The Hosts of the Air

E-text prepared by David Garcia, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from page images generously provided by the Kentuckiana Digital Library
The Star of Gettysburg The Guns of Bull Run The Guns of Shiloh The Scouts of Stonewall The Sword of Antietam The Rock of Chickamauga
The Guns of Europe The Hosts of the Air The Forest of Swords
The Young Trailers The Forest Runners The Free Rangers The Riflemen of the Ohio The Scouts of the Valley The Border Watch
The Texan Star The Texan Scouts The Texan Triumph
Apache Gold The Quest of the Four The Last of the Chiefs In Circling Camps A Soldier of Manhattan The Sun of Saratoga A Herald of the West The Wilderness Road My Captive

The Hosts of the Air
The Hosts of the Air is the third and concluding volume of the World War Series, of which The Forest of Swords and The Guns of Europe were the predecessors. It deals primarily with the love story of John Scott and Julie Lannes, but all the characters of the earlier books reappear in this romance also.
A young man was shaving. His feet rested upon a broad plank embedded in mud, and the tiny glass in which he saw himself hung upon a wall of raw, reeking earth. A sky, somber and leaden, arched above him, and now and then flakes of snow fell in the sodden trench, but John Scott went on placidly with his task.
The face that looked back at him had been changed greatly in the last six months. The smoothness of early youth was gone—for the time—and serious lines showed about the mouth and eyes. His cheeks were thinner and there was a slight sinking at the temples, telling of great privations, and of dangers endured. But the features were much stronger. The six months had been in effect six years. The boy of Dresden had become the man of the trenches.
He finished, rubbed his hand over his face to satisfy himself that the last trace of young beard and mustache was gone, put away his shaving materials in a little niche that he had dug with his own hands in the wall of the trench, and turned to the Englishman.