The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales
by Arthur Conan Doyle

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Title: The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Release Date: March 22, 2004 [EBook #11656]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT SHADOW ***

Produced by Lionel G. Sear

THE GREAT SHADOW AND OTHER NAPOLEONIC TALES

A. CONAN DOYLE

CONTENTS

THE GREAT SHADOW

I. THE NIGHT OF THE BEACONS

II. COUSIN EDIE OF EYEMOUTH

III. THE SHADOW ON THE WATERS

IV. THE CHOOSING OF JIM

V. THE MAN FROM THE SEA

VI. A WANDERING EAGLE

VII. THE SHADOW ON THE LAND

VIII. THE COMING OF THE CUTTER

IX. THE DOINGS AT WEST INCH

X. THE RETURN OF THE SHADOW

XI. THE GATHERING OF THE NATIONS

XII. THE SHADOW ON THE LAND

XIII. THE END OF THE STORM

XIV. THE TALLY OF DEATH

XV. THE END OF IT

THE CRIME OF THE BRIGADIER

THE "SLAPPING SAL"

THE GREAT SHADOW.

CHAPTER I.

THE NIGHT OF THE BEACONS.

It is strange to me, Jock Calder of West Inch, to feel that though now,
in the very centre of the nineteenth century, I am but five-and-fifty
years of age, and though it is only once in a week perhaps that my wife
can pluck out a little grey bristle from over my ear, yet I have lived
in a time when the thoughts and the ways of men were as different as
though it were another planet from this. For when I walk in my fields I
can see, down Berwick way, the little fluffs of white smoke which tell
me of this strange new hundred-legged beast, with coals for food and a
thousand men in its belly, for ever crawling over the border.
On a shiny day I can see the glint of the brass work as it takes the
curve near Corriemuir; and then, as I look out to sea, there is the same
beast again, or a dozen of them maybe, leaving a trail of black in the
air and of white in the water, and swimming in the face of the wind as
easily as a salmon up the Tweed. Such a sight as that would have struck
my good old father speechless with wrath as well as surprise; for he was
so stricken with the fear of offendin