Read "The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow" by Anna Katharine Green online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A shaded walk, with a glimpse of sea beyond, embowering trees, a stretch of lawn on one side, and on the other the dormer windows of a fine old house half hidden by scaffolding, from which there came now and then the quick strokes of a workman's hammer.
It was half-past four, if the sharp little note of a cuckoo-clock, snapping out one, told the time correctly.