United States or Vietnam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The word had no meaning to-night for Reginald as he watched the streets empty, and found himself a solitary wayfarer in the deserted thoroughfares. The hum of traffic ceased. One by one the bedroom lights went out, the clocks chimed midnight clearly in the frosty air, and still he wandered on.
Wayfarer, pass not heedless by, But stand, and say, "he had a cruel darling." Therewith he seized a stone, and laid it against the wall, as high as the middle of the doorposts, a dreadful stone, and from the lintel he fastened the slender halter, and cast the noose about his neck, and kicked away the support from under his foot, and there was he hanged dead.
The sun was charming; the branches had that soft shivering of May, which seems to proceed rather from the nests than from the wind. A brave little bird, probably a lover, was carolling in a distracted manner in a large tree. The wayfarer bent over and examined a rather large circular excavation, resembling the hollow of a sphere, in the stone on the left, at the foot of the pier of the door.
Though upon the wide sea, he seemed in some far inland country; prisoner in some deserted château, left to stare at empty grounds, and peer out at vague roads, where never wagon or wayfarer passed. But these enchantments were a little disenchanted as his eye fell on the corroded main-chains.
Perhaps it is to my shame that I liked John the better of the two; he had grit and dash, and that salt of the Old Adam that pleases men with any savage inheritance of blood; and he was a wayfarer besides, and took my gipsy fancy.
The traveller's horse was conducted to a stable, which was almost too low to receive him, and the glover himself was led into the mansion of the Booshalloch, where, according to the custom of the country, bread and cheese was placed before the wayfarer, while more solid food was preparing.
The tired wayfarer, who is weary with the dust, the din, and stony footing of the Actual and the Present, may sometimes fondly imagine, that, if he could return to the far Past, he would find all smooth and golden there; but it is a pleasant delusion of that glorious arch-cheat, the Imagination.
I was aroused from my absorption by the rattle of a small stone hopping down the steep track, half path, half stairway, by which I had ascended. It had been loosened by the foot of a descending wayfarer, in whom, as he picked his way slowly downward, I recognized a middle-aged German (that I supposed to be his nationality) who had been very assiduous at the roulette-tables of the Casino for some days past. There was nothing remarkable in his appearance, his spectacled eyes, squat nose, and square-cropped bristling beard being simply characteristic of his class and country. He did not notice me as he went by, being too intent on his footing to look about him; but I was so placed that it was a minute or more before he passed out of sight round a bend in the path. He was just turning the corner, and my eyes were still fixed on him, when I was conscious of another figure within my field of vision. This second comer had descended the same pathway, but had loosened no stones on his passage. He trod with such exquisite lightness and agility that he had passed close by me without my being aware of his presence, while he, for his part, had his eyes fixed with a curious intensity on the thick-set figure of the German, upon whom, at his rate of progress, he must have been gaining rapidly. A glance showed me that he was a young man of slender figure, dressed in a suit of dark-coloured tweed, of English cut, and wearing a light-brown wide-awake hat. Just as my eye fell upon him he put his hand into the inner breast-pocket of his coat, and drew from it something which, as he was now well past me, I could not see. At the same moment some small object, probably jerked out of his pocket by mistake, fell almost noiselessly on the path at his feet. In his apparently eager haste he did not notice his loss, but was gliding onward, leaving what I took to be his purse lying on the path. It was clearly my duty to call his attention to it; so I said, "Hi!" an interjection which I have found serves its purpose in all countries. He gave a perceptible start, and looked round at me over his shoulder. I pointed to the object he had dropped, and said, "Voil
And the tender sapling was rooted in the hope that long before it was a mature tree that comet-like Wayfarer would start, the Thunder Bird would fly. Well! star-dust never blinded the eyes.
During the greater part of the day the solitude of the neighbourhood remains unbroken save by the tread of some chance wayfarer like myself, and a general atmosphere of the abomination of desolation reigns supreme. Passing along the unfrequented pavement, one finds it difficult to realize the fact that this was once a not unfashionable quarter of the capital of Upper Canada.
Word Of The Day