There was a momentary silence, to which, probably, I owe my life; for, during it, I heard a quick patter of many feet, and, turning sharply, saw a troop of the creatures coming toward me, at a run.

The big drops sift through the pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite pavements, and pour down the sides of ridges and domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills.

Dar it is again!" He fell to pattering in a tongue unknown to mecharms, spells, undoubtedly, to exorcise the devils that had hold of him.

She pattered about in a pair of her husband's cotton-velvet slippers, and tucked all her little ones into bed again, very much as if they had been clothes in a boiler, which she was forcing down with a stick.

I slept soundly for a long time; then I waked up and found that, instead of rain pattering against the roof, and darkness everywhere, it was quite light.

Mr. Jobson got out first and knocked at the door, and as soon as it opened Mrs. Jobson pattered across the intervening space with the boots dangling from her hand.

" Then would she run, pattering like a scared rabbit over the uneven floor, to the window, and watch my father stalking, grim and tall, across the open spaces of the yard towards the Judgment Hall of Duke Casimir, the men-at-arms avoiding him with deft reverence.

Then Crusoe would prick up his ears and stretch out at full gallop, clearing ditch, and fence, and brake with his strong elastic bound, and leaving Grumps to patter after him as fast as his four-inch legs would carry him.

"You don't put in enough patter with it," said Andresen.

At the word, a light foot pattered along a stone floor within, and in a moment a little woman stood in an arch raised by two steps from our own level.

Distant peals of thunder were heard; and thick sultry drops of rain pattered at intervals against the casement of the inn: every thing seemed to indicate a tempestuous evening.

Then he pattered down the steep stairway without waiting to be answered.

It was a dripping-sweet spring morning, dew-drenched, and with the air so full of moisture that it gathered and pattered from the scant leafage.

I remember (and who that was reared in the country does not) when I was a boy, how I went out in the sunny days of autumn, after the frosts had painted the hillsides, to gather chestnuts; and when the breeze rustled among the branches, how the nuts came rattling down; and how if the winds were still, I climbed into the trees and shook their tops, and how the chestnuts pattered to the ground like a shower of hail.

Two minutes later Diablo was rocking across the hills with his mighty stride, and the cow pony of Pete Reeve was pattering beside him.

The room darkened gradually, and, going to the window, he longed for something to break the silence, and was glad when the rain pattered among the leaves.

I'll bet my soul they're in their billets at this moment, MacTavish mugging up some stable-patter out of NAT GOULD, and Blenkinsop imbibing a dose of ship-chatter from 'BARTIMEUS.'

We could hear them pattering over the dry ground.

The jackals will patter past us slipping back to the hills.

Do not you miss the hearing little feet pattering round the house?

A few twilight shapes were pattering through the narrow streeta squad of Yamên runners haling a prisoner.

We lay down in our clothes and slept; the rain pattering above our heads only causing us to sleep the sounder.

I have watched the giggling little maids patter up to a two-inch shrine and, flinging a word or two to Buddha, use the rest of their time to gossip.

Shrapnel bullets pattered into the roadway, a piece of jagged shell fell with a clatter.