United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


It went to join Calvus and the dreadful books of the Sibyl, and those charred leaves which were found on the floor where Chatterton lay dead. I went three times to Scotland Yard, allowing long intervals and torturing myself with hope. Three times my hands thought to hold it, and three times they closed on nothingness.

She stared out over the brown plain and the herds of lean beasts all shadowy in the smoky mist over the horizon, then round, along the wilderness of gidia scrub, with its charred patches afar off, from which there still rose thin spirals of smoke. Destiny had spoken. Here was the order of release.

Fire, of course, was an ever-present menace. Newtown, for instance, had been wiped out several times, for it lay on a slope down which a broken pipe line could belch a resistless wave of flame, and even yet the place was a litter of charred timber, twisted pipe, and crumpled sheets of galvanized iron. Owing to this menace the residents had taken the only possible precaution. They had dug in.

The points towards which the rockets had been chiefly directed could be discovered by the charred masses, showing the awful death the missiles carried wherever they sped their devastating course.

But there is a common term by which we can express more accurately the misfortune which has befallen all these various things slices of bread, mutton-chops, apples, cakes, chestnuts, potatoes, and what-not, when "burnt," "over-toasted," "over-roasted," or "over-baked." We may call them carbonized, or more simply charred or charcoaled; though the word charred is generally used only for burnt wood.

By-and-by an open place was reached, where were the charred remains of a farm-house, and near them a barn which was falling to ruin and decay. There was no sign of life anywhere, and utter silence prevailed. The youth entered the barn, the King following eagerly upon his heels. No one there! The King shot a surprised and suspicious glance at the youth, and asked "Where is he?"

There could be no mistake: just such an open place as the Indian had pictured to me was here, with giant trees standing apart; while one tree stood killed and blackened by fire, surrounded by a huge heap, sixty or seventy yards across, of prostrate charred tree-trunks and ashes.

The interval between their capture and the departure of the revenue cutter was spent in putting out the fire near Durgan's cove, all that remained of the three adjoining shanties being a heap of charred logs and wind-swept ashes.

The year before he had taken up land two miles away, with his brother; the brother had gone to the shanties for the winter, and he was left alone in the cabin they had built of charred logs. He appeared on the threshold, lantern in hand. "Greeting to each and all," was the salutation as he pulled off his woollen cap.

The flowers were all out now, and even the bakneesh vines glowed like red fire in the woods. Patches of green were beginning to hide the charred heap where the cabin had stood, and the blue-flower vines that covered the princess mother's grave were reaching out toward Pierrot's, as if the princess mother herself were the spirit of them.