Dan

“ Dan listened, and he looked at her with swimming eyes.
"And do you pray for me, Mona?" he said.
"Who will pray for you if I do not? In all the world there will not be one left to speak kindly of you if I speak ill. Oh, Dan, it will become known, and every one will be against you." ”

“ Every one can bring his things, and have a place for them; and Dan is to be the head man, because he knows most about such matters, and it will be quiet, pleasant work for him now that he can't knock about much.”
“Won't that be jolly?” cried Nat, while Dan smiled all over his face and had not a word to say, but hugged his book, and looked at Mr. Laurie as if he thought him one of the greatest public benefactors that ever blessed the world. ”

“ Dan pitied him more than he dared to show, and this one tender emotion in that dark time was like the little flower that sprung up between the stones of the prison yard and saved the captive from despair, in the beautiful old story. Dan helped Mason with his work when he was too feeble to finish his task, and the grateful look that thanked him was a ray of sunshine to cheer his cell when he was alone. Mason envied the splendid health of his neighbour, and mourned to see it wasting there. ”

“ For a moment Dan took it, as Mr. Gabriel had expected him to do, as a joke, and went to trim the boat for racing, not meaning they should reach town first. But I—I saw It all.
"Dan!" I sung out, "save her! She's not coming back! They'll make for the schooner at Black Rocks! Oh, Dan, he's taken her off!"
Now one whose intelligence has never been trained, who shells his five wits and gets rid of the pods as best he can, mayn't be so quick as another, but, like an animal, he feels long before he sees; and a vague sense of this had been upon Dan all day. ”

“ The Bishop echoed Dan's words in a dull, mechanical underbreath, and stood a long time silent while Dan poured forth his bitter remorse. Then he said, speaking with something of his own courageous calm of voice, from something like his own pure face, and with some of the upright wrinkles of his high forehead smoothed away: "Dan, I will go home and think. I seem to be awakening from a dreadful nightmare in a world where no God is, and no light reigns, but all is dark. To tell you the truth, Dan, I fear my faith is not what it was or should be. ”

“ They were like her lips.
He looked up.
"What about Dan?" he asked.
"Oh, Danny—" She smiled.
"He is my friend, and your husband. If he knew—"
"Danny won't mind, dear," she said.
Her words carried conviction. Somehow he knew that Dan wouldn't mind. ”

“ There is no sense of pain in his waking, but rather a pleasant novelty, which renews itself with every stage of the journey. Your cosmopolitan is the most adaptable of creatures.
Dan was one of these enviable beings, and woke in the early morning with a due knowledge of his position. He rubbed his eyes and yawned and stretched himself, moved about briskly to restore the circulation of his blood, and made up the fire. A few embers were still red-hot, so he had no difficulty in fanning them into a blaze under an armful of dry sticks. ”

“ Up in the offices again, Dan was on the phone immediately. He knew politics, and people—like the jungle cat knows the whimpering creatures he stalks. He knew that it was the first impact, the first jolting blow that would win for them, or lose for them. ”

“ A slavering sound reached Dan's ear. He sprinted after the Milbuns, burst through the crowd in a headlong bolt for the cove, then swam as fast as he could to keep up with them as they raced for the opposite shore. They crawled out, strangling and gasping, and dragged themselves up on the sand. Dan lay, heaving in deep breaths, then rolled over and sat up. ”

“ Thus it is that as she and Dan sit looking sadly at each other, Dan is comforted by what he sees, and she is no less so. Their mutual faith in the purity of the absent dear ones is inexpressibly consoling to them. Unconsciously each gives to the other strength to bear the bitterness of the shock. ”

“ But having turned his face from the light, Dan found the downward way easy, and took a grim satisfaction in the prospect of a general outbreak during which he might revenge himself upon the tyrannical warden, and strike a blow for his own liberty, feeling that an hour of insurrection would be a welcome vent for the pent-up passions that tormented him. He had tamed many a wild animal, but his own lawless spirit was too much for him, till he found the curb that made him master of himself. ”

“ Slowly, as the steadfast drop wears away the rock, the patient kindness of this man won Dan's confidence, and led by him he began to climb out of the Valley of Humiliation towards the mountains, whence, through the clouds, one can catch glimpses of the Celestial City whither all true pilgrims sooner or later turn their wistful eyes and stumbling feet. There were many back-slidings, many struggles with Giant Despair and fiery Apollyon, many heavy hours when life did not seem worth living and Mason's escape the only hope. ”

“ That is such a pleasant prospect for poor Nat, who came to me six months ago so friendless and forlorn. Dan’s future is already plain to me. Mr. Hyde will want him soon, and I mean to give him a brave and faithful little servant. Dan is one who can serve well if the wages are love and confidence, and he has the energy to carve out his own future in his own way. ”

“ And she couldn’t give Dan an answer right off, but was loath to think of it, and went flirting about among the other boys; and Dan, when he saw she wasn’t so easily gotten, perhaps set more value on her. For Faith, she grew prettier every day; her great brown eyes were so soft and clear, and had a wide, sorrowful way of looking at you; and her cheeks, that were usually pale, blossomed to roses when you spoke to her, her hair drooping over them dark and silky; and though she was slack and untidy and at loose ends about her dress, she somehow always seemed like a princess in disguise ”

“ In the battle that Hope Farwell had set for him to fight Dan had sought to be frankly honest with himself, and to judge himself coldly, without regard to the demands of his heart. If he had erred at all it was in an over-sensitiveness to conscience, for conscience has ever been a tricky master, often betraying its too-willing slaves to their own self-injury. It is, a large question whether one has a greater right to injure himself than to harm another.
Dan could not admit, even to himself, that he had in any way neglected the church, or fallen short of his duties as a hired shepherd. ”

“ Sometimes Dan used to forget to talk at all—he would be asleep—and Dad would wonder if he was unwell. Once he advised him to go up to the house and have a good camp. Dan went. He stretched himself on the sofa, and smoked and spat on the floor and played the concertina—an old one he won in a raffle.
Dan did n't go near the plough any more. He stayed inside every day, and drank the yeast, and provided music for the women. Sometimes he would leave the sofa, and go to the back-door and look out, and watch Dad tearing up and
Dan Preferred the Shade. ”

“ Dan’s hands follow them. Roots throb. Dan’s heart beats violently. He places his palms upon the earth to cool them. Earth throbs. Dan’s heart beats violently. He sees all the people in the house rush to the walls to listen to the rumble. A new-world Christ is coming up. Dan comes up. He is startled. The eyes of the woman dont belong to her. They look at him unpleasanfly. From either aisle, bolted masses press in. He doesnt fit. The mass grows agitant. For an instant, Dan’s and Muriel’s eyes meet. ”

“ Dan says it’s my cooking fetches him. Everything is different here now. Mr. Dan got sawed lumber, and put me up a nice little house; and up above the bluff he has laid out a place where he is going to build a stone house, just as if he intends to live and die here. He doesn’t ever seem to think that he has enough made now to rest all his days. Sometimes I think he ain’t well. Sometimes, ’Tana, I think it would cheer him up if you would just write him a few lines from time to time. He always says, ‘Is she well?’ when I get a letter from you ”

“ He had come of late, somber and grimly determined to give her no peace until he knew the truth. But Dan, even in that mood, was infinitely better than no Dan at all. When he sent her word that he was going with some of the men from the factory up the river for a swim, she gave her shoulders a defiant shrug, and set to work to launder her one white dress and stove-polish her hat, with the pleasing results we have already witnessed through the eyes of Mrs. Snawdor and Mrs. Smelts. ”

“ Silent, gaunt, and grim, Dan did his daily task, ate his bitter bread, and obeyed commands with a rebellious flash of the eye, that made the warden say:
'That's a dangerous man. Watch him. He'll break out some day.'
There were others more dangerous than he, because older in crime and ready for any desperate outbreak to change the monotony of long sentences. These men soon divined Dan's mood, and in the mysterious way convicts invent, managed to convey to him before a month was over that plans were being made for a mutiny at the first opportunity. ”

“ Had it been Dan's fate to mix with the world, his sensitive nature would have rendered him the most unhappy of beings. The selfishness with which the world abounds, and with which he would have been brought in contact, would have made his life a misery. ”

“ Dan is a magician now, and he can show you many miracles going on all round you; for he has two things needful—patience and a love of nature. We live in a beautiful and wonderful world, Demi, and the more you know about it the wiser and the better you will be. ”

“ Dan had been raised by Submit Curler, Oyster Jim, Ali Baba, Betsey Pilrig, Hopeful Whittier—and himself. He began domineering over his father, as a new tyrant always wins easily over an old one, before he was a year old. At three the Corners looked aghast at his antics, and shivered at his vocabulary.
“Well,” Thurley Precore answered with spirit equal to Dan’s, “you think you’re smart, because your pa has money, but there’s lots of people smarter than your pa, and I think, if a man has to choose between knowing how to spell and everything and having a little money, he better choose learning. ”

“ And Dan, as he sat now searching the rugged, but kindly face of his friend, realized faintly why the Doctor had shrunk from talking to him of the sick girl.
Slowly the minister rose from his chair. Aimlessly—as one in perplexing, troubled thought—he went to the window and, standing there, looked out with unseeing eyes upon the cast-iron monument on the opposite corner of the street. Then he moved restlessly to the other window, and, with eyes still unseeing, looked down into the little garden of the crippled boy—the garden with the big moss and vine-grown rock in its center. ”

“ The person addressed as Dan was a splendid specimen of a "frontiersman," having all the characteristics of a frank, free American, with the physical advantages of a stalwart "Englisher." Among the miners he was variously known as "English Dan" and "Dead-Shot Dan." How he got the latter nickname always seemed a puzzle to his comrades, for he was one of the best, gentlest, and kindest fellows on "the lode." His manners and appearance indicated anything but a wicked nature, and he was always ready to do a comrade a good turn, or act as peacemaker in the ever-recurring rows of the miners. ”

“ The Doctor kept his place on the fence, while Dan stepped into the road.
The team, when they had left the ford, stopped as they reached him.
"How do you do, Doctor?" called the man in the buggy in a loud voice; then to Dan, "Well, sir, what do you want now?"
Dan stood near the horses' heads, his eyes fixed on their driver, and the
Judge, seeing the sorrow in his face, misunderstood, as always.
"Judge Strong," said Dan. "You are the only man in the world with whom I am not at peace. I cannot be content to leave Corinth, sir, with anything between us." ”

“ A bloated mechanic; began life as a riveter sort of fellow, but with a knack of making money and a keen eye beyond belief. I remembered his telling me that Dan was too good for us, and that if ever he came across a job in which he wanted help, he would try and steal him. This is some huge irrigation scheme--private--down South. If Dan succeeds, and he will if any one can, there will be millions in it.'
'I suppose your cousin is delighted?' said Rose.
'Gwen? Never saw a woman more relieved in my life. ”

“ There he stood, waving his plumed cap over his head, his red coat a bright spot in the moonlight.
Soon the hoofs of the White-White Horse began to play a soft tattoo on the turf and the Pretty Lady’s laugh to ring merrily in tune with it. But these sounds could not shut out another that Dan fancied still filled the air. It seemed to come from the fast receding valley, growing fainter and fainter and fainter, yet still saying, “Tick-took, tick-tock, tick-took.” ”

“ Then Dan slipped from his seat and stood before his mount. At once the ears of the stallion, which had been flat back, pricked sharply forward; the eyes of the animal grew luminous and soft as the eyes of a woman, and he dropped the black velvet of his muzzle beneath the master's chin. As for Dan Barry, he rewarded this outburst of affection with no touch of his hand; but his lips moved, and he seemed to be whispering a secret to his horse. The wolf in the meantime had viewed this scene with growing unrest, and now it trotted up and placed itself at the side of the man. ”

“ Very often, when a man or a boy is in misfortune, many take pleasure in adding to it by harsh words.
The crowd increased as word of Dan’s arrest spread. At first he hung his head, and pulled his cap down over his eyes, but, though he was much ashamed of his plight, he knew he was innocent, and he determined to hold up his head and look every one in the face. ”