"Forked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... luxuriant with rushes and saw-grass, made a part of the way easy for him, though it led through mud, and slime, and stagnant water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... archway, and the hostler followed at his heels. Meanwhile the carriage bearing Mr. Mountclere and Sol was speeding on its way to Enckworth. When they reached the spot at which the road forked into two, they left the Knollsea route, and keeping thence under the hills for the distance of five or six miles, drove into Lord Mountclere's park. In ten minutes the house was before them, framed ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... angular crags, and pierced, in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine. Far above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightning; and far beyond and above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept in the blue sky the utmost peaks of the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... forth, and in his arms A woman's senseless form. As they descended And now were in mid-air, there came the sound Of the bell striking midnight, and forthwith In a moment, like a serpent winged with fire, There rose from wall to wall a sheet of flame, Which in one instant mounted to the roof With forked red tongues. Then every casement teemed With strange armed men, who leapt into the flames And perished. Those who, maimed and burnt, escaped, Ere they could gain their feet, a little band Of citizens, who sprang from out the night, Slew as they lay. The Prince, who bore ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... creatures swarmed over the bows. Men with beards and men without, some holding long spears and streamers, and some with three-pronged tridents, all having huge heads with grotesque faces, and forked tails which ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... a forked branch of hazel suspended between the balls of the thumbs. The inclination of this rod indicates the presence of water-springs and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... half a mile in front when we had last seen them. They rode side by side, and Alexander seemed to have plenty to say, for he talked incessantly in his pleasant, easy voice, and Hermione listened to him. They came to a place where the road forked to the right and left. Neither of them were very familiar with the forest, and, without stopping to think, they followed the lane which looked the straighter and broader of the two, but which in reality led ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... and, with him, six servants, with trays heaped high with the prettiest and the fanciest fire-crackers ever boy or man saw. They were wrapped in rose-colored silk paper, with gold letters on the paper, and dragons, too, with great eyes and fiery forked tongues. ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... For a time then it seemed that nothing would move her from out this scrub. The dogs were finished. Men and horses were becoming played out. Firecrackers and burning grass were used without result. Eventually the Colonel fastened a forked stick to his rope and dragged it across her hiding place to uncover her. This maneuver partly succeeded—succeeded enough, at least, for Loveless to throw his rope at her. And at the sight of the rope coming ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... all!" cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked flash from those masterful eyes. "Mr. Raffles is the last person in the world who must ever ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... smoke and thinning as a gust Of brighter sunshine makes the colours leap and range, The strange old music-stand seems to strike out and change; To stroke and tear the darkness with sharp golden claws; To dart a forked, vermilion tongue from open jaws; To puff out bitter smoke which chokes the sun; and fade Back to a still, faint outline obliterate in shade. Creeping up the ladder into the loft, the Boy Stands watching, very ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... hour and a quarter the battle of Masindi was won. Not a house remained of the lately extensive town. A vast open space of smoke and black ashes, with flames flickering in some places where the buildings had been consumed, and at others forked sheets of fire where the fuel was still undestroyed, were the only remains of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... head, but at that moment their hand-maiden did return, carrying a great load of sticks for fire, and then brought to the girl a number of fine trout she had caught almost at their door. She built the fire outside, where two forked sticks had been driven into the ground, and across them a pole lay, from which kettles could be hung. As 'Tana set the coffee pot on the hot coals, the Indian woman spoke to her in that low voice which is characteristic of ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant "Beware!" In the flooded prairie the willow-trees were loaded with the knotted folds of the moccasin, the rattlesnake, and I know not how many other sorts of deadly or only loathsome serpents. Some little creatures at the bottom of the water, feeding on the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... me The purport of this embassy. His foe am I, he is my foe, And I his worst can undergo. Then let his forked lightnings flash, Heaven with his pealing thunder crash: Let him the wild winds loose and make Earth to her deep foundation shake; Bid the swoll'n waves, by tempest driven, Mount up and drench the stars of heaven; And let my helpless form be hurled Headlong to the dark under-world ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... any want of evidence as to the man's condition, that want was now supplied. He began a tirade—said that Eve was the downfall of the world, and number of other things derogatory to woman's character. He told me that he had had a dream in which a forked-tongued snake had been trying to kill him. "You," said he, "are that forked-tongued snake." I told him that I could bear his abuse for Christ's sake. "But it is not for Christ's sake; it is your own devilish work." I could not reason with him at all, ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... kick.—Mungo Park says that the negroes, where he travelled, taught their asses as follows:—They cut a forked stick, and put the forked part into the ass's mouth, like the bit of a bridle; they then tied the two smaller parts together above his head, leaving the lower part of sufficient length to strike against the ground ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... he saw a young lady seated at a desk, manipulating a typewriter. She had the ends of a forked rubber tube hung in her ears, and did not see Bradley. He observed that the tube connected with a sewing-machine-like table and a swiftly revolving little cylinder, which he recognized as a phonograph. At the window sat Radbourn, talking ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... sauntered idly through them, along a path that could be just seen winding its tortuous way, and it led him presently to a broad creek. There was a bridge across it, but a bridge constructed of single trunks of coconut trees, a dozen of them, placed end to end and supported where they met by a forked branch driven into the bed of the creek. You walked on a smooth, round surface, narrow and slippery, and there was no support for the hand. To cross such a bridge required sure feet and a stout heart. The skipper hesitated. But he saw on the ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... stone steps to a second tunnel, and along this underground way for several hundred yards. Since he was the only one familiar with the path they were traversing, the governor took the lead and guided the others. At a distance of perhaps an eighth of a mile from the palace the tunnel forked. Without hesitation, Megales kept to the right. A stone's throw beyond this point of divergence there began to be apparent a perceptible descent which terminated in a stone wall that ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... start. Many of the spectators interested in other engines would not have shed tears had it failed, but it started splendidly making eleven eight-foot strokes per minute, which broke the record. Three cheers for the Scotch engineer! It soon worked with greater power and more steadily, and "forked" more water than the ordinary engines with only about one-third the consumption of ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... more of your nephew than I was of your dog,—not more than you think yourself; for, look here, you've only forked out six bits of sugar. I ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... you were, sir! ...... ... With most quick agility could turn And return; make knots and undo them, Give forked ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pettinesses; next, the Regent's friends, the cream of the rows, possessed with the spirit of opposition and corruption, ignorant and clever, bold and lazy, and far better calculated to harass than to conduct a government; lastly, below them, were pitch-forked in, pell-mell, councillors of State, masters of requests, members of Parliament, well-informed and industrious gentlemen, fated henceforth to crawl about at the bottom of the committees, and, without the spur of glory or emulation, to repair the blunders ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rabbit snares, for instead of a tossing pole the snare was secured to the middle of a clog, or stout stick about two inches in diameter and four feet long. The ends of this clog were then supported upon two forked sticks in such manner that the snare hung downward where it was secured in position by tying the loop to a light switch thrust into the snow at either side. The snare was set only a foot or two from the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Muller says of this species that it is occasionally found sleeping stretched across the forked branch of a tree, which is not the case with either the tiger or the pard. According to Sir Stamford Raffles, the Rimau-dahan or clouded panther (miscalled tiger) Felis ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... same Church to be kept on Friday after the Feast of St. Gregory. He lieth under a Tomb of stone, with his Image also of stone over him, the hair of his head auburn long to his shoulders, but curling up, and a small forked beard; on his head a Chaplet, like a Coronet of four Roses; an habit of purple, damasked down to his feet, a Collar of Esses of Gold about his neck, which being proper to places of Judicature, makes some think he was a ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... out at the door and looked up into the branches. They were very much forked, and upon every difficult branch Hugh had nailed steps and made a railing. In some of the forks he had inserted wooden seats, others he had left to nature. The topmost seat was almost at the summit of the tree, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... camped in the woods, and after we had pitched our tent and made a large fire, we pulled out our knapsacks to recruit ourselves. Every one was his own cook. Our spits were forked sticks, our plates were large chips. As for dishes, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... sudden rush Of the rain, and the riot Of the shrieking, tearing gale Breaks loose in the night, With a fusillade of hail! Hear the forest fight, With its tossing arms that crack and clash In the thunder's cannonade, While the lightning's forked flash Brings the old hero-trees to the ground with a crash! Hear the breakers' deepening roar, Driven like a herd of cattle In the wild stampede of battle, Trampling, trampling, trampling, to ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... You see I needed money awful bad fer baby. He don't take to livin' awful good. He cries a lot an' I bed to hev thin's fer 'im, so I threatened him ef he didn't do sompin' I'd go tell her; an' he up an' forked over, but not till I promised. But now they say the papers is tellin' he's to marry her to-night, an' I gotta stop it somehow. I got my rights an' baby's to look after, promise er no promise, Ken I get ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... offended that any mortal should rise to the light of life from the infernal shades, struck the son of Phoebus with his forked lightning to the Stygian ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... be applied and forked under or raked in, using judgment as to method and quantity, which must be determined by the previous condition of the soil and the strength of the material used, remembering that it is not well to have any chemicals in too close proximity to the ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... slightly forward of amidships. Poles are extremely scarce in this region—lumber has to be brought from Puget Sound, 6000 miles away—so nearly all the masts I saw were made of small pieces of wood spliced two or three times. To the apex of the "A" is attached a forked stick, over which run the halyards. The rectangular "sail" is nothing more nor less than a large mat made of rushes. A short forestay fastened to the sides of the "A" about four feet above the hull prevents the mast from falling when the sail is hoisted. The main halyards ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... the white men slept beneath the canoe, which was turned half over, with its upper gunwale resting on a couple of short, but stout, forked sticks; and, acting upon Donald's insistent advice, they kept watch by turn, two hours at a time, during the night. Even "Tummas" was so thoroughly impressed with a sense of responsibility, that his ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... oak was a squirrel. It was motionless, as though carved out of the trunk itself. Beneath it lay coiled a snake. Its eyes were fastened upon those of the squirrel and its flat, ugly head was moving gently to and fro—to and fro—the while its forked tongue played back and ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... supper, Joe commenced curing the moose-hide, on which I had sat a good part of the voyage, he having already cut most of the hair off with his knife at the Caucomgomoc. He set up two stout forked poles on the bank, seven or eight feet high, and as much asunder east and west, and having cut slits eight or ten inches long, and the same distance apart, close to the edge, on the sides of the hide, he threaded poles through them, and then, placing one of the poles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... was attracted by the peculiar chirping of a ground sparrow near by. He turned, and but a few feet from him he saw a large black snake, with its head raised about a foot above its body, which lay coiled upon the ground. Its jaws were distended, its forked tongue played around its open mouth, flashing in the sunlight like a small lambent flame, while its eyes were intently fixed upon the bird. There was a clear, sparkling light about those eyes that was fearful to behold—they ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... foot of the Karaim's Hill, in the hut which clung closely to its sandy side, there burned a small, yellow light. Over it, through the forked branches of the willow tree, shone many small stars, and further on, over the great fields, lay the ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... the gully, where jambed stones made rude steps, and reaching the bottom found a belt of grass that led them to the head of a dale. The mist was thinner, and presently a few scattered houses appeared across the fields. The path they followed forked, and Helen ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... on's are sophisticated: thou art the thing itself, unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... was oscillating like a pendulum, its little tongue playing like forked red lightning, its loathsome red eyes holding his own. Terror gripped his heart, and his soul curdled. He would have cried out, but that his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He could not have ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... a rock form a wall, to leeward of which you will lie when your mansion is completed by a few sticks simply inclined from the rock and covered with grass. If the country is flat, you must cut four forked sticks, and erect a villa after this fashion in skeleton-work, which ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... least fifty. He was a well-proportioned man, and dressed with studied plainness. A long, narrow face, with very large, heavy eyelids, and a long but not hooked nose, were relieved by a moustache, and a beard square and slightly forked in the midst. This moustache hid a mouth which was the characteristic feature of the face. No physiognomist would have placed the slightest confidence in the owner of that mouth. It was at once sanctimonious and unstable. The manners of ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... sufficiently to allow his body to pass through, he put the lantern through and then crawled out. He was in a tangle of branches and leaves. The head-rope was a long one; the tree had fallen directly towards them, and the boat was, as far as Frank could see, wedged in between the branches, which forked some forty feet above the roots; a cross branch had stove in the cabin top, and another rested across the scuttle of the cabin used ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... but much more elaborate than if the night had been clear. Then he would have made his fire, boiled coffee, spread his bed, and gone to sleep beneath the stars; but because of the ominous storm cloud he constructed a lean-to by driving two forked stakes and joining them with a crosspiece. From these he slanted two poles to the ground, and on the poles laid a tarp, lashing it in place. The mouth of the lean-to faced away from the cloud bank. In addition it had the partial shelter ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... "I guess I've heard it all before. Don't you remember how you held forth that night in the wood? You came out too strong. I felt as if I were in church; but you forked out handsomely at the collection afterwards. I will ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212] not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a Grand-Monarque to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there is left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved;—admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of Hero to do that;—and one of the world's wants, in this as in other senses, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... lake was there, blue and silvery with purple and gold irises growing on its banks, and white water-lilies floated on its bosom. Not a trace was there of a man, or of one of the great beasts so much feared by Abeille, but only the marks of tiny forked feet on the sand. The little girl at once pulled off her torn shoes and stockings and let the water flow over her, while Youri looked about for some nuts or strawberries. But none ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... changes of linen, slung suspended from my shoulders; a strong cotton umbrella occupied my better hand; and a gray maud, buckled shepherd-fashion aslant the chest, completed my equipment. There were few travellers on the road, which forked off on the hill-side a short mile away, into two branches, like a huge letter Y, leaving me uncertain which branch to choose; and I made up my mind to have the point settled by a woman of middle age, marked by a hard, manly countenance, who was coming up ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... earnestly. "I'm done with practical jokes. It was only a garter snake, though I caught it with a forked stick." ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... two forked sticks and drove them in the ground about ten feet from the fallen tree trunk, and about ten feet apart. When driven in they were about five feet high, while the top of the trunk was perhaps eight feet from the ground. Cutting a long, straight pole, Sam laid it in ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... day he came searching for them by day. Thorn had speared a fish for Sylva with a stick he had sharpened by rubbing it on a crumbling rock. He was working discouragedly on a little contrivance made out of a forked stick and the elastic from his parachute-pack. He was haggard and worn and desperate. Sylva was beginning to look like a hunted ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... he had left it lying; not one stick or stack or stone but he could put his finger on and say, "This place I know!" Green pastures, grassy levels, streams, groves, mills, the old grange and the manor-house, the road that forked in three, and the hills of Arden beyond it all. There was the tower of the guildhall chapel above the clustering, dun-thatched roofs among the green and blossom-white; to left the spire of Holy Trinity sprang up beside the shining Avon. Bull Lane he made out dimly, and a red-tiled ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... not: 'tis but some passing spasm, The Titan is unvanquished still. 315 But see, where through the azure chasm Of yon forked and snowy hill Trampling the slant winds on high With golden-sandalled feet, that glow Under plumes of purple dye, 320 Like rose-ensanguined ivory, A Shape comes now, Stretching on high from his right hand ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... from his white lips, though his teeth were tightly set, And with sudden strength he started—sprang from my detaining arm, Shrieking wildly, 'Curse the demons; do they think to do me harm? Back! I say, ye forked-tongued serpents reeking with the filth of hell! Don't ye see I have her with me—my poor ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... mountain districts have acquired an ominous character for storms; Antaichahua is one of the places to which this sort of fearful celebrity belongs. For hours together flash follows flash, painting blood-red cataracts on the naked precipices. The forked lightning darts its zig-zag flashes on the mountain-tops, or, running along the ground, imprints deep furrows in its course; whilst the atmosphere quivers amidst uninterrupted peals of thunder, repeated a thousandfold by the mountain echoes. The traveller, overtaken by ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... as breaking the old pitcher that came over in the "Mayflower," and putting into the fire the Alpenstock with which her father climbed Mont Blanc,)—besides these, I say, (imitating the style of Robinson Crusoe,) there were pitch-forked in on us a great rowen-heap of humbugs, banded down from some unknown seed-time, in which we were expected, and I chiefly, to fulfil certain public functions before the community, of the character of those fulfilled by the third row of supernumeraries who stand behind the Sepoys in the spectacle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the sky Is overcast, and musters muttering thunder, In clouds that seem approaching fast, and show In forked flashes a commanding tempest.[r] 540 Will you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... on Saturday he would start for the city, hugging the edge of the campus and afterward cutting across the adjoining estate to meet the car line where it forked into the main road. Many another boy had done the same and not been caught; why not he? It was, to be sure, against the rules to leave the school grounds without permission, but one must take a chance now and then. Did not half the spice ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... loaded with oil," writes sailor Haywood; "and, when it caught, a high column of dense black smoke poured out of the hatchways, and spread in vast involutions to the leeward. Soon the red forked flames began to climb her masts, and her spars glowed with light; with a crash her mainmast fell, carrying the foremast with it, and sending a shower of sparks high in the air; her stout sides seemed to burst open; and what was a stately ship was now a blackened hulk, the rising sea breaking ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... ragged snow-clouds, Quick ascend beyond the cloud-space, Quickly journey whence thou camest, To the snow-clouds, crystal-sprinkled, To the twinkling stars of heaven There thy fire may burn forever, There may flash thy forked lightnings, In the Sun's undying furnace. "Wert thou sent here by the spring-floods, Driven here by river-torrents? Quickly journey whence thou camest, Quickly hasten to the waters, To the borders of the rivers, To the ancient ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... it's a thick 'un," growled old Dick; "and if I was in command o' this here expedition, I should give orders for all the Jacks to out cutlashes and cut the fog in pieces, while the sogers and marines forked it ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... perched around the windows, shivering with dread, and afraid to jump out. The snakes were writhing about, crippled and blistered by the heat, darting out their forked tongues, and expressing their rage and fear in the most sibilant of hisses. The 'Happy Family' were experiencing an amount of beatitude which was evidently too cordial for philosophical enjoyment. A long tongue of flame had crept under the cage, completely singing every hair from the cat's ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... when you broiled it yourself on a forked stick Frontispiece Laura took the new cousin up to her room 26 Cutting the wiry brown stems in the fern-filled glade. 140 "I'm getting dinner ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... road for Trudy as well as for Mary Faithful. Women are no longer compelled to accept the one unending pathway of domesticity. Trudy's forked road resolved itself into either marriage with Gay as a stepping stone to marriage with someone else, or a smart shop with society women and actresses as patrons, being able to live at a hotel and do as she wished, inventing a neat little ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... himself opened his eyes to the sun and his mind was untroubled save where his immediate needs were concerned. He sat up thinking of breakfast, and he spied Andy Green humped on his knees over a heap of camp-fire coals, toasting rabbit-hams—the joy of it—on a forked stick. Opposite him Miss Allen crouched and held another rabbit-leg on a forked stick. The Kid sat up as if a spring had been suddenly released, and threw ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... water witches was almost as difficult as finding water. They had to be imported from some remote section of the West. The witches, as we called them, went over various parts of the reservation, probing, poking, with their forked sticks. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... both men intimately, had eaten and drank with them, and conversed with them at intervals from the days of their common childhood. Most of these witnesses agreed that Martin Guerre was taller and of a darker complexion, that he was of slender make and had round shoulders, that his chin forked and turned up, his lower lip hung down, his nose was large and flat, and that he had the mark of an ulcer on his face, and a scar on his right eyebrow, whereas Arnold du Tilh was a short thickish man who did not stoop, although at the same time similar marks ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... draw the trail forked, and Stratton took the left-hand branch. The grazing hereabouts was poor, and at this time of year particularly the Shoe-Bar cattle were more likely to be confined to the richer fenced-in pastures belonging to the ranch. The scenery thus presenting no ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... road to Cheney's farm, near the crossing of Olley's Creek, the next in the series of parallel valleys trending to the southwest. Cheney's was also at the crossing of the lower road from Marietta to Powder Springs village, which forked near Kolb's farm, the northern branch being that on which Schofield was advancing with Hascall's division. But Hood's corps was also upon this road, having marched in the night from the extreme right of Johnston's ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the mazy windings of the wall, Bill Brown sat in the forked top of a tree and studied out the ground-plan of the city. He was imprinting landmarks in his memory for future reference, and trying—with a brain that ached from the apparent hopelessness of the ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... kettle on the end of it. If you have jabbed it far enough into the ground in the first place, it will balance nicely by its own spring and the elasticity of the turf. The other method is to plant two forked sticks on either side your fire over which a strong cross-piece is laid. The kettles are hung on hooks cut from forked branches. The forked branches are attached to the cross-piece by means of thongs ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... down a hickory sapling to make a coupling pole, put his axe-craft to further use by cutting off a forked bough, crooked by Nature, in the exact shape for a pack-saddle. Satisfied with these forest spoils, the rustic statesman returned to his house, where Burr met him with a cordial grasp and a ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... limbs; and the harmless faun has been made the figuration of the most implacable of fiends. But why, O wanderer of the South, lingerest thou in these foreign dells? Why returnest thou not to the bi-forked hill-top of old Parnassus, or the wastes around the yellow ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to her. Nothing gave her so much pleasure as our plates and dishes, which were actual necessaries. We went to our kitchen, and were gratified to see preparations going on for a good supper. My wife had planted a forked stick on each side the hearth; on these rested a long thin wand, on which all sorts of fish were roasting, Francis being intrusted to turn the spit. On the other side was impaled a goose on another ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... Bissell, a young Pittsburgher but recently graduated from West Point, started across one of the bridges and reached the north bank with a squad of a dozen men and two machine guns. This little unit went into position in a place commanding the forked highways which converged not far from the northern approach of the iron bridge crossing the river. It was this unit's function to prevent the enemy advance from this direction. The unit was separated from its comrades on the south ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... from Careless Mesa ended at a point in the mountains marked "Dry Spring." The second road led to the town marked "Steamboat," where the road forked again. One branch eventually joined other roads in Pahrump Valley, the ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... very well have passed for a doctor himself, having a strict suit of black, spectacles, grey hair, and a confidential manner. In fact, he was a far more presentable man of science than his master, Dr Hirsch, who was a forked radish of a fellow, with just enough bulb of a head to make his body insignificant. With all the gravity of a great physician handling a prescription, Simon handed a letter to M. Armagnac. That gentleman ripped it up with a racial impatience, and ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... one-third of "pikemen," the pike of Connecticut being two feet shorter than the rod-pike of England. Some of the lighter muskets were fired with a simple match, but the greater number were supported by "rests," forked at the top and stuck into the ground. They were fired by "match-locks," the "cock" being that part which held the burning match aloft before it was applied to the powder in the pan. Hence "to go off half cocked" originally meant that the burning fuse dropped into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... meteor hence he shot, And drew a sweeping fiery train along.— O Paris, Paris, once my seat of triumph, But now the scene of all thy king's misfortunes; Ungrateful, perjured, and disloyal town, Which by my royal presence I have warmed So long, that now the serpent hisses out, And shakes his forked tongue at majesty, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... different kinds of wood. Put kaç (juniper) in the east, tse'isçázi (mountain mahogany) in the south, ¢estsì[n] (piñon) in the west, and awètsal (cliff rose) in the north; join them together at the top and cover them with any shrubs you choose. Get two small forked sticks, the length of the forearm, to pass the hot stones into the sweat-house, and one long stick to poke the stones out of the fire, and let all these sticks be such as have their bark abraded by the antlers ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... heard the voices; for swift as lightning, his black head and forked tongue came hissing among the trees again, darting full forty feet at a stretch. As it approached, Medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide-open throat. Immediately, with an outrageous hiss ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... position and held in place by a notched piece of bone. The breech-pin was gone, and a piece of stone fixed in the stock filled its place. The breech of the stock was but little larger than the other part, and seemed very awkwardly contrived. A forked stick is carried to form a rest, that ensures the accuracy of aim. Powder and lead are so expensive that great economy is shown in their use. I was told these natives were excellent marksmen, and rarely missed a shot. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... platform burial, of which "the latter is considered the more complimentary," states (pp. 76 and 77) that a small stage is constructed of sticks and boughs about 8 to 12 feet above the ground, generally (the italics are mine) between the forked branches of some large tree, and to it the body ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... considerable establishment back of the dining-room, including a most delectable little creature even smaller than Deenah, but quite as important, and sharing all light and shadow by his side. Deenah had a look of forked lightning and a mellow voice. The more angry he became, the more caressing ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... rod is a rod used by those who pretend to discover water or metals underground. It is commonly made of witch hazel, with forked branches. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... had quite a different effect upon George Talboys. His friend was startled when he looked at the young man's white face as he sat opposite the open window listening to the thunder, and staring at the black sky, rent every now and then by forked streaks of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... trodden, with wisps at foot and side, twisted and turned back; from the floor-level to the waist. [443] For lords, 2 beds, outer and inner, hung with hangings, hooks and eyes set on the binding; the valance hanging on a rod (?), four curtains reaching to the ground; these he takes up with a forked rod. [455] The counterpane is laid at the foot, cushions on the sides, tapestry on the floor and sides of the room. [461] The Groom gets fuel, and screens. [463] The Groom keeps the table, trestles, and forms ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... transposition which it became necessary to make in the clocks, for the effectual adaptation of the pendulum to their regulation. The verge V was set up horizontally and the pendulum B, suspended freely from a flexible cord, received the impulses through the intermediation of the forked arm F, which formed a part of the verge. At first this forked arm was not thought of, for the pendulum itself formed a part of the verge. A far-reaching step had been taken, but it soon became apparent that perfection was still a long way off. The crown-wheel escapement ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... squalid beyond measure. Constructed with a rough frame of tree-branches, fortified by wooden posts and rafters, roofed over with a thatch of dried grass, the majority of them measured about ten feet. They were built against the hillside, a strong bi-forked pole in the centre of the structure supporting the roof, and were usually divided into two sections, so as to give shelter each of them to two families. They contained no furniture, and but few utensils ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... mad laughter of a few moments before still upon her lips, she held the flying threads in her hand, and so strained was her mind that it would not have caused her surprise if they had wound round her fingers or given forth forked tongues. She laughed again—a low and discordant laugh it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... river Hi in Izumo. And he found there an old man and an old woman and a young girl, and they were weeping. And he asked them why they wept. And the old man answered. I once had eight daughters; but every year an eight-forked serpent comes and devours one of them; and now it is the time for it to come again. Then the deity said, Wilt thou give me thy daughter if I save her from the serpent? And he eagerly promised her. Then the deity said, Do you brew eight tubs of strong sake, and set each ...
— Japan • David Murray
... told each other a good deal, he strode to the doorway, pushed aside the plank which served for a door, and went out into the storm. He did not feel the rain beating upon his head: he did not hear the thunder, nor see the forked lightning that played without intermission in the darkened sky; he was conscious only of the intolerable fact that he was shut up in a narrow corner of the earth, in daily, almost hourly, companionship with the one man for whom he felt something not unlike fierce hatred. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the trees and begin to sing a particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... currants and gooseberries, are frequently propagated by stem cuttings, as in the case of roses. Another method, which is known as layering, consists in bending one or more of the lowest branches down against the ground, fastening it there by means of a forked stick, and then covering it with two or three inches of earth. The part in contact with the moist earth will send out roots, while one or more shoots will come up. When roots and shoots have developed, the branch is severed from the parent bush ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... behoved him to go, and knew well that the day whereon he should come was drawing nigh. He told King Arthur as much, and then said, that and he should go not, he would belie his covenant. They rode until they came to a cross where the ways forked. ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... accommodating her two larger patients so that neither should hurt nor alarm the other. A bright thought came to her after much pondering. Carefully lifting the handkerchief, she pinned the two ends to the roof of the cart, and there swung little Forked-tongue, while Rob lay ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... words to fell. Ah! but the secret lacking, The secret of the child, the bird, the night, Faded, flouted, bespattered, in days so far Hate cannot bitter them, nor wrath deny; Else were this Desdemona.... Why! Woman a harlot is, and life a nest Fouled by long ages of forked fools. And God— Iago deals not with a tale so dull: To have made the world! Fie ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... this ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I could not repent; at least the emotion of repentance would not come. Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette, was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier, now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact that his despatches were ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... learning seemed a pleasure rather than a torment, a favor instead of a punishment, was such an exceeding and novel delight to the good minister, that soon he forgot the crippled figure—the helpless hands that sometimes with fingers, sometimes even with teeth, painfully guided the ingeniously cut forked stick, and the thin face that only too often turned white and weary, but quickly looked up, as if struggling against weakness, and concentrating all attention on the work that was to ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... inches in depth, is cut in the trunk of a large tree, so that the bottom of the slot will be about at the height of a sable's head when he stands erect. The stem of another smaller tree is then trimmed, one of its ends raised to a height of three feet by a forked stick set in the ground, and the other bevelled off so as to slip up and down freely in the slot cut for its reception. This end is raised to the top of the slot and supported there by a simple figure-four catch, leaving a nearly square ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... will rob her of all she has and yet can talk of loving her. Do you not see he is a villain, that he has the forked tongue, as old Bear Paw, the Navajo, says of all gringoes? But let Senor Gordon beware. His time is short. He will not live to drive us from the valley. So say I. So say all ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... (Thy father said it thundered towards the morn.) But soon, far off, I saw a dull green light Break though the clouds, which fell across the earth, Like death upon a bad man's upturned face. Sudden it burst with fifty forked darts In one white flash, so dazzling bright it seemed To hide the landscape in one blaze of light. When the loud crash that came down with it had Rolled its long echo into stillness, through The calm dark silence came a plaintive sound; ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... the little gamins, Creole throughout, came half shyly near the log, fishing, and exchanging furtive whispers and half-concealed glances at the silent couple. Their angling was rewarded only by a little black water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue in an attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This Athanasia insisted must go back into its native black waters, and paid the price the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom. The gamins laughed and chattered in their soft patois; the Don smiled tenderly ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... making biscuits can jerk them out of the oven all in one pan. But my oven is larger and hotter. I have to use long-handled tongs, and each of my biscuits weighs twice as much as I weigh. Suppose you were a cook with a fork six feet long, and had three roasting sheep on the grid at once to be forked off as quickly as possible. Could you do it? Even with a helper wouldn't you probably scorch the mutton or else burn yourself to death with the hot grease? That is where strength and skill must ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Sheikh the money ourselves." One of them turned to me, "Why, Christian, what is a couple of dollars to Haj Ibrahim? That's the value?" (putting his hand to his nose.) The reader may easily guess how this stupid obstinacy of the merchant ended. The Haj forked out, with a bad grace, and the money was carried after The Giant, one of the Ghat merchants adding two more dollars. I was pleased with this trait of the Ghateen, who were determined we should not go off in this uncomfortable plight. The Giant I did not see ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... no longer hide her misfortune. But she obstinately refused to name her betrayer."—"Her name was Gudule," said Mademoiselle Zoe.—"Her name was Gudule, and she believed that she was protected from danger by a long, forked bead that she wore on her chin. The sudden appearance of a beard protected the innocence of that holy daughter of the king that Prague venerates. A beard, no longer youthful, did not suffice to protect ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... the adder's forked dart; The vipers nestle in my heart. But soon, I wot, shall Vider's wand, Fixed in Ella's bosom stand. My youthful sons with rage will swell, Listening how their father fell; Those gallant boys in peace unbroken Will never rest, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... sere: From the green grass the small grasshoppers' din Spreads soft and silvery thin: And ever and anon a murmur steals Into mine ears of toil that moves alway, The crackling rustle of the pitch-forked hay And lazy jerk ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... a cannibal island. You must speak to no one in the streets, as they would not leave you till you were rooked and beaten. You must enter a hotel with military precautions; for the least you had to apprehend was to awake next morning without money or baggage, or necessary raiment, a lone forked radish in a bed; and if the worst befell, you would instantly and mysteriously disappear ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into these holes, upon which were placed two pieces of timber, with the upper surfaces hewn smooth, thus constructing a table. In one corner of the cabin, four stakes were driven in a similar way, about eighteen inches high, with forked tops. Upon these two saplings were laid with smooth pieces of bark stretched across. These were covered with grass or dried leaves, upon which was placed, with the fur upwards, the well-tanned skin of the buffalo or the bear. Thus quite a luxurious bed was constructed, upon which there was often ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... Rob, "because Lewis went ashore with only five men, in his turn, and then they all pulled off a dance, and a big talk in a big council tent—it must have been big, for there were seventy Sioux in it, and just those two young American officers. The big pipe was on forked sticks in front of the chief, and under it they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... eye Harrington watched her swinging down the trail to Forty Mile. Where the road forked and crossed the river to Fort Cudahy, she halted ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... the third pair of feet loses its branches, and becomes converted into mandibles destitute of palpi. The labrum acquires a spine directed forward and of considerable size, which occurs in all the Zoeae of allied species. The biramose maxillipedes appear to assist but slightly in locomotion. The forked tail reminds us rather of the forms occurring in the lower Crustacea, especially the Copepoda, than of the spatuliform caudal plate which characterises the Zoeae of Alpheus, Palaemon, Hippolyte, and other Prawns, of the Hermit Crabs, the Tatuira and ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... there himself, sittin' in a forked bough, an' watchin' me through his glass." Placing the telescope gently on the ground, Jake turned himself into a human semaphore, and gesticulated frantically with his arms. "That ought to fetch 'im," ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... him, ye can go and dig him out.' They realized from the way I swobbed my neck More than was needed something must be up. They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was. They told me afterward. First they forked hay, A lot of it, out into the barn floor. Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle. I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the temple Before I buried him, or I couldn't have managed. They excavated more. 'Go keep his wife Out of the barn.' Someone looked in a window, And curse ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... around to the corral, where Mary forked down some hay for the three horses, and filled the sunken water-barrel from the tank. Already shadows were creeping up from the hollows, and the place seemed very still ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... had outlawed, and who was now outlawing their outlawry. We do not reason out our conclusions, as I said before. At our supremest moments we do not think. Consciousness leaps from summit to summit like the forked lightnings across the mountain-peaks; and the mysteries of life are illumined as a spread-out scroll. In that moment of joy and fear and horror, as I crouched back to the wall, I did not think. I knew—knew the meaning ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... ground behind, the body of a great dragon. It was no wonder that, with such a drag at his heels, the horse could make but slow progress, notwithstanding his evident dismay. The horrid, serpent-like head, with its black tongue, forked with red, hanging out of its jaws, dangled against the horse's side. Its neck was covered with long blue hair, its sides with scales of green and gold. Its back was of corrugated skin, of a purple hue. Its belly was similar in nature, but its colour was leaden, dashed with ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Garland, simply. They had reached a point where the wood-path forked and put forth two divergent tracks which lost themselves in a verdurous tangle. Miss Garland seemed to think that the difficulty of choice between them was a reason for giving them up and turning back. Rowland thought otherwise, and ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... for a moment and subsided in the dust. The two Baquaines soon made their appearance, and seemed delighted at my success. Having kindled a fire, they cut out steaks, which they roasted on the embers; I also cooked a steak for myself, spitting it upon a forked branch, the other end of which I sharpened with my knife and ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... long time. The shallow river, full of rapids and shoals, curved and forked and steadily shrank. But although Sacagawea eagerly peered, and murmured to herself, no ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... Warwick, being an old campaigner, set about building a fire, and the girl began her sylvan housekeeping. The scene rapidly brightened into light and color as the blaze sprang up, showing the little kettle slung gipsywise on forked sticks, and the supper prettily set forth in a leafy table-service on a smooth, flat stone. Soon four pairs of wet feet surrounded the fire; an agreeable oblivion of meum and tuum concerning plates, knives, and cups did away with etiquette, and every one was in ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... discovery, he led them back along the scent for a hundred yards or so up the field, where it suddenly forked off behind some gorse-bushes, and made straight ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... he got out these words than there came a tremendous crash of thunder, a vivid sheet of forked lightning simultaneously illuminating the whole interior of the cavern; and, to our great surprise, we perceived by the bright electric glare the figure of another man besides our own party—the stranger standing at the upper end of the cave, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in dracunculus has a very peculiar shape; it consists of a number of lobes which are disposed upon a stalk which is more or less forked (tends more or less to dichotomize). If you call to your minds some of the Pompeian wall decorations, you will perceive that similar forms occur there in all possible variations. Stems are regularly seen in decorations that run perpendicularly, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various |
