Minl Fry Pan

Minl Fry Pan The Project Gutenberg eBook of The wonderful Christmas in Pumpkin Delight Lane No more would the fire-flies weave a gauze of golden stars above the marshlands at the foot of the Causeway. The season of green and blue had lived and died and in its place had been born a season of drab and brown. Summer was gone. The song-birds had migrated. Soon the green rush fields would sway, grey and dead and the bronze woodcocks would whistle away from the bog-lands, for seldom did they tarry after the first frost. Along the creek the red-winged black-birds would be sounding their up-and-away notes. No happy carol to welcome the first glow of dawn! No wonder Billy sighed. Then he lifted his head quickly as, high above him, sounded the whistle of wings. Up from the north a wedgeshaped flock of wild ducks came speeding, white backs flashing as they pitched downward in unbroken formation towards the calling bay-waters.,CHAPTER XXVI A GOLDEN WEDDING GIFT,“Good work, Bob, my boy! It’s great to see you! Have a good trip? You’ve grown since I saw you—how’re the other fellows? How’s Big Chris?”,"You aren't going to bring her here?" she queried, a faint flush of shame at the selfishness of her speech creeping into her cheeks.,"I say, Molly, look at the frog I bringed you!" he exclaimed as he came close under the sill, which is not high from the ground. "If you put your face down to the mud and sing something to 'em, they'll come out of their holes. A beetle comed, too, but I couldn't ketch 'em both. Lift me up, and I can put him in the waterglass on your table." He held up one muddy hand to me, and promptly I lifted him up into my arms. From the embrace in which he and the frog and I indulged my lace and cambric came out much the worse.，He raised his face at sound of the boy's step. "Ho, Billy!" he called cheerfully. "Is it you?"，He descended into the same wild hall he had passed on the preceding night. He had scarcely reached the bottom of the stair-case, when a feeble light gleamed across the hall, and his eye caught the glimpse of a figure retiring through the low arched door which led to the south tower. He drew his sword and rushed on. A faint sound died away along the passage, the windings of which prevented his seeing the figure he pursued. Of this, indeed, he had obtained so slight a view, that he scarcely knew whether it bore the impression of a human form. The light quickly disappeared, and he heard the door that opened upon the tower suddenly close. He reached it, and forcing it open, sprang forward; but the place was dark and solitary, and there was no appearance of any person having passed along it. He looked up the tower, and the chasm which the stair-case exhibited, convinced him that no human being could have passed up. He stood silent and amazed; examining the place with an eye of strict enquiry, he perceived a door, which was partly concealed by hanging stairs, and which till now had escaped his notice. Hope invigorated curiosity, but his expectation was quickly disappointed, for this door also was fastened. He tried in vain to force it. He knocked, and a hollow sullen sound ran in echoes through the place, and died away at a distance. It was evident that beyond this door were chambers of considerable extent, but after long and various attempts to reach them, he was obliged to desist, and he quitted the tower as ignorant and more dissatisfied than he had entered it. He returned to the hall, which he now for the first time deliberately surveyed. It was a spacious and desolate apartment, whose lofty roof rose into arches supported by pillars of black marble. The same substance inlaid the floor, and formed the stair-case. The windows were high and gothic. An air of proud sublimity, united with singular wildness, characterized the place, at the extremity of which arose several gothic arches, whose dark shade veiled in obscurity the extent beyond. On the left hand appeared two doors, each of which was fastened, and on the right the grand entrance from the courts. Ferdinand determined to explore the dark recess which terminated his view, and as he traversed the hall, his imagination, affected by the surrounding scene, often multiplied the echoes of his footsteps into uncertain sounds of strange and fearful import.，"I don't know, I'm sure. I have never thought about it. Did I cry, Geoffrey, when——" hesitates Mrs. Geoffrey, with a laugh, and a faint sweet blush.The man nodded and for a moment Bob was amazed at the look of resemblance that was common to both. They might have been brothers or father and son.

"How strange!" says the duchess, with an amused smile. "Are you quite sure of that?","But what are you talking of?" broke in Jen, impetuously. "You say that my poor boy died from blood-poisoning. How else could he have come by that, save through being touched or struck with the devil-stick? No one in the neighborhood was likely to possess any weapon likely to corrupt the blood. If Maurice had been stabbed, or shot, or if his head had been smashed in, I could understand the crime--or rather the motive for the crime--better; but as it is, the person who stole the devil-stick must have killed him.","Other people have done it,—do it every day," says Dorothy, stoutly. She has dried her eyes, and is looking almost as pretty as ever. "We might find a dear nice little house somewhere, Nicholas," this rather vaguely, "might we not? with some furniture in Queen Anne's style. Queen Anne, or what looks like her, is not so very expensive now, is she?",John now started on his way to Kingthorpe. One of his pockets was weighted down with a big cornucopia of dates, for he planned to drop in at Tellef’s on his way home; and from another pocket protruded the greater portion of the frame he was to present to Uncle Isaac.,Clarence had crossed the Pons Asinorum; a series of intoxicated circles, with sharp-cornered triangles piercing their fat sides, bore eloquent testimony to his faltering steps.,"I saw you," said Fisher, "when you went into that lodge. Did you, when you came out of the lodge, see there in the water another lodge painted with yellow buffalo? Is it still there?","No, doctor! I am too weary to frame theories at this hour of the night. But, no doubt, Mr. Inspector yonder, can--",“I wonder ef she guesses you aint my really truly brother. Ef I only had your beaut-i-ful red hair an’ white eyebrows, stead of havin’ yaller hair an’ brown eyebrows. I can’t do nothin’ jist now ’bout my hair, but s’pose I cut off my eyebrows an’ make them look nice an’ white like yours. Mosey,” coaxingly, “you cut them fer me.”,He was not more inquisitive than other boys, yet the mystery, the many uncanny tales told of the old house, fired him with a desire to know its secrets. Long before he was born a murder had left its stain there. The owners, suspected but unconvicted, moved away; and for years the house stared vacantly at passers. The coming of the Italians had only increased its bad name. Late travellers on the lonely road declared that shadowy forms and flickering lights passed the lower windows and down into the cavernous basement; yet no sounds ever came from behind the barred doors.,CHAPTER X THE PRIZE DESIGNS,Several others were summoned and returned with remarkable reports. At last two high-pitched little voices called in concert down the[160] stair: “The Royal Seeress will rend the veil of futurity for William Bennett.”,“I hear that you wish to sell your fishing rod so as to get money for Tellef’s grandmother,” said Father at the dinner table. “Very well, John. I will buy it and you shall run over to Sandy Point with the money this afternoon.”.