The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood

A long low line of coast trending along north and south as far as the eye could reach; nearest at hand a strip of beach, smooth shingle cast up by the surf of westerly gales; ne...

Years had passed since Hyde--he was Rupert Gascoigne then--had last been in Paris. The memory of that last sojourn and the horrors of it still clung to him--his arrest, unjust t...

The spy, whatever his nationality, and however questionable his antecedents, was right in the intelligence he had communicated. A large Russian force was even then on the march...

McKay was in His tent next morning finishing dressing when his servant brought him a piece of crumpled paper and said there was a messenger waiting to see him. The paper was the...

Wilders had made the best show with his little band and clung tenaciously to the battery yet. The Russians came on and on, with stubborn insistence, and all along the line a han...

Hyde's unfortunate affair with the sailor had ended in a broken rib and a dislocated arm. He was taken back senseless to the camp of the Royal Picts, and for some days required...

With the return of spring brighter days dawned for the British troops in the East. The worst troubles were ended; supplies of all kinds were now flowing in in great profusion; t...

Mr. Hobson, as he called himself, had been perfectly right when he gleefully assured Mrs. Wilders that the Russians were gathering up their strength for a supreme effort against...

The mixed population of Constantinople in these busy, stirring times was ripe for any great surprise. It was much moved and excited by a startling bit of news that spread very r...

Mean as had been their conduct towards Mrs. Purling and her son, Phillipa and her husband were not to be classed with common adventurers of the ordinary type. Born in a lower st...

Next morning there was much stir and commotion in the South Barracks, where "lay" the Royal Picts--to use a soldier's phrase. The few words let drop by General Wilders, and over...

"Will you not come down into the cabin?" said Mrs. Wilders, civilly; "the lunch is still on the table, and I daresay you will be glad of something to eat."

"There you must allow me to differ from you. This letter is, in my belief, perfectly genuine. It supplies a most important link in the chain of evidence, and I shall give it the...

The Wilders' party, after leaving the Waterport, passed through the Casemate Barrack Square and entered Waterport Street, the chief thoroughfare of the town. It was a narrow, un...

"What! back again so soon, Stanny," was Captain Faulks's greeting as McKay stepped on board the _Burlington Castle_. "I am right glad to see you. Is that a friend of yours?" poi...

Since the English and French armies had established themselves in the Crimea and the magnitude of their undertaking grew more and more apparent, they had found their true base o...

Mr. Hobson gave his address at Duke Street, St. James's, a lodging-house frequented by gentlemen from the neighbouring clubs. But he was never there except asleep. There was not...

Some half a dozen years after the occurrences just recorded there was a great gathering one night at Essendine House, a palatial mansion occupying the whole angle of a great Lon...

That Mrs. Purling was what she was, the chances of her life and her father were principally to blame. He had begun life as an errand-boy, and ended it as a millionnaire; but lon...

After their victory at the Alma the allies tarried long on the ground they had gained. There were many excuses, but no sound reasons, for thus wasting precious moments that woul...

Mr. Faulks was rather fond of good living, and, as a rule, he never allowed official cares to interfere with his lunch, a meal brought in on a tray from an eating-house in the S...

McKay must have slept for many hours. Daylight was fading, and the den he occupied was nearly dark, when he was aroused by the voices of his Russian fellow-lodgers coming off du...

He was not drowned when, through the fiendish intervention of Mrs. Wilders, he fell from the deck of the _Arcadia_, and was, as it seemed, swallowed up in the all-devouring sea.

The preparation for Miss Fanshawe's reception could not have been more ambitious if she had been a royal princess. With much reluctance Mrs. Purling eschewed triumphal arches an...

McKay travelled as far as Constantinople in one of the man-of-war despatch-boats used for the postal service. There he changed into a transport homeward bound, and proceeded on...

They were stirring times, those early days of '54. After half a century of peace the shadow of a great contest loomed dark and near. The whole British nation, sick and tired of...

The _Arcadia_, Lord Lydstone's yacht, was a fine three-masted schooner of a couple of hundred tons. She was lying far out in the bay, amidst a crowd of shipping of every kind--c...

The Battle of the Alma was won! Three short hours had sufficed to finish it, and by four o'clock the enemy was in full retreat. It was a flight rather than a retreat--a headlong...

Since we left him at Gibraltar McKay had led a busy life. The "Horse Purchase" was in full swing upon the north front, where, in a short space of time, many hundreds of animals...

McKay, on returning to the Crimea, had resumed his duties at headquarters. He was complimented by Lord Raglan and General Airey on the manner in which he had performed his mission.

Next day the brief telegram announcing it was published in the morning papers, with many strong comments. Although some blamed the young officer for his rashness, and others hel...

The Military Munitions' department was one of a dozen or more seated at that period in and about Whitehall. Its ostensible functions, as its title implied, were to supply warlik...

A quaint old red-sandstone town; the river-harbour crowded with small craft, but now and again, like a Triton among the minnows, a timber-brig or a trading-barque driven in by s...

The Hôtel Versailles and St. Cloud was one of the best hotels of Paris at this time, a time long antecedent to the opening of such vast caravansaries as the Louvre, the Continen...

"What's come of the young vixen?" went on the speaker, addressing her husband, the Tio Pedro, who sat with her behind the counter of a small tobacconist's shop--an ugly beldame,...

He had been taken into Sebastopol by his escort at a rapid pace. It was a ride of half-a-dozen miles, no more, and the greater part of it, when once they regained the Tchernaya,...

McKay lay where he fell, and it was perhaps well for him that he was prostrate. The attacking parties soon desisted from firing, and charged forward at racing-pace, driving all...

In the Paris of the first half of this century there was no darker, dingier, or more forbidding quarter than that which lay north of the Rue de Rivoli, round about the great cen...

It was not until he had been absent more than a year that Mrs. Purling appeared to relent. She began to yearn after her son; she missed him and was disposed to be reconciled, pr...

When old Purling bought the ----shire estates there was an ancient manor-house on the property, a picturesque but inconvenient residence, which did not at all come up to his ide...

It was necessary for her to review her position and look things in the face. Her circumstances were undoubtedly straitened since her husband's death. She had her pension as the...

The capture made by the police in the Faubourg St. Martin was kept secret. Under the Second Empire nothing was published except with the permission of the authorities, and they...

"Have no fears. The police are on his track. They have his exact description, and are watching at the Mairie. Directly he shows himself he will be arrested as Rupert Gascoigne,...

Mrs. Wilders's first and only idea after she left Lincoln's Inn was to get to Paris as soon as she could. She no longer counted on much assistance from Ledantec, nor, indeed, ha...

The _Burlington Castle_ made a short halt at Constantinople, and another, somewhat longer, at Malta; a third was to be made at Gibraltar, where two of our most important charact...

"It is very painful to think," said Sir Richard Airey, "that he passed away at the moment of failure; that he was not spared to see the fortress fall--for it must fall."

"But, mother," went on Harold, her only son--like herself, large and broadly built; but, unlike her, quiet and rather submissive in manner, as one who had been habitually kept u...