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More "Stealthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were rewritten and enlarged for regular performance at the Duke of York's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It seems to have been held that a play was no longer a play if its words were sung instead of spoken—or these representations of Davenant's works may have been altogether stealthy, and without the cognisance of the legal authorities of the time. Isaac Disraeli, however, has pointed out that in some verses, published in 1653, and prefixed to the plays of Richard Brome, there is evident a ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... man before her, while over her countenance passed rapid variations of pride, resentment, and tenderness. Then with a stealthy step, an assured smile, she went to him and touched his hand, saying, in a voice inured to that language which seems ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... in silence, until they could hear the spiders creeping on the ceiling. There it was again! A stealthy step on ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... time to dress for dinner. He crept up to his chamber with a wearied and stealthy air, for he was still dispirited and desirous of avoiding ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... at Alittane, between Anarajapoora and Dambool. When about a yard apart, each discerned the other and stood still, the spider with his legs slightly bent and his body raised, the cockroach confronting him and directing his antennae with a restless undulation towards his enemy. The spider, by stealthy movements, approached to within a few inches and paused, both parties eyeing each other intently: then suddenly a rush, a scuffle, and both fell to the ground, when the blatta's wings closed, the spider seized it under the throat with his claws, and dragging it into a corner, the action of his ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... with sleep, but nothing disturbed the silence of the wooden building, and it was a moment or two before the moan of the wind forced itself on his perceptions. Then, he thought he heard the trampling of a horse and stealthy footsteps in the mire below, and, springing from his bed, ran to the window. The night was dark, but he could dimly see a few shadowy figures moving towards the house. In another minute he slipped into part of his clothing and hastening into Grant's room ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... and nights alike there. He scarce left it save to go abroad, or perchance to have a few hours' sleep in his bed. But the treasure is buried somewhere nigh at hand down in those cellars, though the spot I know not. And he fears to leave it night or day, lest some stealthy hand filch away the ill-gotten gain. Men thought he had the secret whereby all might be changed to gold, and indeed he would ofttimes bring pure gold out from the crucibles over his fire; but he had cast in first, unknown to those who so greedily watched him, the precious ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... house was utterly quiet—so quiet that the stillness became oppressive. Meanwhile the young girl sat in her bower of luxury, softly humming a favorite air, and very happy in thoughts of her approaching marriage. While deep in her smiling reverie, a stealthy footstep distinctly sounded ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... in the utter darkness of the scarce-fathomed deeps of the ocean, what Kraken may not lie, coil on coil; what strange black, slimy, large-eyed forms do their stealthy hunting in perpetual night by the light of phosphorescent lamps they bear upon their bodies? Many of these there are, every year teaches of new species. The land—oh! the land is all well known, even the Arctic and Antarctic regions no longer hide their secrets, but the ocean is inscrutable. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the thought of spending the night in the cave. He had parted from his companions on the opposite side of the island, and it added to his uneasiness that they must be full of apprehension about him. At last there came a lull in the storm, and the same instant he heard a footfall, stealthy and light as that of a wild beast, upon the bones at the mouth of the cave. He started up in some fear, though the least thought might have satisfied him that there could be no very dangerous animals upon the island. Before he had time to think, however, the face of a woman appeared in ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... of good from evil, of innocence from guilt. On one side of it, in a chamber of light, sat a fair girl, confiding, generous, and deceived only through her excess of every virtue; on the other, wickedness, fell and artful, was approaching with stealthy footsteps through an unseen way, and stood with hand upraised to knock, but incapable of entering in unless that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... behind the mass of mines and submarine traps spread ingeniously across the harbor entrance, devoting their attention almost solely to the artillery duel with the dreadnoughts outside, the German cruiser knew naught of the stealthy torpedo from the daring Monitor until it shot suddenly forward below the surface of the water, revealed in the glare of her own searchlight. But it was too late then to avoid the deadly missile and it struck ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... They came farther and farther into the level land. They grew larger and brighter. The dark hid the body of the creature with those fiery eyes. They came on and on, just over the tops of the prairie grass. It might have been a wildcat prowling low on soft, stealthy feet. Slowly but surely the terrible eyes drew nearer and nearer to the ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... Dinkie and Poppsy, furred to the ears, are out on the drifts learning to use the snow-shoes which Percy and Olga sent down to them for Christmas. Dinkie has made himself a spear by lashing his broken-bladed jack-knife to the handle of my headless dutch-hoe and has converted himself into a stealthy Iluit stalking a polar bear in the form of poor old Scotty, who can't quite understand why he is being driven so relentlessly from crevice to Arctic crevice. They have also built an igloo, and indulged in what is apparently marriage by capture, with the reluctant bride making ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... take a walk in the Green Forest. It was a beautiful morning, and Mr. Otter went farther than he intended. He was just trying to make up his mind whether to turn back or go just a little farther, when he heard stealthy footsteps behind him. He looked over his shoulder, and what he saw helped him to make up his mind in a hurry. There, creeping over the frozen snow, was Mr. Lynx, and the sides of Mr. Lynx were very thin, and the ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... were nearer at hand, and a crackling of undergrowth warned her of the presence of the savage creatures she had summoned. The deep blue eyes were alert and watchful, but she showed no signs of fear; nor did she move. Suddenly a less stealthy and more certain crackling of the bush made itself heard; and the roving eyes became fixed in one direction. Beneath the shadow of the laden boughs a tall grey figure appeared moving towards her. But this was not all, for several slinking, stealing forms ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... well advised. In the midst of their devotional exercises a powerful body of Indians made a sudden onslaught upon the village. They had crept up in their usual stealthy way, under cover of trees and bushes, and their wild yells as they assailed the outlying houses were the first intimation ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... went up from the inhabited portions by a corkscrew staircase, steep as a ladder. The servants did not like the attics. There were creaking footsteps on the floors at night, and sometimes the slamming of a door or the stealthy opening of a window. They complained that locked doors up there flew open, and bolted windows were found unbolted. In storm the wind keened like a banshee, and one bright snowy morning a housemaid, who had business there, found a slender wet footprint on the floor ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... finish the sentence, for a movement behind caused me to turn round. To my utter astonishment and horror I found myself face to face with my old friend, or rather enemy. He had evidently followed with stealthy steps, the snow acting as a carpet ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... wrongs of human slavery. Marg'et Ann was conscious sometimes of a change in him; he went often and restlessly to see Squire Kirkendall, who kept an underground railroad station, and not infrequently a runaway negro was harbored at the Morrisons'. Strange to say, these frightened and stealthy visitors, dirty and repulsive though they were, excited no fear in the minds of the children, to whom the slave had become almost an ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... declared themselves, on the contrary, more called upon than ever before to be upon the watch against the stealthy proceedings of the Spanish council of state—bearing in mind the late execrable attempts at assassination, and the open war which was still carried on against ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... regulo. Statutes regularo. Stave, in krevi. Stay (to remain) resti. Stay (to stop) haltigi. Stay (a support) subteno. Steadfast konstanta. Steady nesxancelebla. Steak steko, bifsteko. Steal sxteli. Stealth, by kasxe, sekrete. Stealthy kasxa, sekreta. Steam vaporo. Steamboat vaporsxipo. Steam-engine vapormasxino. Steed cxevalo. Steel sxtalo. Steelyard pesilo, pesmasxino. Steep kruta. Steep trempi. Steeple pregxeja turo. Steer juna bovviro. Steer direkti. Steerage antauxparto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... arrived at about four o'clock in the morning, just as the light of day was breaking. It was an engrossing study to observe how skillfully he kept us concealed from view of the enemy, by keeping rolls of the prairie between us. All his movements were like those of a wary animal, stealthy and noiseless. The fact is, the education of a savage is learned from the wild animals on which he lives, and that is what makes him such a good ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the glade, and is advancing across it. He walks slowly, but without caution—without that habitual stealthy tread that distinguishes the sons of Saint Hubert in the West. On the contrary, his step is free, and the flowers are crushed under his feet. He is not even silent; but humming a tune as he goes. Notwithstanding that he appears accoutred for the chase, his movements ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... though I have called him a youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... know," said Lan-O; "A-Kor says that he believes that it is because their country has never been invaded by a victorious foe. In their stealthy raids never have they been defeated, because they have never waited to face a powerful force; and so they have come to believe themselves invincible, and the other peoples are held in contempt as inferior in valor and ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Margaret thought, with sour grimace, "A gift-horse is not out of place, And, truly! godless cannot be The one who brought such things to me." A parson came, by the mother bidden: He saw, at once, where the game was hidden, And viewed it with a favor stealthy. He spake: "That is the proper view,— Who overcometh, winneth too. The Holy Church has a stomach healthy: Hath eaten many a land as forfeit, And never yet complained of surfeit: The Church alone, beyond all question, Has for ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... swept streaming behind by the wind. Maganga, a tall Mnyamwezi, stalked along like a very Goliah about to give battle alone, to Mirambo and his thousand warriors. Frisky Khamisi paced on under his load, imitating a lion and there was the rude jester—the incorrigible Ulimengo— with a stealthy pace like a cat. But their silence could not last long. Their, vanity was so much gratified, the red cloaks danced so incessantly before their eyes, that it would have been a wonder if they could have maintained such serious gravity ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the stealthy, cat-like approach of the panther, the most piercing cries, as of some human being in terrible agony, filled the air, startling the Indian, and causing the panther to rise from its crouching position, and ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... it all now,—the slow and stealthy approach of the boat from the little sloop out in the river (it had disappeared round the bend, he noticed), Blodgett's quiet watch at the foot of the path, the approach of the men, Blodgett's challenge, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... a proverb which was current as an exponent of the adversaries' successful stratagems, and stamps the metal with the image and superscription of the rightful King. The evil spreads like leaven; you tremble before its stealthy advance and relentless grasp: but be of good cheer, disciples of Jesus, greater is He that is for you than all that are against you; the word of life which has been hidden in the world, hidden in believing hearts, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... son exchanged stealthy glances behind the girl's back as she leaned toward the cracked mirror between the windows, apparently intent upon capturing an airy tendril of hair which had ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... With the stealthy tread of a panther, Bert climbed over the improvised rampart, and a few seconds later his form merged into the enveloping darkness and was lost to the view of his anxious friends. They listened with straining ears for any sound of shot or struggle, but the ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue,—of course he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak,—but what he loved was the game for its own sake—the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and sounds of the women's world on the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark. Then there were holy men, ash-smeared ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... made her gasp. The dog began to bark again, but it was easy to distinguish his sharp yelps of excitement and defiance from the earlier notes of alarmed suspicion. In fact, Joey himself was the first to discover the stealthy approach of the Indians. Courtenay and Tollemache, who took the middle watch, from midnight to 4 A.M., had failed to note the presence of several canoes on the ink-black surface of the bay until the dog warned them by growling, and ruffling ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... again, after a stealthy glance back at the house, and putting the tobacco back, he drew out a bottle. "Will you drink ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... crowded. There were, however, a few groups of the villagers kneeling at the shrine, or at the different altars, to aid the picturesque. We ascended into the upper part of the edifice, and walked in those narrow galleries through which I had formerly seen the Benedictines stalking in stealthy watchfulness, looking down at the devotees beneath. I was admitted to the cloisters, cells, library, &c., but my companions were excluded as a matter of course. It is merely a spacious German convent, very ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Should we reproach her with tardiness when she had not closed the eye all night for a headache properly of the devil? If she came late in the morning, she stayed late at night; and it sometimes happened that when the Paron and Parona, supposing her gone, made a stealthy expedition to the kitchen for cold chicken, they found her there at midnight in the fell company of the Cognata, bibbing the wine of the country and holding a mild Italian revel with that vinegar and the stony bread ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... eye of the man used to danger, had seen his stealthy preparation, and his wrist was caught ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... more, and with caution raised himself gradually from the ground with a careful circumspection, lest any of the subterranean community might be watchers on the hill; and when he was satisfied he was free from observation, he stole away from the spot with stealthy steps for about twenty paces, and there, as well as the darkness would permit, after taking such landmarks as would help him to retrace his way to the still, if requisite, he dashed down the hill at the top of his speed. This pace he did not moderate until ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Durward's return, and as she well knew how much he would disapprove of it, she resolved not to tell him, secretly hoping 'Lena would keep her own counsel. "Base creature!" said she, "to give my husband her likeness—but he shall never see it again;" and with stealthy step she advanced toward the secret drawer, which she again opened, and taking from it both daguerreotype and ringlet, locked it, replacing the key in the pocket where she found it. Then seizing the long, bright curl, she hurled it into the glowing grate, shuddering ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... weapons for hunting large game were their bows and obsidian-pointed arrows. Their manner of hunting was either by the stealthy still hunt, or a general turn-out, surrounding a large area of favorable country and driving to a common center, where at close range the hunters could sometimes ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... minutes Donald ventured to move, and then to pursue his way with a greater caution than before. Now he passed other sleeping forms, and even stepped over one whom he could not otherwise avoid. Finally, after more than an hour of intense anxiety and stealthy movement, only advancing by inches, and with frequent motionless pauses, he discovered the place of which he was in search. It was the mouth of the mine that the Indians had spent two days and nights ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... strong relief; beyond that copper fretwork all was blackness. Out of the dark came the breathing of the horses, fastened near the tobacco-cask, the croaking of frogs in a marshy place, and all the stealthy, indefinable stir of the forest at night. At times the wind brought a swirl of dead leaves across the ring of light, an owl hooted, or one of the sleeping dogs stirred and raised his head, then ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... a moment and then involuntarily, spasmodically shook hands, each heaving the deep breath of excitement. The stealthy rustle of moving bodies was heard, faint, but positive. It was a moment of suspense that would have strained the nerve of a stone image. Where were the abductors? On which side of the road and from what direction did they come? Oh, for the eyes ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... dreadful?" asked Maggie half fearfully, and casting a stealthy glance at the dim woods, where the night shadows were falling, and whose winding path she must traverse alone on her homeward route. "Was it, then, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Just at the point where he appeared, a few rays of the moonlight found their way among the limbs, and added impressiveness to his appearance. A glance would have told that he had approached at the most stealthy gait of which he was capable, and was still using all the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... dew. Through the trees I could see the house with its closed shutters and drawn blinds, the people in it all missing, as I have missed day after day, the beauty of life at that hour. Just behind me the border of rockets and larkspurs came to an end, and, turning my head to watch a stealthy cat, my face brushed against a wet truss of blossom and got its first morning washing. It was wonderfully quiet, and the nightingale on the hornbeam had everything to itself as I sat motionless watching that glow in the east burning ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Slade, camp assistant, said it would be all right for Hervey to meet him at quarter of eleven under the elm tree, Hervey was only too glad to jump the rule, which was that scouts must turn in at ten thirty, directly after camp-fire. This stealthy meeting under the old elm tree near the witching hour of midnight was quite ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... magic had caused the likeness of a monkey to come from the juggler's vase. Only now it was Abi who emerged from the vase, a terrible Abi, with a red sword in his hand, and Pharaoh's crown upon his head. He leapt from the mouth of the vase, he devoured her with his greedy eyes, with stealthy steps he came to seize her, and she could not stir an inch, something held her ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... Of the roguish eye, Wherefore dost thou hie, Stealthy, down the street, On well-booted feet? From French novels I Gather that you fly, ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... there across the river, dimly seen now when the moon is high? And has he helped to make them happy?—did they always sit singing there before he or others came, or did they have to watch with Krises ready, for fear of stealthy foes—foes who crept to stab beneath the raised bamboo floors. Perhaps he, too, has aided with his mite—perhaps—who knows? And as this thought occurs, the discontent will fade, while content ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... dream such horrid dreams that Hell itself were peace when matched with them. To trust none but those I have bought, to buy none worth trusting! To see a traitor in every smile, poison in every dish, a dagger in every hand! To lie awake at night, listening from hour to hour for the stealthy creeping of the murderer, for the laying of the damned mine! You are all spies! you are all spies! You worst of all—you, my own son! Which of you is it who hides these bloody proclamations under my own pillow, or at the table where I sit? Which of ye all is the Judas who ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... shortly ceased, and a faint moonlight showed itself through the window. Almost at the same time the Minister was aware of stealthy soft footings on the stairs without. Noiselessly he approached his open door, and there he saw by the dim skylight a tall figure moving on stockinged feet at the stair-head. Was it a burglar? he thought fearfully. 'No, it was Ringan. But what ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the open water, was yet more perceptible in the dark, dull street. Job grew more and more fidgety. He was obliged to walk about the room, for he could not keep still; and he did so, regardless of Mr. Bridgnorth's impatient little motions and noises, as the slow, stealthy, creaking movements were heard, backwards ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... throughout the day, and made him hasten home. At table at home they had secret signs that referred to their secret world. They were living in the first love of youth with all its sweet secrecy, and smiled at one another in youthful, stealthy comprehension, as though the whole world were watching them and must learn nothing. If their feet touched under the table, their eyes met and Ellen would blush like a young girl. Her affection was so great that she could ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... attack our premises until some time after the moon was risen, because it would be too dangerous to cross the flooded valleys in the darkness of the night. And, but for this consideration, I must have striven harder against the stealthy approach of slumber. But even so, it was very foolish to abandon watch, especially in such as I, who sleep like any dormouse. Moreover, I had chosen the very worst place in the world for such employment, with a goodly chance of awaking in a bed ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... rushing blasts from underground; So fell the goodly form of Aeacus' son. He glared, a murderous glance, to right, to left, [Upon the Trojans, and a terrible threat] Shouted, a threat that could not be fulfilled: "Who shot at me a stealthy-smiting shaft? Let him but dare to meet me face to face! So shall his blood and all his bowels gush out About my spear, and he be hellward sped! I know that none can meet me man to man And quell in fight—of earth-born heroes none, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... whispers of evil-doing, of dishonor, and of shame, That I cannot bear to think of now, and would not dare to name! There was hiding away from the light of day, there was creeping about at night, A hurried word of parting—then a criminal's stealthy flight! His lips were white with remorse and fright when he gave me a good-by kiss; And I've never seen my poor lost boy from that black ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... a sigh adown he lay And slept, nor ever woke again, For in that hour was he slain By stealthy traitors as he slept. He of a few was much bewept, But of most men was well forgot While the town's ashes still were hot The foeman on that day did burn. As for the land, great Time did turn The bloody fields to deep green ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... went to the door; he stepped cautiously and with that stealthy foot-tread which speaks in eloquent silence of daily, hourly danger, of anguish and anxiety for lives ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... far. I had often and often observed the capabilities of the sand-hills for protracted ambush or stealthy advances and retreats; and, not ten yards from the scene of the scuffle, plumped down again upon the grass. The lantern had fallen and gone out. But what was my astonishment to see Northmour slip at a bound into the pavilion, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wooded shore. It was in those years that the silver-skinned salmon leaped in its crystal depths; the otter and the beaver crept with sleek wet skins upon its shore; and the brown deer came down to quench his thirst at its brink while at twilight the stealthy forms of bear and panther and wolf were mirrored in ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... With stealthy tread, and stooping head, from tree to tree they passed, They crept beneath the crackling furze, they held their rifles fast: Hour passed on hour, the noonday sun smote fiercely down, but yet No sound to the expectant crowd proclaimed ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the story he had just heard, until the vengeful spirit of the murdered Doctor seemed to darken and possess the house. He was striving to shake off the feeling, when his attention was attracted to stealthy footsteps in the passage. Could it be Maruja? He rose to his feet, with his eye upon the door. The footsteps ceased—it remained closed. But another door, which had escaped his attention in the darkened corner, slowly swung ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... silent that I thought I had convinced her. I urged her to her feet. But suddenly I heard a stealthy footfall close at hand, between the cave ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... bird is the great American chipper. There is no other bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military decision as this yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click of a giant gun-lock. Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems to be going about on tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloft in the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but it ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... concealing our approach. Beyond that we dared not proceed, as the country was so open that we might easily have been seen had we made the attempt. The band, accordingly, here left their horses under charge of five of their number, and as soon as it was dusk they commenced their stealthy approach to the camp. Sigenok and another young and active Indian undertook to look after me. Not a word was spoken after we set out—not a leaf was moved, scarcely a blade of grass was uselessly pressed down. On they crept slowly, and so gently that I ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the chapel bell began to ring for the final service of the day. The period of silence throughout the dormitories and passages now began, and only stealthy footfalls broke the ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... watching for an opportunity to steal their egg into some nest. One day while sitting on a log, I saw one moving by short flights through the trees and gradually nearing the ground. Its movements were hurried and stealthy. About fifty yards from me it disappeared behind some low brush, and had evidently alighted upon ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... other rooms and, only knowing it was there behind him in case of need, see his way about, visually project for his purpose a comparative clearness. It made him feel, this acquired faculty, like some monstrous stealthy cat; he wondered if he would have glared at these moments with large shining yellow eyes, and what it mightn't verily be, for the poor hard-pressed alter ego, to be confronted with ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... can forget the pain in view of the suggestiveness; and unpleasant as is my position here to-day, I am almost glad of the opportunity which may end in putting some check to the spy system in prisons. How many men have been won from honour and honesty by the stealthy visit to the cell is more of course than I can say—how many have had their weakness acted upon, or their wickness fanned into flame by which means I have no opportunity of knowing—in how many frailty and folly may have blossomed ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Smile on thy face, and I in fancy hear The low pulsations of thy dormant life, And feel thy mighty bosom heave and fall With regular breathings; through my little world I feel Disease advancing on his sure And stealthy mission. Well I know his step, The wily traitor! when I mark my short, Quick respirations; and his call I know, As, in the hush of night, my ear alarmed By the heart's death-march notes, repeats ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Beneath them the Pool slept, a sheet of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. A few, scattering, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... they had come, that he was not sure but that the whole apparition had been a mere trick of imagination. Rising swiftly, he gazed after the vanished riders, and the crunching of the pine cones under the horses' hoofs, dying slowly away as they retreated, warned him that the stealthy, nocturnal visit was no illusion, but a curious ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,—mighty statues with robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as he will; and ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... about "Jack," for she had heard not the slightest sound. Presently she became aware of a slow, regular scraping sound, that seemed to come from one of the rear rooms. It suggested something alive, something moving about with stealthy footsteps. Then, all of a sudden, there ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... a stealthy but rapid movement forward, drawing Naida gently out of the way. Immelan was too quick, however. He swung around, showing the revolver which he had been concealing behind him, and moved to one side until his back was against one of the pillars. By this time, most of the other occupants ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a shoemaker, was also a small farmer; but, sooth to say, a more treacherous or ferocious-looking ruffian you could not possibly meet with in a province. He was spare and big-boned slouchy and stealthy in his gait, pale in face with dark, heavy brows that seemed to have been kept from falling into his deep and down-looking eyes only by an effort. His cheekbones stood out very prominently, whilst his thin, pallid cheeks fell away so rapidly as to give him something the appearance of the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a cloudy sunset, like the flame In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst Beyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo, Lay heavy down the topmost peaks, they came, With pent-in breath and stealthy steps, and crouched, Like snakes, amongst the grasses, till the night Had covered face from face, and thrown the gloom Of many shadows on the front ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... stalking, in berry time, or more especially in the early spring, before the snow has gone from the mountains, and while the bears are driven by hunger to roam much abroad and sometimes to seek their food in the open. In such cases the still-hunter is stirring by the earliest dawn, and walks with stealthy speed to some high point of observation from which he can overlook the feeding-grounds where he has previously discovered sign. From this vantage he scans the country far and near, either with his own keen eyes or with powerful glasses; and he must combine ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... of night there are forms that glide As stealthy as serpents creep, And around the hut where the outlaws hide They plant in the shadows deep, And they wait till the first faint flush of dawn Shall waken their prey ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... an open space made by a slip of the land into the bed of the river. When Jack Meredith came to this he stepped out of the thicket and stood in the open, awaiting the approach of his stealthy prey. The sound of its footfall was just perceptible, slowly diminishing the distance that divided them. Then the trees were parted, and a tall, fair man stepped forward on to ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a rear door, with the view of a stealthy egress and a skirting of the bushes on the lawn unobserved until they should gain the shelter of the carriage, when there was a movement at their backs, and a voice observed, "Good-afternoon, ladies," and they turned, and there was Captain Arthur Carroll. He was a man possibly ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hours, but not venturing to betray, by word or look, how very content he was. For these hours of stolen happiness he knew how severe a penalty he must pay: he knew and braved it. And in our poor judgment he was right. Let the secret, stealthy, unrequited lover enjoy to the full the presence, the smiles, the bland and cheerful society of her whom his heart is silently worshipping. Even this shall in future hours be a sweet remembrance. By and by, it is true, there will come a season of poignant affliction. But better ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... hasty, yet stealthy step along the hall to the door, yet the girl had no presentiment of evil. The warm, brooding, fragrant darkness of the night was not more ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... laws, or other institutions of civilization they had conferred. The traditions connected with them served only to magnify those uncertain legends met with all over Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Sicily, of the prodigies and miracles that adventurous pirates reported they had actually seen in their stealthy visits to the enchanted valley—great pyramids covering acres of land, their tops rising to the heavens, yet each pyramid nothing more than the tombstone of a king; colossi sitting on granite thrones, the images of Pharaohs who lived ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... she:—I have heard, O auspicious King, that seeing the doleful state of these twain, my sire was filled with ruth and longed to fall upon the ogre sword in hand; however, not being able to cope with him he restrained his wrath and remained on stealthy watch. The giant having drained all the pitchers of wine and devoured half of the barbacued bullock presently addressed himself to the lady and said, "O loveliest of Princesses, how long wilt thou prove thee coy and keep aloof from me? Dost thou not see how desirous I am of winning ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... it will be easy to understand how the stealthy entrance of burglars into a house can be announced by an electric bell or warning lamp. If press-buttons or contact-keys are placed on the sashes of the windows, the posts of the door, or the treads ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... of departure drew nearer. I had already been passed down by the stealthy guards and through the numerous locked and barred gates to the subterranean docks where Grauble's vessel, the Eitel 3, rested on the heavy trucks that would bear her away through the tunnel to the pneumatic lock that would float her into the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... to sleep. For several years nightmares poisoned his rest. He wandered in cellars, and through the manhole saw the grinning flayed man entering. He was alone in a room, and he heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor; he hurled himself against the door to close it, and was just in time to hold the handle; but it was turned from the outside; he could not turn the key, his strength left ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... to feel a trifle nervous as he watched the silent, stealthy approach of the stranger; and fetching his speaking-trumpet from the beckets in the companion-way, where it always hung in company with the telescope, he stepped aft to the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... see the players, sir," spoke up Hal Saddler, briskly, not heeding Robin's stealthy kick. "He said he'd bide wi' Diccon Haggard overnight; an' he said he wished he were ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... was creeping along one morning, with the stealthy tread of a cat, his eye fell upon a beautiful buck browsing on the edge of a barren spot, three hundred yards distant. The temptation was too strong for the woodsman, and he resolved to have a shot at every hazard. Repriming his gun, and picking his flint, he made his approaches ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... This was the man who had treacherously told Christian of his master's doings; but when he saw, suddenly, what had come of his disloyal chattering, the fellow went white as a ghost, and came tottering in stealthy silence down the stairs, his finger on his lips. Neither of them spoke to him, nor he to them. They gave no thought to him; his only thought was to escape as soon as he might; so he passed them, and, going on, passed also ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... boys in turn became the victim of some prank. Raymond betrayed Ken's abhorrence of any kind of perfume, and straightway there was a stealthy colloquy. Cheap perfume of a most penetrating and paralyzing odor was liberally purchased. In Ken's absence from his room all the clothing that he did not have on his back was saturated. Then the conspirators waited for him to come up the stoop, ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... the early hour of dawn, than to venture again, in the middle of the day, among the dreaded crowds of the vast city. Very few, indeed, were the passers-by whom Shamus met during his straggling and stealthy walk through the streets, and those of a description little able or willing to afford a half-penny to his humbled, whining suit, and to his spasmed lip and watery eye. In what direction he went Shamus did not know; but at ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... divest himself of the conviction that a fragment of horrible reality had mingled with his dream. In defiance of reason, he imagined something peculiarly significant in the expression of the old man's face; a something of the cautious stealthy look it had worn when he crept round the screen, and counted his gold under the very nose of the needy painter. And Tchartkoff still felt the print of the rouleau upon his palm, as though it had but that instant left his grasp. Had he held it but a little tighter, he thought, it must have remained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... met the stream which foamed into the stealthy quiet of the wood, and on a large flat stone she sat and was splashed by the noisy water. The larch-trees were alive with feathery green, and their arms waved with the wind, but when Miriam peered ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... ate their supper in comparative silence, Lawrence and Pedro exchanging a comment on the viands now and then, and the handsome Indian girl sitting opposite to them with her eyes for the most part fixed on the ground, though now and then she raised them to take a quick stealthy glance at the huge youth whose appetite did not seem to be greatly affected by his misfortunes. Perhaps she was wondering whether all Englishmen, possessed such innocent kindly faces and such ungainly though powerful frames. It may be that she was contrasting him with the handsome ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... at last, with stealthy steps so as not to disturb the sleeping travellers in our caravansary. The shikari has covered his everyday dress of old Harris tweeds with a white sheet, and might be anyone, and my long Mohammedan guide and interpreter is also in white ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... made by withered bracken or bramble leaves, and had nothing to do with the stealthy fall of a poacher's heavy boot. It came again more clearly, and Thurston was almost sure that it was the rustle of a woven fabric, such as a woman's dress. To confirm this opinion a soft laugh followed. He rose, deciding it could only be ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... young person. Nothing ever brings a blush to my cheek except the rouge-pencil or the exposure of my stealthy deeds of good I can read the Elizabethan dramatists or Rabelais with equanimity, and the only thing that mars my enjoyment of Juvenal is the occasional obscurity of the Latin. I like the immoral passages in "Mademoiselle de Maupin," even if I do not ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... that followed the course of the Beautiful River, the gently varied surfaces of the center, and the southwest, the swamps and morasses of the northwest, were nearly everywhere densely wooded. Our land was a woodland, and its life, when it first became known to the white man, was the stealthy and cruel life of the forest. Where the busy Mound Builders once swarmed, scanty tribes of savages lurked in the leafy twilight, hunting and fishing, and warring upon one another. They came and went upon their errands of death and rapine by trails unseen ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... that moment they heard from behind them the sound of slow, stealthy footsteps. They both wheeled instantly, choking with this additional terror. Coleman saw the dragoman move swiftly to the side of the road, ready to jump into whatever abyss happened to be there. Coleman still gripped the halter ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... I lie and mark Romance's stealthy footsteps. Hark! The rhythm of the horse's hoof Bears some new drama through ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... to the "brute" within him. He who grudges, envies, tries to aggrandise himself at his neighbour's expense—he too gives way to the "brute" within him, and puts on the likeness of the dog which snatches and snarls over his bone. He who spends his life in cunning plots and mean tricks, stealthy, crafty, silent, false, he gives way to the "brute" in him, just as much as the fox or ferret. And those, let me say, who without giving way to those grosser vices, let their minds be swallowed up with vanity, love of admiration, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... second volume, "The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip," will recall, among other things, the desperate efforts made by George Melville, the capitalist, aided by the latter's disagreeable son, Don, to acquire stealthy control of the submarine building company, and their efforts to oust Jack, Hal and Eph from their much-prized employment. These readers will remember how Jack and his comrades spoiled the Melville plans, and how Captain Jack and his ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... cart up the embankment of the tower, and now intended to amuse themselves by ruining him. It was a matter to him of over three thousand francs,—very nearly the whole capital he had scraped together since the peace. Driven by the desire for vengeance, the man now displayed the cunning and stealthy persistence of a detective to whom a large reward is offered. Hiding at night in different parts of Issoudun, he soon acquired proof of the proceedings of the Knights of Idleness; he saw them all, counted them, watched their ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... much-needed rest. Assigned to an important post. The night patrol of the river bank. A nerve-trying vigil. "Halt! Who goes there?" A stealthy step. Lieutenant Hal ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... now in purple shadows stand the hills: The night winds beat their stony sides, and trills From hidden rivulets, and stealthy creep Of some lone reptile down the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but shuttered window, there was a stealthy stirring of animals in the dark, a gliding of ghostly ducks, a breathing of sheep and camels. And sometimes the wild braying of a donkey or the yelp of a dog tore the silence ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... evidently remembered her, and sent one stealthy, keen and scrutinizing glance into her face; but, finding that imperturbable, he bowed with stately politeness and seemed satisfied that she had not identified ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... The stealthy step of the panther, The tiger's cruel eye; A flash—and the wail of a nation Rang in that ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... dare to attempt to pass the end of the Indian semi-circle. It was one chance in a thousand. Throwing himself on the ground, he waited. "Crack!" It was the rifle of an Indian, not fifty feet away and coming nearer. The stealthy footfalls told Elmer that his foe was heading straight for the river bank and that he was in the Ute's path. Then he could hear the Indian's ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... Scarcely had the stealthy rogue vanished from the room when the door of a closet in the rear opened softly and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... when first coming out of doors in the morning, Judy paused a moment to look about. The sky, so clear and bright the evening before, was now a luminous gray. The mountains were lost in a ghostly world of fog, through which the river moved in stealthy silence,—a dull thing of mystery, with only here and there a touch of silvery light upon its clouded surface. The cottonwoods and willows, on the opposite shore, were mere dreams of trees,—gray, formless, and weird. The air was filled ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... approached this statuesque figure with a stealthy tread, and plucking a long spear of grass tickled the bronzed neck. The hand of the plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly, and at this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... border of woodland, heath, or fen was jealously guarded as a frontier and natural defence for the little predatory and agricultural community. Whoever crossed it was bound to give notice of his coming by blowing a horn; else he was cut down at once as a stealthy enemy. The marksmen wished to remain separate from all others, and only to mix with those of their own kin. In this primitive love of separation we have the germ of that local independence and that isolated private home life which is one of the most ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... went to bed, but he did not sleep. He lay in the berth in the darkness, listening intently as the train rushed out of Paris across the plains of France. Once or twice, as the hours passed, he heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor outside, and once the faintest possible little click told that the latch of his door had been lifted to make sure that the bolt was still shot home in its socket. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... had brought acid drops to bed with them, and sucked them slowly, so as to make them last as long as possible. They dared not talk, for fear of disturbing the others, though the temptation was great. Occasionally a stealthy hand would reach over to the next bed, to make sure of its occupant's vigilance, and the squeeze would be passed on ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the screams could have come from, as there wasn't a sound of anyone stirring on the floor. He could hear Dick's stealthy footfall above him occasionally. ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... cabals—and boycotts. Go in for that 'stealthy intrigue' that Heffy is always talkin' ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... moment of doing so, he heard a stealthy but rapid step. The first glance showed him a sinewy warrior, moving softly across the planking from the other end of the cabin and coming ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... to stay there under the orange trees, while the sun dipped lower and lower, turning the western sky to flaming copper and gold. The shadows lengthened and crept out like stealthy, grotesque monsters across ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... and clenched 'his hands together. By the time Mr. Chase came into the room he was able to greet him with a stealthy wink. Mr. Chase, with a humorous twist of his mouth, ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... happy as a grig as I ran downstairs; happier still when we re-entered the flat two hours later, and not a sound came from behind that closed door. I undressed the children, and the maid tiptoed in with their tea with the air of a conspirator in a dark and stealthy plot. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Tuesday morning, December 11, 1688, James II., King of England, rose noiselessly from his bed, passed with stealthy steps from his palace, entered a carriage in waiting, and was driven rapidly to the bank of the Thames, where he stepped into a boat, and was rowed swiftly down the stream. As the boat shot past the old palace of Lambeth, he flung into the river the Great ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... kneel, since Thou art far higher than she deemed, if thou Madest these wondrous things." And lowly now As she would kneel, she drew anigh. But he Cried, shrinking, "Nay, I made them not." And she Low questioned, "Eblis, tell me who then, did make Them all. Who set the creeping hooded snake And stealthy pard within the thorny brake, And spread the sea, and wreathed the waterfall With foam? Who reared the hoar hills, towering tall Above the lands?" With eyes wild flashing, low He groaned: "O Lilith, ask ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... in from the ocean and the brittle sand grass kept up a constant rustling. This sound served admirably to cover the approach of a stealthy figure that had followed the boys at a distance ever since they had left Bartanet. This figure crept closer and closer to the sand dune, until only a projecting hump concealed it from the five ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... Security. The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague. Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Heron was more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, irresponsible fashion, rushes at an obstacle without gauging its resisting powers, and allows its victim to slip from beneath ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... recall may not, in certain cases, be the visionary product of my own disordered brain—realities to me, and to no one else? What are the dreams of Mrs. Van Brandt? What are the ghostly apparitions of her which I believe myself to have seen? Delusions which have been the stealthy growth of years? delusions which are leading me, by slow degrees, nearer and nearer to madness in the end? Is it insane suspicion which has made me so angry with the good friends who have been trying to save my reason? Is it insane terror which sets ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... power, it is true, and against the battleship; but always where the element of surprise has entered into its attack in quite a different fashion from that which is inherent in its always mysterious and stealthy nature. The battle cruiser has shown the value of speed and long-range guns combined, but in a comparatively restricted field. The destroyer has played a part in coast patrol and has doubtless accounted for ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... change my personality, and to be no longer a third party watching these proceedings, but Mr. Leavenworth himself, sitting at his library table and feeling his doom crawling upon him without capacity for speech or power of movement to avert it. Though my back was towards the man, I could feel his stealthy form traverse the passage, enter the room beyond, pass to that stand where the pistol was, try the drawer, find it locked, turn the key, procure the pistol, weigh it in an accustomed hand, and advance ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep; My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn. Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep The stealthy silver moccasins of morn. There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light; It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world; And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night Back in ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Breckenridge awakened suddenly. He sat up listening, still a little dazed with sleep, but nothing disturbed the silence of the wooden building, and it was a moment or two before the moan of the wind forced itself on his perceptions. Then, he thought he heard the trampling of a horse and stealthy footsteps in the mire below, and, springing from his bed, ran to the window. The night was dark, but he could dimly see a few shadowy figures moving towards the house. In another minute he slipped into part of his clothing and hastening into Grant's room ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... to the tower of the church, Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,— Up the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... made out Fogg as Clark had described. The fireman was walking along in the direction they were proceeding. There was something stealthy and sinister in the way in which he kept close to the buildings lining ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... was only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend. It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social conspiracy, that must needs ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... which, from the width and capacity of its throat, is in some varieties very powerful, may be intended as an alarm and warning to the birds and animals on which they prey, to secure themselves from the approach of their stealthy foe. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... said it I was convinced I had hit on the explanation, and that perhaps it was already too late. It seemed to me as I listened that I heard stealthy footsteps on the east porch, but there was so much shouting outside that it was impossible to tell. Liddy was on the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of oysters or crabs, but after making a long sweep which carried the boat out of vision of the sloop and the beach, it swung toward the shore, a little to the northward of the mouth of the creek. The errand had a stealthy air. Jack Cockrell started and almost fell out of the tree. He had been mistaken in his fancy that Blackbeard was in the pinnace which had towed the prisoners out to be marooned. This was none other than the grotesque fiend ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... yet, practical preparation for the robber horde that would soon be prowling over my camping ground. Then a stealthy movement among the ferns or the sweep of a shadow among the twilight shadows would mean a very different thing from wriggling stick and waving hemlock tip. Snap and swoop, and teeth and claws,—jump for your life and find out afterwards. That is the rule for a wise wood mouse. So I said ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... and intricate warble for an hour together. This bird is the great American chipper. There is no other bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military decision as this yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click of a giant gun-lock. Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems to be going about on tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloft in the air and traversing the world openly, like ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... and splashed over the sleek, brown sand, and sucked back, leaving a curved line of bubbles which, one by one, winked, gaped and burst. There was a drowsy peacefulness in the air; behind them, among the beeches, were many stealthy wood-sounds; and, at long intervals, a sleepy, peevish twittering went about ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... came a short, quick yelp, as from some stray dog. She rose, slipped out the door, and peered into the darkness, which was full of gathering snow. After listening a moment, she gave a low whistle. It was not answered, but a stealthy step presently approached, and a form, dividing itself from the gloom, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... things, when I became aware that the man in the cot to the right was trying to attract my attention. He had been brought in that very morning, said to have been kicked by a horse. One of his ribs was broken, and his face badly smashed. He was in great pain, but quite conscious, and he was making stealthy motions to me. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... he engrossed in his meditations that he did not hear the stealthy turning of the door-handle, and it was not until a distinct hiss reached his ears that he turned. A woman, dripping with water, her gray hair hanging in wet strings about a withered face, stole toward him. Everett was so taken aback by the sight of her and the hissing, cross-eyed ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... proceeded pleasantly for many miles; I trotting steadily onwards, and Puss creeping behind the hedge at her usual stealthy pace. When prudence permitted, we enlivened our journey by various agreeable diversions. Sometimes on coming to a paling or a wall, Puss jumped up with her usual activity, and ran along the top. Occasionally we made a halt, while she climbed a pleasant tree, and I reposed on the ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... this mountaineer. His movements, made with the instinctive cunning of the woodsman and with muscles trained not only by wild life there in the mountains to speed, endurance and exactitude, but by many an hour of stealthy stalking of the "revenuers" sent to search out his moonshine still, raid it, take him prisoner, were almost magically ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... that line, up the great river, within the great wall of Omdurman, into the arsenal, into the treasury, into the mosque, into the Khalifa's house itself, the spies and secret agents of the Government—disguised as traders, as warriors, or as women—worked their stealthy way. Sometimes the road by the Nile was blocked, and the messengers must toil across the deserts to Darfur, and so by a tremendous journey creep into Omdurman. At others a trader might work his way from Suakin or from the Italian settlements. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... started forward, slow and stealthy as a creeping cat. When within fifty feet of the fire I went down on all-fours and began to crawl. Twice I got out of line. But at last Dick's burly shoulders loomed up between me and ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... the small circular threshing-floor, and savagely snap at the revolving wheels. Sometimes, after being held in check until I am out of sight beyond a knoll, these vindictive and determined assailants will sneak around through the fields, and, overtaking me unseen, make stealthy onslaughts upon me from the brush; my only safety is in unremitting vigilance. Like the dogs of most semi-civilized peoples, they are but imperfectly trained to obey; and the natives dislike checking them in their attacks upon anybody, arguing that so doing interferes with the courage ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... left in the living-room, waited in silence. They could hear the stealthy footsteps, which, however, seemed now to be ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... would have detected any change in him. But, as the minutes of the new morning wore away, the swiftly-subtle progress of the influence began to show itself more plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium gleamed in his eyes; the dew of a stealthy perspiration began to glisten on his face. In five minutes more, the talk which he still kept up with me, failed in coherence. He held steadily to the subject of the Diamond; but he ceased to complete his sentences. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... and to fly to its destruction with all his power. Amid continual risks of losing his life, he exercised his gigantic charity for many years in directing the souls of those islands to God, without any fear of death whose scythe he saw upon him many times. The Moros with their stealthy attacks, the infidels or apostates with open malice, and the evil Christians with their subterfuges and deceits made him almost continually suffer for justice. But he worked on manfully as one who had the refuge of his life in God, and consoling his weakened heart with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... was posted the guard of four. Behind them twinkled many camp-fires on a distant plain, before them wound a road ploughed by the passage of an army, strewn with the relics of a rout. On the right, a sluggish river glided, like a serpent, stealthy, sinuous, and dark, into a seemingly impervious jungle; on the left, a Southern swamp filled the air with malarial damps, swarms of noisome life, and discordant sounds that robbed the hour of its repose. The men were friends as well as comrades, for though gathered ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... first to take him in hand, the opportunity of saying, that he was a "witness of great weight," a remark which caused much laughter—even the Chairman of the Committee, a somewhat austere person, indulging in a stealthy smile at the ingenious sally. Such waggish flashes as this, I need scarcely say, were most welcome, and afforded, when they came, a pleasant relief to the necessary dryness that characterised, perforce, the proceedings. As the hands of the clock progressed, waiters ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... may be useful to push forward officers as stealthy patrols, with instruction to avoid being drawn into an action, as far as time and opportunity will allow, goes without saying; but nevertheless stress must be laid upon the point that already in the period ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... with the skill shown some time before, and once more the unwieldy craft swung slowly down the Ganges, with all on board alert for the first sign of their enemies. The women were advised to remain in the small cabin, where they would be safe against stealthy shots. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... horror which stalks in the stillness of the noonday, when the glare of an artificial sunshine lights up the motionless trees, moved all about her. In front and behind she was aware of it. Beyond this stealthy silence, just within the edge of it, the things of another world were passing. But she could not know them. Her husband knew them, knew their beauty and their awe, yes, but for her they were out of ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... secret and unknown, crept the heathen host. They were clad in shining steel from head to foot, swords were by their sides, lances were in their hands, and bitter hatred in their hearts. Four hundred thousand strong they marched in stealthy silence. And, alas! the Franks knew ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... old man. He stopped with us another couple of hours, yet could not sit still for a moment, but kept jumping up from his seat, laughing, cracking jokes with Sasha, bestowing stealthy kisses upon myself, pinching my hands, and making silent grimaces at Anna Thedorovna. At length, she turned him out of the house. In short, his transports of joy exceeded anything that I ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... colonel," said a benignant voice at the door. I turned suddenly, as did the general. At the opening of the tent, a head was seen—the head passed through—was followed by a body,—and Mr. Nighthawk, private and confidential emissary, glided in with the stealthy step ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... leave his post, while there was sufficient daylight to give him a chance of ascertaining whether the objects he saw were mounted Indians or not: he knew that at such a distance men on foot could not possibly be seen. He had much less to fear from men on horseback than from the stealthy approach of savages on foot, who might creep up almost unperceived close ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... and bracelets round her arms, and anklets of gold round her legs, and her loose dress is of gay-coloured striped cotton of delicate texture. She is alive, but faint and weak; and, by her dim eye and short-coming breath, death seems to be approaching with stealthy strides to claim her as his own. Still, the soul is struggling to triumph over the weakness of the flesh. With an anxious gaze she looks beneath the awning, for there is something there which claims her constant solicitude. She turns her gaze towards ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... upon the necessity of procuring the means of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, as ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... effort at the club; And I, elated, loaned it to the press For publication if the writer willed; But scruples seemed to fill his vacuous mind, Hence it was hidden from the public gaze. Now it hath disappeared, and Rumor saith 'Tis to be published in a stealthy way. Zounds! 'tis enough to cause the blood to course Like mercury adown the burning veins. Could I but lay my eager hands upon The thiefly neck, I'd wring it ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Gardens. For he refused to come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with the malice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossible to let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so to speak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloud blown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear a sleeping ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... her shoulder, as she ran. And she came to the bottom, and crept in under a ledge of rock that did be in that place; and she did seem utter worn, and gone of the spirit, and desperate. And I perceived in the same instant why that she did go stealthy and swift in that fashion, and to cower, as for her very life; for there came a squat, haired man, so broad as a bullock, who did come silent down into the hollow, looking this way and that, even as a wild beast ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... mind of Archie, as he struggled with the load of penitence. So it chanced that, in the flutter of the moment when the last psalm was given out, and Torrance was reading the verse, and the leaves of every psalm-book in church were rustling under busy fingers, two stealthy glances were sent out like antennae among the pews and on the indifferent and absorbed occupants, and drew timidly nearer to the straight line between Archie and Christina. They met, they lingered together for the least fraction of time, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about it as a blue jay. No dog's voice had ever wakened the echoes within fifty miles; but every sound of the wilderness he seemed to know a thousand times better than I. The snapping of the smallest stick under the stealthy tread of fox or wildcat would send him scurrying out of sight in wild alarm; yet I watched a dozen of them at play one night when a frightened moose went crashing through the underbrush and plunged into the lake near by, and they did not seem to mind ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Crawley lay for days—ever so many days—Mr. Bute reading books of devotion to her: for nights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing, the night-light sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the stealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinkling eyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary darkened ceiling. Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a regimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim? It has been ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... onslaught of the Indian warriors was well known, but it was also understood by every white man that the red men seldom persisted in a long attack. A stealthy and sudden dash was their favourite method of fighting, but if the resistance was determined or prolonged they would usually withdraw to the shelter of ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... Feng laughing; "I've found no place, as yet, where I could put away all my own things; and do the stealthy practices of you people take ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... strange rencontre. The tiger was now crouching low, crawling stealthily round and round the boar, who changed front with every movement of his lithe and sinewy adversary, keeping his determined head and sharp, deadly tusks ever facing his stealthy and treacherous foe. The bristles of the boar's back were up at a right angle from the strong spine. The wedge-shaped head poised on the strong neck and thick rampart of muscular shoulder was bent low, and the whole attitude of the body betokened full alertness and angry resoluteness. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... underground; So fell the goodly form of Aeacus' son. He glared, a murderous glance, to right, to left, [Upon the Trojans, and a terrible threat] Shouted, a threat that could not be fulfilled: "Who shot at me a stealthy-smiting shaft? Let him but dare to meet me face to face! So shall his blood and all his bowels gush out About my spear, and he be hellward sped! I know that none can meet me man to man And quell in fight—of earth-born heroes none, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... him, and the two advanced in their stealthy fashion among the trees for some twenty steps, when they gained full view of the third Indian, whose course was rather peculiar. He had stepped from the woods into the clearing, and was standing facing the other ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... evening. We were off Deal, slowly drifting past the town on the ebb tide; our progress made apparent only by the quiet, stealthy way in which the masts of the vessels lying at anchor in the roadstead successively approached, covered, and receded from some prominent object on shore, such as a church spire, a lofty building, a tall chimney, and what not. The sun had sunk behind ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... its unclouded radiance over open space, failed to throw a beauty not their own on those sluggish waters. Broad and muddy, their stealthy current flowed onward to the sea, without a rock to diversify, without a bubble to break, the sullen surface. On the side from which I was looking at the river, the neglected trees grew so close together that they were undermining their own lives, and poisoning each other. On the opposite ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... was carried down the long winding path above the deep-water reach, where Michael and Francis at Christmas had heard the sound of stealthy rowing, and on to the boat that awaited it to ferry it across to the church. There was high tide, and, as they passed over the estuary, the stillness of supreme noon bore to them the tolling of the bell. The mourners from the house ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... huts crept stealthy figures of women and children. When Eustace opened his eyes he found himself lying flat on his back with these people crowding inquisitively around. He looked up into their repulsively heavy faces with a horror of realization. For some moments he was too paralyzed to stir. No more awful fate ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... engines were stopped and for an hour we drifted on under the ship's momentum. The silencing of the engines on a ship is always ominous, and just now, with the dim bulk of Corregidor looming grimly before us, it seemed as if there was something particularly sinister about our stealthy approach. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... features, which makes me tremble. Amelia, too, is not indifferent towards him! Does she not dart eager, languishing looks at the fellow looks of which she is so chary to all the world beside? Did I not see her drop those stealthy tears into the wine, which, behind my back, he quaffed so eagerly that he seemed to swallow the very glass? Yes, I saw it—I saw it in the mirror with my own eyes. Take care, Francis! Look about you! Some destruction-brooding monster is lurking beneath all this! (He stops, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a short pause, and each pause was of the same duration. The footsteps were very light; it was almost as though an animal, a caged animal, padded from the bars at one end to the bars at the other. There was something stealthy in the footsteps too. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... flowers at the altar, there has been added the cacodorous scents of forty or fifty different brands of talcum and rice powder. It begins to grow warm in the church, and a number of women open their vanity bags and duck down for stealthy dabs at their noses. Others, more reverent, suffer the agony of augmenting shines. One, a trickster, has concealed powder in her pocket handkerchief, and applies it dexterously while pretending to ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... joint. Shockingly bad wishes flitted through her head. Each wish aimed at the disposal, imaginary of course, of Warrington: by falling overboard, by being seized with one of the numerous plagues, by having a deadly fracas with one of those stealthy Lascars. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... his breath and listening. There was a tiny window opposite to the door, but it only declared itself a window, it gave no light. And illusions came to Lieutenant Fevrier, such as will come to the bravest man so long as he listens hard enough in the dark—illusions of stealthy footsteps on the floor, of hands scraping and feeling along the walls, of a man's breathing upon his neck, of many infinitesimal noises and ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... heard, O auspicious King, that seeing the doleful state of these twain, my sire was filled with ruth and longed to fall upon the ogre sword in hand; however, not being able to cope with him he restrained his wrath and remained on stealthy watch. The giant having drained all the pitchers of wine and devoured half of the barbacued bullock presently addressed himself to the lady and said, "O loveliest of Princesses, how long wilt thou prove thee coy and keep aloof from me? Dost thou not see how desirous I am of winning ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... sun, his day's course run, Sinks into the western sea, And the mountains loom in the growing gloom With far-off mystery, When the shadows creep o'er plain and steep With stealthy tread and still, And the fettered stream to its icy dream Is left by the sleeping mill, From the frozen north I then lead forth My swiftly flying bands, In close array on the track of day, As she flees to ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... uninhabited. The cold October wind whistled through its joints and crannies;—the walls were studded with bright patches of moss and lichen;—darkness and desolation brooded over it, unbroken by aught but the cry of the moor-fowl and the stealthy prowl of the weasel ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... given a stealthy sigh of relief when she discovered that he was not making the protest she had feared. "Yes, I understand," replied she, her manner a gentle graciousness, which in some moods would have sent his pride flaring against ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... fingers and scorched them, but I scarcely noticed. My sense of high-gear adventure had reached its zenith now. There was something thrilling, something stimulating in this stealthy night entrance into a deserted castle. It was an experience, at all events; there was no concierge to stump before one through dim passages and up winding staircases; no flood of dates and names and anecdotes poured inexorably into one's bored ears to insure a douceur when the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the lantern. He was some time feeling for the match-box under his furs, and while he did so he heard a soft rustling in the stall nearest the door. This was curious, for the stall, being a cold one, was unoccupied, and there was something significantly stealthy in the sound; but it ceased, and while he listened with strained attention a horse moved and snorted. Then, while he fumbled impatiently at a button of his skin coat which would not come loose, an icy draught stole into ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... Dragut-Reis, wounded, breathless, but victorious, stood master of the strongest place of arms in all the continent of Africa. It is true that treachery had given him his opportunity, but once that was obtained the rest he had done for himself: the stealthy advance by sea, the midnight march to the exact spot on the walls where he was awaited by Ibrahim Amburac, the marshalling of his five hundred for the conflict, and the actual conduct of the fight itself, were all to the credit of this apt pupil of the great Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, As ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... pursuer was gaining on him, he desperately strode on. He did not dare to look behind, dreading less what he might see than the momentary loss of speed the action might occasion. Faster, faster, faster! And all at once he knew that the dogging thing had dropped its stealthy pace and was racing up to him. With a bound he broke into a run, seeing, hearing, heeding nothing, aware only that the other was silently louping on his track two steps to his one; and with that frantic apprehension upon him, he gained ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... I was awakened by the sound of someone's walking in the hallway. I sat bolt-upright in bed and heard the unmistakable approach of footsteps coming down the corridor from Carse's bedroom. The tread was stealthy and determined, and as it drew closer to my room I was conscious of a cold mask of sweat clinging to my face, because the footsteps did not sound like those ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... passed away, and the swift and stealthy hunter had been succeeded by the patient and industrious white cultivator. Few traces of the Indian were remaining. The weak and irresolute—they who could see unmoved the dwelling-places of their fathers usurped by strangers, had found unhonoured graves ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... deadly. For this reason they halted at the base of Observation Hill until such time as it was possible to proceed in safety. Presently the moon sank behind clouds and they moved on. At half-past one they crossed the railway lines and commenced, stealthy as cats, to ascend the hill. One company and a half was left on the right, and one company and a half on the left flank. A half company was posted in a nullah near the railway. The remainder of the force, led by Colonel Metcalfe, deployed into line and ascended with steady, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... vote melodious and romantic, while others associate the sound rather with midnight crime and dislike it accordingly. The badger, on the other hand, with the otter and fox—all of them sad thieves from our point of view—have learnt, whatever their primeval habits, to go about their marauding in stealthy silence; and it is only in less settled regions that one hears the jackals barking, the hyaenas howling, and the browsing deer whistling ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... old store was full of noises, for the fingers of decay never cease from picking and, in the silence of night, one can best hear their stealthy activities. Little falls of fragments sounded loudly, even echoed, in this great silence. There was almost a perpetual rustle and whisper; and once a thud and skurry, when a rat displaced a piece of mortar which fell from the rotting plaster. Dark though the heaven was and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... wisdom, then. The frequent feast Avoid; for there, with stealthy tread Temptation walks, to lure you on, Till death, at last, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... A stealthy campaign against Prince Nikola now began, which emanated from Belgrade and had, I am inclined ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... "This is a slaughter-house." Every door was impassable; every window was barred. The idea of interference from without was futile. Vainly I lifted my voice and cried for aid. The street was desolate as a graveyard; the only thing that moved about me was the stealthy blood that came creeping out from beneath the doors of these awful dwellings. Wild with horror I fled along the street, seeking some outlet, the cries and moans pursuing me as I ran. At length the street abruptly ended in a high dead wall, the top of which was not discernible; it seemed, indeed, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... a sound of stealthy movement outside the cabin and he flicked sweat out of his eyes ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... the road and wiped my damp forehead. What a fool I was! The night was over. Here in the garish day there was surely nothing to fear? Nevertheless, I, who had started out thirsting only to breathe the fresh salt air, now walked along with stealthy nervous footsteps, looking all the time from left to right, starting at the sight of a dark log on the sands, terrified at a broken buoy which had floated up one of the creeks. Some fear had come over me which I could not shake off. I was afraid of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the steps, and glided up with the stealthy silent tread of a cat. So little noise had his moccasins made upon the stones, that, when he arrived upon the roof, its occupant—although standing but six feet from the head of the escalera—was ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Lurking in the utter darkness of the scarce-fathomed deeps of the ocean, what Kraken may not lie, coil on coil; what strange black, slimy, large-eyed forms do their stealthy hunting in perpetual night by the light of phosphorescent lamps they bear upon their bodies? Many of these there are, every year teaches of new species. The land—oh! the land is all well known, even the Arctic and Antarctic regions ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the low bench. He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there, heedless ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spoke the great gate of the city yawned noiselessly, and stealthy and silent the hope of Paris glided into the darkness and was ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... forth, and so will I. Sorry sight! to view Jabaster, with a stealthy step, skulk like a thing dishonoured! Oh! may the purpose consecrate the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... loss, and questioning the honor of those to whose safekeeping it had been entrusted. Finally, doubtless under the apprehension that through their irregularities the corn would all disappear and find its way to the horses in accordance with the stealthy enterprise of their owners, a general raid was made on the field in broad daylight, and though the guard drove off the marauders, I must admit that its efforts to keep them back were so unsuccessful that ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... of innocence from guilt. On one side of it, in a chamber of light, sat a fair girl, confiding, generous, and deceived only through her excess of every virtue; on the other, wickedness, fell and artful, was approaching with stealthy footsteps through an unseen way, and stood with hand upraised to knock, but incapable of entering in unless that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... shrugged his shoulders. That would be easier than a fight, he argued, and so he led the girl toward the doorway that she had indicated. Within the room all was dark, but the daimio moved as one accustomed to the place, and as he moved through the blackness the girl at his side felt with stealthy ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the deep woods, the stealthy redskins sprang upon him, shrieking like fierce beasts of prey. And in a moment the arrows flew thick ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... however, have ended in a slow forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week. One afternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening, which drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds. It was a time when in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets; when round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the sitters' backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow. Many ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... English; sweet and low, and soothing in their simple and sometimes wild melody. They soothed Daisy. After a time, wearied and exhausted by all her long day of trial, she did forget pain in slumber. The eyelids closed, and Juanita's stealthy examination found that quiet soft breathing was really proving her fast asleep. The singing ceased; and for a while nothing was to be heard in the cottage but the low rush and rustle of the wind which had driven away the storm ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... her. And the dark doubt she fain Would banish, sees the shuddering fear remain, And ever presses near with stealthy tread. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... was silent. The lights had been darkened for an hour. With stealthy step along the upper hall, and silent footfall on the stairway, the cloaked and hooded figure of Leah approached the sleeping apartment of her father and his wife. The sound of heavy breathing betokened heavy slumber, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... depth of night there are forms that glide As stealthy as serpents creep, And around the hut where the outlaws hide They plant in the shadows deep, And they wait till the first faint flush of dawn Shall waken their prey ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... to the landing-stage. Beneath them the Pool slept, a sheet of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... enchained—my situation was desperate—what species of civility could I expect from the spirits, (for that they were supernatural beings I could no longer doubt) of those chairmen who during their mortal career are so noted for their brutality? After a short halt, they recommenced their march at the same stealthy pace, through how many streets I cannot now tell, for fear almost deprived me of my senses. We came to the town gate—it opened—and my conductors bore me directly towards—the churchyard! I was in a fever of excitement. They no sooner reached this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what was sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place. The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet stealthy steps, ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of 'em pulled it off successful, and they was snuggled up on a marble bench gettin' real well acquainted—maybe callin' each other by their first names and whisperin' mushy sentiments in the moonshine—when the heavy villain enters with stealthy tread. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... bed the following morning at half-after six, I could not but wonder rather nervously what the day might have in store for me. I was obliged to admit that what I was in for looked a bit thick. As I opened my door I heard stealthy footsteps down the hall and looked out in time to observe Cousin Egbert entering his own room. It was not this that startled me. He would have been abroad, I knew, for the ham and eggs that were forbidden ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... my room. And so I promised myself that in the dining-room, as they began to eat and drink and as I felt the hour approach, I would put beforehand into this kiss, which was bound to be so brief and stealthy in execution, everything that my own efforts could put into it: would look out very carefully first the exact spot on her cheek where I would imprint it, and would so prepare my thoughts that I might be able, thanks ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... then, so dreadful?" asked Maggie half fearfully, and casting a stealthy glance at the dim woods, where the night shadows were falling, and whose winding path she must traverse alone on her homeward route. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... that Puddin's he might lure, Into his clutches stealthy; He stole the Puddin' of the poor, ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... him also the night had eyes, and the air a feeling of movement in it, stealthy movement that walked on tiptoe and held its breath. The steel sang, now high, now low, distinct sounds and continuous. The breeze rustled the leaves then and again, but something else was stirring in the night, now behind him, now to his right, just where the high hedges enclosed ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... advocate has described to you how she stole step by step into that room with murder in her heart, the guilt of former days lending courage to a desperate act. With stealthy tread she crept up to the bed, her hand fumbled for a moment in the folds of her dress, then drew out a syringe. Deftly, and with practiced hand, she thrust the hypodermic needle into the brawny arm which, once so valiant in the fight, lay ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... merely the work of an aroused imagination, but had something sensible to go upon; sounds of a stealthy approach were no doubt audible; and while he still stood staring at the lumber, the voice of his host sounded suddenly, and with even more than the customary softness of enunciation, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the dead silence that reigned within the fort, she flattered herself that her stealthy approach was unperceived by the enemy, and so, after pausing for a moment, she advanced still farther and gained ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... of its projectors, the people credulously supposed that their interests would be safeguarded. But from time to time, Legislature after Legislature was corrupted or induced to enact stealthy acts by which the railroad was permitted to pass without restriction into the possession of a small clique of exploiters and speculators. Not only were the people cheated out of funds raised by public taxation and advanced to build the road—a common occurrence in the case of most railroads—but ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Thieves" and their officers. This little corps performed nearly all the active service. Their red shirts had become so well known, that the colour was enough to keep the natives at a distance; but although the Baris were now afraid to risk a stand-up fight, they troubled us by their stealthy tactics. It was impossible to say where they were concealed. They were spread all over the country: some hidden in the tall dhurra, others behind bushes. Their favourite place was in the grass and scattered bush on the banks of the river, where they lay in wait for any ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... horror-stricken than I really was by this mysterious, and, all things considered, even terrible interpellation. It was not until the silence had again returned, and the faint rustling of the frosty breeze among the crisp weeds crept toward me like the stealthy approach of some unearthly influence, that I felt a superstitious terror gradually inspire me, which hurried me at an accelerated pace from the place. A few minutes, and I heard the friendly voice of my charioteer hallooing to me from ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... hospitable man's exit all the noise ceased, but the seaman could hear murmuring voices and stealthy footsteps gathering round the hut. In a few minutes ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... the fire, was awakened by the fall of a lump of snow from the branch of a shaken evergreen. That was nothing. But there were other sounds in the forest, faint, stealthy, inaudible to an ear less keen than his. He crept out of the shelter and looked into the wood. He could see shadowy forms, stealing among the trees, gliding down the hill. Five of them. Wolves, doubtless! He must guard the provisions. By this time the rest of his team were awake. Their eyes ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... bright and the walk is quick, your customer has the money to pay either in his pocket or in his bank; when the step is dull and sluggish, you take a risk; when the eye looks about with an anxious glance and the step is stealthy, and then when you take the measure for the coat, both go out dancing, you may never get a penny. But that is only to tell you how I know," the tailor chuckled softly. "And now one thing more"—he was serious now—"when must you have this ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... two girls came downstairs, the landlord's wife took their satchel, and led them over broken sidewalks to the meson, where the street was filled with torches and laden burros and blanketed shadows. Murguia's caravan was forming, making a weird, stealthy scene of activity. Jacqueline picked up a lantern, and searched ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... had a most terrible fright. He and his wife, and some of the young ones, had been hard at work on the ripe strawberries. They had been so busy that they did not hear stealthy footsteps approaching on the sandy gravel till they were quite close to them. Then the birds rose in the air, with shrill cries of alarm, all except Mamma Blackbird, who somehow could not get her head from under the net. She struggled desperately; ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... answered 'Collins,' and commenced a few words of explanation of the cause of his being there and alone, when the forms of two Indians, which I fancied I had before detected creeping along the shore, regulating their stealthy progress by that of the boat, started into full height, and silently bounded towards me—one a little in advance of the other. The moment was critical. They were not twenty paces from me, and I have often since wondered at the presence ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... off down the beach until I was far enough away to be able to walk across the open and into the shadow of the bush without being seen, which I succeeded in doing. Once there, I commenced a stealthy approach, putting each foot carefully and noiselessly to the ground, and not venturing to raise one until the other was firmly planted. In this manner I contrived to make my way onward unobserved, and at last gained a ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... primal hunting instinct of the Anglo-Saxon awoke in the lank Benjamin. The incomparable fascination which makes man-hunting the sport supreme of all ages gripped him tight. The stealthy cunning of a savage became on the moment his. A plan of ambush, one which could scarcely fail, flashed into his mind. The trail of the divide narrowing now, stretched for miles and miles straight before them. That black figure would scarcely ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... planks of the summerhouse. His most obvious course was to scramble back over the wall again into safety, in all thankfulness at having escaped so violent an attack. But he reflected that Bellward was here and that surely meant that the others were not far off. In that instant as he heard the stealthy footstep cross the floor of the summer-house, Desmond resolved he would not leave the garden until he had ascertained whether Barbara Mackwayte ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... for consumption the soft, velvet darkness of the South African starlit night had fallen, and we ate our meal to the accompaniment of the usual night sounds of the veld where water happens to be near—the soft, subdued quacking of drowsy waterfowl, the occasional "honk" of a belated goose, the stealthy splashing of bucks wading warily into the deeper and cleaner water clear of the rushes before venturing to drink, mysterious rustlings among the reeds, the distant call of buck to each other in the bush, the sharp bark of the jackal, the blood-curdling laugh ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... had slept for two hours when the stealthy apprentice let himself quietly into the dark and cheerless house. He bore on his back a heavy bag of flour, and carried on his arm a big basket filled with minor packages gleaned from sleepy shopkeepers, who had been awakened by the lynx-eyed youth knocking ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... as still as the night before. In another moment a flash might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in the room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... a twilight strand 'Twixt the daylight shore and the ocean night, But takes—as it gives—at once, the light. We laid us down on the steep hillside, While far below us wild peacocks cried, And we sometimes heard, in the sunburnt grass, The stealthy steps of the Jungle pass. We listened; knew not whether they went On love or hunger the more intent. And under your kisses I hardly knew Whether I loved ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... West kindles red and low, Across the sunset's sombre glow, The black crows fly—the black crows fly! High pines are swaying to and fro In evil winds that blow and blow. The stealthy dusk draws nigh—draws nigh, Till the sly sun at last goes down, And ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... village of Hadley the people were all at church, the Indians crept up in their usual stealthy fashion. Suddenly the alarm was given, and, seizing their guns which stood by their sides, the men rushed out of the meeting-house. But they were all in confusion: the attack was sudden, they were none of them soldiers, but merely brave men ready to die for their homes ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... Moonlighter led his men in stealthy retreat from an overwhelming force of troopers armed to the teeth. Tracks had to be covered and diversions created, and there was much hiding behind logs and in clumps of scrub; indeed, the police were only foiled at length by the exertion of that subtle ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... king of Britain, describes her own condition at the beginning of the story. The theme of the long and complicated tale that follows is her fidelity under this affliction. Neither her father's anger, nor the stealthy deception of the false stepmother, nor the base lust of her brutish half-brother Cloten, nor the seductive tongue of the villainous Italian Iachimo, her husband's friend; nor even the knowledge of her own husband's ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... from seed of speech; And love (thou son of Kunti!) those gentle hearts did reach. Thus Nala—hardly bearing in his heart Such longing—wandered in his palace-woods, And marked some water-birds, with painted plumes, Disporting. One, by stealthy steps, he seized; But the sky-traveller spake to Nala this:— "Kill me not, Prince, and I will serve thee well. For I, in Damayanti's ear, will say Such good of Nishadh's lord, that nevermore Shall ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... certain number of the thralls, many of them wild negritos from the west, have taken to the bush, harbour there in a state partly bestial, or creep into the back quarters of the town to do a day's stealthy labour under the nose of their proprietors. Twelve were arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. Farther in the bush, huts, small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by hunters. There are still three runaways in the woods ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ways of storming a castle were discovered. They could be scaled by means of tall ladders, especially in a stealthy night attack. Stones could be thrown over the walls by mangonels to annoy the garrison. Sometimes a wall could be brought down by a battering- ram. But the quickest and surest way was by mining. The miners worked their way to the wall, and then began ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
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