"Cowering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hymn—he was Dam, the smith. He led the singing, and as he stood there he bent his knees in time, and they all sang with him, with tremulous voices, each in his own key, of that which had passed over them. The notes forced their way through the parched, worn throats, cowering, as though afraid, now that they had flown into the light. Hesitatingly they unfurled their fragile, gauzy wings, and floated out into the room, up from the quivering lips. And under the roof they met with their hundreds of sisters, and their defilement fell from them. They became a jubilation, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... They were forlorn, So were the cowering inmates whom they held; A thriftless tribe, to shifts and leanness born, Ever complaining: infancy or eld Alike. But there was rent, or long ago Those cottage roofs ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... changes of temperature rendered it impossible to discard them altogether. For often the sun would be blazing at midday with a temperature of 60 deg. in the shade, and a few minutes later we would be cowering over the stove listening to the howling of the wind and the rattle of sleet against the wooden walls. This would last perhaps an hour or two, and then the sky would again become blue and cloudless, the sunshine as powerful as before. One day in early June is thus described ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... chattering, I was about to drop the Curtain, when, afar off, whether in or over some distant Quarter of the Town, I heard the same Voice, clearlie enow to recognise the Rhythm, though not the Words. I crept to Bed, chilled and awe-stricken; yet, after cowering awhile, and saying our ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... of agonising suspense, the elevator boy remained cowering in a corner of the car, staring at Lanyard as at some shape of terror, while the ignored buzzer droned without cessation to persistent pressure ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... mousetraps. At a whispered signal from the sergeant in command, the patrol slid noiselessly off the trail and dropped to the ground as the groping Wims went clattering by in the darkness. Within the hour Wims tripped over a Chinese patrol that lay cowering in the ferns as it listened apprehensively to what it thought was an ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... and the rotten casing yielded, the door burst open. The room was in semi-darkness, one candle, along with the cards, having been upset and knocked to the floor. Dick with uplifted cane stood over the cowering Villecourt. Hearing the noise of the bursting door, and doubtless thinking Villecourt's friends were coming to the rescue, he wheeled and struck me a ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... any man wished to. They had dragged her from the house, hoisted her on horseback and headed for home unpursued. It was all admirably simple as Trevarthen related it, swelling with honest pride, by the kitchen fire. The woman herself heard the tale, cowering in a chair beside the hearth, wondering what her death ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the glance. And when the cannon mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabers rise and fall, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall sink beneath Each gallant arm, that strikes below That lovely ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... why, when the deacon arrived at the head of a squad of soldiers that evening, there was no girl of any description to be found. Ignoring the cowering and unhappy reward seeker, the old woman delivered her dictum ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... least eighty, was seated on a stone, cowering over a few sticks burning feebly on what had once been a right noble and cheerful hearth; her side-glance was towards the doorway as I entered, for she had heard my footsteps. I stood suddenly still, and her haggard glance ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... entering the houses, one soldier to each house, in which he took his station, cowering the occupants ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... spectacles and slippers and dressing-gown, and exchanged his pipe for a cigarette, would cut much of a figure as a lover. He was new to the game, we were old hands at it, but the first thing we knew he had given the world's mistress, France, a scolding, and flung her into a corner, a cowering heap of outraged finery; and she has only been safe ever since in the role of a sort of mistress ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... magic crystal to the light of the lamp, as a drinker examines his bottle at the end of a repast, he had not seen his father's eye pale. The cowering dog looked alternately at his dead master and at the elixir, as Don Juan regarded by turns his father and the phial. The lamp threw out fitful waves of light. The silence was profound, the viol was mute. Belvidero thought he saw his father move, and he trembled. Frightened by the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... me, and said the soup was cold. He looked me steadily in the face, and talked of this and that; not only whilst his servant was present, but afterwards as we smoked our pipes and played our game at piquet; whilst according to her wont, the poor Biche sate cowering in ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are blowing, there is a rattling of horses' hoofs. "Fire! Fire!" Richard, who was passing Soho Square at the time, heard the cry and dashed into the burning house. In a room full of smoke he perceived a cowering woman. Hyacinth! To pick her up was the work of a moment, but how shall he save her? Stay! The telegraph wire! His training at the Royal Circus stood him in good stead. Treading lightly on the swaying wire he carried Hyacinth ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... cowering together at the foot of the tree where they had been set down. For one moment Moonlight thought of her own lithe and active frame, her powers of running and endurance, and meditated a sudden dash into the woods, but one glance at ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... words upon his lips, the poor wine-dealer expired. Meanwhile the notary sat cowering over the fire, aghast at the fearful scene that was passing before him, and now and then striving to keep up his courage by a glass of cognac. Already his fears were on the alert; and the idea of contagion flitted to and fro through his mind. In order to quiet ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... afterwards that he had added the story to his fund of legal dining-out anecdotes, and had considerably amplified it. It came out in a shape which made FIBBINS a hero, myself an imbecile of a rather malicious kind, PROSER helplessly cowering under FIBBINS's wealth of arguments, and the other two Judges reduced to admiring silence. I take this opportunity of stating that if anybody "cowered" in Court on that memorable occasion, it was certainly not poor ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... example, Eleanor shakes her head. If she gives in to him now their life will be one of cowering seclusion. There is something convincing in the light of day that drives from her heart ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... two nights later," said Bagheera, cowering a little; "and of that long, sweet grass that pleased thee so he gathered more than any Man-cub could eat in all the nights of the Rains. That was no ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... have fought to the death! There's treachery! What paynim dog dare face His lance, who naked braved yon lion's rage, And eyed the cowering monster to his den? Speak! Has he fled? ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... down the empty street, he glimpsed a woman standing in the shelter of a big cottonwood tree, cowering against its trunk. A quick thrill shot through his body. He jammed down the brake so suddenly that his car skidded and sloughed around. He carefully turned and ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... for them, and the boon which they begged him to ask, 'that we die not.' They had better have prayed for themselves, and they had better have asked for strength to cleave to Jehovah. They were like Simon Magus cowering before Peter, and beseeching him, 'Pray ye for me to the Lord, that none of the things which ye have spoken may come upon me.' That is not the voice of true repentance, the 'godly sorrow' which works ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is in his veins, And in his heart the glory of the sea; Therefore the storm-wind shall his comrade be, That strips the hills and sweeps the cowering plains. October, shot with flashing rays and rains, Inhabits all his pulses; he shall know The stress and splendor of the roaring gales, The creaking boughs shall croon him fairy tales, And the sea's kisses set his blood aglow, While in his ears the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... gone a hundred yards when it occurred to one of the Indians who had captured them to take a look at his prizes. His listless saunter toward where he had left them was changed to movements of bewildered activity, as in place of the cowering captives, he found only severed thongs, and realized that in some mysterious manner a release had been effected. He uttered a yell that brought a number of his companions to the spot, and in another minute a score or so of half-sobered savages were ranging ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... fiend now. Fiercely he raged among the snarling pack, kicking, clubbing, cursing, till one and all he had them beaten into cowering subjection. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of intuition, the whole truth was revealed to the woman who stood looking down at the cowering creature before her. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... puts his one movable hand against his face, sobs so that his tears wash through his fingers and wet his pillow as with driving rain,—then poverty is pitiful. Or, when one sees his children hungry, tattered, with lean faces and eyes staring as with constant fear; sees them huddling under rags or cowering at a flicker meant for flame,—then poverty is hard; and then, "The poor always ye have with you," said our Christ, which remember and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... and scrambled along, and after going about twenty yards he came to the dyke, at the other side of which stood the cowering horses. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... my soul refused to be comforted. It was cowering in some minute and inadequate corner—at an ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... to the eyes being nearly three feet long. The scene at this moment was exceedingly good, as seen by the light of a small, bright, silver lamp, fed with spirits of wine, that I always travelled with, which hung from one of the hoops of the toldo. First, there was our friend Peter Mangrove, cowering in a corner under the after part of the awning, covered up with a blanket, and shaken as if with an ague—fit, with the patron peering over his shoulder, no less alarmed. Sneezer, the dog, was sitting on end, with his black nose resting on the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the quick signals given to start and stop, and in a very short space of time the elevator stood at the second level. The bar was down, but Will threw it aside and stepped out into the passage. There he saw the bank cashier and the miner standing cowering against the wall only a ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... It was during the charge on 445 that Lieut. Stoner missed a dugout door by a foot with his hand grenade and his tender heart near froze with horror an hour afterward when he came back from pursuit of the Reds to find that with the one Bolo soldier in the dugout were cowering twenty-seven women and children, one eight days old. The red-whiskered old Bolo soldier had a hand grenade in his pocket and Sergeant Dundon nearly shook his yellow teeth loose trying to make him reply to questions in English. And the poor varlet nearly expired ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... addressed him as "Daddy" and asked him what he was doing in the Great War; another gambolled round and round him making noises like a rabbit. In Knightsbridge a Military Policeman wanted to arrest him as a deserter. The Babe hailed a taxi and, cowering on the floor, fled back to his hotel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... terrific yell of fear and pain, for instead of cowering down and suffering himself to be beaten and kicked, Gyp knew that this was not his master. For one moment he had stood astonished at the blow, and then seemed puzzled by the strange broken English objurgations; then with a fierce snarl he darted at the black and tried ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... intolerably stupid the woman was, how she disliked her; but when Lloyd came and they went away together, she would be like Mrs. King! She drew an exultant breath and smiled proudly in the darkness. For the moment the cowering fear was forgotten....How soon could he come? He ought to have the telegram by ten the next morning—too late to catch the express for Mercer. He would take the night train, and arrive at noon on Saturday. A day and a half to wait. And at that she realized ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... and the provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his ancestors? While the senate was debating in such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered Claudius in a corner of the imperial palace, where he had been cowering through fear lest he too be killed. Recognizing in him the brother of Germanicus, the pretorians proclaimed him emperor. An act of will is always more powerful than a thousand scruples or hesitations: the senate yielded to the legions, ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... set up for you. Good-by again, Lyddy." She did not kiss the girl again, or touch her hand. Their decent and sparing adieux had been made in the house. As Miss Maria returned to the door, the hens, cowering conscience-stricken under the lilacs, sprang up at sight of her with a screech of guilty alarm, and flew out over ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... afterwards would have been perfect but for the Staines, who tramped through everything. Estelle perpetually saw them bursting into places where they weren't wanted, and shouting remarks which sounded abusive but were meant to be cordial to cowering Fanshawes and Arnots. It was really not necessary for Sir Peter to say in the middle of the lawn that what Mr. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... seemed to be holding its breath, but so far as she could see, moors and hillsides were wrapped in one unending mantle of snow. There was no visible sign of any human habitation, no sound from any of the birds or animals who were cowering in their shelters, not even a sheep hell or the barking of a dog to break the profound silence. She dropped the curtain and turned back to her chair. Her feet were leaden and her heart was heavy. The struggle of the day was at an end. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... broad, marshy waters of Lake Cercynitis, from which the river issues just above the town,—eastwards, the towering summit of Mount Pangaeus,—and on the other side, just beneath his feet, the devoted city, which now seemed cowering, silent and deserted, as if conscious of Cleon's eagle glance. The gates were closed, and not a man was to be seen on the battlements. "What a pity," remarked Cleon, "that we brought no siege-engines with us! We might have battered down the wall, and marched in at once,—there ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... have been a barrister, Mr. Lovell," he said; "that would have been a capital opening for your speech as counsel for the crown. I can see the wretched criminal shivering in the dock, cowering under ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... islands of the sea and all the places on the dark continents where the British flag has been planted; seriously consider the enormous, the incalculable betterment that comes at this moment to ninety-five per cent. of the people who have been cowering under the inconceivably inhuman rule of Mahdism in the Sudan because it has been supplanted by the reign of law and of justice. I ask you to read the accounts of the Catholic missionary priests, the Austrian priests ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in that supreme moment, when life and death swung in the balance, an awful revulsion seized him. He beheld now with a sickening shudder the woman cowering at his feet whose beauty an hour ago had melted his soul: she was flesh to him only—her beauty was of the earth, and flesh and the earth were passing, and it was other things on which such moments as these were opening—things such as shone in the transfigured face of Lilian—of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... light inlaid the dim expanse of Washington Square. He turned east, then south, then east again, and doubled into a dim street, where old-time houses with toppling dormers crowded huddling together as though in the cowering contact there was safety from the destroyer who must one day come, bringing steel girders and cement to mark their graves with sky-scraping monuments ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... bravely and with more composure than men. I have frequently seen a frail, delicate woman standing erect and unflinching upon the deck, as the shells were whistling and bursting over us, while her lawful protector would be cowering "under the lee" of a cotton bale. I pay this humble tribute of admiration to the sex, but a cynical old bachelor, to whom I once made the observation, replied that in his opinion their insatiable curiosity prevailed even ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... waited, Out of the darkness she could distinguish not the rustle of a movement, not a breath of sound; and at last cowering back into herself with shame, she buried ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... and, leaning on the table, hid his face in both hands. The Gadfly seemed to have left some terrible shadow of himself, some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt the room; and Montanelli sat trembling and cowering, not daring to look up lest he should see the phantom presence that he knew was not there. The spectre hardly amounted to a hallucination. It was a mere fancy of overwrought nerves; but he was seized with an unutterable dread of its shadowy presence—of the wounded ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... smoke eddied from the eye. The explosion echoed through the Temple and died away, while all the time Pharaoh Shabako stared at the idol. Slow comprehension broke through the bewilderment on his face. Suddenly he swung around and gripped the cowering form of the second ranking priest, who ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... inaccessible. Turning to the sergeant, Mr. Billings directed him to make his way off to the right and see if there were any possibility of finding a path to the summit; then looking back down the side, and marking his Indians cowering under the trees some fifty yards away, he signalled "come up," and was about moving farther to his left to explore the shelf, when something went whizzing past his head, and, embedding itself in a stunted oak behind him, shook and quivered with the shock,—a Tonto arrow. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... remarked Phil quietly, as he rose to his feet. "We may safely move now, for the 'bad spirits' are abroad with a vengeance to-night, and every Indian in the place—man, woman, and child—will be cowering with head tightly wrapped in blanket and unable to move for fear of what may be seen. There! listen to that!" as another vivid flash illumined the hut, and low, terrified wails burst forth from all round about them, mingling with ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... brave look had gone from his eyes, and his face and hands were more shrivelled than ever. He gave the impression of cowering in bed as though wishing to avoid a blow. Harry was with him continually now, and the old man was never happy if his son was not there. He rambled at times and fancied himself back in his youth again. Harry had found his father's room a refuge from the family, and he sat, hour after hour, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... the yearning, burning desire for money which had so long made a part of her existence came back with full force; she sat revolving scheme after scheme, plan after plan, of how she could procure it. Hours passed away, but still she sat alone, silently cowering over the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the nearest pistol muzzle and the awful scowling face behind it; while the highwayman, reaching out his second pistol, awoke Mr. Vokes with a smart rap on the crown, whereupon, cursing drowsily, he sat up, clasping his hurt and immediately sank cowering in his chair, which action roused the landlord who stared, gasped a feeble "Lorramighty!" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... be possible his ears did actually detect a sound of human respiration through the keyhole? Was Bayard Shaynon just the other side of that inch-wide pressed-steel barrier, the fire-proof door, cowering in throes of some paralysing fright, afraid to answer ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... was concerned, the crucial moment was at hand, the actor—or rather actress—who was to remedy all things was on the scene, and shortly the curtain would fall on a situation of the rough made smooth. Then red fire, marriage bells, triumphant virtue and cowering guilt, with a rhyming tag, delivered by the prettiest actress, of 'All's ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... and it looked very pretty, but the poor creature herself was a figure to frighten a child,—bowed almost double, having a hooked nose and overhanging eyebrows, a complexion stained brown with smoke, and a cap that might have been worn for months and never washed. No doubt she had been cowering over her peat fire, for if she had emitted smoke by her breath and through every pore, the odour could not have been stronger. This ancient woman, by right of office, attended us to show off the curiosities, and she had her tale as perfect, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... wind roaring among its brethren, and it was aware of the wee birds cowering among its boughs; and it remembered, as in a flash, the weary life of humanity, with hopes to befool it and despair for its reward: and it rustled its myriad leaves whispering mournfully, "Let me, O Master, remain ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... entire religion to poetry, and then set it to music. And it is one of the greatest of religions,—what Nature engraved on the heart of our own Teutonic ancestors. It is all there,—its thousand phantasmal years, from the first cowering cry of the Norse savage before the chariot of his storm-god to the last gentle hymn that rose to Freya under her new name of Mary,—all. It is interpreted as a purely human expression; and, I repeat, no man has ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... when a lad, seeing the escaping slaves that his father had driven across country and temporarily hidden. "Those were heroic days," he says, quietly. "And once in a while my father let me go with him. They were wonderful night drives—the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road, the caution and the silence and dread of it all." This underground route, he remembers, was from Philadelphia to New Haven, thence to Springfield, where Conwell's father would take his charge, and onward to Bellows ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... instinct to cut him off, had made a motion to draw the door after him; "this mountain air is so bland, even when it is damp." He paused on the dripping threshold, with his hands in the pockets of his red jacket, and surveyed with smiling complacence the forlorn, weeping day, and the mountains cowering under their misty veil, and the sodden dooryard, and the wild rocks and chasms of the gorge, adown the trough of which a stream unknown to the dry weather was tumbling with a suggestion of flight and trouble ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... . . Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. . . . In other words, it is the rock we search for. . . . Draw near it, and you will know yourself in God's very shadow—the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. . . . As with this building, so with you, O man, cowering from wrath, as these walls ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... orders. But no orders came, for their terror-stricken commander had sought safety in a bomb-proof and when his hiding place was discovered the miserable cur merely mumbled something about "moving forward" and remained cowering in his refuge. Meanwhile, other regiments rushed forward, tumbling in upon one another, until the chasm was choked with men upon whom the Confederates began to pour shot, shell and canister. From that moment everything was lost and at last orders came from Grant to rescue the struggling ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... in the wont of drawing up wi' a' the gangrel bodies that ye meet on the high-road, or find cowering in a sand-bunker upon the links?' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Gitta, Cyriax's wife, cowering as if threatened with a blow from an invisible hand. "It ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... terrier concluded that rabbits were vanity. He drooped his ears and tail, and trotted along as if he were reproaching me for my rashness. I was glancing out over the grey trouble of the sea, and watching the forlorn ships cowering along like belated ghosts, when I heard a click to the right of me. Looking up the bluff, I saw a tall powerful lad who had just straightened himself up. He had two rabbits slung over his shoulder, and his big bag seemed to contain many more. I walked towards him to have a look ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... hands stretch forth like the tentacles of an octopus; she seizes her victim in an irresistible embrace, and with horrid glee plunges him head-under the advancing wave. Ere he can fetch his breath to scream, down again he goes, and yet again. The frigid, heavy water stings his cowering body; he has swallowed quarts of it; his foot has come in contact with a crab or a starfish; before him rolls the tumultuous expanse of desolation, surging forward to take his life; behind him are the rickety steps of the bathing-machine, which, but now a chamber of torture, has become ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... whaleman. He was a roaring, terrific combination of wind and lightning and thunder, and earnest, whole-souled profanity. But nevertheless he was tender-hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening, devastating typhoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed refuge in the centre where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could know the "Admiral" without liking him; and in a sudden and dire emergency I think no friend of his would know which to choose—to be cursed by him or prayed for by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... subjection; understand the same Of fish within their watery residence, Not hither summoned, since they cannot change Their element, to draw the thinner air." As thus he spake, each bird and beast behold Approaching two and two; these cowering low With blandishment; each bird stooped on his wing. I named them, as they passed, and understood Their nature, with such knowledge God endued My sudden apprehension: But in these I found not what methought I wanted still; And to the heavenly ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... through Easton, Fenley saw two policemen stationed at a cross-road. They signaled the car to stop, and his blood curdled, but, in the same instant, they saw the chauffeur's face; the other occupant was cowering as far back in ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... flat. For this, she had a wonderful example in Godmother of whom some one had once said, admiringly, that she was "never mean to anybody just because he's rich." It was true. Godmother was just as "nice" to the rich as to the poor, to the "cowering celebrity" (as she was wont to say) as to the most important nobody. It was the Secret that helped her to do it. It was the ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... entering that public room who might recognize us. Just in the middle of our meal, the public diligence drove lumbering up under the porte-cochere, and disgorged its passengers. Most of them turned into the room where we sat, cowering and fearful, for the door was opposite to the porter's lodge, and both opened on to the wide-covered entrance from the street. Among the passengers came in a young, fair-haired lady, attended by an ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... horses and carts was broken. Some of the poor creatures clung to the road, struggling desperately. Others were driven on to the prairie, and turning their backs to the storm, stood still or moved sideways, with cowering heads, their manes and tails floating wildly, like those ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... power. The King became exasperated by the very smallness of the creature which thus kept him at bay; drew the line of persecution closer and closer; and at last ran his victim to earth. But, at the critical moment, the man so long passive and cowering threw himself on the protection of God. The King saw, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, an Arm thrown out from the sky, and the "wretch" he had striven to crush, safely enfolded in it Then ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... not and saw not. She left the room without a glance at the man sitting cowering between the officers, and blubbering with shame and passion and the sense of total loss. In a few minutes he heard the Rawdon carriage drive to the door. Tyrrel and Ethel assisted Dora into it, and the ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... looking,' and were 'in the trap' themselves; and, guessing that whoever had made that trap would soon be alongside, they were as much frightened as the poor doe. In this state we had actually found them—cowering and crouching, and more scared-like than the fawns themselves. You will think this a very improbable relation, yet it is quite true. An equally improbable event occurred not long after. Frank caught a large fox and a turkey in his trap; and although they had ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... would find himself at once in the thick of the brilliant competition. He would see a row of lovely archers, backed by a second row of older and more experienced markswomen. And in the human pigeons now cowering before their combined artillery he would recognise the heroes so lately engaged in dispatching thousands of the feathered branch of the family to oblivion. At first sight it might strike an animal of his well-known gallantry that there was nothing so very terrible in their impending ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... matinee in the Kuenstlerhaus, but eighteen times again. While Fuellenberg was trying to express his impression with "great," "tremendous," "glorious," and similarly strong epithets, Frederick saw the whole dance over again with his mind's eye. He saw how the childlike body, after cowering and trembling a while in the corner of the room, approached the flower again to the accompaniment of music played by a tom-tom, a cymbal, and a flute. Something which was not pleasure drew her to it. The first ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... them, they could not have discerned her features. But as she climbed into view her loosened hair fell all about her; on the summit of the rock she turned and seated herself fronting the sea; and while the three children drew together, cowering, at her gaze, she ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... desire for the old life. Perugia was rebuilt, and rehabilitated, in spite of the conquering name of Augustus superimposed upon its most ancient Etruscan portal. Assisi was plying a busy and happy life on the opposite hillside. The intervening valley, once cowering under the flail of war, was given over now to plenty and to peace. Its beauty, as she had seen it last, recurred to her vividly. She had left home in the early morning. The sky still held the flush of dawn, and the white mists were just rising from the valley and ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... into the room along with them. The husband and wife seated themselves on the couch—the marquess with his sword and pistols beside him; and while they endeavoured, the best way they could, to amuse themselves with conversation, the dog, cowering down on the floor at their feet, fell asleep. Again, with the stroke of midnight, the noise was renewed;—something, though what they could not discover, raised itself us if with crutches in the corner; the straw rustled as before. At the sound of the first foot-fall, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... Eudena had turned from the cowering old woman and overtaken Si. "Si!" she cried, "Si!" She caught the child up in her arms as it stopped, pressed the nail-lined face to hers, and turned about to run towards her lair, the lair of the old lion. The old woman stood waist-high in the reeds, and screamed foul things and inarticulate ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... a gaping sword-wound in her side, and the ground all bloody about her. For a moment I stood dumb in the spell of that horror, then a movement beyond, against the wall, aroused me, and I beheld her murderers cowering there, one with a naked sword in ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... wide eyes a little wildly fixed upon his face in the lamplight, the girl stumbled to her feet, and for a moment remained cowering against the wall, terribly shaken, a hand gripping a corner of the packing-box for support, the other pressed against the bosom of her dress as if in attempt forcibly to quell the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... peculiar set of features which is so characteristic of bad characters in England, and so general among prisoners that it is usually, I believe, known by the name of the 'felon-face;' I mean that they have prominent cheek-bones, bullet-shaped head, cowering but restless eyes, and heavy sensual lips, and added to this a shackling ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to kick him out of the cabin like a craven hound and henceforward ignore his existence. But this impulse lasted only for a moment; they recalled to mind the insolent arrogance with which this same cowering creature had treated them when he deemed himself secure from retaliation; and they determined that, while his miserable life was not worth the taking, he should still receive so salutary a lesson as should effectually deter him from any repetition of the offence for the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... together into the meadow, and there stood the others by the hazel-garth: the goodman cowering and abject, Surly John pale and anxious, and the two women clinging together in sore sorrow, the grandam weeping sorely. But as they passed close by these last, Stephen touched the grandam and said to her: "Sawest thou ever King David the little?" ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... these inquiries in a half-hearty voice, he advanced into a poorly-furnished apartment, so small and low that it seemed a couple of sizes too small for him, and bestowed a kiss first upon the cheek of his old mother, who sat cowering over the fire, but brightened up on hearing his voice, and then upon the forehead of his daughter Nora, the cheerfulness of whose greeting, however, was somewhat checked when she observed the intoxicated state ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... an extremely remote period, in almost the same manner as it now is by man; namely, by trembling, the erection of the hair, cold perspiration, pallor, widely opened eyes, the relaxation of most of the muscles, and by the whole body cowering ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... down deeper into his chair, his chin sunk into his fist. It was quite like the act of cowering. It was long before he spoke. When he did so the tone of resentment was more bitter. "Does she realize what she's done ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... be pig-headed and obtrusive, as though possessed of their full share of the spirit of self-assertion; the Sup Ogwanis people, on the contrary, act like beings utterly destitute of anything of the kind, cowering beneath one's look and shunning immediate contact as though habitually overcome with a sense of their own inferiority. The two priests come out to see the bicycle ridden; they are stout, bushy-whiskered, greasy-looking old jokers, with small ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... at the clock and the pendulum swinging dimly behind a painted landscape on the glass door, and never after saw one without his uncle's imagery recurring to his mind. Always for him the pendulum swung into the midst of a cowering throng of beggars on the left, and into a band of purple-clad revellers on the right. Somehow, too, Doctor Seth Prescott's face always stood out for him ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... body? Was she really dead? Had anyone been in the house? What had he been doing all the afternoon? One might as well have asked the great hound in the doorway. Even to threats of violence he was dumb, cowering, it is true, but hopelessly and with no attempt to escape whatever penalty ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... feet; a few rapid words seemed to pass between him and his mate, and then he fell upon the other drake and the heartless minions who had persecuted the helpless one, drove them far away out of sight, and, returning, went to the corner where the victim was cowering, her face to the wall. He seemed to whisper to her, or in some way to convey to her a sense of protection; for after a few moments she tremblingly went with him to the dish, and hurriedly ate her dinner while he stood by, repulsing the advances of the few ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... onslaught of her yelling, rope-swinging assailants; and she took to her heels and galloped off, leaving the cubs to shift for themselves. The cowboys were close behind, however, and after half a mile's run she bolted into a shallow cave or hole in the side of a butte, where she stayed cowering and growling, until one of the men leaped off his horse, ran up to the edge of the hole, and killed her with a single bullet from his revolver, fired so close that the powder burned her hair. The unfortunate cubs ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... arrival, visiting the kennels before breakfast, he stood chatting with his head man, and caressing the wet noses of his two favourite pointers,—with something of the feeling of a boy let out of school. Those pleasant creatures, cowering and quivering with pride against his legs, and turning up at him their yellow Chinese eyes, gave him that sense of warmth and comfort which visits men in the presence of their hobbies. With this particular pair, inbred to the uttermost, he had successfully ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... soared the gracious beam, Deeper and deeper glowed the heavenly hues, Nor any cowering shadow could refuse The beautiful embrace which clasped and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... much less of a boomer. He dared to be original as to colour, and has been shivering and cowering and looking miserable ever since in terror of his own independence; he looks only a sort of unhappy white rabbit, overgrown in the hinder half. But there is encouragement to be got from the case of the boxing boomer. The kangaroo will never become clever of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said his mother, "In my work you never help me! In the summer you are roaming Idly in the fields and forests; In the winter you are cowering O'er the firebrands in the wigwam! In the coldest days of winter I must break the ice for fishing; With my nets you never help me! At the door—my nets are hanging, Dripping, freezing with the water; Go and wring them, Yenadizze! Go and ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... sprang to his feet, and rushed at Bascomb, who was cowering and shivering in the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... alleys and lane-ways hooded in blackness, and the one or two human fragments who drifted aimless and frantic along the lonely streets, striving to walk easily for fear of their own thundering footsteps, cowering in the vastness of the city, dwarfed and shivering beside the gaunt houses; the thousands upon thousands of black houses, each deadly silent, each seeming to wait and listen for the morning, and each ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... they obtained told them that something unusual had indeed happened. A number of the native crew were in range of their vision, but every man had fallen flat on his face and seemed to be cowering ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... her were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... foreigners whom the grumpy officers jostle and hustle about. For neither poverty, nor oppression, nor both together can drive a man out of his country, unless the soul within him awaken. Indeed, many a misventurous cowering peasant continues to live on bread and olives in his little village, chained in the fear of dying of hunger in a foreign land. Only the brave and daring spirits hearken to the voice of discontent within them. They give themselves ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... aspect, cowering under his denunciation, emphasised as it was by a terrifying gesture, the people, pressing closest about him, drew back and left the passage open to the gate. He took it with a bound, and would have entered but that from the outskirts ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... and went forward, and soon discovered a tiny girl cowering under a thorn. When she saw him she ran quickly and grasped his sleeve and hid her face in it and wept. She was small for her years, which ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... my husband that we used to be happier when we used to sleep under a hedge with, may be, only a thin blanket, and wake up covered with snow." Now this woman had only a wretched wagon, and was always tramping in the rain, or cowering in a smoky, ragged tent and sitting on the ground, but she had food, fire, and fun, with warm clothes, and believed herself happy. Truly, she had better reason to think so than any old maid with a heart run to waste on church gossip, or the latest engagements and marriages; for it is ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... beside a lion thunder-voiced! No battle-biding heart is in thy breast, But wiles and treachery be all thy care. Hast thou forgotten how thou didst shrink back From faring with Achaea's gathered host To Ilium's holy burg, till Atreus' sons Forced thee, the cowering craven, how loth soe'er, To follow them—would God thou hadst never come! For by thy counsel left we in Lemnos' isle Groaning in agony Poeas' son renowned. And not for him alone was ruin devised Of thee; for ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... I winna luke at ye! I hae lukit at ye ower muckle for my ain gude already!" cried the girl, cowering under ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... could not meet him now, To curse him, to accuse him, or to save, And draw him from the red entanglement Coiled by his own hands round his ruined life. God pardon me! My heart that moment held No drop of pity toward this wretched soul; And cowering down, as though his guilt were mine, I fled amidst the savage silences Of that grim wood, resolved to nurse alone My boundless desolation, shame ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... little, cowering, timorous beastie! Oh what a panic's in thy breastie! You need not start away so hasty, With bickering speed: I should be loth to run and chase thee I ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... hunters through the jungle, flashing their lights and looking for the lion which one of them had shot while the hunter was hidden on the platform in a tree. But Nero, cowering away back in the dark cave, kept very still and quiet, and he heard the hunters walk right past ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... many good souls, who in former times would have freely indulged their religious propensities, find themselves nowadays, as it were, frozen; or the agnostic vetoes upon faith as something weak and shameful, under which so many of us today lie cowering, afraid to use our instincts. In many persons such inhibitions are never overcome. To the end of their days they refuse to believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious centre, and the latter remains ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... light of the attic window, snatched him up as Odo entered. Her back being turned to the light, he caught only a slender youthful outline; but something in the turn of the head, the shrinking curve of the shoulders, carried him back to the little barefoot figure cowering in a corner of the kitchen at Pontesordo, while the farm-yard rang with Filomena's call—"Where are you then, child ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... have been calm enough for satisfaction in the completed deed, since the mind does, after a red act, become at once fugitive before the furies of inherited beliefs and fears. Perhaps it would have shrunk cowering back from the old, old penalty against the letting of blood, as it did now when he was faced with the tragic irony of the deed as it was. He had shed blood and, by one of the savage mischances of life, the blood of a man innocent of offense against him. After the ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... for?" Michael demanded. But for his sunburn, his face would have been as white as Margaret's own. The sight of Millicent's cowering figure brought back to him, with the quickness of light, the evening in the desert when he had flung her from him in ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Dawson re-entered, holding in her hands outstretched a gingham apron on which were two deep stains the shape and size of a long, straight-bladed, two-edged knife. It was the apron that Bridget Doyle had worn that fatal night. One quick, furtive look at that, one glance at her trembling, shrinking, cowering kinsman, and, with an Irish howl of despair, a loud wail of "Mike, Mike, you've sworn your sister's life away!" she threw herself upon the floor, tearing madly at her hair. And so ended the ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... scorn than pity in her tone; "Your Excellency shall not strike him. When men seek only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily granted—and so well deserved!" Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam on a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering form and extended her hand to meet that ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Goliath of silliness; when billowing black clouds heaped themselves in the west on a hot afternoon, she turned pale with apprehension, and the Captain and Cyrus ran for four tumblers, into which they put the legs of her bed, where, cowering among the feathers, she lay cold with fear and perspiration. Every night the Captain screwed down all the windows on the lower floor; in the morning Cyrus pulled the screws out. Cyrus had a pretty taste in horseflesh, but Gussie cried so when he once bought a trotter that he had long ago resigned ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... twice when Sanderson had found her alone, he had attempted to speak to her. But she silenced him with a look that seat him away cowering like a whipped cur. If he had any interest in any member of the Squire's family, Anna did not notice it. He was an ugly scar on her memory, and when not actually in his presence she tried to ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... of the mundane school, And taught the art of governmental lore. And then from thy great military store Thou sent the gallant Hannibal to war, Taught Romans tactics never known before, And filled their hearts with ever-cowering awe, And bowed their haughty heads ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... from the behaviour of the young Englishmen, and in place of cowering behind, they ran to the front, flourishing their kiris, striking the ground with them, and shouting in their own tongue ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... "No," answered the cowering creature. "The gaoler carries those. But what would you with them, thou man of violence? No one is permitted to enter the cells without the permission of the ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... between herself and savagery before a woman can learn instinctively to fear the soul of a man rather than his muscles in a crisis like this. Husband and wife confronted each other as he walked quickly across the chamber. Her cowering attitude, the fear which was written in every line of her face, fed his anger, until, in his blind rage, all pity and self-restraint ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... one of the splintered bars from the broken cage. "I've got to leave you, old fellow," he told the cowering animal, "but I'll give you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled master, there is no denying that he enjoys it immensely; and as he is ourself for the moment, or at least the chief portion of ourself (the other half-self retiring into a dim corner of semiconsciousness and cowering under the storm of sneers and contumely,—you follow me perfectly, Beloved,—the way is as plain as the path of the babe to the maternal fount), as, I say, the abusive fellow is the chief part of us for the time, and he likes to exercise ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wisdom was his carven owl. His ram was lordship on the lonely hills, Alert and fleet, content only to know The wind mightily pouring on his fleece, With yesterday and all unrisen suns Poorer than disinherited ghosts. His bat Was ancient envy made a mockery, Cowering below the newer eagle carved Above the arches with wide pinion spread, His faith's dominion ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... unchecked. Indeed, it was years before the boldness engendered by this foray became reduced to respect for French authority. Settlement after settlement, the marauders raided. From Montreal to Three Rivers crops went up in flame, and the terrified habitants came cowering with their families to the shelter ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of those old-fashioned houses which belong to a former Paris a heavy iron lantern swung, creaking in the wind, and, battling with the darkness, shed flickering rays of light on the child who, with a faded red cotton shawl wrapped about her, was cowering in the deep doorway of the house. From time to time there would emerge from the whirling snowflakes the dark form of a man clad as a laborer. He would walk leisurely toward the doorway in which the shivering child was concealed, but would turn when he came to the circle of ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... brightly, and I could easily see to follow. Still yelping "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit," he dashed into a bramble thicket in the middle of the field. But at once he dashed out again shrieking, "Police! Help! Murder!" and took refuge behind me, cowering up against my legs. At the same moment from the side of that bramble thicket there went out—a Rabbit. Yes, a common Rabbit all right, but it was a snow-white one. The first albino Cottontail I had ever seen, and apparently the first albino Cottontail that[C] Ranger had ever ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... cheek, usually glowing with the dark bloom of Oriental youth; the knees knocked together; and at last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one who receives a death-blow, he bowed his face over his clasped hands, and so remained—still, but cowering. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and June, when the twisted and cowering madrone trees are putting forth their clusters of creamy buds, when the white blossoms of the dogwoods line the banks of little streams, when the azaleas and rhododendrons, lovely and delicate as orchids, blaze a bed of glory, and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment for a cove so groveling. In the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the turned-up female noses ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... hardly ever been in a sick room before. He half expected to see Lady Maulevrier in bed, with a crowd of medicine bottles and a cut orange on a table by her side, and a sick nurse of the ancient-crone species cowering over the fire. It was an infinite relief to him to find his grandmother lying on a sofa by the fire in her pretty morning room. A little tea-table was drawn close up to her sofa, and she was taking ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... o'er the death-strewn plain, And he uttered the name of his love, in vain, As he stumbled over the crest; He fought with the fierceness of dark despair And drove the cowering foe to his lair— Ere he ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... moments ago for you, sir, but I thought you were in bed," and the other tossed a little envelope out to him. Mechanically Rossiter tore it open. He was thinking of the cowering woman in the hallway and he was ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... believed to be Shasta, but a second look showed him his mistake. Had he held any doubts they were removed by the Indian abruptly pausing, turning his face full toward him, and uttering the "hoogh!" of surprise, as he saw the boy cowering against ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... conceal this gory head, Nor songs proclaim the dreadful Zamor dead, Me, whom the hungry gods from plain to plain Have follow'd, feasting on thy slaughter'd train, Me wouldst thou cover? No! from yonder sky, The wide-beak'd hawk, that now beholds me die, Soon with his cowering train my flesh shall tear, And wolves and tigers vindicate their share. Receive, dread Powers (since I can slay no more), My last glad ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... black, cowering low, with the face turned up. It was Charles Nutter's face, fixed and stealthy. It was only while the fascination lasted—while you might count one, two, three, deliberately—that the horrid gaze met mutually. But there was ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Argive king, Pelasgus, who is kind but timid; and he (by a pleasing anachronism) refers the matter to the people, who agree to protect the fugitives. The pursuing fleet of suitors is seen approaching; the herald arrives (with a company of followers), blusters, threatens, orders off the cowering Danaids to the ships and finally attempts to drag them away. Pelasgus interposes with a force, drives off the Egyptians and saves the suppliants. Danaus urges them to prayer, thanksgiving and maidenly modesty, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... she dreamed of backward jerks, of turning the handle-bar, pushing the pedal. Poor Glass-Eye, cowering in a corner of the bed, had terrible nightmares, and, in the morning, after Lily's kicks, she rose with her ribs smarting and her shins all black and blue. That was all her profit, for Lily had hardly any money left and was not yet drawing ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... by the bandit, a clattering band of horsemen dashed up to the lonely house at the break of dawn. They were led by Prince Ugo Ravorelli, dishevelled, half-crazed. A shivering woman in silks and a cowering old man sobbed with joy when the rescuers burst through the door. Tacked to a panel in the door was an ominous, ghost-like paper on which was printed the following message from the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... was cowering in his cell before the attorney's indignation. His lips were drawn back over his teeth in something that was neither a snarl nor a smile. His eyes were bulging and fear-stricken, and his hands ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... memory of his words. True or not, they were spoken to a woman who was cowering under them as under a lash. He was at a disadvantage now. If she had met him with anger they might have cried quits. But he had seen her wince, seen her sudden pallor, and it was ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reply. He was looking at Ramona. She had flung her shawl over her head, as the other woman had done, and the two were cowering in the corner, their faces turned away. Ramona dared not look on; she felt sure Alessandro would kill some one. But this was not the type of outrage that roused Alessandro to dangerous wrath. He even felt a certain enjoyment in the discomfiture of the self-constituted ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his despoilment. The air grew dark and in the center of the darkness, his hate concentrated on the watching face, and an impulse, the strongest of his life, nerved him with the force to kill. For once he broke beyond himself, rose outside the restrictions that had held him cowering within his sensitive shell. His rage had the vehemence of a distracted woman's, and he threw himself upon his enemy, inadequate now as always, but at last unaware ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... no means quiet. Some skipped uneasily over the surface; some stood on one leg, as it were, and pirouetted; some crept further and further under banks; some ran merry races over the mounds, and some danced up and down in the hollows. As for the trees themselves, they were cowering and shivering at a tremendous rate, apparently from want of the cloaks of which every blast was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... a beautiful, fearless creature, blazing defiance with dying eyes upon those who had destroyed her, the mother-instinct supreme to the last; for as she fell to rise no more she had thrown her paw around the cowering cubs. It was not in shape, nor in colour, but in expression and in their stillness, that the eyes of Madame de Staemer resembled ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... stared vainly into the black vacuum of the screen, blinking in the glaring lights, cowering instinctively before the unseen but certain malignancy of the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind — the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk — the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg — the dead ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers |
