Courtney Ryley Cooper

“ Houston went on—to a repetition of his story and a fulfillment of his duties. Then, from far up the mountain side, there came the churning, grinding sound of the snowplow, and he hurried toward the station house to greet it. There on a spur, in the faint glow of an electric light, a short train was side-tracked, engineless, waiting until the time should come when the road again would be open, and the way over the Pass free. One glance told him what it was: the tarpaulin-covered, snow-shielded, bulky forms of his machinery,—machinery that he now felt he could personally aid to its destination. ”

“ Huge streams of water played on the ill-fated vessel, and the shouts and yells of excited dock hands mingled with the roar of flames and water and the weird sirens of newly arriving fire engines.
There was little they could do there. Grant, sickened at the appalling waste and the heartlessness of the crime, which they had been too late to prevent, turned his footsteps slowly back toward the Club. Was there no end to fiendishness which could concoct such acts as this? Would the eyes of the people never be opened to the danger that stalked abroad among them in the guise of friendship? ”

“ Murder is not an easy word to hear, whether it rests upon one's own shoulders, or upon the memory of a person beloved. And right now Robert Fairchild felt himself sagging beneath the weight of the accusation.
But there was no time to lose in making his decision. Beside him stood Harry, silent, morose. Before him,—Fairchild closed his eyes in an attempt to shut out the sight of it. But still it was there, the crumpled heap of tattered clothing and human remains, the awry, heavy shoes still shielding the fleshless bones of the feet. ”

“ Back in childhood days, when I had been a runaway clown with a small, tatterdemalion circus, the menagerie had consisted of one lion, vicious to the extreme and permanently blinded by blows from a leaden-tipped whip, and three scarred and scurvy-appearing leopards which hated humans with enthusiastic passion, and which eventually accomplished their much desired ambition of killing the trainer who had beaten them daily for years. ”

“ Little time did Barry Houston have for thought in those weeks. There were too many other things to crowd upon him; too many cold, horrible hours in blinding snow, or in the faint glare of a ruddy sun which only broke through the clouds that it might jeer at the stricken country beneath it, then fade again in the whipping gusts of wind and its attendant clouds, giving way once more to the surging sweep of white and the howl of a freshened blizzard.
Telegraph poles reared only their cross-arms above the mammoth drifts. Haystacks became buried, lost things. ”

“ Harder than ever pressed the foot of Dixie Mason against the accelerator of her car, while her soul raged within her. Not content with sinking the ships that carried innocent horses and cattle to France, not content with filling their oats with steel barbs, painted yellow and designed to be eaten by the unfortunate animals, not content with poisoning the water of these beasts who were a part of the war only through the will of others, Imperial Germany now was resorting to worse measures to gain its "victories," the horror and agonizing torture of fire! ”

“ The engine was cool now. Barry leaped to the wheel and once more began his struggle upward, a new seriousness upon him, a new grimness apparent in the tightness of his lips. The tiny rivulets of the road had given place to gushing streams; here and there a patch of snow appeared in the highway; farther above, Barry could see that the white was unbroken, save for the half-erased marks of the two cars which had made the journey before him. The motor, like some refreshed animal, roared with a new power and new energy, vibrant, confident, but the spirit was not echoed by the man at the wheel. ”

“ Year after year, Thornton Fairchild had sat in the big armchair by the windows, watching the days grow old and fade into night, studying sunset after sunset, voicing the vain hope that the gloaming might bring the twilight of his own existence,—a silent man except for this, rarely speaking of the past, never giving to the son who worked for him, cared for him, worshiped him, the slightest inkling of what might have happened in the dim days of the long ago to transform him into a beaten thing, longing for the final surcease. ”

“ The lion is let into the arena, roaring and bellowing the minute he leaves his cage. He chews at his pedestal. He turns and claws and thunders at the attendants outside. To all intents and purposes, he is a raging, vengeful thing that really doesn’t begin to get along with himself until he’s killed a trainer or two a day. He seeks to climb the bars of the big den; he claws at the netting; from outside the trainer throws him a crumpled piece of cloth and he tears it to shreds even before it has had time to strike the arena floor. ”