Explore "The Great Shadow" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I never felt quite the same to our lodger after that little business at / the Peel Castle. It was always in my mind that he was holding a secret / from me -- indeed, that he was all a secret together, seeing that he / always hung a veil over his past. And when by chance that veil was for / an instant whisked away, we always caught just a glimpse of something / bloody and violent and dreadful upon the other side. The very look of / his body was terrible. I bathed with him once in the summer, and I saw / then that he was haggled with wounds all over. Besides seven or eight / scars and slashes, his ribs on one side were all twisted out of shape, / and a part of one of his calves had been torn away. He laughed in his / merry way when he saw my face of wonder.
"Cossacks! Cossacks! " said he, running his hand over his scars. / "And the ribs were broke by an artillery tumbril. It is very bad to / have the guns pass over one. Now with cavalry it is nothing. A horse / will pick its steps however fast it may go. I have been ridden over by / fifteen hundred cuirassiers A and by the Russian hussars of Grodno, and / I had no harm from that. But guns are very bad."