Sentence Examples:
Then, as Isabel drew back behind the curtain, she could see through the loophole that Margaret Wallace was returning whence she came.
We answered each one of their greetings and always with success, inasmuch as we stood to our loopholes for twenty-four hours with two-hour reliefs.
Thus armed with these they placed themselves behind the loopholes of the embattled gateway, whence they could sweep the space before them.
With this object in view, loopholes had been formed in all the doors and windows, from whence a warm fire could be poured down upon the assailants.
Brown first approached the place from whence the light proceeded, which was a long narrow slit or loophole, such as usually are to be found in old castles.
Opposite to him was the window whence Rita had held her conversation with the gypsy; below it, Paco saw traces of the loophole through which he had escaped.
The affair seemed just as clear and distinct as could well be; a verbal quarrel whence resulted the actual insult, which, though not serious, left not the smallest loophole for a revocation.
Groans and curses filled the air as men pitched headlong from their loophole posts to writhe upon the floor and once a woman's shrill scream rang out as a tawdrily clothed shape dropped across the bar.
Having many indentations and projections, with salient angles, square towers, loopholes, and battlements, it is surmounted with a parapet, protecting a pathway which is frequently thronged with people enjoying the fine promenade and beholding the commanding prospect.
The man, absolutely, unquestionably, without a loophole for doubt, had either been killed outright in the automobile accident, or had died immediately afterward, probably without regaining consciousness, certainly without supplying any of the information that was so determinedly sought.
Their instructions were made complex, voluminous, in the effort to cover every possible emergency, but no foresight sufficed for the purpose, while the legal system in use opened many loopholes for evading or postponing the application of unpopular measures.
Up on the heaped earth near the doorway, which made the walls practically bullet-proof to a height of six feet and thus would protect the women and children, one or more of the Americans was constantly on the lookout through some inconspicuous loophole.
He had given his plighted word, however, that merchants should receive fair treatment, and how could he find a loophole to avoid fulfilling what he had promised, and yet at the same time escape bringing about an open rupture with the Russian Government.
As the country was still infested by roving bands of robbers who raided defenseless villages, the station buildings were put in a state of defense, the walls loopholed and head?cover provided by means of sandbags until each resembled a miniature fort.
The massive Norman battlements and its beautiful hall had crumbled into rubbish, or sunk in ponderous masses beneath the heavy salvos: every window and loophole were beaten into hideous gaps, and yawning rents split the strong towers from rampart to foundation.
The Cardinal, indeed, never seemed to have any of these; his bland, benevolent, well-ordered existence left no loophole for worry, the cipher word which expresses in five letters regrets for the past, irritation in the present, and anxiety concerning the future.
A straightforward answer of that kind could not easily be explained away, whereas if everything were left in a misty, nebulous condition, with nothing determined, and nothing definite said, it ought to prove easy to find opportunities for action and loopholes for interference.
Some of their old kraals are veritable fortresses, consisting of an outer ringed palisade banked with clay and loopholed; inside is a deep trench, and again an inner palisade similarly banked and loopholed, with, in many cases, a third palisade containing the chief's huts.
Under these circumstances it was the part of wisdom to take advantage of every loophole of escape, and the peculiar provisions of the second consolidated mortgage, denying to these bonds the right of immediate foreclosure in case of default, were turned to for relief.
They must be made binding, and made to apply to all matters; the loophole which permits a nation to refuse to arbitrate a matter which it believes to involve its "honor" practically invalidates the treaty altogether, as every matter in dispute may be so construed.
If he has been used to feel humanely, and to look upon life somewhat more widely than from the narrow loophole of personal pleasure and advancement, it is strange how small a portion of his thoughts will be changed or embittered by this proximity of death.
Around a great portion of the city stretches a mud wall with embrasures and loopholes for musketry, which was built under Young's direction in 1853, ostensibly to guard against Indian attacks, but really to keep the people busy and prevent their murmuring.
For in the small towns, violently anti-royalist as they were, the whole population was armed, and the walls and palisades loopholed, so that the losses involved in the capture of such positions, without artillery, would be too heavy to be worth incurring.
More often than not the subordinate magistrate, whose business it is to commit the prisoner for trial, acts with timidity and reserve, apologetically attenuating the crime; he leaves loopholes of escape, appeals in audible asides for indulgence, dwells on the uncertainty of evidence.
Throughout its whole circuit, the wall was pierced at the height of a man with loopholes, whence arrows might be discharged at an enemy, and at every fifty paces, it was surmounted by a tower capable of holding seven or eight fighting men.
Had the moon been behind the archway, instead of behind me, that might have furnished a loophole of explanation: a very poor and inefficient loophole; a curious one also: for how can an archway in the substance be a bier and two mourners in its shadow?
The walls could be made enormously massive, the towers raised to a great height, and the defenders so completely sheltered by battlements that they could not easily be injured and could take aim from the top of their turrets, or from their loophole windows.
It was fortunate that this loophole of escape to another court was opened, for before the Union such a cause would have led almost to civil broil where the rival interests of the factions, through the ramifications of marriage and other connections, extended so widely.
He was right in his conjecture, for scarcely had he placed himself at the loophole, when two ladies, attended by female slaves, who held above the heads of their mistresses umbrellas of embroidered yellow silk deeply fringed with gold, came toward the menagerie.
I had placed a field battery in position, and directing shells to be fired at the narrow loopholes, we succeeded in driving shells through them, which, exploding inside, filled the structure with a dense, suffocating smoke, and soon the white flag was waved.
I paid a visit to Dudley Castle, having a great curiosity to see a veritable old castle, a ruined castle; and I explored every corner, looked up the broad chimneys, and peeped out of the stone window frames and loopholes with a feeling of true antiquarian enthusiasm.
In the two days that followed upon the visit of the pirates we were busy victualling the stockade and supplying it with water, looking to our arms and ammunition, and, which was of first importance, in building a strong fence, loopholed like the stockade.
Distinct size limits for the different species would introduce peculiar difficulties into the practical workings of enforcement; it would be more troublesome to the sheller to observe the law voluntarily, and loopholes for evasion would more easily be found by the offender of wrong intent.
As the doctor spoke he carefully levelled his repeating rifle through a loophole and brought the sights in line with the trunk of a young sapling which stood full in the moonlight, and in front of which the stealthily advancing figures would have to pass.
Being provided with tools, they planted a row of stakes within their palisade, to form a double fence, and filled the intervening space with earth and stones to the height of a man, leaving some twenty loopholes, at each of which three marksmen were stationed.
While occupied in this way I caught sight of a means of ascent to the battlements above, and at once ran up to the upper platform, where, in the still dim light, I remained in hiding, peeping from behind an angle of the wall through an unoccupied loophole.
The surroundings, of wooded ravines and cliffs and numberless waterfalls, were charming, and in the center of the town stood an ancient cathedral, whose former use as a fortress was still proclaimed by the loopholes in its walls and the hooded projections on its towers.
"You can't tempt me to shoot till I see something to fire at," he said, grimly, watching through the loophole at the underbrush which was merged by the shadows into one single mass of gloom, amid which not even a movement among the branches could be distinguished.
The Highlanders and their comrades, however, opened with such a tremendous fire upon the points from which the enemy commanded the battery, and at every loophole in the wall, that the mutineers could only keep up a wild and very ineffectual fire upon the gunners.
The loophole opened on the south side of the tower, near one of the large buttresses, which projected several yards beyond it on the left, and was more than twenty feet above the roof; so that it would be certain destruction to drop from so great a height.
The mob grew denser and denser toward the gate side of the Prison, leaving the remaining portions of the perimeter thinly surrounded by those who possessed firearms and had been instructed to shoot at loopholes and at all who showed themselves over the wall.
The light at the upper window disappeared, and glancing from loophole to loophole in slow succession, gave intimation that the bearer was in the act of descending, with great deliberation, a winding staircase occupying one of the turrets which graced the angles of the old tower.
Soon after, they were attacked by a party of English regulars and militiamen, who drove them into a windmill and two strong stone houses, which they loopholed, and defended themselves with a pertinacity which one would have called heroism, had it been in a better cause.
When, however, the occupant of the house had ascertained, from one of the loopholes of the building, who we were, the doors were soon unbarred, and we were admitted, but not without many sallies of Irish wit, sometimes good-natured, and sometimes keenly caustic and ironical.
The recollection of his confession of the night before was a cause of acute pain to him; the priest had drawn out every ridiculous detail of the affair and in the end had so magnified his sin that he was almost thankful at being afforded a loophole of reparation.
Carefully following the instructions of his leader, the keeper passed through the loophole, let himself drop softly down, and keeping close to the walls of the tower till he heard the sentinels move off, darted swiftly across the street and made good his escape.
Acting under Mark's orders, neither Susan nor Luke had attempted to make reply to the furious shooting, lest a bullet accidentally come through one of the loopholes, and when, because their weapons were empty, the soldiers ceased the aimless firing, the children's muskets had been recharged.
Again and again the canteen soaked the kerchief and the kerchief spread the oil, again a pile of shavings leaned against a wetted post, and another match leaped from a mere spot of fire into a climbing sheet of flame, which swept up over the loophole and made it useless.
On passing beneath the lofty entrance archway, we are confronted by a well-proportioned Gothic doorway, with one small pointed window, little more than a loophole, in the wall beside it; these are the sole relics of the northern front, of which all else has fallen to decay.
These well-nigh impregnable positions were all very ingeniously camouflaged, and could not be detected by the sharpest eyes from the direction of our trenches until one was almost on top of them; and even then the only thing to be seen were one or two firing loopholes.
I cannot say how long I continued in a state of torpor; but at length, having slowly recovered my senses, I found myself lying firmly handcuffed upon the floor of a small chamber, through a narrow loophole in one of whose walls the evening sun was shining.
It was decided that the old cabin should immediately be put into a condition of defense, with a loophole on each side, strong new bars at the door, and with a thick barricade near at hand that could be quickly fitted against the window in case of attack.
The logs were bullet-proof, squared and jointed with a care to leave no defenseless points; the windows were loopholes, the door massive and small, and the roof, like the rest of the structure, was framed of hewn timber, covered properly with bark to exclude the rain.
Separated by a retirement of twenty years from the world, with which he had never been very familiar, and at which he only 'peeped through the loopholes of retreat,' his satire wanted the brilliance, the quickness of illustration from actual life, which alone makes satire readable.
The jailer bore a torch which flickered and smoked as they passed loopholes at turns in the corridor, making the silent passageways, with their walls of stone, where none but themselves moved, seem even more ghastly and far from civilization than otherwise would have been the case.
All around rose massive blackened walls, forming a pentagon crowned by heavy towers, square and round, high and low, some tottering to pieces, others intact and topped by high conical roofs, overlaid with lead; innumerable flights of half-ruined stairs led to the battlements and loopholes.
Then a light was set to the timbers, the granaries were fired, and in a few minutes the smoke wreathing out of the various loopholes and openings told the country round that the stronghold had fallen, and that they were free from the oppressor at last.
Doors shut fast on this wintry night, and with no sign of life at either doorways or loopholes, except in so far as a great lantern, swinging on a rope above one of the former and emitting its dull rays, might be said to testify to the place being inhabited.
Hampton sat forward, voiceless, lost in thought, their elbows on their knees, on a couch near the door; silence, while Frank and Jack leaned in a loophole, their heads close together, staring down at the Temple front and the portion of the square within their view.
A stone wall of ten feet high, painted white, and loopholed, is built all round the place; and some detached batteries, well provided with heavy guns, but not of much pretension as works of defense, have been erected in advance of the walls on the land side.
The form of the oath was framed by the two clergymen, who, as they knew the reservations and evasions commonest among such characters, had ingeniously contrived not to leave a single loophole through which the consciences of those who belonged to this worthy fraternity might escape.
Obviously enough, closely allied to, in fact interwoven with, production is the question of cost, a question which in war as in peace could not fail to afford a loophole for difficulties and disputes, either of a minor character, or aggravated perhaps by the continued years of strain and monotony.
Behind the parapet the Towers waited with rifles ready, and stared out through the loopholes; and behind them the French artillery officer, and his signalers standing by their telephone, also waited with the loaded guns and ready gunners at the other end of the wire.
That is the proposal which has been put forward as the least objectionable form of the preferential proposals, and it has been said of it that it was the least objectionable because it gave no loophole for the corruption which may spring up in the wake of the other proposals.
These, kneeling at the breastworks, replied as well as they could through the loopholes; but they suffered two disadvantages: while they were exposed to the missiles of the enemy behind them, and on a higher level, the enemy themselves were concealed among the trees and brushwood.
He was standing thus, gazing stealthily out through a loophole, when Edith, who was watching every portion of the clearing, placed her hand on his shoulder and told him that an Indian was stealing toward them from the side opposite to that on which their enemies were collected.
Processes wrought out by wise and noble-minded men for the protection of life and property and the dispensation of justice, have been seized upon again and again by unscrupulous pettifoggers, and every technicality of the entire legal procedure has been converted into a loophole through which some scalawag has escaped.
Furthermore, on examination, I soon discovered that, as the doors and windows faced the wrong way, it would have been impossible for a Boer to do much shooting at our men, unless the walls at the gable end were loopholed, which they were not, I know, for I examined them minutely.
Wallace, with as noble an exhibition of cool, deliberate courage as man is capable, went out to clear the covered loophole, and did clear it, but he crawled back with a hole in his tunic from a machine gun, and his drab coat was soaked deep red from a grievous wound.
A detachment of marksmen posted behind the plane trees made it impossible for the defenders to show themselves at the loopholes, and thus the assailants escaped with but little loss, though it was indubitable that in this, their first attack in force, they had suffered a defeat.
The walls are of mud, having round buttresses, with loopholes for musketry, rudely built, but sufficiently strong to guard against attack; they are about fifteen feet in height, and at the bottom eight feet in thickness, tapering, as all the walls in this country do, towards the top.
She probed her mind for a form of words which should give him no further loophole to persist in his veiled menaces, for she could call them no less, one that should seize a meaning out of his allusions and crush it with a directness which could not be misunderstood.
He has a good deal of influence with the Government nowadays, and when he delivered an eloquent defense of conscientious objectors, describing them as the men who kept the spiritual fires burning, there were high hopes that he was going to secure an enlargement of the loopholes in the Bill.
Lighted by narrow loopholes pierced through the walls, which were of immense thickness, this passage described the outer side of the whole upper quadrangle, and communicated with many other lateral passages and winding stairs leading to the chambers allotted to the household or to the state apartments.
On the inside, I doubt not, they can approach close to their loopholes, which you can detect all along, and take easy aim at us; but on this side it is bristling with pointed stakes, twisted boughs, and treetops so arranged as to baffle and hinder any attempt at assault.
There was a doorway and a swinging screen of dirty canvas just beyond the loophole lately occupied by "the wife of my brother," a doorway that gave on the corral, and to each of these each silent "tough" had given a quick, furtive glance, but not a step was taken.
To return, however, to the building: the veranda rested on square rough masonry full twenty feet from the ground, which was loopholed for musketry, and with but one narrow slip of a doorway that fell like a portcullis, banded and strapped with bars and studs of wrought iron.
I heard them hack with their swords a little way up, at the mill's wooden sides; but they had no time to hew their way out: the fire and reek were at their heels, and the smoke burst out at every loophole, and oozed blue in the moonlight through each crevice.
They were of a pale golden color, horrible to look into, with their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference, hardly enlivened by the almost imperceptible vertical slit of the pupil, through which Death seemed to be looking out, like the archer behind the long, narrow loophole in a blank turret wall.'
These ancient rights afford, doubtless, convenient loopholes, through which the crafty and the powerful may creep, and wherein they may lie concealed, to the injury of the people and of the entire community; and it is on this account, I fear, that they are held in such high esteem.
The part allotted to the prisoners was strongly boarded over, and the planks were thickly studded with broad-headed nails, making them almost as impenetrable as a wall of iron; and at intervals were loopholes, which, in case of an outbreak, would enable the garrison to fire upon us without exposing themselves.
Sylvia thought it was imprudent to make any attempt to find out for certain; but he was obstinately determined to explore, and she had to wait in a torment of anxiety while he worked his way downhill and took the risk of peeping through a loophole at the back of the building.
The sun had not set when Mark had put the palisade into the best condition possible with the materials at his command, and then, after cautioning Susan to keep her eyes open very wide, the two boys began making loopholes in the house which was to shelter both families.
The courtyard was enclosed by a wall, high and massive, provided with loopholes, parapet, bastions, and breastwork; and the great gate, which had not yet been many weeks in its place, was so heavy that it was as much as four men could do to open and close it.
Inside, the floor was covered with a bed of straw, and a bucket with holes in its sides and full of red-hot coke did duty as a stove, while narrow loopholes served for ventilation and for light, and were to be used for firing from in the event of an attack.
Blakely, flattening like hunted squirrel close to the parapet, flung down his empty carbine and strove to reach another, lying loaded at the southward loophole, and at the outstretched hand there whizzed an arrow from aloft whose guiding feather fairly seared the skin, so close came the barbed messenger.
That evening the newly arrived troops, as well as every man in the place capable of laboring, set to work with pickaxes, spades, and barrows to throw up embankments, to cut trenches, to erect batteries, to barricade the roads, and to loophole all the outer walls of the houses and gardens.
I was not one who considered courage, under all circumstances, as a peculiar virtue; and as soon as I perceived the storm gathering, I no longer took the matter in jest, but looking about for the first loophole, valiantly took to my heels, trusting to their speed to place me beyond its reach.
To the eyes of one viewing it from above, the winding path which ascended towards the terrible habitation could be perceived throughout its whole course, and from the windows and loopholes, the signor could leisurely count the steps of the person ascending, and examine him with the closest scrutiny.
The machine guns whirled incessantly and the pile of dead Prussians grew steadily around the monster, but still there were rushes by these foolish men, who clambered to the steel roof and hoisted one another up in the hope of finding loopholes or joints in the armor of the strange beast.
The first indication of approach to the fortifications was the sight of piles of stones heaped into walls four or five feet high, pierced with loopholes, and visible on every projecting point of the cliffs along the northern side, from most of which a pebble could be snapped down upon the road.
As the lantern threw its feeble glimmer on this group, and I surveyed them through my loophole, I thought I had never seen so wild and savage a picture, such enormous shadows, such bold outline, such a startling flash on the face of their leader, such light retreating up the threatening arches.
For the latter he had at first felt the esteem and confidence which he almost invariably showed, even to the point of weakness, towards those associated with him; but he now became distrustful, and devoted himself to stopping every loophole of excuse which might afterwards be converted into reproaches to the navy.
We walked along the center path, till we came to a long high wall, with loopholes extending across the garden, and evidently concealing other buildings; turned to the left till we came to a small heavy wooden door studded with iron, and with the posts and jambs somewhat elaborately carved.
There is a delusive appearance of roundness and completeness in the creeds of those who either accept everything or deny everything: though, even here, there is, I think we may say, always, some little loophole left of belief or of denial, which will inevitably expand until it splits and destroys the whole structure.
This is the sum and substance of some conversations held while rambling among these scenes, going in and out of arches, climbing into nooks and through loopholes, picking moss and ivy, and occasionally retreating under the shadow of some arch, while the skies were indulging in a sudden burst of emotion.
Till I had got up there and looked down through the Tibetan loopholes on our insignificant Mission post below, I had not realized how certain the Tibetans must have felt that they could overwhelm us, and how impossible it must have seemed that we could ever turn the tables upon them.
Thousands of spectators of both sexes, but especially of women, were examining the bases that were being put in for the guns, the openings they were making to serve as loopholes, the joists they were putting across the gates, and the paving stones with which the entrances were being barricaded.
The villages are surrounded by high walls, loopholed along the top, and the huts in the inside are built against the wall, so that the roofs of them can be used by the men of the village as lounges during the day, and as ramparts for sentries during the night.
Then they organized the defense in the three little rooms on the first floor and the garret up above; approving, by the way, of the preparations that Weiss had already made, the mattresses placed against the shutters, and the loopholes devised in the latter between the transverse laths.