[ 21 ] Upon a tree there mounted guard A veteran cock, adroit and cunning; When to the roots a fox up running, Spoke thus, in tones of kind regard:-- 'Our quarrel, brother, 's at an end; Henceforth I hope to live your friend; For peace now reigns Throughout the animal domains.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

SYN: Firm, steady, constant, faithful, unswerving, reliable, sincere, trusty, zealous, fast, sound, steadfast.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

“In that way the Indian could clean them up in time, I should say, without any help from us,” Roger suggested, though he showed no sign that his intention of giving aid had changed in the least.
— from The Pioneer Boys of the Columbia; or, In the Wilderness of the Great Northwest by St. George Rathborne

The city of his first unpremeditated rapture shines to memory, on the other hand, in the manner of a lost paradise the rustle of whose gardens is still just audible enough in the air to make him wonder if some sudden turn, some recovered vista, mayn’t lead him back to the thing itself.
— from Italian Hours by Henry James

Even if it should be so—which is not true, I think—the Bible says 'the heathen are a law unto themselves,' and God knows they worship the best they can find until revelation shows them their error.
— from Infelice by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

It occurred to me that perhaps I was weaning the captain from Keedy, for Holstrom snapped his friend up rather short two or three times during the meal.
— from Where Your Treasure Is: Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver by Holman Day

He even induced their aged king, Athanaric, who had sworn never to set a friendly foot upon Roman soil, to visit Constantinople.
— from Constantinople, painted by Warwick Goble, described by Alexander Van Millingen by Alexander Van Millingen

But the work is finished and elegant,[318] and the simile which describes the arrival of the serpents that were to slay Laocoon is not unworthy of a more successful poet than Eumolpus is represented to have been: ecce alia monstra; celsa qua Tenedos mare dorso replevit, tumida consurgunt freta undaque resultat scissa tranquillo minans[319] qualis silenti nocte remorum sonus longe refertur, cum premunt classes mare pulsumque marmor abiete imposita gemit.
— from Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal by Harold Edgeworth Butler