Guy Boothby

“ The solicitor's face was a piteous sight. He was trying to recognise, in the disgusting, dilapidated scarecrow before him, the happy, bright-faced boy he remembered of old. When he did speak, his voice was choked with emotion.
"Your Grace, how can I say——?"
Assuming a new air, that for a moment made one forget the gunny bags and the candle guttering in the bottle, the peer broke in—
"So the unnatural old scoundrel is dead, is he? Bien! Le roi ed mort! Vive le roi! But, Denton, it has come too late. ”

“ WHOEVER affirmed that a man's happiness is more the result of environment than the outcome of any deliberate action on his own part, was not so very far wrong, after all. He would, however, have been nearer the mark, and he might have built up a cheap reputation for himself as a sayer of sharp things, had he affirmed that "Man's happiness is the pin in the Thermometer of Existence, which is raised or depressed by the mercury of Circumstance." ”

“ The solicitor accompanying me, we followed the boy down the main street, across the open bit of ground where the Afghan camel men were camped, and finally approached the creek, where we drew up before a small humpy, constructed of bark, kerosene tins, and old gunny bags. The ducal residence was illuminated by one solitary candle, stuck in an empty whisky bottle, and was filthily dirty. Half-caste children littered the floor, and a murderous-looking black gin was cooking at the fire. The sick man must have heard our approach, for he called to us in a faint voice to enter. ”