Fiction Books

It was the music of chains. A column of unfortunates from the big prison on the hill swung down the road and turned into the wide street between the log houses. They were on their way out into the taiga to cut wood and hew timbers under a guard of Cossacks.

Casey waved good-by to the men from Tonopah, squinted up at the sun, and got a coal-oil can of water and filled the radiator of his Ford. He rolled his bed in the tarp and tied it securely, put flour, bacon, coffee, salt, and various other small necessities of life into a box, inspected his...

THE baby was born at Whitewater Farms about nine in the morning, April 19, 1900. Two pure-breed calves,—one a heifer, the other a bull,—were dropped the same day at nearly the same hour.

Abington harried the starter with vicious jabs of his heel, then crawled reluctantly out into the blistering wind which felt as if it were driving down the sunlight with sharp needle points of heat that stung and smarted the skin where they struck.

On the 18th of March, 1867, I arrived at Liverpool, intending to take a berth simply as an amateur traveller on board the “Great Eastern,” which in a few days was to sail for New York. I had sometimes thought of paying a visit to North America, and was now tempted to cross the Atlantic on...

Dare Stanley, who had been lying down in his berth, felt the necessity of fresh air, and slipping on an oilskin coat he made his way on deck. The air was fresh enough there in all conscience! He found all but the bridge deserted; the heavy sea made a stay on deck undesirable. Yet he did not wish...

Inspector Barker, of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, raised his frowning eyes from the weekly report he was scrawling, to watch absent-mindedly the arrival of the Calgary express as it roared out from the arches of the South Saskatchewan bridge and pulled up at the station.

Easter was now fast approaching, and Fitzhenry announced to Emmeline his intention of going out of town for a fortnight,—but not to Arlingford—And he concluded by saying, that, of course, he supposed she would like to pass the time with her father at Charlton.

Emmeline’s father, an opulent city merchant and banker, appeared arrayed in a complete new suit for the occasion. The first gloss was not off his coat, which hung stiff upon him, as if not yet reconciled to the homely person to which it was destined to belong, while each separate bright button...

In the following pages are narrated much of real life and adventure, with much that is historically true; but these passages I leave to the inquiring reader to discover or to separate. The localities are all described from old works or other sources, as they existed in the time of the hero.