Garrote

“ That is most true, doughty Garret. A culverin is but the whiff of an oaten pipe, compared with a hag upon her broomstick. Thou wert ever the man to encounter these women. It needs thy mettle to face them. Now there is thy wife, Master Weasel—oh, but that is a perilous venture in store for thee! You shall go to her and have it over, whilst I make my report to his Lordship; when that is done I will straight for the Crow and Archer, to help you in the battle, which by that time will doubtless find you sore at need. ”

“ Having given up his own room for the garret, he now gave up his garret—a matter of greater self-denial—to share his own room with Morely, that the garret might be made a place for evening work. He purchased, at the price of some self-denial in the way of outward adornment, a set of tools for the finer sort of cabinet-work; and in the long winter evenings applied himself to learn to use them, that his friend might have something to do in teaching him.
It would take long to tell all the ways in which this young man carried on the labour of love he had undertaken. ”

“ The garrotte is a short stout post, at the top of which is an iron crook, just wide enough to admit the neck of a man seated in a chair beneath it. Through the post, parallel with the crook, is the loop of a rope, whose ends are fastened to a bar held by the executioner. The loop, being round the throat of the victim, is so powerfully tightened from behind by half a turn of the bar, that an extra twist would sever a man’s head from his body. ”

“ The Baron said to her: 'Why have you come, Falise? I forbade you.' 'Oh, my lord,' she answered, 'I feared—for you both! When men go mad because of women a devil enters into them.' The Baron, taking her by the hand, said: 'Permit me,' and he led her to the door for her to pass out. She looked back sadly at Garoche, standing for a minute very still. Then Garoche said: 'I command you, come with me; you are my wife.' She did not reply, but shook her head at him. Then he spoke out high and fierce: 'May no child be born to you. May a curse fall on you. ”

“ On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theater orchestra; adding that Zann's desire to play in the night after his return from the theater was the reason he had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gable window was the only point on the street from which one could look over the terminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond. ”

“ A garret at Home is a very different place from a garret in the World; and so our poet thought, when he compared this miserable, dismal place with the little attic far, far away in his own father’s cottage, where he was next-door neighbour to the swallows who slept in their little mud cabins under the cottage eaves!
Never in his life was Tiny so lonely. ”

“ I answered. “They are very interesting. Only you should have found them in a garret. Something is lacking in your background. It isn’t artistic.”
“There was altogether too much background,” said the Doctor. “Nearly all the inhabitants of the tenement-house swarmed up while I was there, and all of the landlady’s children came as far into that tiny room as was possible. No, the lonely garret exists only in story-books. Its seclusion is too good to be true. ”

“ In winter it was the granary. It held bushels and bushels of nuts, and its smooth, out-sloping sides defeated the clever little mice who were always raiding and rummaging among the garret stores.
Well, it seemed a long distance to the timid little errand girl, from the stairs, across the garret floor to that bathtub. “Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,” she stepped. Then, what a shock it was, when the first loud handfuls of nuts bumped upon the bottom of the pail! ”

“ I pray you not to hinder your journey in this way. I beseech you not to trouble about me. The enemy will overcome you as he has me. You are happy in your faith. You have your Guide Book next to your heart, and your sword in your hand. You believe in the Radiant City, and in your King. I will not be the one to throw you into the hands of the great enemy Doubt."
"Friend," said the traveller, while a radiant light from the City touched his helmet and illumined his face, "when my King calls me to fight, He will see that I get the victory, and I fight kneeling." ”

“ The crust is hyssop when the heart is young. The garret is a palace when hope flies unfettered. The most wonderful dreams imaginable are dreamt close to the eaves. And when a man leaves behind him the garret, he also leaves behind the fondest illusions. But who—who would stay in the garret!
And as my thoughts ran on, the question rose, Whom would they send in his place—Dan's? I knew London. It was familiar ground. Perhaps they might send me. It was this thought which unsettled me. I was perfectly satisfied with New York. Phyllis lived in New York. ”

“ For a moment there was a wild flurry of furry, tearing legs and a blood-streaked white body between them, trying desperately to evade their slicing strokes. They pitched down the bank together, animal and man struggling silently to the death; and when they jarred to a stop in the water below, Garth's strategy was achieved.
He was uppermost; his grip was steel around the throbbing throat, and the hundred and eighty pound weight of his body was holding the legs powerless. Not an inch from his face the weasel's fangs clashed frantically together. ”

“ The nuts were pointed and cold as lumps of ice; they hurt the small hands that [Pg 148] shoveled them up in haste, and a great many handfuls it took to fill the pail.
Hanging from the beams that divided the main garret from the eaves, dangled a perfectly useless row of old garments that seemed to be there for no purpose but to look dreadful. How they might have appeared in a different light cannot be said; there seemed to be nothing wrong with them when the women took them down at house-cleaning time and shook and beat them about; they were as empty as sacks, every one. ”

“ Even though the chest had found its way into the tiled stove during the last hard winter, when people were even forced to burn dried cakes of dung, there is still hidden away in the garret a rusty sickle which once went off to the fields, shining and merry, and stretched low at one swing of the arm a thousand golden-green stalks; and above it hangs the uncanny scythe which a farm-hand once ran into a long time ago, so that he cut off his nose—it having hung too far down over the garret hatch, and he having mounted the ladder too quickly. ”

“ Garth asked.
All the drowsiness left the inspector's eyes.
"Maybe to sit in with them to-night. I've never had a ghost of a show with a stool before, and this is the night of all nights. One of these crooks has been boasting. He said—and I have it straight—'To-night we play our ace.' Get that, Garth! What must an ace mean to that lot, eh? And the president's here, but he'll be well looked after. Still there are lots of big men in this town whose sudden death would make a noise more like a home-run than a funeral. Or, if it's burglary, play it to scale. ”

“ At a bound I was up in the attic, at another I flew to the garret window. Like a [52] gargoyle stretched out on the edge of the roof, I scanned the horizon. Northward a light puff of smoke vanished in the upper branches of the poplar trees. Nothing was to be heard; but I beheld the confused flight of all creatures that were out in the fields. A man standing in a car lashed his bewildered horse with all his might; fowls and even pigeons hurried away to poultry-yard and dovecot. ”

“ Worthy Garret Weasel has good report in the province for the reasonableness of his wines—and long may he deserve that commendation!"
"I thank heaven that I strive to merit the good will of the freemen," interrupted the innkeeper.
"And he is something given to brag of his wines. Faith, and with reason! Spain and Portugal, the Garonne and the Rhine, are his tributaries. Garret, we know the meridian of your El Dorado."
"Nay, nay, Master Captain—your worship is merry; I beseech you——"
"Never mind your beseeching, my modest friend. You scarce do yourself justice. ”

“ She was near the outbuildings of a farm that was [Pg 306] half-way to Chidhurst; she smelt the newly garnered grain in them as she passed. Another quarter of a mile and she had come to the edge of the moor. Along the white road beside it—the road she had driven with her father the day she returned from London, and that Mr. Garratt had trotted along so often with his fat, gray pony or on his mare, pleased and jaunty, with his hunting-crop in his right hand. The bell heather was dead, the gorse was turning brown, she knew that there must be patches of ling, but it was too dark to see them. ”

“ Garreau was a very handsome fellow, but as headstrong as the devil. He had a great tenacity of purpose, and when once he had set his heart on a thing, he would pursue it, as a weasel follows a rabbit, until he could set his teeth in its neck. ”

“ Similarly a “garbler” was an official who was appointed to sort out, or test the work of those who had already sorted, the spices or drugs offered for sale in the London markets. In this original sense the word is now obsolete, but by inversion, or rather perversion, “garble” now means to sort out or select, chiefly from books or other literary works, or from public speeches, some portion which twists, mutilates, or renders ineffective the meaning of the author or speaker. ”

“ Old Garreau, who was constantly with our engagés in the fort, complained to me, that, for a long time, he had lived on nothing but maize boiled in water; and this was really the case with many persons at this place, as game became more and more scarce. When Garreau first came to these parts, game abounded, and beavers were heard in all the streams, striking with their tails; now, however, even the Indians are often reduced to want of food. ”

“ Amer, remembering the rules inscribed on the walls of the cave of Spiritual Pride, noticed how the slow traveller resisted the temptation to speak of his own experience, and spoke instead of the King.
"Ah!" sighed the stranger, "you are right. It is because I forget the promises of my King and His Book that I fail; thank you, Sir. But look, what is that crowd I see before me? If some poor fellow is being belaboured by the enemy I must be off to help," and he began running, and would even then have forgotten his shoes, if Iddo had not cried after him,
"Your shoes, your shoes." ”

“ In the azure of the sky, Garuda circles, calling for his deity as his eye is cast earthwards in search of a meal. Happily there is no battlefield with stricken horse and bullock to bring him down and tempt him to forget his sorrows in the terrible feast. ”

“ THERE is a charm in simplicity of soul, and in sympathies green in the first rich burgeoning of the mind, unshrivelled and untainted by the miserable misanthropies of the world. The girl Garlotte was as ignorant as you will, but she loved God, had the heart of a thrush in spring-time, and was possessed naturally of a warm and delicate appreciation of the feelings of others that would have put to utter shame the majority of court ladies. ”

“ Of the middle height and slender, with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck, and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange—who, tall and stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in his position in the shed—as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long time before Mr Jarrott spoke—the natural harshness of his voice softened by his quiet manner. ”

“ Garth hesitated and cleared his throat.
"First—I thought I might drop in on Nora for a minute."
With a quick gesture the inspector brushed the mention of his daughter aside. Abruptly he verified Garth's hazard.
"How much do you love your life?"
The inspector's voice possessed the growling quality of an animal. A warning rather than an aggressive roar, it issued from a throat remotely surviving behind great masses of flesh. Garth had rarely heard it raised, nor, for that matter, had it ever deceived him as to the other's amiability and gentleness of soul. ”

“ Of evenings, when the barefoot boys sit on the kitchen lounge tired with their long day's work, yet scuffling and knocking their elbows and knees together, she keeps up an incessant tittering with them. And in the beginning of the season, when they clear out the leavings of last year's pease, beans and seed-corn from the garret, she has a good time with the boys a-dodging the wasps that fly through the garret singing their bass buzz and carrying blobs of mud like boxing-gloves on their feet, and taking such irregular zig-zags their course cannot be foreseen. ”

“ I dare say my boy might have been willing to stone these nests, but he was not allowed, either he or his mates, who must have panted with him to improve such an opportunity of havoc. There was a real window in the gable from which he could look out of the garret; such a garret as every boy should once have the use of some time in his life. It was dim and low, though it seemed high, and the naked brown rafters were studded with wasps' nests ”

“ Of my mother’s person I have a very indistinct recollection; but when, many years afterwards, a garret was opened at Elfdale, which had always been used as a lumber-room, and kept locked, a picture of her, which in my early recollections hung over the mantel-piece in the dining-room, was found sown up in a packing-cloth. It was a beautiful thing, independent of its being, as I feel certain it was, an admirable likeness. She is represented standing before a mirror, trying the effect of some wild flowers in her hair ”