The Soldier of the Valley

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The orator, now swelling into his peroration, was forgotten. The people of the valley--Tim--even Tim--all of them were forgotten. I had found the woman of my firelight, the woma...

How I liked the way she put it! It was flattering--subtly so. She seemed to imply that I was a modest soldier, and if there is a way to flatter a man it is to call him modest. M...

I knew enough of the world to know that it was not an unheard-of thing for a man to settle for a time in an out-of-the-way village. I knew enough of men to understand that he mi...

"Nearer and nearer came the footsteps," read Luther, pausing at each word to make sure of it. "Furder and furder out over the top of the mission-house leaned Sister Flora, and a...

"I was playin' sock-ball," snuffled the boy, and a solitary tear rolled down his snub nose. He flicked it away with his right hand, and this act disclosed to me a great bluish s...

"I have kep' a good deal of company," he said. "On account of my fiddlin', and singin', and recitin' I've always had things pretty much my own way. It's opposition that's ruinat...

"I suppose they must be very rich--the Parkers, I mean." This was offered as a wedge to break the silence, for the needles were going very rapidly now, and the stitches seemed t...

But this was my first day of life, too. Some twenty-four years before I had been born, but those years were simply existence. Now I was living. I had a secret. I had hinted at i...

Then I laughed. Lord, how I laughed! Twenty-four years I had lived, and until now I had never known a real joke, one that made the heart beat quicker, and sent the blood singing...

"Yes," I answered, still stroking the old hound's head. "Very badly. But he'll be all right in a few days--and we'll go on watching the mountains--and thinking--and chasing foxe...

Over the mountain there is peace! It is cold and gray there in the early morning, and the hills are bleak and black, but I remember days when from this same spot I've watched th...

Right on the sill it lay, a small white envelope! I did not waste time hobbling back to my chair and the table. I sat right down on the floor with the lamp at my side, and tore...