There were three of them in 1886, the big drought year: old Eversofar, Billy Marshall, and Bingong. I never was very jealous of them, not even when Billy gave undoubted ground for divorce by kissing her boldly in the front garden, with Eversofar and Bingong looking on–to say nothing of myself. So far as public […]

It was a barren country, and Wadgery was generally shrivelled with heat, but he always had roses in his garden, on his window-sill, or in his button-hole. Growing flowers under difficulties was his recreation. That was why he was called Old Roses. It was not otherwise inapt, for there was something antique about him, though […]

“Oh, nothing matters,” she said, with a soft, ironical smile, as she tossed a bit of sugar to the cockatoo. “Quite so,” was his reply, and he carefully gathered in a loose leaf of his cigar. Then, after a pause: “And yet, why so? It’s a very pretty world one way and another.” “Yes, it’s […]

“Now listen to me, Neddie Dibbs,” she said, as she bounced the ball lightly on her tennis-racket, “you are very precipitate. It’s only four weeks since you were court-martialed, and you escaped being reduced by the very closest shave; and yet you come and make love to me, and want me to marry you. You […]

There was a culminating growth of irritation on board the Merrie Monarch. The Captain was markedly fitful and, to a layman’s eye, unreliable at the helm; the Hon. Skye Terryer was smoking violently, and the Newspaper Correspondent–representing an American syndicate–chewed his cigar in silence. “Yes,” Gregson, the Member of Parliament, continued, “if I had my […]

We were camped on the edge of a billabong. Barlas was kneading a damper, Drysdale was tenderly packing coals about the billy to make the water boil, and I was cooking the chops. The hobbled horses were picking the grass and the old-man salt-bush near, and Bimbi, the black boy, was gathering twigs and bark […]

I. THE CHOOSING OF THE MESSENGER There was trouble at Mandakan. You could not have guessed it from anything the eye could see. In front of the Residency two soldiers marched up and down sleepily, mechanically, between two ten-pounders marking the limit of their patrol; and an orderly stood at an open door, lazily shifting […]

I Of all the good men that Lincolnshire gave to England to make her proud, strong and handsome, none was stronger, prouder and more handsome than John Enderby, whom King Charles made a knight against his will. “Your gracious Majesty,” said John Enderby, when the King was come to Boston town on the business of […]

I “Ask Mr. Hume to come here for a moment, Gosse,” said Field, the chief factor, as he turned from the frosty window of his office at Fort Providence, one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts. The servant, or more properly, Orderly-Sergeant Gosse, late of the Scots Guards, departed on his errand, glancing curiously at […]

The five brothers lived with Louison, three miles from Pontiac, and Medallion came to know them first through having sold them, at an auction, a slice of an adjoining farm. He had been invited to their home, intimacy had grown, and afterwards, stricken with a severe illness, he had been taken into the household and […]

“Sacre bapteme!” “What did he say?” asked the Little Chemist, stepping from his doorway. “He cursed his baptism,” answered tall Medallion, the English auctioneer, pushing his way farther into the crowd. “Ah, the pitiful vaurien!” said the Little Chemist’s wife, shudderingly; for that was an oath not to be endured by any one who called […]

Rachette told the story to Medallion and the Little Chemist’s wife on Sunday after Mass, and because he was vain of his English he forsook his own tongue and paid tribute to the Anglo-Saxon. “Ah, she was so purty, that Norinne, when she drive through the parishes all twelve days, after the wedding, a dance […]

At the beginning he was only a tombstone-cutter. His name was Francois Lagarre. He was but twenty years old when he stepped into the shop where the old tombstone-cutter had worked for forty years. Picking up the hammer and chisel which the old man had dropped when he fell dead at the end of a […]

The chest of drawers, the bed, the bedding, the pieces of linen, and the pile of yarn had been ready for many months. Annette had made inventory of them every day since the dot was complete–at first with a great deal of pride, after a time more shyly and wistfully: Benoit did not come. He […]

Medallion put it into his head on the day that Benoit and Annette were married. “See,” said Medallion, “Annette wouldn’t have you–and quite right–and she took what was left of that Benoit, who’ll laugh at you over his mush-and-milk.” “Benoit will want flour some day, with no money.” The old man chuckled and rubbed his […]

The tale was told to me in the little valley beneath Dalgrothe Mountain one September morning. Far and near one could see the swinging of the flail, and the laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land. There was a little Calvary down by the riverside, where the flax-beaters used to say their prayers […]

For a man in whose life there had been tragedy he was cheerful. He had a habit of humming vague notes in the silence of conversation, as if to put you at your ease. His body and face were lean and arid, his eyes oblique and small, his hair straight and dry and straw-coloured; and […]

The old woodsman shifted the knife with which he was mending his fishing-rod from one hand to the other, and looked at it musingly, before he replied to Medallion. “Yes, m’sieu’, I knew the White Chief, as they called him: this was his”–holding up the knife; “and this”–taking a watch from his pocket. “He gave […]

He was no uncle of mine, but it pleased me that he let me call him Uncle Jim. It seems only yesterday that, for the first time, on a farm “over the border,” from the French province, I saw him standing by a log outside the wood-house door, splitting maple knots. He was all bent […]

No one ever visited the House except the Little Chemist, the Avocat, and Medallion; and Medallion, though merely an auctioneer, was the only person on terms of intimacy with its owner, the old Seigneur, who for many years had never stirred beyond the limits of his little garden. At rare intervals he might be seen […]