The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Flag, by Arthur Conan Doyle

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Green Flag

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Release Date: December 13, 2003 [eBook #10446]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN FLAG***

E-text prepared by Lionel G. Sear of Truro, Cornwall, England

THE GREEN FLAG.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

CONTENTS.

THE GREEN FLAG.

CAPTAIN SHARKEY.

THE CROXLEY MASTER.

THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR.

THE STRIPED CHEST.

A SHADOW BEFORE.

THE KING OF THE FOXES.

THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS.

THE NEW CATACOMB.

THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE.

A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE.

THE GREEN FLAG

When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the
British Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the
seventy-five shillings were wanting which might have carried him to
America, he took the only way handy of getting himself out of the way.
Seldom has Her Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic
blood seethed with hatred against Britain and all things British.
The sergeant, however, smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and
his 44 in. chest, whisked him off with a dozen other of the boys to the
depot at Fermoy, whence in a few weeks they were sent on, with the
spade-work kinks taken out of their backs, to the first battalion of the
Royal Mallows, at the top of the roster for foreign service.

The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the
darkest hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with
crow-bar and battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with
shot-gun by night. Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found
their way even into the service of the Government, to which it seemed to
them that they owed their troubles, and now and then they did wild
things before they c