"The Major, mam, the Major has a truly wonderful 'ead " said Sergeant Zebedee Tring as he stood, hammer in hand, very neat and precise from broad shoe-buckles to smart curled wig that offset his square, bronzed face. "Head, Sergeant, head " retorted pretty, dimpled Mrs. Agatha, nodding at the Sergeant's broad back. "'Ead mam, yes " said the Sergeant, busily nailing up a branch of the Major's favourite cherry tree. "The Major has a truly wonderful 'ead, regarding which I take liberty to ob-serve as two sword-cuts and a spent bullet have in nowise affected it, Mrs. Agatha, mam, which is a fact...

"Nineteen to-day, is he " said my uncle Jervas, viewing me languidly through his quizzing-glass. "How confoundedly the years flit Nineteen-and on me soul, our poor youth looks as if he hadn't a single gentlemanly vice to bless himself with " "Not one, Jervas, my boy," quoth my uncle George, shaking his comely head at me. "Not one, begad, and that's the dooce of it It seems he don't swear, he don't drink, he don't gamble, he don't make love, he don't even-" "Don't, George," exclaimed my aunt Julia in her sternest tone, her handsome face flushed, her stately back very rigid. "Don't what,...

In publishing these collected articles in book form (the result of my visits to Flanders, the battlefields of France and divers of the great munition centres), some of which have already appeared in the press both in England and America, I do so with a certain amount of diffidence, because of their so many imperfections and of their inadequacy of expression.

In the writing of books, as all the world knows, two things are above all other things essential-the one is to know exactly when and where to leave off, and the other to be equally certain when and where to begin. Now this book, naturally enough, begins with Mr. Brimberly's whiskers; begins at that moment when he coughed and pulled down his waistcoat for the first time. And yet (since action is as necessary to the success of a book as to life itself) it should perhaps begin more properly at the psychological moment when Mr. Brimberly coughed and pulled down the garment aforesaid for the third...

"Justice, O God, upon mine enemy. For the pain I suffer, may I see him suffer; for the anguish that is mine, so may I watch his agony Thou art a just God, so, God of Justice, give to me vengeance " And having spoken this, which had been my prayer for three weary years, I composed myself to slumber. But even so, I started up broad awake and my every nerve a-tingle, only to see the moonlight flooding my solitude and nought to hear save the rustle of the soft night wind beyond the open door of the cave that was my habitation and the far-off, never-ceasing murmur that was the voice of those...

John Barty, ex-champion of England and landlord of the "Coursing Hound," sat screwed round in his chair with his eyes yet turned to the door that had closed after the departing lawyer fully five minutes ago, and his eyes were wide and blank, and his mouth (grim and close-lipped as a rule) gaped, becoming aware of which, he closed it with a snap, and passed a great knotted fist across his brow. "Barnabas," said he slowly, "I beant asleep an' dreaming be I, Barnabas?"

The Frenchman beside me had been dead since dawn. His scarred and shackled body swayed limply back and forth with every sweep of the great oar as we, his less fortunate bench-fellows, tugged and strained to keep time to the stroke. Two men had I seen die beside me, yet Death ever passed me by, nay, it seemed rather that despite the pain of stripes, despite the travail and hardship, my strength waxed the mightier; upon arm and thigh, burnt nigh black by fierce suns, the muscles showed hard and knotted; within my body, scarred by the lash, the life leapt and glowed yet was the soul of me sick...

Which, being the first, is, very properly, the shortest chapter in the book When Sylvia Marchmont went to Europe, George Bellew being, at the same time, desirous of testing his newest acquired yacht, followed her, and mutual friends in New York, Newport, and elsewhere, confidently awaited news of their engagement. Great, therefore, was their surprise when they learnt of her approaching marriage to the Duke of Ryde.