United States or Namibia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He turned away sadly and wandered back into the streets, hardly knowing where he was going; when a voice behind him cried: 'Stop, prince, I have caught you at last! It is a thousand years since I first began to seek you. And there beside him stood the old, white-bearded, figure of Death.
Nearer and nearer it came, till at length in the dark and narrow street they caught sight of a thin, white-bearded figure, naked to the waist as though to show the hideous scars and rod-weals with which its back and breast were scored, still festering, some of them.
There was an explosion, many screams, then the yelling tumult of men in deadly battle. Every man on the tower terrace was facing toward the noise, staring. The white-bearded man gave an order, deliberately. Men rushed. But as they swarmed toward an exit, a green beam of light appeared near the uproar.
A white-bearded native servant had entered and was moving swiftly with cat-like stealth toward the veiled figure by the window. He was breathless, as though with hard running, and seemed oblivious of Travers' presence until, with an exclamation of relief, he had grasped the unresisting figure by the wrist. Then he turned, salaaming profoundly.
There in the gate of the court she saw a tall man, white-bearded, yellow-faced, horny-eyed, ancient, who, clad in a tattered robe, leaned upon his staff of thornwood, and stared about him blindly as though the sun bewildered him. The guards came to thrust him away, but he waved his staff, and they fell back from him as though there were power in that staff.
Four of them were strangers to her, but the fifth she remembered: Goat Hennessey, white-bearded and watery-eyed. "How are you adjusting to your new work here, Dr. Hennessey?" Nuwell asked him. "Very well," answered Goat in his cracked voice. "They're using a different approach from mine, but I find it extremely interesting."
"A woman gathers a little grass for her cow; she's caught and imprisoned," said the white-bearded old man. "Our own land is five versts away, and as to renting any it's impossible; the price is raised so high that it won't pay," added the cross, toothless old man. "They twist us into ropes, worse than during serfdom."
The white-bearded man considers them in silence, turning in his hand the cunning knife. We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely. So the two comrades go to sleep, in that dreadful slumber wherein each man resembles his own corpse.
It was barbarically hung with banners, but it was not exactly a cheery place. At the far end logs burned in a great fireplace. Don Loris sat in a carved chair beside it; wizened and white-bearded, in a fur-trimmed velvet robe, with a peevish expression on his face. "My chieftain," said Thal subduedly, "here is the engineer from Walden."
In a minute the crowd had surrounded me, all asking questions at once in such a fashion that I could only answer them with my cry of: "Stir! the French are upon you. To arms, I say. To arms!" Presently through the throng advanced an old white-bearded man who wore a badge of office, crying as he came, "Make way for the bailiff!" The crowd obeyed, opening a path, and soon we were face to face.
Word Of The Day