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Miscreant   Listen
adjective
Miscreant  adj.  
1.
Holding a false religious faith.
2.
Destitute of conscience; unscrupulous; villainous; base; depraved.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Miscreant" Quotes from Famous Books



... bad man, wrongdoer, worker of iniquity; evildoer &c 913; sinner; the wicked &c 945; bad example. villain, rascal, scoundrel, miscreant, budmash^, caitiff^; wretch, reptile, viper, serpent, cockatrice, basilisk, urchin; tiger^, monster; devil &c (demon) 980; devil incarnate; demon in human shape, Nana Sahib; hellhound, hellcat; rakehell^. bad woman, jade, Jezebel. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... connects my son with this monstrous crime? I have had a dreadful presentiment, all along, that he had something to do with it. The end of his wrong career will be the gallows. I have dreamt of it for years. O God! that I should have begotten such a profligate and miscreant ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... of the Free Companions, it was the name of Red Ringan that came first to their tongues. I had been too occupied by my own affairs to listen just then to fireside tales, but I could not help hearing of this man's exploits. He was a kind of leader of the buccaneers, and by all accounts no miscreant like Cosh, but a mirthful fellow, striking hard when need be, but at other times merciful and jovial. Now I set little store by your pirate heroes. They are for lads and silly girls and sots in an ale-house, and a merchant can have no kindness ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... other but the name of God in her mouth, vseth the words of sacred Scripture. To this that holy Father replieth, Therefore she is the more to be hated, because shee hath abused and taken in vaine that great and glorious name, and professing herselfe a Christian, yet practiseth the [h]damnable Arts of miscreant and vnbeleeuing Heathen. For the Diuels could speake the name of God, and neuerthelesse were still Diuels; and when they said vnto Christ, they knew who he was, the holy one of God, &c. Mar. 1. 24.25. their mouthes were stopped, he would no such witnesse, that wee should learne, ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... now no quarrel with them," replied the governor indifferently. "They are pawns. Now I have the real miscreant ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... descendant. This territory, nominally assigned for the maintenance of the troops under the adventurer's command, was valued in those days at six laths of rupees annually; so that the blood-stained miscreant, whose saturnine manners had given him a bad name, even among the rough Europeans of the Company's battalion, found his career of crime rewarded by an income corresponding to that of many such petty sovereigns as ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene

... oath Roach brought down the club. Landless swerved, and the blow fell harmlessly; before the arm could be again raised, he caught it, held it with a grasp of steel, and shortened his sword. The miscreant saw his death, and screamed for mercy. "Remember Robert Godwyn!" said Landless, and drove the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... tell you what I have done. When I first brought Cap home I was moved not only by the desire of wreaking vengeance upon a most atrocious miscreant who had done me an irreparable injury, but also by sympathy for the little witch who had won my heart at first sight. Therefore, you may judge I lost no time in preparing to strike a double blow which should ruin my own mortal enemy and reinstate ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... exemplarily punished. They returned haughtily, That all the country reverenced the great Cham-Chi-Thaungu, who dwelt in the son, and no mortal would have dared to offer violence to his image, but some Christian miscreant; so they called them, it seems; and they therefore denounced war against him, and all the Russians, who, they said, were miscreants ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... minutes from this moment let him be a spectacle between the heavens and the earth.' The wife and daughter clung to his knees in supplication, but an irrevocable oath had passed his lips that never should treason receive his forgiveness after that of the miscreant Arnold. 'For my own life,' he said, while tears rolled down his noble countenance at the agony of the wife and daughter: 'For my own life I heed not; but the liberty of my native land—the welfare of millions demand this sacrifice. For the sake of humanity, I pity him; but my oath ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... Some miscreant, by a simple but ingenious means, which afterward transpired, had mixed a quantity of gunpowder with the smithy-slack or fine cinders of Henry's forge. The moment the forge was hot, the powder ignited with a tremendous thud, a huge mass of flame rushed out, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... Scoots nose-dived for the wee feller's tail, loosin' a drum at the puir body as he endeavoured to escape the lichtenin' swoop o' the intrepid Scotsman. Wi' matchless skeel, Tam o' the Scoots banked over an' brocht the gallant miscreant to terra firma—puir laddie! If he'd kept ben the hoose he'd no' be lyin' deid the nicht. God ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... those who most closely made inquiry on the matter,—ever occurred to her. She had not brought him there that she might frighten him with that danger, or that she might avenge herself by the power which it gave her. But now the idea flashed across her maddened mind. "Miscreant," she said. And she bore him back to the very edge of ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... helm of affairs, was constantly impelled forward by the clubs, but more so by the incessant clamours of the mob. At the Hotel de Ville sat the Commune, a crew of blood-thirsty villains, headed by Hebert; and this miscreant, with his armed sections, accompanied by paid female furies, beset the Convention, and carried measures of severity by sheer intimidation. Let it further be remembered that, in 1793, France was kept in apprehension of invasion by the Allies under ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... sending such a letter? If he did throw her over he would be a traitor, and her heart would be full of reproaches. Whatever might be his future lot in life, he owed it to her to share it with her, and if he evaded his debt he would be a traitor and a miscreant. She would never tell him so. She would be far too proud to condescend to spoken or written reproaches. But she would know that it would be so, and why should she lie to him by saying that it would not be so? Thinking of all this, when the morning came, she left the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... upper apartments, and motioned to his comrades to avail themselves of the opening, but as Isaac—the first to accept the hint—crept across, Almamen fixed upon him his terrible eye, and, appearing suddenly to awake to consciousness, shouted out, "Thou miscreant, Ximen! whom hast thou admitted to the secrets of thy lord? Close the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... "Out, miscreant!" shouted Adam; and was about to spring at him again, but the powerful arm collared him, and he recognized at once that he was like a child in that grasp. He ground his teeth with rage and muttered, "That a fellow with such thews should give such dastardly ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... upon those sentences which were the most unmercifully severe, and they seemed to burn their way into his very soul. Was he in truth such a miscreant as the "Courier" described? Mrs. Arnot had not shrunk from him as from contamination; but she was different from all other people that he had known; and he now remembered, also, that even she always referred to his act in a grave, troubled way, as if ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... Lombardo's vigilance and (thoroughly familiar with every detail of Nissr) had succeeded in making his way to the aft port fuel-tank, from which he had probably drained petrol through a pet-cock and thereafter set it afire; how the miscreant had then scrambled up the aft companion-ladder, to shoot down the Master himself; and how only a horrible, nightmare fight against the flames had saved even this shattered wreck ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... to Zagori, a district noted for its doctors, for a quack who undertook to poison Sepher Bey on condition of receiving forty purses. When all was settled, the miscreant set out for Berat, and was immediately accused by Ali of evasion, and his wife and children were arrested as accomplices and detained, apparently as hostages for the good behaviour of their husband and father, but really as pledges for his silence when the crime should ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... "based upon the knowledge they must have wrung from one of the native tribes they have oppressed. Well, gentlemen, we have two of the miscreant spies. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... followed, the details of which would only be tedious. At the close Cavallo said, "There is some life in us yet, and what life we have left shall be spent in trapping that miscreant. Italy shall be avenged on one of her traitors, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... multitudinous acclamations of the great Irish people.' Or suppose it is a newspaper: the prospectus states that 'At a time when the Church is in danger, threatened from without by savage fanaticism and miscreant unbelief, and undermined from within by dangerous Jesuitism, and suicidal Schism, a Want has been universally felt—a suffering people has looked abroad—for an Ecclesiastical Champion and Guardian. A body ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... miscreant who had received an unexpected pardon," he said lightly, and yet with a touch of gravity in his voice, "and, like the miscreant, I at once proceed to take advantage of ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... Charles and Medhurst were each provided with a pair of handcuffs. Remembering the Polperro case, however, we determined to use them with the greatest caution. We would only put them on in case of violent resistance. We crept up to the door where the miscreant was housed. Charles handed the notes in an open envelope to Medhurst, who seized them hastily and held them in his hands in readiness for action. We had a sign concerted. Whenever he sneezed—which he could do in the most natural manner—we ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... you die for it!" returned the miscreant, holding up a hand in affected horror at so treacherous a threat. "Well, captain, you must know that gentlemen don't all live by the same calling; some keep what they've got, and some get ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Ashb. Miscreant slaves! For one younge damsell's sake I once cald daughter, And in the absens of there greater frends, I'l stand ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... was almost above him. Then—how it happened she could never tell, so swift was the movement—Merwyn stood before her father. The knife descended upon his breast, yet at the same instant his pistol exploded against the man's temple, and the miscreant dropped like a log. There were sounds of other men clambering in at the window, and Mr. Vosburgh snatched Merwyn back by main force, saying to Marian, "Quick! for your life! down ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... prosecuted and, perhaps, persecuted Georgie for various offenses; but as Georgie was supposed to be as much at war with his own brethren as with the rest of the world at large, Heathcote had not thought much of that miscreant in the present emergency. But if the miscreant were in truth at Boolabong, and if evil things were being plotted against Gangoil, Georgie would certainly be among ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... was to live on dangerous ground, at least in thought. No more doubt, no more shuffling now. I must try the chords of my heart, the sympathy of my soul, in open rebellion. The iniquities of civilisation had ruined a fine barbarian in me, and almost made of me a maudlin miscreant, willing to hang upon the skirts of a false society. The Haymarket bomb made me strip again ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... common with the Corsican vendetta. In the one, the appeal to arms has always been tempered by a punctilious chivalry, which recoiled from the slightest unfairness in the attendant circumstances; in the other, the enemy is, if possible, taken unawares, shot down by a cowardly miscreant lurking behind a tree or a rock, or suddenly stabbed without an opportunity of putting himself on his defence. The practice of the vendetta is ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... Skidmore had nothing to worry him, nothing, that is, except the outside chance of a bad accident. He did not anticipate, however, that some miscreant might deliberately wreck the train on the off chance of looting those plain deal boxes. The class of thief that banks have to fear is not guilty of such clumsiness. Unquestionably nothing could happen on this side of Lydmouth. The train was roaring along now through the fierce gale at sixty ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... prostitution. You approve the system; you volunteer your best varnish in its commendation; and this is an inseparable and legal part of it. Legal, I say,—legal, and not destructive of respectability. That is the point. In ordering such lashes, that ancient miscreant (for old he already was) neither violated any syllable of the slave-code, nor forfeited his social position. He was punishing "disobedience"; he was admministering "justice"; he was illustrating the "rights ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... schools than any half-dozen men in the city, and I don't suppose there's a den in New York where she has not been, and never once, I'm told, was she insulted, for the vilest of them stand between her and harm. Once a miscreant on Avenue A knocked a boy down for accidentally stepping in a pool of water and sprinkling her white dress in passing. Friday nights she has a reception for these people, and you ought to see how well ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes

... man near Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. He had applied to a Magistrate, and informed him that he had been robbed by such a gentleman.—"The Magistrate told him that he was committing perjury, but the miscreant calling God to witness, that if what he had advanced was not true, he wished that his jaws might be locked and his flesh rot on his bones; and, shocking to relate, his jaws were instantly arrested, and after lingering nearly a fortnight in great ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... Roldan, a man whom Columbus had raised from the dust. He had been a servant; and the admiral, noting his ability, had intrusted him with some judicial functions. When he sailed for Spain he appointed Roldan chief justice of the colony. This ungrateful miscreant fostered discontent and mutiny by every art of persuasion and calumny at his command, and soon had a large band of worthless and idle ruffians ready to follow his lead. His first plan was to murder the Adelantado and seize the government, but he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... consultation, a piece of information was sent in, which has very much changed the opinion of parties as to her reputed sanctity. It appears that near the spot where the vessel was wrecked they have discovered the body of a woman dressed in man's clothes; and it is now supposed that some miscreant has personified her at the convent, and has subsequently escaped. The officers of justice are making the strictest search; and if the individual is found, he will be sent to Rome to be disposed ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... capacity as a justice of the peace. To whatever reward I am able to make in the name of H.M. Government I shall add the sum of one thousand dollars for the recovery of the cattle, and the additional sum of one thousand dollars for the capture of the miscreant himself. I have determined to spare no expense in the matter of hunting this devil," with vindictive intensity, "down, therefore you can draw on me for all outlay your work may entail. All I say ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... saw and of which ear never heard. He used to debel Kings and do to death champions and braves in battle and in the field of fight, so that the Conquerors feared him and the Chosros[FN516] humbled themselves to him. For all this, he was a miscreant in creed ascribing to Allah partnership and adoring idols, instead of the Lord of worship; and all his troops were of images fain in lieu of the All-knowing Sovereign. One day of the days as he sat on the throne of his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... foul injurious language. The saint suffered it with his accustomed mildness; and only said these words to him, with somewhat a melancholy countenance, "God preserve your mouth." Immediately the miscreant felt his tongue eaten with a cancer, and there issued out of his mouth a purulent matter, mixed with worms, and a stench that was not to be endured. This vengeance, so visible, and so sudden, ought ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... vanished. There was no one else in the house, so that ordinary theft was out of the question. Yet where did these articles go, and of what use would they be to a poltergeist? On one occasion, only, I caught a glimpse of the miscreant. It was about eight o'clock on a warm evening in June, and I was sitting reading in my study. The room is slightly below the level of the road, and in summer, the trees outside, whilst acting as an effective screen against the sun's rays, cast their shadows somewhat too thickly on the ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... silent, bathed in the moonlight; there was no sign of anyone about, other than the miscreant who stood now in the shadow, surveying the place. Presently he put down his pack, went to a window and, quick and silent as an expert burglar, jimmied the sash. There was only one sudden, sharp snap of the breaking sash bolt and in a moment the fellow ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... must keep boosting. Fortunately society here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before us. But I think we ought to stop buying—except among ourselves, and keep the transfers from falling off—and begin ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... husband was not a real gainer in this respect, for while he ate, she tirelessly discoursed to him on the new creed, and asked him to recite with her the True Statement of Being. And on the top of that she dismissed the admirable cook, and engaged the miscreant from whom he suffered still, though Christian Science, which had allowed her cold to make so long a false claim on her, had followed the uric-acid fad into the limbo of ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... this miscreant's flippant allusion to Madame de Sevigne and his own damnation, uttered in a spirit which (to use the author's own words upon another occasion), "mingled ridicule with horror, and seemed like a Harlequin in the infernal regions flirting with the furies:"—But we ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... "Thou shalt have something of which (so may God save my soul!) no creature in all the world could swallow a single grain without losing his life thereby—and that in less time than thou wouldest take to walk a mile in." So the miscreant shut up this poison in a box, and then he went into the next street and borrowed three large bottles, into two of which he poured his poison, while the third he kept clean to hold drink for himself; for he meant to work hard all the night to carry away the gold. So he filled his three bottles with ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... well that the young man was an infamous profligate, was not at all disposed to incur the displeasure of Peter by apparently espousing the cause of the son against the father. He consequently gave the miscreant such a cold reception that he found the imperial palace any thing but a pleasant place of residence, and again he set out on his vagabond travels. The next tidings his father heard of him were ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... "Unhand me, miscreant," cried Cicely. "Think you that I would forget my brave and gallant husband for such as thou, steeped in crime from head to foot? Unhand me, I ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... thought Rostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to hard labor), "he was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go unpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished a miscreant." ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... also, and to the intense hatred which they roused throughout Christendom against the Mahomedan infidels, we owe 'miscreant,' as designating one to whom the vilest principles and practices are ascribed. A 'miscreant,' at the first, meant simply a misbeliever. The name would have been applied as freely, and with as little sense of injustice, to the royal-hearted Saladin as to the vilest wretch that ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... years in a page, takes part in a riot and flees back to Florence. He enters into earnest details of how 'leven rogues in buckram suits reviled him as he passed a certain shop. One of them upset a handcart of brick upon him. He dealt the miscreant a blow on the ear. The police here appeared and as usual arrested the innocent Happy Hooligan of the affair. Being taken before the Magistrates he was accused of striking a free citizen. Cellini insisted he had only boxed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... have often noticed, but never could explain) that something was astir, belonging to the world of women, yet foreign to the eyes of men. And now the Counsellor, being well-born, although such a heartless miscreant, beckoned to me to come away; which I, being smothered with women, was only too glad to do, as soon as my own love would ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... man gave the command to "hold up your hands," the victim had only to squeeze the bulb as the hands went up, and, if accurately aimed, the miscreant would get the stream of the deadly vitriolic fluid in his eyes and—here endeth the first lesson. Experience ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... Don Rebiera of your arrival, signor," said the miscreant, springing up the rocks, and mixing with the rest, who now commenced hooting and laughing ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... was Wat, Sic a miscreant slave, That the very worms damn'd him When laid in his grave. "In his flesh there's a famine," A starv'd reptile cries; "An' his heart ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... fetch him out dere," said the latter, sheltering himself as quick as lightning, and peering out in the hope of gaining a glimpse of the miscreant who had come so near shooting him. He was disappointed, however, the savage descending the tree with such skill and caution that his person was never once exposed to the eagle ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... "Miscreant!" cried Rodin, more and more alarmed by this narrative, for Faringhea had dealt a terrible blow at the machinations of the socius and his friends. "You risk ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... for a convicted Vestal. I know that no caitiff could be found so vile as to dare to lay hands on a Vestal, no ruffian so reckless as to venture to end her life by sword or axe, by strangling or drowning. The most impious miscreant has too much fear of the gods to injure a consecrated priestess. The only way to dispose of a delinquent Vestal is to bury her alive. But the cruelty of it makes me choke. I think of the last hours of each of those who were punished, of their ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... police set forth to capture him, and soon returned with the miscreant. Such a sight he was! Glistening with fat and covered with feathers, and, as one of the soldiers remarked, "with a corporation like the Lord Mayor." He was handcuffed and taken to the police camp, while the men had their breakfast before escorting ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... Beaudry with a snarl of rage and terror. Except one of the Rutherfords there was no man on earth he less wanted to meet. The forty-four in his hand jerked up convulsively. The miscreant was in two minds whether to let ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... I am not, I protest, one jot wiser than I was. Hearken here, Epistemon, my little bully, dost not thou hold him to be very resolute in his responsory verdicts? He is a witty, quick, and subtle sophister. I will lay an even wager that he is a miscreant apostate. By the belly of a stalled ox, how careful he is not to be mistaken in his words. He answered but by disjunctives, therefore can it not be true which he saith; for the verity of such-like propositions ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... not much regard for human life. These men deluged an Assiniboine Indian Camp with deadly whisky in return for every valuable thing the Indians had to trade. And when the Indian Camp was ablaze with the light of campfires and was a mad whirl of dancing drunkenness the miscreant traders from the South, in a spirit of utter wanton devilry, got under cover of a cut bank by the creek where the camp was, and proceeded to shoot the Indians who were defenceless in their orgy. A volley or two accounted for two score killed and many wounded, only a few escaping to the hills. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... gemmen, that, besides the instances I have alleged of Sir Launcelot's extravagant benevolence, I could recount a great many others of the same nature, and particularly the laudable vengeance he took of a country lawyer. I'm sorry that any such miscreant should belong to the profession. He was clerk of the assize, gemmen, in a certain town, not a great way distant; and having a blank pardon left by the judges for some criminals whose cases were attended with favourable circumstances, he would not ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... gambling, pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned out of their ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... caving in, and I feel the devil fingering my toes." Seeing the people come to his relief, the major regained his courage, (for when discovered he was nearly frightened out of his wits,) and began heaping curses upon the head of the miscreant who had laid so diabolical a plot against his life. Indeed, he stubbornly refused to be convinced that it was anything else than a trick of his enemies to rob him of his military title. In fine, he declared to the parson, who several times rebuked him for his free use of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... kindled and pepper thrown into it; and there he is kept in the fumes of the burning pepper till he confesses his guilt and returns the stolen liver, upon which of course the sick man recovers. But should the patient die, the miscreant who did him to death by kidnapping his soul or his liver will be sold as a slave or choked.[42] In like manner the Bakerewe, who inhabit the largest island in the Victoria Nyanza lake, believe that all deaths and all ailments, however trivial, are the effect of witchcraft; and the person, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... sold in every shop in this city, there would be one moment's delay in settling the question? What to the oak lightning is that marks it and descends swiftly upon it, that woman's vote would be to miscreant vices in these great cities. [Applause]. Ah, I speak that which I do know. As a physician speaks from that which he sees in the hospital where he ministers, so I speak from that which I behold in my professional position ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... that it was impossible to fix suspicion on him, and indeed there was no man among all the ship's company who showed more concern over this matter than did Thorir, or who made greater efforts to discover the miscreant who had dared to attempt the life of the well ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... gentlemen all, I am well aware it was not from need of money that you went out with me, nor yet in order to serve Cyaxares; you came for my sake. You marched with me by night, you ran into danger at my side, simply to do me honour. [21] Unless I were a miscreant, I could not but be grateful for such kindness. But I must confess that at present I lack the ability to make a fit requital. This I am not ashamed to tell you, but I would feel ashamed to add, 'If you will stay with me, I will be sure to repay you,' for that would look as though I spoke ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... "Miscreant! devil! incarnate iniquity!" cried Douglas, as he grasped and grappled with the baffled plotter. "You have tried to murder me— and you have tried to murder her! I might have forgiven you the first crime—I ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... on thee minion! these eyes have their sight; Would'st tell me that mead, in its colour, is white?" "Well, well, since the proofs are so glaring and strong, I own that Sir Middel has done me a wrong." "And was he the miscreant? dear shall he pay, For the cloud he has cast on our honour's bright ray; I'll hang him up; yes, I will hang him with scorn, And burn thee to ashes, at breaking of morn." The maiden departed in anguish and wo, And straight to Sir Middel it ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... he has lost it or sold it, the shabby little miscreant; however, I'll risk it. And now I must ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant's condemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors the moving discourse ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... to doubt the truth of this story, every circumstance of which tended to corroborate the intelligence he had already received touching the character of Fathom, whom he now considered with a double portion of abhorrence, as the most abandoned miscreant that nature had ever produced. Though Ratchcali did not possess a much higher place in his opinion, he favoured him with marks of his bounty, and exhorted him, if possible, to reform his heart; but he would by no means promise to interpose his credit in favour of a wretch self-convicted ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... The young miscreant, Toto Chupin, had too fatally earned the note with which Tantaine had bribed him. The whole of the front of the window gave way with a loud crash, and Andre was hurled ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... What miscreant hero had dared perform this sacrilegious exploit? "Perish Hector!" had been an immemorial war-cry at Plummer's; but Hector had never yet perished. No one had been found daring enough to bell the cat—that is, to shoot the dog. To what scoundrel was Dangerfield College now indebted ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... as he was, he at once dropped on to the lower deck, rushing to where Moody was standing, but the other men got in between and hustled him away; so, seeing that he could do nothing towards arresting the miscreant for the present, he bent over the poor captain and lifted him on his knee to see whether life was quite extinct. Happily he still lived! moaning faintly as Mr Meldrum raised him in his arms; consequently, as it was too dark—for it was just under the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... him. Bonaparte, not wishing to press them hard on this subject, turned the conversation.—But always occupied with his first idea, he returned to it immediately.—"Acknowledge, at least, ladies, that now, when fortune is against me, they say that I am a wretch, a miscreant, and a marauder. But do you know the meaning of all this? I wished to make France superior to England, and I have failed in ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... embarked, amidst the scoffs and shouts of a miscreant rabble, who took a brutal joy in heaping insult on his ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... akin to the Mexican mule, And who have not fair Cuba subdued, After three bloody years of your miscreant rule, It is time you began ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw

... next year was out the poor boy was dead—murdered by some miscreant for the handful of gold in his possession, down in the lonely bush about ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... know anything about him," M. Jerome Coignard replied, "and besides cannot know it. But those crimes are his, they are of his race, and I can charge him with them without slandering him. I place on that miscreant's back a long array of flagitious ancestors. You cannot have remained ignorant of all that is said of the Jews and of their abominable rites. You may see in an ancient cosmography of Munster in Westphalia a drawing representing some Jews mutilating a child; they are recognisable by the ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... or any other convenience; in consequence of which enormities they fell under the high displeasure of chivalry, and all true, loyal, and gallant knights were instructed to attack and slay outright any miscreant they might happen to find above six feet high; which is doubtless one reason why the race of large men is nearly extinct, and the generations of latter ages are so exceedingly small. His valiant ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... these ghosts of departed crimes were no more than indefinite shapes; they never consolidated nor took a definite form. The most persistent miscreant of them all, which had tormented him so long, the sin of the flesh, at last was silenced, and left him in peace. La Trappe had rooted up the stock of those debaucheries. The memory of them, indeed, haunted him still, on his most distressing, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... not. Dynamite must have been used. Hazelton and I heard the noise of the blast, but of course we got out there too late to catch any miscreant at the job." ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... Miscreant! Wretch! Traitor!" When his vocabulary of vituperation and his breath failed him, he ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... the laws of honor and the work of an executioner? Don't you know that to kill a man who had surrendered would be a vile deed and would be to make one's self a butcher of men? Don't you know that to kill a man who asks quarter would be the deed of a miscreant and a coward, and would disgrace the name of Christian and dishonor the name of Spaniard? In honorable combat I killed them, Maria, when with arms in their hands they tried to kill me and my companions. I know ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... never tired of hearing him recount all the gossip which obtained at Acol and at St. Nicholas: the surmises as to the motive of the horrible crime, the talk about the stranger and his doings, the resentment caused by his weird demise, and the conjectures as to what could have led a miscreant to do away with so ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... cause for it, by infidelity, she will have managed ill, if she have not her defenders. Nor did I ever know a cause or a person so bad, as to want advocates, either from ill-will to the one, or pity to the other: and you will then be thought a hard-hearted miscreant: and even were she to go off without credit to herself, she will leave you as little; especially with all those whose good opinion a man would wish ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... a fellow creature to death against the plainest rules of justice. Grey, Wade, and Goodenough were produced, but could only repeat what they had heard said by Monmouth and by Wildman's emissaries. The principal witness for the prosecution, a miscreant named Saxton, who had been concerned in the rebellion, and was now labouring to earn his pardon by swearing against all who were obnoxious to the government, who proved by overwhelming evidence to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... prophet had no such suspicion, And that is convincing because He was constantly in a position To see what the miscreant was. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various

... matter that fell between King Mark and his brother, that was called the good Prince Boudwin, that all the people of the country loved passing well. So it befell on a time that the miscreant Saracens landed in the country of Cornwall soon after these Sessoins were gone. And then the good Prince Boudwin, at the landing, he raised the country privily and hastily. And or it were day he let put wildfire in three of his own ships, and suddenly he pulled up the sail, and with the wind ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... he mean, that miscreant?" cried Lecamus, as he watched Ruggiero hurrying with rapid steps to the place ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... sight of land, and sold the women for slaves, or worse. Dodd asked for particulars: was he a Ladroner, a Malay, a Bornese? In what latitude was he to be looked for? The admiral on this examined his memoranda: by these it appeared little was known as yet about the miscreant, except that he never cruised long on one ground; the crew was a mixed one: the captain was believed to be a Portuguese, and to have a consort commanded by his brother: but this was doubtful; at all events, the pair had never been ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Come I appealant to this Princely presence. Now Thomas Mowbray do I turne to thee, And marke my greeting well: for what I speake, My body shall make good vpon this earth, Or my diuine soule answer it in heauen. Thou art a Traitor, and a Miscreant; Too good to be so, and too bad to liue, Since the more faire and christall is the skie, The vglier seeme the cloudes that in it flye: Once more, the more to aggrauate the note, With a foule Traitors name stuffe I thy throte, And wish (so ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... recluse. "Not call me! Villain Dastard! Cur! I have four queens, miscreant." His voice grew so mighty that it could not fit his throat. He choked wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then the power of his body was concentrated in a ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... to complain when their parents are attempting to break their limbs, to administer poison, or to sell them to enemies for slaves? Let me intreat you to consider, will the mother be pleased, when you represent her as deaf to the cries of her children? When you compare her to the infamous miscreant, who lately stood on the gallows for starving her child? When you resemble her to Lady Macbeth in Shakespear, (I cannot think of it ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... says he, "a work of price, If done entirely for my sake, And good had been the plea you make: But since, with all these pains and care, You seize yourself the dainty fare On which those vermin used to fall, And then devour the mice and all, Urge not a benefit in vain." This said, the miscreant was slain. The satire here those chaps will own, Who, useful to themselves alone, And bustling for a private end, Would boast the merit ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... with intensity of fury. "You fill Karen's mind with lies about my past—oh, there are two sides to every story! she shall hear my side!—you drive her forth with your threats to hand her over to the man she loathes, and she takes refuge—where else?—with that miscreant. Why not? Where else had she to go? You say that she had no money. We call now at the hotel. If he is gone, and if within the day we do not hear that she is with Lise, we will ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... narrative of the Adelantado's brother-in-law was published. That Ribaut, a man whose good sense and bravery were both reputed high, should have submitted himself and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety is scarcely credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a miscreant so savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim, current among the bigots of the day, that faith ought not to be kept ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... by this hand, I'll play the conjuror. Blush, Fortunatus, at the base conceit! To stand aloof, like one that's in a trance, And with thine eyes behold that miscreant imp, Whose tongue['s] more venom['s] than the serpent's sting, Before thy face thus taunt thy dearest friends— Ay, thine own father—with reproachful terms! Thy sister Lelia, she is bought and sold, And learned Sophos, thy thrice-vowed friend, Is made a stale by this base cursed crew ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... "The miscreant has insulted me, and I willingly forgive him the insult. But he has spoken against the laws of Viterbo, and it is ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... woman, and no woman was "fitten" to teach school. She was more—a "fotched-on" woman, a distrusted "furriner," and she was carrying on a "slavery school." Sometimes she despaired of ever winning their unreserved confidence, but out of the very depth of that despair to which the firebrand of some miscreant had plunged her, rose her star of hope, for then the Indian-like stoicism of her neighbors melted and she learned the place in their hearts that was really hers. Other neighborhoods asked for her ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... once given to the newspapers and the Citizens' Municipal Reform Association. These letters were enough to show, so the politicians figured, that the Republican party was anxious to purge itself of any miscreant within its ranks, and they also helped to pass the time ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... degradation. Alas! she had no one to whom she could fly, and under whose fostering kindness she might hide her shame; she had no refuge left—none but death, the last shelter of virtuous woman betrayed. She spurned with indignant pride the glittering offers of the miscreant who wrought her ruin. She recoiled with abhorrence from his loathsome caresses; cursed in bitter agony his unmanly deed, and brooded over her misfortune, until the loss of her reason followed the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... wish, reverend father," he said; "for I have had my taste of joy! If my back be torn and scored, I have had my fingers on yon miscreant's throat. I think he will carry the marks of them as long as I shall carry my scars. I have had ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... importance which the American Government affected to attach to this trivial matter had, however, some influence in confirming the spirit of hostility towards Great Britain which at that time pervaded America, and shortly after broke out in open war. This self-sufficient miscreant having, as he fancied, taken ample vengeance upon the Government of his native country, could not, with any degree of decency, remain in the States, from whence he sailed for France in an American sloop-of-war, carrying with him the reward of his treason and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... Review. And by a poor figure, and therefore a true, For it suits with thy nature, both shoe-like and slaughterly Be its hue leathern, and title the Quarterly, Much misconduct, and see that the others Misdeem, and misconstrue, like miscreant brothers; Misquote, and misplace, and mislead, and misstate, Misapply, misinterpret, misreckon, misdate, Misinform, misconjecture, misargue; in short, Miss all that is good, that ye miss ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... never discovered who blew up the Cafe Vernon, although it was surmised that some miscreant had left a bag containing an infernal machine with either the waiter or ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... silent, absorbed in studying the quiet face so finely formed by Nature and so pathetic to look at. No thoroughly depraved miscreant could look like that. Yet it was like a peaceful sea: when the hurricane should break loose, what a boiling whirl of gray, hissing, tossing, foaming waves would disfigure the peaceful, smooth, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... some ponderous questionings, collared both the two enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the young man who had smashed the window, than to the miscreant who had had his window smashed. There was an air of refined mystery about Evan MacIan, which did not exist in the irate little shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery which appealed to the policemen, for policemen, like most other English types, are at once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... the thought in my mind of that abominable schooner with her miscreant crew, and the terrible dread that she might have fallen in with the "Lady Alice" while her boats were away, and run off with her. What resistance could the five or six people left on board offer, even though they might have suspected ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... indeed had the miscreant acted, that his victim had hardly realised the assault before he found himself securely gagged and bound to a chair in his own ante-room, whilst that dare-devil stood before him, perfectly at his ease, his hands buried in the capacious pockets of his ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... "Go, vile miscreant, from my presence! Think not to intimidate me. Better an 'open enemy than a secret foe.' I am glad you have unmasked yourself so fully. Now I know that I have escaped the ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... before it came into my head, to rob the robber, and tithe Mr. Verrat's harvest. I never considered the hazard I run in these expeditions, not only of a torrent of abuse, but what I should have been still more sensible of, a hearty beating; for the miscreant, who received the whole benefit, would certainly have denied all knowledge of the fact, and I should only have received a double portion of punishment for daring to accuse him, since being only an apprentice, I stood no chance of being believed in opposition to a journeyman. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... that the Kings of yonder blessed city of Cologne, who will not endure that a Jew or infidel should even enter within the walls of their town, could be oblivious enough to permit their worshippers, coming to their shrine as true pilgrims, to be plundered and misused by such a miscreant dog as this Boar of Ardennes, who is worse than a whole desert of Saracen heathens, and all the ten ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... a deadly snare; all who knew him for the foe and suspected him for the murderer of the gallant and lamented earl of Essex;—finally, all, and they were nearly the whole of the nation, who looked upon him as a base and treacherous miscreant, shielded by the affection of his sovereign and wrapped in an impenetrable cloud of hypocrisy and artifice, who aimed in the dark his envenomed weapons against the bosom of innocence;—exulted in this exposure of his secret crimes, and eagerly received and propagated for ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... But hear me, I pray thee, Hotep. This most rapacious miscreant would hold his favor with the king. He knew I loved Masanath, and he held her out of my reach till I should consent to countenance his advisership to my father. I consented—and should I lapse, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... stealth, like a malefactor. "Well," he murmured, thinking of the act which he was on the point of accomplishing, "it's better so. In any case and in spite of everything, I was bound, now that war has been declared, to appear a miscreant and a renegade in my father's eyes. Have I the right to rob him of the ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... Lady Gorgon, cursing Mr. Scully in her heart, and beginning to play a rapid tattoo with her feet, "that miscreant, that traitor, that—that ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the laws of God, and hence that the first law of nature is the preservation of their subjects. Maxims of persecutions, of torture, and of death, they should leave to those who have effected sovereignty by fraud or the sword; but where, except among a few miscreant emperors of Rome, and the Roman pontiffs, shall we find one whose memory is so "damned to everlasting fame" as that of queen Mary? Nations bewail the hour which separates them forever from a beloved governor, but, with respect to that of Mary, it was ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... had amassed vast wealth by their sweat and blood, and gold and silver poured into his castle on all sides in hogsheads. Here he stored his wealth in deep cellars, where it was secure from thieves and robbers. No one knows how the wealthy miscreant came to his end. One morning the attendants found his bed empty and three drops of blood on the floor. A great black cat, which was never seen before or afterwards, was sitting on the canopy of the bed. It is supposed that this cat was the Evil ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... Conrad; "now my cruel illness will soon be gone, now that the miscreant has been caught at his wicked tricks. He will never carry me down again ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... of letters, and other infamous pieces and scurrilous pamphlets, circulating with unusual industry throughout the kingdom, by the enemies of Britain, thereby poisoning the minds of our liege subjects with their detestable tenets?—And did you not this day see the procession, and that vile miscreant Lord Patriot at their head, going to St. James's with their remonstrance, in such state and parade as manifestly tended to provoke, challenge and defy majesty itself, and the powers of government? and yet nothing done ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... Sing, during his reign of two years, and could not hope to recover from their present state of poverty for many more; that their lands were scantily tilled, and the crops had so failed for many years, since this miscreant's rule, that the district which used to supply Lucknow with grain was obliged to draw grain from it, and even from Cawnpore. This is true, and grain has in consequence been increasing in price ever since we left Lucknow. It is now here almost double the price ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... find any natural or significant expression, except through sharp discharges of stones, that being a language older than Hebrew or Sanscrit, and universally intelligible. But, excepting these high days of religious solemnity, when a man is called upon to show that he is not a pagan or a miscreant in the eldest of senses, by thumping, or trying to thump, somebody who is accused or accusable of being heterodox, the great ceremony of breakfast was allowed to sanctify the hour. Some natural growls we uttered, but ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... calaboose, and when he frankly said that he had come to Tahiti to preach the gospel of I. W. W.-ism and that he believed the fishermen had all the right on their side, he was sentenced as "a foreigner without visible means of support, a vagrant, miscreant, vagabond, and dangerous alien," to a month on the roads, and then to be deported to the United States, whence he ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... but he was not, as represented by his opponents on the two extremes, either a charlatan or a miscreant, though possibly not wholly exempt from charges against him in either respect. In many of his ultra radical and it may be truly said revolutionary views—revolutionary because they changed the structure of the Government—he coincided with Senator Sumner, who was perhaps ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... the miserable 'story of Cawnpore.' We were told how, owing to Sir Hugh Wheeler's misplaced belief in the loyalty of the sepoys, with whom he had served for upwards of half a century, and to the confiding old soldier's trust in the friendship of the miscreant Nana, and in the latter's ability to defend him until succour should arrive, he had neglected to take precautionary measures for laying in supplies or for fortifying the two exposed barracks which, for some unaccountable reason, had been chosen as a place of refuge, instead ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... not thus resign Me, for a miscreant of Barbary, A mere adventurer: but that citron face Shall bleach and shrivel the whole winter long There, on you cork-tree by the sallyport. ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... did so, but with so unmistakable an air of cunning and triumph that Eric was both astonished and dismayed. Could the miscreant have any further plot against him? At first he fancied that Billy might attempt to extort money by a threat of telling Dr Rowlands; but this supposition he banished as unlikely, since it might expose Billy himself ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... The miscreant reeled, and lost his balance. Then Curtis closed with him, caught his right wrist, and threw him heavily, but, such was the man's frenzied resolve not to be arrested, that he fired twice again before ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... same air of haughtiness and disgust. But now that he was among the unholy crew he felt that he must make the best of the situation, conformably, of course, with his sense of honour. The description given of this miscreant by the robber chief indicates his appearance. He was somewhat below the medium height, and though not stoutly built, revealed strongly knit shoulders, and muscles enduring as twisted steel. He had a fawning air, a dark, rolling eye, and most ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... this appalling account of human depravity, expressed himself in energetic terms of indignation against the miscreant, who to the acute miseries of maternal affliction at the premature loss of a son, and by such a death! could add the bitter anguish of consigning his cold remains, unseen by any earthly spirit of sympathy, to the knife of the dissector, in breach of every law moral and divine! In the warmth of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... careful!" He knew that this was what lawyers always said. Of course, there is a difference in position between a miscreant whom you suspect of an attempt at perjury and the father of the girl you love, whose consent to the match you wish to obtain, but Sam was in no mood for these nice distinctions. He only knew that lawyers ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... from his coat lapel and wedged it carefully in the joint between his desk and the back of Olga's seat. A glance at Miss Brown found her watching Billy Silvey closely in the belief that he was the miscreant. The time for his crowning bit ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... of a king, have every opportunity and inducement to betray their trust. The same national misfortune happens, when a king, worn out with age and infirmity, enters the last stage of human weakness. In both these cases the public becomes a prey to every miscreant, who can tamper successfully with the follies either ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... there lived at Florence a man who trafficked in torture named Schiff; "among the inferior professors of medical knowledge," says Dr. Johnson, "is a race of wretches, whose lives are only varied by varieties of cruelty," and such an one was this miscreant. ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge

... befriend the Irish race; and so sudden, universal, and lasting, was the effect of this plot in closing the eyes of all to the claims of the Irish, that when its chief promoter, Shaftesbury, was dragged to the Tower and there imprisoned as a miscreant, and Oates himself suffered a punishment too mild for his villany, nevertheless no one thought of again taking up the cause of the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... mistress lived in a state of continual nervous apprehension. So far she had got in her narrative, when suddenly she sprang from her chair and her face was convulsed with surprise and fear. "See!" she cried. "The miscreant follows still! There is the very man of ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle

... service was ended; the singers departed, the priests retired, but the congregation remained. Seven hundred and eighty-three human beings waiting to take vengeance on the miscreant who had thrown ridicule on the Holy Father by making faces at the faithful as they knelt in prayer. Already a murmur ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... look exasperating. He saw everything and he enjoyed everything. Plainly he was the miscreant. He was waddling round on his stout little legs, flourishing a huge jack-knife, and grinning as if he were going to have a big dish of whale-fat for dinner. He looked comical enough. He was dressed in ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... irritated; he grew calm in the same way. For my part, I think that he pardoned the Jesuits, as he had the Leaguers, in the hope that his clemency would bring them all into peaceful disposition; in which he was certainly succeeding when a miscreant killed him." ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... leader, changing his entire manner with the most sudden and shameless inconsistency. "You shall go back together, and woe betide the miscreant who would prevent it. What say you brothers? What shall be his fate who dares to separate our noble Queen ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... closer walk with God, that I may know His will, and act in conformity with it. Walking down High Ousegate about half-past eight in the evening, in company with my daughter, I had my pocket picked of a small silver box, given me by a cousin. I can, and have prayed for the miscreant who did it; but wish to have my box again: I fear this is wrong; it is not like Paul, who suffered the loss of all things without regret.—Several ladies commenced cutting out clothing for the poor. May we be clothed with humility. Our interview was pleasant.—On ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... because they reject some clause of it, incur a forfeiture; no one must enjoy the advantages of a pact of which some of the conditions are repudiated.—Even better, as this pact is based on natural right and is obligatory, he who rejects it or withdraws from it, becomes by that act a miscreant, a public wrong-doer and an enemy of the people. There were once crimes of royal lese-majesty; now there are crimes of popular lese-majesty. Such crimes are committed when by deed, word, or thought, any portion whatever of the more than royal authority belonging to the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... known, and face it, whatever it is. Look, now. She wrote this letter which brought you here—this letter—every word of which is a lie; she it was who sent Gualtier to you to bring you here; she it was who recommended to you that miscreant who betrayed you, on whose tracks the police of France and Italy are already set. How do you suppose she will appear in the eyes of the French police? Guilty, or ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille



Words linked to "Miscreant" :   offender, wretch, deviate, wrongdoer, degenerate, reprobate



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