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The grass was parched with heat, the roads were ground to a fine dust, which a breath of wind drove, like clouds of smoke, into the burning air; the forest leaves, which had been so recently stained with a marvellous beauty of brown, crimson and gold, became dim and shrivelled; a slight touch snapped, with a sharp, crackling sound, the dried branches of the trees; even the golden rod and the purple aster, those hardy children of autumn, began to hang their heads with thirst.
Meantime, Helene had remained standing in the middle of the sitting-room. Silence reigned there, a warm, close silence, only disturbed by the crackling of the burnt logs. There was a singing in her ears, and she heard nothing. But after an interval, which seemed to her interminable, the rattle of a cab suddenly resounded. It was Juliette's cab rolling away.
He was a little before his time, and he settled himself to listen and wait, his sharp ears keenly on the alert, his eyes turned toward the dark and quiet house. The little noises of the night broke upon him with exaggerated clamor. A crackling twig was a thunderous crash, a bird's sleepy stir was the sound of pursuit and disaster.
She did not dare, brave as she was, to ride alone outside of the little village. She did not really think she would be harmed, yet she trembled when the night came, and every crackling twig sent her heart into her mouth in fear lest the chivalric masqueraders should come to fulfil their vague threats against herself.
When the fire was bright and crackling when everything was ready for breakfast, and the tea-kettle was singing away, Margaret gave a last look round the room before going to summon Mr. Hale and Frederick. She wanted everything to look as cheerful as possible; and yet, when it did so, the contrast between it and her own thoughts forced her into sudden weeping.
The corners of the large, high-ceilinged room, with its old-fashioned mahogany furniture, its shelves of books, its carved desk of quaint pattern, and its many touches of feminine occupancy, were lost in shadow, and only here and there on chair or table or bit of wall the firelight darted, but to dance off again, and the stillness was unbroken save by the crackling logs upon the hearth.
Simultaneously, with a crackling roar, six tongues of flame spat from the thicket and we charged out of our ambush and over the crest of the dunes toward the smugglers' craft and its crew, firing as we ran. The fellow next to me stumbled and fell sprawling in the sand. In the panic that ensued I saw the sloop making a desperate effort to put to sea.
He intended at the same time to fulfil his long-pledged engagement at Castle Dacre. He arrived at Hauteville amid the ringing of bells, the roasting of oxen, and the crackling of bonfires.
She clutched at the papers and bank-notes in her private drawer, and looked and counted them over a dozen times before she could satisfy herself. Her thin fingers nervously opened the packages and folds, the papers crackling as her eye glanced over them. They were there; but not all.
The roar of human passion, the crackling fire of musketry, and the shrieks of the wounded and the dying, rose and blended in one fearful din throughout the whole metropolis. Guns, pistols, daggers, were every where busy. Old men, terrified maidens, helpless infants, venerable matrons, were alike smitten, and mercy had no appeal which could touch the heart of the murderers.
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