Red Fleece

The first time that Boylan of the _Rhodes News Agency_ of New York saw Peter Mowbray was in the office of Lonegan of _The States_, Mowbray's chief in Warsaw. Lonegan had known P...

She, too, was almost a stranger in Warsaw, and lonely. Each had their work, and many hours each day were required for it; still, after the first fortnight, they managed to meet...

Lonegan smiled deprecatingly. “Boylan will help you get through. You don't know him yet. Some time, perhaps, you will--two hundred and fifty pounds of soul. He'll do all he can...

Fallows met them in his small bleak room, turned the lamp low, and opened the door of the diminutive wood-stove to let the firelight in the room. The three sat around it.... Pet...

It was too early to go to Berthe, yet his steps led him to the street of her house, and he had not passed it a second time before she opened the blinds above, and called to him....

Thus Peter was awakened the seventh morning out--and in a place he had not observed the previous night. It was as good a place as usual, if not better, except for the smell of f...

Marching south along the Vistula with the old-fashioned army--no airships, nothing that intensely puzzled Mowbray in this service--that is, in the exteriors of it--nothing but e...

And now a rainy field. Two days of cold wind and rain after the cattle-cars; a different tone and temper from the men, coughing instead of laughter at night-fall. Another namele...

The four were much together for a few days after that, Samarc and Spenski not yet assigned to their battery. They learned each other in those few days as men often fail to learn...

All went black for Peter. The slope rose up and took him. For an eternity afterward he felt someone tugging at him--hands of terrible strength that would not let him die, would...

Boylan and Peter sat together in the ante-room of headquarters. They did not speak. Peter was getting down to the quick. He thought many things which a man never tells another m...

Of course, they did not know it in _The States'_ office, neither the Old Man nor his managing editor, but a way had been found to _rock_ Peter Mowbray. Indeed he would have been...

Moritz Abel stepped nearer. In the silence Peter grew embarrassed. What he had said would sound without footing since the poet did not understand the trend of his thoughts. He m...

They were silent. Samarc's hand came up to Peter, and drew him close. It was clear that he could not bear the woman to hear his struggle for speech. “Tell her about Spenski,” ca...

“...He was trying to lift a man from the hopelessness of death when I stepped up quietly behind,” Berthe was saying. “He was wonderful about it, because he had felt the same hop...

It was not yet dawn. Peter heard the moaning of the men as they awoke and turned in their bandages. Surgeon and assistants passed through; two of the latter remained to start up...

Big Belt awoke early in his own quarters, and beat around under the blankets for his friend. Peter was not there. Boylan remembered and sat up. This was the day of the great bat...

Ashamed of himself, Big Belt waited to see if Peter would turn in to their quarters, as he approached carrying the hospital steward's blouse across his arm. Boylan would not cal...

Peter had pitied the infantry formerly from a hill, having stood with a battery as it sprayed the Austrian lines. He had watched the Austrian machines pouring steel upon the Rus...

Something of the activity now apparent to the blurred faculties of Mowbray, as he sat in the clammy embrace of nausea and struggling for breath, appealed to him as structurally...

The roar of the battle followed as Peter staggered back alone to Judenbach. He must have traversed a mile before there was a rational activity of his faculties. The first mental...

Big Belt perceived that the day was working out according to its evil beginnings.... After coming in from the infantry hollows as one risen from the dead (and transfigured in th...

They did not murder him then and there. Boylan was glad of that. His sack was already full of blood.... It was all too big. Something would happen to spoil the telling. No man e...

Goylan was back in Judenbach. It was four in the afternoon. He had searched everywhere for Peter Mowbray. The whole war zone was getting blacker and blacker to his sight. He had...

Peter walked ahead unbound. He could not keep his mind on the journey with the sentry. His thoughts winged from Lonegan at Warsaw, to _The States'_ office and home, as if carryi...

“Yes,” he said presently, “but we have not fulfilled our purpose.... You know, we set out in high courage to start the army back home again--and now, here we are.”

A basket of food was sent in during the early afternoon. They gathered about, making a place for the woman under the light. Abel was brighter, his eyes full of tenderness. Poltn...

Boylan went back to headquarters again, but his nerve was breaking. He did not feel at one with the staff this afternoon, rather as a stranger who wanted something which the gre...

“... There is one perfect story in the world. It will bear the deepest scrutiny of mind or matter or soul. Physically it is exact; mentally it balances; spiritually it is the ul...

The light was gray that came down through the skylight. Abel and Poltneck and Fallows sat on the floor in the front end, because there were not chairs for all. Back in the shado...

It was night. Boylan had plunged into a new vat of power, and persuaded Dabnitz to furnish an escort from Judenbach, four miles to the east to the main headquarters of the Galic...

Peter walked the room, a changing star or two in the windy skylight; a candle in the center by the stair-door where the sentry stood; Berthe watching him steadily from her chair...

A gray dawn, an east wind with a driving mist, a miserable day afield in every promise, and Big Belt had missed none of these portents since the full darkness. With the first re...

Peter turned back from the upper door, since nothing further in the way of news was to be had from Boylan. The first face that he saw within was Fallows', and over it, as his ow...

As before, the song was on the wing at the word.... Throughout the hour the Germans had flooded into the little city, the main column moving rapidly on in pursuit of the Russian...

Big Belt was alone with his friend again, but Peter seemed merely the body of a man, not much use. They were kept very close by the Germans, and told frankly that they were to b...

“He's hit--hit twice--but we can't go back to the Russians. They'll finish the lad. Dabnitz promised. The Germans can't rescue us, because the bridges are down. I've got to get...

Some unique thing, Big Belt, that rock of a man, had found in Peter Mowbray. For seven days and nights, though broken with incredible fatigues (a yellow line of bone color showi...

He was sleeping again. Berthe went to the window. Even in her happiness she was afraid, for she was remaining longer than her leave.... The window faced the south, and the apoth...

A most satisfying adventure, so that Big Belt added many things to the matters which could not be related. The old mother had told him of her son (as they sat together in the li...

A last time he climbed to the floor above the apothecary shop. If only she wouldn't act up. A serious thing, this he had done. Big Belt felt that he had rushed matters, possibly...