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Trail   /treɪl/   Listen
Trail

verb
(past & past part. trailed; pres. part. trailing)
1.
To lag or linger behind.  Synonyms: drag, drop back, drop behind, get behind, hang back.
2.
Go after with the intent to catch.  Synonyms: chase, chase after, dog, give chase, go after, tag, tail, track.  "The dog chased the rabbit"
3.
Move, proceed, or walk draggingly or slowly.  Synonym: shack.  "The Mercedes trailed behind the horse cart"
4.
Hang down so as to drag along the ground.
5.
Drag loosely along a surface; allow to sweep the ground.  Synonym: train.  "She trained her long scarf behind her"



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"Trail" Quotes from Famous Books



... galloping over an open trail on a nervous little cow-pony. But it was both a bodily and mental relief for the outdoor girl who had been, for these past weeks, shut into a groove for which ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... by Mr. Jackal came lilting along with his tail up. "Ho! ho! That is your game, is it?" said he to himself, when he saw the trail of the Crocodile in the sandy soil. So he stood outside, and said aloud, "Bless my stars! What has happened? I don't half like to go in, for whenever I come home my wife ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... trail to guide him now, but he did not immediately mind that. He trekked the South Mars Desert and he had weathered the jungles of Io. Tsith hound or no, he had an unerring instinct for direction. He was sure the foothills couldn't be far ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse

... these ideas were constantly forcing themselves, as it were, into my mind as I wandered over the changeful face of this singular land, where the fresh print of the moccasin is followed by the tread of the engineer and his attendants, and the light trail of the red man is effaced by the road of iron: hardly have the echoes ceased to repeat through the woods the Indian's hunter-cry before this is followed by the angry rush of the ponderous steam-engine, urged forward! ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... had missed the drift of the girls' discussion. He was considering, privately, whether he had not better send a special messenger on the young men's trail. His assurances to the women left a wide margin for personal doubt as to the prudence of the trip. Aside from the lateness of the start, it was, undoubtedly, an ill-assorted company for the woods. There was a wide margin also for ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... effect was intensified by the approach on the fading wood road, which the wagons had made in former days when they hauled the fallen timber to the pulp-mill. In places it was so vague and faint as to be hardly a trail; in others, where the wheel-tracks remained visible, the trees had sent out a new growth of lower branches in the place of those lopped away, and almost forbade the advance of foot-passengers. The ladies said they did not see how Jeff was ever going to get through ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... by goin' hossback across the old trail, but you 'd need to have a guide in the dark, and you 'd find it a ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... idea of becoming an Indian. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes and ears open. He studied their ways. They showed him how to follow a trail over the dead leaves of the forest—how the leaves would be rustled here and there, turned up at the edges, or pressed down a little harder where men had set their feet. He saw what cowards they were unless the advantage was all on their side, and how ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... plains," they said. But it was too late to profit by this advice, for they had already got entangled in the thick woods. Grasshopper soon scented the hunters, who were closely following his trail for they had left all the others and were making after him in full cry. He jumped furiously, dashed through the underwood, and broke down whole groves of saplings in his flight. But this only made it the harder for him to get on, such ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... tradition—which now far exceeds what is accessible in the case of any poet contemporary with Shakespeare. Some links in the chain of Shakespeare's career are still missing, and we must wait for the future to disclose them. But, though the clues at present are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the patient investigator. The ascertained facts are already numerous enough to define beyond risk of intelligent doubt the direction that Shakespeare's career followed. Its general outline ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... to be followed as a matter of course; in the same way he avoided the adders on the mountain. His old ideals were almost if not quite forgotten; he knew that the female of the bete humaine, like the adder, would in all probability sting, and he therefore shrank from its trail, but without any feeling of special resentment. The one had a poisoned tongue as the other had a poisoned fang, and it was well to leave them both alone. Then had come that sudden fury of rage against ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... grown up very much as my trees have, with every natural eccentricity of growth untrimmed; but I hope you will not let your branches trail ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... said, "I'm on the trail. This time I'm convinced that I shall pull it off. I've remembered ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... go through this hall, and follow this little passageway, one end openin' up right under the sidewalk, in the refractin' glass manhole. Leading to the back, here, is a second passage, all barred, the same as the others. So, if our front is shut off, and they're hot on our trail, we shut everything after us as we go, and then open this neat little steel trapdoor, and find ourselves smellin' fresh air and five lines full of washin' from that ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... was a voyage of from six to eight weeks west of the Mississippi in those days. The only stations—and miserably primitive ones at that—lay along Ben Holliday's overland stage route. They were far between. Indians waylaid the voyagers; fires, famine and fatigue helped to strew the trail with the graves of men and the carcasses of animals. Hard lines were these; but not so hard as the lines of those who pushed farther into the wilderness, nor stayed their adventurous feet till they were planted on the rich soil of the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... got them to give me a sea-going canoe, a stock of cakes and fresh water; and with many parting injunctions how to find the Woodman trail, since I would not listen to reason and lie all the rest of my life with them in the sunshine, they pushed me off on my ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... lost, but all he was is overworn. This is not the truth; and Tennyson did not intend it for the truth. It is simply the result of the lack of something militant, dogmatic and structural in him: whereby he could not be trusted with the trail of a very long literary process without entangling himself like ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... men who had started at morning from Jesse Purvy's store had spent a hard day. The roads followed creek-beds, crossing and recrossing waterways in a fashion that gave the bloodhounds a hundred baffling difficulties. Often, their noses lost the trail, which had at first been so surely taken. Often, they circled and whined, and halted in perplexity, but each time they came to a point where, at the end, one of them again raised his muzzle ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... out of breath that he just had to stop for a rest. But he couldn't rest much. He was too terribly frightened. He shivered and shook while he got his breath, and never for a second did he take his eyes from his back trail. Presently he saw a slim white form darting along the snow straight towards the tree in which he was resting. Once more Happy Jack ran, and somehow he felt terribly ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess

... other ties. I know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... a monkey!" Mrs. Lem's consciousness of the trail on her black brilliantine suddenly failed to support her company manner. "Do tell me you're foolin'!" she ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... nightfall pressed heavily upon us. Neither confessed to the other the fatigue and apprehension each felt, but, with fresh endeavor and words of encouragement, we cautiously went on. We accidentally struck a trail that led us winding down comfortably some distance, but we lost it, and went clambering down as well as we could in our usual way. To add to our misery, a dense Scotch mist soon enveloped us, so that we could see but a short distance ahead, and not knowing the point from which we started, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... of pyrotechny will go up in the air, bust, and become an eagle. Said eagle will soar away into the western skies, leavin' a red trail behind him as ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... the Leopard Woman had passed the kopje not over a mile away; indeed Kingozi had left her trail only a short distance back. On the supposition that she was well informed, it seemed unlikely that she could expect to make the whole distance from the last camp to the mountains in one march. Therefore there must be another water between. In that case, if Kingozi followed her tracks, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... a simple trail, well defined beyond dispute. Viewed in retrospect it begins in a hazy thread stretching from Assyria into Egypt, from Egypt into Greece, from Greece to Rome—widening throughout Italy and Spain, then centering in Venice, and tracing clear and deep to Amsterdam—widening again ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... was impassive, but the inevitable, "I knew it," almost sprang to his lips. He was rather pleased at the instinct which had led him so directly to the right trail. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... creek, which from being the prints of a small and large foot, left no doubt as to whom they belonged. Strange as it may appear, this was the only sure indication of the lost ones that we had yet seen. No further trail was seen till the evening of the seventh day, when fresh signs were found. Our party therefore determined to camp out all night, and follow these new indications early in the morning, which object they succeeded in effecting. The lost ones were then found, and ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... audience, and declaring that the play couldn't go on without him. "Have you tried all the saloons?" asked one, to which another responded, "Yes, and he's been in all of them, but now he has fled. The sheriff has put bloodhounds on his trail and promises to have ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... There were occasions, of course, when he was disgracefully duped by the "surviving relatives." However, I pass over a thousand little epitaphs of memory and come to our last years in the itinerancy. And it is curious how life winds itself into a circle, like the trail a lost man makes in the desert. After a few years as pastor of village churches, William was sent back to the country circuits. He was failing some, and, of course, younger and more progressive men were needed in the villages—preachers ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... of cordage and leather. Upon the occasions that the Vanator rolled completely over, these things would be wrapped around her until another revolution in the opposite direction, or the wind itself, carried them once again clear of the deck to trail, whipping in the storm, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and was written in the tent you know of, where it was found long afterwards with his body and those of some other very gallant gentlemen, his comrades. The writing is in pencil, still quite clear, though toward the end some of the words trail away as into the great silence that was waiting for them. ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie

... to eleven I walked a little apart, up the trail, and began saying my Rosary Beads. They were always companion and comfort to my trying hours. Fervently I implored her, who is "Mightier than an army in battle array," to intercede for us to her Divine Son. That, it ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... Elizabeth Maxwell, youngest daughter of Henry Braddon, solicitor, and widow of John Maxwell, publisher, was born in London in 1837. Early in life she had literary aspirations, and, as a girl of twenty-three, wrote her first novel, "The Trail of the Serpent," which first appeared in serial form. "Lady Audley's Secret" was published in 1862, and Miss Braddon immediately sprang into fame as an authoress, combining a graphic style with keen analysis of character, and exceptional ingenuity ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... And what a delicious evening and holiday, all told, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, men and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his private race-track—I myself as much frightened as any at the roaring speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road—we arrived at seven, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... under stones, in caves, and in rotten wood. The last two are often seen in old houses, but daily use of the broom and duster will make them appear but rarely. Some of these animals grow to a large size. On a ride on the Haitian border my horse shied at a tarantula in the trail, and in calling my Dominican companion's attention to it, I remarked that it was as large as a saucer. "That is nothing," he replied, "there are many around here as large as a ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... were very angry at being tricked in this way by such a small animal as the Mouse-deer. They scratched the side of the pit with their feet until it sloped, and enabled them to scramble out; then they followed the trail of the ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes

... was great joy at this, for some of the weaker brethren seeing that an outsider who had been working on independent lines could create kittens, whereas their own rulers had never gone beyond crockery—and broken at best—were showing a desire to break line on their own trail. In fact, there was the promise of a schism. A second Round Robin was drafted to the Englishman, beginning: 'O Scoffer,' and ending with a selection of curses from the Rites of Mizraim and Memphis and the Commination of Jugana, who was a 'fifth-rounder,' upon whose name an upstart 'third-rounder' ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... of the Greek proverb challenged Athene to sing. I know it all, I deplore it, I regret the evils of ambition; but c'est plus fort que moi. If there is a trout rising well under the pendant boughs that trail in the water, if there is a brake of briars behind me, a strong wind down stream, for that trout, in that impregnable situation, I am impelled to fish. If I raise him I strike, miss him, catch up ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... Falls and built this house we are now living in in 1854. It was built right on an Indian trail that paralleled the Red River cart trail. You see that road out there? That is just where the old Red River cart road went. That is Swan River and it went between us and that. Our back door was right on their foot trail. You could step out of our door onto it. There is a big flat rock ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... likely to prove effectual. The scouts commenced a circuit around the clearing, extending their line as far as might be done without cutting off support, and each man lending his senses attentively to the signs of the trail, or of the lairs, of those dangerous enemies, who they had reason to think were outlying in their neighborhood. But, like the recent search in the buildings, the scouting was for a long time attended by no results. Many weary miles were passed ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... the beginning. The trail was long. But time was hideously short before they began turning Tighe's brain inside out. And there ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... occasional jangle of a bit or the ring of a horse's shoe on a stone, there was silence which lasted many minutes. Each was busy with her thoughts, and the narrowness of the trail, which here made them go in single file, served ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... on with fresh supplies of horses at the topmost speed that the limitations of their convoy of carts would permit. Band after band of Plains {111} Indians, adorned with war-paint and scalp-locks, crossed their trail, but mosquito and sand-fly proved more troublesome. The travellers passed a band of emigrants making slowly for the Columbia, and everywhere found countless herds of buffalo. In three weeks from Fort Garry they reached Fort Edmonton. Here forty-five fresh horses were in readiness for riding, ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... searchingly. He listened. He hung up. "Memo., Miss Bunker." He was curt. His eyes were hard. One observing his manner and hearing his tone would have realized that quarry had broken cover and that Mr. Blanchard had not been able to confuse the trail by dragging across it an anise-bag; in fact, Morrison had said so over the telephone just before he hung up. "Get me Cooper of the Waverly, Finitter of the Lorton Looms, Labarre of the Bleachery, Sprague of the Bates." He named four of the great textile ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... labouring away out there on the Nor'-East Rough whilst we who have shared her trials so long are following once more the less arduous ways of the land. If she prove as eager in the pursuit of her undersea quarry as she was on the trail of the U-Boat I would not change places with the cod and haddocks of the North Sea for the prize-money of an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various

... vegetable forms and colors. Vast tracts, shady and cool with dense dark foliage; trees, tall and strong, spreading their giant arms abroad, with prickly, shining shrubs between, while parasites and creepers, wild, bright, and beautiful, trail from the highest boughs to the ground; the bamboo, shooting to the height of sixty feet and upward, with branches gracefully drooping; the generous, kind banana; fairy forests of ferns of a thousand forms; tall grasses, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... wind &c (opposition) 708; trammel, tether &c (means of restraint) 752; hold back, counterpoise. [person who hinders] damper, wet blanket, hinderer, marplot, killjoy; party pooper [Coll.]; party crasher, interloper. trail of a red herring; opponent &c 710. V. hinder, impede, filibuster [U.S.], impedite^, embarrass. keep off, stave off, ward off; obviate; avert, antevert^; turn aside, draw off, prevent, forefend, nip in the bud; retard, slacken, check, let; counteract, countercheck^; preclude, debar, foreclose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... very still and bade us listen. The whole wood was full of the sound of "halloaing" now. Far and wide I heard question and answer, and a lingering yodle such as the Swiss boys make on the mountains. It couldn't be many minutes, I said, before the first man was out on our trail; and there I was right, for one of them came leaping out of the wood straight into Peter Bligh's arms before I'd spoken another word. Poor devil—it was the last good-night for him in this world—for Peter passes him on, so to speak, and he went headlong into ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... and spacious harbour, Port Augusta, which lies in about 49 deg. 36' north latitude, and is scarcely 50 miles from Nanaimo. Major Downie was on his way down from the Upper Fraser River region by the Lillooet trail and Port Douglas. There were reports of his having made some valuable geographical discoveries on his journey from the coast to Port Alexander, among which were a chain of lakes extending along the route 150 miles, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... mountains; their carts came by the ordinary road, and on arriving at the Italian lines the drivers asked for hay; but when they explained that the rest of their force was going round by the mountain trail the Italian commandant refused to give any supplies to such liars. (Later on, though, he gave them sufficient for five days.) When an Austrian officer who was stationed in a minaret saw the Serbs coming down from those terrible heights he was so astonished ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... been a "pocket" miner—a sort of gold mining not findable in any but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know how, with horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the ground. I know the language ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... plot called Studabaker's woods. Some of them we could distinguish almost a block away coming straight toward the Cabin, and sailing around the eastern corner with the precision of hounds on a hot trail. How they knew, the Almighty knows; I do not pretend to; but that there was odour distilled by that one female, practically imperceptible to us (she merely smelled like a moth), yet of such strength as to penetrate screen, vines, and roses and reach her kind a block ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... true comrades of camp and trail are in the saddle. In the strangest possible way they are drawn into a series of exciting happenings among the Zuni Indians. Certainly no lad will lay this book down, ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis

... depths of the green wilderness, where dark spruce and hemlock guard the secrets of the trail, are still to be found wild creatures who know little of man and who regard him with more of curiosity than of fear. Woodland ponds, whose placid waters have never reflected the dark lines of a canoe, lie like jewels in their setting of green hills; ponds where soft-eyed ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... you on the trail of that Eg Phillips? Do you really think you've got anything on him? Because if you have and you don't let me into the game I'll never forgive you. Of all the slick, smooth, stuck-up ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... I should say he spent the nights with me. Most of the time he was on the elusive trail of the Rhamda. From the minute of our conversation with Kennedy he held to one conviction. He was positive of that chemist back in the nineties. He was certain of the Rhamda. Whatever the weirdness of his theory it would ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... acceptance of cold, intellectual theories in place of religion, and how this develops the ability to separate morals and manners; how one's theology needn't interfere with one's religion, and all that. It would be the story of the union of politics and business; and the trail would lead up to those proud and insolent aristocracies that are founded on the purchase of the privilege of making the laws, and down to those stews of horror where they pay for the privilege of breaking the laws. It would be the story ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... brothers in blood of his, young hunting men who had faced all forms of death for the very love of it, and these vanished from the land and none knew where they went save that they did not follow on their master's trail. ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... soon as the robbery is discovered the company will turn hell itself upside down to find it. Pinkerton will be on our trail in forty-eight hours. The first thing they will do will be to suspect the messenger. He will be arrested, and while they are monkeying with him we must get out of the way. I told the poor devil I would write ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... to Dick: either to continue to follow in the knight's trail, and, if he were able, to fall upon him that very night in camp, or to strike out a path of his own, and seek to place himself between ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sprawled on the fairway, and the laborious rain had worn ruts into straggling ditches, where culverts had given way and the dammed streams had spread the track with wasting pools, where sometimes time-honoured weeds blotted the very memory of the trail into oblivion; when they stood before an old grey mansion, with what had once been lawns about it and the ruin of a great cedar hard by its side, its many windows surveying with a grave stare the wreck and riot of the court it kept—then for the first time Anthony ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... Festing stopped at the edge of a ravine on the Saskatchewan prairie. The trail that led up through the leafless birches was steep, and he had walked fast since he left his work at the half-finished railroad bridge. Besides, he felt thoughtful, for something had happened during the visit of a Montreal superintendent ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... Then he straightened and swept the sea with keen, puckered eyes. It was a scrutiny that was rewarded. Ahead, across the horizon sky, floated a dark smudge, like the smoke-trail of a steamer, and beneath it was a black speck. It was no ship, but land, he knew. It was the expected landfall, the volcanic island, there ahead, and he, of all of the ship's company, first perceived it from ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... daughter, as if the sense must be hers. She did not meet his glance at once, but with an impatient recognition of the heat that was now great for the warmth with which she was dressed, she pushed her sleeve from her wrist, showing its delicious whiteness, and letting her fingers trail through the cool water; she dried them on her handkerchief, and then bent her eyes full upon him as if challenging ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... time. When I am gone—when all that man has made, that seems so firm and everlasting, shall have crumbled into the earth, whence it sprang, this wave, so momentary and so eternal, shall still surge up the slanting beach, and trail its lacy mantle in retreat.... O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence, and be ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... I beseech you, follow; see but the issue of my jealousy: if I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... trail furnishes another good example of a directive tendency. Give a bloodhound the scent of a particular man and he will follow that scent persistently, not turning aside to respond to stimuli that would otherwise influence him, nor even to follow the scent ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... us what must have been an order to march. At all events we walked with them at a brisk pace along a well-marked trail, between great ferns and rank canes and grasses, and after a time we came to a village composed of frail, low houses or bungalows, from which other natives came running. Some of them shook their fists at us angrily; ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... counsel, old Mark Stecklin, are the keepers of them. Now, suppose Judge Enderby runs afoul of our interests, as he is bound to do sooner or later. Little Weaselfoot gets on his trail—probably is on it already—and he'll spend a year if necessary watching, waiting, sniffing out something that he can use as a threat or a bludgeon or ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... lightness of heart which makes a long walk a pleasure, rather than a task. Going down the wooded descent, where the dew still lay wet beneath the heaviest thickets, was not so bad; but, when he had obtained his grip and gun, and started on the back trail, his discomforts commenced. As the main street of the little village changed its character, first to a road and then a cart path through the fields, it grew deep with dust, and, although no air stirred, it seemed to rise, as water does by capillary attraction, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... the girl with a shade of mysticism in her tones. "Once I saw you going down The Way, Sandy, with the look on your face that you now have. I stood by the big pine just where the trail ends in The Way, and watched you. Then I dreamed last night that I stood by the big pine again and you were coming up The Way a-waving to me like you knew I would be there. There was a look on your face—a new look—but I knew it, for I've seen ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... scout were thus following the trail, Buck Tom, lying in the cave, became suddenly much worse. It seemed as if some string in his system had suddenly snapped and let the ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... away at full speed, starting off the whole herd in alarm. The black fathom followed at the top of his speed, and was joined by a number of other black fathoms, who were quite aware of what had been done. The buffaloes were soon out of sight, but the fathoms followed the trail with the unerring pertinacity of fate. After a long run they came up with the stricken bull, which had fallen behind its fellows, and waited patiently until the poison took full effect. In a short time the animal ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... of "K" Company, the other two having been dropped temporarily at Issaka Gorka to guard that railroad repair shop and wireless station, now moved right out by order of Colonel Guard, on September seventh, on a trail leading off toward Tiogra and Seletskoe. Somewhere in the wilds he would find traces of or might succor the handful of American sailors and Scots who, under Col. Hazelden, a British officer, had been cornered by ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... of sight, having passed into some thick timber that grew along the edge of the water, through which there was a plain trail made by deer and other wild animals. He kept along this trail, sheltering himself behind the trees, so that the flamingoes, that were several hundred yards farther down the bayou, might not see ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... miles that we travelled. With the cool mornings and evenings and the suggestion of frost in the air it is ideal walking and we tramp almost all of the hundred miles, letting the waggons overtake us at meal-times and waiting for them again when it is time to camp. The trail leads us through a rolling, lightly-wooded country, with many streams and open glades. At every lake and runway we flush ducks and wild-fowl, like us bound south, and like us, too, loath to leave the golden ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... her gratefully. "But it makes me feel like a child to think I need such care. If honestly trying, if going up against these hills and winds with Spartan courage will do me good, I'm for it. I'm resolved to show to you and your good father that I can learn to ride and pack and cut trail, and do all the rest of it—there's some honor in qualifying as a forester, and I'm going ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... because he was so strong of wind and leg that he enjoyed running, and because he was so keen of nose that he enjoyed following a trail. Anyway, he scorned to spend his time sneaking about as did his cousin, Mr. Coyote, but chose to follow the swiftest runners and to match his nose and speed and skill against their speed and wits. He didn't bother to ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess

... falls of eight hundred, with nothing at the base but thick mists, which form and trickle, and then run and at last plunge into the blue Merced that flows through the centre of the valley. Back by the Coulterville trail, the peaks of Sierra Nevada in sight, across the North Fork of the Merced, by Gentry's Gulch, over hills and through canons, to Fremont's again, and thence to Stockton and San Francisco—all this at the end of August, when there has been no rain for four months, and the air ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... classified. In some libraries material upon an unrelated variety of subjects may be found within the covers of a single volume. This feature has been tried and found wanting. It means that when the reader is on the trail of a given subject he never knows where to look for it, and he is likely to have to hunt through several volumes before he learns what he wants to know. The argument for an unclassified library is that the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... the creature which made that, Nat," said my uncle. "Rather an unpleasant neighbour to have. Why, the fellow that marked that trail must be a good eighteen ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn

... stalwart and bronzed by exposure. Seen together, they rather resembled lad and lass. I thought so, at least, when first I saw her, coming to fetch him dry feeting and a clean shirt. She had walked twenty miles to bring them, through the woods, following our trail. And the way she kissed the young man, aside, was, or looked to be, rather lover-like than maternal. Afterward, on several similar occasions, I was much struck by the genre picture they made; the youth had the great black eyes and black curling ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... head of the North Sea, and running for the "Naze of Norway," the weather being pleasant and the sea smooth, I persuaded Mr. Bowen to throw a fishing-line over the stern and let it trail, with the expectation of catching some mackerel. We succeeded in capturing several of those excellent fish, and also two or three gar-fish; a kind of fish I have never met with elsewhere excepting in the tropical ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... from Col. Singleton's plantation, and Mr. Black, with twenty-five hound dogs, was hired to hunt them up. The dogs struck trail of the runaways late one afternoon, and chased them all that night, during which time they got scattered. Next morning three of the runaways were chased through a crowd of their fellow negroes, who were working in the cotton field. ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer

... son," he said. "We'll 'tend to P. Casey, soon's we've 'tended to you. You need fixin' if you're goin' to take us to him. You'll have to hoof it till we cut fair trail. Sam, fetch me some adhesive, will you? An' then saddle up; Pronto fo' me, a hawss fo' yoreself ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... was poised in the air ready to be lowered, and two of the deck-hands were dropping from the shore end to trail the bow line up the paved slope to the nearest mooring-ring. There was an electric arc-light opposite the steamer's berth, and Charlotte shaded her eyes with her hands to follow the motions of the two bent figures under the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... don't you remember that moonlit sea, With us on a silver trail afloat, When I gracefully sank on my bended knee At the risk of upsetting our little boat? Oh, I vowed that my life was blighted then, As friendship you proffered with mournful mien; But now as I think of your children ten, I'm glad you ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... serene possessor—shared equally by his daring brother; and evidence of this bravery is made plain throughout the following pages. Every youth who has in him a spark of adventure will kindle with desire to battle his way also from Green River to the foot of Bright Angel Trail; while every man whose bones have been stiffened and his breath made short by the years, will remember wistfully such wild tastes of risk and conquest that he, too, rejoiced in when ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... though few may climb The mountain and the star on trail of thee? Thy wing-flash beams toward man, and if it be True inspiration—whether thought sublime, Or fervor for the truth, or liberty— Thy light will reach the earth in ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... do just what we please without regard to the Indians. We are at present the highest up of any white men on the river, and we must go higher to be satisfied. {13} I don't apprehend any danger from the Indians at present, but there will be hell to pay after a while. There is a pack-trail from Hope, but it cannot be travelled till the snow is off ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... easy world to live in; all you really need to do Is the decent thing and proper and then friends will flock to you; But let dishonor trail you and some stormy day you'll find To your heart's supremest sorrow that you've made ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... man, his overpowering desire for revenge; his rage turned as fiercely even upon the unfortunate ones lying beside him as upon those who had maimed him. But another idea had taken even more powerfully possession of his mind; his thoughts darted forward like a pack of hounds on the trail, in frantic pursuit of the power which had thus passed sentence ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... In a Oaxaca story (Radin-Espinosa, 204, No. 104) occur the abandoned-children opening, corn-trail, fruit-trail, ogre's house, advice of rat, ogre pushed in oven. A Chile version of "Le Petit Poucet" is "Pinoncito" (Sauniere, 262). The following American Indian versions are noticed by Thompson (361-365): Thompson River (3), ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... unwilling, as they vanished, "Star-Child" slow to camp returned; Told the council of the Blackfeet All the marvels he had learned; Dressed him in his chief's apparel, Rode to where, within the glen, Lay the trail that led him onward To the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... Ford had left no stone unturned to obtain news of the runaways. This he did not find difficult, though attended with delay. He struck the right trail, and then had only to inquire, as he went along, whether two boys had been seen, one small and delicate, the other large and well-grown, wandering through the country. Plenty had seen the two ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger

... great diurnal of the eighteenth-century navy, the Captains' Letters and Admirals' Dispatches, no volume can be opened without striking the broad trail of destitution, misery and heart-break, to mention no worse consequences, left by the gang. At nearly every turn of the page, indeed, we come upon recitals or petitions recalling vividly the exclamation involuntarily let fall by ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... cross an open space, they bent down like North American Indians on a war-trail, keeping perfect silence, so that they might have passed close to an enemy without being discovered. Thus on they went, Dick calculating that it would take them about half an hour to reach the magazines, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... by the rising sun, we started from Tosari at two o'clock in the morning. Our mounts were wiry mountain ponies, hardy as mustangs and sure-footed as goats. And it was well that they were, for the trail was the steepest and narrowest that I have ever seen negotiated by horses. The Bright Angel Trail, which leads from the rim of the Grand Canon down to the Colorado, is a Central Park bridle-path in comparison. In places ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... temperately fond and familiar they took to the western trail together, and presently Warrigal "pointed" a big bandicoot for Finn, and Finn, delighted to exhibit his prowess, stalked and slew the creature with a good deal of style. Then the two fed together, Finn politely yielding the hind-quarters to his inamorata. And then ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... I was longing to slip into my home before I ran the gantlet of all the streets opening on the Santa Fe Trail. I never did know what Dever's "errant" was, that led him to swing some miles to the west, out of the way to the ford of the Neosho above the old stone cabin where Father Le Claire swam his horse in the May flood ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... never again seeing the peaceful hills and valleys of Onondaga or tasting the sweet waters of familiar springs. For here was evil water, of which no man might drink to quench his thirst; there were no firebrands to throw into the face of the North Wind; there was no trail, to follow or to retrace. O for his mat by the fire in the Long House, with the young braves and old warriors sprawling around, recounting the victories ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... our moose-camp on Skeleton Lake had impressed us from the beginning—in the Quebec backwoods, five days by trail and canoe from civilisation—and perhaps the singular name contributed a little to the sensation of eeriness that made itself felt in the camp circle when once the sun was down and the late October mists began ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... and he rigged up a "jack", a forbidden apparatus made of a soap-box and a lantern and a tin-plate for a reflector. He had an ingenious arrangement of straps and cords, whereby he could fasten this upon his head; and he had found an old lumber-trail where the deer came to feed upon the soft grass. Down this he crept like a thief in the night, with the light gleaming ahead, and the deer tramping in the thickets and whistling their alarms. Now and then one would stand and stare, his eye-balls gleaming like coals of fire; and at last came ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... of Yellowstone Park; 1921 ed. 8 vo., 160 pp. Officially approved by The National Park Service, Washington, D. C., and The Yellowstone Trail Association. Illustrated, maps, diagrams, charts. Descriptive, Historical, Geological, and contains the Motorists' Complete Road Log; By J. E. Haynes, B. ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough

... trail along," said the odd man. "We haven't done anything worth speaking of since he used his great searchlight to detect the smugglers. But I don't believe he'll go. That mining proposition ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... knowledge of Spanish, in which my grandfather had so persistently drilled me, enabled me to understand all that passed between him and Aiken. The captain warned us that the revolutionists were camped along the trail, and that if challenged we had best answer quickly that we were Americanos. He also told us that General Laguerre and his legion of "gringoes" were in hiding in the highlands some two days' ride from the coast. Aiken expressed the greatest concern at this, and was for ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... to his right, and in the fulness of his heart went striding southward down the slope, past the once familiar haunt the store, now dark and deserted, past the big house of the post trader, past the trader's roomy stables and corral, and so wended his moonlit way along the Rawlins trail, never noting until he had chanted over half a mile and most of the songs he knew, that Frayne was well behind him and the rise to the Medicine Bow in front. Then Kennedy began to laugh and call himself ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... gone off, his head bent low, and they understood that he was following the trail, much as a hound would have done, with this one difference, that whereas a dog pursues by scent alone, the cowboy had to depend ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... minutes later, Alonzo Rawson, his neckwear disordered and his face white with rage, stumbled out of the great doors upon the trail of Battle, who had quietly hurried away to his hotel for lunch as soon ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... he could hardly be expected to guess, after such a momentary glimpse of a man of extraordinary genius in unraveling crime, that Clancy was never more discursive, never more prone to chaff and sneer at his special friend, Steingall, than when hot on the trail of some particularly acute and daring malefactor. The Chief of the Bureau, of course, knew by these signs that his trusted aide had obtained information of a really startling nature, but neither Curtis nor Devar was aware of Clancy's idiosyncrasies, ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... all green, and scattered with sheep, or here and there an unfenced turnip-field, the road stretching behind like a long white ribbon, and now and then descending between steep chalk cuttings in slopes, down which the carriage slowly scrooped on its drag, leaving a broad blue-flecked trail. Dr. Spencer was asleep, hat off, and the wind lifting his snowy locks, and she wished the others were; but Aubrey lamented on the heat and the length, and Leonard leant back in his corner, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... professes to have visited in the questionable kingdom of Tawalisi on his way to China: "I heard ... that various sons of kings had sought Urduja's hand, but she always answered, 'I will marry no one but him who shall fight and conquer me'; so they all avoided the trail, for fear of the shame of being beaten by her." (I.B. IV. 253-254.) I have given reasons (Cathay, p. 520) for suspecting that this lady with a Turkish name in the Indian Archipelago is a bit of fiction. Possibly Ibn Batuta had heard the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... came, and, with it, Tom to our camp. "You can go to Horse Creek with me; then I hunt alone and you come back," was the Indian's remark as both set out. I afterwards learned that Ka-tca-la-ni was all kindness on the trail to Horse Creek, three miles away, aiding the amateur hunter in his search for game and giving him the first shot at what was started. At Horse Creek, however, Tom stopped, and, turning to his companion, said, "Now you hi-e-pus (go)!" That was frankness indeed, and quite refreshing to us who had not ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... swift hoofs, thundering south; The dust like smoke from the cannon's mouth, Or the trail of a comet sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster, The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... never have occurred had not Mr. Froude, in the early eighties, given his story about the Carlyles to the world. Carlyle went to his grave, an old man, highly honored, and with no trail of gossip behind him. His wife had died some sixteen years before, leaving a brilliant memory. The books of Mr. Froude seemed for a moment to have desecrated the grave, and to have shed a sudden and sinister light upon those who could not make ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... to the empty room at the back of the house, muttering to himself the while, and Zena and I smiled at each other behind his back as we followed him. He was like an old dog on the trail again, and I did not believe for a moment this case would ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... stake, youd have said all that, and more too. I cut the thongs with this very hand, and gave him my own tomahawk and knife, seeing that the rifle was always my fav'rite weapon. He did lay about him like a man! I met him as I was coming home from the trail, with eleven Mingo scalps on his pole. You neednt shudder, Madam Effingham, for they was all from shaved heads and warriors. When I look about me, at these hills, where I used to could count sometimes twenty ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... nostrils a naphthaline odour outflows, In his trail a petroleum-whiff lingers. With crude nitro-glycerine glitter his hose, Suggestions of dynamite hang round his nose, And gunpowder ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various

... rhythmically up and down in the tether of their chains. On the walls, covered with a cold sweat, as of deathless agony, we could see the staples; and there was one spot of a dreadful fascination, where Donald Douglas held his candle to show a trail of slimy moisture. Always this weeping stone had been there, he said, no one knew why; and in old days, when these dungeons bore the name of the "black hell," prisoners tortured with thirst used, animal-like, to lick the oozing patch, making many hollows round ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... & II example: 1st, rope stitch with alternate fillings of darning and outline stitch, and 2nd, rows of outline stitch for one-half the back leaves and one-half grey knot stitch and blue snail trail in alternative, the end leaf being in rows of outline ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands

... woven up in cloud-land Trail their fringes over all, Shifting shadows gray and purple, Which aerial elves ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... had better move, Colonel," said Captain Rankin at last. As he spoke, a bullet split a brick in the road about three feet away from me, and slid across the road leaving a trail ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... thin as Mr Crich, pale and ill-looking. His figure was narrow but nicely made. He went with a slight trail of one foot, which came only from self-consciousness. Although he was dressed correctly for his part, yet there was an innate incongruity which caused a slight ridiculousness in his appearance. His nature was clever and separate, he ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... deep of the delights of this mellow afternoon. On either side of our trail lie yellow harvest fields, narrow, like those of eastern Canada, and set in frames of green poplar bluffs that rustle and shimmer under the softly going wind. Then on through scrub we go, bumping over roots and pitching through holes, till ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor

... vacant place for a chief of the police, I reckon you are the man for it," he said, gazing with undisguised admiration at my fellow-lodger. "The way you kept on my trail was a caution." ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... gallop her horse had left no trail that she could follow as a path—nothing but slight records which might be discovered upon close and particular search. As his shoeless feet had made little or no impression on the sward, and there were wide spaces where ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... clue to follow up, the matter was then plain enough. The search through the wood showed us the whole circumstances of the case, as I have related them to you, just as plainly as if we had witnessed the affair. But if I had not been set upon the right trail, I say honestly that I doubt whether I should have unravelled it, especially as the snow is rapidly going, and by this afternoon the ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... on either side, evidently waiting for a favourable moment to renew the attack. Thus the whole party, friends and foes, vanished from my sight in the fog. To stay where I was would only lead to my certain destruction, for when the Indians returned, as I knew they would, to carry off my scalp, the trail to my hiding-place would at once be discovered. I felt, too, that if I allowed my wounds to grow stiff, I might not be able to move at all. Suffering intense agony, therefore, I dragged myself down into the stream. It was barely deep enough to ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... you must remember that in those days there weren't fifty automobiles in England. When my brother came up the London Road with a whiz and a bang, a long trail of blue stench coming out of the back of the machine, I really think that was the third or fourth time I had ever seen such a thing. Well, there he was, a great big chap with a hooked nose and flashing black eyes behind the goggles. Where had he been? Neither to Canada nor to ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... desert city ceased to exist except on camels' backs. It was shaved off the surface of the earth, and went churning and swaying along toward the next stand; the procession rising and falling among swelling dunes, under a sky which seemed to trail like a heavy blue curtain, where at the horizon it met ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... time to be on his way. He had been in the wilderness forty days, and that was long enough. He found the trail back to the outside world, and soon he was on the road ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford

... and free; We looked towards the Admiral, where high the Peter flew, And all our hearts were dancing like the sea. "The French are gone to Martinique with four-and-twenty sail! The Old Suberb is old and foul and slow, But the French are gone to Martinique, and Nelson's on the trail, And where he goes the ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... walking over that trail again?' I asked him. 'I do most of my thinking at a foot-step and your ideas is over the hill and far away before I can recognise the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... proved that Grace was not alone in her fondness for sleep. There being no more interruptions in the shape of fuming gentlemen on the trail of runaway daughters, they slept soundly through the long hours while the train plunged onward through the inky blackness of the night. They did not stir until the sun, shining on their faces, roused them to the realization that ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... chain of brilliant flame, its form lengthening as it goes, until it has circumscribed a large share of the entire basin. Then it begins to spread and flatten, as though the body had burst asunder and was dissolving back again, along its whole trail, into the fierce flood of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... proceeded too far to return alone, I was to continue on from Santa Fe with the fur traders, returning to St. Louis, on the Mississippi, where I was to dispose of some valuable jewels, hire men to form a strong caravan, and return to the settlement by the Astoria trail. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... between them, a bundle was lowered by the grocer, containing a change of clothes and a couple of blankets. On receiving these, Leonard retired to the hutch, and tying a handkerchief round his wounded arm, wrapped himself in a night trail, and stretching himself on the ground, in spite of his anxiety, soon sank asleep. He awoke about four o'clock in the morning, with a painful consciousness of what had taken place during the night. It was just beginning to grow light, and he walked across the street to gaze at the house ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth



Words linked to "Trail" :   hunt, path, ski run, slot, grounds, lag, pursue, cart track, hound, quest, locomote, trace, cartroad, fall behind, fall back, go, run down, spoor, travel, move, course, tree, follow, dawdle, evidence



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