"Watcher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at noon. Erica was just thinking so, when a rustle in the thicket, within the pine grove, made her involuntarily turn her head in that direction. Instantly remembering that it was a common device of the underground people for one of them to make the watcher look away, in order that others might drive off the cattle, she resumed her duty, and gazed steadfastly at the herd. They were safe—neither reduced to the size of mice, nor wandering off, though she had let her ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... In the watcher's heart, too, had come another Spring, for once in time and tune with the outer world. The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... body while it lay in state, fell asleep one night, and let the Tapers catch fire of the rich Velvet Mantle, lined with Ermine and powdered over with gold Flower-de-Luces, which melted all the candles, and burnt off one of the feet of the Departed, before it wakened the watcher. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... hour when all things have repose, O lonely watcher of the skies, Do you hear the night wind and the sighs Of harps playing unto Love to unclose The pale gates ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... alleviation;—and indeed, in some sort, as a necessity. He has "friends here," he admits to himself, "whose kindness is beyond all price, all description;" but his little children, if anything befell him, have no relative within two hundred miles. He is now sole watcher over them; and his very life is so precarious; nay, at any rate, it would appear, he has to leave Falmouth every spring, or run the hazard of worse. Once more, what is to be done? Once more,—and now, as it turned out, for the ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... upon the second night, the night of Ramazan, The watcher leaning earthward heard the message of Yar Khan. From shattered breast through shrivelled lips broke forth the rattling breath, "Creature of God, deliver me ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... of the watcher In hell, and not swerve For an hour from the faith that they follow, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... The watcher disappeared as the Overlanders were saddling their ponies. As before, the guide made no comment after he had examined the hoof-prints left by the observer's pony, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... the chief. On a triangular shelf across the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider, which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... lain motionless, without so much as lifting a finger, since that first glimmer of consciousness had entered his brain. He was probably under scrutiny, even in the darkness, and for the present it was desirable to accommodate any chance watcher by remaining ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... it baa-a ever so loudly, it is not for her. It is bound for the white tent on the shore, shunned even here, where sits a solitary watcher gazing wistfully all day toward the city that has passed out of his life. Perchance it may bring to him a message from the far-away home where the birds sang for him, and the waves and the flowers spoke to him, and ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... she lay thinking these thoughts, horrible, yet fraught with a strange fascination, starting with a shudder every time they were broken by the striking of the clock below. How awful a clock sounds in the night-time, and to such a watcher—a mere child too! Olive longed for morning, and yet when the dusk of daybreak came, the very curtains took ghastly shapes, and her own white dress, hanging behind the door, looked like a shroud, within which——. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... little above it for a bowl, in one side of which he made a hole, and thrust in a little reed for a stem. In this sylvan pipe he placed some broken leaf of the coarse Malay tobacco, and began to smoke contentedly; while the third watcher helped himself to a piece of sugar-cane, and began peeling off the harsh, siliceous envelope, and then eating the sweet ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... the herd, with which he often roamed far and wide through the forest. And sometimes, without his knowing it, he was seen by some native passing through the jungle, who hurriedly climbed a tree or hid in the undergrowth to avoid meeting the elephants. From concealment the awed watcher gazed in astonishment at the white man in their midst, of whom such wonderful tales were told in the villages. And when he got back safely to his own hamlet that night the native added freely to the legends that were gathering around Dermot's name ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the days went by. Whatever pangs of remorse, whatever longing she endured, she remained faithful to the resolution that she would not give way to temptation again. But every night brought the lonely watcher ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... afternoon. It was then five o'clock, and the darkness was coming: all day a gentle, never-ceasing rain had been bringing the soot down from the dark skies upon the already dingy roofs. It was a dismal and miserable prospect upon which the watcher looked out, but not so miserable nor so dismal as the situation in which he just then found himself. The mean street beneath him was not more empty of cheerfulness than his pockets were empty of money and his ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... Chicago who with his wife came to live at Hull-House, traveling the long distance every day throughout the autumn and winter that he might qualify as a nineteenth-ward voter in the spring campaign. He served as a watcher at the polls and it was but a poor reward for his devotion that he was literally set upon and beaten up, for in those good old days such things frequently occurred. Many another case of devotion to our standard so recklessly raised might be cited, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... that critic must have been—so young that he had never seen a star return. Quite differently they come back—or is it quite the same? Soon we shall be able to judge, for this star is returning, and—oh wonder!—is trailing clouds of glory of the very newest cut. The stars always do that, this watcher fancies, and certainly Browning, like the Jub-jub, was ages ahead of the fashion. His passport for to-day is dated up to the very hour—for though he could be so many other things besides, one of his achievements, for us, will prove ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... any unseen watcher he presented the appearance of a man not impressed by stage settings. After all he was now in the seller's space boots, and it ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... "Duke of Alba" had danced twice in succession with Juliet Capulet, I could bear my role of watcher no longer. Besides, I knew that I had not much time to waste. For the sake of de la Mole, who had run the risk of admitting a stranger, I must vanish before the hour for the masks to fall. When I took off my cap and bowed before this white Juliet with the pearl-laced plaits ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of my qualities. I have been thus liberal in my confessions, in order that parents may see that their duties do not terminate where those of the schoolmaster begin; that the schoolmaster himself must be taken to task, and the watcher watched. I had been placed in one of the first boarding-schools near town; a most liberal stipend had been paid with me; I had every description of master; yet, after all this outlay of money, which is not dross—and waste of time, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the mighty dead, [Strophe. Electra, lo, my way To thee in the dawn hath sped, And the cot on the mountain grey, For the Watcher hath cried this day: He of the ancient folk, The walker of waste and hill, Who drinketh the milk of the flock; And he told of Hera's will; For the morrow's morrow now They cry her festival, And before her throne shall bow ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... is not strange that a bought watcher drowses; What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps Who would not sleep for all my draughts of sleep In the last days. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... connection with this newly-made acquaintance. Instinctively she turned towards Ron, and the two pairs of brown eyes met, and flashed a message of mischief, affection, and secret understanding—a glance which made the watcher sigh with a sudden realisation of his own lost youth, his bald head, and increasing bulk. They were only a pair of children, these newcomers; kindly, affectionate, light-hearted children, whose companionship would be a tonic to a lonely, tired man. The broad cherubic countenance showed a ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the most solemn, self-reproachful thoughts that she had ever known. God's angel had been present in that room, and in what a spirit had he found this watcher? ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... him. And if he throws all he possesses on a stake . . . to win her—give her what she has a right to claim, he ought . . . . Only at present the prospect seems good . . . . He ought of course to wait. Well, the value of the stock I hold has doubled, and it increases. I am a careful watcher of the market. I have friends—brokers and railway Directors. I can rely ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... military cape drawn closely up, and his horse's head drooping as if the poor beast was utterly weary of the situation. In truth, they had kept watch and ward there for hours, and night was near at hand, the weary watcher still looking southward with an anxiety that seemed fast growing ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his key from his pocket, opened the vault and went inside, nearly closing the door behind him. Uncle Bushrod saw, through the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle. In a minute or two—it seemed an hour to the watcher—Mr. Robert came out, bringing with him a large hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried manner, as if fearful that he might be observed. With one hand he closed and locked ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... faint note of hysteria that culminates presently in a scream of anger and a torrent of spits, leading again in their turn to an ominous silence and the first fierce clawing blows at eyes and ears. In another instant the watcher above would recoil for a moment as the swift rush was made up the trellis, and then the battle would be joined: but that instant never came. There fell a sudden silence; and he, peering down into the grey gloom, chin ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... years!" was the prompt retort. "I never put anything on paper—you're the man that does that—and if the Interstate Commerce people should break in, I'd have the best little forgettery of any clock-watcher in the works. Nix for me, Weyburn; you are the chap with the figures, and the only man in the shop who has them down in black on white. When the roar comes, it'll be up to you, and Mullins will throw up his ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... solemn responsibilities still met him; its earnest duties still confronted him, and, though he sometimes felt like a weary watcher at the gates of death, longing to catch a glimpse of her shining robes and the radiant light of her glorified face, yet her knew it was his work to labor ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... any doubt crossed the Red Sea with Moses, this new and glittering star, who had but just "made good," or "got over," or "clicked" (my new acquaintance used all these phrases indiscriminately when referring to his own Herschellian triumphs as a watcher of the skies), walked confidently to a distant table which was being held in reserve for her party, and drew off her gloves with the happy anticipatory assurance of one who is about to lunch a little too well. (All this, I should say, happened before the War. I am ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... with her heart disease that the Reverend Mother rules the convent," Evelyn thought, as she followed Sister Mary John up the spiral staircase to the organ loft. She looked over the curtained railing into the church. The watcher knelt there, her head bowed, her habit still as sculpture, and Evelyn heard Sister Mary John pulling out her music. She could not find what she wanted, and she sat with her legs apart, throwing from side to side piles of old ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... seals the sleepers under, to heave and roll, to burst, and for released humanity to pour through fractures, from the lower dark, to be renewed in the fires of the morning. Nothing has happened yet. But I am confident it would repay society to appoint another watcher when I am gone, to keep an eye ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... battalion forms the extreme end of the advance guard, and at the approach of night, Claudet is on duty on the banks of the stream. It is a lovely May night, irradiated by millions of stars, which, under the limpid Italian sky, appear larger and nearer to the watcher than they appeared in the vaporous atmosphere of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... already at her brother's Bible-class, and she had been drawn to her. Something in the character of the labourer's daughter seemed to make a special appeal to the delicate and mystical temper of the vicar's sister, in whom the ardour of the "watcher for souls" was a natural gift. Jenny seemed to be aware of it. She was flushed and a little excited, alternately shy and communicative—like the bird under fascination, already alive to the signal of its captor. At any rate, Margaret Shenstone kept both ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scarcely attained, when the bow, where we had stood but a minute before, and the whole hull of the "Flying Cloud" with it, blended together in one mass of surging fire. The appearance in the heavens of this strange sight, to a watcher at some rancho, or in the not distant city of San Francisco, if such there were, must have afforded a more vivid illustration of the fall of a blazing star or meteoric wonder than astronomer has ever put ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... and closed the door he had left open a crack out of courtesy to the little watcher there. He came back to the bed, not with a creaking caution, but like a man bringing a man's rude solace. He could not believe his father was seriously undone. But, whatever was the matter, the colonel was glad to talk. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... home and laid on the table the crust of bread she had brought back with her." Wondering at this, her stepmother sent her two-eyed stepsister to watch her. But Marya uttered the words "Sleep, sleep, one-eye! sleep, sleep, other eye!" till the watcher fell asleep. Then the three-eyed sister was sent, and Marya by the same spell sent two of her eyes to sleep, but forgot the third. So all was found out, and the stepmother had the cow killed. But Marya persuaded her father, who acted as the butcher, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... all we'll all stand quietly on one side. Then when the idlers come in and start touching our things, we'll go up to 'em and say, "'Ere, watcher doin' of? Just you put it down, will yer?" And if they don't put it down at once, it'll be the worse for ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... on seer and sage, On Mecca's brave Sherif; I've fastened it on what's-his-name, The famed Albanian chief, Till, wearying of the watcher's task, At length I ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon me that I ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... little jerk of his shoulders the man who caught sight of the opening moved again, faster than he had done, and the watcher surmised that fear and savagery struggled for the mastery within him. The latter apparently rose uppermost, for he came straight on through the thicket, sprang across the clear space, and would have plunged into the bush beyond it but that Alton, reaching out caught him by the ankle. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... and the dread of the watcher changed to another feeling as he saw distinctly one of the outer doors of the residence open and Daisy Fern's form come out. Without glancing to the right or the left she walked in the direction where the negro was waiting. For an instant, overcome by his apprehensions, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... must be near the bottom they turned the light downward, and every available window was occupied by an eager watcher. Presently a cry of "Look! Look there!" broke from several voices ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... to think that, at that very hour, almost in the same quarter, some one else is wandering through the streets, waiting, watching, desperate! Ah! if they could but meet. Suppose she should accost that feverish watcher, should ask him to ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... lookout," exclaimed Walter, pausing beside a clump of great oaks. "See, it couldn't be better if it had been made to order. This knoll commands a good view of the marshes and river towards the Everglades, while those trees will hide the watcher from our point, and of course from the convicts' camp. I have got a big, red, bandanna handkerchief which we can use as a flag. When the one on watch sees the Indians coming, he can fasten it to that dead sapling further ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... been awaiting the arrival of her gallant with some impatience. Hawley was busily explaining his delay as they came down the stairs, and paid little attention to the seemingly deserted office. Indeed, Miss Christie monopolized all his thoughts. With quick scrutiny the watcher noted the more conspicuous articles of apparel constituting her costume—the white mantilla thrown over her head, the neatly fitting blue dress, the light cape covering the shoulders—surely it would not be difficult ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 5 That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; 10 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... to do with him!" cried Joey hotly. He slid off the bench and faced Jimmy proudly and confidently. The unseen watcher on the other side of the hedge saw his face grow white and intense and set-lipped, as if it had been the face of a man. The grey eyes were alight with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... after that one of the men never took his eyes off him when he was outside of his house. Afterwards you went to the place where the men used to fight, and the man who was watching you went in, and had beer, and saw you talking with the big man you used to fight with, in the parlor behind the bar. The watcher went out to follow you, but left another to watch this man. We found that both Mr. Chetwynd and he went to a shipping office in Tower Street, and we then guessed that you intended to take the bracelet at once ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... riding through the wood, haunted, as usual, by visions of her loveliness which, in his opinion, reached the very pinnacle of perfection. He was sick with longing to meet her alone, freed from all fear of incurring some watcher's displeasure. In his heated imagination the desire of being near her had assumed such enormous proportions, that he felt that life ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and deeper feelings, not from any behaviour in itself wrong, but from the hurry, noise, and tumult in the streets of life, that, penetrating too deep into the house of life, dazed and stupefied the silent and lonely watcher in the chamber of conscience, far apart. He had no time to think ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... wan face arrested the watcher's attention and stooping closely down he saw that the man was trying to communicate something ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... become more arrogant and peremptory than thou art. And as for a musket in the ranks, what were that to such offices as not yet a year agone I saw thee fill around the beds of the sick and dying in our first great plague? When had we a tenderer nurse, a more patient watcher? What office was too loathly for thee, what tendence ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... makes the soil express him. The next thing that is going to happen is that every one is going to know the other kind of mechanic. It is cheerfully admitted that the kind of mechanic we largely have now, who allows himself to be a watcher of a machine, a turner-of-something for forty years, can hardly be classed as vegetable life. He is not even organic matter except in a ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... The watcher above him struck a match at length and kindled a cigarette. His face was lit up during the operation. It was the face of a man who had seen a good deal of the world and had not found the experience particularly ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of a Jew on a frosty morning after mist. In short, as Larry soon discovered to his horror, on looking up at the niche, it was no other than Saint Colman himself, who had stept forth, indignant (in all probability) at the stigma cast by the watcher of the dead on the churchyard of which his Saintship was patron. He smiled with a grisly solemnity—just such a smile as you might imagine would play round the lips of a milestone (if it had any,) at the recantation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... The last watcher in Mariposa is Hardin, the hate of hell in his heart. A glass of neat brandy is tossed off. He throws himself heavily on the bed. The world is a torment to him now. "On to Sacramento" is his last thought. Money, in hoards and heaps, will drown this rich booby's ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... far into the night now, and the lone watcher felt too uneasy to retire. The moon shone with great brilliancy, and she sat without a light, busying herself with some coarse sewing. The children were peacefully sleeping, and not a sound was to be heard save their breathing, and the whisper of the wind ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... away from the fascination. After the crowded scenes of the day, we seemed surrounded by the very silence and repose, the majesty of Death. Everyone had retired to rest; the curfew had long tolled, and the fires were nearly all out. Only here and there a lighted lattice spoke of a late watcher, who perhaps was searching for the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life, wherewith to turn the grey hairs of age to the flowing locks of youth—the feeble gait of one stricken in years to the vigour and comeliness of manhood. Vain wish! and needless; for why will they not look at life in its ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... night he spent in arming himself for the task that lay before him. Yet how he dreaded that scene to-morrow! How he wished that this hideous nightmare were after all a dream, and that he could awake and find Bolsover where it was even yesterday morning! The other watcher was Jeffreys. He had slept not a wink the night before, and to-night sleep seemed still more impossible. Had you seen him as he sat there listlessly in his chair, with his gaunt, ugly face and restless lips, you would have been inclined, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... The first deck, when the vessel is but lightly loaded, stands perhaps two feet out of water. Above this, carried on rows of posts twenty feet high, comes the first cabin. All between is open to the air on either side; so that, as one of the huge river-monsters passes at night, the watcher on the bank can see the stalwart, black, half-naked bodies of the negro stokers, bending before the glowing furnace doors, and throwing in the soft coal, that issues in clouds of smoke from the towering chimneys seventy feet above. The lights in three rows of cabin windows ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... our Queen, thou watcher old and true, We see her great affliction, but no clue Have we to learn the sickness. Wouldst thou tell The name and sort ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... 58. Terrified was the kettle-watcher, the place no longer held him: he could be a whiner, he clomb into every nook: their conflict was his bane, as he the penalty must pay; and the day sad, when he must from the swine die, from all good things, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... quietly on the still night, and its first watcher among the hosts of heaven, and felt something of balm sink into his soul; not, indeed, that vague and delicious calm which, in his boyhood of poesy and romance, he had drunk in, by green solitudes, from the mellow twilight: ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have suffered and the joy of the triumphant issue. To him Clytemnestra announces, in words of which the irony is patent to the audience, her sufferings in the absence of her husband and her delight at the prospect of his return. He will find her, she says, as he left her, a faithful watcher of the home, her loyalty sure, her honour undefiled. Then follows another choral ode, similar in theme to the last, dwelling on the woe brought by the act of Paris upon Troy, the change of the bridal song to the trump of war and ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher in the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... as if he were used to it. In a few minutes the watcher below could barely make him out ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... That watcher among the clouds would have seen a great distribution of khaki-uniformed men and khaki-painted material over the whole of the sunken area of Holland. He would have marked the long trains, packed with men or piled with great guns and war material, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... inward tremor, followed by a thrill of excitement like a wave of heat sweeping through his being. Instantaneously his eyes flashed; then were dulled. Imperturbable, listless, hall-marked the prey of ennui, he waited, undecided, upon the stoop, while the watcher opposite, catching sight of him, abruptly abandoned his slouch ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... lamps are dull and flickering and the stranger is a mere shadow. Where Major Abbot stands enveloped in the cloak-cape of his army overcoat there is no light at all. Whoever may be the approaching party he has the disadvantage of being partially visible to a watcher whose presence he cannot be aware of until close at hand. When he has come some yards farther Abbot is in no doubt as to his identity, and steps ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... coming out of the east against that sunrise remind me of the experiences one has in France in these vivid war days," I said to my fellow watcher in the "crow's-nest." ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... terror of Simon, for he motioned me to creep, as he was creeping, out of the enclosure, bending low beside the fence, so that a watcher from the chateau might not detect our silhouettes against ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... but a clock-watcher, but on a certain bright day in June he was seated in his laboratory ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... and the association was rapidly getting into working order, when news arrived that the missing planet had been found, through no systematic plan of search, but by the diligent, though otherwise directed labours of a distant watcher of the skies. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... back to his book,—the watcher nodding on his spear,—and all the stormy scenes he expected soon to realize in his own life, when the sword of conscription had numbered his old head with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Oblivious equally of Byrd and of her more distant watchers, the English girl passed from "Hunt the Slipper" to "A Cold and Frosty Morning," and from that to story-telling, as absorbed as her small companions, or as her watcher-in-chief. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Then away with you back to him and tell this King of whom I have never heard, though I have a message for a certain Umslopogaas, that Macumazahn, Watcher-by-Night, intends to visit him to-morrow, if he will send a guide at the first light to show the ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... with complacency—a cabby, one would venture, without a care in the world and serene in the assurance of a generous pour-boire when he lost his fare. But as for the latter, she made no move; the door of the cab remained closed,—like its occupant's mind, a mystery to the watcher. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... put a watcher over them," said Massin. "La Bougival is capable of anything in the interests of that ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... contrary they might have abandoned the attack altogether and retired. But the situation was one of far too much peril to permit us to take anything for granted; while, therefore, the main body of our party, so to speak, seized the opportunity thus afforded to snatch a hasty but much-needed meal, a watcher, with loaded weapon, was stationed at each door and window of the house, with instructions to maintain a sharp lookout, and immediately to report any movement that he might detect on the part ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... and his lithe canoe to the progress of "manifest destiny," few are those who pass the venerable site of the first colony in Virginia, Jamestown, without paying a tribute of a sigh, and perchance a tear, to that solitary tower which is still standing a mute watcher amid the few almost illegible tombs,—all that are left of a busy population long departed;—the germ, however, of a great nation, whose name is even now "a watchword to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of all the earth; the leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all; the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed of it. I saw in the vision of my head upon my bed, and behold a watcher, and a holy one came down from heaven! He cried aloud, and said thus, 'Hew down the tree and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit; let the beasts get away from under it, and ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... day during the growing season to see that nothing breaks in to destroy the grain. Often flappers are placed in different parts of the field and a connecting string leads from these to the little house, so that the watcher by pulling this string may frighten the ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... the cross wind. Again that little bushy jet breaks the monotony of the sea; but this time there is no mistaking it. Emerging diagonally from the water, not high and thin, but low and spreading, it is an infallible indication to those piercing eyes of the presence of a sperm-whale. The watcher utters a long, low musical cry, "Blo-o-o-o-w," which penetrates the gloomy recesses of the fo'ksle [Footnote: Fo'ksle: the forward part of the vessel, under the deck, where the sailors live.] and cuddy, [Footnote: Cuddy: small cabin.] ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the enemy were visibly converging upon the town. From a high hill within rifleshot of the houses a watcher could see no fewer than six Boer camps to the east and north. French, with his cavalry, pushed out feelers, and coasted along the edge of the advancing host. His report warned White that if he would strike before all the scattered ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pure profile as she gazed into her world of dreams. It was evident that she took small interest in Monck and his probable career. It was not surprising. Monck was not the sort of man to attract women; he cared so little about them—this silent watcher whose eyes were ever searching below the surface of Eastern life, who studied and read and knew so much more than any one else and yet who guarded knowledge and methods so closely that only those in contact with his daily life suspected ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... were permitted to study aloud, but at other times they were obliged to keep still. And a boy or girl was put as a watcher, to set down the names of those who talked ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... when engaged on any dealings with supernatural powers, is insisted on in the tales and practices of the Russians, Eskimos, Zulus, and the Khonds of Orissa. In Russia the watcher for the golden fern-flower must seize it the instant it blossoms and run home, taking care not to look behind him: whether through fear of giving the demons, who also watch for it, power over him, or whether through a dread ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... said Fionn, and he projected again his grim, gaunt forehead. For it seemed as if the watcher stared with his whole face, aye, and with his hands; but Fionn brooded weightedly on distance with his puckered and ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... into an excited narrative of their journey and narrow escape from the watcher in ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... refill her kettle that she might find it ready for any emergency, and carrying her own tea with her in a can wherewith to refresh the worn-out watcher, she at once ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... were certain to come from the harassed wife of the old man who wanted to die. As he remounted the stairs, he was subtly aware that some one opened a door below and watched him as he fled. He did not look behind, but he knew that the watcher was white-faced and pleading, and that she too was counting ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... soon be three;" and he began to heap some wood on it that the watcher had prepared; during which the prudent Gerard seized the man's axe, and sat down tight on it, grasping his own, and examining the sleeper. There was nothing outwardly distinctive in the man. He wore the dress of the country folk, and the hat of the district, a three-cornered ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin's shrine and the old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but the iron ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... down into the valley, and soon verified his fears. It was the diligencia, which had quitted the monastery a short hour ago, that flew down the hill to inevitable destruction. Once before in the recollection of the watcher the mules had run away, rushing down to their death, and carrying with them across that frontier the lives of seven passengers, devout persons, who, having performed the pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady of Montserrat, ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... call of the Muezzins thundering from the minarets, had invited the faithful to prayers, when a black servant, about fifteen years old, stood before Hartley, and pronounced these words, deliberately, and twice over,—"Thus says Barak el Hadgi, the watcher in the Mosque: He that would see the sun rise, let him turn towards the east." He then left the caravanserai; and it may be well supposed that Hartley, starting from the carpet on which he had lain down to repose himself, followed ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... as the daylight faded in the quiet room, seemingly oblivious of the presence of the watcher, who stood immovable, as if turned to stone, beside the door. Now and again Francis would ask a question and Isabella would answer, but for the most part they were silent. Words were of no avail to help him—they could not reconstruct ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... left the watcher and, after this disturbance, she did not close her eyes a second time. She was once more calm and strong, and constantly repeated in her mind that she was about to do a good, needful work, pleasing to God. The moon had set, it was growing noticeably ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... was locked. Fearful lest the grating of the knob should have roused some watcher, he ran down the steps and hurried into the shadow of the banquet hall, where he stood close beside a pillar until he satisfied himself of the objects in the court beyond. He saw an edge of light along the crack of a closed door to the left on the ground floor of the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... or the good heart that the colonel put into his friend's customers, the results were always the same. Singular as it may seem, his cheery word just at the right time tided over the critical moment many an uncertain watcher at the "ticker," often to an enlargement of his bank account. Nor would he allow any one to pay him for any service of this kind, even though he had spent days ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... house was one square solitary tower, in which, day and night, a watcher was stationed. Fall went to the telephone and took down the receiver. He spoke a few words and listened, then he hung up the receiver ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... says; "Mr. Bacheller is admirable alike in his scenes of peace and war. He paints the silent woods in the fall of the year with the rich golden glow of the Indian summer. He is eloquently poetical in the lonely watcher's contemplation of thousands of twinkling stars reflected from the broad bosom of the St. Lawrence, and he is grimly humorous in some of his dramatic episodes. Nor does anything in Crane's 'Red Badge of Courage' bring home to us more forcibly the ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... interrupt the flow of her speech as little as possible. When he returned along this road, he would come alone and for the last time, and so, that his memory of her might be full, he would be no more than her auditor and watcher. Just to have her by his side, her arm in his, and hear her ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud, betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... wants to keep me occupied for some certain reason?" pondered the club man. "Helene is protected now by a silent watcher. The members of the Lobster Club are all out of the city. Van Cleft is safe on the ocean. They must be laying a trap. I wonder where that ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... emotions. He turned up the light, adjusted his tie and smoothed his hair before the mirror over the mantelpiece, and ran upstairs to the drawing-room. Outside the door he paused, looking now like the expectant watcher on the platform. Faintly he heard Ellen Berstoun's voice, and the same look came into his eyes as when he caught the distant roaring of the train. He straightened his neck, banished all expression from his face as a soldier should, and entered ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... therefore, I gained my feet, only to see that my watcher did the same; cautiously I advanced toward him, finding that by moving with a shuffling gait I could retain my balance as well as make reasonably rapid progress. As I neared the brute he backed cautiously away from me, and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... That past me streams unto an end sublime Whereof you know not. All our ends are folly, And win not what they seek; yet there is joy In seeking; and one end there is that shows A brighter glow. I am the watcher set Upon the heights. In my impassioned sight All life is holy that strives unto life: Death only is damnation. I will be More happy than the happiest man, more strong Than is the strongest! I will ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... committed under a particular roof, long after the actual doers have passed away, that makes the gooseflesh come and the hair rise. Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and of the horror felt by his victim, enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood. He ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... on his back with one brown arm held aloft. If he made any outcry "Brownie" failed to hear it, but apparently he had, for Phil was turning now and hurrying back with short, quick strokes. But before he had covered half the distance separating him from the other, the watcher on shore uttered an involuntary cry of alarm. Joe was ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... must resist and blood must be spilt in order to obtain it. Soon after they became acquainted with the French, the fire was extinguished in the great temple at the White Apple village by the lazy watcher. Knowing his fate, he stealthily lighted it from profane fire. Great misfortunes following this, and shortly thereafter the loss of the holy fire in the other temple near the Grindstone ford, on the Bayou Pierre, in Claiborne County, Mississippi, they sought after the legal ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the Gulwings' messenger, watching him covertly from behind a newspaper over on the far side of the lobby, that the plan had failed. The signal he had so confidently expected to give—a trick of relighting his cigar and flipping the match into the air—would have conveyed to the watcher the information that all augured well. The latter's job then would have been to get up from his chair and step outside and bear the word to Sig Gulwing, who, letter-perfect in the part of the conspiring telegraph ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... yon lettered stone? whose ashes rest beneath? That thus you come with flowers to deck the mournful home of death; And thou—why darkens so thy brow with grief's untimely gloom? Thou art fitter for a bride than for a watcher by ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... fourth canoe, picked out readily by their swarthy skins, their crimson caps, and their rugged litheness. Fairer, all, were the rest, paler of skin, more loose of muscle, shown by the very way they bent to their work. Their garments, too, as they drew nearer brought a smile to the watcher's lips, a smile of memory. Those coats, brave in their gilt braid, had assuredly come across seas. Thus might one ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... man, as an author, as the chief factor in the domestic drama,—yet most of all it pleases me to remember him as he appeared when under the spell of the prairies he loved so well. Tramping the fields in search of prairie-chicken or quail, a patient watcher in the rushes of a duck-pond, or merely lying flat on his back in the sunshine,—he was a being transformed. For he had in him much of the primitive man and his whole nature responded to the "call of the wild." But you who know his prairie-tales must have read between the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... being who could not make and mend and wash and iron her own clothing, and get three regular meals and clear them away every day, besides keeping the house tidy, and doing any other needed neighborly service, such as sitting all night by a sick-bed. To be "a good watcher" was considered one of the most important of womanly attainments. People who lived side by side exchanged such services without waiting to be asked, and they seemed to be happiest of whom ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... at the corner. With an exultant shout she turned and waved her hand at rigid, white-lipped Allee in the window, then slid lightly down the ladder and out of sight. She was gone a long time, and the small watcher above was becoming alarmed at her stay, fearing that the daring acrobat had been caught at her pranks, and wondering what punishment would befall her in such an event, when the bare, brown head appeared over the low porch roof once more, and Peace inquired ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... awoke from its somnolence, when the scattered miners came swarming down from out the surrounding hills and turned into a noisy, restless playground the single narrow, irregular street. Then it suddenly became a mad commixture of Babel and hell. At this hour nothing living moved within range of the watcher's vision except a vagrant dog; the heat haze hung along the near-by slopes, while a little spiral of dust rose lazily from the deserted road. But Hampton had no eyes for this dreary prospect; with contracted brows he was viewing again that which he had confidently believed to have been buried ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... at first it was hardly noticeable. But it swiftly developed, and the shrewd mind of the watcher in the hills realized that the days of halcyon were passing all too swiftly. Men were no longer satisfied with ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... and anguish from Demetri Agryopoulo's lips, and he leaped into the shadow with a hand upraised, and in the hand a blade that glittered as he raised it, One impulse seemed to shoot forth the jealous Greek and his watcher, and before Demetri Agryopoulo could form the faintest notion as to how the thing had happened, a sudden thunderbolt seemed launched against him, and he was lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. The stiletto flew clean over the wall, so ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... motionless figure. All around him was very still, too. Freddy could hear the plash of the waves on the beach, the rustle of the wind through the dwarf trees, the whir of wings as some sea bird took its swift flight above the broken roof. But within there was a solemn hush, that to the small watcher seemed quite appalling. ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... the stream. Once, indeed, he saw the figures of the hunters, painted dark against the sky, rise over a distant swell and disappear just as one of them turned and waved a signal in dumb show to the solitary watcher on ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... beneath them, tugging, rolling, wrestling, accomplishing in a minute a depth of disorder and din unbelievable save by a Scottish scholar. We even carried on war, class against class, in those wild, precious minutes. A watcher gave the alarm when the master opened his house-door to return, and it was a great feat to get into our places before he entered, adorned in awful majestic authority, shouting "Silence!" and striking resounding blows with his cane on a desk or ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... recalls it! The house opened upon the main street of the village, and there was nearly always a watcher on the look-out for us. Sometimes it was Isaac, our good man-of-all-work, who never failed Ponnamal through the two years he was with us. Then we would hear a call, and Ponnamal (we used to call her ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... he had taken precaution to send his letter from a village post-office, and his message from a railway station ten miles east of Argenta, the spies of Silver Shield had heard of one or both, and now their watcher knew that two at least of the enemy were in their camp. For what else was young Breifogle there? For what but to give warning ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... broke into tears and went out of the room. She sent in the night-watcher, and then Jeff took leave of his mother with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
