The penitent had been with his director; permitted to withhold nothing; suffered to keep no corner of his heart sacred to God and to himself; the whole narrative of our late interview had been drawn from him; he had avowed the covenant of fraternity, and spoken of his adopted sister.
I felt as if—knowing what I now knew—his countenance would offer a page more lucid, more interesting than ever; I felt a longing to trace in it the imprint of that primitive devotedness, the signs of that half-knightly, half-saintly chivalry which the priest's narrative imputed to his nature.
" I got, in reply, quite a little romantic narrative, told not unimpressively, with the accompaniment of the now subsiding storm.
My own attention I think would not soon have flagged, but by-and-by, she herself seemed to need some change of subject; she hastened to wind up her narrative briefly.
Won to confidence, I told him exactly what I had seen: ere now I had narrated to him the legend of the house—whiling away with that narrative an hour of a certain mild October afternoon, when he and I rode through Bois l'Etang.
As to what I said, it was no confidence, no narrative.
We all think ourselves strong in some points; we all know ourselves weak in many; the probabilities are that had I visited Numero 10, Rue des Mages, at the hour and day appointed, I might just now, instead of writing this heretic narrative, be counting my beads in the cell of a certain Carmelite convent on the Boulevard of Crécy, in Villette.
I felt she was not one to be led an inch by her feelings: grave and considerate, she gazed, consulting her judgment and studying my narrative.
To the hymn would succeed some reading—perhaps a chapter in the Bible; correction was seldom required here, for the child could read any simple narrative chapter very well; and, when the subject was such as she could understand and take an interest in, her expression and emphasis were something remarkable.
And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner.
"I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times.
The Man on the Tor The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion.
Now, however, I have arrived at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which I kept at the time.
"Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance," said he when the long narrative was finished.
Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative.
Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, old-world narrative: "Of the origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles there have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct line from Hugo Baskerville, and as I had the story from my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down with all belief that it occurred even as is here set forth.
It was about the period that my narrative has reached: a bright frosty afternoon; the ground bare, and the road hard and dry.
She would not hear of staying a second longer: in truth, I felt rather disposed to defer the sequel of her narrative myself.
His narrative was short, yet he was obliged to summon up his whole remaining energy to arrive at the end.
If the essay so inspires you I would suggest that you make a commencement with purely narrative poetry.
