Greatest Short Stories

Part 1

Deliverance

For an hour the first regiment of Dragoons of the guard had been drawn up on level ground behind a screen of low bushes, waiting the order to engage. For some time the fighting appeared to have ceased around them. Only a  shattered gun carriage and the ground, pierced with deep holes like newly dug graves, heaped about with soft, yellowish earth, gave the spot the look of a battlefied. But the conflict was evident enough to the ear. on all sides thundered the cannon, and from the right came also the rattling of musketry. The roar of battle rose and fell like the gamut of a great orchestra executing the "Storm Movement" of the pastoral Symphony.

In the foreground, on a slight elevation, a group of officers were attentively examining the French position. One of them, a major, stood a little apart smoking a cigarette and gazing dreamily into the distance. He might not, perhaps, have attracted a feminime observer, but a masculine eye would certainly have marked him asa a man of striking intellect. He was about thirty, tall, slight, with cold gray eyes, a pale thin face and pale, sarastic lips, just shadowed by a delicated auburn mustache.