"Piercingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again at the window where Lyonors still watched, and hesitating no longer, blew the horn so piercingly and so long, that he woke all the echoes of ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... who had left me more than twenty years ago with an only child to bring up. But the bills offering the reward assured me that Norman and Krill are one and the same man. Therefore," she drew herself up and looked piercingly at the young man, "I have come to see after the property. I understand from the papers that my daughter is an ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... sex were debarred from joining in the festivities, they were represented on the eventful evening in question by a Mrs Square, an angular washer-woman with only one eye (but that was a piercingly black one), who dwelt in the same court, and who consented to act the double part of tea-maker and doorkeeper for that occasion. As most of the decorations and wreaths had been made and hung up by May Maylands ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... before him and watched it, and she saw that his eyes were piercingly bright, with the brightness of burnished steel. She could not turn her own away from them, though her whole soul shrank from that stark scrutiny. In anguish of mind she faced him, helpless, unutterably ashamed, while that burning ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... dead do not speak in syllables that an ordinary human ear can hear. And Colin heard his own name spoken in accents piercingly clear and sweet. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of Franklin Poynter's arms, fainted quietly. Sandra shrieked piercingly. The four men stared, goggle-eyed. Temple and Teddy, as though by common thought, burrowed their ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... curiously at the speaker. A tall, slender man he was, with a face that might have been any age,—a mask-like face, smooth and long, and devoid of hair as it was of wrinkles; an arresting face, with its curving nostrils, thin-lipped, close-shut mouth, high, prominent brow, and small, piercingly-bright eyes; quick eyes, that glinted between their red-rimmed, hairless lids, old in their experience of men and the ways of men. For the rest, he was clad in a rich yet sober habit, unrelieved by any color save for the gleaming seals at his fob, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... mourningly over the large leaves of the chestnut-tree beneath which they stood: the serene stillness of the evening seemed gone; an unquiet and melancholy spirit was loosened abroad, and the chill of the sudden change which is so frequent to our climate, came piercingly upon them. Godolphin was silent for some moments, for the thought found a ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I trust, will be to learn to drive, said the Judge, who bad busied himself in throwing the buck, together with several other articles of baggage, from his own sleigh into the snow; here are seats for you all, gentlemen; the evening grows piercingly cold, and the hour approaches for the service of Mr. Grant; we will leave friend Jones to repair the damages, with the assistance of Agamemnon, and hasten to a warm fire. Here, Dickon, are a few articles of Bess trumpery, that you can throw into your sleigh when ready; and there ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... whisper, "You have shut up our clever friend, many thanks." Everything was hushed in the room; the only sound was the faint crackling of the wax-candles, and sometimes the tap of a hand on the table, and an exclamation or reckoning of points; and the rich torrent of the nightingale's song, powerful piercingly sweet, poured in at the window, together with the ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... have it on the plantation?"-Mr. M'Fadden gives his preacher a piercingly fierce look-"that's just where ye won't have 't. Have any kind o' song-book ye' wants; only larn 'em to other niggers, so they can put in the chorus once in a while. Now, old buck (I'm a man o' genius, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from under the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Stanton glanced piercingly at her. Her proud, cold beauty and distinguished appearance stirred a momentary feeling of admiration in the "Iron Secretary's" breast. He half rose, then ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... shining brightly, and warmed the stones where they sat, but the air seemed to be piercingly cold, and Mr Burne shivered more than once, and got ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... the beach, but before they had finished their work, the waves reached the place where the sledges were secured, and they were with difficulty saved from being washed into the sea. About nine o'clock all of them crept into the snow-house, thanking God for this place of refuge; for the wind was piercingly cold, and so violent, that it required great strength to stand ...
— Dangers on the Ice Off the Coast of Labrador • Anonymous
... every sentence that fell from the lips of the lady from London, trying harder to understand than she had ever tried to do anything in her life. She put all her quick, young mind and avid soul into the struggle to receive, though piercingly aware every instant of the difference between her attire and that of the women who had bidden her there, noting acutely variations between their language and hers, their voices, their gestures and hers. These were the women of Gray Stoddard's ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... know. We also have cuttings from your hair and your beard; we have the parings of your nails, five cubic centimeters of your spinal fluid and a scraping from your liver. We have your body through those, nor can you take it out of our reach. Your name gives us your soul." He looked at Hanson piercingly. "Shall I tell you what it would be like for your soul to live in the muck of a swamp ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... that could whistle a tune So piercingly pure and sweet, That tears would fall from the eyes of the moon In dewdrops at its feet; And the winds would sigh at the sweet refrain, Till they swooned in an ecstacy, To waken again in a hurricane Of ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Though Madrid is situated between two and three thousand feet above the level of the sea, it does not seem to possess the advantages usually following such a position, the climate being scorchingly hot in summer and piercingly cold in winter. Thus, in point of climate and location, the Spanish capital seems to be ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... square shouldered and broad chested. His head was manly and handsome, his nose aquiline, his eyes large, dark, and piercingly bright, and shaded by strongly-marked eyebrows. His air was grave and thoughtful, and in strong contrast to that of the merry and buoyant Pisani. His temper was more equable, but his character was as impulsive as that of the admiral. He was now forty-five years of age—ten years the junior of Pisani. ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... forced it into his belly low down through his belt. And as when a strong man with a sharp axe smiting behind the horns of an ox of the homestead cleaveth the sinew asunder, and the ox leapeth forward and falleth, so leapt Aretos forward and fell on his back; and the spear in his entrails very piercingly quivering unstrung his limbs. And Hector hurled at Automedon with his bright spear, but he looked steadfastly on the bronze javelin as it came at him and avoided it, for he stooped forward, and the long spear fixed ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... certain responsibility for the conditions of the settlers. I felt related to them, an intolerant part of them. Once fairly out among the fields of northern Illinois everything became so homely, uttered itself so piercingly to me that nothing less than song could express my sense of joy, of power. This ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... outdone, the Hawks, led by Walter Osborne and Blake Merton, lifted their voices in a shrill "Kree-kree-eee," which rose piercingly above the Wolves' "How-ooo-ooo!" Then the Otters and the Foxes added their characteristic cries to the din, and away off in the shadows where the contagion of the noise penetrated, Indian Joe gave vent to a ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... that really perhaps the reason why some nice ladies did not like Vincent was just because of his habit of looking at them so hard. He could have no idea how piercingly bright his eyes looked when he fixed them on a speaker like that. And now Mrs. Crittenden was looking back at him, and would notice it. He could understand how a refined lady would feel as though somebody were almost ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... temperature is only 58 deg. Fahrenheit and the winter about 45 deg.; so that there is little oppressive heat, and frost is very rare. But in spite of these figures the islands can become sultry under a blaze of sunshine; and in winter the winds are sometimes piercingly keen. No trees will grow unless protected from this wind; yet the tropical vegetation that flourishes in the open air conclusively proves the remarkable equability of the climate; while rainfall, which is seldom excessive, is quickly absorbed or evaporated. To the lover of history, legend, and romance ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... seemed but a matter of a few breaths of piercingly cold air before we were circling Hazlehurst Field. A brief glide and we were coasting on the ground toward the exact spot we had left. I looked ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... warm wind from the south. Snow melting. At noon there was a sudden change of the wind to the northwest, which rose to a tempest, overturning trees and making most doleful sounds as it swept through the woods, where it broke off branches by the thousand. Became piercingly cold. Such quick changes cannot ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... and uttered a whistle, piercingly shrill and high; and instantly she became the object of intense astonishment on the part of the other diners. She was quite oblivious to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Madrid was a fortified outpost of Toledo—"imperial" Toledo. Though it is situated between two and three thousand feet above sea-level, it does not seem to possess the advantages usually following such position, the climate being scorchingly hot in summer and piercingly cold in winter. So that one comes to the conclusion that in point of climate, as well as in location, the ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... when he smiled. His smile was like his face, large, and smooth, and fat. His eyes, which were light gray—white, Hughie called them—were shifty, avoiding the gaze that sought to read them, or piercingly keen, according as he ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... still shone piercingly down, but they read but little, for the dancer's were firmly closed against them, even while the dark cropped head nodded a ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... all!" cried Steele, piercingly. "I call on you to witness the arrest of a criminal opposed by Sampson, mayor of Linrock. It will be recorded in the report sent to the Adjutant General at Austin. Sampson, I warn ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... nerve-disturbing factors Thompson suffered from the heat. A perverted dignity, nurtured in a hard-shell, middle-class environment, prevented him from stripping to his undershirt. The sun's rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in the North. The ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... thought. "Mary" was gone off on her own independent course; Martha alone remained—still and quiet for ever, in the cemetery beyond the Porte de Louvain. The weather, too, for the first few weeks after Charlotte's return, had been piercingly cold; and her feeble constitution was always painfully sensitive to an inclement season. Mere bodily pain, however acute, she could always put aside; but too often ill-health assailed her in a part far more to be dreaded. Her depression of spirits, when she ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... man struck against him, scanned him piercingly, and then shuffled off. He was muffled up, but Andrew wondered if he had not seen him ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... town with the opposite shore, each of them being about a mile long. The weather is so piercingly cold, that we did not venture across, but we took a long walk up the banks, of the river. The town of Harrisburgh is very small, consisting of only three or four streets parallel to the river, intersected ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... very close against hers, the scent of the heliotrope had grown on the sudden stronger and more piercingly sweet, perhaps because the sun had vanished behind the distant line of trees and a little breeze from the oncoming night was blowing across the flower-beds towards them. The quick-gathering twilight seemed to be shutting ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... like a tigress, so light was her step, and passed her hand over his eyes, so as to close them. Then, bending her gaze one moment piercingly on his face, she sharply tapped his wrist and uttered ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Piercingly she looked at me. Her eyes narrowed to slits and stabbed me with their spite. Her dark face grew turgid with impotent anger. As I stood there she was like to have killed me. Then like a flash her expression changed. With a dirty bejewelled hand she smoothed ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... speak sentences, And wisdom insupportably complete, Why should it only say the long night through, In mimicry of you, - "A cup of chocolate, One farthing is the rate, You drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw!" Oh, of all sentences, Piercingly incomplete! Why did you teach that fatal mouth to draw, Child, impermissible awe, From your old trivialness? Why have you done me this Most unsustainable wrong, And into Death's control Betrayed the secret places of my soul? Teaching ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... were growing very dark; the wind was rising and driving black clouds athwart the sky; the atmosphere was becoming piercingly cold; the snow, that during the middle of the day had thawed, was freezing hard. Yet Marian hurried fearlessly and gayly on over the rugged and slippery stubble fields that lay between the cottage and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the house, it was built of slabs, which, erected while green, and on account Of the heat, had shrunk until many of the cracks were sufficiently wide to insert one's arm. On Monday—after the rain—the wind, which disturbed us through them, was piercingly cold, but as the week advanced summer and drought regained their pitiless sway, and we were often sunburnt by the rough gusts which filled the room with such clouds of dust and grit that we were forced to cover our heads until ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... speculative gaze upon some knotty point in his calculation. This long, sideways look happened to fall upon Lydia, and she turned cold before the profound unconsciousness of her existence in those eyes apparently fixed so piercingly upon her. She had a quick fancy that the blank wall of abstraction at which that vacant stare was directed really and palpably ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of Grecian art, radiant with love, glorious in self-reliant power; with lips bent firm to resist oppression, and melting into soft curves of passion and of pity; with deep, far-seeing eyes, gazing piercingly into the secrets of the unknown, and resting lovingly on the beauties around him; with hands strong to work in the present; with heart full of hope which the future shall realise; making earth glad with his labour and beautiful with his skill—this, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... teens, but there were years of hard life in his face. He slapped the dust in little puffs from his gloves. At sight of Kells he threw the gloves aloft and took no note of them when they fell. "STRIKE!" he called, piercingly. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... his poor injured brain had been working in the interval, for when he was quite conscious, he looked at me piercingly with an agonized confusion which I shall never forget, and said, "I must not deceive myself. It was no dream, but all a grim reality." Then his eyes roved round the room. As they caught sight of ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... New Yorker and the man from Topaz City shook hands with alcoholic gravity. The elevated crashed raucously, surface cars hummed and clanged, cabmen swore, newsboys shrieked, wheels clattered ear-piercingly. The New Yorker conceived a happy thought, with which he aspired to clinch the pre-eminence of ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... the child at one time screamed piercingly, in very high tones, from pain. When hungry and desiring milk, he said with perfect distinctness, mae, ae, [)u]ae, [)u]ae[)e]; when contented he would say oerroe too, as at an earlier period. The ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... The night was piercingly cold, and, although there was not a breath of wind, the keen and frosty air penetrated into the lonely signal-box. We spoke little, and both of us were doubtless absorbed by our own thoughts and speculations. ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... entire tract lying between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great extremes of temperature,—the summers being hot, and the winters piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C., about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... and strongly limbed man of about fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging two piercingly bright black-eyes, and features which would be heavy, were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of the facial muscles, sending a never-ending series of varying expressions across the dark, swarthy visage. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... His swarthy face showed dark lines, like cords, under the surface. His little eyes were exceedingly prominent and glittering. To Madeline his face seemed to be a bold, handsome mask through which his eyes piercingly betrayed the evil nature of ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... pale light spread on the north-eastern horizon. The short wintry day was breaking. The sea was calm. The air was piercingly cold. A thin coating of frost covered the Capella's deck. Ross and his chum were heartily glad of their thick pilot-coats, mufflers, and woollen "mitts", as they sheltered behind the breast-work ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer was then promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the commendatore's patriarchal ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... grew a bit pale, Caleb Parish returned from his varied duties and laid a hand on his wife's forehead to find it fever-hot. The woman opened her eyes and essayed a smile, but at the same moment there rode piercingly through the still air the long and hideous challenge of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... I was unconscious I do not know, but it was daylight when I opened my eyes. It was piercingly cold—snow was falling, and although I lay in Phillip's arms with his coat over me, while he sat in his shirt-sleeves holding me. On the other side stood Kenneth Moore. He also was in his shirt-sleeves. His coat also had been devoted to covering me. Both those men were freezing ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the dim haze of the distance; and to the left the everlasting snows of Snaehatten. A few wretched cabins are scattered at remote intervals over the desert plains, in which the shepherds seek shelter from the inclemency of the weather, which even in midsummer is often piercingly raw. Herds of rattle, sheep, and goats were grazing over the rocky wastes of the Fjeld. Reindeer are sometimes seen in this vicinity, but not often within sight of the road. The only vegetation produced here is reindeer moss, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... a distinctly audible flutter throughout the room. Here, at last, was something definite to support the general contention that "we aren't through with the Germans yet." A lady up in front leaned across the aisle and whispered piercingly ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... first time, so overwhelmingly had my discoveries occupied my attention, that the wind had freshened and was blowing briskly and piercingly. When I had first started upon the ascent of the slope, the wind had merely wrinkled the swell as the large bodies ran; but those wrinkles had become little seas, which flashed into foam after a short race, and the whole surface of the ocean was a ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... enough to bury them all, covering them over with the loose earth. Her task done, she returned to the house to sleep all day, but when night came again the whole piteous performance was repeated: the pups were dug up, and she passed the long, piercingly cold night—for it was in the depth of winter—trying to keep them warm, and uttering, as before, distressing cries. Yet a third time the whole thing was repeated; but after the third night, when the dog came home to sleep, the dead pups were taken ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... sing to him. It had sung loud enough in the streets last Wednesday; it had hymned the procession of his dreams and the loud tumultuous orgy of his passions; and why could he not hear it now? For here his senses were satisfied to the full. Never had Nature's material loveliness been more vividly, piercingly present to him. The warm air was like a touch, palpable yet divine. He lay face downwards on the earth and pressed it with his hands; he smelt the good smell of the grass and young bracken, and the sweet almond-scented blossom of the furze. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... had been keen, and piercingly cold. The whole lift of heaven seemed a dome of iron. Black and frost-bound was the earth under the cruel east wind. Now the wind had dropped, and as the darkness had gathered in, the weather-wise old labourers prophesied snow. The sounds ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to play and the music floated in to us. It was Traumerei. Mother Bab's tired face relaxed as she leaned back to listen to the piercingly sweet melody. David looked at me—I knew he was asking whether the player ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... who took up the tale. She had been listening with growing excitement, her eyes fixed piercingly upon William. "He's got a beard!" she cried, alluding not to her brother, but to the fabled Iowan. "I heard Willie tell ole ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... pitched in octaves. You saw brown men binding the vines, and on Sundays you heard them talking and laughing, while the boccia balls rolled with dull thuds over the well-trodden soil in the open fields where they played. Those voices and sounds were piercingly sweet and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... features here. The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures—one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of humankind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... piercingly cold, and at any moment the snow might again come down and overwhelm me. The rough training I had gone through, however, had taught me never to despair, but to struggle on to the last. I had no thoughts of doing otherwise, though every limb ached, and I had scarcely strength to draw ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... his luck. With this determination, he rang up the residence of Mrs. Oldham. There was a moment or two of delay, and then Marcia's voice answered. Hayden mentioned the beauty of the day—it was overcast—the charm of this soft and mild weather—an east wind blew piercingly—and diffidently assumed that after a day in her studio, she would as usual take the air by walking home through ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that had held her and Robert, that, holding them, had taken on the ten days' splendour of their passion. It stood, divinely still in the perishing violet light, a world withdrawn and unsubstantial, yet piercingly, ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... oil, figs, dried grapes, and wine. They had vessels and vestments for the Holy Sacrifice. Their serious want was a dearth of water at that season, but they relied on Divine Providence to give them by miracle, if in no other way, a supply. The place was piercingly cold too ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... it, Cap'n, don't you do it!" called Miss Letty piercingly. "I don't want 'em to bid on gran'ther's books. I want them books myself, if I have to work my fingers ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... from the crossbow at that moment penetrated into her heart, the person he addressed could not have been more transfixed than at this speech. She started—an inquiring and tearful doubt rose into her eyes, as they settled piercingly upon his own; but the information they met with there needed no further word of assurance from his lips. He was a stern tyrant—one, however, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of the sunset gun instantly brought the deserted city back to life. Lights began to twinkle—in tea houses, along the river, among the indigo plantations—streets filled with ghostly costumes and jostling camels, and everywhere voices would celebrate the happy return of dusk so strangely and piercingly that they made Matthews think of "battles far away." This was most so when he listened to them, out of sight of unfriendly eyes, from his own garden. Above the extraordinary rumor that drifted to him through the arches of the bridge he heard the wailing of pipes, raucous ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the old chief in command of the band, but it was two whole days since he had eaten anything, and he had a faded, worn, drawn, hungry appearance, until you came to his black, brilliant eyes. These had an unusual fire in them, and glanced quickly, restlessly, piercingly in all directions. He might have been even good-looking if he had been well fed and well dressed, and he was tall and strongly built. Just such Indian boys grow up into the chiefs and leaders who make themselves famous, ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... looking piercingly at us—and no doubt we must have seemed a miserable and dejected crew enough. "Who are these? Not the first-fruits ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... train shrilled piercingly through the air and, startled back to a realisation of the present, Ann glanced ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... venison collops whiff to us across the blue air. Against that stump—is it a real stump, or only a painted canvas affair from the property man's warehouse?—surely that is a demijohn of cider? And we can hear, presently, that most piercingly tremulous of all songs rising in rich chorus, with the plenitude of pathos that masculines best compass after a ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... closing time, and several friends of Garstin's, models and others, who had been scattered about in the cafe, and who were on their way out, stopped to hear what was going on. Some adherents of Jennings also came up. The discussion became animated. Voices waxed roaringly loud or piercingly shrill. The little Bolshevik, suddenly losing her round faced calm and the shepherdess look in her eyes, burst forth in a voluble outcry in praise of the beauty of anarchy, expressing herself in broken English, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... moon was shining brightly, and the morning was piercingly cold. We soon entered on a sandy hollow way, emerging from which we passed by a strange-looking and large edifice, standing on a high bleak sand-hill on our left. We were speedily overtaken by five or six men on horseback, riding at a rapid pace, each with a long gun slung at his saddle, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ledge, and landing on the beach a mass of broken bones. Then behind them, along the brink, black and gigantic against the blue sky-line, appeared a group of the Mammoths. They waved their long trunks, and trumpeted piercingly, but hesitated to ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... I could stand it no longer; I rushed to the window, determined to stay there till the mystery was explained, for I felt convinced that I should find it there. I directed my eyes piercingly to every part of the curtains; and at length I perceived that the window had been let down at the top. I closed it, arranged the curtains differently, and then, in some trepidation, returned to my shadow. It had disappeared; ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... left the museum, which, by the by, was piercingly chill, as if the multitude of statues radiated cold out of their marble substance. We might have gone to see the pictures in the Palace of the Conservatori, and S——-, whose receptivity is unlimited and forever fresh, would willingly have done ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a rational person accepts the world as mixed of good and evil with a decent satisfaction and a decent endurance. But this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to be defective. It is, I know, very common in this age; it was perfectly put in those quiet lines of Matthew Arnold which are more piercingly blasphemous than the shrieks ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... mountains by a deep, black defile which pierced the range. For a day and night they wound through this, hardly pausing to rest, for it had become piercingly cold. Moreover, as Silawayo explained, even when the weather was at its highest stage of sultriness elsewhere, in the mountains the changes were sudden and great. To be snowed up in this pass was too serious a matter ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Martha," said the venerable Father Ephraim, fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon them, "if ye can conscientiously undertake this charge, speak, that the brethren may not doubt of ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lady, not forgetting to lard them with the most extravagant encomiums on her beauty and merit. These he sings in the night below her window accompanied with his lute, or sometimes with a whole band of music. The more piercingly cold the air, the more the lady's heart is supposed to be thawed with the patient sufferance of her lover, who, from night to night, frequently continues his exercises for many hours, heaving the deepest sighs, and casting the most piteous looks towards the window; at which if his goddess at last ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... There was, indeed, when she looked up, a blush still visible on her dark features; but their melancholy and languid expression had given place to that of wild and restless vivacity, which was most common to them. Her eyes gleamed with more than their wonted fire, and her glances were more piercingly wild and unsettled than usual. To Julian's inquiry, she answered, by laying her hand on her heart—a motion by which she always indicated the Countess—and rising, and taking the direction of her apartment, she made a sign ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... straight upon her; they were piercingly green in the morning light. "Your visit," he said, "is a direct violation of my orders. I must trouble you to ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... obliterated, and the guides sometimes refuse to accompany travelers. Moreover, violent storms often rage in the upper regions of the mountain, and the wind acquires a force which it is difficult to withstand, and is at the same time piercingly cold. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Her voice came piercingly from her temporary seclusion. "Where'd they put it? It ain't here in sight! ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... something to my graciousness; perhaps he was ashamed of their reading, and indeed I never heard anything like it. "Oh yes," I said, resigned, but outwardly smiling kindly with the self-control natural to woman. They sang, or rather screamed, a hymn, and so frightfully loud and piercingly that the very windows shook. "My dear," explained the Man of Wrath, when I complained one Sunday on our way home from church of the terrible quality and volume of the music, "it frightens ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... curtains and shrank back in sweet surprise. Right before her stood Trenck—the Apollo of Louise von Kleist, the Hercules and the Ganymede of Madame von Brandt, the beloved of the Princess Amelia—Trenck stood with folded arms immovable, and gazed piercingly in the crowd of maskers. Perhaps he sought for Amelia; perhaps he was sorrowful because she ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... was it you wanted to tell me?" He eyed his son-in-law piercingly. "Not a cent over twenty ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... you never do.... Certainly I never thought I should devour a book about parsons—my desires lying toward—"time upon once there was a dreadful pirate"—but I am back again five and thirty years and feeling softened and subdued with memories you have wakened up so piercingly—and I ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to attempt. If he did not possess bodily strength, however, he was not without presence of mind. For whilst Reilly and his captors were engaged in a fierce and powerful conflict, he placed his fore-finger and thumb in his mouth, from which proceeded a whistle so piercingly loud and shrill that it awoke the midnight echoes ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... says, 'Mr. Bates spoke to me in the water, and said, "I shall soon be all right," and I thought he would too. The water was piercingly cold, and I went and changed my clothes, and when I returned to see how the poor man was, Dr. Lowther had pronounced him dead. I never felt such a sense of distress as I did at that moment; I did my very best to save him; indeed, ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... fearful blow, thrashed him with it until the clothes were cut from his back, and his shoulders barred with a close network of livid and bloody weals. The miserable cowardly wretch screamed at first more piercingly even than poor May had done; but Bob commanded silence so imperatively and with such frightful threats that Ralli was fairly cowed into submitting to the rest of his fearful punishment in silence, save for such low moans as he was utterly ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... of them with great lumps of food still in their mouths. But they were confused, and all went into the wrong places. Everything began to fall with dreadful crashes, the fat woman shrieked piercingly, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... caused them in December to pause and turn back. It was now clothed with the early verdure of spring, and plentifully stocked with game. Still, when obliged to bivouac on its bare surface, without any covering, by a scanty fire of buffalo-chips, they found the night-blasts piercingly cold. On one occasion a herd of buffalo having strayed near their evening camp, they killed three of them merely for their hides, wherewith to make a shelter ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... man and now over sixty, had a distinct presence. He wore excellent gray clothes of the same shade as his hair, and out of this neutrality of tint his bright, brown eyes sparkled piercingly. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... and unhappy looks, I recognized the unfortunate Heir to the Russian Throne. Someone called him in—and he went slowly into the house. Two Reds passed near the women smoking pipes and dragging the rifles by their bayonettes. They both looked piercingly at the women and exchanged a few words with each other. The women slowly moved toward the house. Their life must be a real torture within ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... the shattered window falling into the court below. He anticipated the porter's steps on the staircase and his knock at the door, and it was with an intense relief and triumph that he saw the bottle strike the curtain and fall harmless. He would win yet. Lily screamed piercingly. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... remains. Twice the Great Frederick had sojourned in the palace; visiting his sister Louise, the wife of the Wild Margrave, and more than once it had welcomed her next neighbor and sister Wilhelmina, the Margravine of Baireuth, whose autobiographic voice, piercingly plaintive and reproachful, seemed to quiver in the air. Here, oddly enough, the spell of the Wild Margrave weakened in the presence of his portrait, which signally failed to justify his fame of furious tyrant. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... piercingly at her. He, a Christian, had risked much to bring her this message. Dare he trust this woman, known to be a devout worshiper of Egypt's gods? Would she not betray ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... not show the usual restlessness and distress after a dry and exhausting day. Gale carried his saddle blankets and bags into the lee of a little greasewood-covered mound, from around which the wind had cut the soil, and here, in a wash, he risked building a small fire. By this time the wind was piercingly cold. Gale's hands were numb and he moved them to and fro in the little blaze. Then he made coffee in a cup, cooked some slices of bacon on the end of a stick, and took a couple of hard biscuits from a saddlebag. Of these his meal consisted. After that he removed the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... at her piercingly with eyes that gleamed from amid a bunch of wrinkles, then motioned with a skinny arm in the direction of an awning where shade was to be had from the dangerous early sun-rays. She made no move to enter through the arch until her mistress ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... and piercingly on the doorstep outside. He was tired of the cold stone and wanted his warm corner behind the stove. Thyra smiled grimly when she heard him. She had no intention of letting him in. She said she had always ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... three travelled abreast; Spadevil in the middle. The fog was so dense that it was impossible to see a hundred yards ahead. The ground was covered by the green snow. The wind blew in gusts from the Sant highlands and was piercingly cold. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the night—that very night, he realized with a jumping pulse—he was to go over the side of the Mirabelle and find out the channel, the Captain looked at him piercingly. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... turned and glared at me, And oh, that fishlike face of his was sinister to see: "Forgive me if I startled you; of course you think I'm queer; No doubt you wonder who I am, so solitary here; You question why the passers-by I piercingly review . . . Well, listen, my bibacious friend, I'll ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... hesitation, I accosted a stranger, whose appearance pleased me, and besought his assistance in my perplexity. He was a man of lofty bearing; his countenance was strong and benign as the western wind; he had a gentle smile, but eyes which piercingly regarded me. He was of superior beauty, and conducted himself as one having authority. He was much occupied, and hastening upon some evidently important errand; but he stopped at once, and gave his attention to me with the hearty interest ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... and let me have at least the consolation of shedding my tears in your bosom! Fear nothing for US, and"—O King, she is dying, and I believe knows it, though you will hope to the last! There is something piercingly tragical in those final Letters of Friedrich to his Wilhelmina, written from such scenes of wreck and storm, and in Wilhelmina's beautiful ever-loving quiet Answers, dictated when she could no longer write. ["July 18th" is the last ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... expressed themselves in his features and form. "His face was round, his brow square, ample," and deeply furrowed: "the temples projected much beyond the ears"; his eyes were "small rather than large," of a dark (some said horn) color and peered, piercingly, from under heavy brows. The flattened nose was the result of a blow from a rival apprentice. He evidently looked the part, though for such mental powers one of his colossal statues would seem ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... And then, piercingly through the thunderings of the copper shell, a voice broke in—Ianito's voice. "Dantor!" it shrieked. "At last I have found you. I need your help immediately. Wait there ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... than her arrival had been looked for, and at once all Paris was in a scramble of preparation. Laborers and artists worked night and day. The weather was piercingly cold. Indeed, no less than three hundred English were said to have died of colds contracted on the day of the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... a man of much natural dignity, ingenuity, honesty, and kind affection, as well as sound intellect and imagination.... He had a burst of genuine fun too.... His laugh was ever a hearty, low guffaw, and his tones in preaching would reach to the piercingly pathetic. No preacher ever went so into one's heart. He was a man essentially of little culture, of narrow sphere all his life. Such an intellect, professing to be educated, and yet ... ignorant in all that lies beyond the horizon in place or time I ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... chasm; crossed, and next moment stood in the inner cave the very embodiment of astonished consternation, for Branwen was gone, and in her place stood a little old woman, with a bowed form, and a puckered-up mouth, gazing at him with half-closed but piercingly dark eyes! ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... close her eyes; but she collected herself directly. She looked once, piercingly, at Manvers, then surrendered herself to him who touched her on the shoulder, turned, and went out of ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... there too—a soothing drowsiness stole over me, and I had the feeling that in another moment or two I should fall away into a delicious doze. And then, all of a sudden, I was roused wide awake again by hearing faintly, but quite distinctly, a long and piercingly shrill cry. ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... stayed leaning on the sill, breathing the fresh air and craning forward to catch sight of Mme Bron underneath. She could hear her broom wildly at work on the mildewed pantiles of the narrow court which was buried in shadow. A canary, whose cage hung on a shutter, was trilling away piercingly. The sound of carriages in the boulevard and neighboring streets was no longer audible, and the quiet and the wide expanse of sleeping sunlight suggested the country. Looking farther afield, her eye fell on the small buildings and glass roofs of the galleries in the passage and, beyond ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... his father lay Unconscious, and the mighty did not speak, But half in fear and half for wonderment Beheld. And yet again the dragon laughed, And leered at him and hissed; and Japhet strove Vainly to take away his spell-set eyes, And moved to go to him, till piercingly Crying out, "God! forbid it, God in heaven!" The dragon lowered his head, and shut his eyes As feigning sleep; and, suddenly released, He fell back staggering; and at noise of it, And clash of Japhet's weapons on the floor, And Japhet's voice crying out, "I loathe thee, snake! I hate ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... church in the air, and church-steeple piercing ever so high; and out of the heart of the mist leaped a brook, and to hear it at one moment, and then to have the sharp freezing silence in one's ear, was piercingly weird. It all tossed the mind in my head like hay on a pitchfork. I forgot the existence of everything but what I loved passionately,—and that had no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fearful get-up, and, involuntarily, I looked about me expecting to see people stopping, a crowd forming. But no one appeared to notice the little old woman except myself, and as she drew near I discovered that she wore spectacles and a fringe of iron-gray hair around her face. Her eyes were piercingly bright and on her lips was etched a sardonic smile. Not quite knowing how to explain my rude stare, I was preparing to turn in another direction, when the stranger accosted me, and in the voice of a man: "Perhaps you don't know ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... my summons a footman appeared (a fellow I remembered to have seen at the town house when I had called), and it struck me that, as I enquired if Lady Tressidy was at home, he eyed me more piercingly than a well-trained servant usually eyes ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... you?" the man cried to him piercingly. "Tell it an' git it over." Then, as Raven merely looked at him in a civil inquiry, "You've got suthin' to break, ain't ye? Break ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the end of it. Behind the screen was a bed, and on it lay, as I thought, the oldest woman on whom I ever set my eyes. Her face was all wrinkled up, yet there was a fresh colour in her cheeks, and her eyes, though much sunk, seemed piercingly bright. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... wherever it was required, that much sooner than could have been expected from one of his age, he stood before the King. Creeping Shadow, lifting her eyes eagerly, beheld a very ancient fairy, clad in deep scarlet. His beard was white as snow. His eyes were piercingly keen. Never had she seen anyone who looked at once so ancient and ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield |
