VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea

Here we are, fifteen months later, with Balaclava and Inkerman behind us, and the world ringing with the story of our valour; and something here and there being said about the s...

The people of Castle Barfield boast that the middle of their High Street is on a level with the cross of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The whole country-side is open, and affords a welc...

General Boswell’s coachman was a Scot; a grim, taciturn, brickdust-coloured fellow, who had been in his present service for a quarter of a century. He had been bred amongst hors...

If Polson had not to be taught how to ride, how to handle a sabre or a gun, or how to balance himself in the goose-step--matters which he had taken the pains to master long ago-...

We swoop, as it were, to the skies, and we drop, as it were, to the very sea bed, and we are seasick to the souls of us, one and all; and of the five hundred men the staunch boa...

The clatter of the tumbling objects in the hall brought out the General and Jack Jervase’s son. The girl peered with a whiter face than ever from the parlour doorway, and a four...

There was what seemed like a long silence, though in reality it endured only for a few seconds, whilst General Boswell searched for his gold-rimmed reading glasses, and balanced...

The oil-lamp which hung in the hall was flickering uncertainly as Polson and the General walked towards the foot of the staircase, leaving the passage in darkness for a second o...

There was no sleep in the grey-stone house on the Beacon Hill, on that eventful night on which Polson Jervase left his home, for anybody except the domestics, who were ignorant...

Polson was gone, so far, only to his own room, but so swiftly that it was impossible to intercept him, and the snick of the bolt in the lock arrested his father before he had se...

In the pale spring sunlight where they sat, there came a wholly incongruous figure. It was clad in black broadcloth, and black kid gloves, and there was a black shining silk hat...

The time, half-past four o’clock in the morning; the date the twentieth of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-four; the place the southern bank of the River Alma. Present, so...

It was the First of May, and that same good three-master, the _Cæsar_, which had carried Major de Blacquaire and Sergeant Jervase from the Crimea to Scutari, was bowling merrily...