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Rafter   Listen
noun
Rafter  n.  (Arch.) Originally, any rough and somewhat heavy piece of timber. Now, commonly, one of the timbers of a roof which are put on sloping, according to the inclination of the roof. "(Courtesy) oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rafter" Quotes from Famous Books



... And now his right-hand was nearly on a level with the floor of the bridge, and he was stretching out his left hand to grasp one of the rails, when his foot suddenly slipping on a sloping rafter, he lost his hold altogether, and, to the horror of his companions, fell with a heavy thud on to the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... Sit ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe—pardon, Hal—says I am the very image of a ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... party, as they stood about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning, beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to protect the property, and the party adjourned to Tentaillon's to break their fast at the Doctor's expense. The bottle circulated somewhat freely; and before they left the table ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... two tubs of water stood in the kitchen, close to the narrow stairway which led into the loft. Three or four pails of water and some quick work in running up and down the stairs was all that was needed. Ford, standing in the low, unfinished loft, looked at the rafter which was burnt half through, and wiped his perspiring ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... doth waft her Little breaths of maiden laughter. O, divinely dies the day! And the swallow, on the rafter, In her nest of sticks and clay,— On the rafter, up above her, With her patience doth reprove her, Twittering soft the time away; Never stopping, never stopping, With her wings so warmly dropping Round her nest of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... night," went on Newt joyously. "From a rafter in Ed Higgins's livery stable. With a clothesline. Kicked a step-ladder out from under himself. Why, even Uncle Dad Simms has heard about it. Ed found him when he went out to—wait a second! I'm goin' your way. What's the rush? He's been dead six or eight hours. He ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... ain't one to go pitchin' my life hither an' yon an' dancin' wildly first on one leg an' then the other from dawn to dusk for other people. Elijah's come an' Elijah's gone an' his mattress is hung back to the rafter in the attic an' his sulphur candle is all bought to burn to-morrow an' when that's over an' the smell's over too I shall look to settle down an' not have nothin' more to upset my days an' nights till your time comes, Mrs. Lathrop, an' ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner

... brother, how you speak of another's fault. Ere you know, you may be in the same or deeper condemnation. Very significantly does the Master say that the man that sees a mote in his brother's eye, usually has a rafter in his own eye! One of the two unpardonable sins of ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... meal is eaten and the things are cleared away, then we sit around repeatin' cares and triumphs of the day; and the high resounding rafter echoes to our harmless jokes, to our buoyant peals of laughter, while tired mother sits and smokes. Thus her jaded mind relaxes in an atmosphere so gay, and she thinks no more of taxes or of bills that she must pay; smiles are soon her face adorning, ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... to meet a builder! Had this good house, in frame or fixture, Been tempered by the least admixture Of that discreditable shoddy, Should we to-day compound our toddy, Or gaily marry song and laughter Below its sempiternal rafter? Not so!' ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... finished his porridge, he was to go into the barn to thrash. He took one of the rafters from the roof and made a flail out of it, and when the roof was about to fall in, he took a big pine tree with branches and all and put it up instead of the rafter. So he went on thrashing the grain and the straw and the hay all together. This was doing more damage than good, for the corn and the chaff flew about together, and a cloud of dust arose over the ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... which, in another moment, vanished. The world had fled away from these two wanderers. They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground. It seemed uninhabited. There were the relics of a wood-pile, indeed, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... worked into elaborate bas-relief designs. But ordinarily the horse's head is a plain tenpin in shape or a squat bottle with a knob on the side by which it has been tied up, two cheeses at a time, on opposite sides of a rafter, while being smoked lightly golden and rubbed with olive oil and butter to make ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... Lat. dens, a tooth), in architecture, a small tooth-shaped block used as a repeating ornament in the bed-mould of a cornice. Vitruvius (iv. 2) states that the dentil represents the end of a rafter (asser); and since it occurs in its most pronounced form in the Ionic temples of Asia Minor, the Lycian tombs and the porticoes and tombs of Persia, where it represents distinctly the reproduction in stone of timber construction, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... grateful Ceres wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome. The bread-pantry, the wine-vat, and the store of sausages on the rafter,—lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food are set before him; contented, the sated guest sits, looking neither before him nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen. The warmest double-wool sheepskin is spread as a couch for him. Here people still, as good ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... Resolved thus, without delay she went, As her strong passion did her rashly guide, And those bright arms, down from the rafter hent, Within her closet did she closely hide; That might she do unseen, for she had sent The rest, on sleeveless errands from her side, And night her stealths brought to their wished end, Night, patroness of thieves, and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... VP's couldn't make the calf Manley's. If anybody came and saw that cow, why—" Val looked at him rafter pityingly, as if she could not quite understand how he could even question her upon that point. "And, after all," she added forlornly, "he's my husband. I couldn't—I had to do what I could to shield him—just for sake of the past, I suppose. Much as I despise ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... above him, a rafter here and there was gaping open, and fiery monsters, with blood-red eyes, were peeping down at him and puffing clouds of blue smoke through the interstices. Thousands and thousands of voices were bickering and chattering with each other, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... the loft revealed, to the boy's surprise and wonder, a coil of rope. He examined this, and found a stout clasp-hook at one end. The other end of the rope was made fast to a rafter. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... Armagnac under her arm. Rabecque busied himself at once, and his hungry master disposed himself to satisfy the healthiest appetite in France, when suddenly a shadow fell across the table. A man had come to stand beside it, his body screening the light of one of the lamps that hung from a rafter of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... up, and clung by his elbows. "No good," he whispered hoarsely. "The nearest rafter is a foot below. Let me have the coat. It will be safer than trusting to your hands. I might drag you ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... of the power, abhorred by the gods of high heaven, The ruinous curse of the home till roof-tree and rafter be riven! Too true are the visions of ill, too true the fulfilment they bring To the curse that was spoken of old by the frenzy and wrath of the king! Her will is the doom of the children, and Discord ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... morning, while the shoemaker still slept, the soldier was astir again. He shivered as he rose, and went to the window, where his clothes were hanging from a rafter. The water was still dripping from them. Wrapt in a blanket he sat down by the open window to write while the morning ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... of haze, born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman, who wore a slop-shop blue suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily, then I realized that a sort of tourniquet of wire-netting was screwed ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... expedition, climbed up first, Paul handing him the rope. He soon reached a rafter, and lowering the rope until he knew that it touched the ground, he fastened it securely, and at once descended, followed by Paul. They had dropped into their own bedroom, which they had given up to Hector; after feeling about, however, they decided he was not there. ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... Spanish defence, this strategic point of all their operations, and their chief hope of success against the revolutionists, was furnished by their despised and hated enemies in the United States. Every sheet of armor plate, every corrugated zinc roof, every roll of barbed wire, every plank, beam, rafter and girder, even the nails that hold the planks together, the forts themselves, shipped in sections, which are numbered in readiness for setting up, the ties for the military railroad which clings to the trocha from one sea ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... would redden, and my long, lean hands and arms, that offended my sense of beauty constantly, as I dwelt on their hopelessly angular turns. I had one beauty; so my little paper-framed glass, that rested on the rough rafter that edged the sloping roof of my garret, told me, whenever I took it down to gaze in it, which, but for that beauty, would have been but seldom. It was a finely cut and firmly set mouth and chin. There was, and I felt it, beauty and character in the curves of the lips, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... a bullet whistled through the door and struck a tin of condensed milk which hung by a string from the rafter. The bullet went right through and the milk oozed out and fell ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... once appointed Town-Major of some brick-dust, a rafter and two empty bully-beef tins—all of which in combination bore the name of a village. He assumed his duties with a bland Pickwickian zest, which did good to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... a stake is driven into and even with the soil at each plant, being careful to have them in true lines both ways, and driven deep enough to be quite firm; on the top of this stake is driven a small nail or hook. Directly over each nail, in the rafter of the house, or a strip nailed to them for the purpose, is placed another nail, and between the two a cord similar to that used by druggists or the like—but green, if possible, in color, for obvious reasons—is stretched as taught as may be, so that when finished ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... were lit, and then Manuel repeated his experiment by burning a piece, amid breathless excitement. No further doubt could exist, and then Manuel, taking a spring balance (weighing up to 50 lbs.) from the wall, hung it to a rafter, whilst the men put the lot into three separate bags and suspended them to ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... twelfths, tenths, and eighths of an inch, also a brace-measure, an eight-square measure, and the Essex board-measure. Another style, instead of an Essex board-measure, and the hundredths graduation has a rafter-table. The side upon which the name of the maker is stamped, is called the "face," and the reverse side ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... official papers. Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment, "Libertad o Muerte." (Liberty or Death!) In the southwest corner of the room stood a low and narrow cot, beneath whose thin serape covering a tall, gaunt cadaverous ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... have bread;—plowing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, threshing, grinding, baking.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house is raised to a certain height, a man tumbles off a scaffold, and breaks his neck; he would laugh heartily at our folly in building; but it does not follow that men are better without houses. No, Sir, (holding ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the gallery. The grand old hall was a thrilling scene—the dense throng, the upturned faces, the counsel, the judges, the officers of court, and then the windows, the statues, the echo of history that made every stone and rafter live—Oh, Nan, Nan, listen to me! If I live I'll sit on the bench there some day—I will, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... entered extended across the entire east end of the building, and had windows upon three sides. These were heavily curtained. The apartment was lighted by a small cresset hanging from a rafter near the ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... queen haughtily. "Procure me my crown." Suzanna looked about her. An old dried-up Christmas wreath hanging on a rafter attracted her attention. Quickly she procured it and held it out to Drusilla. "Here is your crown, Queen," she said. And then, her voice changing, she said: "You'd better let me put it on, Drusilla, it's liable to crumble if you're not careful. Lower ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... very plentiful. During our first winter, we had a deer hung on every rafter on the north side of the house. Our supply of meat for the first year or two depended upon our success as ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... ground, They and their houses shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes.' They scarce had spoke when fair and soft The roof began to mount aloft, Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climb'd slowly after; The chimney widen'd and grew higher. Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fasten'd to a joist; Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack which had almost Lost by disuse ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... his guards, huge and distorted, against the woven reed and bamboo walls, their every movement being magnified and strange. In his own part, from time to time he could see the bright green growth that had forced itself through the palm-thatch, and trace every bamboo rafter, save where, in places, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... at their invitation, turned to go into the palace, little anticipating the danger that awaited him, for the eldest daughter had drawn up by a chain a huge rafter to let fall and slay Iliya as he rode through the gate. But Iliya perceived her design, and slew her with his lance. Thereupon he rode on toward Kiev, and going straight to the palace, prayed to God and saluted the nobles. ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... Clewer, quite monstrous, and fantastic with their skirts and hair and their shadows on the wall. Before Frosted Moses had said that sentence about Courage, Peter had been taking the room in. Because he had been there very often before he knew every flagstone in the floor and every rafter in the roof and all the sporting pictures on the walls, and the long shining row of mugs and coloured plates by the fire-place and the cured hams hanging from the ceiling ... but to-night was Christmas Eve and a very especial occasion, and he was sure to be beaten when he ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... feel the fangs in his wrist. But he found the match-box, struck a light, carefully examined the floor as far as he could see it, jumped out of bed at one bound, and took refuge in the other room. There he looked in every corner, and along every rafter for the other snake, for he knew that at this season snakes are often found in pairs, but he could not see the mate of the one he had left ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. They tied the mayor of the town to a tree and shot him. The trenches have been filled in, all the ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... detail of the room as he looked down it and then across to Ruby again: the motion of the fiddle-bows; the variegated dresses of the women; the kissing-bush that some tall dancer's head had set swaying from the low rafter; the light of a sconce gleaming on Tresidder's bald scalp. Years after, he could recall the exact poise of Ruby's head as she answered some question of her companion. The stranger left her, and strolled slowly ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... tiny room he saw, with a rough, narrow bed in one corner and a box table at its head. From the ceiling hung a lantern with the chimney smoked on one side and the warped, pole rafter above it slightly blackened to show how long the lantern had hung there lighted. A door opposite the tiny window was closed, and there was no latch or fastening on the inner side. An Indian blanket covered half the ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... I dare not follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter, I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the window: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. Then ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... word. Raised by his toil a cottage stood To shelter Rama in the wood, Of ample size, with leaves o'erlaid, Of hardened earth the walls were made. The strong bamboos his hands had felled For pillars fair the roof upheld, And rafter, beam, and lath supplied Well interwrought from side to side. Then Sami(451) boughs he deftly spread Enlaced with knotted cord o'erhead, Well thatched above from ridge to eaves With holy grass, and reed, and leaves. The mighty chief with careful toil ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... borne onward by the tide, A loving mother with her babe close sheltered at her side; One hand has grasped a rafter, the other guards her child; Oh, how she pleads with God and man in accents loud and wild! Men hear but give no answer, no human hand can save; Her voice, alas, is hushed in ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... done here this night, whome onely I may call to witnesse for my innocency, render (I say) unto me some wholesome weapon to end my life, that am most willing to dye. And therewithal I pulled out a piece of the rope wherewith the bed was corded, and tyed one end thereof about a rafter by the window, and with the other end I made a sliding knot, and stood upon my bed, and so put my neck into it, and leaped from the bed, thinking to strangle my selfe and so dye, behold the rope beeing old and rotten burst in the middle, and I fell down ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before—if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail of ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... moved uneasily, shifting her position in the chair. Sunset, and the swift winter twilight, had tinted, then dimmed, the light in the room. On the oak-beamed ceiling, across the ivory rosettes, a single bar of red sunlight lay, broken by rafter and plaster foliation. She watched it turn to rose, to ashes. And, closing her eyes, she lay very still and motionless in the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... dusty, over a rafter in the shed, and Harriet sewed a buckle on the strip that goes around the waist. I cleaned and sharpened ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

... dragged out to the door, and every bone of him broken. Next night Grettir sat up to watch; and when a third of the night was past, he heard a terrible din as of one riding the roof, and driving his heels against the thatch so that every rafter cracked again. He went to the door, and saw Glam, whose head, as it appeared to him, was monstrously big. Glam came slowly in and took hold of a bundle lying on the seat, but Grettir planted his foot against a beam, seized the bundle also, and pulled against Glam ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... follow more easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which you will need if you would survive ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... the candle down from the rafter, and she went swiftly to the tiny window. She raised her hand, once, then pinched out the flame between ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... and no two sorts alike on the whole twenty pyramids. A temple of Roses, planted in the same way, has a beautiful appearance in a flower garden—that is, eight, ten, or twelve stout peeled Larch poles, well painted, set in the ground, with a light iron rafter from each, meeting at the top and forming a dome. An old cable, or other old rope, twisted round the pillar and iron, gives an additional beauty to the whole. Then plant against the pillars with two or three ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed. The house dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... stockade gate, and went straight to the porch; all the woodwork of which was carved and gaily painted, and so were eaves and rafter ends and tie beams. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... the corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. It, too, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... his castle wall; The gate was burnt with fire; Roof and rafter were fallen down, The folk were strangers all in the town, And ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... rocky wall he could reach the end of the ledge. Creeping along it he soon found himself close to the opening, surrounded by strong light, but effectually concealed from view by the ledge. It was as if he were on a natural rafter, peeping down on the floor below! As there was a multitude of such ledges around, which it would take several men many hours to examine, he began to breathe more freely, for, would the searchers ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... on the rafter gave a low whistle. Through the window he had seen the dim form of the sentry outside approach the space lighted by the rays from the lantern, which he had laid down at a corner of the shed. Before ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... But for that pack of churlish boors, Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their village shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes." Scarce had they spoke, when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose ev'ry beam and rafter; The heavy wall went clambering after. The chimney widen'd, and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... to them during divine worship, put up backs to their forms. But still, for many a year, there was no inclosure of pews; the first, indeed, that made a pew, as I have been told, was one Archibald Rafter, a wright, and the grandfather of Mr Rafter, the architect, who has had so much to do with the edification of the new town of Edinburgh. This Archibald's form happened to be near the door, on the left side of the pulpit; ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... stone's throw apart. As our kuruma men knew the place, while we did not, we let them choose the inn. They pulled up at what caused me a shudder. I thought, if this was the best inn, what must the worst be like! However, I bowed my head to fate in the form of a rafter lintel, and passed in. A dim light, which came in part from a hole in the floor, and in part from an ineffective lamp, revealed a lofty, grotto-like interior. Over the hole hung a sort of witches' caldron, swung by a set of iron bars from the shadowy ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... phoebe; pewit, phoebe, they contentedly but rather monotonously sing as they investigate all the sites in the neighborhood. Presently a location is chosen under a beam or rafter, and the work of collecting moss and mud for the foundation and hair and feathers or wool to line the exquisite little home begins. But the labor is done cheerfully, with many a sally in midair either to let off superfluous ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... hear the light, light foot, the faint sweet laughter Happy stir and murmur of a child that plays: Slowly the darkness creeps up from floor to rafter, Slowly the fallen snow covers all ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... rent were demanded, and once more he feebly protested that he could not discharge them. Thereon Ramani Babu ordered him to be hung up. Forthwith, a dozen eager hands were laid on him, a rope was passed under his armpits, and the free end thrown over a rafter of the office. By this means he was hauled from the ground and swung suspended, a butt of sarcasm and abuse for Ramani Babu's myrmidons. After enduring this humiliation for an hour or so, he was ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... of most attractive personal and social qualities. He was artless as a little child, full of enthusiasm for the best things, and a pattern of saintly goodness. It used to be said that every stone and rafter in the Church of the Covenant had felt the touch of his prayers. This venerable servant of God entered into his rest on the 1st of February, 1871, in the 80th year of his age. In a letter to her cousin, Rev. George S. Payson, Mrs. Prentiss thus ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... escape observation from the few persons on the pier I went down to the steerage cabin, which was a little triangular place in the bow, with an open stove in the middle of the floor and a bleary oil-lamp swinging from a rafter overhead. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... of his defeats he was lying one night on a wretched bed in a rude hut, while debating in his own mind whether it were not best to enlist in a crusade, when his attention was directed to a spider on the rafters overhead. He saw that the little spinner was trying to swing from one rafter to another, so as to fix his thread across the space. Time and again it tried and failed. Admiring the perseverance of the creature, Bruce began to count the number of times he tried. One, two, three, four, five, six. ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... to transcribe them here. These tapestries, well preserved in those parts where light has scarcely penetrated, are framed in bands of oak now black as ebony. The ceiling has projecting rafters enriched with foliage which is varied for each rafter; the space between them is filled with planks painted blue, on which twine garlands of golden flowers. Two old buffers face each other; on their shelves, rubbed with Breton persistency by Mariotte the cook, can be seen, as in the days when kings were as poor in 1200 as the du ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... order to pierce wood and to bore its galleries in an old rafter, employs "the same utensils which in others are transformed into picks and mattocks to attack clay and gravel, and it is only a predisposition of talent that holds each ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... however, with the sunlight streaming through doorway, window and cracks, it looked more inviting than it had at night. Weeds were growing between the rotting boards and in one corner a hornets' nest as big as their heads hung from a sagging rafter. ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... was a little boy wouldn't say his pray'rs— An' when he went to bed at night, away up stairs, His mammy heerd him holler, an' his daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout! An' the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef you Don't ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... and their dependants, the labour, though immense, was greatly facilitated by everyone's bringing his post, or his rafter, or his pole strung with thatching, ready for instant use. The materials thus prepared being afterwards secured together by thongs, there was literally "neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... in the household is busily toiling, And hither and thither boys bustle and girls; Whilst, up from the hearth-fires careering and coiling, The smoke round the rafter-beams languidly curls. Let the joys of the revel be parted between us! 'Tis the Ides of young April, the day which divides The month, dearest Phyllis, of ocean-sprung Venus, A day to me dearer than ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... reached from the highway through a half-mile lane, thick grown with bushes. Here, years before I was born, there had once lived a man by the name of Buck, who hanged himself in the garret one day, while his wife was away. It was said she came back just at dusk and found him hanging lifeless from a rafter in the garret. What became of her I never knew, but no one ever lived on the place afterward, and in time the farm and house reverted to the town for taxes. It also soon obtained the reputation of being haunted, and no one ever went near it after ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... league o' ice against the body o' the big pack t' the sou'east. In the nor'west, too, was another floe. 'Twas there, in the mist, an' 'twas comin' down with the wind. It cotched the first of the gale; 'twas free t' move, too. 'Twould overhaul us soon enough. Ever see the ice rafter, sir? No? Well, 'tis no swift collison. 'Tis horrible an' slow. No shock at all: jus' slow pressure. The big pans rear. They break—an' tumble back. Fields—acres big—slip one atop o' the other. Hummocks are crunched t' slush. The big bergs topple ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... I was crossing An obscure street, I saw a crowd of workmen Gathered around a man upon the ground: A rafter from a half-built house had fallen, And he was badly injured. Seeing none To act with promptness in the case, I hailed A cab, and had him driven to my house. Finding he was a fellow-countryman, I gave him one of my spare rooms, and sent For ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... lantern of yellow silk, decorated with black dragons, with only one tear in its entire circumference, and that one Auntie Gossburger darned so skilfully that nobody noticed the hole. This, Felix, after much consideration, swung to the rafter immediately over the throne, so that its mellow light should fall directly on ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... told Nelson to make plans and estimates for a large forage barn, 75 by 150 feet, 25 feet from floor to rafter plate, with a driving floor through the length of it and mows on either side. A granary, with a capacity of twenty thousand bushels, a large woodhouse, and a small house in the centre of this group where the fifteen horse-power engine ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... much of a ranch now," admitted Jack Harpe. "But everything has to have a beginning. I'm figuring on a right smart growth for the Rafter H within the next year ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... some brown, honest hand of toil, And honorable with service of the soil,— Forever open; to which, on his back The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack, And while the miller measures out his toll, Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,— That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,— The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that says how so-and-so Lived, died, or wedded: how curculio And codling-moth play havoc with the fruit, Smut ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot: Or what ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... awoke, gazed about and laughed until the echoes rang from rafter to rafter as the eye took in each black-featured, bearded and grubby individual. Stumpy was requested to "leave that foot of fungus on his face, as it hid what for weeks had been an infliction," and to which he cuttingly replied that the other gentleman had features ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... Bellows, you must work till the furnace is aglow. Snug is my old smithy when, without, comes down the snow, When sooty wall and rafter in the blaze are all aglow. Blow, blow, blow, blow! What care I if the storm, then, without, be high or low? Blow, ...
— The Nursery, August 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... close to a rapid mountain stream, which was of a greyish white, like bubbling soap suds. A smaller stream, rushes forth from the rocks on the other side of the river, passes through an enclosed, broad rafter-made-gutter and turns the large wheel of the mill. The gutter was so full of water, that it streamed over and offered a most slippery way, to one who had the idea of crossing more quickly to the mill; a young man had this idea—the Englishman. Guided by the light, which shone from ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... this infernal thing!" Altamont raged. "'Wielding a gold-plated spade handled with oak from an original rafter of the Congressional Library, at three-fifteen one afternoon last week—' One afternoon last week!" He cursed luridly. "Why couldn't that blasted magazine say what afternoon? I've gone over a lot of twentieth century copies of that magazine; that ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... for dinner and what he should reserve for breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel of the Indian Medical Service "pinched" ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... on to a chair, and took it from the rafter on which it had so long lain. Then he carefully wiped the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... I have that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else . . .'), and if by any effort we can enter into their lives, and transcend ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... duties were not easy nor expeditious work, nor did all the work begin in the still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown through them in the sunny days of their youth ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose every beam and rafter; The heavy wall ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high; Bright reason will mock thee Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... beside me, mark my deeds, And thou shalt own Mentor Alcimides 270 A valiant friend, and mindful of thy love. She spake; nor made she victory as yet Entire his own, proving the valour, first, Both of the sire and of his glorious son, But, springing in a swallow's form aloft, Perch'd on a rafter of the splendid roof. Then, Agelaues animated loud The suitors, whom Eurynomus also roused, Amphimedon, and Demoptolemus, And Polyctorides, Pisander named, 280 And Polybus the brave; for noblest far Of ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... between August 4th and 5th, 1689; all was quiet on the Island of Montreal. At the end of the evening's conversation, that necessary complement of every well-filled day, the men had hung their pipes, the faithful comrades of their labour, to a rafter of the ceiling; the women had put away their knitting or pushed aside in a corner their indefatigable spinning-wheel, and all had hastened to seek in sleep new strength for the labour of the morrow. Outside, the elements were unchained, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... high north wall are the remains of two buttresses. There is a small building which abuts on the east, and ranges along the southern side, which was probably the Chapter House of the Nuns. The walls are entire, the roof is of wood, and some of the rafter work is in fair preservation. It is in this building that the remains of Rosamond are supposed to have been deposited, when they were removed from the choir of the church, by the order of Hugh, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... awkward gait, as if troubled with the gout, or with corns on his toes, casting about many a prying look, turning down first one eye, then the other, in earnest consideration, upon every straw he meets with; until, espying some mighty twig, large enough to make a rafter for his air-castle, he will seize upon it with avidity, and hurry away with it to the tree-top; fearing, apparently, lest you should dispute with him ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... pen should write upon your rafter Mene and Mene in the folds of flame, Think ye could any memories thereafter Wholly retrace the couplet as ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... panes the grassy court was starr'd; The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after; And thro' the ragged roof the sky shone, barr'd With naked beam and rafter. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... recoiled from a worm, who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders taller in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk head in air along the most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the grossness nor the harshness of life's web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into the briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin was mining the walls of her cottage, as already it had mined and subverted Mr. Archer's palace. Well, she faced it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... out. I couldn't see, but I could hear those birds stirring and cheeping all around. I lay down and lifted my gun ready to take the first that came between me and the sky." His voice had fallen to an undernote, and his glance rested an absent moment on the circle of light on the rafter above an electric lamp. "When it did, and I blazed, the whole flock rose. I winged two. I had to grope for them in the reeds, but I found them, and I made a little fire and cooked one of them in a tin pail I carried ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... the wreathed smoke and dim hot fume of the consuming fire told him of certain death; unable to retreat,—for the insidious flame had already destroyed the door which Roupall had failed to move, and danced, like a fiend at play with destruction, from rafter to rafter, and beam to beam, of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... middle of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous Bourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to rafter. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... stick a. Sometimes the upper and lower beams are secured to the two side rails forming a frame such as the warp of a blanket is wound on (Sec. IV), but more commonly the loom is arranged in the manner shown in Plate XXXVI; that is, the upper beam is secured to a rafter, post, or tree, while to the lower beam is attached a loop of rope that passes under the thighs of the weaver, and the warp is rendered tense by her weight. Next, the upper shed is supplied with a shed-rod, and the lower shed with a set of healds. Then the stick ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews

... commit suicide ages ago, and thus end the eventful history with a blank page in the middle of the book. I dare say the very bashfulness which has been my bane has prevented me; the idea of being cut down from a rafter, with a black-and-blue face, and drawn out of the water with a swollen one, has put me so out of countenance that I had not the courage to brave a coroner's jury ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... after, Month of all the Loves (and mine); Month of mock and cuckoo-laughter,— May the jocund cometh after. Beaks are gay on roof and rafter; Luckless lovers ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... Smith had a stream of dirty water sent up his trousers leg, which went clear up to his collar, and wilted it beyond repair. Mr. Hatch entwined his doeskin pants around the burnt ridge-pole of the roof, hung on to a rafter with his teeth, and chopped shingles, and the pipemen kept him wet, and he looked like a bundle of damp stuff in a paper mill. Mr. Spence was on the top of the ladder, and Mr. Drummond was next below him. In falling, Mr. D. caught hold of one tail of Mr. Spence's swallow hammer ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... here. My mammy, she been drown right down dere in de Pee Dee river, fore I get big enough to make motion en talk what I know. Dat how-come it be dat Pa Cudjo raise me. You see, Pa Cudjo, he been work down to de swamp a heap of de time en been run boat en rafter up en down dat river all bout dere. Ma, she get word, one day, she better come cross de river to de Sand Hills to see bout grandmammy cause she been took down wid de fever en was bad off. Pa Cudjo tell her de ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... my life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can displace ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... had heated red-hot, right into the eye of the drunken cannibal, and Ulysses helped to thrust it in with all his might, still farther and farther, with effort, as men bore with an auger, till the scalded blood gushed out, and the eye-ball smoked, and the strings of the eye cracked, as the burning rafter broke in it, and the eye hissed, as hot iron hisses when ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... moment, looking up at the forest roof. They could hear a baying of hounds in the far valley. Down the dingle near them a dead leaf was drumming on a bough—a clock of the wood telling the flight of seconds. Above, they could hear the low creak of brace and rafter and great waves of the upper deep sweeping over and breaking with a loud wash on reefs of evergreen. The little people of this odd winter land had begun to make roads from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket. A partridge had broken ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... glamour round me, And joy, with careless hand, and happiness, had crown'd me, And the Muse shared my hours of leisure, pure and free. In those so joyous nights, lighted with friendly glee, How rang that dear abode with rhyme and merry laughter— Waking the household gods—how rang each shouting rafter! Then, weary of the feast, I from the wine-cup turn'd, For a new sudden fire within my bosom burn'd, And to my lady's bower I flew upon the morrow, And found her half in wrath and half in girlish sorrow, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... concealing the passages leading to the buttery and kitchens, in which the clerk of the kitchen, the pantlers, and the yeomen of the cellar and ewery, were hurrying to and fro. Above the screen was a gallery, occupied by the trumpeters and minstrels; and over all was a noble rafter roof. The tables were profusely spread, and glittered with silver dishes of extraordinary size and splendour, as well as with flagons and goblets of the same material, and rare design. The guests, all of whom were assembled, were outnumbered by the prodigious array of serving-men, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of one house there was left standing only a breadth of front wall between the places where windows had been. It rose in a ragged column to the line of the roof-rafters—only, of course, there was neither roof nor rafter now. On the face of the column, as though done in a spirit of bitter irony, was posted a proclamation, signed by the burgomaster and the military commandant, calling on the vanished dwellers of this ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... Ody's companions were, she bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property. For how could she set him on the Tinker's felonious track without apprising them likewise? You might as well try to huroosh one chicken off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it. The impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables, striding quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... night in a ruined town With a rafter for a bed? With horses stamping underneath In the morning when they are fed? Have you heard the crump-crump whistle? Do you know the dud shell's grunt? Have you played rat in a dugout?— Then you ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... Bill," says Jack to the next blank, "I got it from him." And when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper to ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... Wore kinglier girdle and a kingly crown, Whilst crowns and orbs and sceptres starred his breast. All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale, But special burnishment adorned his mail And special terror weighed upon his frown; 20 His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, he feared no binding law, But ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... was quite evening, and whereabouts I was to get down I couldn't tell. I dare not stop though, for fear the others should come to look after their mate, so unfastening the rope from my waist I tied it to a rafter, slid down as far as it would reach, and hung swinging at the end, thinking that it was all no good, for you two would be gone; and then I dropped, and found myself ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, has been known to build in the knothole of a fence rail; and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so well that they repeated the experiment next year. I have known the social sparrow, or "hairbird," ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... that size be. As was the case with sand a mixture of coarse and fine particles gives the fewest voids; for stone an L{1}M{0}F{1} mixture and for gravel an L{8}M{0}F{2} mixture. Tamping reduces the voids in broken stone. Mr. Geo. W. Rafter gives the voids in clean, hand-broken limestone passing a 2-in. ring as 43 per cent. after being lightly shaken and 37 per cent. after being rammed. Generally speaking heavy ramming will reduce the voids in loose stone about 20 ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... cheers, who solaces, who inspirits, who honours, who exalts the lot of the labourer, is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those whose manner of life he entirely shares; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... barn, The sick wretch hears, like a far-away horn, As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy, The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y." All day it follows, all night it whines, From the suck of waters, the moan of pines, And the tread of cavalry following after, The flash of flames on beam and rafter, The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon, Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten, And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy The dying words of the dark assassin, A wandering ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves

... that she would take good care to stop up the road. As to Parsley, it was, moreover, impossible for her to escape, as she had laid a spell upon her, so that unless she had in her hand the three gall-nuts which were in a rafter in the kitchen it would be labour lost to attempt to ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... home, the archer hid his precious pill under a rafter, lest anyone should steal it, and then began the preparatory course ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... and without making the least noise. Holding the lighted candle out before her, she stared at a rafter from which hung a human figure dressed in woman's clothes. She wheeled about, uttering a stifled gurgle. A sort of drunkenness came over her; she was seized with a terrible desire to dance. She raised ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann



Words linked to "Rafter" :   beam, balk, render, baulk, raft, traveller, raftman, traveler



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