ADVENTURE books online

Reading books adventure Nowadays a big variety of genres are exist. In our electronic library you can choose any book that suits your mood, request and purpose. This website is full of free ebooks. Reading online is very popular and become mainstream. This website can provoke you to be smarter than anyone. You can read between work breaks, in public transport, in cafes over a cup of coffee and cheesecake.
No matter where, but it’s important to read books in our elibrary , without registration.



Today let's analyze the genre adventure. Genre adventure is a reference book for adults and children. But it serve for adults and children in different purposes. If a boy or girl presents himself as a brave and courageous hero, doing noble deeds, then an adult with pleasure can be a little distracted from their daily worries.


A great interest to the reader is the adventure of a historical nature. For example, question: «Who discovered America?»
Today there are quite interesting descriptions of the adventures of Portuguese sailors, who visited this continent 20 years before Columbus.




It should be noted the different quality of literary works created in the genre of adventure. There is an understandable interest of generations of people in the classic adventure. At the same time, new works, which are created by contemporary authors, make classic works in the adventure genre quite worthy competition.
The close attention of readers to the genre of adventure is explained by the very essence of man, which involves constant movement, striving for something new, struggle and achievement of success. Adventure genre is very excited
Heroes of adventure books are always strong and brave. And we, off course, want to be like them. Unfortunately, book life is very different from real life.But that doesn't stop us from loving books even more.

Read books online » Adventure » The House of a Thousand Candles by Meredith Nicholson (good ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Book online «The House of a Thousand Candles by Meredith Nicholson (good ebook reader .TXT) 📖». Author Meredith Nicholson



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was confident that he

lied, but without appealing to Bates I was not prepared

to prove it.

 

“But you can’t deny that you’re on my grounds now,

can you?” I had dropped the revolver to my knee, but

I raised it again.

 

“Certainly not, Mr. Glenarm. If you’ll allow me to

explain—”

 

“That’s precisely what I want you to do.”

 

“Well, it may seem strange,”—he laughed, and I felt

the least bit foolish to be pointing a pistol at the head

of a fellow of so amiable a spirit.

 

“Hurry,” I commanded.

 

“Well, as I was saying, it may seem strange; but I

was just examining the wall to determine the character

of the work. One of the cottagers on the lake left me

with the job of building a fence on his place, and I’ve

been expecting to come over to look at this all fall.

You see, Mr. Glenarm, your honored grandfather was

a master in such matters, as you may know, and I didn’t

see any harm in getting the benefit—to put it so—of his

experience.”

 

I laughed. He had denied having entered the house

with so much assurance that I had been prepared for

some really plausible explanation of his interest in the

wall.

 

“Morgan—you said it was Morgan, didn’t you?—you

are undoubtedly a scoundrel of the first water. I make

the remark with pleasure.”

 

“Men have been killed for saying less,” he said.

 

“And for doing less than firing through windows at a

man’s head. It wasn’t friendly of you.”

 

“I don’t see why you center all your suspicions on

me. You exaggerate my importance, Mr. Glenarm. I’m

only the man-of-all-work at a summer resort.”

 

“I wouldn’t believe you, Morgan, if you swore on a

stack of Bibles as high as this wall.”

 

“Thanks!” he ejaculated mockingly.

 

Like a flash he swung the hammer over his head and

drove it at me, and at the same moment I fired. The

hammer-head struck the pillar near the outer edge and

in such a manner that the handle flew around and

smote me smartly in the face. By the time I reached

the ground the man was already running rapidly

through the park, darting in and out among the trees,

and I made after him at hot speed.

 

[Illustration: Like a flash he swung the hammer, and at the same moment I fired.]

 

The hammer-handle had struck slantingly across my

forehead, and my head ached from the blow. I abused

myself roundly for managing the encounter so stupidly,

and in my rage fired twice with no aim whatever after

the flying figure of the caretaker. He clearly had the

advantage of familiarity with the wood, striking off

boldly into the heart of it, and quickly widening the

distance between us; but I kept on, even after I ceased

to hear him threshing through the undergrowth, and

came out presently at the margin of the lake about fifty

feet from the boat-house. I waited in the shadow for

some time, expecting to see the fellow again, but he did

not appear.

 

I found the wall with difficulty and followed it back

to the gate. It would be just as well, I thought, to

possess myself of the hammer; and I dropped down on

the St. Agatha side of the wall and groped about among

the leaves until I found it.

 

Then I walked home, went into the library, alight

with its many candles just as I had left it, and sat

down before the fire to meditate. I had been absent

from the house only forty-five minutes.

CHAPTER VIII

A STRING OF GOLD BEADS

 

A moment later Bates entered with a fresh supply of

wood. I watched him narrowly for some sign of perturbation,

but he was not to be caught off guard. Possibly

he had not heard the shots in the wood; at any

rate, he tended the fire with his usual gravity, and after

brushing the hearth paused respectfully.

 

“Is there anything further, sir?”

 

“I believe not, Bates. Oh! here’s a hammer I picked

up out in the grounds a bit ago. I wish you’d see if it

belongs to the house.”

 

He examined the implement with care and shook his

head.

 

“It doesn’t belong here, I think, sir. But we sometimes

find tools left by the carpenters that worked on

the house. Shall I put this in the tool-chest, sir?”

 

“Never mind. I need such a thing now and then and

I’ll keep it handy.”

 

“Very good, Mr. Glenarm. It’s a bit sharper to-night,

but we’re likely to have sudden changes at this season.”

 

“I dare say.”

 

We were not getting anywhere; the fellow was certainly

an incomparable actor.

 

“You must find it pretty lonely here, Bates. Don’t

hesitate to go to the village when you like.”

 

“I thank you, Mr. Glenarm; but I am not much for

idling. I keep a few books by me for the evenings. Annandale

is not what you would exactly call a diverting

village.”

 

“I fancy not. But the caretaker over at the summer

resort has even a lonelier time, I suppose. That’s what

I’d call a pretty cheerless job—watching summer cottages

in the winter.”

 

“That’s Morgan, sir. I meet him occasionally when

I go to the village; a very worthy person, I should call

him, on slight acquaintance.”

 

“No doubt of it, Bates. Any time through the winter

you want to have him in for a social glass, it’s all

right with me.”

 

He met my gaze without flinching, and lighted me

to the stair with our established ceremony. I voted him

an interesting knave and really admired the cool way

in which he carried off difficult situations. I had no

intention of being killed, and now that I had due warning

of danger, I resolved to protect myself from foes

without and within. Both Bates and Morgan, the caretaker,

were liars of high attainment. Morgan was,

moreover, a cheerful scoundrel, and experience taught

me long ago that a knave with humor is doubly dangerous.

 

Before going to bed I wrote a long letter to Larry

Donovan, giving him a full account of my arrival at

Glenarm House. The thought of Larry always cheered

me, and as the pages slipped from my pen I could feel

his sympathy and hear him chuckling over the lively beginning

of my year at Glenarm. The idea of being fired

upon by an unseen foe would, I knew, give Larry a real

lift of the spirit.

 

The next morning I walked into the village, mailed

my letter, visited the railway station with true rustic

instinct and watched the cutting out of a freight car for

Annandale with a pleasure I had not before taken in

that proceeding. The villagers stared at me blankly as

on my first visit. A group of idle laborers stopped talking

to watch me; and when I was a few yards past them

they laughed at a remark by one of the number which

I could not overhear. But I am not a particularly sensitive

person; I did not care what my Hoosier neighbors

said of me; all I asked was that they should refrain

from shooting at the back of my head through the windows

of my own house.

 

On this day I really began to work. I mapped out

a course of reading, set up a draftsman’s table I found

put away in a closet, and convinced myself that I was

beginning a year of devotion to architecture. Such was,

I felt, the only honest course. I should work every day

from eight until one, and my leisure I should give to

recreation and a search for the motives that lay behind

the crafts and assaults of my enemies.

 

When I plunged into the wood in the middle of the

afternoon it was with the definite purpose of returning

to the upper end of the lake for an interview with Morgan,

who had, so Bates informed me, a small house back

of the cottages.

 

I took the canoe I had chosen for my own use from

the boat-house and paddled up the lake. The air was

still warm, but the wind that blew out of the south

tasted of rain. I scanned the water and the borders of

the lake for signs of life—more particularly, I may as

well admit, for a certain maroon-colored canoe and a

girl in a red tam-o’-shanter, but lake and summer cottages

were mine alone. I landed and began at once my

search for Morgan. There were many paths through

the woods back of the cottages, and I followed several

futilely before I at last found a small house snugly

bid away in a thicket of young maples.

 

The man I was looking for came to the door quickly

in response to my knock.

 

“Good afternoon, Morgan.”

 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Glenarm,” he said, taking the

pipe from his mouth the better to grin at me. He

showed no sign of surprise, and I was nettled by his cool

reception. There was, perhaps, a certain element of

recklessness in my visit to the house of a man who had

shown so singular an interest in my affairs, and his cool

greeting vexed me.

 

“Morgan—” I began.

 

“Won’t you come in and rest yourself, Mr. Glenarm?”

he interrupted. “I reckon you’re tired from your trip

over—”

 

“Thank you, no,” I snapped.

 

“Suit yourself, Mr. Glenarm.” He seemed to like my

name and gave it a disagreeable drawling emphasis.

 

“Morgan, you are an infernal blackguard. You have

tried twice to kill me—”

 

“We’ll call it that, if you like,”—and he grinned.

“But you’d better cut off one for this.”

 

He lifted the gray fedora hat from his head, and

poked his finger through a hole in the top.

 

“You’re a pretty fair shot, Mr. Glenarm. The fact

about me is,”—and he winked—“the honest truth is,

I’m all out of practice. Why, sir, when I saw you paddling

out on the lake this afternoon I sighted you from

the casino half a dozen times with my gun, but I was

afraid to risk it.” He seemed to be shaken with inner

mirth. “If I’d missed, I wasn’t sure you’d be scared to

death!”

 

For a novel diversion I heartily recommend a meeting

with the assassin who has, only a few days or hours

before, tried to murder you. I know of nothing in the

way of social adventure that is quite equal to it. Morgan

was a fellow of intelligence and, whatever lay back

of his designs against me, he was clearly a foe to reckon

with. He stood in the doorway calmly awaiting my

next move. I struck a match on my box and lighted a

cigarette.

 

“Morgan, I hope you understand that I am not responsible

for any injury my grandfather may have inflicted

on you. I hadn’t seen him for several years before

he died. I was never at Glenarm before in my

life, so it’s a little rough for you to visit your displeasure

on me.”

 

He smiled tolerantly as I spoke. I knew—and he

knew that I did—that no ill feeling against my grandfather

lay back of his interest in my affairs.

 

“You’re not quite the man your grandfather was, Mr.

Glenarm. You’ll excuse my bluntness, but I take it

that you’re a frank man. He was a very keen person,

and, I’m afraid,”—he chuckled with evident satisfaction

to himself—“I’m really afraid, Mr. Glenarm, that

you’re not!”

 

“There you have it, Morgan! I fully agree with you!

I’m as dull as an oyster; that’s the reason I’ve called on

you for enlightenment. Consider

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