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Increasing in volume, it shaped itself into an approaching medley of shouts, hoof-beats, scattering rifle shots, a fierce sentry challenge, a reply, then a steed halted on the stone flags of the courtyard. They waited breathlessly for the added disaster all felt was coming. Their senses, cloyed by grief, knew that whatever it was of ill-omen, it could not touch them now. Still they listened.

Howbeit it was not yet time to give up all hope, and he himself would never weary of his search: Young Kubbeling, who had meanwhile sent Uhlwurm with the leech to see the sick man and then taken his seat again with the wine-cup before him, had nevertheless kept one ear open, and had hearkened like the rest to what Ann had been saying; then on a sudden he thrust away his glass, shook his big fist in wrath, and cried out, to the door, as it were, through which Uhlwurm had departed, "That croaker, that death-watch, that bird of ill-omen!

It had a new lease of life. It was tenanted by some one who could never have friendly relations with children. The weeds in the old garden took on fantastic shapes; figures hid behind the doors and crept about the passages; the rooks in the high elms became birds of ill-omen; the ivy bristled upon the walls, and the trivial explanations of the gardener were no longer satisfactory.

Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if when thou takest the road again and this house is but one of a thousand used for shelter and forgotten, after an easy-flung blessing. No matter. I need no blessings, but but She stamped her foot at the poor relation. 'Take up the trays to the house. What is the good of stale food in the room, O woman of ill-omen?

What a place of ill-omen to the descendants of the Georgian baronet was this sun-lit library with its spacious French windows! "Of course," said the barrister, speaking as quietly as if he were discussing the weather, "such a topic is an unpleasant one. It is, however, unavoidable. My young friend here is determined, at all costs, to discover the secret of Sir Alan's murder.

If her father learnt of the affair, and of the ill-omen connected with it, the matter would surely cause him great uneasiness. Why should he be worried on her account? No, she would never allow it, and told Stewart plainly of her disapproval of such a course.

"What! the father of our nationality, the first citizen of Quebec? It cannot be." "Ah, my friends! let us disperse to our homes. This is a day of ill-omen. Things look as if the sad times of the Conquest were returning. '59 and '75! It seems that we have not suffered enough in these sixteen years." And the old gentleman disappeared from the throng. What happened was simply this.

He asked after Dame Joanna, and how she was bearing her trouble, and then he said gravely: "I was the bearer of bad news yesterday, and to-day again I have come like a bird of ill-omen."

We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in the wintry blast, is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of departed souls; he is the wild ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under the window of a sick-chamber is even now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has also been supposed to summon the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land.

They might indeed be met by Wittgenstein, but Tchitchakoff covered Borisow, and would be certain to burn the bridge over the Berezina if he saw it threatened. The emperor listened as he kept looking at his maps. At last something arrested his attention, the sight of a name of ill-omen: "Poltava! Poltava!" he repeated.