covered mile after mile. So, though the mental strain was prolonged, he became physically played out. His determination had its ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... woodland. I might have guessed that only a couple of idle boys like yourselves, knowing no better, would have pushed their way to a spot that all worthy dwellers in Bosekop, and all true followers of the Lutheran devilry, avoid as though the plague ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... was a thing of the utmost horror. He had known how to brace himself for that other authority—there had, at any rate, been consistency and even a kind of chiselled magnificence in that stiff brutality—now there was degradation, crawling devilry, things unmentionable.... ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... in Ireland has been a vulgar and ignorant hatred of the crucifix, expressed by a crucifixion. I think the South African War was a dirty work which we did under the whips of moneylenders. I think Mitchelstown was a disgrace; I think Denshawi was a devilry. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... came from a pretty young chamber maid, as I passed her. "Do you think so, Patty," I replied, "Just look at my chemise and how I am dressed underneath," opening my robe to give her a view. I felt so full of devilry that I was half inclined to pull her into ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... surrender this pen-point was impossible. And, alas! as they always do, the devils found out this needle's end—and danced. For their purpose it was as good as a platform. It gave them joy indeed to think what stupendous powers of devilry they could concentrate on ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... "If all this devilry goes on I shall take serious measures to stop it," gasped Aunt Charlotte, who was almost frightened to death. "I cannot and will not live in a haunted house. It's you who are haunted, Austin, and I shall go and see the vicar about it this very day. ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... She is very amusing. A very funny thing happened last week. Out of sheer devilry, she and a friend and two men went to the Covent Garden Fancy Dress Ball, disguised of course, and just for an hour or two. To their horror, after the procession, the friend was handed a large glass-and-silver ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... we left the school as officers, we were ready to lay down our lives for the honor of the regiment, but no one of us had any knowledge of the real meaning of honor, and if any one had known it, he would have been the first to ridicule it. Drunkenness, debauchery and devilry were what we almost prided ourselves on. I don't say that we were bad by nature, all these young men were good fellows, but they behaved badly, and I worst of all. What made it worse for me was that I had come into my own money, and so I flung myself into a life of pleasure, and plunged ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... trust of the ruler was not shaken by the rude flippancy of the artificial mourners, and his daughter was brought from the dead. "This is the victory that overcometh, even our faith." Everything bows, like fragile reeds, before the march of a victorious faith. Scorn, and hatred, and all manner of devilry, and death itself, all lose their power in the presence of a belief which remains steady and steadfast. "Said I not unto thee that, if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... be truculent, having gained his end. His blue eyes twinkled with their old infantile devilry. "Thanks. It's awfully nice of you. But—couldn't you make it seem a little more spontaneous? You see, I don't want Rickman to know I had to ask you for them." He had a dim perception of inconsistency in his judgement of the lady; since all along he had been trusting her ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... taverns of Birmingham, tells of a somewhat similar scene from the Quinton side of the town, the bait, however, being not a fox, but the trail-scent of a strong red herring, dragged at his stirrup, in wicked devilry, by one of the well-known haunters of old Joe Lindon's. Still, we have had fox-hunts of our own, one of the vulpine crew being killed in St. Mary's Churchyard, Feb. 26, 1873, while another was captured (Sept. 11, 1883) by some navvies at work on the extension ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... fantastically as though it were on a slippery surface. And if he had met Hal Burnham on his way back from his visit to Ruth Oliver he would undoubtedly have swaggered a little. Nevertheless, he was thinking of Ruth, too, as well as of his own dare-devilry in thus seizing reality with both hands. Ruth's face, much older and more tormented than it had been in the photograph, had still that elusive quality which had from the beginning and through all the period of her trial haunted him. It outraged his refinement ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... door upon the wretched creature who is in it now, and put its screen before a place, quite unsurpassed in all the vice, neglect, and devilry, of the worst old ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... He answered, Thou promised to be silent. From a second it went to a third man's head, who did as the former two. When they dismissed, on the way home, Mr. Peden said to his landlord, I always thought there was devilry amongst you, but I never thought that he had appeared visibly till now I have seen it. O! for the Lord's sake, quit this way, and flee to the Lord Jesus, in whom there is redemption thro' his blood, even ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... desire for peace. The emperors, kings, and men of wealth, birth, and leisure who impudently claim the right of deciding questions of peace and war in all nations, display no objection to war, provided it looks profitable. Provided it looks profitable—what a vista of devilry those words call up! What a theme for satire! But also, to some extent, and in the present ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... ironic "diablerie." A universe entirely composed of the bodies and souls of beings whose primordial emotion is so largely made up of malice is naturally a malicious universe. The age-old tradition of the witchery and devilry of malignant Nature is a proof as to how deep this impression of the system of things has sunk. Certain great masters of fiction draw the "motive" of their art from this ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... which thereafter ran mad and died." He also cured a child of a disease "by straiking back the hair of his head, and wrapping him in an anointed cloth, and by that means putting him asleep," and thus through his devilry and witchcraft, cured the child. Other charges of a similar kind were brought against Grieve, who was found guilty and hanged on the Castle Hill.[196] At the same place, a year previous, Margaret Wallace was ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... snapped Lasse. "But it's no joke being father to a little ne'er-do-weel of a cub like you!" Saying which he went angrily out into the stable. He kept on listening, however, and coming up to peep in and see whether fever or any other devilry had come ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... about, for all the world as if they were drunk. And as he watched one collapsed; the other, after an ineffective effort to spread its wings, rolled to one side and dropped helplessly. And Neale made another turn—to stare at the loaf of bread and to wonder what devilry lay in it. Poison? Of course it was poison! And—what of this man in that jealously guarded room, behind that steel door? Had he also ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... tribe), of Bengal, are a purely agricultural people, and the chief festival of the year with them is the magh parah. It is held in the month of January, "when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, full of devilry." It is the festival of the harvest-home, the termination of the year's toil, and is always held at full moon. The festival is a saturnalia, when all rules of duty and decorum are forgotten, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 5th the Hun commenced to send over thousands of gas shells in the direction of Essarts. It was a dull, misty morning—perfect conditions for this form of devilry—and we could hear the brutes whistling and whining over our heads for more than three hours. The intention was, of course, to silence our guns, and the object of this was to make an attack upon Bucquoy all the easier. He came over at the L.F's. and there was heavy fighting all the ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... bit of Belial, unforeseen, Survives and amplifies itself in you? What manner of devilry has ever been That your ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... into his head to ride at a different hour, if he rides alone," he began. "I will therefore have my mule saddled now, and will station my man—a countryman from Subiaco and good for any devilry—in some place where he can watch the entrance to the house, or the castle, or whatever you call this place. So soon as he sees the count come out he will call me. As a man can ride in only one of two directions in this valley, I shall have ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... that's how it comes out. The unfortunate girl will never be able to think of one of us without the other. If she is dwelling affectionately on your modest merit, what you call, I believe, my swaggering dare-devilry will force itself into her mind, and if any of my encounters with tigers or dacoits should reach her ears, they will only recall your powers of discussing theology or reeling off poetry by the yard. Make no mistake. You intrude, sir; and ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... me you shall have neither money nor strong drink: not a guinea to spend in riot; not a drop to fire your heart with devilry. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perfidious Idolaters that it is very devilry! They say that they burn the bodies of the dead, because if they were not burnt worms would be bred which would eat the body; and when no more food remained for them these worms would die, and the soul ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... went on, with a soft chuckle, as at recollections of unspeakable devilry, "did I ever tell you chaps of a tremendous scrape I very nearly got into up at the 'Varsity? Well, you must know there's a foolish rule there against smoking in the streets. Not that that made any difference to some of us! ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... whether it was pure devilry on the part of this woman, or whether she thought that she could turn me against my wife by encouraging her to misbehave. Anyway, she took a house just two streets off and let lodgings to sailors. Fairbairn used to stay there, and Mary would go round ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that my sketch of a French Convent, as the abode of holy women whose innocent lives were dedicated and devoted to the service of the Prince of Peace, should stand by itself, apart from any drawings suggesting less faintly the devilry of war. The nunnery had been in the possession of the Germans for some short time before we arrived on the scene, and bore traces of their customary depredations and violations. The stories related by the nuns themselves were ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... "contributing with our utmost Power to the Satisfaction and Happiness of all about us." And in these pages we have Fielding's philosophy of goodness and greatness, delivered in words that already display an unrivalled perfection of style. Speaking of his third volume, that poignant indictment of devilry the Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great, it is thus that Fielding exposes the iniquity of villains in "great" places:—"But without considering Newgate as no other than Human Nature with its mask off, which some very shameless Writers have done, a Thought which no Price should purchase me to entertain, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... 'e was in 'orspital recoverin' from 'is sanguinary encounter with a gang of Pathans, an' B Comp'ny was drinkin' 'emselves into Clink by squads. So there never was no Thursday p'raid. But the Kernal, when 'e 'eard of our galliant conduct, 'e sez, 'Hi know there's been some devilry somewheres,' sez 'e, 'but I can't bring it 'ome to ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... magistrate. But that's the merchant who carried it out. Largely at my expense, I admit. But that's a matter for him and me to settle. I tell you, Sir Anthony, you must thank him—and the—er—hell-hound. A more masterly display of devilry I never witnessed." He sank into a chair. "Let refreshment be ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... me," he said to himself. "'Faint heart never won fair lady.' A happy inspiration, I am beginning to think. Losing that toss will perhaps result in my winning a higher stake. There's a good deal of dash and devilry in that infernal blackguard Horton, and doubtless that is why he has made some progress here. Well then, she ought to appreciate my spirit in coming to her at this time of night, or morning, rather. There's a wild, primitive ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... sheer sport and devilry of course!—saving men, women and children from death, as other men destroy and kill animals for the excitement, the love of the thing. The idle, rich man wanted some aim in life—he, and the few ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... took out two pills, the powder of which was tasted by the Wakungu to prove that there was no devilry in "the doctor," and gave orders for them to be eaten at night, restricting her pombe and food until I saw her again. My game was now advancing, for I found through her I should get the key to an influence that might bear on the king, and was much pleased to hear ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... said, suddenly, "to stop the confounded presses and spoof old Fox. He's up to some devilry. And, by Jove, I'd like to get my knife in him; Jove, I would. And then chuck up everything and leave for the Sandwich Islands. I'm sick of this life, this dog's life.... One might have made a pile though, if one'd known this smash ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... he plants his feet firmly out, takes a better grip of the reins, and crams his hat well on to his head. We ignorant new-chums sit perturbed, for we don't know what is coming, only we do not admire the grim determination of our driver's mouth, or the devilry flashing from his eyes. The rest of the passengers say nothing. They know Dandy Jack, and are philosophically resigned ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... what devilry (there were people in Calne who called it nothing less) the old countess-dowager set afloat to secure her ends I am unable to tell you. She was a perfectly unscrupulous woman—poverty had rendered her wits keen; and her captured lion was only feebly struggling to escape from the net. He was to ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... he held firm, and ripped the tongue out by the roots, so that it was the death of the wolf. It is the opinion of some men that this beast was the mother of King Siggeir, and that she had taken this form upon her through devilry and ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... these sayings, I asked myself if it were not possible that the behaviour of certain eminent statesmen was due to some strange devilry of the East, and I made a vow to abstain in future from the Caerlaverock curries. But last month my brother returned from India, and I got the whole truth. He was staying with me in Scotland, and in the smoking-room the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Jehovah's people—that is too much for exclusive Judaism. The correction is effected by the simple device of connecting Balaam with the following section, and making him the intellectual instigator of the devilry of the Midianitish women; and in this new form which he assumes in the Priestly Code he lives on in the Haggada. The reason for changing the Moabites into Midianites is not made clear; but the fact is undoubted that the Midianites never lived ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... devilry!" Polunin declared, "and, do you know, there is another painter—Bosch. He has something more than devilry in him. You should see ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the history of the Dutch minister at Turin, and of the spiriting away of his daughter by the Jesuits? It is all true; though, like the history of our friend's servant,[94] almost incredible. But their devilry is such that I am assured by our consul that if, while we are in the south, we were to let our children go out with servants on whom we could not implicitly rely, these holy men would trot even their small feet ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... unpleasant not knowing how or where they go, though the U.B. boat (Friederich Althofen) made her incoming position the day before yesterday as off Dungeness, so it looks as if the barrage at Dover which got Weissman has got Althofen as well. I wonder what new devilry they ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the larger theatres. It was after our return from Mitau, in the middle of the summer of 1838, that I set to work on this composition, and by so doing roused myself to a state of enthusiasm which, considering my position, was nothing less than desperate dare- devilry. All to whom I confided my plan perceived at once, on the mere mention of my subject, that I was preparing to break away from my present position, in which there could be no possibility of producing my work, and I was looked ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "possibles" to seven. These seven were Rigby himself, Linton, Rand-Brown, Griffith, Hunt, Kershaw, and Chapple. Rigby might be scratched off the list at once. He was one of Milton's greatest friends. Exeunt also Griffith, Hunt, and Kershaw. They were mild youths, quite incapable of any deed of devilry. There remained, therefore, Chapple, Linton, and Rand-Brown. Chapple was a boy who was invariably late for breakfast. The inference was that he was not likely to forego his sleep for the purpose of wrecking studies. Chapple might disappear ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... above a bog-hole, some black bulrushes, and above them a bending, leathery goblin exulting over some drowned traveller, the meteor lamp he carries casting a downward flicker on the dark water. Such darkness, such wicked speed, such bad, Puck-like malice, such devilry, Hoffman and Poe together could not have better devised. Many a May exhibition has not half the genius in all its pictures that focuses in that gem of jet." The description is admirable; but Walter Thornbury has altogether misconceived the artist's idea. Jack o'Lantern is simply ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... punishment. He was a man of the highest courage, the stoutest heart, yet in that hour he was astonied. His knees smote together; he clenched his teeth in a vain effort to prevent their chattering. All his devilry, his assurance, his fortitude, his strength, seemed to leave him. He stood before them suddenly an old, a broken man, facing a doom portentous and terrible, without a spark of strength or resolution left to meet it, whatever it might be. And for the first time ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... home assured that the piece was an excellent likeness. As for my Lord Bolingbroke, who honored her ladyship with a visit occasionally, when Colonel Esmond showed him the picture he burst out laughing, and asked what devilry he was engaged on? Esmond owned simply that the portrait was not that of Viscount Castlewood; besought the Secretary on his honor to keep the secret; said that the ladies of the house were enthusiastic Jacobites, as was well known; and confessed that the picture ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... very low standard of intoxication to apply to them," said the Lambeth magistrate last week. On the other hand the police should be careful not to misinterpret the air of light-hearted devilry that endeared the "growler" to the hearts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... but the phenomenon which interested him was so mysterious that all sorts of uncanny devilry intruded into his mind against his will. All the evening he was imagining that the incognito Fedyukov was the spirit of some long-dead clerk, who had been discharged from the service by Navagin's ancestors and was now revenging himself on their descendant; or ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... what quality she demanded in man, but she had always known that she would recognise it when she found it: and she recognised it now in Jimmy. It was a recklessness, an irresponsibility, a cheerful dare-devilry, the complement to her ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! And those are barges that were goblin floats, Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! And in the piles the water frolics clear, The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, And we—we can behold that could but hear The ancient River singing as he goes New-mailed in morning ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... cards; but, the cards are madly cried. There is no patronage to quarrel for; but, they madly quarrel and fight. Conspicuous among these hyaenas, as breakfast- time discloses, is a fearful creature in the general semblance of a man: shaken off his next-to-no legs by drink and devilry, bare- headed and bare-footed, with a great shock of hair like a horrible broom, and nothing on him but a ragged pair of trousers and a pink glazed-calico coat—made on him—so very tight that it is as evident that he could never take it ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... him. That was when he picked up with this outcast padre here. I found that they had set up housekeeping together at this place on the line that she had to pass for the station. I kept my eye on her after that, for I knew there was some devilry in the wind. I saw them from time to time, for I was anxious to know what they were after. Two days ago Woodley came up to my house with this cable, which showed that Ralph Smith was dead. He asked me if ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... difficult to conceive what fire and devilry they get into these hammering finales; all go together, voices, hands, eyes, leaves, and fluttering finger-rings; the chorus swings to the eye, the song throbs on the ear; the faces are convulsed with enthusiasm ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and that circumstances so far had fought against him. He only knew that he had been tricked, and that he meant to trick Emilio in return. His anxiety to revenge himself on Emilio was quite as keen as his desire to be alone with Vere. The natural devilry of his temperament, a boy's devilry, not really wicked, but compounded of sensuality, vanity, the passion for conquest, and the determination to hold his own against other males and to shine in his world's esteem, was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... in this duadic personality is not of serious consequence, as they have both got into a better way of thinking and acting. Now, since his demission from these high functions, Jean Kostka has found that the chief piece of Gnostic devilry is in denying that the lost angels are eternally damned. On this point he has attained what is rare in him, a touch of personal animosity. To supply the antipodes of heaven, let us say, with a lethal ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... prescription," the doctor replied. "Drive that gypsy lassie out of the town before the soldiers reach it. She is firing the men to a red-heat through sheer devilry." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... of his sheep," said the parson, watching intently. "Strange thing they don't break!" But they didn't. There was no waiting, no coaxing; it was drive and devilry all through. He brought his sheep along at a terrific rate, never missing a turn, never faltering, never running out. And the crowd applauded, for the crowd loves a dashing display. While little ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... sound of revelry or devilry by night in the enemy's camp, ours was not passed in music, and we could not therefore listen to the low harmonics that undertone sweet music's roll. Gibson got one of the horses which was in sight, to go and find the others, while Mr. Tietkens took Jimmy with him to the top of a hill ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... not one plunged more whole-heartedly into the folly of the moment than Quita. She had stationed herself opposite the door where Lenox stood, and the very spirit of devilry seemed to have entered into her, driving her to italicise every trait in herself that must needs grate on his fastidiousness where a woman's conduct was concerned. Her effervescent gaiety dominated the 'set,' which ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... obey. Grizzie had been up for more than an hour, and was going about with the look of one absorbed in a tale of magic and devilry. Her mouth was pursed up close, as if worlds should not make her speak, but her eyes were wide and flashing, and now and then she would nod her head, as for the Q. E. D. to some unheard argument. Whatever Cosmo required, she attended to at once, but not one solitary ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the stage, is so fantastically wrong. With regard to the stage, no characters in the least like gipsies ever appeared on the boards, save the characters in Tom Taylor’s ‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’ In the eyes of the novelist, as well as in the eyes of the playwright, devilry seems to be the chief characteristic of the gipsy woman. The fact is, however, that in the average gipsy woman as she really exists there is but little devilry. “Romany guile,” which is well defined in the gipsy phrase as “the lie for the Gorgios,” does ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... as abruptly as he had risen; but he sat quite still, and when he spoke again it was in a lower voice. "You do it at your own peril," he said; "but wouldn't you be an atheist to keep sane in all this devilry?" ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... man!" thought Montaiglon, silently regarding him. "Devilry appears to have a marvellous ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... at the time, a reign that showed that the Pope was something more than the friend of the English throne—he was in matters of Church discipline its checkmate. This was the time that England trembled at the devilry of a king and rejoiced at the sun of a new learning that was slowly dispelling the fog ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... it's the others he's bent on punishing. God direct myself, I wish at any rate that I never had act or hand in it. As for your time o' life and mine, Polly, you know that age puts it out of our power ever to be much the betther one way or the other, even if Ginty does succeed in her devilry. Very few years now will see us both in our graves, and I don't know but it's safer to lave this world with an aisy conscience, than to face God with the guilt of sich a black saicret ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... excitement in India. The Rajah of Bundelpore had a very bad attack of Indian cholera one night. His own doctors could do nothing for him. Some one—the Rajah's heir who had been at Harrow, probably—sent over for the regimental doctor, who happened to be Gillespie. He found all sorts of devilry going on while the Rajah writhed and turned black and green. Gillespie took him in hand—I heard his treatment was nearly as weird as that of the native doctors. There was something about blackberry ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... with you. I shall be gladder than I can tell you to hear as you're making your way, and I shall be anxious like till I hear as you have got safely over this journey, for they do say as the Indians are playing all sorts of devilry with the caravans. Well, there's one thing, you are a good shot now; but be careful, lad, and don't get into no fights if you can keep ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... for any kind of devilry, and were willing to undertake all risks at Grim's bidding. Jail, fighting, hardship, meant to them no more than temporary inconvenience. But to have asked them to let a prisoner escape, and submit ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... are," pursued the Vrouw Grobelaar. "I know you. But you're wrong. You don't know anything. Young girls in these days are like young pigs, all squeak and fight, but no bacon. Didn't the brother of my half-brother's wife die of a witch's devilry?" ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... like me. But we all agreed that you must be preserved for our country. Of that we have no doubt whatever—I mean all of us who have heard Haldin speak of you on certain occasions. A man doesn't get the police ransacking his rooms without there being some devilry hanging over his head.... And so if you think that it would be better for you to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... leave the matter in your charge, Lady Carfax. I can see you're a capable woman. I'm coming back in September to perform that operation. You will have a willing patient ready for me—by willing I mean something gayer than resigned—and my bugbear, Nap—that most lurid specimen of civilised devilry—hunting scalps on the other side ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... waistcoat, nor a speck upon his varnished shoes. He might have been an auditor of the previous conversation, so quickly and completely did he seem to take in the whole situation at a glance. Perhaps there was an extra tilt to his black-ribboned Panama hat, and a certain dancing devilry in his brown eyes—which might also have been an answer ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... much think he would do that, for I guessed that the scoundrel would do with me as he had in some other cases; namely, take me and carry me back to the house, and there either threaten to shoot me, or hang me up over a fire, or some such devilry, to make those inside give in. I was determined this shouldn't be, and that if I could not shoot him I would be shot myself; for otherwise he would have got my father and mother, and it would have been three ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... you truly say, Will Blanchard," answered Mr. Blee, "an' theer it do lie in a nutshell. A man's gate-post is his awn as a common, natural gate-post; but bein' a sainted cross o' the Lard sticked in the airth upsy-down by some ancient devilry, 't is no gate-post, nor yet every-day moor-stone, but just the common property ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... although looking very much like condemned thieves. We bound eight of them, and thrusting a stretcher across their backs, under their arms, and lashing the fins to the same by good stout lanyards, we were proceeding to stump our prisoners off to the boat, when, with the innate devilry that I have inherited, I know not how, but the original sin of which has more than once nearly cost me my life, I said, without addressing my superior officer, or any one else, directly—"I should like now to scale 'my pistol through that coffin. If I miss, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the axe with which he effected his purpose. What was the purpose of the murderer? Was it the robbery of Dewar's paltry wages? Was it the act of a tiger broken loose on the community? An act of pure wanton devilry? or was there some more reasonable explanation of this most ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... unceasingly every day. Kirk's ideas about it were in a delightfully vague state. He had a notion that it might turn out in the end as "Carmen." On the other hand, if anything went wrong and he failed to insert a sufficient amount of wild devilry into it, he could always hedge by calling it "A ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mr. Winthrop. Mr. Winthrop is fifty-three. He has been in the hotel since this time last year, and he makes accurate forecasts of the weather. My experience is that a man who makes accurate forecasts of the weather may get up to any devilry. And he protests too much. He keeps coming up to me and making long speeches to prove that he didn't do it. But I never said he did. Somebody else started that rumour, but of course he thinks that I did. That comes of being a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... of the swinging scarlet skirts filled the great house with sound as the glitter of spangles filled it with a shimmering light. Faust was surrounded by fluttering women moving in complicated evolutions with a trained air of reckless devilry. And Julian gave himself to the illusion created by the skill of Katti Lanner, ignoring entirely the real care of the dancers, and choosing to consider them as merely driven by wild impulse, vagrant desires of furious motion, and the dashing gaiety of keen sensual sensation. They danced ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... John Storm preached his first sermon on Wednesday last, and, according to programme, I was there to hear it. Oh, God bless me! What a time I had of it! He broke down in the middle, taking stage fright or pulpit fright or some such devilry, though there was nothing to be afraid of except a bandboxful of chattering girls who didn't listen, and a few old fogies with ear-trumpets. I was sitting in the darkness at the back, effectually concealed from the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... best head would be puzzled by such devil-work," the mate continued, muttering. "Well, I have heard tell of women doing for a man in one way or another when they got him fairly ashore. But to bring their devilry to sea and fasten on such a man! . . . It's something I can't understand. But I can watch. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... punishment to his hostess. "Yes," he muttered, as he arranged his white tie in the glass just before dinner, "I think, Lady Mary, the chances are that I shall contrive to make you a little uncomfortable this evening. That Sylla Chipchase is as full of devilry as she can be, and with a very pretty taste for privateering besides. If I give her a hint of your designs, I should think there is nothing she would like better than to do a little bit of cutting-out business, and temporarily capture Lionel Beauchamp under the very guns of the fair Blanche; ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... been one of those interminable days which occur only at schools. A school, more than any other institution, is dependent on the weather. Every small boy rises from his bed of a morning charged with a definite quantity of devilry; and this, if he is to sleep the sound sleep of health, he has got to work off somehow before bedtime. That is why the summer term is the one a master longs for, when the intervals between classes can be spent in the open. There is no pleasanter sight for ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... must know how it is with children; when they look at you as though there was no such thing as original sin, it's time to keep your eye lifting. Ten to one they're getting round you with some new devilry. Well, that's the way with ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... father accepted this explanation, and neither knew that Margaret had artfully prepared the way for it. It fitted in too well with their view of feminine nature. In the smoking-room, after dinner, the Colonel put forward the view that Miss Schlegel had jumped it out of devilry. Well he remembered as a young man, in the harbour of Gibraltar once, how a girl—a handsome girl, too—had jumped overboard for a bet. He could see her now, and all the lads overboard after her. But Charles and Mr. Wilcox agreed it was much more probably nerves ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the light of hell. There was no air but horror. Across Benham's skies these fly-blown trophies of devilry dangled mockingly in the place of God. He had no thought but to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... piece of devilry, wasn't it? That child—whom had she ever harmed? Who could hate her like this? I remember I thought that, in a dull, confused sort of way, when I found myself alone in that carriage with her lying dead on the cushions before me. Alone with ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... temple. By this footpath it was that our countrymen and countrywomen passed down to the cruel ambush which had been laid for them in the mouth of the glen. There are few to whom the details of that fell scene are not familiar. What a contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it and the serene calmness of the all but solitude the ghaut now presents! On the knolls of the farther side snug bungalows nestle among the trees, under the veranda of one of which a lady is playing with her children. The village of Suttee Chowra on the bluff on the left ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... famish'd horse, The greedy hound a-striving To rival thee in gluttony, Both at the bowels riving. Thou called the true bird![149]—Never, Thou foster child of evil,[150] ha! How ill match with thy feather[151] The talons[152] of thy devilry! But when thy foray preys on Our harmless flocks, so dastardly, How often has the shepherd With trusty baton master'd thee; Well in thy fright hast timed thy flight, Else, not alone, belabouring, He 'd gored thee with the Staghead, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... a laughing devilry in her eye as she said this that terribly puzzled the young fellow, for just at the very moment her enthusiasm had begun to stir his breast, her merry mockery wafted it away as ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... a determined fellow and a Yorkshireman to boot, and he had no intention of giving in to Jack; on the contrary, this little exhibition of devilry made him all the more determined to discover Jack's weak point and take ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... either devilry or disease." Tyson's eyes twinkled wickedly as he stroked his blonde mustache. He felt a diabolical delight in teasing Miss Batchelor. There was a time when Miss Batchelor had admired Tyson. He was not handsome; ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... is the Admiral's face down to the least detail of feature, though it is a trifle younger. There is the same neat, jaunty air—there is even the same cock of the hat over the same eye. There is the same sense of compact power concealed by the same spirit of whimsical dare-devilry. There is the same capacity, the same nattiness, the same humanness. There is the same sense of abnormality that a man looking so young should command an organization so enormous, and the same recognition that he is just the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry, and to be rather hard hit at ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... could you, of all people, hurt me?" he gently laughed at her. "Unless you turned me down, gave me to understand that, on second thoughts, you didn't find me up to your requirements or some mean class devilry of that kind—of which, by the way, had I judged you capable, you may be sure I should have been uncommonly careful never to come near you again.—No, it isn't that you hurt me; but that you delight me a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of devilry—I beg pardon, Your Eminence, but really this man is enough to try the patience of a saint. It's hardly credible, but I have to conduct all the interrogations myself, for the regular officer cannot ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... of answers too horrible for record, both in themselves and in the strange devilry of their garnish of oaths, followed. Mr Cupples did not flinch a step from his post. But, alas! his fiery sword had by this time darkened into an iron poker, and the might of its enchantment vanished as the blackness usurped its glow. He was just going to throw it away, and ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... suddenly whelmed themselves in shame, and staggered out into the dark. It is an experience that makes a man feel that the very earth is rocking beneath him; it makes him wonder if it is possible for a good man to be somehow caught in a hot gust of devilry and swept clean off his feet. But the thing that has impressed me as I have counted such names sadly on my fingers is that, without an exception, they were all in the forties, most of them in the early forties. Youth, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... again and were even now away. It was useless to reproach the man even if I had cared to do so. His ready plea was that as far as men were concerned he was as brave as any (which was true enough as I had reason to know later) but that when it came to devilry the Twelve Imaums themselves would think ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... rejoined her father. "They do say that Buck Tom is a gentleman, and often keeps back his boys from devilry—though he can't always manage that, an' no wonder, for Jake the Flint is the cruellest monster 'tween this an' Texas if all that's said ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... to make of it. Perhaps some new devilry of the gods was about to be perpetrated on him. He walked slowly and cautiously, prepared to be assailed at any moment. He did not know what to do, it was all so unprecedented. He took the precaution to sheer off from the two watching gods, and walked carefully to the corner of the ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... after they had flung the glasses twice or thrice over their shoulders, he proposed we should throw our wigs in the fire next. Surely there was some glammer about us that caused us not to observe his devilry, for the laird had no wig on his head. Be that, however, as it may, the instigation took effect, and in the twinkling of an eye every scalp was bare, and the chimley roaring with the roasting of gude kens how many powdered wigs well fattened with pomatum. But scarcely was the deed done, ...
— The Provost • John Galt |
