"Cowering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... millions of your own wimmen enslaved in legal fetters! You say it wuz to protect the wimmen and children of Cuba from the cruelty and brutality of unscrupulous rulers. Look at the wimmen and children of your own country cowering and hiding from crazed drunken husbands, sons and fathers. More misery, murder, suicides, abuse and suffering of every kind is caused by the saloon every day of the year in the United States than ever took place in Cuba in twice the same time, ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... was either thoughtful or preoccupied with some ambitious scheme of fortune. Zamor soon felt a species of instinctive dread of this overpowering and awe-inspiring genius, whose sudden appearance would chill him in his wildest fits of mirthful mischief, and send him cowering to a corner of the room; where he would remain huddled together, and apparently stupefied and motionless, till the count quitted the apartment. At the moment of my writing this, Zamor still resides under my roof. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... had been crouching and cowering beside their master, suddenly started up, barking wildly, and dashed out into the rising waters; new sounds blended with the roar of ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... Metellus, but advised him with much forbearance and moderation, and at last even betook himself to entreaty and praised the family of the Metelli for having always been aristocratic, Metellus becoming much emboldened and despising Cato, whom he supposed to be giving way and cowering, broke out in extravagant threats and arrogant expressions, as if he would accomplish every thing in spite of the Senate. On this Cato, changing his attitude and tone and language, and concluding all that he said with a vehement affirmation that so long as ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... eye grew dark, and Terry frowned. Had the douanier been insolent, my peppery Irishman would have been insolent too, perhaps, in the hope of cowering the man by truculence more swashbuckling than his own; but he had been as polite as his countrymen proverbially are, if not goaded out of their suavity. "Look here, Prince," said Terry, hanging onto ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have my triumph I single out in you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant, that his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge me on him! You know how you came here to-night; you know how you stand cowering there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable, if not as odious, as those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge me ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... he had been roughly handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get down on his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break away, as if he meant incontinently to jump overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings and cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then with a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of every great passion. His Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German that the better half of his statements remained incomprehensible. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... fled at once to the highest room in the building. There he had stayed, locked in, cowering and shivering, till the police, strongly reinforced by soldiers, had ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... had seen a wounded tigress standing over her cubs, a beautiful, fearless creature, blazing defiance with dying eyes upon those who had destroyed her, the mother-instinct supreme to the last; for as she fell to rise no more she had thrown her paw around the cowering cubs. It was not in shape, nor in colour, but in expression and in their stillness, that the eyes of Madame de Staemer resembled ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... already too discouraged, and can scarce do themselves justice. It is easier to write more or less well and agreeably when you are certain of being published and paid, at least, than to write well when a dozen rejected manuscripts are cowering (as Theocritus says) in your chest, bowing their pale faces over their chilly knees, outcast, hungry, repulsed from many a door. To write excellently, brightly, powerfully, with these poor unwelcomed wanderers, returned MSS., in your possession, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... nooses at the end of each. Into the courtyard clattered the Baron and his followers. The Abbot stood with arms folded, pressing a gilded cross across his breast. He was a head taller than any of his frightened, cowering brethren, and his noble emaciated face was thin with fasting caused by his never-ending conflict with the world that was within himself. His pale countenance betokened his office and the Church; but the angry ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... eyes went thoughtfully over the poor cowering wretch. Those careworn features were familiar, somehow. Where had he seen the man before? Suddenly he stiffened, choking an exclamation. The man was bound immovably to his seat. Thin metal links, almost invisible, encircled his feet; held ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... sensation. As the man in charge of the officers passed near the auto, poor Carrie cowering away from him, though he no longer had it in his power to harm her, the Little ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... in thy first novitiate, fled, withered and shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades of initiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changed Parthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I knew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; for FEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he cannot soar. But THOU, seest thou not that to love ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering like a beaten hound, "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring it in murder. I thought I had only stunned him—I never meant to do more than ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... cottage, desolate, The children cowering 'round me, mute from fright, With tearless eyes and brooding heart, I wait, Watching through all the long, the weary night. God of the homeless, look from Heaven and see! Out of the deeps, a woman calls ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... impresses most is not the art but the religion of the place. In this terrible country, where the great forces of nature, drought and famine and pestilence, the intolerable sun, the intolerable rain, and the exuberance of life and death, have made of mankind a mere passive horde cowering before inscrutable Powers—here, more than anywhere, men were bound under a yoke of observance and ritual to the gods they had fashioned and the priests who interpreted their will. Then came the Deliverer to set ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... The fairies were simply cowering away from the King and Naggeneen and shivering and squealing with fright at the talk of handling iron and crossing running water. "Ah, Naggeneen," said the King, "you know we can't do all that. Tell us what we'll ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... ordered to do, his family name of Roulot, under which he buried the De Varandeuil and the former courtier of the Comte d'Artois. He lived there alone, buried, forgotten, hiding his head, never going out, cowering in his hole, without servants, waited upon by his daughter, to whom he left everything. The Terror was to them a period of shuddering suspense, the breathless excitement of impending death. Every evening, the little girl went and listened ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... will not sit down till thou say 'yes' to what I ask"; for some womanly instinct told her that while Adam was cowering over the hearth blaze and she stood in all her beauty and splendour above him, she controlled the ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... when the alien life on which I flourished was gone out of me, I was a worn old man—that the Fire of Life which usually burned in my body, making me look bright and young, was now none of it my own; a few hot ashes only were mine, which Death sat cowering by! I could not but sit and gaze at the reflection of the seared ghastliness of that face, which was mine and yet not mine, and feel well-nigh sick unto death. After a while, however, I plucked up heart. I considered that it was impossible this change had come all at once; I must ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... the tower of the church, there came shouts. Men had been placed there, too, and were gathering to their comrades opposite Moylin's house. The hunt would begin in earnest soon. Donald called a halt and, cowering under the shadow of a thick hedge, the little party of fugitives held ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... and adventurous foreigners whom the grumpy officers jostle and hustle about. For neither poverty, nor oppression, nor both together can drive a man out of his country, unless the soul within him awaken. Indeed, many a misventurous cowering peasant continues to live on bread and olives in his little village, chained in the fear of dying of hunger in a foreign land. Only the brave and daring spirits hearken to the voice of discontent within them. They give themselves up to the higher aspirations ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... village, one and all!" the Uhlan Captain said. "Behold! Some hand has fired a shot. My trumpeter is dead. Now shall they Prussian vengeance know; now shall they rue the day, For by this sacred German slain, ten of these dogs shall pay." They drove the cowering peasants forth, women and babes and men, And from the last, with many a jeer, the Captain chose he ten; Ten simple peasants, bowed with toil; they stood, they knew not why, Against the grey wall of the ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... man had his hand on the office door and had flung it open, disclosing the culprit cowering over the day-book ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the memory of past success. This was his first effort; he forgot he had not earned it, even as he now ignored the danger of earning it. The few words of unconscious praise had fallen like the blade of knighthood on his cowering shoulders; he had risen ennobled from the contact. Though his face was still muffled in his blanket, he stood erect and seemed to have gained ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... Helen Cameron, cowering in her bed. The masked and shrouded figures were gone, and Ruth found herself standing, panting and gasping, in the middle of the room, with the half-filled goblet in her hand, her heart beating as though ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... cowering like a guilty thing, Edith entered the room, for she heard Arthur's voice and knew that he was ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the plain. A red glare on the horizon marked the district through which the travelers had to pass. The mist of night covered, with a gray veil, a dark mass on the ground. Anton went nearer, and found that it consisted of men, women, and children, cowering on the earth, pale, hungry, and emaciated. "They are from the village on the other side of the boundary," explained an old watchman, who stood wrapped in his cavalry cloak. "Their village was on fire; they had run into the forest, and during the night they had come down to the river, stretching ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... all that was best and sweetest in life. It was hard that she should have been suffered to taste happiness, if it was instantly to be snatched from her. She felt this half resentfully, shrinking into herself, and cowering before the unknown trial, which, when fully understood, her natural courage would enable to meet with energy. She sat with her head resting on her hands, while Mrs. Costello left the room, and came back carrying a small, old-fashioned desk, which she placed upon the table. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... solid on the sky- line for a minute or more before being torn down by the wind. Something within me seemed to quake at these engines of destruction, these masses of explosive power sent for the killing of men, invisible there on the ridge, but cowering in fear or ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... macabre. He wondered if she had brains or heart enough to appreciate the full bitterness of that chance. He could see her, in his mind's eye, cowering back ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... him; "this mountain air is so bland, even when it is damp." He paused on the dripping threshold, with his hands in the pockets of his red jacket, and surveyed with smiling complacence the forlorn, weeping day, and the mountains cowering under their misty veil, and the sodden dooryard, and the wild rocks and chasms of the gorge, adown the trough of which a stream unknown to the dry weather was tumbling with a suggestion of flight and trouble and fear in ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the smouldering camp-fire. Pete was used to being kicked, but not before an audience. Moreover, the hot ashes had burned his hands. Pete's dog, hitherto asleep beneath the wagon, rose bristling, anxious to defend his young master, but afraid of the trader. The cowering dog and the cringing ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... fire on the place where he knew the Germans were cowering, tearing up the ground with a storm of bullets as though it had been freshly harrowed. But the sturdy ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... of the roofs on the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and vague through the misty atmosphere. At times we passed a woman struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking exactly like the figures painted on screens, cowering under a gaudily daubed paper umbrella. Again, we passed a pagoda, where an old granite monster, squatting in the water, seemed to make a hideous, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were transferred. A number of negroes, who were loitering about, were pressed into the service, and pushed it along; and the gentlemen, walking, brought up the rear. I don't know that I ever in my life felt so completely desolate as during that half-hour's slow progress. We sat cowering among the trunks, my faithful Margery and I, each with a baby in our arms, sheltering ourselves and our poor little burthens from the bleak northern wind that ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... me, for I was carried away by—'twas there I saw—after so many horrible years!" huskily muttered the exile, fairly cowering there, before ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... my first glimpse of her face then, and I confess it startled me. It was the tall, stately woman of the Ontario, the woman I had last seen cowering beside the road, rolling pebbles in her hand, blood streaming from a cut over her eye. I could see the scar now, a little affair, about an inch long, gleaming red ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Potts felt himself cowering involuntarily; and he began to feel less confidence in his own power, and less sure that the stranger had flung himself into a trap. However, the silence was embarrassing; so at last, with ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when, in the course of the morning, a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street, with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... cowering together at the foot of the tree where they had been set down. For one moment Moonlight thought of her own lithe and active frame, her powers of running and endurance, and meditated a sudden dash into the woods, but one glance at the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... and now the snow met us in large masses, and we walked for two miles knee-deep in it, with an inexpressible fatigue, till we came to the mount called Little Brocken; here even the firs deserted us, or only now and then a patch of them, wind shorn, no higher than one's knee, matted and cowering to the ground, like our thorn bushes on the highest sea-hills. The soil was plashy and boggy; we descended and came to the foot of the Great Brocken without a river—the highest mountain in all the north of Germany, and the seat of innumerable ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... none too soon, for they were not gone a hundred yards when it occurred to one of the Indians who had captured them to take a look at his prizes. His listless saunter toward where he had left them was changed to movements of bewildered activity, as in place of the cowering captives, he found only severed thongs, and realized that in some mysterious manner a release had been effected. He uttered a yell that brought a number of his companions to the spot, and in another minute a score ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Judge, cowering down to the carpet, with his courage and volatility immediately gone, "old Meshach Milburn knows it all! He has purchased the duplicate notes of protest, and holds them with his own. He has me in his power, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... half of my soul refused to be comforted. It was cowering in some minute and inadequate ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... as anybody; and yet I often say to my husband that we used to be happier when we used to sleep under a hedge with, may be, only a thin blanket, and wake up covered with snow." Now this woman had only a wretched wagon, and was always tramping in the rain, or cowering in a smoky, ragged tent and sitting on the ground, but she had food, fire, and fun, with warm clothes, and believed herself happy. Truly, she had better reason to think so than any old maid with a heart run to waste ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... in his cold hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock Place trying to keep his attention on the "tick, tick, tick, tick" of his two-dollar watch, but really cowering before the vast shadowy presences that slunk in from the ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... her second season. He had comforted her and never scolded a word, and then he had gone out armed with a heavy hunting-crop, found Cyril Lamont, and had thrashed the man within an inch of his life. It was one of Hector's pleasantest recollections, the thought of his cowering form, his green silk smoking-jacket all torn, and his eyes sightless. Cyril Lamont's talents had not run in the art of self-defence, and he had been very soon powerless in the ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... reality was their fear, when, after hours spent in fruitless wandering, they stood holding each other's hands, crouching and cowering together in the midst of that ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... hated the memory of his words. True or not, they were spoken to a woman who was cowering under them as under a lash. He was at a disadvantage now. If she had met him with anger they might have cried quits. But he had seen her wince, seen her sudden pallor, and it was not ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in beside the sleeping child, taking care not to waken her, and lay there thinking of his new responsibility. At every shiver of the cowering cabin and rising shriek of the wind, his heart went out in love toward the helpless little creature whose dead mother lay in the cold and deserted shanty, and whose father was wandering perhaps breathless and ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... its loyalty to the democratic republic. But there is another explanation, which goes far deeper. The revolutionary strifes had wearied the brain of France and had predisposed it to accept accomplished facts. Distracted by the talk about royalist plots and Jacobin plots, cowering away from the white ogre and the red spectre, the more credulous part of the populace was fain to take shelter under the cloak of a great soldier, who at least promised order. Everything favoured the drill-sergeant theory of government. The instincts ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... hunted, Not like other children was he; But they saw that much he fasted, Much his Manito entreated, Much besought his Guardian Spirit. "Lazy Kwasind!" said his mother, "In my work you never help me! In the Summer you are roaming Idly in the fields and forests; In the Winter you are cowering O'er the firebrands in the wigwam! In the coldest days of Winter I must break the ice for fishing; With my nets you never help me! At the door my nets are hanging, Dripping, freezing with the water; Go and wring them, Yenadizze! Go and dry them in the sunshine!" ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Brooklyn. The city itself—its streets—its houses—all wore the livery of this "ruler of the inverted year"—while in many a garret and cellar of its crowded streets, ragged children huddled together, seeking to warm their frozen limbs beneath the scanty covering of their beds, or cowering over the few half-dying embers, which they misnamed a fire. Yet the social affections were not chilled—rather did they seem to glow more warmly, as though rejoicing in their triumph over the mighty conqueror of the physical world. Christian charity went forth unchecked ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... enemies. Would I could set thy soul at ease, and do all that thou askest. In the first flush of wrath, when he was taken plotting against our lives, it seemed a little thing enough to take his evil life. But now these morning airs have cooled me, and it goes against my will to shoot a cowering hound tied hand and foot, even though he had murdered twenty sons of mine. I have thought if there be any way to spare his life, and leave this hour's agony to read a lesson not to be unlearned until the grave. ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... the twisted and cowering madrone trees are putting forth their clusters of creamy buds, when the white blossoms of the dogwoods line the banks of little streams, when the azaleas and rhododendrons, lovely and delicate as orchids, blaze a bed of glory, and the modest little oxalis has ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... more composure than men. I have frequently seen a frail, delicate woman standing erect and unflinching upon the deck, as the shells were whistling and bursting over us, while her lawful protector would be cowering "under the lee" of a cotton bale. I pay this humble tribute of admiration to the sex, but a cynical old bachelor, to whom I once made the observation, replied that in his opinion their insatiable curiosity prevailed even over their ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... the promise made by the bandit, a clattering band of horsemen dashed up to the lonely house at the break of dawn. They were led by Prince Ugo Ravorelli, dishevelled, half-crazed. A shivering woman in silks and a cowering old man sobbed with joy when the rescuers burst through the door. Tacked to a panel in the door was an ominous, ghost-like paper on which was printed the following message from the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... floor I beheld my love, a gaping sword-wound in her side, and the ground all bloody about her. For a moment I stood dumb in the spell of that horror, then a movement beyond, against the wall, aroused me, and I beheld her murderers cowering there, one with a naked sword in ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... a magnetic recognition, dim and vague, of the person whom she regarded as the inveterate enemy of her happiness? Cowering among the bedclothes, she trembled and said, in a husky ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... be more different than the careless aimless activities of the monkeys I had seen among the trees between Agra and Delhi and scampering over the parapets of Benares, all thieves and libertines with a charter, and the restriction of these poor cowering mannikins, overcrowded in their cages, with an abysmal sorrow in their eyes. Many died on the voyage, and I think the Indian Government should look into the question of their ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... nights later," said Bagheera, cowering a little; "and of that long, sweet grass that pleased thee so he gathered more than any Man-cub could eat in all the nights of the Rains. That ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Giovanni and his followers were at their prayers, cowering with terror. No notion had they of the armed force, some six score strong, that waited to pour down upon them. I briskly issued my command, and four men detached themselves and let down the bridge. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... double eyeglasses, with a heavy thunder-cloud gathering on his brows. When he had mastered it thoroughly, he bent forward and glared indignantly past his wife and daughter for at least half a minute into the pew where Mr. Bultitude was cowering, until he felt that he was coming all to pieces under the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... of the loud war-cry, the ranks of shield-bearing Trojans came on; so the Achaians donned their arms again, and bethought them of the fray. Now wouldest thou not see noble Agamemnon slumbering, nor cowering, unready to fight, but very eager for glorious battle. He left his horses and his chariot adorned with bronze; and his squire, even Eurymedon son of Ptolemaios Peiraieus' son, kept apart the snorting steeds; and he straitly ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... mother's cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... confidence, brushing the long brown lock from his fair brow, came Solon Denney to his feet. With flawless self-possession he read, and I, disgraced, cowering in my seat, heard words that burned little inconsequential brands forever into my memory. Well do I recall that the middle-aged gentleman regarded the young man with a look of surprise, and inquired, "What security ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... hunters through the jungle, flashing their lights and looking for the lion which one of them had shot while the hunter was hidden on the platform in a tree. But Nero, cowering away back in the dark cave, kept very still and quiet, and he heard the hunters walk right ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... Slidell and Mason, our commissioners to Europe, by Capt. Wilkes, of the U. S. Navy, and while on board the steamer Trent, a British vessel, at sea. I said I was glad of it. He asked why, in surprise. I remarked that it would bring the Eagle cowering to the feet of the Lion. He smiled, and said it was, perhaps, the best thing that could have happened. And he cautions me against giving passports to French subjects even to visit Norfolk or any of our fortified ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... selfishness. Mrs. Cyrus was a Goliath of silliness; when billowing black clouds heaped themselves in the west on a hot afternoon, she turned pale with apprehension, and the Captain and Cyrus ran for four tumblers, into which they put the legs of her bed, where, cowering among the feathers, she lay cold with fear and perspiration. Every night the Captain screwed down all the windows on the lower floor; in the morning Cyrus pulled the screws out. Cyrus had a pretty taste in horseflesh, but Gussie cried so when he once bought a trotter that he had long ago resigned ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... at her feet. It was a white grouse and it remained cowering on the ground. Sheen looked up and she saw a hawk above. And when she looked round she saw a man coming across the bog. The hawk flew towards him and ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... massacre had been so suddenly executed, that assistance would hardly have been possible, even had there been disposition to render it. There was; however, no such disposition. The whole country was already cowering again, except the provinces of Holland and Zealand. No one dared approach, even to learn what had occurred within the walls of the town, for days after its doom had been accomplished. "A wail of agony was heard above Zutphen ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... quickly from her detaining grasp, and strode to the door. As he passed the bar he caught a glimpse of a ring of cowering frightened faces within, huddled together like sheep, and staring with saucer eyes. The mist spanned the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... the little girl drew aside the canvas, and partly invited me to enter. I glanced in; it was a dismal sight. In one corner lay the mother, a blanket her only protection from the humid soil, and cowering down beside her was her other child. I could not enter; it seemed like a heartless intrusion upon misery; so, slipping the contents of my purse (which were unfortunately only a few shillings) into the little, girl's hand, I hurried away, scarcely waiting to notice ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... torn by the mine, and there they halted awaiting further orders. But no orders came, for their terror-stricken commander had sought safety in a bomb-proof and when his hiding place was discovered the miserable cur merely mumbled something about "moving forward" and remained cowering in his refuge. Meanwhile, other regiments rushed forward, tumbling in upon one another, until the chasm was choked with men upon whom the Confederates began to pour shot, shell and canister. From that moment everything ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... drama was concerned, the crucial moment was at hand, the actor—or rather actress—who was to remedy all things was on the scene, and shortly the curtain would fall on a situation of the rough made smooth. Then red fire, marriage bells, triumphant virtue and cowering guilt, with a rhyming tag, delivered by the prettiest actress, of 'All's ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... you some more—vat?" the officer said, without very much meaning. His voice was enough to rattle any captive, but Tom was not easily disconcerted, and instead of cowering under this martial ferocity and the scorning looks of his friend, he glanced about him in his frowning, lowering way as if the surroundings interested him more than his ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... down together into the meadow, and there stood the others by the hazel-garth: the goodman cowering and abject, Surly John pale and anxious, and the two women clinging together in sore sorrow, the grandam weeping sorely. But as they passed close by these last, Stephen touched the grandam and said to her: "Sawest thou ever King David ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... time she was a year old, hatched a respectable family of chickens; little, cowering, timid things at first, but, in due time, they became fine chubby ones; and old Norah said, "If I could only keep Yarico out of the copse, it would do; but the copse is full of weasels ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The place was closer than before and had an unhealthy ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... few seconds Jasper looked contemptuously upon the creature cowering before film. He felt that he was lying, and just as soon as he was out of his sight he would treat old David in a shameful manner, and he himself would be helpless to interfere. What could he do? he asked himself. A sudden idea ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... not the gun. He scratched the match and held it high in front. They saw the great cowering creature like a fallen pony in size—but untellably more vivid in line—the chest not more than seven feet from them, the head held far back, the near front paw lifted against them as ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... mistreating 'em," he said, his eyes on the three cowering, pathetic little figures. "Poor little mites—poor little mites! Found 'em on a sort of raft, you say? Washed ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... his lips, the poor wine-dealer expired. Meanwhile the notary sat cowering over the fire, aghast at the fearful scene that was passing before him, and now and then striving to keep up his courage by a glass of cognac. Already his fears were on the alert; and the idea of contagion flitted to and fro through his mind. In order to quiet these thoughts of evil import, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the last play, with some good criticisms on the acting he had last seen, conducting himself in such manner as would have made lord Gartley quite grateful to him, had he not put it down to the imperial presence of his high-born aunt, cowering his inferior nature. But while indeed the major was naturally checked by a self-sufficing feminine presence, the cause that mainly operated to his suppression was of another kind and from ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... of the motley army. It roused his ire as nothing else could. Instantly he felt himself again their master. They were still only so many mutinous sailors. He turned upon them with the same fierceness which once had sent them cowering into ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... very door of Emigre's Retreat before any savage could possibly reach her. But I felt no bullet, nor did any whistle by my ears, and I wondered why, until I saw, what the savage possibly saw too in the dim light, that mademoiselle (whose head had been cowering on my breast like a child in great terror trying to hide from the sight of danger) had, as we turned into the Rue de l'Eglise, raised her head and looked boldly ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... I could distinctly see some ten or twelve frightened seamen, who, when their light revealed my presence, turned their white faces towards me and waved their hands imploringly. I felt my gorge rise against these poor cowering worms. Why should they presume to shirk the narrow pathway along which all that is great and noble among mankind has travelled? There was one there who interested me more than they. He was a tall man, who stood apart from the others, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the case of Terry Lute. When the northeasterly gales came down with fog, Terry Lute sat on the slimy, wave-lapped ledge overhanging the swirl of water, and watched the spent breaker, streaked with current and flecked with fragments; and he watched, too, the cowering ledge beyond, and the great wave from the sea's restlessness as it thundered into froth and swept on, and the cliff in the mist, and the approach of the offshore ice, and the woeful departure of the last light of day. But he took no pencil to the ledge; he memorized ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... white face was lifted from the shelter of her arms. The stricken look was still upon it, but there was no cowering in her attitude now. Slowly she rose to her feet. I had not realized that ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... other times. Such persons are simply unconscious of the fact that there are other words of kindred meaning from which they might choose; as the United States surveyors of Alaska found "the shuddering tenant of the frigid zone" wrapping himself in furs and cowering over a fire of sticks with untouched coal-mines ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... terzetto, which is worked up with constantly increasing power to a climax of passionate energy, and at last dies away as Marguerite expires. It stands almost alone among effects of this kind in opera. The curtain falls upon a celestial chorus of apotheosis, the vision of the angels, and Mephistopheles cowering in terror before ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... deluge raging Flung its flanks, and shook the staging, Priesthood, cowering from the brim, Chanted thus its ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... he stared," answered the Goodman, as he seized the cowering Zeb and swung him again to his ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... with him; she does so nervously and under protest, glancing ever over her shoulder, as if she expected the austere Fairy momentarily to appear; while her companions sit without winking or moving, cowering together like a covey of birds when the hawk is circling over the turnip-field. How can you expect a man to make himself agreeable under such appalling circumstances? The heart of the adventurer sinks within him. Lo! there is a rustling of robes near; what ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... a command to some who stood near her person, and in a moment, as if by a flash of lightning, the cowering, terrified Demon had vanished, carried away to be confined in one of the dungeons where persistent haters of mankind are kept imprisoned, until their hearts are changed by some noble sentiment of compassion and the Goddess sees that they are ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... see thet things is all right," said the Old Man, with an indifference he was far from feeling. The suggestion was graciously accepted, the door opened and closed on the host, and the crowd, leaning their backs against the wall and cowering under ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Running through Easton, Fenley saw two policemen stationed at a cross-road. They signaled the car to stop, and his blood curdled, but, in the same instant, they saw the chauffeur's face; the other occupant was cowering as far back in the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... went forward, and soon discovered a tiny girl cowering under a thorn. When she saw him she ran quickly and grasped his sleeve and hid her face in it and wept. She was small for her years, which ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... rope-swinging assailants; and she took to her heels and galloped off, leaving the cubs to shift for themselves. The cowboys were close behind, however, and after half a mile's run she bolted into a shallow cave or hole in the side of a butte, where she stayed cowering and growling, until one of the men leaped off his horse, ran up to the edge of the hole, and killed her with a single bullet from his revolver, fired so close that the powder burned her hair. The unfortunate cubs were roped, and then so dragged about that they were speedily killed instead of being ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... junk shop, a man under thirty, dirty and low browed, stood cowering back against a bench. The fellow looked as though he would have fought had there been any chance to draw a weapon. But he was gazing straight into the muzzle of the ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock |
