The Deserter

"Once you said it would kill you if you believed I could be false to you. If by that you meant that, having given my promise to you to be your wife at some future time, I must s...

"The one thing lacking to complete the chain is Gower," said the major, as he looked up over his spectacles. "It would be difficult to tell what became of him. We get tidings of...

Late that night, having occasion to step to his front door, convinced that he heard stealthy footsteps on his piazza, Mr. Hayne could see nobody in the darkness, but found his f...

March had come,--the month of gale and bluster, sleet and storm, in almost every section of our broad domain,--and March at Warrener was to the full as blustering and conscience...

Stannard's battalion of the cavalry came marching into the post two days after the fire, and created a diversion in the garrison talk, which for one long day had been all of tha...

Meantime, the colonel had patiently unravelled the threads and had brought to light the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It made a singularly simple story, after all but t...

"I don't, indeed. He is full of sympathy for you, and I know he means you shall have fair play; but a company commander has as many and as intangible ways of making a man suffer...

The _matinées_, so called, were by no means unpopular features of the daily routine. The officers were permitted to bring their pipes or cigars and take their after-breakfast sm...

"Nothing, sister mine. Why should you feel such an interest in what Mrs. Waldron says, if she's such a gossip?" And Miss Travers was evidently having hard work to keep from laug...

"Very well. That means, he proposes to be guided by the colonel, or nothing at all; and Captain Gregg is simply doing what the others will do. They say to us, in so many words,...

"Colonel," exclaimed Rayner, while beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, "she is worse,--a thousand times worse! The woman is a fiend. She is the devil in petticoats--and in...

Transcribers note This e-book of The Deserter is based upon the edition found in The Deserter, and From the Ranks. Two Novels, by Capt. Charles King. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippinco...

Before dawn a courier has galloped into camp, bearing a despatch from the commanding officer of the Riflers. It says but few words, but they are full of meaning: "We have found...

And as the poor fellow was led away, silence fell upon the group. Mrs. Clancy began a wail of mingled relief and misery, which the captain ordered her to cease and go home. More...

"Kate, it is to get Clancy away from the possibility of revealing what he knows that you have planned this sudden move, and I _know_ it," said Miss Travers. "You need not answer."

When the trumpets rang out their sunset call and the boom of the evening gun shook the windows in Fort Warrener and Nellie Travers came running up-stairs again to her room, she...

"Laws, ma'am! never do in the world to bring frozen people into a hot car! Sure to make their ears an' noses drop off, that would! Got to keep 'em in the cold and pile snow arou...

And in that instant, before either can prevent, Steven Van Antwerp, _alias_ Gower, springs to his feet, leaps over the balcony rail, and disappears in the depths below. It is a...