Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt:... cold shake." "Ah!" ejaculated all the conscripts, with the impassioned interest of children listening to.a fairy tale. "Do you innocents believe that here endeth the last verse?" proceeded Cocagne. "The pair were still talking away like friends, when bang! a shot went off right in the midst of us three! I was knocked over with such a shock that I thought a pine tree had fallen upon me. Down into a rut I rolled, with something right upon me. I pulled myself from under as well as I could, and feeling the bargain knocked down to me, there I found a Prussian, the meek party who had been talking of private affairs with the hussar. He had a bullet in him, and the other, who must have shot him, was off like a shot himself." "But why should he kill his own soldier?" "My lads, I am not in a state to make my report, not having asked for particulars; in the first place, they would not have answered me and, nextly,it was no business of mine." "A quarrel in the next-door family," observed the sergeant, unconcernedly. "Besides," resumed Cocagne, "I have always heard that in foreign armies officers have the power of life and death over their men. So there was nothing to astonish you in the hussar officer sending his inferior to look for quarters down below." "But you said they were prattling like twins in a cradle," said a conscript, who wanted to get at the kernel of matters. "My budding marshal, you are too inquisitive," said the drummer. "Had you been in my fix, I reckon that you would have gone back to question the general and his goot laty." A burst of laughter greeted the sally and silenced the interrupter. "For my part, I flatter...