Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Eagle Blood CHAPTER I A Battalion of stalwart grenadiers swung through Fleet Street in the rain, with squealing fifes and roaring drums, the dripping red ensign flapping in the wind above the moving mass of scarlet and steel and sodden bearskins. A thousand faces looked down from a thousand grimy windows and a hoarse murmur of cheering came from under the lines of streaming black umbrellas, crawling and bumping, turtle-like, along the splashed pavements; for if anything can move the voice of that most British street in the British Empire, it is the sight of the gloriously sharp steel that guards the sacred cause of British commerce throughout the dividend-paying world. Even the fat little hairdresser who shears British manes in Cardinal Wolsey's dishonored palace —and can see from his back windows the Temple Church, where the dead crusaders lie forgotten — waved a brave napkin as the mud-spattered soldiers halted at Temple Bar, faced outward and moved backward to allow the brawling tide of omnibuses and cabs to sweep into their wonted channel, while a jaunty officer swore eloquently at the jeering cabbies as he rode through the jostling vehicles in search of his Exalted Highness, the Rajah of Jinghool, moving in state with the Heir Apparent toward the shrieking central market-place of Christendom. The thousand faces receded from the windows, and Fleet Street forgot for the moment the red ensign and the shining bayonets. " To put the matter quite plainly, my lord, there is not a shilling left, — not a shilling," said Mr. Chadder, dryly, as the fifes ended with a plaintive skirl. " The sale of the South London Boot and Shoe Works to the Americans at a time like this was, to say the least, unfortunate. I did all I could to delay the foreclosure proceedings, knowing that y... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.