The Last Shot

This story of war grew out of my experience in many wars. I have been under fire without fighting; known the comradeship of arms without bearing arms, and the hardships and the...

They made a contrast, these two men, the colonel of the Grays, swart and sturdy, his physical vitality so evident, and the captain of the Browns, some seven or eight years the j...

His hand rose in a vigorous, pulsating gesture; his eyes were snapping; his lips parted in an ecstasy that made him seem twenty years younger; his shoulders broadened and his ch...

"But I am considering," Hugo resumed, when there was silence. "If both sides ran as fast as they could when the war began, it would be interesting to see which army reached home...

"I was very strenuous riding my hobby against yours, wasn't I?" she exclaimed in a flutter of distraction that made it easy for him to descend from his own steed. "I stated a fe...

Once she knew that he was a Lanstron of Thorbourg, a fact of hardly passing interest to Marta, Mrs. Galland made him intimately welcome. By the time he had paid his third call h...

He drew away abruptly, his face becoming suddenly old, his stoop returning, and began to study the branch as before. Lanstron dropped back to his seat and gazed at the brown roo...

"Yes. I recall just how he looked as he stood on the porch, his head bent, his shoulders stooped, twirling his hat in his hands, while mother and I examined him as to his qualif...

"And we have been talking as if war were due to-morrow!" she exclaimed. The breaking light of a discovery, followed by a wave of happy relief, swept over her responsive features...

"Lack of interest!" mused the premier. But Westerling, preoccupied with the literal exposition of his subject, did not catch the flash of passing satire before the premier, his...

When he had finished the manuscript the trance of his thoughts held him in the same attitude. "Five millions to our three!" a voice kept repeating to him. "In face of that this...

"We were told to take you to the general. He'll let you off if there isn't any war, and he may, anyway. But he sure won't if you resist arrest." The soldiers seized his arms fir...

What about Stransky of the Reds, who would not fight to please the ruling classes? What about Grandfather Fragini, who would fight on principle whenever a Gray was in sight? Now...

As Marta and the children came to the door of the chapel after the recitation of the oath, she saw the civil population moving along the street in the direction of the range. Su...

"Why, naturally! If we hadn't mowed them down his plan would have failed. Mowing them down was the only way to hold them back," he said; and seeing her horror made haste to add:...

Every fourth man wormed himself backward on his stomach until he was below the sky-line, when his stiffened limbs brought him to his feet and he started on a dead run down into...

Before the order to move was given the news of it passed from lip to lip among the men in tired whispers. Since dawn they had lived through the impressions of a whole war, and t...

Marta could not deny that there was something fine about Dellarme's smile no less than in his bearing and his delicately, chiselled features. It had the assurance and self-posse...

One minute--two, perhaps--not three--and the thing was over. She saw the Grays being crushed back and realized that the Browns had won, when a last detail of the lessening tumul...

A man might even get used to falling from a great height. At first, in lightning rapidity of thought, all his life would pass in review before him and all his hopes for the futu...

Yet Marta, returning to the hall, had to steady herself in a dizzy moment against the wall. Complete reaction had come. She craved sleep as if it were the one true, real thing i...

"And you will get justice from General Westerling!" It was Marta's voice. In approaching she had unavoidably overheard part of the conversation. "Justice is his first characteri...

"To my sense of humanity!" Her reply was made in much the same tone as his remark, where he had expected emotion, even passion. More than ever was he certain that she had underg...

There was a perceptible shudder on Marta's part, an abrupt, tossing elevation of her head. She stared at the spot where Dellarme had lain in the garden. Dellarme's smile was bac...

Yet the story of how Feller yielded to the temptation of the automatic had made the nostrils of the old war-horse quiver with a dramatic breath, and instead of the command of a...

"I am going on a conviction--on putting two and two together!" Westerling announced. "I am going on my experience as a soldier, as a chief of staff. If I am wrong, I take the re...

"Whittling them down! What a ghastly expression!" she gasped. "You are as bad as Westerling and I am worse than either of you! I--I announced the four hundred thousand as if the...

After the lantern flame grew fainter and finally disappeared around a bend, Marta emitted a peculiar, squeaky little laugh. It sounded to her as if her own ghost--the ghost of h...

"The engineers and material were ready to go in," he continued. "Before morning, as I had planned, we shall be so well fortified in the position that nothing can budge us. This...

"Yes, my father's last letter was pretty blue about business," said the banker's son. He was looking at his dirty hands. The odor of clothes unlaundered for weeks, in which the...

"How have I ever been able to go as far as I have? How did I get through this last scene? When it seems as if I were about to collapse, something supports me. When the thing gro...

Before the mine exploded, by the light of the shell bursts breaking their vast prisms from central spheres of flame for miles, with the quick sequence of a moving-picture flicke...

"There's nothing like being able to order yourself to sleep, whatever the crisis," he said. But suddenly he winced as if a blast of bullets had crashed through a window-pane and...

A young officer of the Grays who was with a signal-corps section, trying to keep a brigade headquarters in touch with the staff during the retreat, two or three miles from the G...

But Marta did not want safety. Danger was sweet; it was expiation. She was helping, actually helping; that was enough. She envied the peaceful dead--they had no nightmares--as s...

Pay, pay for the drudgery, the sleepless nights, the dead and the wounded--for our dead and wounded! No matter about theirs! The officers were too intent in their elation to obs...

She knew not how she uttered that monstrous word killed. But utter it she did in its naked terror. Now she knew a simpler feeling than that of the grand sympathy of the dreamer...

The vice-chief started as if he had received a sharp pin-prick. His shoulders unconsciously relaxed. He began a fresh study of a certain point on the table top. Lanstron, lookin...