"Watcher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... automobile horn from the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. But one dared not count on long continuance of such conditions. Already the sky showed a lighter shade above the profile of the roofs. And one wakeful watcher at a nearby window would ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... he felt the point of the auger coming through, and he himself completed the hole from the outside with his bradawl. This gave an aperture imperceptible on the rough exterior, but large within, and enabled the watcher to see through a much wider angle than he could otherwise have done. Hilliard then once more raised the lid, allowing Merriman to lift the footstool within, where it was destined to act as a seat ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... deal; for the moment he was obliged to leave them unread, since his time might prove to be very short. Down he went, light out, pausing in the big living-room to listen for some sound from the watcher outside. ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... time went on and Branwell grew worse and wilder, it was well for the lonely watcher that she was strong. At last he grew ill, and would be content to go to bed early and lie there half-stupefied with opium and drink. One such night, their father and Branwell being in bed, the sisters came upstairs to sleep. Emily had gone ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... last on the green walls of the Priory, scarcely supposing a fair watcher to be within; for the contrasting pale colours of dawn had ceased to quicken the brilliancy of the crescent, and summer daylight drowned it to fainter than a silver coin in water. It lay dispieced like a pulled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eerie in the thought that I had explored those numerous rooms of the deserted house and had moreover encircled the entire building habitable and otherwise, whilst that mysterious watcher all the time had been lurking up there in the tower! I wondered what his survey portended. If it signified that he had detected my presence at the moment that I had left the house, why was his gaze focused upon the distance and not upon the surrounding grounds? ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... exceeding wet; moreover, it was close time. There was no shadow of excuse. But he was a boy again; fifty years had slipped off his shoulders. And I know not what came of the salmon, but it left the water; nor do I know what the watcher said who came over the hill inopportunely. Maybe the trouser-pocket where the old gentleman kept his silver was a good deal lighter, and that of the watcher a good deal heavier, when the twain parted. And therein the old gentleman sinned doubly; for himself he broke the law, and he put temptation ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher. ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... political corruption. I remember a young professor from the University of Chicago who with his wife came to live at Hull-House, traveling the long distance every day throughout the autumn and winter that he might qualify as a nineteenth-ward voter in the spring campaign. He served as a watcher at the polls and it was but a poor reward for his devotion that he was literally set upon and beaten up, for in those good old days such things frequently occurred. Many another case of devotion to our standard so recklessly raised might be cited, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... within sound of the bleating killdeers when a rather large, greenish-gray bird flapped heavily but noiselessly from a muddy spot in the grass to the top of a stake and faced me. Here was a child of the marsh. Its bolt-upright attitude spoke the watcher in the grass; then as it stretched its neck toward me, bringing its body parallel to the ground, how the shape of the skulker showed! This bird was not built to fly nor to perch, but to tread the low, narrow paths of the marsh jungle, silent, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... room for a little in the early November dawn, when Jacob Nowell had fallen into a profound sleep; but when she did lie down, sleep would not come to her. She could not help listening to every sound in the opposite room—the falling of a cinder, the stealthy footfall of the watcher moving cautiously about now and then; listening still more intently when all was silent, expecting every moment to hear herself summoned suddenly. The sick-room and the dark shadow of coming death brought ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... he watched now. The silence had performed its mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the volume and made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Margaret could do was to prevail upon him to rest on the drawing-room sofa. Dixon stoutly and bluntly refused to go to bed; and, as for Margaret, it was simply impossible that she should leave her mother, let all the doctors in the world speak of 'husbanding resources,' and 'one watcher only being required.' So, Dixon sat, and stared, and winked, and drooped, and picked herself up again with a jerk, and finally gave up the battle, and fairly snored. Margaret had taken off her gown and tossed it aside with a sort ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... opened his door, and after listening for some minutes, and being satisfied he was the only watcher under the roof, he gently opened one of the parlour windows and gave the preconcerted signal which he and Dick had agreed upon. Dick was under the window immediately, and after exchanging a few words with Murtough, the latter withdrew, and taking ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Henry went, back to his book,—the watcher nodding on his spear,—and all the stormy scenes he expected soon to realize in his own life, when the sword of conscription had numbered his old head with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... birdling caged, And in the dark alone, And then methought that he had seen, Some vision from God's throne, The little birdling's eyes were bright, While mine with tears were dim, Had some bright watcher glided by, And ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... flight at the same game, but hid my fur cap some distance out in the clearing, tied a long string to it, went back into the thicket with the other end of the string, and sat down to wait. A low Whooo-hoo-hoo! came from across the valley to tell me I was not the only watcher in ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... troubles with him," said Dorothea abusively, "he is an incorrigible pot-watcher. He comes to the kitchen ten times a day, sticks his nose up in the air, asks what we are going to have for dinner, and then goes out and stands in the hall, with the result that our guests ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the dangerous path which leads to the summit of Saint-Sulpice. The two companies were therefore advancing on parallel lines. The trees and shrubs, draped by the rich arabesques of the hoarfrost, threw whitish reflections which enabled the watcher to see the gray lines of the squads in motion. When Hulot reached the summit of the rocks, he detached all the soldiers in uniform from his main body, and made them into a line of sentinels, each communicating with ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... of scissors as they hang poised above the sea. Presently booby—like some honest housewife who has been a-marketing—comes flapping noisily home, her maw laden with fish for the chicks. Down comes the black watcher from above with a swoop like an eagle. Booby puts all she knows into her flight, but vainly; escape is impossible, so with a despairing shriek she drops her load. Before it has touched the water the graceful thief has intercepted it, and soared slowly aloft again, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... watchfulness was wearing him. The trial would now be beginning, and it was time the binders were driven into his grain; the oats would be ripe, and his neighbors would pick up all the Ontario hands who reached the settlement. Another day passed, and he was feeling desperate when the relief watcher arrived in the afternoon. Listening with strained attention, he heard the men talking outside. Only a few words reached him, but one was "adjourned," and it filled him with fresh determination. If he could escape, it might not ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... life had been sunny and care-free from a child; her new home had till recently been the realization of her dreams of happiness; but the loss of her husband would destroy at once every fair prospect for the future. All that a loving wife could do as a nurse or watcher or doctress, was done by her, but long before her husband had turned the sharp corner between death and life, Mrs. H. was attacked and both lay helpless, dependent upon the care of their only hired man. Neighbors ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... that when the sailors broke off for their mid-day meal, one of them, either out of curiosity or good nature, came over to the old watcher and greeted him. So John asked him to be seated on a log by his side, and began to put many questions to him about the country from which he came, and the town. All which the man answered glibly enough, for there is nothing in the world that a sailor loves to talk of so much as of his ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appear, fell on his face and showed it ashy pale; but he was absorbed in his own sad and bitter thoughts,—lost in his own inward contemplation of the love which consumed him,—and he saw nothing of that hidden watcher in the semi-gloom, gazing at him with such fierce eyes of hate as might have intimidated even the bravest man. He entered his carriage and was rapidly driven away, and the shadow,—no other than Sergius Thord,—stumbling forward,—his brain on fire, and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... he became more himself. His loneliness did not strike him so keenly. He felt that after all there was great satisfaction to be drawn from a watcher's observance of men. Isolated as he was he was enabled to look on men and things more critically than he ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long as a life-time. There she was, a stone's throw away, but utterly unconscious of his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy, curiously transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth At momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts break forth The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... I could not know. The man's attention had become too close for further speech. But I supposed that a pass had been made between my father and the red Captain, and that it had been nothing decisive, for the watcher's interest continued at the extreme tension: he kept his face against the iron bars of the window, and made no sound beyond frequent short ejaculations. The men in the passage called to him for further news, but he did not heed them. To my ears the fighting continued as general as before, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... gleamed darkling. The glint of armor half covered by velvet and fur. A gloved hand that seemed to caress a sword hilt, that caught one crashing ruby light upon its pommel—the matchless Heim Vandyke—the silent, attentive watcher who had seen his sacking of the dead; who seemed, with those deep eyes of understanding, to realize and know it all—the futile clash of human wills, the little day of love and hate, the infinite mercy, and the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... of Alba" had danced twice in succession with Juliet Capulet, I could bear my role of watcher no longer. Besides, I knew that I had not much time to waste. For the sake of de la Mole, who had run the risk of admitting a stranger, I must vanish before the hour for the masks to fall. When I took off my cap and bowed before ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Lone watcher on the mountain-height, It is right precious to behold The first long surf of climbing light Flood all the thirsty east with gold; But we, who in the shadow sit, Know also when the day is nigh, Seeing thy shining forehead ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... once trim barque. Too old (conservative, may be) to start sea life anew, he has come to shipkeeping—a not unpleasant way of life for an aged mariner, so that he can sit on the hatch on fine nights, with a neighbourly dock policeman or Customs watcher and talk of the sea as only he knows it. And when his gossip has risen to go the rounds, what links to the chain of memory may he not forge, casting his old eyes aloft to the gaunt spars and their burden of useless sail? Who knows what kindly ghosts ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... horsemen filed through easily enough, and the underbrush closed behind them, so that, had they been seen, the watcher might have been startled by ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... begins to cry, Lone watcher of the nightly sky: Light of the dark to pilgrims dear, ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... face contracted as at some sudden sense of pain as that scent reached his nostrils. His mouth twitched with a curious tremor, and he covered it with his hand as though he feared some silent watcher in that sleeping world might see and mock his weakness. That violet-bed beneath the window had been planted fifty years before at the whim ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... soul, and he spoke to the evening gloom that stole in through the window and hovered about his pale face like a watcher. ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... god asserted himself, and the watcher passed off into a deep slumber. His last recollection was a dim consciousness of hearing the tread of something near the camp-fire. But his stupor was so great that he had not the inclination to arouse himself, and with his face ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... strange that a bought watcher drowses; What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps Who would not sleep for all my draughts of sleep In the last days. When ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... Bragard immediately informed the trembling planton that I was a Nouveau who had just returned from the douches to which I had been escorted by Monsieur Reeshar, and that I should be admitted to the cour by all means. The cautious watcher of the skies was not, however, to be fooled by any such fol-de-rol and stood his ground. Fortunately at this point the beefy planton yelled from the doorway "Let him in," and I was accordingly let in, to the gratification of my friends, and against the better judgment of the guardian ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... each anxious watcher's sight, Baring her bosom to the wanton sea, The lordly ship sweeps onward in her ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... millions might never flow into his bank account. They were not in hand to use, and they also helped to paralyze effort—like black clouds of an impending shower that may pass around, but meantime keeps the watcher indoors. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... foundations to the stringing of the telephone wires when the tower was complete. The tower itself was to be a slender steel structure made of angle-iron supports bolted together, with a little square room at the top for the watcher. This room would be enclosed on every side with glass windows, and from this great elevation a watcher could see in every direction over miles and miles of forest. A telephone would connect with ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... forward) My boy, your preservation was indeed a miracle. Ascribe not to the vague results of chance, that which belongs to Providence alone. Ah, here is my kinsman—one, whose anxious fears on your account, have held him a sleepless watcher through ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... wheeling round and round, sat on one of the posts of the corral and waited for something to happen. These were the dusky angels that carried away the lamb's body of the day before; she had seen its little white bones down at the foot of the knoll. The present watcher, a stoop-shouldered, big, rusty-black bird, was quite indifferent to human presence; he sat on his post like a usurer on his high stool, calculating and immovable. Janet knew what was in his mind. ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... of the day that shall mean freedom for woman and the ennobling of the race was first seen by Wyoming, on the crest of our continent, and the clarion note was sounded forth, "Equality before the law." For a quarter of a century she was the lone watcher on the heights to sound the tocsin of freedom. At last Colorado, from her splendid snow-covered peaks, answered back in grand accord, "Equality before the law." Then on Utah's brow shone the sun, and she, too, exultantly joined in the trio, "Equality before the law." ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... had dropped, as it were, to that tone of indifference which expresses the accustomed doing of some monotonous duty which has become too much of a habit to excite either pleasure or pain. To the tired watcher then, for whom the notes were mere tones conveying no idea, the soft melancholy cadence, dulled by distance, was like the half-stifled echo of her own ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... going to rejoin her lover in Flanders? Had Remy lied when he spoke of an eternal regret? was this fable of a past love, which had clothed his mistress forever in mourning, only his invention to get rid of an importunate watcher? ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... the dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves of the solitary watcher." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the pair held to his eyes a pair of night marine glasses. Incessantly this watcher kept his gaze focused ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... into tears and went out of the room. She sent in the night-watcher, and then Jeff took leave of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dark it is Beneath its vast-boughed trees! Not one trembling leaflet cries To that Watcher in the skies— "Remove, remove thy searching gaze, Innocent, of heaven's ways, Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright, On ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... The watcher observed that Ned carried no rifle, only a revolver slapping against his thigh in its holster as the boy stumbled on up the mountain side. The mountaineer evidently changed his mind about shooting, for he changed ends with the gun and sat waiting. A few moments later Ned ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... the right of the bank was painted blue. Against that dark background no figure stood out clearly. Instead of creeping close to the ground to get past the guard at the rear of the building, he chose his time when the watcher had turned from the nearest end of his beat and was walking in the opposite direction. The moment that happened, Terry strode forward as ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible and opportune uproar. Those of the prisoners who woke, pretended to fall asleep again, and left Guelemer and Brujon to their own devices. Brujon was adroit; Guelemer was vigorous. Before any sound had reached the watcher, who was sleeping in the grated cell which opened into the dormitory, the wall had, been pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron grating which barred the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two redoubtable ruffians were on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... but distance and obscurity made recognition impossible. And yet, somehow, every quivering instinct within her was telling her that the crouched and shadowy watcher beyond ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... said Liancourt, gravely. "I have been a watcher with her by your sick-bed, and I know what you must feel already:—nay, I must confess that even the old servant has ventured to speak to me. You have inspired that poor girl with feelings dangerous ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... opposite until his eyes ached as well as his feet. At last a curtain parted, and he saw the flash of a white dress back of it. His heart leaped; he raised his hat; there was a titter from beyond the iron grating. Presently another figure was dimly revealed. The watcher held his position stubbornly until the last light in the Torres house winked out, then limped homeward, warmed by the glad conviction that at ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... men or beasts; digs a vat for receiving the juice, and prepares an apparatus above it for squeezing the clusters quickly in the hurry of the vintage; builds a tower as at once a shelter for the keeper and an elevated stand-point for the watcher by night ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... friend,' hast thou been put far from me. The low, measured tones of the minister fall on my ear; and I count the brief moments that give her to the keeping of another for all her mortal life, as the watcher counts the last moments of the dying and the loved. They kneel in prayer before the mockery of those last words is spoken, and I kneel too, crying to the Almighty: 'Wrest even now my treasure from him, or still the anguished throbbings of my heart forever! Let me die!' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tide was once more at its full? Her lying in the outer, instead of in the inner harbor, seemed significant. Time passed; the person on the platform regained the deck and disappeared. In the bushes the watcher ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... never perish. From the hand of the Shepherd no vandal shall steal his own away. How the words thrill! Sometimes Quintus has seen in the Judaean pastures the keeper with his flocks, and knows how unchanging is his fidelity. It is as if this watcher in his devotion is anticipating the faithfulness of the greater Shepherd. How entrancing is the lesson to this seeking soldier ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... climb out upon the crest of the dam, dragging his huge and hairless tail, and glancing along as if to determine where the stick which he carried would do most good. At this critical moment, when the eager watcher felt that he was just about to learn the exact methods of these wonderful architects of the wild, a stick in the slowly settling mud beneath his feet broke ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Through an open window he saw the stars. The few men that had stood about the man in the grassy meadow were alone with him in that upper chamber reclining about a table. The man lifted from the board a cup of silver. He blessed it and gave it. The fragrance of wine came to the watcher. ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... dead silence came a shriek of wrath, and hatred, and anguish from Demetri Agryopoulo's lips, and he leaped into the shadow with a hand upraised, and in the hand a blade that glittered as he raised it, One impulse seemed to shoot forth the jealous Greek and his watcher, and before Demetri Agryopoulo could form the faintest notion as to how the thing had happened, a sudden thunderbolt seemed launched against him, and he was lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. The stiletto flew clean over the wall, so swift and dexterous was the twist which ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... one could go close up to these animals quite unperceived; but the guardian bird, sitting on the beast, sees the approach of danger, flaps its wings and screams, which causes its bulky charge to rush off from a foe he has neither seen nor heard; for his reward the vigilant little watcher has the pick of the parasites on his fat friend. In other cases a chance of escape must be given even by the animal itself to its prey; as in the rattle-snake, which, when excited to strike, cannot avoid using his rattle, any more ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... from Plymouth to it is vexed daily by innumerable wheels; of a summer holiday the wayside watcher may count the motors by the thousand; yet you have but to step a rod or two off its tarred, tire-beaten surface to find wild woodland as primitive as it was three hundred years ago. The spring seeking motorist finds ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of traces of antelope of various kinds, their footprints showing out distinctly and indicating the ease with which a watcher could get a shot. But the next minute the thoughts of all were occupied by their guide stopping short and pointing out the plainly marked ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking around for his wig; while the sick man, who had jumped out of bed in the confusion and captured a pitcher of water, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the resurrection, sure, and when I got over the fence, and had picked myself up I never stopped till I got to Duffy's and I set up with him, cause I thought her pa was after me, and I thought he wouldn't enter a sick room and maul a watcher at the bedside of an invalid. But that settles it with me about celebrating. I don't care if we did whip the British, after declaring independence, I don't want my pants burnt off. What is the declaration of independence ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... uncertain etymology, which, however, is found applied to the moon in many Semitic languages; while Hurki, which is the Chaldaean or Hamitic name, is probably from a root cognate to the Hebrew Ur, "vigilare," whence is derived the term sometimes used to signify "an angel" Ir, "a watcher." ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... were Rene's musings, up in the light watcher's bunk, underneath the lantern, as, smoking a pipe of rest, he listened complacently to the hissing storm ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... pole as if he were used to it. In a few minutes the watcher below could barely make him out in ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... king of Thebes. Till the arrival of Agamemnon, they occupy our attention, as the prophetic organ, not commissioned indeed but employed by heaven, to proclaim the impending horrors. Succeeding to the brief intimation of the watcher who opens the play, they seem oppressed with forebodings of woe and crime which they can neither justify nor analyse. The expression of their anxiety forms the stream in which the plot flows—every thing, even news of joy, takes a colouring from the depth of their gloom. On the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... end together. The rest is a mound of white stones and pieces of bricks with low, leaning walls surrounding it, and the halves of hollow houses; and eyeing it round a comer, one old tower of the cathedral, as though still gazing over its congregation of houses, a mined, melancholy watcher. Over the bricks lie tracks, but no more streets. It is about the middle of the town, a hawk goes over, calling as though he flew over the waste, and as though the waste were his. The breeze that carries him opens old shutters and flaps them to again. Old, useless hinges ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... given a very different impression of my qualities. I have been thus liberal in my confessions, in order that parents may see that their duties do not terminate where those of the schoolmaster begin; that the schoolmaster himself must be taken to task, and the watcher watched. I had been placed in one of the first boarding-schools near town; a most liberal stipend had been paid with me; I had every description of master; yet, after all this outlay of money, which is not dross—and waste of time, which is beyond price precious, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... beside a clump of great oaks. "See, it couldn't be better if it had been made to order. This knoll commands a good view of the marshes and river towards the Everglades, while those trees will hide the watcher from our point, and of course from the convicts' camp. I have got a big, red, bandanna handkerchief which we can use as a flag. When the one on watch sees the Indians coming, he can fasten it to that dead sapling further out. That will be a signal to those in camp to get ready ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... death or bankruptcy the situation is much more intense. Every mouse hole has its alert whiskered watcher, and after a delay of a few days for decency, such pressure is brought to bear that surviving relatives rarely have the courage to stand pat. Probably a change of surroundings ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... really gain both its substance and significance from immaterial and unseen powers. It is significant not in itself but because it hides the truth. It points forever to a beyond. It is the vague and insubstantial pageant of a dream. Behind it, within the impenetrable shadows, stands the Infinite Watcher ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... animal," gasped the watcher. "A bear!" she added in an awed whisper, as a faint mountain breeze fanned the campfire ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... the ranks of the congregation kneel, stand, fall prostrate, and press the brow upon the ground with a rhythm so reverential and so dignified that the watcher forgets for a time the torn or tawdry raiment, the grime of the factory, the dust of the streets, and feels that each fresh attitude of devotion is indeed the true posture of prayer. It is as a sea troubled by ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... with which he often roamed far and wide through the forest. And sometimes, without his knowing it, he was seen by some native passing through the jungle, who hurriedly climbed a tree or hid in the undergrowth to avoid meeting the elephants. From concealment the awed watcher gazed in astonishment at the white man in their midst, of whom such wonderful tales were told in the villages. And when he got back safely to his own hamlet that night the native added freely to the legends that were gathering around Dermot's name ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... escaped the day before. The moment he saw me he poked his snout over my narrow bed-place, but I was too far down for him to get at me, notwithstanding all the efforts he made to effect that object. Still it was not pleasant to have such a watcher over my couch, as I could not help dreading that he might possibly get his claws in and pull me out, and that at all events the moment I sat upright he would give me an embrace, but anything but a friendly one. The moon ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon me that I ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... expression as the most difficult. Mrs. Browning's "Hatty" had bestowed in her bag a volume of Mr. Browning's, and on the homeward journey from Albano to Rome he read aloud to them his "Saul." At the half-way house on the Campagna, the Torre di Mezza, they paused, to gaze at the "weird watcher of the Roman Campagna," the monument to Apuleia, whose ruins are said to have ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... riding through the wood, haunted, as usual, by visions of her loveliness which, in his opinion, reached the very pinnacle of perfection. He was sick with longing to meet her alone, freed from all fear of incurring some watcher's displeasure. In his heated imagination the desire of being near her had assumed such enormous proportions, that he felt that life without her would ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... he sings. Mark the almost hypnotic hold he has over them; not only over pit and gallery but over stalls as well, and the well-groomed loungers who have just dropped in. I defy any sane person to listen to "Watcher, me Old Brown Son!" without chortles of merriment, profound merriment, for you don't laugh idly at Harry Champion. His gaiety is not the superficial gaiety of the funny man who makes you laugh but does nothing else to you. He does you good. I honestly believe that his performance ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... herself at the thought of the fair watcher, the inn door opened, and a waiting-woman entered carrying a small box. As she approached Jasmine she bowed low, and with bated breath ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... assertions of metaphysicians—that, before I awoke, and in my dreamless slumber, I had a visible perception of peril—a consciousness of the hovering presence of death! How to describe my feelings I know not; but, as we have all read and heard that, if the eyes of a watcher are steadily fixed on the countenance of a sleeper for a certain length of time, the slumberer will be sure to start up—wakened by the mysterious magnetism of a recondite principle of clairvoyance; so it was that, with shut eyes and drowsed-up senses, an inward ability was conferred ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... opened, and the dead come forth alive; how Faith and Justice will triumph in the end; how you can't bury 'em deep enough, or roll a stun big enough and hard enough before the door, but what, in some calm mornin', the earliest watcher shall see a tall, fair angel standin' where the dead has lain, bearin' the message of the risen Lord, "He rose ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Illa.—"Ah! your dog Watcher was there, and the purse was made of calf's skin, greased with your hands, for you had been rolling butter; so the dog swallowed it, having got no dinner. Kill the dog, therefore, and you will find ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... fox terrier scampering to and fro on the sunny lawn and how, all of a sudden, she had broken out into a peal of laughter and had run down the sloping curve of the path. Now, as then, he stood listlessly in his place, seemingly a tranquil watcher ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... her, she did not know what, but this little watcher's sleep was always of the lightest, and she had not long fallen asleep, her eyelashes still wet with tears for Angelot. The window creaked as she opened it, leaning out ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... the air but over it now was draped the net, the rocks in its fringes weighing it down in spite of its jerky attempts to rise. In its struggles to be free, it might almost have led the watcher to believe that it had intelligence of a sort. Now the mermen were coming out of the stream, picking up rocks as they advanced. And a hail of stones flew through the air, while others of the sea people sprang to catch ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... I tried to tell him. "And I was never more serious in my life. There's even something sacred about it, once you look at it in the right way. Just think of the Shepherd-Dog of the Stars, the vigilant and affectionate Watcher who keeps the wandering worlds in their folds! That's not one bit worse than the lamb idea, only we've got so used to the lamb it doesn't shock us into attention any more. Why, just look at these eyes ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... them, and they won't go," thought the watcher; and the speaker, a stunted-looking Malay with a short, iron-spiked implement, somewhat like the iron of a boat-hook, in his hand, came into sight between the huge pachyderms and the door, shouting and growling at his charge as he waved the hook ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... to brace and cheer The lonely watcher of the fold, When nights are dark, and foeman near, When visions fade ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... the carriage to the front of the house, she recognized in the watcher Craven Kyte, who at ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... watcher by thy pillow, I, a statue on thy chapel-floor, Pour'd in prayer before the Virgin-Mother, Rouse no anger, make no ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... asked the disgusted watcher. "Good luck seems to go with everything they undertake, and I suppose they'll bring Mickey up by ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... I gained my feet, only to see that my watcher did the same; cautiously I advanced toward him, finding that by moving with a shuffling gait I could retain my balance as well as make reasonably rapid progress. As I neared the brute he backed cautiously away from me, and when I had reached the open ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a man climbed up out of the gorge and sat in the westward door of the hut. This lonely watcher of the west and listener to the silence was Duane. And this hut was the one where, three years before, Jennie had ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... is on yon lettered stone? whose ashes rest beneath? That thus you come with flowers to deck the mournful home of death; And thou—why darkens so thy brow with grief's untimely gloom? Thou art fitter for a bride than for a watcher by the tomb! ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... was an evil spirit in the house,—a small, selfish, envious, malicious spirit; people were cross, and they knew not why; felt injured, and they knew not why; the days were harder than those dreadful ones when fire and candle were never out, and every one was a watcher ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... like lead. What prospect was there for work now, even if Mrs. Groody gave it to her, as she had promised? She saw nothing before her but the part of a weary watcher, for perhaps several weeks. She hesitated no longer, but resolved to mortgage her place at once. Her mother must have delicacies and good attendance, and she must have time to extricate herself from the difficulties into which she had been brought by false steps at the beginning. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the passing Latin race, typified in the unguided giant who, savage with savage, fought here near by, one brutal force meeting another and both passing before one higher and yet more strong. To this watcher it seemed that he looked out from the halfway point of the nation, from the halfway house of a ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and sees a new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at once that the insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is God's will his idol should be broken, and bends his head, and subdues his soul to the sentence ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... arrived, bringing the intelligence that Florence and Mabel had accompanied him, and would next evening be present at the wedding. Slowly the last rays of a bright October sun faded in the west, giving no sign of the stormy day which was to succeed. Long after midnight a lone watcher sat by the window in Fanny's room, gazing at the stars, which looked so quietly on from their distant homes, and praying, not for herself, but for Dr. Lacey, that he might be happy with her he had chosen. At ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... upon the second night, the night of Ramazan, The watcher leaning earthward heard the message ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I have sinned, what have I done to thee, O watcher of men? Why hast thou set me as thy target? And why am I a burden to thee? And why dost thou not pardon my transgression and take away mine iniquity? For now I shall lie down in the dust, When thou shalt seek me, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... I recollected the silent watcher who I had feared might be a detective, and who had recently left the hotel. So Rayne had set secret watch upon my movements—a ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux |
