Hide

“ Then there are dark closets, and strange nooks and corners, where the ghosts of former occupants might hide themselves in the daytime, and stalk forth when night conceals all our sacrilegious improvements. ”

“ Why move his cot and awaken him? He has been ill. The fever spot is still upon his cheek. The quiet slumber he is now enjoying is the first he has had for many weary nights and days. How could a murderer hide with a sleeping child? ”

“ In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. ”

“ "You can not escape me!" he roared. "Lead me into a trap and I'll pile the heads of your kinsmen at your feet. Hide from me and I'll tear apart the mountains to find you! I'll follow you to hell and beyond hell!" ”

“ In plenty of meat, of bed and body clothes, and health of men may it ever abound!" Then each of the party singed in the fire a little bit of the hide which was tied to his staff; and having done so he applied the singed hide to the nose of every person and of every domestic animal belonging to the house. This was imagined to secure them from diseases and other misfortunes, particularly from witchcraft, throughout the ensuing year. The whole ceremony was called _calluinn_ because of the great noise made in beating the hide. ”

“ Antonyms: HIDE. Synonyms:
Hide is the general term, including all the rest, signifying to put out of sight or beyond ready observation or approach; a thing may be hidden by intention, by accident, or by the imperfection of the faculties of the one from whom it is hidden; in their games, children hide the slipper, or hide themselves from each other; a man unconsciously hides a picture from another by standing before it, or hides a thing from himself by laying something else over it. Even an unconscious object may hide another ”

“ We shall walk about till it’s dark, and then creep under one of the arches, or on to a doorstep, if nobody don’t turn us away; but most often we get turned away from one house after another, or the police sees us, and then we has to hide away as fast as we can. ”

“ These, together with the dogs, now grown fat and good-natured with the abundance in the camp, were its only tenants. Still it presented a busy and bustling scene. In all quarters the meat, hung on cords of hide, was drying in the sun, and around the lodges the squaws, young and old, were laboring on the fresh hides that were stretched upon the ground, scraping the hair from one side and the still adhering flesh from the other, and rubbing into them the brains of the buffalo, in order to render them soft and pliant. ”

“ Except the dogs, the most active and noisy tenants of the camp were the old women, ugly as Macbeth's witches, with their hair streaming loose in the wind, and nothing but the tattered fragment of an old buffalo-robe to hide their shriveled limbs. The day of their favoritism passed two generations ago; now the heaviest labors of the camp devolved upon them; they must harness the horses, pitch the lodges, dress the buffalo-robes, and bring in meat for the hunters. ”

“ How could creatures shaped like men prove themselves such fiends, such hideous devils of malignity? It sickened me with horror, and I shrank from those dead bodies as if each had been a grim and threatening ghost. ”

“ When the wind arose, there was a howling and groaning all through the house as if whole hosts of spirits were haunting it, and they entered visibly into the dreams of the poor agonized lady, and drove her toward dizzy abysses with their grotesquely hideous faces and mutilated figures. ”

“ The eerie child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands, the wrinkled fingers that clutch the old letters, the faintly outlined wraiths of the man and woman in old-world garb with ruffles, lace, and buckles, the hideous phantom of the drowned man, the dark figure with malignant serpent eyes, shadow forth the story hinted at in the letters found in an old drawer. ”

“ Kneeling there alone in the strange hiding-place, I was possessed by an intolerable longing to escape with these glittering things, and to live somewhere in secret, to fondle and cherish their unearthly fires. It was a thirst, an appetite, the explanation of all the terrible digging and delving, the sweat and the exhaustion of the mine... it was something akin to the hypnotism that the glittering eye of the serpent has for its victim, a desire, a peril rooted deep in the hearts of men, one of the most mysterious things in our mysterious spirit. ”

“ In the jargon one does not sleep, ‘on pionce.’ Notice with what energy that word expresses the uneasy slumbers of the tracked, tired, suspicious animal called thief, which, as soon as it is in safety, sinks down and rolls into the abysses of deep and necessary sleep, with the powerful wings of suspicion constantly spread over it—an awful repose, comparable to that of the wild beast, which sleeps and snores, but whose ears nevertheless remain ever watchful. ”

“ My attention being drawn to a bright object in one corner of my room, I sat up in bed and looked at it, when to my horror I saw a spherical mass of vibrating, yellow-green light suddenly materialise into the round head of Something half human, half animal, and wholly evil! ”

“ I am acutely conscious of the nearness of some mystery, of some overwhelming Presence. The very air seems pregnant with terror. I sit huddled, and just listen, intently. Still, there is no sound. Nature, herself, seems dead. ”

“ Like a flash of lightning came a jagged line of fire down the blank wall opposite him, a line that remained, that grew wider, that let a pale cold light into the room, showing him now all its details,—the empty fireplace, where a thin smoke rose in a spiral from a bit of charred wood, the mass of the great bed, and, in the very middle, black against the curious brightness, the armored man, or ghost, or devil, standing, not suspended, beneath the rusty hook. ”

“ Two women, total strangers to me, united in an unceasing watch upon me in my room! I own that the sense of mystery which this discovery brought struck me at the moment as being fully as uncanny and as unsettling to contemplate as the idea of a spirit haunting walls in which I was destined for a while to live, breathe and sleep. However, as soon as I had drawn the shade and lighted the gas, I forgot the whole thing, and not till I was quite ready for bed, and my light again turned low, did I feel the least desire to take another peep at that mysterious window. ”

“ And have you received the message, or something purporting to be the message?”
“Not exactly, but there have been indications of a strange and terrible presence in that house—an elusive, disembodied entity that, while not a creature of flesh and blood, exercises an uncanny power over material objects as well as living creatures.” ”

“ Dear little lad, in this darkness may there be no fear! For these shadows of the twilight—which too long have been chased like common miscreants with lamp and candle—are really friendly beings and they wait to romp with you. Because thieves have walked in darkness, shall darkness be called a thief? Rather, let the dark hours take their repute from the countless gracious spirits that are abroad—the quieter fancies that flourish when the light has gone—the gentle creatures that leave their hiding when the sun has set. ”

“ And after seventeen days' march I came to a settlement of Indians who are called Querechos, who travel around with these cows, who do not plant, and who eat the raw flesh and drink the blood of the cows they kill, and they tan the skins of the cows, with which all the people of this country dress themselves here. They have little field tents made of the hides of the cows, tanned and greased, very well made, in which they live while they travel around near the cows, moving with these. ”

“ As the perspiration bursts in great beads of moisture from your brow, you hear the faint hum of circling wings, faint at first, but ever growing shriller and more acute—hiss, zip—as the invisible fiend circles round his prostrate victim. ”

“ I can look round my vast and solitary room without fancying a ghost or an assassin in every corner, and listen to the raving and lamenting of the storm, without imagining I hear in every gust the shrieks of wailing spirits, or the groans of murdered travellers ”

“ Houses call ye them? Whited sepulchres, young lady, whited sepulchres. Trust not all that seems to glisten. Fair though it seems, 'tis but the product of disease—even as is the pearl in your hair, young lady, that glitters in the mirror yonder,—not more specious than is all,—ay, all ye have seen to-night."
As my strange visitor pronounced these words, I instinctively turned my gaze to a large old-fashioned mirror that leaned from the wall of the chamber. 'Twas but for a moment. But when I again turned my head, my visitant was no longer there! ”

“ The real danger was simply that this excellent hiding place might be located, and every hiding place which was discovered, narrowed their resources for escape and hiding when they should next be pressed by the man hunters. ”

“ As I shrank from the danger without,
And recoiled from the horror within.
When lo! at the window a shape,
A creature of infinite dread;
A thing with the face of an ape,
And with eyes like the eyes of the dead. ”

“ Are we not all children who shrink from entering a haunted chamber, and shudder in the presence of death? Well, the mountain was haunted, and death seemed near. We forgot fatigue, forgot cold, to yield to this mysterious terror, which daunted us as no peril could do, and froze us with vague presentiment of the unknown. ”

“ Paler than the dead who lay so still in their quiet rest in the churchyard; colder than the very touch of death itself; rigid as the body when the breath has gone forever; there he stood, the epitome of awful fear. With eyeballs starting from their sockets, open mouth, dilated nostrils, he seemed the very personification of incredulous horror. ”

“ Not a light was to be seen in any of the houses, nor was there any sound to be heard save that produced by the falling rain, and that soughing of the wind—not unlike the sighs and moans of some uneasy spirit unable to rest in the grave. ”

“ The thief does not come with strident voice, with thunderous noise, nor in open daylight, but between the midnight and the morn, with shodden feet, silently, softly, and takes the treasure while all in the house are sunken in the depths of sleep. ”

“ The presence in the room of another than himself was a physical impossibility, unless, indeed, there was, after all, a fourth dimension, into which as a man passes from sunlight into shadow, the intruder had stepped perhaps now regarding him sardonically from that invisible plan: A living ghost!
Absurd! And yet, there was that other fact—he had seen it: the silent, the voiceless, yet moving witness—the positive and irrefutable proof of a presence other than his own. ”

“ We gets a quantity of letters too from folk asking to see the house. Have I ever seen the ghost? No, I cannot rightly say as how I have, but I’ve heard him often. There’s strange noises and bangings going on at nights, just like the moving about of heavy furniture on the floors, and knockings on the walls; the noises used to keep me awake at first, but now I’ve got used to them and they don’t trouble me. ”

“ The idea of a hunter disguising himself in the skin of an animal, or even of one animal assuming the disguise of another,11 are familiar in every part of the world, and if that is so, then the step from hiding under the skin of a large animal to that of hiding in a wooden animal is not very great. ”

“ The position of this house is so remote, its precincts are so well guarded, that, even if your friends were to discover your hiding-place—which is most unlikely—and were in hot cry hither, I should have ample leisure to devise and carry out even the most lingering form of death for you. ”

“ The splintering of glass mingled its small sound with an ominous thud in the thick darkness. It was the end of all things; the falling of an impenetrable curtain over a horror half sensed, yet all the greater for its mystery.
The silence—the terror—the unspeakable sense [Pg 71] of doom which gripped them all was not broken by a heart-beat. All listened for a stir, a movement where they could see nothing. ”

“ But the demon of curiosity holds fast and as soon as their eyes had become sufficiently used to the darkness to notice the faint line of light marking the sill of a door directly in front of them, they all plunged forward in spite of the fear I have mentioned. ”

“ What white shadow comes yonder, though, moving under the high hedge in the darkness? It might almost be one of those wraiths of which the country-folk speak with bated breath—the awful Something seen moving in the dusk from the house where a man has died. ”

“ Therefore, any who escaped in the attack on the house may have hidden themselves from the first search, and we may possibly come across them at night. They would assuredly never leave their hiding-places until darkness had fallen. ”

“ Yet it is a good hiding-place for them that are in trouble; and many a night have little Peter and I sheltered us beneath the ruined roof, with little fear of either ghosts or Injuns; though, truly, we have sometimes heard strange and mournful noises among the trees around us. ”

“ Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow,—malignant, serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. ”

“ If you strike one rock with another you can see its ghost as a spark of fire. When the clouds gather they are the ghosts of water; when angry they shine with lightning light, and when pleased the clouds shine as rainbows. These illustrations will serve to show how thoroughly, in the notion of the savage, ghosts and bodies are differentiated.
The universe being considered as bodies and ghosts, and the bodies being considered as inert and the ghosts as active principles, we have the fundamental theory of savage reasoning. ”