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Clew

verb
(past & past part. clewed; pres. part. clewing)
1.
Roll into a ball.  Synonym: clue.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Clew" Quotes from Famous Books



... plain enough, and it gave me a clew, somehow, to what Melford's nightmare was about. She was calling out, 'Help! help! help! Burglars!' till I thought she would raise the roof ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... my vague exploration of that scene of beauty, of those scarcely stirring, stilly burning trees, of that shimmering-fronded fern, of that misty splendour, I was hunting for the soul of it all, for the informing spirit of it all. Harkness's erotics gave ardour to my search, but no clew. I lost him, left him behind, and never found him again. He fell into the Garden of Priapus, I doubt. As for me, I believed that I was now looking upon a Dryad. I was looking certainly at a spirit informed. A being, irradiate and quivering with life and joy of life, stood ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... our cavalry wore, when on Indian campaign, the forage-cap with its crossed sabres and distinguishing letters. Nothing in the dress or accoutrements of the two men thus advancing to meet the Indian emissaries would give to the latter any clew as to the troop or regiment to which they belonged. Could they see the horses, however, the matter would be settled at once. The U. S. brand, with that of the number of the regiment and letter of the troop showed on every cavalry mount in the service, and the Ogallallas ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... case and the whole of her jewelry, except what she was wearing, had been stolen. As no arrest had yet been made the references to the affair were naturally guarded. The paragraph even concluded without the usual formula as to the police having a clew. On the whole, I put the paper down with a slight feeling of relief. I felt that ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... go and take another look around there. Some man was evidently hurt there, and was taken away. We may get a clew. The lights on the runabout will give us a better chance to look around than we had by the little pocket lamp. We'll try there, and, if we don't find anything, then I'll call ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... are. We must take every precaution," he said decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate Armida had disappeared—a fact which, knowing all that I ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... end, he knelt down, and felt the smooth surface of the snow with bare fingers for some trace of his footsteps. There was none. The firm crust had carried him without strain. There was no least abrasion of the frozen surface to afford him a clew to his own trail. He strove to reason concerning the direction of his movements, but quickly abandoned the attempt as altogether baffling. In his circling about the tree from which he had garnered fuel, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... exhausted every known means of finding her, and I thought you might, at least, give him a clew." ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... the staff, whose opinion was the only god he knew, was a dagger thrust to Bouchard. At night he had lain awake worrying about the leak; by day he had sought to trace it, only to find every clew leading back to the staff. Now he was as confused in his shame as a sensitive schoolboy. Vaguely, in his distress, he heard Westerling asking a question, while he saw all those eyes staring ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... "I'm afraid not; no one else asked for you. At least, some one did; a Mr. Rawson-Clew came here for ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... experience no real difficulty in finding a clew to the labyrinth of life, or, as our ancient brothers put it in regard to the Magnum Opus—"a key to the closed palace of ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... Roland. He had heard it before. It had a happy memory, an air of prosperity about it. Lanhearne! It was a Cornish name! That circumstance gave him the clew. When he was a boy at Eton, he remembered a Mr. Lanhearne who stayed with his father. "By Jove!" he cried, starting to his feet, "he was an American. What a piece of luck it would be if it should be the same man!" He fixed the address ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the packet inclosed, D'Avencourt continued—"The accompanying letters were found in Ferrari's breast-pocket, and on opening the first one, in the expectation of finding some clew as to his last wishes, we came to the conclusion that you, as the future husband of the lady whose signature and handwriting you will here recognize, should be made aware of the contents, not only for your own sake, but in justice to the deceased. If all the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... very mysterious," answered Billie, turning the envelope around and around in her hand and finally holding it up to the light to see if she could get any clew to its contents that way. "But I surely never did see that handwriting ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... which afforded Dory a clew to the strange event in the woods. He fancied it had some connection with the money the farmer had received for his farm. The hungry boy was called into another room by Mrs. Brookbine to eat his supper. He found a plentiful meal on the table, and he did ample ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... moved away a few yards to be sure of the mother-bird, charging my friend not to stir from his tracks. When I returned, he had moved two paces, he said (he had really moved four), and we spent a half hour stooping over the daisies and the buttercups, looking for the lost clew. We grew desperate, and fairly felt the ground all over with our hands, but without avail. I marked the spot with a bush, and came the next day, and with the bush as a centre, moved about it in slowly increasing circles, covering, I thought, nearly every inch of ground ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... Bertram was looking at her in all astonishment, and in vain seeking a clew to her conduct. "This is too much!" cried she, half soliloquizing. "Love cannot stand this! Love! away with the word—I would despise myself if I could find a spark of this love in my heart!" She pressed her hands to her breast, as if she wished thereby ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... writer. On inquiring, to their mutual surprise they were told, that the gentleman had left there early in the morning, having discharged his lodgings, and that they were unable to say whither he had gone. To hunt for a man without a clew, in the city of London, is usually time misspent Of this Moseley was perfectly sensible, and disregarding a proposition of Peter's, he returned to his own lodgings. The proposal of the steward, if it did not do much credit to his sagacity, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... conduct, no other gospel than that which he had taught found her a listener. She refused to go to church, to Mary's chagrin and Uncle Chirgwin's sorrow; but he explained the matter correctly and indeed found a clew to most of Joan's actions at this season. Mary saw the old man's growing love for the new arrival, and a smaller mind might have sunk to jealousy quickly enough under such circumstances, but she, deeply concerned ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... identification, and a stranger's grave had to be provided. In the meantime the friends and relatives of the missing girl had been making every effort to locate her, no idea having occurred to them that she was going South. A loving brother finally got hold of a clew, which he followed up so successfully that he at last solved the mystery. He arrived in New Orleans on November 1st, and when taken out to the grave that had been provided for the stranger who had died ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... since he had last looked upon it,—a week of disappointment, of anxious fears, of doubts, of wild imaginings, of utter helplessness. In his hopeless quest of the missing Mornie, he had, in fancy, seen this serene eminence haunting his remorseful, passion-stricken soul. And now, without a clew to guide him to her unknown hiding-place, he was back again, to face the brother whom he had deceived, with only the confession of his own weakness. Hard as it was to lose forever the fierce, reproachful glances of the woman he loved, it was still harder, to a man of Ruth's temperament, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... in your Majesty's escape," said the Duke of Buckingham, "and not less in the quick wit which tracked that labyrinth of treason by so fine and almost invisible a clew." ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... calculations more doubtful than those of the geologist."[365] In fact, no truly scientific geologist pretends that it stands on the same level with any authentic history, much less with the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new fact may overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us in our presumptuous ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... true, how could we be expected to believe it like them that saw him with their own eyes? I couldn't be required to believe just as if I could have no doubt about it. It wouldn't be fair. Only—perhaps we haven't got the clew by the ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... wrote for it a noble prologue, which ranks among the best of his poems. When played at Weimar, in October, 1798, the 'Camp' was well received as a picturesque novelty, but that was all. It gave no clew to what was coming, and there was nothing in it to stir ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... center table and around the walls; pausing at one window sill and again at the threshold; picking his way daintily over heaps of litter on the floor. Yes, the room was full of the scent. But, whence the scent emanated, Lad could not, for the life of him, tell. The room gave him no clew. And, after a few minutes of futile ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... was square;[394] but there is abundant evidence to show that it was not. The very name, Globe, would hardly be suitable to a square building; Jonson describes the interior as a "round";[395] the ballad on the burning of the house refers to the roof as being "round as a tailor's clew"; and the New Globe, which certainly was not square, was erected on the old foundation.[396] The frame, we know, was of timber, and the roof of thatch. In front of the main door was suspended a sign of ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... smoking, and often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... nor, indeed, until I had recounted all the circumstances of my last night's adventure, that the poor Pere could be brought to see his way through a mystery that had almost become equally embarrassing to myself. When he did, however, detect the clew, and when he had perceived the different tracks on which our minds were traveling, his grief burst all bounds. He inveighed against the armies of the Republic as hordes of pillagers and bandits, the sworn enemies ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... opens into a field of thought that has heretofore mostly escaped the survey of theologians and philosophers: classes that are supposed to be in pursuit of essential truth concerning both God and man. Its leading aim seems to be to present a reliable clew to those truths by an unusual interpretation of the Scriptures as a revelation of creative order. The author stands with a comparatively small class of ardent explorers who have come to see "the light of the world" under a new radiance; a radiance that ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... The only clew left by the assassin was the "dog." At the inquest, the policeman on the beat swore that when he passed the house on his rounds at half-past four A.M., he tried both front doors, and that they were fastened, and that when he passed again a little before ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... hypothesis. Through what agency has the ooze of the ocean-bed been transformed into solid rock? and through what agency has this rock been lifted above the surface of the water to form new continents? Hutton looks about him for a clew, and soon he finds it. Everywhere about us there are outcropping rocks that are not stratified, but which give evidence to the observant eye of having once been in a molten state. Different minerals are mixed together; pebbles are scattered through masses ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... hope to lean upon. In that boiling, seething world of Rome, now more than ever disturbed by the inroads of strangers eagerly looking forward to the excitements of the amphitheatre, it would be in vain to make even deliberate and careful search for a lost slave, unless some clew should be left behind. Yes, she must surely have that clew; and doubtless she purposed to use it as soon as daylight came. Let her go now, therefore. It were idle to call her back only for new flight in a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... violence of the attack and to the particular form of disease with which the animal is affected. In the superficial, or cutaneous, form the presence of a swollen tongue, throat, and dewlap, or even of the lower portion of the legs, gives us a clew to the trouble. An entire loss of appetite occurs, and in milk cows there is a diminution of the milk secretion. The temperature may be only slightly elevated, but it is usually very high. Salivation is set up by the inflammation of the mouth ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... requirements of the life-conditions. The followers of the theory of descent believed that this conclusion was unavoidable, and were induced to deny the manifest fact that species are constant entities. The mutation theory gives a clew to the final combination of the two contending ideas. Reducing the changeability of the species to distinct and probably short periods, it at once explains how the stability of species perfectly agrees with the principle ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... some music-hall keeper who hears him play, and knows a good thing when he hears it, and who engages the old fiddler to play for an evening or two. He goes readily enough; for there is no knowing where the dark stranger may have taken the child, and where no clew is, one may follow any track that presents itself. So the old man goes, and sits patiently in the hot, noisy place. At first the merry-makers, who are not of a high degree of refinement, make fun of him, and cut many a joke at ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... the doctor, "if the captain is on board he will know better than we what is to be done, and so much the better because we are perfectly ignorant; for his singularly brief letter gives us no clew to the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.... Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its suburbs, there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there, and most probably never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit the east coast: in fact, except among the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... Courtrey—th' biggest thief, th' coldest murderer in th' country! He put you there! An' what are you good for? My daddy was shot—in th' back—an' did you make one inquiry into the murder? Come out to Last's, even to find a clew? Not you! There's only one sheriff in this Valley—one bit o' law that will avenge his death—an' that's me! Now, you two fine gentlemen—I'm goin'. There's my hand! I throw th' cards on th' table! Shoot me in the back if you've ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... admirable and wonderfull Mechanism in the foot of a Spider, whereby he is able to spin, weave, and climb, or run on his curious transparent clew, of which I shall say more in the description of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... remarkable; it looks so ridiculous. I must get a cap to suit my rags; any old thing would be better than this horror. Hats like these are not worn; this one would be noticeable a verst* off; it would be remembered; people would think of it again some time after, and it might furnish a clew. I must attract as little attention as possible just now. Trifles become important, everything ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... malicious schemes, and he was not the man to be taken in by it. He now began, furtively, to watch his brother notary and Madame Evangelista as they conversed with Paul, endeavoring to detect some clew to the deep-laid plot which was beginning to ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... a different answer—one which might throw some light upon the situation—but the girl was again quiet and introspective, without affording the slightest clew to her thoughts. How did it happen that he had proved so entirely satisfactory? Perhaps, then, after all, the original Henley was not so important a personage as he had imagined. But Paul scarcely hoped that his identity would remain undiscovered after arriving at the young lady's ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... appearance of the citizens, too, gave no clew to the country to which the place belonged; there were as many Egyptians among them as Greeks, Syrians, and negroes. Asiatics appeared in the majority only in the market place, where the dealers were just leaving their stands to secure their goods from the storm. In front of the big building where ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Egypt—the homestead of the nations—beneath which the rites of religion and the blessings of civilization have passed out into the world; and with grateful respect we confess that on the banks of the Nile stands the true Daleth of the Nations.' This idea forms the clew to the whole book, and from hence is derived its title, Daleth. We heartily recommend it to our readers. It merits attention. We quote the last sentence of the short preface: 'That these fragments of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... lords. The discovery which I have made is great; for though I have not found the maiden yet, I have found the way in which I must seek her. Ye have sent freedmen and slaves throughout the city and into the country; has any one given you a clew? No! I alone have given one. I tell you more. Among your slaves there may be Christians, of whom ye have no knowledge, for this superstition has spread everywhere; and they, instead of aiding, will betray you. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Following this clew, we run back along the line of what may be called "our spiritual ancestry." Turning naturally to our own next of kin, a child of New England, going back from the teaching of his youth to his fathers and to their fathers, soon ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... soft dishevelment of her fair hair suggested weariness—sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a muffled sob escaped the quiet figure. He turned noiselessly and went away, sorry and ashamed, because unwittingly he had stumbled upon the clew he had long ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... shot him a quick glance which Snaffle understood at once to mean that he was to second her in something she was attempting. He did not yet get his clew clearly enough to understand just how, but the look put him on the alert, as the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... had a clew to the meaning of these characters, and no doubt recorded the facts in a later diary, many of the pages of which Poe never saw. But if Pym and Peters had analyzed more closely the indentures, they might have gained at least the shadow of an idea of the meaning ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... no measure of the time, no clew to the old dates, nothing whatever, beyond such considerations as I have stated, to warrant even a vague hypothesis. It can be seen clearly that the beginning of this old civilization was much older than the earliest great cities, and, also, that these were ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... and Mr. Langton, after a short private conversation, had summoned the landlord, in the hope of obtaining some clew to the development of the mystery. But no young lady, nor any stranger answering to the description the doctor had received from Hugh Crombie (which was indeed a false one), had been seen to pass through the village since ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... looked down and saw that a taut black thread from the bottom of my sweater connected me with the dressing room. It must have snagged on the big bolt and unraveled. I moved my body an inch or so, tugging it delicately to see what it felt like and I got the answers: Theseus's clew, a spider's ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... glorifying. But love has a manward as well as a Godward development. St. John, the disciple of love, teaches very plainly that he who says he loves God must prove it by also loving man. If the whole of our training here is to be in loving and in living out our love, we certainly have the clew to the heavenly life. We shall continue in the doing of the things we have here learned to do. Life in glory will be earth's Christian life intensified and perfected. Heaven will not be a place of idle repose. Inaction can never be a condition of blessedness for a life made ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... into the rigging and the studdingsail halliards and tacks been cast off by the watch on deck and the downhauls and sheets manned, than the "first luff," pitching his voice to yet a higher key, sang out in rapid sequence, "Topmast stu'ns'l downhaul—haul taut—clew up—all down!" ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... a lucky dog," Leigh said, filling an impressive pause with the first chance comment that came to him. Afterward he wondered at the obstinate torpidity of his mind, for not even the reference to her deliberate look and fine eyes gave him the clew. All this talk of early hardship and of street-cars had put the narrator for the time on another level from that he now occupied in the world, and made his past seem his present. The very confession, and the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... thing which is innocent in itself, without inquiring of the buyer its application or its use? And if I should say so, might I not as well say, that no Quaker can be in trade? I fear that to say this, would be to get into a labyrinth, out of which there would be no clew to guide us. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... wore glasses. All Nihilists wear glasses when traveling. And then I had a good clew. A minute before the departure from Paris I had a friend go into the corridor of the sleeping-car, a reporter who would do anything I said without even wanting to know why. I said, 'You call out suddenly ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... the evening before, when he had engaged the taxicab and had started in pursuit of the limousine Kate Gilbert had entered. Prale wondered what Farland had been doing, whether he had discovered anything concerning Kate Gilbert, whether he had found a clew that would lead to an ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong

... "Man the main clew-garnets and buntlines!" shouted the first lieutenant; and the hands sprang to their several stations. "Stand ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... "What you said, just now, about the Caesars, gave me the clew. The rest was simple enough to any one who knew of the treasure's existence. There's one thing, though, that puzzles me—a thing that's none of my business, of course. I can understand how Standish could have told you he and Hade had stumbled onto a hatful ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... neither sleep nor waking, though wrought of the intertwining strands of each. Again she saw the dark face in the gateway. It was a mere picture in a frame, set for an artist's joy. Then it seemed a summons, calling her to unfamiliar paths,—a prophecy, a clew. Again she heard his voice,—an echo made of all these things, and more. She tried to force herself to think of him merely as an artist would think; how the lines of the shoulders and the throat flowed upward, like dark flame, to the altar of his face. How the hair grew in flame upon his brow, ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... when May with heavy clouds and slant rains was making the city as miserable as possible, Ethel had a caller. His card bore a name quite unknown, and his appearance gave no clew ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... rolling and pitching as tho she would shake the long sticks out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every direction. The mizzen-topsail, which was a comparatively new sail and close reefed, split from head to foot in the bunt; the foretopsail went in one rent from clew to earing, and was blowing to tatters; one of the chain bobstays parted; the spritsailyard sprung in the slings, the martingale had slued away off to leeward; and owing to the long dry weather the lee rigging ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... medical chart with coloured pictures that was propped up against the wood box, father found the clew, and comprehended that Richard was giving himself a practical lesson in anatomy by trying to carve these organs from a huge mangel wurzel beet that he had rolled in from the root cellar. Did father scold him for mess-making, or laugh at ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... refused to follow her. She jerked at it in vain. She dared not let her clew break, because if she should lose the lover supposed to be holding its other end, she would die unmarried. "Let me see you! let me see you!" she cried, eagerly, and a figure drew near her in the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... were obeyed. The Languedocian made a third sailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with brailing up, they furled the sails, lashed the earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and leech-lines, and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which thus might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They battened down the ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method of walling up a ship. These evolutions, though executed in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... he SAW the disappearance, but there is nothing of this in his testimony given in court. None of the field hands working in the field to which Williamson was going had seen him at all, and the most rigorous search of the entire plantation and adjoining country failed to supply a clew. The most monstrous and grotesque fictions, originating with the blacks, were current in that part of the State for many years, and probably are to this day; but what has been here related is all that is certainly ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce

... heel, he left the apartment. By some means he obtained a clew to the retreat of Louise. Mounting his horse, accompanied by a single page, he galloped to the convent of Chaillot. As there had been no warning of his approach, the grating still remained closed. He arrived just after the poor girl had fallen from the wooden bench upon the tesselated ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... in a plain, simple, matter-of-fact way. You want to find a person whose name you don't know, whose face you can't recognize, and whose voice even is equally unknown. You can't give any clew to her at all. You don't know whether she lives in Quebec or in New York. You only know she is ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... assurance that he was awake to the suppositious landlord who had called, for the sense of some sound but stilled on the second of his waking was strong within him. He fastened upon the vague starlit space of the little window to give him a clew to his situation. Then he remembered Doom, and, with the window for his key, built up the puzzle of his room, wondering at ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... neither helpless nor afraid. Valentin had evidently meant to put him in possession of a powerful instrument, though he could not be said to have placed the handle very securely within his grasp. But if he had not really told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to it—a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs. Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected she might be induced to share her knowledge with him. So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to ...
— The American • Henry James

... is Errig Bridge, from which the best view of Croagh Patrick Mountain may be had. But an ascent of the mountain is best made from Murrisk Abbey, six miles outside Westport. From the mountain side the expansive country from island-set Clew Bay to Nephin and Slievemore, in Achill, spreads out to best advantage. The famous coach road from Clifden cuts into Westport from the south. The Quay and Mall and the Marquis of Sligo's demesne are the "sights" of the town. It is a convenient centre from which to visit Achill ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... for pounding and called alapaa, literally, "close-grained stone," he explained that because the people of that section were "tight" (stingy) they were called Kaweleau alapaa. This ready imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.[3] The chants abound in such symbols. Man is "a long-legged fish" offered to the gods. Ignorance is the "night of the mind." The cloud ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... county in Counaught, west of Ireland, between Sligo and Galway; has many indentations, the largest Broadhaven, Blacksod, and Clew Bays, and islands Achil and Clare, with a remarkable peninsula The Mullet; mountainous in the W., the E. is more level, and has Lough Conn and the Moy River; much of the county is barren and bog, but ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... resigned the work he valued, put the seas between himself and Deena, only to be baffled at every turn. For two months he had used his utmost acumen in prosecuting the search without even finding a clew, and when finally he made his great discovery, it was by yielding to the impulse of the moment rather than the suggestions ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet home the fore-royal!"—"Weather sheet's home!"—"Lee sheet's home!"—"Hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your clew-lines!" shouts the mate. "Aye-aye, sir, all clear!"—"Taut leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... clew, but he recognized tones he loved in the suave, easy voice, and his tail beat his sides in vigorous approval. The ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... then their bosoms were distended, and their bow-lines hauled. How the fore and main-tacks got aboard I could not tell, though it was done while my eyes were on the upper sails. I caught a glimpse of the fore-sheet, however, as the clew was first flapping violently, and then was brought under the restraint of its own proper, powerful purchase. The spanker had been hauled out previously, to help the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... Morgan the instant the boat was alongside. "Swing the mainyard and get the canvas off her. Aloft, topmen, settle away the halliards! Clew ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... a whack at each measure. In my hands was the mission album, a motley collection of faces, as devoid of Nature or any clew to the real characteristics of the owners as the average photograph usually is, but here and there one with a suggestion of interest and, in this special case, of beauty—a delicate, pensive face, with a mass of floating hair, deep, dark eyes, and exquisite curves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... as seen through the lattice-work, had a somewhat sensational aspect; they spoke of battle and murder and sudden death, and sometimes the policeman passing by, if he was a new one, thought for a second that he had stumbled on a "clew." ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... danger so long as he remained in such close proximity to the bank. It was safe to assume that this was one of the things the professional "strong-arm man" would not do. But it was also evident that he must speedily lose his identity if he hoped to escape; and the lost identity must leave no clew to itself. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... mystery; no one knew what had become of the gentle, young half brother, more than thirty years his junior, whom once he seemed so fondly to love, but who, seven years ago, had disappeared suddenly, once for all, and left no clew of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... small boys in Virginia. This is the only thing by which I could identify my brother William." Nothing more was said upon the matter, and it dropped out of my mind. I did not realize how important were the words of this man. It never occurred to me that he held the clew that might bring us ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes

... multimillionaire of New York City who was kidnapped on Saturday night on his way from New York to a week-end house party at Beechwood, N. J., not yet heard from. No clew to his whereabouts. Detectives out with bloodhounds searching country. Mother in a state of collapse. It is feared the bandits have fulfilled their threats and killed him. Father frantically offering any ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... "Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School" will remember the mysterious disappearance of the bazaar money and the untiring zeal with which Grace worked until she found a clew to the robbery, which led to the astonishing discovery that she made in an isolated house on the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... man, a Frenchman, seemingly of no high rank, had several times visited the convent, as if to scrutinize the habits and life of the anchorite; he had declared himself commissioned by the Hermit's relations to make inquiry of him from time to time; but he had given the Abbot no clew to discover himself, though Anselmo had especially hinted at the expediency of being acquainted with some quarter to which he could direct any information of change in the Hermit's habits or health. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and action. She had already so conquered herself as to be able to leave her own quiet room, and descend to that of her parents. There she would sit calmly for hours, listening attentively to the conversation, hoping to catch some word that might give her a clew. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... mystery," the newspaper said in conclusion. "The hack driver caught but a glimpse of her, and in the excitement of the moment failed to take the number of the car. But that the latter was a Maillard he is positive. There are several headquarter's men following up the clew as this goes to press; and startling developments ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... to enter the cottage, but hastened back to the hotel, in a state of agitation difficult to describe. I could not make up my mind to pass unnoticed such extraordinary coincidences; but how was any clew to be obtained to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... Wednesday, and had got no answer, but this was no evidence that Davenport might not have made some use of the room in the meanwhile. If he had made use of it, he might have left some trace, some possible clew to his subsequent movements. Larcher, thinking thus on his way from Bagley's apartment-house, resolved to pay another visit to Mr. Bud's quarters before saying anything about Bagley's theory ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... the lugger was poured into the cutter, with what effect upon the crew could not be ascertained; but the main-boom was cut in half, and the outer part of it fell over the cutter's quarter, and was dragged astern by the clew of the sail. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... went part way with him—to a point beyond the south corral. It was here that Mrs. Thomas had found the body of her murdered husband. There seemed to be no clew as to who had performed the deliberate killing. Before The Kid left, however, he did a little scouting around. In the sand behind a mesquite, fifty yards from the spot where the body had been found, ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... to prove an accident,—or a murder, either,—when there's practically no clew to be found. Therefore, it's our duty to question any one who can give any material evidence, especially one who was presumably the last one to see ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... couldn't have arrived in Goldfield with a burro train in less than six weeks. You say this man uses double negatives. There's a clew. Who, among your acquaintances, Miss ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... to have had a peculiar fascination for Thomson. The passages above quoted, and the stanza from "The Castle of Indolence," cited on page 94, gave Collins the clew for his "Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands," which contained, says Lowell, the whole romantic school in the germ. Thomason had perhaps found the embryon atom in Milton's "stormy Hebrides," in "Lycidas," whose echo is prolonged ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... no signature and absolutely no clew to the identity of the writer Two telegraph line repairers who had been working near Crow's house during the night, repairing damage done by the blizzard, gave out the news that they had seen a cloaked ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... a wondrous hand from the blue yonder Held out a scroll On which my life was writ, and I with wonder Beheld unroll To a long century's end its mystic clew— What should I do? ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... Hubbell replied. "I am willing to acknowledge it freely. In his explanation of the parable of the Prodigal Son, he gave me the clew to our modern times. What was for me an inextricable puzzle has become clear as day. He has made me understand, at last, the force which stirred me, which goaded me until I was fairly compelled to embark in the movement which the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... ships of the squadron, which had hitherto kept us company, notwithstanding the violence of the preceding storms. Neither was this our sole misfortune, for next morning, while endeavouring to hand the top-sails, the clew-lines and bunt-lines broke, and the sheets being half flown, every seam in the top-sails was soon split from top to bottom. The main top-sail shook so violently in the wind, that it carried away the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... with the toned-down manners of the gentlemen, and the kid-gloves, and luncheons and finger-glasses—Let not our eminent visitors, we say, suppose that, by means of these experiences, they have "seen America," or captur'd any distinctive clew or purport thereof. Not a bit of it. Of the pulse-beats that lie within and vitalize this Commonweal to-day—of the hard-pan purports and idiosyncrasies pursued faithfully and triumphantly by its bulk of men North and South, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... he began, and then stopped, as if searching in his own mind for the clew to what ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... trace. The only clew that seems important, so far, is that Scott spent fifteen minutes in Hardy's room, alone, on ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... followers of Pawcett and Hungerford. We don't know who they are; but doubtless they have been selected for their shrewdness. Probably they will be looking for information among the men. Spoors is one of them, and by watching him some clew may be ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat's-topper, Hawl up your clew-garnets, let ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... there ain't nothin' new—no clew—nothin' you can work on?" The speaker felt assured there was not, but it might be an encouragement to ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... have given the clew, seemed so puzzled herself, that they did not even apply to her. Edouard took a sorrowful leave of the baroness, and set out on ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... done, don't you? Well, it depends only on you. There must be some one among you who knows something about this matter. Let him come forward and tell us what he has seen or heard. Remember that the smallest trifle may be a clew to the crime. You would be as bad as the incendiary himself, if you concealed him. Just think it ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... prospective husband! He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And the ever-recurring question presented itself—was he prepared to go that length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him intensely—the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... said nothing: she sought a clew to the mystery and found none. What had come to Timar? His countenance betrayed something like happiness; what was he concealing under his care for Timea? In company he was bright and cheerful, unconstrained and at ease with Athalie, sometimes even taking her for a turn in the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... information lie hidden away in such papers; how they often help to reconstruct an incident, or determine a mooted point. If the Greeks, after the Peloponnesian war, had had a Colburn's, we should have a more certain, if not a perfect, clew to the reconstruction of the trireme; and probably even could deduce with some accuracy the daily routine, the several duties, and hear the professional jokes and squabbles, of their officers and crews. The serious people who write history can never fill the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... replied the postmaster with delight. And he himself harnessed the ancient horse to the creaking carriage. In the meantime Porthos was curious to behold. He imagined he had discovered a clew to the secret, and he felt pleased, because a visit to Athos, in the first place, promised him much satisfaction, and, in the next, gave him the hope of finding at the same time a good bed and good supper. The master, having got the carriage ready, ordered one ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition? But, if the laboring earth does not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet hear it, and tremble! the eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; traces the leading clew through all the labyrinths which your industrious folly has devised; and you, however you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... business. Money with brains behind it is a power, but I wouldn't like Hulton on my track if he hadn't a cent. There's something relentless about the man." He paused and resumed: "Well, he has a clew. It's curious I didn't think of mentioning before that I spoke to the watchman, but I thought the fellow was Jordan. I wonder how the thief will get the bonds across ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... with Mr. Damsel all day, but so shrewdly and cunningly had the express robber covered his tracks, that nothing but the bare description of the man could be used as a clew. ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... has been reported will give a clew to the different characters of the two boys, who, after less than a day's acquaintance, have become roommates. Henry Martin was about Sam's age, but much more thoughtful and sedate. He had begun to think of the future, and to provide for it. This is always an encouraging sign, and an augury of success. ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger

... girl was crazy! Her father, a wealthy Burlington real estate broker, had mysteriously disappeared some months before, and it was supposed that he had met with foul play. Despite the efforts of Dyke Darrel and other detectives, no clew had yet been found of the missing man. The detective had met Sibyl at her father's house, and had regarded her as one both beautiful and accomplished. To meet her as now was a terrible ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... wonder, remained as it was on the night of the ride, and looking from the window Miss Ashton saw the distinct marks of a number of feet around the bank into which Myra Peters had fallen. She also saw, and took off, the piece torn from her dress. This would surely give her a clew to one of the girls; but, before using it, she would make herself acquainted as far as possible with the time and circumstances when ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... obtained at the police station was meagre enough, but it furnished them a clew. A little girl had been found wandering about, and could be located on a certain street at such a number. The name of the family was not known. With this slender clew they began their search for the street and house. The map of streets which ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... body, to conteine a minde distraught through troublesome thoughts, breathing out hollow and deepe sighes, desiring helpe of the pittifull Cretensian Ariadne, who for the destroying of hir monstrous brother the Mynotaur[A] gaue vnto the deceitfull Theseus a clew of thred, to conduct him foorth of the intricate laborinth, that I also by some such meanes might be deliuered out ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... "I called at the police station before I came here, on leaving the train. The detective is Al Howard, and he's a nice fellow but rather stupid. You mustn't expect any results from that source. To be sure, the department might stumble on a clew, but the chances are they wouldn't ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... addressed to the Bishop Zumarraga, the phrase that occurred in it—"this New Spain, wherein, Very Reverend Father, you have labored in God's service this year and more past"—showed that 1530 was the year in which it was written. As to place, there practically was no clew at all. The writer referred repeatedly to "this mission of Santa Marta, in the Chichimeca country"—but the mission had perished utterly but a little while after it was founded; and at that period the term Chichimeca country ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... "were to be" put on trial. Whether they were, or were not, put on trial has remained unknown. Any one who has engaged in the fascinating pursuit of elusive historical truth will understand, therefore, my warm delight, and my warm gratitude to Mr. Marsden, when this clew to hitherto unpublished facts concerning Hudson ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... her gaff tops'l, but I see she couldn't stand it. 'Boys,' says I, 'clew up that tops'l.' Which they did, and put it in gaskets, and your Arthur, I mind, was one of the four men to go aloft to clew it up. Never a lad to shirk was Arthur. Well, a stouter craft of her tonnage than the Arbiter maybe never lived, nor no gear any sounder, but there are things ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly

... sowing, to rise again in the spring; thus does a faithful heart pine during absence till it is reunited to the beloved one; thus do we mourn our dead till our soul is assured of their resurrection: and this belief is the end and clew to the mystery. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... whose clew-garnet blocks rattled as it expanded to the breeze, which was now blowing pretty stiff, with every indication of veering more round to the north, causing the yards to have a pull taken at the braces every now and ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the monastic pile, Did of this penitential aisle 335 Some vague tradition go, Few only, save the Abbot, knew Where the place lay; and still more few Were those, who had from him the clew To that dread vault to go. 340 Victim and executioner Were blindfold when transported there. In low dark rounds the arches hung, From the rude rock the side-walls sprung; The grave-stones, rudely sculptured o'er, 345 Half sunk in earth, by time half wore, Were ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... no more. But he did some thinking. Experience had sharpened his wits, and by this time he knew a clew when he met it. A while later, when Bates had gone and his brother had come in with Alice, he got Oliver off in a corner and demanded, "How much are you to get ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... Henry II. shortly before his accession to the throne, and the subject of an old ballad. She is said to have been kept by her royal lover in a secret bower at Woodstock, the approaches to which formed a labyrinth so intricate that it could only be discovered by the clew of a silken thread, which the king used for that purpose. Here Queen Eleanor discovered and poisoned her, about 1173.— (Noted names of Fiction, 1175. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... say to that?—why, that it's just what I should have expected—that's what I say!" replied Dr. Rollinson, who had apparently begun to divine some clew to the grand mystery. But he ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... in the direction of yonder land, where Bethlehem was, some star which might prove to be His star, and which might guide me in the new quest. If only our old companion, Balthazar, were with us now, he might give us the clew to our search, for not only was he more skilful in the magician's art, but he was braver and more courageous, and ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various

... anxious to get mademoiselle to Paris. Rouzet had been followed. Mercier, with a friend, had immediately ridden after him, only, alas! to find him dead upon the roadside and the star gone. They continued their journey toward Beauvais, with only one clew to the scoundrel who had murdered and robbed the faithful Rouzet. He was not a Frenchman. Even now Mercier did not know his name, but he and his friend had distanced the foreigner and his companion on the road and arrived first in Beauvais. Lodgings were scarce owing to the ball, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... was to be arrested. In another paper Kirk found something that relieved his mind a bit: evidently Williams had not died prior to the time of going to press, although he was reported in a critical condition. Kirk was interested to read that the police had a clew to the identity of the criminals and were confident of soon rounding them up. What mystified him most was the lack of detail. Evidently much had been printed previously, but he had no means of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... few and scattered students of nature of that day picked up the clew to her secrets exactly as it fell from the hands of the Greeks a thousand years before. The foundations of mathematics were so well laid by them that our children learn their geometry from a book written for the schools of Alexandria two thousand ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... been revealed to Peter, and he now thought he had the clew to the charm. The good dwarf, Glassmanikin, only helped people who ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... looked at each other and shook their heads. She might have to wait longer than for the morning paper to have news of Mary Rose. They felt so helpless. They had followed every clew, they had the assistance of the entire police force, but they had discovered nothing. They knew no more about Mary Rose than they knew when they had first discovered that ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... head, and raising it above the hammock I caught sight of numberless dark creatures with huge wings which kept sweeping round and round here and there through the verandah. Presently one of them pitched on the clew of my hammock. There was sufficient light from the bright stars to see its shape, and I beheld a creature with large ears standing out from the sides and top of its head, a spear-shaped appendage on the tip of its ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... the town Dr. Fenneben's recovery was the only thing asked for. There was as yet no clew regarding the cause of the assault. Bond Saxon had avoided Burgess since the event, so the young man himself made occasion to get Bond up into Dr. Fenneben's study one June day just ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... clew to much of the best thought. Very often one of the chief differences between a thinker and one who cannot think lies in the attention given to premonitory feelings of pleasure, discomfort, doubt, suspicion, etc.; the latter ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... booby. Though of like colour, there was no bird of such form as that. There was neither beast nor fish belonging to the sea that could show such a shape above its surface. That sable globe, rounded like a sea-hedgehog, or a Turk's-head clew, and black as a tarred tackle-block, could be nothing else than the woolly pate of Snowball, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... interrogatively up at her. Less practical surely than the fur coat,—more amusing, certainly, than encyclopedias,—the funny "false faces" grinned up at her with a curiously excitative audacity. Where from?—No identifying card! What for? No conceivable clew!—Unless perhaps just on general principles a donation for the Sunday School Christmas Tree?—But there wasn't going to be any tree! Tentatively she reached into the box and touched the fiercely striped face of a tiger, ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... chance, had left little doubt what works of what writers, Greek and Roman, best deserved now to be shown to the general reader. Besides this, the prevalent custom of the schools of classical learning could then wisely be taken as a clew of guidance to be implicitly followed, whatever might be the path through which it should lead. There is here no similar avoidance of responsibility possible; for the schools have not established a custom, and French ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... money could do anything. A serious mistake, my dear—money couldn't find the widow and her children. We supposed you were somewhere in London; and there, to my great grief, it ended. From time to time—long afterward, when we thought we had got the clew in our hands—I continued my inquiries, still without success. A poor woman and her little family are so easily engulfed in the big city! Years passed (more of them than I like to reckon up) before ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... whistle, after his fashion, and he walked away from the females, with the air of a man who wanted room to think in. Half a minute later, he called out—"Stand by to shorten sail, boys. Man fore-clew-garnets, flying jib down haul, topgallant sheets, and gaff-topsail gear. In with 'em all, my lads—in with ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... religious rites of any description has met the eyes of the learned seekers after truth. Thus it has been ascertained that the old race had reached a high degree of material civilization; but no clew to its religion ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... forth. Perhaps the two obviously corrupt words in italics may contain a clew to the right reading, and this may ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... his clew: he couldn't miss her," said Varney. "Let me go on, while I have time. Miss Carstairs, it is not fair to either of us to let matters stay like this. In the cottage last night, you forced me to let you ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... they blessed their lucky stars that they understood enough of German to know what was being said, for it was then and there that they got a clew to the whereabouts of Harry Leroy, from whom they had heard not a word since the dropping of his glove by the German aviator. They did not even know whether or not their packages ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... me; but I hoped years of absence would obliterate the memory that prevented my winning you. I made unusual exertions to discover some trace of your wandering guardian; have written constantly to my former banker in Paris, to find some clew to his whereabouts. Through him I learn that your friend was last heard of at Canton, and the supposition is that he is no longer living. I do not wish to pain you, Beulah; but I would fain show you how frail a hope you cling to. Believe me, dear Beulah, I ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... in our little maiden a large share of the strong, self-respecting pride of her ancestry. She would never have stooped to buy the silence of a low knave like this Alexander; and her clear truthfulness of soul indicated at once the single, straight, unerring clew which could lead out of this ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... enough. Man, man, can't you see through a ladder? They're after the girl with the gray eyes, and hope in this way to get a clew to her whereabouts. Now, you can't fight shadows; the only chance is to match them against each other. Do I make myself ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... and rumpled wristbands, a sure indication of extraordinary preoccupation; and the concierge, on taking up the provisions, had found the poor mother half mad, running from one room to another, looking for a note from the child, for any clew, however unimportant, that would enable her at least to form ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet



Words linked to "Clew" :   ball, clump, twine, wrap, lump, mark, sign, evidence, glob, clod, wind, chunk, roll



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