BOOK II.

[Transcriber's Note: The spelling inconsistencies of the original have

been retained in this etext.]

The Iron Game

A TALE OF THE WAR

BY

HENRY F. KEENAN

"Heavy and solemn the cloudy column

Over the green fields marching came,

Measureless spread like a table bread

For the cold grim dice of the iron game."

1898

TO

BERNARD JOHN McGRANN

WHOSE LIFE AND CONDUCT EMBODY AND ILLUSTRATE

THE MANLINESS, MODESTY, AND WORTH

THAT FANCY DELIGHTS TO EMBALM IN FICTION

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED

BY ONE AMONG THE MANY WITNESSES OF HIS NOBLE CAREER

HENRY F. KEENAN

NEW YORK, _25th March, 1891_.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

_THE CARIBEES_.

CHAPTER

I.--THE BOY IN BLUE

II.--FLAG AND FAITH

III.--MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE

IV.--GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE

V.--A NAPOLEONIC EPIGRAM

VI.--ON THE POTOMAC

VII.--THE STEP THAT COSTS

VIII.--AN ARMY WITH BANNERS

IX.--"THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF ON THE FOLD"

X.--BLOOD AND IRON

XI.--THE LEGIONS OF VARUS

BOOK II.

_THE HOSTAGES_.

XII.--THE AFTERMATH

XIII.--A COMEDY OF TERRORS

XIV.--UNDER TWO FLAGS

XV.--ROSEDALE

XVI.--A MASQUE IN ARCADY

XVII.--TREASON AND STRATAGEMS

XVIII.--A CAMPAIGN OF PLOTS

XIX.--"HE EITHER FEARS HIS FATE TOO MUCH"

XX.--A CATASTROPHE

XXI.--THE STORY OF THE NIGHT

XXII.--A CARPET-KNIGHT

XXIII.--ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

BOOK III.

_THE DESERTERS._

XXIV.--BETWEEN THE LINES

XXV.--PHANTASMAGORIA

XXVI.--IN THE UNION LINES

XXVII.--"THE ABSENT ARE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG"

XXVIII.--THE WORLD WENT VERY ILL THEN

XXIX.--A WOMAN'S REASON

XXX.--A GAME OF CHANCE

XXXI.--TWO BLADES OF THE SAME STEEL

XXXII.--THE LOST CARIBEES

XXXIII.--FATHER ABRAHAM'S JOKE

BOOK I.

_THE CARIBEES_.

CHAPTER I.

THE BOY IN BLUE.

When expulsion from college, in his junior years, was visited upon Jack

Sprague, he straightway became the hero of Acredale. And, though the

grave faculty had felt constrained to vindicate college authority, it

was well known that they sympathized with the infraction of decorum that

obliged them to put this mark of disgrace upon one of the most promising

of their students.

All his young life Jack had dreamed of West Point and the years of

training that were to fit him for the glories of war. He knew the

battles of the Revolution as other boys knew the child-lore of the

nursery. He had the campaigns of Marlborough, the strategy of Turenne,

the inspirations of the great Frederick, and the prodigies of Napoleon,

as readily on the end of his tongue as his comrades had the struggles of

the Giant Killer or the tactics of Robinson Crusoe. When, inspired by

the promise of West Point, he had mastered the repugnant rubrics of the

village academy, the statesman of his district conferred the promised

nomination upon his school rival, Wesley Boone, Jack passionately

refused to pursue the arid paths of learning, and declared his purpose

of becoming a pirate, a scout, or some other equally fascinating child

of nature delightful to the boyish mind.

When Jack Sprague entered Warchester College, he carried with him the

light baggage of learning picked up at the Acredale Academy. At his

entrance to the sequestered quadrangles of Dessau Hall, Jack's frame of

mind was very much like the passionate discontent of the younger son of

a feudal lord whose discrepant birthright doomed him to the gown instead

of the sword.

Long before the senior year he had allured a chosen band about him who

shared his eager aspiration for war, and when the other fellows dawdled

in society or wrangled in debate, these young Alexanders set their tents

in the college campus and fought the campaigns of Frederick or Napoleon

over again. Jack did not give much heed to the menacing signs of civil

war that came day by day from the tempestuous spirits North and South. A

Democrat, as his fathers had been before him, he saw no probability of

the pomp and circumstance of glorious war in the noisy wrangling of

politicians. The defeat of Douglas, the Navarre of the young Democracy

of the North, amazed him: but all thought of Lincoln asserting the

national authority, and reviving the splendor of Jackson and Madison,

was looked upon as the step between the sublime and the ridiculous that

reasoning men refuse to consider.

When, however, the stupefying news came that a national garrison had

been fired upon by the South Carolinians, in Charleston Harbor, the

college boys took sides strongly. There were many in the classes from

Maryland and Virginia. These were as ardent in admiration of their

Southern compatriots as the Northern boys were for the insulted Union.

Months passed, and, although the forces of war were arraying themselves

behind the thin veil of compromise and negotiation, the public mind only

languidly convinced itself that actual war would come.

The college was divided into hostile camps. The "Secessionists," led by

Vincent Atterbury, Jack's old-time chief crony, went so far as to hoist

the flag of the Montgomery (Jeff Davis's) government on the campus pole,

one morning in April. A fierce fight followed, in which Jack's ardent

partisans made painful havoc with the limbs of the enemy--Atterbury,

their leader, being carted from the campus, under the horrified eyes of

the faculty, dying, as it was thought. Then followed expulsion. When the

solemn words were spoken in chapel, the culprit bore up with great

serenity. But when he announced that he had enlisted in the army, then

such an uproar, such an outburst, that the session was at an end. Even

the grave president looked sympathetic. The like of it was never seen in

a sober college since Antony with Cleopatra invaded the Academy at

Alexandria. The boys flung themselves upon the abashed Jack. They hugged

him, raised him on their shoulders, carried him out on the campus, and,

forming a ring round him, swore, in the classic form dear to collegians,

that they would follow him; that they would be his soldiers, and fight

for the _patria_ in danger.

"I have nothing to offer you, boys. I'm only sergeant; but if you will

join now, I'm authorized to swear you in provisionally," Jack said,

shrewdly, seizing the flood at high tide.

So soon as the names could be written the whole senior class

(forty-three) were enrolled. Jack refused the prayerful urgings of the

juniors, who pleaded tearfully to join him. But the president coming out

confirmed Jack's decision until the juniors could get the written

consent of their parents.

The recitations were sadly disjointed that day, and the excited

professors were glad when rest came. The humanities had received

disjointed exposition during that session. Jack had been summoned to the

president's sanctuary, where he had been received with a parental

tenderness that brought the tears to his big brown eyes.

"Ah, ha! soldiers mustn't know tears. You must be made of sterner stuff

now, sergeant," the doctor cried, cheerily, as the culprit stood

confusedly before him. "O Jack, Jack, why did you put this hard task

upon me? Why make me drive from Dessau the brightest fellow in the

classes? What will your mother say? I would as soon have lost my own

child as be forced to put this mark on you? But you know I am bound by

the laws of the college. You know I have time and again overlooked your

wild pranks. We have already suffered a good deal from the press for

winking at the sympathy the college has shown in this political quarrel."

"Yes, professor, I haven't a word to say. You did your duty. Now I want

you to bear witness how I do mine. I do not complain that I am condemned

rather through the form than the fact. I was carried out of my senses by

the sight of that rebel flag."

The Warchester press, known for many years as the most sprightly and

enterprising of the country, was too much taken up with the direful news

from Baltimore to even make a note of Jack Sprague's expulsion, and the

soldier boy was spared that mortification. Nor did he meet the tearful

lament and heart-broken remonstrance at home, to which he had looked

forward with lively dread. His friends in the village of Acredale were

so astonished by his blue regimentals that he reached the homestead door

unquestioned. His mother, at the dining-room window, caught sight of the

uniform, and did not recognize her son until she was almost smothered in

his hearty embrace.

"Why, John! What does this mean? What--what have you on?"

"Mother, I am twenty-two years old. A man who won't fight for his

country isn't a good son. He has no right to stay in a country that he

isn't willing to fight for!" and with this specious dictum he drew

himself up and met the astonished eyes of his sister Olympia, who had

been apprised of his coming. But the maternal fears clouded patriotic

conceptions where her darling was involved, and his mother sobbed:

"O Jack, Jack! what shall we do? How can we live without you! And oh, my

son, you are too young to go to the war. You will break down. You can't

manage a--a musket, and the--the heavy load the soldiers carry. My son,

don't break your mother's heart. Don't go--don't, Jack, Jack! What shall

I do?--O Polly, what shall we do?"

"What shall we do? Why, we'll just show Jack that all of war isn't in

soldiering; that the women who stay at home help the heroes, though they

may not take part in the battle. As to you and me, mamma, we shall be

the proudest women in Acredale, for our Jack's the first--" she was

going to say "boy," but, catching the coming protest in the warrior's

glowing eye, substituted "man" with timely magnanimity--"the first man

that volunteered from Acredale. And how shamed you would have been--we

would have been--if Jack hadn't kept up the tradition of the family! He

comes naturally by his sense of duty. Your father's father was the first

to join Gates at Saratoga. My father's father was the right hand of

Warren, at Bunker Hill! If ever blood ran like water in our Jack's

veins, I should put on--trousers and go to the war myself. I'm not sure

that I sha'n't as it is," and, affecting Spartan fortitude, Olympia

pretended to be deeply absorbed in adjusting a disarranged furbelow in

her attire to conceal the quavering in her voice and the dewy something

in her dark eyes. The mother, disconcerted by this defection where she

had counted on the blindest adhesion, sank back in the cane rocker,

helpless, speechless.

"Yes, mother, Polly is right. How could you ever lift up your head if it

were said that son of John Sprague's--Governor, Senator, minister

abroad--was the last to fly to his country's call? Why, Jackson would

turn in his grave if a son of John Sprague were not the first to take up

arms when the Union that he loved, as he loved his life, was in peril!"

Mrs. Sprague listened with woe-begone perplexity to these sounding

periods, conscious only that her darling, her adored scapegrace, had

suddenly turned serious, and was using the weapons she had so often

employed to justify his conduct. For it was using one of the standing

arms in the maternal arsenal, to remind the wild and headstrong lad that

his father had been Jackson's confidant, that he had been Governor of

Imperia, that he had enforced the demands of the United States upon

European statesmen, that after a life spent in the public service he had

died, reverenced by his party and by his neighbors. Jack, as an infant,

had been fondled by Webster, by Clay, and, one never-to-be-forgotten

day, Jackson, the Scipio of the republic, had placed his brawny hand

upon the infant's head and declared that he would be "worthy of Jack

Sprague, who was man enough to make two Kentuckians."

"But you--you, ought to be a colonel. Your father was a major-general in

the Mexican War at twenty-five. A Sprague can't be a private soldier!"

she cried, seizing on this as the only tenable ground where she could

begin the contest against the two children confederated against her.

"I don't want to owe everything to my father. This is a republic, mamma,

and a man is, or ought to be, what he makes himself. I saw in a paper,

the other day, that the Government has more brigadiers and colonels

and--and--officers than it knows what to do with. I saw it stated that a

stone thrown from Willard's Hotel in Washington hit a dozen brigadiers.

I want to earn a commission before I assume it. I'll be an officer soon

enough, no fear. I could have had a lieutenant's commission if I had

gone in Blandon's regiment. But I hate Blandon. He is one of those

canting sneaks father detested, and I won't serve under such cattle."

Mrs. Sprague, like millions of mothers in those days, was cruelly

divided in mind. When the neighbors felicitated her on the valor and

patriotism of Mr. Jack she was elated and fitfully reconciled. When, in

the long watches of the night, she reflected on the hardships,

temptations, the dreadful companions her darling must be thrown with,

country, lineage, everything faded into the dreadful reality that her

darling was in peril, body and soul. He was so like his father--gay,

impressionable, easily influenced--he would be saint or sinner, just as

his surroundings incited him. This was the woe that ate the mother's

heart; this was the sorrow that clouded millions of homes when mothers

saw their boys pranked out in the trappings of war.

Our jaunty Jack enjoyed the worship that came to him. He was the first

boy in blue that appeared in the sandy streets of Acredale. Never had

the rascal been so petted, so feted, so adored. He might have been a

pasha, had he been a Turk. The promising down on his upper lip--the

object of his own secret solicitude and Olympia's gibes during the

junior year--was quite worn away by the kissing he underwent among the

impulsive Jeannettes of the village, who had a vague notion that

soldiers, like sailors, were indurated for battle by adosculation. Jack

may have believed this himself, for he took no pains to disabuse the

maidens as to the inefficacy of the rite, and bore with galliard

fortitude the wear and tear of the nascent mustache, without which, to

his mind, a soldier would figure very much as a monk without a shaven

crown or a mandarin without a queue. And though presently big Tom

Tooker, chief of the rival faction in Acredale, gave his name to the

recruiting officer in Warchester, and a score more of Jack's rivals and

cronies, he was the soldier of the village. For hadn't he given up the

glory of graduation and the delights of "commencement" to take up his

musket for the Union? And then the fife was heard in the village

street--delicious airs from Arcady--and a great flag was flung out from

the post-office, and Master Jack was installed recruiting sergeant for

Colonel Ulrich Oswald's regiment, that was to be raised in Warchester

County. For Colonel Oswald, having failed in a third nomination for

Congress, had gallantly proffered his services to the Governor of the

State, and, in consideration of his influence with his German

compatriots, had been granted a commission, though with reluctance, as

he had supported the Democratic party and was not yet trusted in the

Republican councils.

CHAPTER II.

FLAG AND FAITH.

If Acredale had not been for a century the ancestral seat of the

Spragues, and in its widest sense typical of the suburban Northern town,

there would be merely an objective and extrinsic interest in portraying

its sequestered life, its monotonous activities. But Acredale was not

only a very complete reflex of Northern local sentiment; its war epoch

represented the normal conduct of every hamlet in the land during the

conflict with the South. Now that the war is becoming a memory, even to

those who were actors in it, the facts distorted and the incidents

warped to serve partisan ends or personal pique, the photograph of the

time may have its value.

Made up of thriving farmers and semi-retired city men, Acredale mingled

the simple conditions of a country village and the easy refinement of

city life. The houses were large, the grounds ornate and ample, the

society decorously convivial. People could be fine--at least they were

thought very fine--without going to the British isles to recast their

home manners or take hints for the fashioning of their grounds and

mansions. There was what would be called to-day the English air about

the place and some of the people; but it was an inheritance, not an

imitation. Save in the bustling business segment, abutting the four

corners, where the old United States road bore off westward to Bucephalo

and the lakes, the few score houses were set far back from the highway

in a wilderness of shrubbery, secluded by hedges and shaded by an almost

primeval growth of elms or maples. The whole hamlet might be mistaken

for a lordly park or an old-fashioned German Spa. Family marketing was

mostly done in Warchester; hence the village shops were like Arabian

bazaars, few but all-supplying. The most pregnant evidence of the

approach of modern ways that tinged the primitive color of the village

life, was the then new railway skirting furtively through the meadows on

the northern limits, as if decently ashamed of intruding upon such

idyllic tranquillity. The little Gothic station, cunningly hidden behind

a clustering grove of oaks at a respectful distance from the Corners,

like the lodge of a great estate, reconciled those who had at first

fought the iron mischief-maker.

The public edifices of the town--the Episcopal church, the free academy,

the bank, the young ladies' seminary--were very unlike such institutions

in the bustling, treeless towns of to-day. Corinthian columns and Greek

friezes adorned these architectural evidences of Acredale's affluence

and taste. The village had grown up on private grounds, conceded to the

public year by year as the children and dependents of the founders

increased. The Spragues were the founders, and they had never been

anxious to alienate their patrimony. Acredale is not now the sylvan

sanctuary of rural simplicity it was thirty years ago--before the war.

The febrile tentacles of Warchester had not yet reached out to make its

vernal recesses the court quarter for the "new rich." In Jack Sprague's

young warrior days the village was three miles from the most suburban

limits of the city. There was not even a horse-car, or, as fashionable

Warchesterians have it, a "tram," to remind the tranquil villagers that

life had any need more pressing than a jaunt to the post twice a day.

Some "city folks" did hold villas on the outskirts, but they used them

only for short seasons in the late summer, when the air at the lake

began to grow too sharp for outdoor pleasures.

Society in the place was patriarchal as an English shire town. The large

Sprague mansion, about which the village clustered at a respectful

distance, was the "Castle" of local phrase. Much of the glory of early

days had departed, however, when the Senator--Jack's papa--died. The

widow found herself unable to maintain the affluent state her lord had

loved. His legal practice, rather than the wide acres of his domain, had

supported a hospitality famous from Bucephalo to Washington. But with

prudent management the family had abundance, and, as Jack often said, he

was a fortune in himself. When the time came he would revive the

splendors his father loved to associate with the home of his ancestors.

"But where are we to get this splendor now, Jack?" Olympia inquired, as

the youth was dilating to his mother on the wonders to come. "Private

soldiers get just thirteen dollars a month; and if you continue

smoking--as I am informed all men do in the army--I expect to have to

stint my pin-money expenses to eke out your tobacco bills."

"Oh, I'll bring home glory. Napoleon said that every soldier carried a

marshal's _bâton_ in his knapsack."

"I'm afraid you won't have room for it if you carry all the things that

I know of intended for you in this and other families."

"Yes; but, Polly, you know, or perhaps you don't know, a _bâton_ is like

a college love--no matter how full your heart is, you can always find

room for another!"

"John," Mistress Sprague reproves mildly; "how can you? I don't like to

hear my son talk like that even in jest. Don't get the idea that it is

soldierly to treat sacred things with levity. Love is a very sacred

thing; it ought to be part of a man's religion; it was of your

father's."

"Then Jack must be a high priest, for there are a dozen girls here and

in the city who believe themselves enshrined in that elastic heart."

"Olympia, you are a baleful influence on your brother. If anything could

reconcile me to his going it is the thought that he will escape the

extraordinary speech and manners you have brought back from New York. Do

the Misses Pomfret graduate all their young ladies with such a tone and

laxity of speech as you have lately shown? Strangers would naturally

think that you had no training at home."

"Don't fear, mamma; strangers are not favored with my lighter vein; I

assume that for you and Jack, to keep your minds from graver things. I

preserve the senatorial suavity of speech and the Sprague austerity of

manner 'before folks,' as Aunt Merry would say. Which reminds me, Jack,

Kitty Moore declares that you are responsible for Barney's enlisting.

The family look to you to bring him home safe--a colonel at least."

"Well, by George, I like that! Why, the beggar was bent on going long

ago. He was the first to ask me to run away and enlist. The other day he

wanted me to have him sworn in, and I told him to wait until--until I

got a commission." Jack was going to say until he was older, but he

suddenly recollected that Barney was his own age, and that, in view of

his mother's argument, struck him as unfortunate. He saw Olympia smiling

mischievously and turned the subject abruptly. "I suppose you know,

Polly, that Vincent is going home to join the rebels?"

"Is he?" She had turned swiftly to gather a ball of worsted, and when it

was secured began to rummage in her work-basket for something that

seemed from her intentness to be vitally necessary to her at the moment.

"Yes, he wrote to President Grandison that he should go as soon as his

passports and remittances came. He's promised a captain's commission.

I'm very, very sorry. Vint is the noblest of fellows. I hate to think of

him in the rebel army."

"That's the reason you half killed him the other day, I suppose,"

Olympia said, sweetly, still investigating the contents of the basket.

"What, John, you've not been in a broil--fighting?" and Mistress Sprague

could not, even in imagination, go further in such an odious direction,

and let her eyes finish the interrogatory.

Jack, a good deal subdued by what Olympia had left unsaid, rather than

what she had said, blurted out: "It was a campus shindy: Vint led the

rebel side and they got licked, that's all."

"Oh, was that all?" Olympia had ended her search in the basket and

fastened a glance of satiric good humor upon the culprit, which did not

tend to relieve the awkwardness of the moment. Jack blushed under the

glance and began to hum an air from Figaro, as if the conversation had

ebbed into an impass from which it could only be rescued by a

lively air.

Mrs. Sprague looked at the uneasy warrior, then at her daughter, darting

the crochet-needles placidly through the wool.

"Well," she said, "never mind what's past; we must have Vincent out here

for a visit before he goes. I must send Mrs. Atterbury a number of

things. I hope she won't think that we intend to let the war make any

difference in our feeling toward the family."

Jack was very glad to set out at once for his quondam foe, and in ten

minutes was driving down the road to Warchester. Vincent's bruises were

nearly healed, and he saluted Jack as a "chum" rather than as the agent

of his late discomfiture.

"I'm mighty glad you've come to day. I didn't know whether you meant to

break off or not. I don't cherish any rancor. I don't see any use in

carrying the war into friendships. We made the best fight we could. We

did better than your side. You had the most men and the biggest fellows.

We showed good pluck, if we did get licked. If you hadn't come to-day I

should have been gone without seeing you, for I began to think that you

were as narrow as these prating abolitionists. My commission is ready

for me now at Richmond, and I'm just aching to get my regimentals on.

I'm to be with Johnston in the Shenandoah, you know, and--"

"You mustn't tell me your army plans, Vint. I'm a soldier," and Jack

drew himself up with martial pomposity, "and--and--perhaps I ought to

arrest you now as an enemy, you know. I will look in the articles of war

and find out my duty in such cases." Jack waved his arm reassuringly, as

if to bid the rebel take heart for the moment--he would not hurry in the

matter. Vincent eyed his comrade with such a woe-begone mingling of

alarm and comic indignation that Jack forgot his possible part as agent

of his country's laws, and said, soothingly: "Never mind, Vint, I'm not

really a full soldier in the technical sense until the regiment is

mustered in at Washington. After that, of course, you know very well it

would he treason to give aid or comfort to the country's enemies."

Vincent didn't leave next day, nor for a good many days. He seemed to

get a good deal of "aid and comfort" from those who should have been his

enemies. Mistress Sprague found that he was not in a fit state to

travel; that he needed nursing to prepare him for his journey, and that

no place was so fit as the great guest-chamber in the baronial Sprague

mansion, near his friend Jack. Strange to say, Vincent's eagerness to

get to Richmond and his shoulder-straps were forgotten in the agreeable

pastimes of the big house, where he spent hours enlightening Olympia on

the wonders the Southern soldiers were to perform and the glory that he

(Vincent) was to win. He went of a morning to the post-office, where

Jack was installed recruiting-agent for Acredale township, and made very

merry over the homespun stuff enrolled in defense of the Union.

"Our strapping cavaliers will make short work of your gawky bumpkins;"

he remarked to Jack as the recruits loitered about the wide, shaded

streets, waiting to be forwarded to the rendezvous.

"Don't be too sure of that. These young, boyish-looking fellows are just

the sort of men that met the British at Bunker Hill. They laughed too,

when they saw them; but they didn't laugh after they met them, nor will

your cavaliers," Jack cried, loftily.

"But there's not a full-grown man among all these I've seen. How do you

suppose they are to endure march and battle? None of them can ride. All

our young men ride, and cavalry is the main thing in modern armies."

In the Sprague parlors conversation of this risky sort was eschewed.

Mistress Sprague was anxious that the son of her oldest friend should

return to his mother with only the memory of amiable hospitality in his

heart to show that, although war raged between the people, families were

still friends. Vincent's mother had been one of Mistress Sprague's

bridesmaids, and it was her wish that the children might grow up in the

old kindly ties. So Vincent was made much of. There were companies every

night, and drives and boating in the afternoons, and such merry-making

as it was thought a lad of his years would enjoy. He was a very

entertaining guest; that all Acredale had known in the old vacations

when, with his sister, the pretty Rosa, he spent a summer with

the Spragues.

But, now that there was to be a separation involving the unknown in its

vaguest form, the lad was treated with a tenderness that made the swift

days very sweet to the young rebel. It was from Olympia that he met the

only distinct formality in the manners of his hosts. He had known and

adored her in a boyish way for years, and now, as he contemplated going,

he thought that she ought to exhibit something of the old-time warmth.

In other days she had ridden, walked, and flirted to his heart's desire.

Now she avoided him when Jack was not at hand, and when she talked it

was in a flippant vein that drove him wild with baffled hope. The day

before he was to bid the kind house adieu he had his wish. She was

riding with him over the shaded roadway that curves in bewildering

beauty toward the lake. She seemed in a gentler mood than he had lately

seen her. They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal

awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency.

"There's only one thing hateful to me in this war," he said, caressing

the arching neck of his horse, "and that is, the better we do our duty

as soldiers the more sorrow we must bring upon our own friends."

"That's a rather solemn view to take of what Jack regards as the path of

glory."

"Oh, you know what I mean: under the flag there can or ought to be no

friendships--the bullet sent from the musket, the sword drawn in light,

must be aimed blindly. It might be my fate, for example, to meet

Jack, to--to--"

"Yes," Olympia laughed demurely, ignoring the sentimental aspect of

Vincent's remark. "Yes, that might paralyze the arm of valor; but, then,

you and Jack have met before, when duty demanded one thing and affection

another: I don't see that the dilemma softened the blows, or that either

of you are any the worse for them."

Vincent was the real Southerner of his epoch--impulsive, sentimental,

ardent in all that he espoused, without the slightest notion of humor,

though imaginative as a dreamer; love, war, and his State, Virginia,

were passions that he thought it a duty to uphold at any and all times.

He colored under the girl's satiric sally. If she had been a man he

would have bid her to battle on the spot. Her sly fun and gentle malice

he resented as insulting, coarse, and unwomanly. He flashed a look of

piteous, surprised reproach at her as she flecked the flies from the

neck of her horse. He rode along moodily--too angry, too wretched to

trust himself to speak, for he felt sure he must say something bitter.

But, as she gave no sign of resuming the discourse, he was forced to

take up the burden again. Venturing nearer her side, he said in a

conciliating, argumentative tone, as if he had not heard the

foregoing speech:

"Do you know, it seems to me, Olympia, that you of the North do not seem

to realize the seriousness of the war, the determination of our side to

make the South free? Here you go about the common business of life,

parties, balls, dress, and all the follies of peace, as if war could not

affect you at all. Your newspapers are full of coarse jokes at the

expense of your own soldiers, your own President. There seems no

devotion to your own cause, such as we feel in the South. I believe that

if put to a vote more than half the North would side with us to-day."

CHAPTER III.

MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE.

Olympia had been jogging along, apparently oblivious to everything but

the blazing vision of sun and cloud above the lake, purpling shapes of

mirage, reflecting the smooth surface of the glowing water. But as the

young man's voice--fallen into a melodious murmur--ceased, she took up

the theme with unexpected earnestness.

"That's the error the South has made from the first. You know my father

was a public man. I have been educated more at our dinner-table and in

his talks with guests than at school. That is, the things that have

taken strongest hold of my mind young girls rarely hear or understand.

Now I think I can tell you something that may be of value to you in

official places where you are going. The North is not only in

earnest--it is religiously in earnest. If you know Puritan history you

know what that means. For example: if Jack had hesitated a moment or

made delay to get rank in the army, I should have abhorred him. So would

our mother, though she seems to be dismayed at his serving as a common

soldier. I adore Jack; I think him the finest, the most perfect nature

after my father's--that lives. But I give him up gladly, because to keep

him would be to degrade him. We know that he may fall; that he may come

back to us a cripple or worse. But, as you see, we make no sign. Not a

line of routine has been changed in the house. Jack will march away and

never see a tear in my eye or feel my pulse tremble. It is not in our

Northern blood to give much expression to sentiment, but we feel none

the less deeply--much more deeply, I think, than you exuberant

Southerners; you are impulsive, mercurial, and fickle."

"Oh, don't say that: I can't bear to hear you say it; we have deep

feelings, we are constant, true as steel, chivalrous--"

"Yes, you are delightful people; but you are always living in the past.

Shall I say it? You are womanlike; you can't reason. What you want at

the moment is right, and only that; with us nothing is real until we

have tried and proved it. If you count on Northern apathy you will soon

see your mistake. When Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter the North was of

one mind, and will stay so until all is again as it was."

"Pray don't let us talk on this subject. I'm free to own that it does

not interest me. Then," he added adroitly, "you are readier in argument

than I, because you were brought up in it. But what I want to say is,

that it seems base for me to turn upon the goodness I have met in this

house, and--and--"

"But you need not turn. In battle do your duty like a man. If it should

fall to you to do a kindness to the wounded, do it in memory of the

friends you have here. War is less savage now than it was when your

ancestors and mine tortured each other in the name of God and the king."

"All murder is done for love of one sort or another: war is love of

country; revenge is love of some one else--men rarely kill from hate,"

Vincent stammered, his heart beating at the nearness of what he was

dying to say.

"In that case I hope I shall he hated. I shall shun people who love me,"

and with that she struck the horse a lively tap and soon was far ahead

of her tongue-tied wooer. Was this a challenge? Vincent asked himself,

as he sped after her. When he reached her side the tender words were

chilled on his lips, for Olympia had in her laughing eye the, to him,

odious expression he saw there when she made the irritating speech about

himself and Jack a few minutes before. Fearing a teasing retort, he

bridled the tender outburst and rode along pensively, revolving pretexts

for another day's stay in Acredale. But when they reached home he found

an imperative mandate to set out at once, as his lingering in the North

was subjecting himself and kinsmen to doubt among the zealous partisans

of the Davis party. Olympia was alone in the library when he ran down to

tell Jack that he must start at once. He took it as an omen, and said,

confusedly:

"It is decided; I must go in the morning."

As this had been the plan all along, she looked up at him in surprise,

not knowing, of course, that he had been thinking of putting off the

fixed time.

"Yes, everything has been made ready; Jack will take you to Warchester,

and we shall drive over to see you _en route_."

"It is fortunate the letter from my mother came to-night." He stood

quite, over her chair, his eyes glittering strangely, his

manner excited.

"Do you know what they think at home? They say that I--I am not true to

my cause; that my heart is with the North--that I want to stay here."

"They won't think that when they hear you, as we have, breathing fury

and wrath against the Lincolnites," Olympia briskly replied, as if to

proffer her services as witness to his misguided loyalty to the South.

"Ah, don't be so ungenerous, now--at this time. I never talk like that

now--here--never before you." He hesitated, and his voice dropped. "Why

will you put a fellow in a ridiculous light? Your sneers almost make me

ashamed of my honest pride in my State--my enthusiasm for our

sacred cause."

"Deep feeling isn't so easily shaken; true love should brave all

things--even sneers and blows."

"If I should tell you that I loved somebody, I am sure you would make me

seem ridiculous or ignorant of my own mind."

"Then pray be wise and don't tell me. It's bad enough to be in love,

without being photographed in the agony."

He looked at her in angry perplexity. Could she ever be serious? Was all

the tenderness of the past only heedless coquetry? Had she danced with

him, drove with him, sailed with him, walked in the moonlight and made

much of him in mere wanton mischief? What right had she to be so pretty

and so--without heart or sensibility? A Southern girl with the word love

on a young man's lips would have become a Circe of seductive wooing

until the tale were told, even though she could not give her heart

in return.

"I--I am going to-morrow, you know, and--" Then he almost laughed

himself, for the droll inconsequence of this intelligence, after what

had passed, touched even his small sense of humor. "O Olympia, I mean

that I shall be far away: that I shall not see you after to-morrow.

Won't you say something to encourage me--to give me heart for

the future?"

"Let me see," and she leaned on her elbow musingly, as if construing his

words literally, and quite unaware of the tender intent of his prayer.

"It ought to be a line to go on your sword--there's where you have the

advantage of poor Jack, he has only a musket. But, no, you being a

Southerner, have a coat of arms, and the line must go on that. I used to

know plenty of stirring phrases suitable to young men setting out for

the wars. Perhaps you know them, too; they are to be found in the

copy-books. 'The pen is mightier than the sword' wouldn't do, would it?

Pens are only fit for poets and men of peace? We should have something

brief and epigrammatic. 'That hour is regal when the sentinel mounts on

guard.' There is sublimity in that, but you won't go on guard, being

an officer.

'No blood-stained woes in mankind's story

Should daunt the heart that's set on glory.'

"That's too trivial--the sort of doggerel for newspaper poets' corners

rather than a warrior's shield.

'Think on the perils that environ

The man that meddles with cold iron!'

"That's too much like a caution, and a soldier's motto should urge to

daring. So we'll none of that. What do you say to the distich in honor

of your great ancestor, Pocahontas's husband, John Smith:

'I never yet knew a warrior but thee,

From wine, tobacco, debt, and vice so free.'

"Perhaps, however, that might be regarded as vaunting over your

comrades, who, I've no doubt, relax the tedium of war in temperate

indulgence of some of these vices. 'Put up thy sword; states may be

saved without it,' would sound out of keeping for a warrior whose States

drew the sword when the olive-branch was offered them. You see, I can

not select any text quite suitable to your case?"

"O Olympia, I did not believe you could be so heartless! Be serious."

"Well, Mr. Soldier, if you insist, I know nothing better for a warrior

to bear in mind in war than these simple lines:

'The bravest are the tenderest,

The loving are the daring.'"

"You are right, Olympia--those are noble lines. It gives me courage; the

loving are the daring! I love you; I dare to tell you that I love you!

Ah, Olympia, I love you so well that I have been traitor to my

fatherland! I have loitered here in the hope that you would give me some

sign--some word to take with me in the dark path Fate has set for me

to follow."

He came back to her side now, passion and zeal in his shining eyes,

ardent, elate, expectant. But she put the hand behind her that he

reached out to seize as he fell upon one knee by her chair. Her voice

softened and a warm light shone in her eye when she spoke:

"I beg you to get up; we cold-blooded people up here don't understand

that old-fashioned way." As he started back with something like a groan,

she gave him a quick glance that electrified him. He seized her hand

before she could snatch it away and pressed it to his lips.

"Pray be serious. You are too young to talk of love."

"I am twenty-two; my father was married at nineteen."

"No, dear Vincent, don't talk of this now. You don't know your own mind

yet. I am sure that when you go home and think over the matter you will

see that it would be impossible, but, even if you were sure of yourself,

I never could think of it. You are going to take up arms against all I

hold dear and sacred. If I were your affianced, with the love for you

that you deserve, I would break the pledge when you joined in arms

against my family and country."

"You have known for years, Olympia, that I loved you; that I was only

waiting to finish college to tell you of my love. Why didn't you

tell me--"

"Tell you what?"

"I say, Polly," Jack cried, bursting in, radiant and eager. "I have the

last man of the one hundred--" Observing Vincent he stopped. It seemed

to him a sort of treason to talk of his regiment before the man who was

so soon to be in the ranks against them. "Oh, I can't tell our secrets

before the enemy," he ended, jocosely. The word went to Vincent's heart

like the prod of sharp steel. He gave Olympia one pathetic glance, and,

without a word, hastened from the room. In spite of a great many adroit

efforts, Vincent could get no further speech with Olympia alone that

night. Early in the morning he was driven, with Mrs. Sprague and Jack to

the station. Olympia sent down excuses and adieus, alleging some not

incredible ailing of the sort that is always gallantly at the disposal

of damsels not minded to do things people expect.

Presently, when the lorn lover had been gone three days, a letter came

from Washington to Olympia, and, though it was handed to her by her

mother, the maiden made no proffer to confide its contents to the

naturally curious parent. But we, who can look over the reader's

shoulder, need not be kept in the dark.

"Dear Olympia" (the letter said), "it was hard to leave

without a last word. All the way here I have been thinking

of our little talk--if that can be called a talk where one

side has lost his senses and the other is trifling or mystifying.

I told you that I loved you. I thrill even yet with

the joy of that. You are so wayward and capricious, so

coy, that I began to fear that I never could get your car long

enough to tell you what I felt you must have long known. You

didn't say that you loved me; but, dear Olympia, neither did

you say that you did not. The rose has fallen on the hem

of your robe. When its fragrance steals into your senses,

you will stoop and put the blossom in your bosom. It is the

war that divides us, you say. It will soon pass. And who

knows what may happen to make you glad that, since there

must be strife, I am one of the enemy rather than a stranger?

I feel that we shall be brought together in danger, when it

may be my happiness to serve you or yours. But, even if I

am not so favored, I shall still ask your love. You know

our Southern ways. Whom I love my mother loves. But

my mother and sister Rosa have loved you long and dearly.

They have known you as long as I have, and when you consent

to come to us you will take no stranger's place in the

heart and home of the family. Remember the motto you

gave me. You are a woman, therefore tender; I am daring,

Heaven knows, in aspiring to such a reward as your love.

But I dare to love you; if you cast that love from you, love

will lose its tenderness, bravery its daring. One of the high

mountains of hope whereon I sun my fainting soul is the

knowledge that you love no one else. I won't say that you

should in love hold to the ride 'first come first served,' but I

do say, 'first dare, first win.' And when you reflect on what

you said about the accident of war separating us, just put

Jack in my place. What would you think of a Southern

girl who should refuse him because he fought on the side of

his family and his State? What is the old line? 'I could

not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.' I'm

sure I couldn't ask your love if there were not honor in my

own. The war will be over and forgotten in six months,

but you and I are young; we have long years before us.

The right will win in the contest, and, right or wrong, I am

yours, and only yours, while there are life in my body and

hope in my soul. VINCENT."

In a little glow of what was plainly not displeasure, the young woman

"filed" this "writ of pre-emption," as Jack afterward called it, in

careful hiding, and resumed meditation of the writer. It could not now

be answered, for letters between the lines were subject to censorship,

and Olympia perhaps shrank from adding to her lover's misery by exposing

his rejection to the unfeeling eyes of the postal agents. There was pity

in the resolve as well as prudence. Had Vincent been able to read the

workings of the lady's mind, he would have donned his rebel gray with

more buoyant joy that day in Richmond. Another ally of the absent came

in the course of the day. Miss Boone, the daughter of the opulent

contractor and chief local magnate, called to plan work for the

soldiers. Vincent's name being mentioned, Miss Boone said, in the

apparent effusion of girlish intimacy:

"I like Mr. Atterbury very much. He is a charming fellow. But, for your

family's sake, I am glad he is away from this house." At Olympia's

surprised start she nodded as if to emphasize this, continuing: "Yes,

and for good reasons. You know our house is the high court of

abolitionism? Well, papa's cronies have made Mr. Atterbury's visit cause

of suspicion."

"Suspicion? What do you mean?"

Miss Boone was paling and blushing painfully. "Dear Olympia, I hate to

say it; but you should know it. You will hear it elsewhere. Cruel things

like this always come out. You know that feeling has been very bitter

here since the dreadful attack on the Massachusetts soldiers in

Baltimore? Radicals make no distinction between Democrats and rebels,

and--I'm to say it--but Mr. Atterbury is charged with being a spy

here--and--and your family, being Democrats, are thought to sympathize

with the rebels. Of course, your friends know better. I and many more

know that the Atterburys and Spragues have been intimate for thirty

years. But in war-time people seem to lose their senses and change their

opinions like lake breezes; prejudices grow like gourds, and the people

who do least and talk loudest make public sentiment."

"What an outrageous state of things!" Olympia cried, hotly. "Our family

sympathize with traitors indeed! Why, it was my father who, in the

Senate, upheld Jackson when he stamped out South Carolina in its

rebellion. Oh! it is monstrous, such a calumny. Why, just think of it!

The only man in the family is a private soldier, when he might have been

high in rank, with such influences as we could bring to bear. O Kate! it

almost makes one pray for a defeat to punish such ingrates!"

"Yes; but for Heaven's sake don't let any one hear you say such a

thing--for your brother's sake! He is already the victim of the feeling

I have spoken about. He was to have had the captaincy of the first one

hundred men he raised. But the Governor has been made to change the

usual rule, and the colonel is to appoint the officers."

"And Jack isn't to have a commission?"

"No, not now; only men of the war party are to be made officers."

"Good heavens! Nobody could be more eager for the war than Jack. It is

his passion. His delight in it shocks my mother, who hates war. What

stronger evidence of sympathy for the cause could he show than joining

the army before finishing college?"

"But he is a Democrat--and--and--only Republicans are to be trusted at

first." Miss Boone blushed as she stammered this, for it was her own

father, in his function as chairman of the war committee, who had

insisted upon this discrimination. Worse still, but this Kate did not

mention--it was Boone's own work that kept Jack from his expected

epaulets. There had long been a feud between Boone and the late Senator

Sprague, and Olympia conjectured most of what the daughter reserved.

"Your brother has done wonders, everybody says; he has the finest

fellows in the township, and he ought to be colonel, at least," Miss

Boone said, rising to go.

"Oh, I have no fear that he will not win his way," Olympia replied,

cheerfully. "The brave in battle are captains, no matter what rank

they hold."

The odious partisanship and ready calumny of her own compatriots gave a

strange bent to her mind in dealing with another problem. Vincent, too,

had suffered from the wretched battle of his family's enemies. After

all, might he not be right? Might the war not be a mere game of havoc

played by the base and unscrupulous? Country, right or wrong, had been

her family watchword since her ancestor flew to fight the British

invaders. It was Jack's watchword, too, and his conduct in battle should

put these wretches to shame. She thought more kindly of the rebel in

this vengeful mood, and straightway ran up-stairs, where, sitting by the

open window and lulled by the piping of the robins, she took the letter

from its pretty covert, read it again with heightened color, and,

smiling rosily at the face she saw in the mirror, raised it to her lips

and sighed softly.

When a whole people have but one thought in mind that thought becomes

mania. Acredale had but this one thought, "Beat rebellion and punish

rebels." "On to Richmond!" was the cry, and forming ranks to go there

the business that everybody took in hand. These had been great days to

Jack. He began to feel something of the burden that a feudal chief must

have borne at the summoning of the clans. So soon as it spread in the

country-side that "young Sprague had 'listed," all the "ageable" sons of

the soil were fired with a burning zeal to take up arms and bear him

company. Boys from sixteen to twenty these were for the most part, and

there was bitter grumbling when Jack firmly refused to take the names of

any under twenty. Some he solaced with a gun, a pistol, or such object

as he knew was dear to the country boy's heart. They returned to the

relieved hearthstone loud in Jack's praise, having his promise to enlist

them when they were twenty, if the war lasted so long; and if the wise

smiled at this, wasn't it well known that the great army now gathering

was to set out at latest by the 4th of July? And didn't everybody know

that it was going to march direct to Richmond? There were trying scenes

too, in the _rôle_ Jack had assumed so gayly. He began to see that war

had ministers of pain and sorrow hardly less cruel than those dealing

death and wounds. Tearful parents came to him day by day to beg his help

in restoring sons who had fled to the wars. Others came to warn him that

if their boys applied to him he must refuse them, as they were

under age.

In this list the Perley sisters, Dick's three maiden aunts, came on a

respectful embassy to implore Jack to discourage their nephew, who had

quite deserted school and gave all his time to drilling with the

"college squad." Jack pledged himself that he would hand Dick over to

the justice of the peace, to be detained at the house of refuge, if he

didn't give up his evil designs. But, when that young aspirant appeared,

so soon as his aunts had gone, and reminded Jack of years of intimate

companionship in dare-deviltry, the elder saw that his own safety would

be in flight, and that night, his company was removed to Warchester.

There in the great camp, surrounded by sentinels, his Acredale cronies

were shut out, and Jack began in earnest his soldier life.

CHAPTER IV.

GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE.

The shifting of Jack's company to the regimental camp in Warchester left

a broad gap in the lines of the social life of Acredale. Jack's going

alone, to say nothing of the others, would have eclipsed the gayety of

many home groups besides his own, in which the Sprague primacy in a

social sense was acknowledged. Since the influx of the new-made rich,

under the stimulus of the war and Acredale's advantages as a resort,

there were a good many who disputed the Sprague leadership--tacitly

conceded rather than asserted. Chief of the dissidents was Elisha Boone,

who, by virtue of longer tenure, vast wealth, and political precedence,

divided not unequally the homage paid the patrician family. Boone was

fond of speaking of himself as a "self-made man," and the satirical were

not slow to add that he had no other worship than his "creator." This

was a gibe made rather for the antithesis than its accuracy, for even

Boone's enemies owned that he was a good neighbor, and, where his

prejudices were not in question, a man with few distinctly repellent

traits. He delighted in showing his affluence--not always in good taste.

He filled his fine house with bizarre crowds, and made no stint to his

friends who needed his purse or his influence. He had in the early days

when he came to Acredale aspired to political leadership in the

Democratic party.

But Senator Sprague was too firmly enshrined in the loyalty of the

district to be overcome by the parvenu's manoeuvres or his money. His

ambition in time turned to rancor as he marked the patrician's

disdainful disregard of his (Boone's) efforts to supplant him. Hatred of

the Spragues became something like a passion in Boone. Sarcasms and

disparagement leveled at his social and political pretensions he

attributed to the Senator and his family. All sorts of slurs and gossip

were reported to him by busybodies, until it became a settled purpose

with Boone to make the Sprague family feel heavy heart-burnings for the

sum of the affronts he had endured. It was to them he attributed the

whispered gibes about his illiteracy; his shady business methods; the

awful story of his handiwork in the ruin of Richard Perley, the

spendthrift brother of the Misses Perley. Once, too, when he had so well

manipulated the district delegates that he was sure of nomination in the

convention, Senator Sprague had hurried home from Washington and

defeated him just as the prize was in his grasp. The Senator made a

speech to the delegates, in which he pointedly declared that it was men

of honor and brains, not men of money, that should be chosen to make

the laws.

"The time will come, Senator, that you'll be sorry for this hour's

work," Boone said, joining Sprague at the door as he was leaving

the hall.

"How's that?" the other asked, with just the shade of superciliousness

in the tone admired in the Senate for suavity. "I hope I am always sorry

when I do wrong, in speech or act; I teach my children to be."

"Well, if you think it right to run the party for a few lordly idlers

too proud to mix with the people--men who think they are better born and

better bred than the rest of us--I don't want to have anything more to

do with it. I will go elsewhere."

"That's your privilege, sir. The Whigs have plenty of room for self-made

men. Though I do think you are taking too personal a view of to-day's

contest, your defeat was purely a matter of duty. Moore, whom we have

chosen, was a poor Irish settler here before you came. He was promised

the nomination two years ago." With a lofty bow the Senator turned and

stalked in another direction as if he did not care for the other's

further company. Even this small and wholly unintended affront worked in

the poor, misjudging victim of morbid self-esteem, as a cinder in the

eye will torture and blind the sufferer to all the landscape. Boone

mingled no more with the Democrats. He threw himself with the fervor of

the convert into the radical wing of the Whigs, and was brought into

close relation with some of the most admired of the band of great men

who created the young Republican party. If Douglas, Dickinson, Cass, Van

Buren, Seymour, or any eminent Democrat passing through Warchester

stopped to break bread with their colleague Sprague in his Acredale

retreat, straightway the splendid Sumner, the Ciceronian Phillips, or

the Walpole-Seward, or some other of the shining galaxy of agitators,

whose light so shone before men that the whole land was presently

brought out of darkness, met at Boone's table to maintain the balance in

distinction.

It was Boone's liberal purse that paid the expenses of the memorable

campaign in the Warchester district, wherein the Democrats were first

shaken in their hold. It was his money that finally secured the seat in

Congress for Oswald, who was his tenant and debtor. It was therefore no

surprise when Oswald--who had been greatly aided in business affairs by

Senator Sprague--passed over the prior claims of his old patron's son,

and gave the cadetship to Wesley Boone, the son of his new liege. It was

looked upon as another step in the ladder of gratitude when Wesley

carried off the captaincy in the Acredale company, though everybody knew

that young Boone was not in any way so well fitted for the "straps" as

Jack. When one day an item appeared in the local paper to the effect

that President Lincoln had shown the "sagacity for which he was so well

known, in honoring our distinguished townsman, Elisha Boone, Esq., with

the appointment of ambassador to Russia," everybody thought the

statement only natural. There were many congratulations. But when,

having declined this splendid proffer, the authorities pressed the place

of "Assistant Secretary of the Treasury" upon their townsman, the whole

village awoke to the fact that all its greatness had not gone when

Senator Sprague was gathered to his fathers.

The event was potent as the cross Constantine saw, or dreamed he saw, in

the sky, in the conversion of party workers to the new Administration.

Everybody looked forward to an eminent future for the potent partisan

and millionaire, the first of that--now not uncommon--hierarchy that

replace the feudal barons in modern social forces. Had he listened to

the eager urging of Kate, his daughter and prime minister, Boone would

have accepted the foreign mission; but he stubbornly refused to listen

to her in this.

Kate Boone was like her father only in strong will, vehement purpose,

and a certain humorous independence that made her a great delight among

even the anti-Boone partisans in both Acredale and Warchester. Since the

death of her mother, Kate had been head of her father's household--an

imperious, capricious, kind-hearted tyrant, who ruled mostly by jokes

and persuasions of the gentler sort. It was her father's one lament that

Kate was not "the boy of the family, for she had more of the stuff that

makes the man in her little finger than Wes had in his whole body." She

kept him in a perpetual unrest of delight and dismay. She espoused none

of his piques or prejudices; she was as apt to bring people he disliked

to his dinner-table as those he liked. She was forever making him

forgive wrongs, or what he fancied to be wrongs, and causing him seem at

fault in all his squabbles, so that he was often heard to say, when

things went as he didn't want them:

"I don't know whether I am to blame or the other fellow until Kate hears

the story."

His illiteracy and lack of polish were the secret grief of the rich

man's life. Kate was quick in detecting this. Much of it she saw was due

to the shyness that unschooled men feel in the presence of college men,

or those who have been trained. On returning from her seminary life, the

young girl set about remedying the single break in her father's

perfections. She was far too clever to let him know her ambitious

purpose. With a patience almost maternal and an exquisite adroitness,

she interested him in her own reading, which was comprehensive, if not

very well ordered. But she won the main point. During the long winter

evenings her father found no pleasure like that Kate had always ready

for him in the cheery library. He was soon amazed at his keen interest

in the world of mind unrolled to his understanding; more than all, he

retained with the receptivity of a boy all that was read to him. Kate

made believe that she needed his help in reviewing her own studies, and

so carried him through all she had gone over in the seminary classes.

Boone began presently to see that education is not the result of mere

attendance in schools and the parroting of the classics in a few

semesters in college. Without suspecting it, his varied business

enterprises and his wide experience of men had grounded him as well in

the ordinary forms of knowledge as nine in ten college men attain.

"Education, after all, papa, is like a trade. A man may be able to

handle all the tools and not know their names. Now, you are a

well-informed man, but, because you didn't know logic, grammar,

scientific terms, and the like, you thought yourself ignorant."

In the new confidence in himself he was surprised at his own ability in

launching a subject in the presence of his eminent friends when

especially Kate was on hand to support the conversation. She got him not

only to buy fine pictures, as most rich men do, but she made him see

wherein their value lay, so that when artists and amateurs came to

admire his treasures, he could talk to them without gross solecisms.

"I'm not a liberal education to you, papa, as Steele said of the Duchess

of Devonshire. That implies too much, but I am an index. You can find

out what you need to know by keeping track of my ignorance."

Elisha Boone's domestic circle was a termagancy--as Kate often told his

guests--tempered by wit and good-humor. He was prouder of his daughter

than of his self-made rank or his revered million. In moments of

expansive good-nature he invited business or political associates to

"Acre Villa," as his place was called, to enjoy the surprise Kate's

graces wrought in the guests. But these were not always times of delight

to the doting parent. Kate was a shrewd judge of the amenities; and if

the personages who came, at the father's bidding, gave the least sign of

a not unnatural surprise to find a girl so well bred and self-contained

in the daughter of such a man as Boone, she became very frigid and left

the father to do the honors of the evening visit. No entreaty could move

her to reappear on the scene. In time, the prodigal papa was careful to

submit a list of the names of his proposed guests, as chamberlains give

royalty a descriptive list of those to be bidden to court.

Kate was on terms that, if not cordial, were not constrained, with the

Spragues. She had gone to the same seminary with Olympia, had danced

with Jack, and, in the cadetship affair, had plainly given her opinion

that her brother Wesley, having no taste or fitness for military life,

Jack, who had, should have the prize. But two motives entered into the

father's determination: one was to annoy and humiliate the Spragues; the

other, the sleepless craving of the parvenu to get for his son what had

not been his, in spite of all the adulation paid him--the conceded

equality of social condition. The army was then, as I believe it is

considered now, the surest sign of higher caste in a democracy. Wesley,

by the mere right to epaulets, would be of the acknowledged gentility.

Nobody could sneer at him; no doors could be opened grudgingly when he

called. He would, in virtue of his West Point insignia, be a knighted

member of the blood royal of the republic. Some of this mysterious

unction would distill itself into the unconsecrated ichor of the rest of

the family, and Kate, as well as himself, would be part of the patrician

caste. The daughter looked upon all this good-humoredly; she shared none

of her father's morbid delusions on the subject. She rallied the cadet a

good deal on his mission. When Wesley, after the June examinations,

which he passed by the narrowest squeeze--'twas said by outside

influence--came home to display his cadet buttons and his neat gray

uniform in Acredale, Kate bantered the complacent young

warrior jocosely.

"We shall all have to live up to your shoulder-straps and brass buttons

after this, Wesley," she cried, as the proud young dandy strutted over

the arabesques of the library, where the delighted papa marched him, the

better to survey the boy's splendor. "And think of the fate that awaits

you if, in the esteem of Acredale, you should turn out less than a

Napoleon."

"Be serious, Kate, and don't tease the boy. Wesley knows what's expected

of him; he has an opportunity to show what is in his stock. Thank God,

men in the North can now come to their own without going down on their

knees to the South!"

Wesley grinned. He was no match for his sister in the humorous bouts

waged over his head against his father's prejudices and cherished social

schemes. During the vacation she put a heavy penalty of raillery upon

his swelling pride and vanity, sarcasm that tried the paternal patience

as well as his own. Wesley, however, had a large fund of the philosophy

that comes from a high estimate of one's self. He was well favored in

looks and build, though somewhat effeminate, with his small hands and

carefully shod feet. He would have been called a "dude" had the word

been known in its present significance; as it was, he was regarded as a

coxcomb by the derisive group hostile to the father's social

pretensions. He was the first of the golden youth of his set to adopt

the then reviving mode of parting the hair on the middle of the head. In

the teeth of the village derision, he persisted in this with a tenacity

that Kate declared gave promise of a "Wellington." For many who had at

first adopted the foreign freak had been ridiculed out of it,

discouraged by the obstinate refusal of the generality to follow the

lead. In those sturdily primitive days the rich youth of the land had

not so universally gone abroad as they do now, and "the proper thing"

among the "well born" was not so distinctly laid down in the code of the

_élite_. The accent and manners that now mark "good form" seemed queer,

not to say _bouffe_, to even the first circles of home society, and the

first disciples of "Anglomania" had a very hard time polishing the raw

material. The home life of the Boones was something better and sincerer

than the impression made upon their neighbors by the father's invincible

push and high-handed ways. His daughter and son had been born to him in

middle age. They had the reverence for the parent marked in the conduct

of children who associate gray hairs with the venerable. With all her

strong sense and self-assertion, Kate was proud of the fact that she was

her father's daughter. It was a distinction to bear his name. His

solidity, his masterful will, his well-defined, if narrow, convictions,

were to her the sanctities one is apt to associate with lineage or

magistracy. Wesley, though less impressionable than his sister, shared

these secret devotions to the parent's parts, and bowed before his

father's behests, in the filial reverence of the sons of the patriarchs.

When Elisha Boone denounced the outbreak of John Brown at Harper's Ferry

as more criminal than Aaron Burr's treason, his children made his

prepossessions their own; when, three years later, the father proudly

eulogized the uprising he had so luridly condemned, his children saw no

tergiversation in the swift conversion. When to this full measure of lay

perfection the complexion of Levite godliness was superadded by election

to the deaconate in the Baptist Church, it will readily be seen that two

young people, in whom the hard worldliness of wealth and easy conditions

had not bred home agnosticism, were material for all the credulities of

parent worship. Kate, a year older than Wesley, soon encountered the

influences which gave the first shock to her faith and gradually

tinctured her sentiments with a clearer insight into her father's

character. Oddly enough, it was through the rival house this came.

Olympia, a sort of ablegate in the social hierarchy of the village, had

been thrown much with Kate, and was greatly amused with her point of

view in many of the snarls arising in a provincial society. The intimacy

had been begun in the New York school, where both had been in the same

classes, and, though the families saw nothing of each other, the girls

did. Kate was soon led to see that the Spragues had none of the

patrician pretension her father attributed to them. Jack, too, had made

much of her, and seemed to delight in her sharp retorts to the inanities

of would-be wits. The episode in Elisha Boone's life, that all his

success, wealth, and after exemplary conduct had not condoned in the

village mind, was his handiwork in the ruin of Richard Perley, I set

this down with something of the delight Carlyle expresses when in the

rubbish of history he found, among the shams called kings and nobles,

anything like a man.

It is worth the noting, this trait of Acredale, at a time when riches

and success are looked upon as condoning every breach of the decalogue.

Just how the intimacy between the two men came about was not known. It,

however, was known that when Boone first came to Acredale he had been

helped in his affairs by Dick Perley's lavish means. In a few years

Boone was the patron and Perley the client. As Boone grew rich Perley

grew poor, until finally all was gone. Then the fairest lands of the

Perley inheritance passed to Boone. It was the fireside history of the

whole Caribee Valley that the rich contractor had encouraged the ruined

gentleman in the excesses that ended the profligate's career; that the

two men had staked large sums at play in Bucephalo, and that inability

to meet his losses to Boone had caused Dick Perley's flight. He had been

seen by one of the village people a year or two before the war in

Richmond, and had been heard of in California later, but no word had

ever reached his family, not even when his wife died, two years after

his exile. There were those who said that Boone was in correspondence

with his victim, and it was known that drafts, made by Dick Perley, had

been paid by Boone at the bank in Warchester. Between Boone and the

Perley ladies, whose house was separated from "Acre Villa" by a wide

lawn and hedge, there had always been the tacit enmity that wrong on one

side and meek unreproach on the other breeds. The rancor that manifested

itself in Boone's treatment of the Misses Perley was not imitated by

them. They never alluded to their affluent neighbor, never suffered

gossip concerning the Boones in what Olympia humorously called the

"Orphic adytum," the "tabby-shop," as Wesley named the Perley parlors.

Young Dick, however, had none of the scruples that kept his aunts

silent. One dreadful day, when he had been nagged to fisticuffs with

Wesley, whose dudish dignity exacted a certain restraint with the

hot-headed youngster, Elisha Boone, behind the thick hedge, heard on the

highway outside his grounds this outrageous anathema:

"You're no more than a thief, Wes Boone; your father stole all he's got.

Some day I'll make him give it back, or send him to jail, where he ought

to be now."

Schoolboy though the railer was, Boone staggered against the hedge, the

words brought a dreadful flush and then a livid pallor to the miserable

parent's cheek. He dared not trust himself to speak then. Nor was the

antipathy the outbreak caused mitigated by the savage thrashing that

Wesley, throwing aside his dignity, proceeded to administer to the

unbridled accuser. After that, by the father's sternest command, neither

of his children was to return the courteous salutation the Perley ladies

had never ceased to bestow in meeting the Boones walking or in company.

Now, Dick was the kind of boy that those who know boy nature would call

adorable. To the Philistine, without humor or sympathy, I'm afraid he

was a very bad boy. He was until late in his teens painfully shy with

grown people and strangers; even under the eyes of his aunts and with

youths of his own age, diffident to awkwardness. He had the face of a

well-fed cherub and the gentle, dreamy, and wistful eye of a girl in

love. With his elders he had the halting, confused speech of a new boy

in a big school. But in the woods or on the playground he was the

merriest, most daring, and winningly obstreperous lad that ever filled

three maiden aunts with terror and delight.

CHAPTER V.

A NAPOLEONIC EPIGRAM.

For weeks the regiment expected every day the order to march. The guns

had been distributed and all their fascinating secrets mastered. In

evolution and manual the men regarded themselves as quite equal to the

regulars. The strict orders forbidding absence overnight were hardly

needed, as no one ventured far, fearing that the regiment would be

whirled away to Washington during the night. Had the men been older or

more experienced in war, the weeks of waiting would have been delightful

rather than dreary. The regiment was the object of universal interest in

the town. Base-ball and the alluring outdoor pastimes that now divert

the dawdlers of cities were unknown. Hence the camp-ground of the

Caribees was the matinee, ball-match, tennis, boating, all in one of the

idle afternoon world of Warchester. At parade and battalion drill the

scene was like the race-ground on gala days.

All the fine equipages of the town drew up in the roads and lanes

flanking the camp, where with leveled glasses the mothers, sisters, and

sweethearts watched the columns as they skirmished, formed squares, or

"passed the defile," quite sure that the rebels would fly in confusion

before such surprising manoeuvres. This daily audience stimulated such a

fierce rivalry among the companies that the men turned out at all hours

of the day to drill and practice in squads, rather than loiter about the

camp. One day great news aroused the camp: the Governor was to review

the regiment and send it to the front. All Warchester poured out to the

Holly Hills, and when at five o'clock the companies filed out on the

shining green there was such a cheer that the men felt repaid for the

tiresome wait of months. The civic commander-in-chief watched the

movements with affable scrutiny, surrounded by a profusely uniformed

staff, to whom he expressed the most politic approval. He was heard to

remark that no such soldiers had been seen on this continent since Scott

had marched to Lundy's Lane.

There was a throb of passionate joy in the ranks when this eulogium

reached the men, for the words were hardly spoken when they were known

in every company by that mysterious telegraphy which makes the human

body a conductor swift as an electric wire among large masses of men.

Nor were the words less relished that the eulogist was as ignorant of

military excellence as a Malay of the uses of a patent mower. The men,

it was easy to see, were much more efficient in movement than the

officers in handling them. Colonel Oswald had wasted weeks in the study

of the occult evolutions of the battalion; they were still a maddening

mystery to him that fatal day. For six weeks his dreams had been haunted

by airy battalions filing over impossible defiles. The commands he gave

that day would have thrown the companies into hopeless confusion had the

junior officers not boldly substituted the right ones for the colonel's

blunders. This, however, passed unnoted, for the crowds, and even the

men, were not the sharp critics they afterward became when mistakes by

an incompetent officer were saluted by shouts of ridicule, and the men

contemptuously disregarded them. When Colonel Oswald ordered them to

"present arms" from a "place rest" there was more perplexity than

merriment, and the admiring crowd saw nothing peculiar in one company

snatching up bayonets to present while others remained perfectly still.

Jack, to whom the manual was a very sacred thing, broke into fierce

ridicule of the commander, declaring that he was better fitted for

sutler than colonel. When the savage speech was reported to headquarters

that young fellow's prospects for the straps--never the best--were by no

means improved. The review brought bitter disappointment to the

regiment. The inspector-general, who was present, informed the colonel

that no more than a thousand men could be accepted in one body; that

five hundred of the Caribees would have to be divided among other troops

in the State. The order aroused wild excitement. Half the men looked

upon the edict as a scheme to give the politicians more places for their

feudatories. Indeed, though that was not the origin of the order, that

was the use made of it. Some of the junior officers, who disliked Oswald

and distrusted his capacity to command, drew out very willingly, and of

course carried many of their men with them.

But in the end the matter had to be decided by lot. Now this chance

threw Wesley Boone out, and there was great rejoicing in the Acredale

group, who hoped that this stroke of luck would make place for their

favorite, Jack Sprague. But, to everybody's astonishment, a day or two

after the event, Wesley resumed his place in Company K, and gave out

that it was by order of the Governor. Jack was urged by the major of the

regiment, who had gone with the five hundred, to cast his fortunes with

the new body, promising a speedy lieutenancy. But Jack would not desert

the Caribees. All of Company K, and many in the others, had enlisted on

his word, and he could not in honor leave them. The opposition journals

had from the first denounced the division of the Caribees as a trick of

the partisans, and, sure enough, the men were given to understand that

there would be no move to Washington until after the election, then

pending. This was a municipal contest, and the Administration party made

good use of the incipient soldiery to obtain a majority in the town.

Promotion was quite openly held out as a reward for those who could

influence most votes for the Administration candidates. At night the

various companies were sent into the city to take part in the political

propaganda; to march in processions or occupy conspicuous places at the

party meetings. The private soldiers were almost to a man Democrats, but

the chance to escape the long and irksome evenings of the camp and join

the frolic and adventure of the street made most of them willing enough

to play the part of claque or figurantes. Jack, of course, refused to

take part in these scenic rallies, making known his sentiments in

vehement disdain. He detested Oswald, who had quit his party, not on a

question of principle, but merely for place, and Jack did not spare him

in his satirical allusions to the new uses invented for the military.

A still more trying injustice befell the luckless Jack. For a long time

he had, as senior, acted as orderly sergeant of Company K. This officer

is virtually the executive functionary in the company. It is his place

to form the men in rank, make out details, and prepare everything for

the captain. The orderly sergeant is to the company what the adjutant is

to the regiment. He carries a musket and marches with the ranks, but in

responsibility is not inferior to an officer. One evening when it was

known that orders had come for the regiment to march, Jack, having

formed the company for parade, received a paper from the captain's

orderly to read. He opened it without suspicion, and, among other

changes in the corps, read, "Thomas Trask to be first sergeant of

Company K, and he will be obeyed and respected accordingly." Jack read

the monstrous wrong without a tremor. The men flung down their arms and

broke into a fierce clamor of rage and grief. Many of them were Jack's

classmates. These swarmed about him. One, assuming the part of

spokesman, cried out:

"It's an infamous outrage. They cheated you out of your captaincy; they

have put every slight they could upon you. But we have some rights. We

won't stand this. There are thirty of your classmates who will do

whatever you say to show these people that they can't act like this."

There were mutiny and desperation in the air. It needed but a spark to

destroy the usefulness of the company. But, as is often the case with

impetuous, hot-headed spirits, Jack cooled as his friends grew hot. He

was the more patient that the injustice was his injury alone. He

remained in his place at the right of the company, and confronted the

rebellious group with amazing self-control. Then loud above the

murmuring his voice rang out:

"Company, attention! fall in, fall in! Any man out of the ranks will be

sent to the guard-house. Eight dress, steady on the left."

Many a time afterward these angry mutineers heard that sonorous, clear,

boyish treble in stern and determined command; but they never heard it

signalize a more heroic temper than at that moment, when, himself deeply

wronged, he forced them to go back in the ranks to receive the

interloper. They "dressed up" sullenly as Jack called the roll for the

last time, and received Trask, the new orderly, at a "present," which,

though not in the tactics, Jack exacted as a penitence for the momentary

revolt. Poor Trask looked very unhappy indeed as his displaced rival

stepped back to the rear and left the new orderly to march the company

out from the narrow way to take its place in the parade. It was easy to

see that he would have been very glad to postpone or evade his new

honors, on any pretext, for the time. He was so confused that Jack, from

the flank, was obliged to repeat the few commands needed to get the

company to the field.

Fortunately for the efficiency of the raw army, as this public

discontent reached its most acute stage orders came to march the troops

to Washington. The Caribees were the first body of soldiers sent from

Warchester, and there was a memorable scene when the jaunty ranks filed

through the streets to the station. By the time the men reached the

train they discovered that they could never make war laden down as they

were by knapsacks filled with the preposterous impedimenta feminine

foresight had provided.

The men's backs bulged out with such a pack of supplies that when the

regiment halted each man was forced to kneel and let a comrade take off

or put on his knapsack. And then the march through the streets--every

man known to scores in the throng! The brisk, high-stepping drum corps

rat-a-tatting at intervals; then tempests of cheers, flashing banners

and patriotic symbols at every window; tears, laughter, humorous cries,

jokes, sobbing outbreaks. The whole city was in march as the Caribees

reached the thronged main thoroughfare. Ready hands relieved the

soldiers of their burden as the line filed in sight of the Governor, who

had come to speed the parting braves.

Lads and lasses made merry with the elated warriors. The muskets were

turned into bouquet-holders, and the first move toward real war took on

the air of a floral _fête_. There were popping corks and sounds of

convivial revelry that made the scene anything but warlike. Jack, in a

cluster of his town cronies, caught sight of his mother at one of the

windows of the Parthenon Hotel. He wafted her a joyous kiss, pretending

not to see the tears falling down her cheeks. Olympia was not apparently

very deeply affected. She made her way through the crowd to her

brother's side, and with an air of the liveliest interest demanded:

"Jack, what have you in your knapsack? Let me see."

"O Polly, it's such a job to close it! What do you want? It is harder to

manage than a Saratoga trunk. I can't really stuff another pin or needle

in, so pray keep what you have for my furlough."

"No, I am not going to put anything in." She bent over while Barney

Moore, one of Jack's Acredale comrades, gallantly loosed the straps. She

searched carefully through the divers articles, taking everything out,

Jack looking on ruefully while his companions gathered about in vague

curiosity. When she had removed and restored everything she arose,

saying: "I feel easier now. I merely looked to see if that marshal's

_bâton_ I have heard so much about was there. I shall feel easy in my

mind now, because a _bâton_ in your baggage would have made you too

adventurous."

There was a great shout of laughter as the fun of the incident flashed

upon the listeners, many of whom had heard the ingenuous Jack often in

other days sighing for war, and the chance that Napoleon said every man

had of finding a marshal's _bâton_ in his knapsack. Jack bore the banter

very equably, knowing that Olympia was rather striving to keep his

spirits up and divert him from the tears in his mother's eyes than

indulge her own humor. Indeed, most of the gayety at this moment was

contributed by those whose hearts were heaviest. The consecrated

priesthood of patriotism must see no weakness in those left behind. The

only son, now brought face to face with the meaning and consequence of

his rashly seized chance for glory, must not be reminded that perhaps a

grave lay beyond the thin veil of the near future; must not be reminded

that heavy hearts and dim eyes were left behind, feeding day by day,

hour by hour, on terror and dread, unsupported by the changing scenes,

the wild excitement, and the joyous vicissitudes of the soldier's life,

it was a cruel comedy acted every day between 1861 and 1865. They

laughed who were not gay, and they seemed indifferent who were fainting

with despair. The courage of battle is mere brutish insensibility

compared with the abnegation of the million mothers who gave their boys

to the bestial maw of war.

The harrowing ceremonial of parting is ended. The train moves slowly out

of the station, and a murmur of sobs and cheers echoes until it is far

beyond the easternmost limits of the city. After a journey of two days

and a night the train readied Philadelphia. Jack was all eyes and ears

for the spectacle the country presented. In every station through which

the regiment passed crowds welcomed the blue-coats. Women fed them, or

those who seemed in need, thinking, perhaps, of their own distant

darlings receiving like tenderness from the stranger.

In Philadelphia, the regiment marched across the city to resume its

journey. It was a cold spring night, and the regimental quartermaster

and commissary had made no provision for the men. Indeed, as the

observant Jack afterward learned, it was part of the plan of the groups

that first began to create great fortunes during the war to make the

soldiers pay for their rations _en route_ to the seat of war, or depend

upon the charity of citizens along the railway lines. The Government

paid for the supplies just the same, while the money went into the

pockets of contractors and quartermasters. After a weary tramp through

what seemed to the soldiers the biggest city in the world, the regiment,

with blistered feet, hungry and cross, were halted before a long, low

wooden building, through whose rough glass windows cheerful lights could

be seen. A rumor spread that they were to have a hot supper, and, sure

enough, they were marched in, dividing on each side of four long tables

that stretched into spectral distance, in the feeble glimmer of the

oil-lamps hanging from the ceiling. Most of the men in Jack's company,

at least, were gently nurtured, but the steaming oysters, cold beef, and

generous "chunks" of bread, filled their eyes with a magnificence and

their stomachs with a gentle repletion no banquet before or after ever

equaled. The feast was set in the same place during four years, by the

Sanitary Society, I think, but the memory of that homely board,

plenteously spread, is in the mind of many a veteran who faced warward

during the conflict.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE POTOMAC.

The next morning, when the men debarked to march through Baltimore,

every one was on the _qui vive_ to fasten in his memory the scene of the

shameful attack upon the soldiers of Massachusetts on the 19th of April.

But, as the line marched proudly down Pratt Street, there were no signs

of the hostile spirit that made Baltimore a center of doubt and

suspicion in the North for many a day afterward. It was, however, when

the train dashed out from among the hills to the northwest of the sheet

of water behind the capitol that the Caribees glued their eyes to the

panes in awe not unmingled with delight. No American will ever look upon

that imperial dome again with the sensations that filled the breasts of

those who first saw its rounded outlines in the war epoch. What the ark

of the covenant was to the armies that marched in the wilderness, or the

cross of St. Peter to the pilgrims approaching Rome, that the great

dome, towering cloud ward in the perpetual blue, was to the wondering

eye of the soldier as his glance first fell upon it; that it was for

months--yes, ever after--on the plains of Arlington and in the deadly

exhalations of the Chickahominy. Every one looked anxiously to see signs

of war--indeed, since leaving Baltimore, there was a delicious feeling

of suspense--as the train shot over embankments or skirted the deep pine

woods. Perhaps an adventurous rebel vanguard might attack them. Perhaps

they might have the glory of fighting their way to the beleaguered

capital. Perhaps Father Abraham might come out and smile benignantly at

them for a brave deed well done. Faces flushed and eyes sparkled in the

delightful anticipation: and some of the ardent spirits, more eager than

the others, loaded their muskets to be ready! But, beyond the Federal

picket-post at the stations, no sign of war was soon, nor much sign of

hostilities, such as the vivid fancies of the raw young

warriors conjured.

But now the train was at rest, and the officers--who had not been seen

during the journey--turned out in resplendent plumery. The station--in

those days a tumble-down barrack--was already crowded with soldiery. The

Caribees were aligned along the track, the officers so bewildered by the

confusion that it was by a miracle some of the groups of moving men were

not run over by the backing engines. After an interminable delay, the

band set up "We're coming down to Washington to fight for Abraham's

daughter!" and with exuberant joy a thousand pairs of legs kept brisk

step and elastic movement to the inspiriting strain. Now the longing

eyes see the circumstance and even some of the pomp of war. The regiment

debouches into Pennsylvania Avenue, under the very shadow of the

Capitol, which looks sadly shabby and disproportioned to the eyes that

had an hour or two before opened in such admiration at the first view.

But there is no time for architectural criticism. They are moving down

the avenue toward the White House, toward the home of that patient,

kindly, sorely-tried ruler--the Democritus of his grisly epoch. The

Caribees excite none of the sensation here they have been accustomed to.

The streets are not crowded, and the few civilians passing hardly turn

their heads. Mounted orderlies dash hurriedly, with hideous clatter of

sabre and equipments, across the line of march, through the very

regiment's ranks, answering with a disdainful oath or mocking gibe when

an outraged shoulder-strap raised a remonstrating voice. At Fourteenth

Street the Caribees were halted until the colonel could take his

bearings from headquarters, just around the corner. The wide sidewalks

were dense with bestarred and epauleted personages in various keys of

discussion. Jack and his crony, Barney Moore, studied the scene in

wonder. Their company was halted exactly at the corner of Fourteenth

Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and the two were standing at

Willard's corner.

"I wonder if the President just stands and throws the stars down from

that balcony?" Jack said, as the crowd of brigadiers thickened before

the hotel door. "What on earth are they all doing here?"

"Oh, they come to make requisition on General Bacchus; he's the

commissary-general of the brigadiers--don't you know?" Barney said,

innocently.

"General Bacchus? Barney, you're crazy--there's no such officer in the

army--I know all the names--you mean General Banks, don't you?"

"Oh, no, I'm not mistaken--General Bacchus has been selected to deal out

the _esprit de corps!_"

"_L'esprit de corps_? Barney, you're certainly tipsy. I'm ashamed of

you!"

"Yes, the spirit of that corps, as you can tell from the whiffs that

come this way, is the whisky-bottle. Bacchus presides over that spirit.

One would think you'd never read an eclogue of Virgil--you're duller

than a doctor of divinity's after-dinner speech! A tutor's joke is the

utmost wit you ought to bear."

"And so you call that a joke?"

"Well, it isn't a cough, a song, an oath, or--or anything old Oswald

would say, so it must be a joke."

"Well, in that sense it may pass, like a tipsy soldier without the

countersign."

"Oh, come now, Jack, these stars are really dazzling you!"

"Not but I'll make you see some that will dazzle you, if you don't treat

your superior more respectfully."

"Oh, the punch you think of giving me wouldn't solve this star problem;

it requires to be made in the old--the milky way."

But Barney's astral jokes were brought to a period by the sharp note of

the bugle, as Colonel Oswald, very important under the eye of so many

big-wigs, magnificently ordered the march. The regiment passed up the

steep hill, out Fourteenth Street--then a red clay thoroughfare of

sticky mire with only here and there a negro's shanty where the palaces

of the rich rise to-day. The men learned something of their future

enemy, Virginia mud, as they climbed the red gorge and debouched on

Meridian Hill, where, presently, an aide-de-camp marked the ground

assigned the regiment, and the real life of the soldier began. How tame

to tell, but how "imperial the hour" when these one thousand lads first

went, on guard! Yes, the fact was now before them. They were no longer

segregated atoms, inert, ineffective, eccentric. They were part of that

mighty bulwark of blood and iron that stood between law and rebellion,

between the nation's heart and the assassin dagger of disunion.

How proud and glad and manly they felt, these bright-eyed boys--for boys

they mostly were; not a hundred in the regiment had seen their

five-and-twentieth year. One razor would have been ample for the beards

of the whole battalion. And oh, the nameless, the intoxicating sense of

solidarity as they swept the vast reach of hillsides, and saw the white

tents in brooding immensity on either hand! Yes, yonder, far across the

wondrous belt of water, touching loyalty and rebellion in its mighty

rush seaward, they could distinguish the cities of canvas on the distant

Virginia shore.

"It makes a fellow feel as Godfrey's hosts felt when they came in sight

of the Bosporus, and the hordes of the Saracens on the plains of the

Hellespont," Jack said, exultingly, as Barney stood on a pile of camp

equipages above him, surveying the quickening spectacle.

"I don't know how Godfrey's fellows felt, Jack, but it _do_ make a man

feel kinder able to do something with so many near by to lend a hand.

But, stars and garters! what a head it must take to manage all these!

Fair and square, now, Jack, you feel the fires of military genius in

your big head--do you think that you could disentangle this enormous

coil--put each corps, division, and regiment, in its proper place--at a

day's notice?"

"Oh, I couldn't perhaps do it just to-day; but give me time!"

"Yes, I'll give you to the age of Methuselah, and then if you can manage

it I shall not lose faith in you."

"Come, men, the tents must be up before dark. Sergeant Sprague, your

squad has five tents for its detail. You'll find axes and tools at the

quartermaster's wagon on the hill yonder!" It was the captain who spoke,

and, an instant later, the plot of ground, perhaps an acre and a half in

area, was a scene of rollicking labor. Each company had a street, the

tents--calculated to hold four each, but the number varied, going up

often as high as six--faced each other, leaving room enough for the

company to march in column or in line between the white walls. As the

regiment would be presumably some time on the ground, the canvas tents

rested on the top of a palisade of logs cut in the neighboring woods.

These were five feet or more in length, and when driven into the ground

a foot, and banked by the sticky clay, served excellently as walls upon

which to rest the A tents. Two berths, sometimes four, were fastened

laterally on these walls, frames running up to the center of the A held

the guns, while lines stretched across from above served as wardrobes

for such garments as could be hung up.

All this manoeuvring for space in such close quarters was great fun for

lads accustomed to roomy houses, and careless, almost to slovenliness,

in the matter of keeping things in place. Absurd as these details may

seem, they were all parts, and very important parts, in the life and

training of that mighty host that carried the destiny of the country in

its discipline during four years. There was rigid inspection of quarters

every Sunday morning, and during the week the non-commissioned officers

were expected to see that cleanliness was not intermitted. The company

"street" was "policed" every morning after breakfast, swept and

garnished, that is, with the care of a Dutch housewife. Order is the

first law of the soldier as well as of Heaven, and many a careless lad

brought from his four years' drill method and painstaking that made him

of more value to himself and his neighbors.

Personal traits, too, could be divined in these toy-like interiors. The

regulations prescribed the arrangement of the "bunks," blankets folded,

knapsacks laid at the head of the bed, accoutrements burnished until, at

first sight, the four guns in the rack seemed to be a mirror for the

orderly spirit of this thrifty grot. The shining plates, cups, and

spoons, would have done no discredit to the most energetic, housewife,

as they hung from pegs either above the bunks or along the wall. If

running water were not accessible, every tent had a tin basin for the

morning ablution, each soldier taking turn good humoredly. The household

duties were scrupulously observed, each man assuming his _rôle_ in the

complicated _ménage_.

It was fully a week before the Caribees were installed ready for Sunday

inspection, as no exigency was permitted to interfere with morning and

afternoon drill, guard-mount, and parade. Battalion and brigade drill,

too, were new diversions for the Caribees, as now, camped near other

troops, these more complicated movements were part of the regiment's

allotted duty. After they were sufficiently trained in this they were to

take part in a grand review by the general-in-chief, when the President,

the Secretary of War, and all the great folks in Washington rode out to

witness the spectacle.

There was no time for dullness. Every hour had its duty, and these soon

became second nature to the zealous young warriors. Such rivalry to best

master the manual, to hold the most soldierly stature in the ranks, to

detect the drill-sergeant when, to test their attention, he gave a false

command! And then the coronal joy of a reward of merit for efficiency

and alertness on guard! The rapture the bit of paper brought, and the

exultation with which the hero thus signalized went off to town for the

day, wandered through the waste of streets, stood before Willard's and

admired in awe and wonder the indolent groups from whose shoulders

gleamed one and sometimes two stars! One day Jack and Barney, walking in

Fifteenth Street, saw a stout man, with no insignia to indicate rank or

station, coming out of the headquarters hurriedly. He walked to the edge

of the pavement, and, looking up and down, seemed disconcerted. Noticing

the two lads, he came to where Jack was standing in a preoccupied way,

and the two saluted decorously. He returned the salute and asked:

"Sergeant, are you on duty?"

"No, sir; I'm on leave for the day."

"Ah, good; my orderly was here a moment ago, but I don't see him

anywhere. Would you mind taking this telegram to the War Department,

through the park yonder?"

He gave Jack an envelope and hurried back into the building as the two

lads started with alacrity across the street.

"I've seen that chap before, somewhere," Barney said, panting with the

rapid pace.

"He's a staff officer, I suppose, not very high rank, for he only had a

blouse on. General officers always wear double-button frocks even if

they don't carry the insignia."

The War Department was easy of access, an old building not unlike Jack's

own home in Acredale. He asked the sentry at the door where his envelope

was to be delivered. The man looked at it, pointed to a closed door, and

Jack, receiving no response to his knock, entered. Three men were in the

room. One was seated at a vast desk with papers, maps, dispatches, and

books piled in disheartening confusion, within reach of his hand. Behind

him a young captain in uniform sat writing. But the figure that fixed

Jack's reverential attention was half sprawling, half lying over the

heaped-up impediments of the big desk. The young soldier caught sight of

the serious, sad face, the wistful humorous eyes, and he knew, with a

thrill through all his body and an adoring throb in his breast, that it

was the President--hapless heritor of generations of disjointed time.

All thought of his errand, all thought of place and person, faded as he

realized this presence. How long he would have remained in this mute

adoration there is no telling. The restless, keen eyes looked up sharply

and a dissonant, imperious, repellent voice jerked out:

"Well, my man, what is it?"

Without a word Jack handed him the envelope, and with a sort of

reverence to the tall figure whose face was turned kindly toward him he

backed to the door.

"O Barney, I've seen the President!"

"Seen the President! No? Oh! Why could not I have gone in with you? It's

always my luck."

"No: it was my luck. But take heart. He will come out pretty soon, and

we'll loaf about here. Perhaps we can see him as he goes back to the

White House yonder."

But though they waited far into the afternoon, forgetting their dinner

in the impulse of homage, they did not catch sight of the well-known

figure, for the President's way to the Secretary's room was a private

one, and when he went away the boys of course could not see him. But

Jack's good fortune was the talk of the regiment for many a day, and for

months when the fellows of the Caribee got leave they lingered

expectantly about the modest headquarters, hoping that a missing orderly

might bring them Jack Sprague's proud distinction of seeing the

President face to face. On the grand review, a few days later, Jack and

his crony were reminded of the encounter at headquarters, for the man

who had given the envelope to carry to the war office was riding a

splendid horse next to the President. Two stars glittered on his

shoulder now, and as he answered the cheers that saluted the group, the

young men saw that it was General McDowell, the commander of the forces.

The President rode along the lines, with a kindly wistfulness in the

honest eyes that studied with no superficial glance the long line of

shouting soldiery. He was not an imposing figure in the sense of

cavalier bravery, but no man that watched as he moved in the glittering

group, conspicuous by his somber black and high hat, ever forgot the

melancholy, rapt regard he gave the ranks, as at an easy canter he

passed the fronts of the squares or sat solemnly at the march past that

concluded the review.

CHAPTER VII.

THE STEP THAT COSTS.

What between the doings of the camp and the daily visit to Washington,

"soldiering" grew into an enchanting existence for the young warriors of

the Caribee. Their quarters were on the high plateaus north and west of

the city--which were in those days shaded slopes, that made suburban

Washington a vale of Tempe. In the streets they saw bedizened officers,

from commanders of armies down to presidential orderlies. In the Senate

and House they heard the voices of men afterward potent in

public councils.

What an exuberant, vagrant life it was! The blood warms and the nerves

tingle after the tensions and heats of a quarter of a century as those

days of sublime vagabondage come back. The melodious morning calls that

waked the sleepy, lusty young bodies; the echoing bugle and the abrupt

drum! And then the roll-call, in the misty morning when the sun, blear

and very red, rose as if blushing, or apoplectic after the night's

carouse! It was an army of poets--of Homers--that began the never

monotonous routine of these memorable days, for the incense of national

sympathy came faint but intoxicating to the soldier's nostrils in the

visits of great statesmen, the picnics of civilians, the copious

descriptive letters of correspondents and the daily scrawls from

far-away valleys, where fond eyes watched the sun rise, noted the stars,

to mark the special duties their darlings were doing in the watches of

the night. And then the mad music of cheers when the news came that the

young McClellan in West Virginia had scattered the adventurous columns

of Lee, capturing guns, men, and arms, and forever saving the great

Kanawha country to the Union! And in Kentucky the rebels had been

outmanoeuvred; while in Missouri the glorious Lyon and the crafty Blair

had, one in the Cabinet, the other in the camp, routed the secret,

black, and Janus-like rabble of treason and anarchy.

To feel that he was part of all this; that, at rest in the iron ring

girdling the capital, he was might in leash; that to-morrow he would be

vengeance let loose--this was the sustaining, exulting thought that made

the volunteer the best of soldiers. His heart was all in the glorious

ardor for action. Night and morning he looked proudly at the sacred

ensign waving lightly in the summer breeze, and he remembered that the

eyes of Washington had rested on the same standard at Valley Forge; that

the sullen battalions of Cornwallis had saluted it at Yorktown.

It was a beautiful ardor that filled the young hosts that waited in

leash on the green hills of the Potomac those months of turmoil, when

Scott and McDowell were straining the crude machinery of war to get

ready for the vital lunge. Jack and his Acredale squad, as the college

fellows were called, lived in a perpetual dream, from which the hard

realities of drill, now six hours a day, could not waken them. In days

of release they scoured the Maryland hills, secretly hoping that an

adventurous rebel picket might appear and give them occasion to return

to camp decked with preluding laurels. Mile after mile of the charming

woodland country they scoured, their hearts beating at the appearance of

any animate thing that for a brief, intoxicating moment they could

conjure into a rebel advance post. But, beyond wan and reticent yokels,

engaged in the primitive husbandry of this slave section, they never

encountered any one that could be counted overt enemies of the cause.

Money was plenty among these excursive groups, and they were welcomed in

Company K with effusive outbreaks by their less restive comrades.

As July wore on, the signs of movement grew. Regiments were moved away

mysteriously, and soon the Caribees were almost alone on Meridian Hill.

Jack was filled with dire fears that the commanding officer, having

discovered the incompetency of Oswald, feared to take the Caribees to

the front. Something of the rumor spread through the regiment, and if,

as reputed, "Old Sauerkraut" (this was the name he got behind his back)

had spies in all the companies, the adage about listeners was abundantly

confirmed. In the secrecy of Jack's tent, however, the subject was

freely discussed. Nick Marsh, the poet of the class, as became the

mystic tendencies of his tribe, was for poisoning the detested

Pomeranian--Oswald was a compatriot of Bismarck, often boasting, as the

then slowly emerging statesman became more widely known, that he lived

in his near neighborhood. Marsh's suggestion fell upon fruitful

perceptions. Bernard Moore--Barney, for short--was to be a physician,

and had already passed an apprenticeship in a pharmacy, coincident with

his college term in Jack's class.

"By the powers of mud and blood, Nick, dear, I have it!"

"Have what, Barney, me b'y?" Nick asked, mimicking Barney's quaintly

displaced vowels.

"Why, the way to get rid of Old Schnapps and Blitzen--more power to

me!"

"All the power you want, if you'll only do that; and your voice will be

as sweet as 'the harp that once in Tara's halls--'"

"Never moind the harp--Sassenach--here's what we can do. Tim Hussey is

Oswald's orderly; he and I are good friends. I know a preparation that

will turn the sauerkraut and sausages, that Oswald eats so much of, into

degluted fire and brimstone, warranted to keep him on the broad of his

back for ten days or a fortnight. Will ye all swear secrecy?"

"We will! We will!"

"On what?"

"On the double crown on your head," Jack answered, solemnly, "which you

have often told us was considered a sign that an angel had touched

you--I'm sure nothing could be more solemn than that. It isn't every

fellow that can get an angel to touch the top of his head."

"No; most fellows can consider themselves lucky if an angel touches

their lips--or heart," Barney cried, naïvely.

"Well, never mind that sort of angel now, Barney," Nick said, pettishly;

"I notice that you always bring up with something about the girls, no

matter what the subject we set off on. It's the jalap--isn't that what

it's called?--we want to hear about."

"There isn't enough poetry or sentiment in the two o' ye to fill a

wind-blown buttercup. No wonder ye don't care to talk of the

gurls--they'll have none of ye."

"We'll be satisfied if they'll have you, Barney. I'm sure that's

magnanimous. But if your jalap takes as much time in working Old

Schnapps as you take in explaining it, the war will be over, and we

shall have seen none of it."

"It's too great a conception to be hastily set forth. Give me time. I'll

lay a guinea that Oswald goes to the hospital before this day week. Let

us see. This is the 14th; before the 20th--" and Barney gave the barrel

of his gun, near him, a furtive wipe with his coat-sleeve.

"Barney, if you'll do that, I'll gather every four-leaved clover between

here and Richmond to give you; and, what's more, if I die I'll leave you

my bones to operate."

"Ah, Nick, dear, I'd rather have your little finger living than all the

possessions of your father's bank. If you were dead--" And honest Barney

seized the poet's hand sentimentally.

"Come, come, fellows, what sort of soldiering do you call this? You

remind me of two school-girls," Jack remonstrated, as in duty bound to

keep up the warrior spirit.

"Yer acquaintances among females being chiefly of the silly sort, it's

no wonder we remind you of the only things you can look back on without

blushing," Barney retorted; and a neighbor poking his head in the door

to learn the cause of the hilarity, the conspirators sallied out for a

jaunt until parade-time. Now, what means Barney employed, or whether he

had any handiwork in what befell, it does not fall to me to say, but

this is what happened: A market hawker came into camp the next morning

and went straight to the big marquee tent where Colonel Oswald stood, in

all the bravery of a new broadcloth uniform with spreading eagles on the

shoulders. The savory fumes of hot sauerkraut aroused the warrior from

his reveries, and he asked, in vociferous delight:

_"Was haben sie? Kohlen, nicht wahr--sauerkraut--das is aber schon?"_

"Yes, mein golonel, I hof cabbage und sauerkraut und"--looking about

circumspectly--"_etwas schnapps aus Antwerpen gebracht?"_

The "golonel's" eyes glistened and he made a motion for the vender to go

to the rear of the marquee. Passing through from the front, he met him

at the rear, and the bargain was hastily concluded, Marsh secreting

three portly bottles in his chest, and turning the edibles over to

Hussey to store in the larder. There had been a good deal of uneasiness

in camp over rumors of cholera, yellow fever, and other dismal

epidemics. When, therefore, the evening after the colonel's purchase the

regimental surgeon was summoned in alarm, it was instantly believed in

the regiment that "Old Sauerkraut" was stricken with cholera. He at

first suffered hideous pains in the stomachic regions. This was followed

by a raging thirst, and, unknown to the physician, the three bottles of

schnapps were quite emptied. On the fourth day the poor man, very

woe-begone, but now suffering no pain, was carried to the hospital, and

the next day, as the campaign was about to begin, he was sent North, to

leave room near the field for those who should be wounded in the coming

engagement.

Company K was drilling on the wide plateau between the camp and the

highway when the ambulance bearing the afflicted officer came slowly

over the road worn through the greensward. Hussey sat solemnly on the

seat with the driver, and as the vehicle reached the company, standing

at rest, Barney Moore in the rear rank spoke up:

"Tim, is the poor colonel no better?"

"Divil a betther; it's worse he's intirely. God be good till 'im!"

Neither Jack nor Nick Marsh dared trust himself to meet the other's eyes

as the helpless chief disappeared down the hillside, while Barney

entered into an exhaustive treatise on the symptoms of cholera and the

liability of the most robust to meet sudden disaster in this malarious

upland, circumvailated by ages of decaying matter in the damp swamps on

every hand. But when, an hour later, Company K's whole street was

aroused by peal on peal of Abderian laughter, Jack and Nick were found

helpless in their bunks, and Barney was engaged in presenting a potion

to settle their collapsed nerves!

"Well, haven't I won the guinea, now? It cost me just twice that. If

ye's have a spark of honor ye'll pay your just dues, so ye will," Barney

said, in the evening, returning from parade, where Lieutenant-Colonel

Grandison officiated as commander, to the unconcealed delight of all but

the Oswald parasites among the officers.

"Don't say a word, Barney--to whom the medicos of mythology and all the

wizards of antique story are clowns and mountebanks--you shall have the

guinea or its equivalent."

"Twenty-one shillings gold, bear in mind. Yer father's a banker, ye

ought to know that!"

"I do. You shall have the twenty-one shillings in the shinplasters of

the republic."

The colonel had been routed none too soon. The very next morning, when

the Caribees "fell in" for roll-call, the orderly received a paper from

the commander's orderly which read, "Tents to be struck at twelve

o'clock and the men ready to march, with ten days' rations."

At last! All the future, glowing with heroism, exciting with the march,

the attack, the battle--ah! what after? With something of joy and regret

the comely tents, that had given them home and harbor, were taken down,

folded in precise line, and carried away for storage--for in the field

the ranks were to bivouac in the open air. Such gayety; such jokes; such

bravado; and augury of the to be! And the rumors! Telephones, had they

been invented; stenographers, had they been present in legion, could not

have kept track of the momentous tales that were instantly bruited

about. General Scott was going to lead the army in person. His charger

had been seen before the headquarters. The rebels were going to be

swooped up by another such famous dash as the flank march from Vera Cruz

to the plateau of Mexico! Then came a numbing fear that Beauregard's

bragging host had fled, and that the movement would turn out a tedious

stern chase to Richmond. In the agony of all this Jack, returning from a

"detail" to the quartermaster's tent, heard his name shouted where his

tent had been. He hurried to the spot and Nick saluted him with

the cry--

"Here, Jack, are two recruits who declare they must enter Company K."

His gun was on his arm and his knapsack on his back, but only the

realization that a score of eyes were upon him saved Jack from dropping

limply on the ground, as, looking in the group, he saw Dick Perley and

Tom Twigg grinning ingratiatingly at him.

"Where--how in the name of all that's sacred did you get here?" he

gasped.

"Why, we enlisted for drummers in the Caribees, but the recruiting

officer told us as we were eighteen we could carry muskets if we wanted

to. We do want to, and we're going to come into Company K."

They looked him confidently in the face as Dick repeated this evidently

long-practiced explanation. It would not do to take them to task before

the company. Jack waited until the rest were scattered, and then,

leading the boys aside, said, sternly:

"Don't you know you can be put in prison for this? You have run away

from your parents and guardians. No one had a lawful right to enlist

you. I shall send for the provost marshal and have you put in prison

until your parents can come and get your enlistment annulled."

Appalled by Jack's stern manner as much as by his words, the two lads

began to whimper and expostulate tearfully. They had trusted to his

ancient friendship. They could have gone into any other regiment, but

they had enlisted to be with him. Whatever happened, they were soldiers,

and, if Tom Twigg wasn't eighteen until September, it was perfectly

lawful for him to enlist as a drummer. Perley was eighteen in April

last, and he was a soldier in spite of all that Jack could do. Jack was

deeply perplexed. What could be done? If he attempted to put the

machinery of reclamation in order, the boys would be subjected to all

sorts of vicissitudes, prisons, everything distressing and demoralizing

to tender youth.

"Do they know at home what you have done?" Jack asked, doubtingly.

"Yes," Dick said, noting with boyish quickness the indecision in Jack's

troubled face. "I sent a letter to Aunt Pliny, from New York, telling

her we were soldiers, and that we were happy and well."

"You impudent young scamp--to write that to your best friend! Don't you

know it will kill her?"

Dick had no answer for this, and looked perplexedly at Tom, who was lost

in admiration of a neighboring group engaged in athletic exercises. He

felt rather than heard the question put by the Mentor, and observing

Dick's discomfiture, stammered:

"It didn't kill your mother when you went for a soldier, I guess."

The astute young rascal had hit upon the weak place, and Jack stood in

anxious doubt wondering what to do. An aide that he recognized from

division headquarters rode past at the moment and Jack turned to watch

him. He leaped from his horse at the colonel's tent. Jack again looked

at the boys. They were lost in delight at the scene and oblivious of the

debate going on in their guardian's mind.

"Stay here till I come back," he said, authoritatively, and strode off

to Grandison's tent. As he reached it the major, McGoyle, was entering,

and Jack waited until that officer should come out. He came presently,

and Colonel Grandison with him. Jack saluted, and stated his dilemma to

the commander, who listened with amused interest.

"I don't see that anything can be done now, Jack. I'm just about leaving

the regiment. I have been assigned to General Tyler's staff during the

campaign. McGoyle takes command of the regiment. He will need orderlies,

and the boys can serve with him until we can get time to look into the

business. I will settle the matter with him, and if you will write a

telegram to the lad's family I will have it sent as I go to

headquarters."

Jack's relief and gratitude were best seen in the brightening eye and

the more buoyant movement that succeeded the heaviness and agitation of

his first impression. The boys' coming would weigh upon him every minute

until he was in some sort relieved of even passive complicity. He would

feel that the kind-hearted "Pearls," as the aunts were often called,

would look upon him as having led the truants into the army. But

Grandison's interposition had shifted from him a weighty anxiety. The

boys would not be left friendless and irresponsible in the turbulent

streets of Washington. Nor would they, as orderlies, be in continuous or

inextricable danger in battle--for whereas the soldier in the line must

keep in ranks even when not in actual battle, with the enemy's missiles

as destructive as in the charge or combat, the orderlies may take

advantage of the inequalities of ground and natural objects. Jack

explained something of this to the young Marlboroughs, and was fairly

irritated at the crest-fallen look that came into their eager, shining

faces when they comprehended that they were not to be with their hero.

"But you couldn't be in the company in any event. You look more like

rebels than soldiers, with your gray jackets and trousers"--for the boys

still wore their Acredale uniform, an imitation of the West Point

cadet's costume. "We shall be on the march in a few minutes, and there

is only one of two things to be done. Remain here in the 'unassigned'

camp, where you may be transferred into any regiment in the service that

needs recruits; or go, as Colonel Grandison has very kindly consented to

have you, as orderlies or clerks."

The very possibility of being sent into some unknown regiment was a

terror so great that the other alternative became less odious to the

boys, and they trotted after Jack, as he stalked moody and distracted to

Major Mike McGoyle's tent, now the only habitable spot left where a few

hours before a symmetrical little city had stood.

"And so ye want to be solgers, me foine b'yes? Well, well, 'tis litter

for yer mothers' knees ye are, with yer rosy cheeks and curling locks.

It's a poor place here for yer bright oies and soft hands, me lads; but

I'm not the wan to throw the dish after th' milk when it's spilt!"

He stroked the bared heads of the blushing lads, and, turning to their

unhappy sponsor, he added with official brevity: "I will put Twiggs's

son at me papers in the adjutant's office. Young Pearley can remain with

your company until I make out a detail for him."

It was impossible for Jack to sustain the _rôle_ of frowning displeasure

as Dick skipped back with him to the company. He remembered his own

delight three months before, even with the haunting thoughts of his

mother's reproaches to dampen his ardor, and he was soon dazzling the

neophyte with the wonders that were just about to begin.

It was the afternoon of the 16th of July, and the hillsides, which the

day before were covered with tents as far as the eye could see on every

hand, were now blue with masses of men, while other masses had been

passing on the red highways since early morning, taking the direction of

the Potomac bridges.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.

It has always seemed to me that the life, the routine, the many small

haps in the daily function of a soldier, which in sum made up to him all

that there was in the _devoir_ of death, ought to be read with interest

by the millions whose kin were part of the civil war, as well as by

those who knew of it only as we know Napoleon's wars or Washington's.

For my part, I would find a livelier pleasure in the diary of a common

soldier, in any of the great wars, than I do in the confusing pamphlets,

bound in volumes called history. I like to read of war as our Uncle Toby

related it. I like to know what two observing eyes saw and the feelings

that sometimes made the timidest heroes--sometimes cravens.

For a month--yes, months--the burden of the press, the prayers of the

North, had been, "On to Richmond!" Jack, through Colonel Grandison, knew

that General McDowell and the commander-in-chief, the venerable soldier

Scott, had pleaded and protested against a move until the new levies

under the three-months' call could be drilled and disciplined. But on

the Fourth of July Congress had assembled, and the raw statesmen--with

an eye to future elections--took up the public clamor. They gave the

Cabinet, the President, no peace until General Scott and McDowell had

given way and promised the pending movement.

"Our soldiers are so green that I shall move with fear," McDowell said

to the President.

"Well, they" (meaning the rebels) "are green too, and one greenness will

offset the other," Lincoln responded with kindly malice. It was useless

to argue further; useless to point out that the rebels were not so

"green," for the young men of the semi-aristocratic society of the South

were trained to arms, whereas it was a mark of lawlessness and vulgarity

to carry arms in the Puritan ranks of the North. Something of the

unreadiness of the army, every reflecting soldier in the ranks

comprehended, when he saw within the precincts of his own brigades the

hap hazard conduct of the quartermaster's and staff departments. Some

regiments had raw flour dealt them for rations and no bake-ovens to turn

it into bread; some regiments had abundance of bread, but no coffee or

meat rations. As to vegetables--beans, or anything of the sort--if the

pockets of the soldiers had not been well supplied from home, the army

that set out for Manassas would have been eaten with scurvy and the skin

diseases that come from unseasoned food.

Now, at the very moment the legions were stripped for the march, many of

them were without proper ammunition. Various arms were in use, and the

same cartridge did not lit them all. Eager groups could be seen all

through the brigades filing down the leaden end of the cartridge to make

their weapons effective, until a proper supply could be obtained. This

was promised at Fairfax Station, or Centreville, where the army's

supplies were to be sent. So, in spite of the high hopes and feverish

unrest for the forward movement, there was a good deal of sober

foreboding among the men, who held to the American right to criticise as

the Briton maintains his right to grumble. For the soldier in camp or on

the march is as garrulous as a tea gossip, and no problem in war or

statecraft is too complex or sacred for him to attempt the solution. Of

the thirty thousand men leaving the banks of the Potomac that 16th of

July there were, at a low estimate, ten thousand who believed themselves

as fitted to command as the chieftains who led them.

By two o'clock the Caribees were in the line that had been passing

city-ward since daylight. The sun had baked the sticky clay into

brick-like hardness, and the hours of trampling, the tread of heavy

teams, and the still heavier artillery, had filled the air with an

opaque atmosphere of reddish powder, through which the masses passed in

almost spectral vagueness. The city crowds, usually alert, when great

masses of men moved, were discouraged by heat and dust, and the streets

were quite given over to the military. Eager as Jack and his friends

were to note the impression the march made upon the civilians, most of

whom were thought to be secretly in sympathy with the rebellion, it was

impossible to even catch sight of any but soldiers. Pennsylvania Avenue,

when they reached it, was a billowy channel of impalpable powder. But at

the Long Bridge the breeze from the wide channel of the river cleared

the clouds of dust, and the men, catching glimpses of each other, broke

into jocose banter. On the bridge they looked eagerly down the river,

where the low roofs of Alexandria were visible, and upward on the

Virginia shore where the gleaming walls of Arlington recalled to Jack

far different times and scenes.

"Now we're in Jeff Davis's land," Barney called out from one of the rear

files, as the company reached midway in the bridge.

"Not by a long shot," Nick Marsh cried. "Davis's land begins and ends

within cannon-shot of himself. He is like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen--he

has to beg his neighbor's permission to hold battalion drill."

"He isn't so polite as the duke; he takes it without asking," Barney

retorts.

"But now we are on the 'sacred soil,'" Jack cries, as the company

debouched from the bridge up the steep, narrow road that seemed to be

taking them to Arlington. In spite of the burning heat and the

exhaustion of the three hours' march, the scene was, or rather the

imagination of the men, invested each step with a sort of awe. They were

at last in the enemy's territory. It had been held by the Union forces,

only by dint of large numbers and strong fortifications. There wasn't a

man in the company that didn't resent the fact, constantly obtruding

itself on the ranks as they marched eagerly onward by every knoll, every

bush in the landscape, that Union soldiers had been there before them!

that their devouring eyes were not the first to mark these

historic spots.

Tired as they were and burdensome as the heavy knapsacks and still

heavier ammunition had become, they heard an aide give the order to

bivouac with chagrin! They so longed to put undebatable ground behind

them and really be where the distant coppice might be a curtain to the

enemy! The Caribees marked with indignant surprise that, when they had

turned into a field about seven o'clock, the long line following them

pushed onward until far into the night, and they envied the contiguity

this would give the lucky laggards to first see and engage the enemy!

But they turned-to very merrily, in this first night of real soldiering.

They were "in the field." All the parade part of military life was now

relaxed. The hot little dress coats were left behind; there was no

display. Even guard-mount was reduced to the simplest possible form.

With one impulse all the men--that is, all who had been alert enough to

provide pen and paper--bestowed themselves about the candles allotted

each group, and began letters "home," dated magniloquently "Headquarters

in the Field. Tyler's Division, Sherman's Brigade, 16th July, 1861." The

imperial impulse manifested itself in these curt epistles. I can't

resist giving Jack's:

"Dear Mother: How I wish you and Polly could see us now! We are really

on the march at last. The battle can't be far off. We are not many miles

from the enemy, and, if he stands, what glorious news you will hear very

soon! I wish you could have seen us to-day. Colonel Sherman, who is the

sternest looking man I ever saw, a regular army officer, once a

professor, told the major--you know McGoyle is commanding us now--he is

a brick--Sherman told him that the Caribees did as good marching as the

regulars, who came behind us. Dear old Mick, with his brogue and his

blarney, has won every heart in the regiment, and you may be sure we

shall see the whites of the enemy's eyes under him, which we never

should have done under that odious Hessian, Oswald--in hospital now,

thank Heaven--though some time, when I tell you the story, you will see

that in this, as in most other things, Heaven helps those who help

themselves. Taps will sound in five minutes, and I can only add that I

am in good health, glorious spirits, and unshaken confidence that we

shall return to Acredale before your longing to see your son overcomes

your love of glory. We shall return victors, if not heroes--at least I

know that you and Polly will believe this of your affectionate and

dutiful son

"JACK."

Barney read one or two phrases of his composition to the indulgent ear

of Jack and the poet, over which they laughed a good deal. "We are," he

said, "before the enemy. I feel as our great ancestor, Baron Moore, felt

at Fontenoy when the Sassenachs were over against the French lines--as

if all the blood in Munster was in my veins and I wanted to spill it on

the villains ferninst us."

The poet declined to quote from his epistle, and the three friends sat

in the dim light until midnight, wondering over what the morrow had in

store. Dick Perley listened in awe to Jack's wonderful ratiocinations on

what was to come--secretly believing him much more learned in war than

this General McDowell who was commanding the army. The first bugle

sounded at three in the morning in the Caribees' camp, and when the

coffee had been hastily dispatched, the men began to understand the

cause of their being shunted into the field so early the evening before

while the rear of the column marched ahead of them. The Caribees passed

a mile or more of encampments, the men not yet aroused, and when at

daylight the whole body was in motion they were in advance, with nothing

before them but a few hundred cavalry.

A delirious expectation, a rapturous sense of holding the post of

danger, kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipation that the hours

passed like minutes. The dusty roads, the intolerable thirst, and the

nauseous, tepid water, the blistered feet, the abraded hips, where the

cartridge-box began to wear the flesh--all these woes of the march were

ignored in the one impulse to see the ground ahead, to note the first

sight of the enemy. It was not until four o'clock in the afternoon that

the column was halted, and two companies, K and H, were marched out of

the column and formed in platoons across the line of march, that the

regiment learned with mortification that hitherto the route had been

inside the Union lines! They soon saw the difference in the tactics of

the march. The company was spread out in groups of four; these again

were separated by a few yards, and in this order, sweeping like a

drag-net, they advanced over the dry fields, through the clustering

pines or into cultivated acres, and through great farm-yards.

Back of them the long column came, slowly winding over the sandy highway

which curved through the undulating land. Here and there the

skirmishers--for that was the office the two companies were now

filling--came upon signs of picket-posts; and once, as Jack hurried

beyond his group to the thicket, near a wretched cabin, a horse and

rider were visible tearing through the foliage of a winding lane. He

drew up his musket in prompt recognition of his duty, but he saw with

mortification that the horse and rider continued unharmed. Other shots

from the skirmish-line followed, but Jack's rebel was the only enemy

seen, when, in the early dusk, an orderly from the main column brought

the command to set pickets and bivouac for the night. Jack would have

written with better grounds for his solemnity if he had waited until

this evening; but now there was no chance.

The companies were the extreme advance of the army; nothing between them

and the enemy but detached pickets of cavalry, at long distances apart,

to fly back with the report of the least signs made by the rebels. These

meager groups were forbidden fires, or any evidence of their presence

that might guide hostile movement, and the infantry outposts felt that

they were really the guardians of the sleeping thousands a mile or so

behind them. No one minded the cold water and hard bread which for the

first time formed the company's fare that night. Like the cavalry, fire

was forbidden them. They formed little groups in the rear of the outer

line of pickets, discussing with animation--even levity--the likelihood

of an engagement the next day. It was the general opinion that if

Beauregard meant to fight he would have made a stand at some of the

excellent points of vantage that had been encountered in the day's

march. Jack smiled wisely over these amateur guesses, and quite abashed

the rest when he said:

"Beauregard is no fool. His army is massed near the point that he is

guarding--Manassas Junction. You seem to think that war is a game of

chance, armies fighting just where they happen to meet each other. Not

at all. Our business is to march to Richmond; Beauregard's business is

to prevent us. To do this he must, first of all, keep his lines of

supply safe. An army without that is like a ship at sea without

food--the more of a crew, the worse the situation. Of course, Beauregard

had his skirmishers spread out in front of us, but, as there is no use

in killing until some end is to be gained, they have got out of our way.

If the spies that are in our ranks should send information that promised

to give the rebels a chance to get at a big body of our men, before the

whole army came up, you'd see a change of things very quick. We've got

fifty thousand men, or thereabout" (Jack was wrong; there were but

thirty thousand). "Now, these men are stretched back of us to

Washington, fifteen miles or more, because the artillery must be

guarded, and infantry only can do that. Now, suppose Beauregard finds

that there is a gap somewhere between the forces stretching back, and he

happens to have ten or fifteen thousand men handy? Why, he just swoops

down upon us, and, if we can't defend ourselves until the rest of the

army comes up, he has won what is called a tactical victory, and

endangered our strategy."

"Goodness, Jack, you ought to have been commander-in-chief! You talk war

like a book!" Barney cried, in mock admiration.

The war-talk went on late into the night, for the company, detached from

camp, was not obliged to follow the signals of the bugles that came in

melodious echoes over the fragrant fields. It was a thrilling sight as

the lone watchers peered backward. The June fields for miles were dotted

with blazing spires, as if the earth had opened to pour out columns of

flame, guiding the wanderers on their trying way. The sleep of the night

was desultory and fitful, excitement stimulating everybody to

wakefulness.

CHAPTER IX.

"THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF ON THE FOLD."

The next morning the march was resumed by daylight, the two companies

remaining on the skirmish-line. The country gradually became more rugged

as the route brought them near Centreville. There were no hills--a bare

but not bleak champaign, mostly without houses or farms, as the North

knows them. Sluggish brooks became more frequent, but none that were not

easily fordable. There were no landmarks to hold the mind to the scene,

nor, in case of battle, give the strategists points of vantage for the

iron game. About noon, the detached groups stalking a little negligently

now over the tedious plains, were startled by the unexpected.

On the green slope of a hill, a mile or more ahead, a score of little

puffs of white smoke were seen, then a sharp report, and, in some places

near by, the ground was broken as if by a thrust of a spear, and little

scraps of clay scattered over the greensward. Then the bugle sounded a

halt. A few minutes later the horsemen spread in a chain across the line

of march, rode swiftly to a common center, formed in a solid group,

turned to the rear and rode back of the skirmishers to the main body.

Company K watched them as they galloped back, and as they reached the

group at the head of the long line, a half-mile or so distant, a body of

men hastened forward laden with stretchers and hospital appliances. Ah!

at last! It is now real war. The bugle sounds Forward! and with an

elastic spring the groups of four push dauntlessly ahead. Their eyes are

fixed on the brow of the hill, separated from them by a narrow

depression.

The whole line--perhaps three miles wide--but, of course, not at all

regular, conforming largely to the difficulties encountered, moves down

the sloping bank on a run. Before they reach the bottom they are an

excellent target, and for the first time that most blood curdling of

sounds--the half-singing, half-hissing z-z-z-ip of the minie-ball--numbs

the ardor of the bravest. It is such a malignant, direct, devilish

admonition of murder; it comes so unexpectedly, no matter how well you

are prepared, that Achilles himself would feel a spasm of fear. And when

it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter,

that there seems something animate, demoniac in it. The volley, as I

said, came as the men were hurried down the hill by their own momentum

and by the sharp fall in the ground. The balls passed too high or too

low, but they impressed the fact on enthusiasts, who had longed for

battle, that one might die for one's country and not die gloriously. It

seemed such an ignoble, such a dastardly, outrageous thing, that death

could come to them from unseen hands, for as yet they had not seen a

soul. But now they are at the foot of the hill--though it is not correct

to so call it, for it was a long, winding valley, through which ran a

dancing streamlet, very welcome to the thirsty warriors when they had

succeeded in breaking through the vicious natural _chevaux de frise_ of

blackberry-briers and nettles. But now there wasn't much time to slake

thirst. The bullets had begun to come regularly; and suddenly, as Jack

conducted his squad across the stream, he was startled by the

exclamation, uttered rather in reverence, it seemed to him, than

surprise or pain:

"My God, I'm hit!"

Yes, a fair-haired lad--one of his class--tottered a second in a limp,

helpless way, and fell headlong, pitching into the little stream. Jack

ran and lifted him out; but even before the hospital corps came the boy

was dead. The bullet had gone quite through his heart.

However, now the first numbing terror of the bullet was changed to a

sort of revengeful delight. Relinquishing any return fire for a moment,

the company, with a great shout, that sounded all along its front,

dashed up the hill, through the scrub-oak at the brow, and then they

could see the enemy slowly retiring, a chain of them a mile or more

wide. While one of the rebel ranks fired the other knelt, or lay flat

upon the ground loading, where there were no natural obstacles to take

shelter behind. A vengeful shout ran along the Union lines.

"Capture them--don't fire!" and with one impulse the groups lied forward

so swiftly that the enemy, believing the rush only momentary, delayed

too long, and in two minutes the Union line was pell-mell among them.

"Surrender!" Jack shouted to the squad just ahead of him--"surrender, or

we'll blow your heads off!" and along the line for some distance to his

left and right he could hear his own exultant demand echoed. There was

nothing to do for the rebels, who had neglected to keep their enemies at

the proper distance, but throw up their hands. Jack's squad sent back

twenty-three prisoners to Major Mike, who took them in proud triumph to

General Tyler, riding with the head of the column, now that the tenacity

of the rebel skirmishers made it seem probable that there would be

serious work. But though the firing kept up as the Union forces

advanced, no obstacle more, serious than the thin lines of the

skirmishers revealed itself.

At dusk the bugles, moving with the captains in the rear, sounded the

rally, and then the scattered groups came together in company. They were

to bivouac on the spot to await their regiment when it arrived.

Meanwhile, to the bitter discontent of the Caribee companies, their post

of honor was taken by new troops, and they knew that next day they would

march in line. They had so enjoyed the glory of the first volleys, the

first deaths, and the first prisoners, that, not remembering military

procedure, they resented the change as an aspersion upon their valor.

When the regiment came up, however, they forgot their mortification in

the eager questioning and envious jocularities of the rest. Companies K

and H were so beset that they forgot to boil their coffee, and would

have gone thirsty to their dewy beds, if the other companies' cooks had

not shared their rations with the gossiping heroes. As darkness fell,

the sky was reddened for miles with pillars of fire, and for a time the

Caribees thought it was the enemy. But Tom Twigg, who had been with the

major at headquarters, explained to Jack that the army was divided into

three bodies of about ten thousand men each, and that Tyler's column, of

which the Caribees were the advance, were the extreme northern body;

that they were now at Vienna, far north of Manassas, where Schenck had

been beset a month before in his never-enough-ridiculed reconnaissance

by train; that in the morning they were to push on to Fairfax

Court-House and thence to Centreville, where the army was to come

together for the blow at the rebels. Jack and his friends were a good

deal chagrined to learn that they were not as near the enemy as the

column to the south of them, whose fires had been mistaken for

Beauregard's. Though the levée came to an end at "taps," no one felt

sleepy, and the excitement banished the pains of fatigue. Major Mike,

sauntering through the dark lines near midnight, heard the tale still

going on in drowsy monotone, but, good-naturedly, made no sign.

Though not given the skirmish-line next day--the 17th--Jack was

delighted to find that the Caribees led all the rest. With them rode the

commander of the brigade, Colonel Sherman, whom the soldiers thought a

very crabbed and "grumpy" sort of a fellow. His red hair bristled

straight up and out when he took his slouch hat off, as he did very

often, for the heat was intolerable. His eyes had a merry twinkle,

however, that won the hearts of the lads as he rode by, scrupulously

striking into the fields to save the panting and heavily laden line

every extra step he could. Often, in after-days--when Sherman had become

the Turenne of the armies--Jack, who was often heard to brag of his gift

of detecting greatness, used to turn very red in the face when he was

reminded of a saying of his on that hot July day:

"That chap is too lean and hungry to have much stomach for a fight; he

looks better fitted for wielding the ferule than the sword. Schoolmaster

is written in every line of his face and stamped in his

pedagogue manner."

The march that day was south by a little west, and about nine o'clock a

cool morning breeze lifted the clouds of dust far enough above the

horizon to reveal the distant blue of the mountains. The whole line

seemed to come to a pause in the enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. "The

Shenandoah," Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of

mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore,

naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpremeditated cosmetic. The

march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious

soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure

in the morning, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon when the

Caribees passed the hamlet, turning sharply to the right. They marched

up the deep cut of projected railway, where, for a time, they were

shaded from the sun by the high banks. But, emerging presently on the

Warrenton pike, they saw evidences that other columns--whether friends

or foes they couldn't tell--had recently preceded them. Scores of the

raw and overworked were breaking down now every hour.

The dust and heat were insupportable. Whenever the march came near

water, all thought of discipline was forgotten, and the panting,

miner-like hosts broke for the inviting stream. The officers were

powerless to enforce discipline; when these breaks happened the column

was forced to come to a halt until every man had filled his canteen--and

here is one, among the many trivial causes, that brought about the

reverses of McDowell's masterly campaign. A march that ought to have

been made in twenty-four hours, or thirty at the utmost, took more than

three days! One of those days saved to the army would have enabled

McDowell to finish Beauregard before the ten thousand re-enforcements

from the Shenandoah came upon his flank at Bull Run. But we shall see

that in proper time, for there is nothing more dramatically timely, or

untimely, than this incident in the history of battles, unless it be

Blücher's miraculous appearance at Waterloo, when Napoleon supposed that

Grouchy was pummeling him twenty miles away.

There was no provost guard to spur on the stragglers; and when, late in

the afternoon, the way-worn columns spread themselves on the western

slope of the hamlet of Centreville, at least a third of each regiment

was far in the rear. Nearly every man had, in the heat and burden of the

march, thrown away the provisions in his haversack, and that night ten

thousand men lay down supperless on the grateful greensward, happy to

rest and sleep. Mother Earth must have ministered to the weary flesh,

for at sunrise, when the music of the bugles aroused them, they started

up with the alert vivacity of old campaigners. Provisions, that should

have been with the column the night before, arrived in the morning.

While the reinvigorated ranks were at coffee, there was a great clatter

in the rear, and presently a _cortége_ of mounted officers appeared,

General McDowell among them. Dick Perley, who was at the brigade

headquarters, with Grandison, came to the Caribees presently with

great news.

The battle was to begin that very day. General Tyler was to go forward

to a river called Bull Run, where Beauregard was waiting. The whole army

was to spread out like a fan and fight him. He had seen the map on the

table, and the place couldn't be more than four miles away. Yes, they

all looked eagerly to the westward now. The mountains in the distance

rolled themselves down into lower and lower ridges, and just about four

miles ahead could be seen a range that seemed to melt into a wide

plateau fringed deeply with scrub-oak and clusters of pine. Jack had

provided himself with a field-glass. Standing in the middle of the

Warrenton pike, a fine highway, that ran downward as solid as a Roman

causeway, for four or five miles, he could see the break made by the

Bull Run River, and--yes, by the glaive of battle!--he could see the

glistening of bayonets now and then, where the screen of woods

grew thinner.

The general, too, was examining the distant lines, and Jack took it as a

good omen that Sherman grew jocose and appeared to be making merry with

Tyler, whose face looked troubled, now that the decisive moment seemed

at hand. But the day passed, and there was no advance. It was not until

late in the evening that the cause became known. The army had been

waiting for supplies, ammunition, and what not, that should have been on

the field the day before. The Caribees were made frantic, too, by what

seemed a battle going on to the south of them, a few miles to the left.

The camp that night was a grand debating society, every man propounding

a theory of strategy that would have edified General McDowell, no doubt,

if he could have been given a _précis_ of the whole. How such things

become known it is difficult to guess, but every man in the columns knew

that the general had planned to put forward his thirty thousand men in

the form of a half-moon, covering about ten miles from tip to tip. The

right or northward horn was to be considerably thicker and of more body

than the left or southern. When the time came this right was to curve in

like a hook and cut the ground out from the left wing of the rebel army.

This is the homely way these unscientific strategists made the movement

known to each other, and it very aptly describes the formulated plan of

battle, save that, of course, there were gaps between the forces here

and there along this human crescent. Long before daylight Sherman's

brigade, with a battery of guns and a squadron of cavalry, set out due

south, leaving the broad Warrenton pike far to their right hand. Such a

country as the march led into, no one had ever seen in the North outside

of mountain regions--deep gullies; wastes of gnarled and aggressive

oaks, that tore clothes and flesh in the passage; sudden hillocks rising

conical and inconsequent every few rods; deep chasms conducting driblets

of water; morasses covered with dark and stagnant pools, where the

pioneers fairly picked their steps among squirming reptiles. A stream,

sometimes large as a river, crawling languidly through deep fissures in

the red shale, protected the left flank of the column. The cavalry was

forced to hold the narrow wood road, as the bush was hardly passable

for men.

"Hi, Jack!" Barney cries, catching his breath at the edge of a muddy

stream, "what sort of a place must the rebels be in if they let us

promenade through such a jungle as this unopposed?"

"I have been thinking of that," Jack replies. And so had every man in

the expedition--for to think was one of the drawbacks as well as one of

the excellences of the soldier in the civil war. But presently, after

five hours of laborious work, a halt is called. The men dive into their

haversacks, and even the brackish water in the nearest sedge pond has a

flavor of nectar and the invigoration of a tonic. On they tear again,

the whole body pushing on in skirmish-like dispersion. Suddenly the land

changes. They are climbing a rolling table-land, cleared in some places

as though the axe of the settler had been at work. The march is now

easier and the picket-lines are strengthened. Then a sharp volley comes,

as if from the tree-tops.

The march is instantly halted. The mass, moving in a column, is

deployed--that is, stretched out to cover a mile or more as it moves

forward; the cavalry divides and rides far to right and left, to see

that no ambush is set to enable the rebels to sneak in behind the vast

human broom, as it sweeps through the solemn aisles of the pines, now

rising in vernal columns thicker and thicker. The firing is going on now

in scattering volleys, and soon the wounded--a dozen or more--are

carried back through the silent ranks. Joking has now ceased. Lips are

compressed; eyes glitter, and the men avoid meeting each other's gaze.

It is the moment of all moments, the most trying to the soldier, when he

is expecting every instant a hurricane of bullets, and yet sees no one

to avenge his anguish on or forestall in the deadly work. But they have

been moving forward all the time, the hurtling bullets sweeping through

the leafy covering, now and then thumping into the soft pine with a

vicious joyousness, as if to say to each man, "The next is for you, see

how well our work is done." For these hideous missiles have a language

of their own, as every man that stood fire can tell. The skirmishers are

now all drawn in. The solid line must do the work at hand. No one but

the commander and his confidants knew the work intended, save that to

kill and be killed was the business to be done. The panting lines are on

high cleared ground now, and they can see absolutely nothing but the

irregular depressions that mark the channel of the Bull Run, as it

rushes down to the Rappahannock. The line is moving along steadily.

Looking to left and right, Jack can see the colors of three regiments,

and his eye rests with pleasure on the bright, shining folds of the

Caribees' dark-blue State flag spread to the breeze beside the stars of

the Union. Are they to cross the river? Evidently, for the command is

still "Forward, bear center, bear right." Then, square in front, where

the thick, broad leaves of the oak glitter in the sun, there is seen a

cylinder of steam-like smoke, with fiery gleams at the end, a crackling

explosion of a hogshead of fire-crackers, then a rushing, screaming

sound in their very faces, then a few rods behind a ringing, vicious

explosion. They are in the very teeth of a masked battery. The Union

skirmishers have been withdrawn too soon. The main line will be torn to

pieces, for retreat is as fatal as advance.

"Lie down, men!" The command rings out and is echoed along the column.

The guns have the range, and the enemy knows the ground. The Caribees

are directly in the sweep of the artillery, and the command comes to

them by company to crawl backward, exposing themselves as little as may

be. Presently two brass guns are brought up behind the Caribees. The

gunners have noted the point of the enemy's fire. The men point the big

muzzles with intrepid equanimity, firing over the prostrate blue coats.

For twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour, this is kept up; then there is

silence on the hill beyond. The column rises to its feet, and at the

command, "Forward!" they start with a rush and a cheer. Five hundred

yards onward, and a solid mass of gray coats confront them. A volley is

fired and returned; the exulting Caribees, with two lines behind them,

give a loud cheer and, in an instant, the gray mass has disappeared, as

if the earth had opened. The skirmish-line, advancing now, picks up a

half-dozen or more wounded rebels, besides two or three who had become

confused in the hasty retreat and run toward the "Yankees" instead of

their own line. Jack's comrade held this conversation with one of the

prisoners:

"I say, reb, what place is this?"

"Mitchell's Ford."

"Much of your army here?"

"'Nuff to lick you uns out of your boots, I reckon."

"What did they run across the ford for, then?"

"Oh, you'll see soon enough--when our folks get ready."

"Who's in command here?"

"General Bonham, of South Carolina."

"How many men, about?"

"Well, there's right smart on to a million, I reckon. They had to cut

the trees down, yonder, to get room for 'em.".

The man's eyes twinkled as he gave this precise approximation; but

Barney, who had brought the humorist in, whispered to the captain to let

him have a moment's speech with the man before he was sent away. The

captain nodded, and Barney said innocently:

"Had anything to eat to-day?"

"Not a mouthful. The trains were all taken up with soldiers coming from

Richmond."

"Have a bit of beef--and here's a cracker or two. You can have some

coffee if the guards will let you make it."

"Old Longstreet himself would envy me now," the rebel cried, his mouth

stuffed with the cold meat and hard-tack, almost as fresh and crisp as

soda-crackers, for the contractors had not yet learned the trick of

making them out of sawdust, white sand, and other inexpensive

substitutes for flour.

"Longstreet?" Barney said, carelessly.

"Yes, that's the commander of the right wing, just below, at Blackburn's

Ford."

"Blackburn's Ford?"

"Yes, that's a mile down, and really behind you uns, for the run makes a

big elbow to the east. I tell you what it is, Yank, you'll see snakes

right soon, for our folks are behind you."

Sure enough, a crackling to the left confirmed this, and the captain,

who had listened to Barney's adroit cross-questioning, sent the man with

a note to Colonel Sherman, a few rods in the rear. Ten minutes later the

column fell into ranks again and moved off swiftly southeastward. A

march of a mile or so brought them to a bold ridge cutting down almost

aslant to the clear water of the run. The skirmishers, for some reason,

had not pushed ahead to explore the ground, and the regiments, marching

in close masses, came out in a rather disorderly multitude on the ridged

crest. A hundred yards nearly below the water-course was fringed with

thick copses of oak, and the gently ascending slopes on the western bank

were completely hidden from the Union lines. A few gaunt, almost

limbless trees rose up spectrally on the ridge, offering the compact

masses neither shelter from the sun nor security from the enemy--if

there were an enemy near.

Dick came up to Jack out of breath with great news, just as the Caribees

were aligning themselves to move forward.

"General Tyler just told Richardson"--a brigade commander--"that the

rebels had retreated from Manassas, and he (Tyler) is going to have the

glory of occupying the works: that McDowell thought the army would have

to fight a big battle to get--"

"Glory!" the group shouted, near enough to hear; and the delightful

story ran up and down the lines by a telephone process that was much

swifter than Edison's electric invention. A roar of gratulatory triumph

broke--a roar so loud and inspiring that for a moment the densely packed

masses did not distinguish an ear-splitting outburst just in front of

them. But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled

cheerers--cries of death and agony--changed the paeans of triumph into

wails of anguish and mortal pain. A panic--instant, unreasoning,

irresistible--fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident. A third

of the regiment seemed to wither away. The colors fell in the struggling

group in the center. Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could

be vaguely heard from the staff and line.

Direr still, hideous clamor of masked cannon, right in their very faces,

added the horror of surprise to the disorder of attack, and the thick

blue lines broke in irrestrainable confusion. The terror of the unknown

seized officers and men alike. In five minutes the crest was cleared,

and the ignoble vanity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency of one man had

undone in an hour the splendid work of the commander-in-chief. A _mêlée_

of miserable, disgraceful disorder ensued. The rebel sharpshooters,

hurrying to the flank, poured in hurtling, murderous volleys, filling

the minds of the panic-stricken mob with the idea, the most awful that

can enter a soldier's mind, that his line is surrounded. Hundreds threw

away guns and everything that could impede flight. Other hundreds fired

wildly wherever they saw moving men, and thus aided the rebels in

killing their own comrades, for it was into the supporting Union forces

they directed their random shots. The fire grew every instant more

bewildering. Shots came in volleys from every direction, and the

helpless hordes darted wildly together--sometimes toward, instead of

from the enemy. Had the rebels been as numerous as they were crafty, the

brigade could have been seized _en masse_. But now Sherman is at hand

with fresh regiments, others are at his heels, and the contest takes on

some of the order of intelligent action. The rebels, too, are

re-enforced, but the dispositions made by the Union chiefs bring the

combat to equal terms. The clamor of cannon and musketry continues an

hour, though the lines are now among the friendly undergrowth, and the

losses are not serious. But the Caribees, with the regiment supporting

them, have been blotted from the scene as a factor. For hours the

scattering groups fled--fled in ever-increasing panic, and it was long

after dark before the remnants of the regiment came into camp at

Centreville.

Poor Jack! He gave no heed to supper that dreadful night. He threw

himself on the ground, too exhausted to think and too disheartened to

talk. He couldn't understand the shameful panic. The Caribees were not

cowards; every man in the regiment had longed for the battle. When under

fire at Mitchell's Ford, an hour earlier than the disaster at Blackburn,

all had stood firmly in place, fought with coolness, and gave no sign of

fear. The volume of fire when they broke was not much greater than the

Mitchell's Ford volleys. During the night Grandison came to camp and

assembled the officers. He expressed his sorrow at the sudden shadow

that had fallen on the fair fame of the regiment, but since the panic

had not been followed, as such outbreaks often are, by the total

destruction of the men, there would be abundant chance to redeem the

disgrace of the day. He had himself begged the division commander to

give the men another trial, and he had staked his commission on their

doing such duty as would remove the tarnish of the afternoon from

their banners.

The officers had been dispirited. Major Mike had raged over the field,

through the woods, a very angry man indeed, belaboring the fleeing men

with his sword and imploring those he couldn't reach to "come to me

here. Dress on me. There's no call to be afeard. We've more men than

they have, and we'll soon wallop them."

But the resounding blows on the backs of those near the officer did not

give the encouraging emphasis to his appeal that captivates men whose

reasoning faculties are almost gone for the moment. Before daylight on

the next morning--Saturday, the 20th--the companies were called together

and little addresses were made to the men by the officers. The substance

of Colonel Grandison's words was imparted, and the hope expressed that

when, in the course of that or the next day the regiment was again under

fire, they would show that the panic of yesterday had not been

cowardice. The men said nothing, and every one was glad that the light

was so dim that the officers could not look in their faces, though, as a

matter of fact, the shoulder-straps had shown as little fortitude as the

muskets in the dispersion. All that day the forces rested, the Caribees

providing themselves with new arms and equipments, or the two or three

hundred who had flung their own away. During the afternoon an incident

happened in the division that lessened the mortification of the

Caribees. A splendid regiment and a battery of bronze guns came into the

highway from the extreme of the line that was expected to take part in

the battle which all knew would be opened the next morning. Every one

was surprised to see the men moving without muskets and the colors

wrapped in their cases. "Where you bound for?" some one at the roadside

yelled curiously.

"Our time is out; we're going home."

Then a derisive howl followed the line as it passed through the masses

of the army, and remarks of an acrid nature were made that were not

gratifying to the departing patriots:

"Don't you want a guard to protect you?"

"Does your mamma know you're out alone?"

"Wait till to-morrow and we'll send Beauregard's forces to see you safe

home."

The men and officers looked very conscious and uncomfortable under the

gamut of jeers, for word went along the line, and all along the route to

the rear they passed through this clamor of contemptuous outcry.

"Well, I thought we had reached the eminent deadly pinnacle of

disgrace," Barney said, with a sigh, as a group of Company K watched the

considerable number taken out of McDowell's small army, "but this sight

makes me feel like the man on trial for murder who escapes with a

verdict of manslaughter."

CHAPTER X.

BLOOD AND IRON.

Late at night Dick came down to Jack's bivouac with a strange tale.

McDowell had come to Tyler's quarters storming with rage. He had accused

that officer of disobeying orders in forcing a fight on the fords of

Bull Run where he had been told to merely reconnoitre.

The staff believed that Tyler would be cashiered, for he had not only

wrecked the general's plan of battle, but he had given the rebels the

secret of the movement and demoralized one wing of the army by putting

raw soldiers in front of masked batteries that could have been detected

by proper outpost work. Then one of the staff reported a speech Tyler

had made when his troops rushed over the empty rebel breastworks and

forts around Centreville. His officers were discussing the probable

forces Beauregard had behind the crooked stream beyond.

"I believe we've got them on the run," Tyler said, exultingly, "from

what we see here. I tell you the great man of this war is the man that

plants the flag at Manassas, and I'm going through to Richmond

to-night."

"Not much comfort in knowing we've got such a fool for a commander,"

Jack cried, thinking of the disgrace of the day before and of the small

chance the regiment had under such a chief to redeem its prestige on the

morrow. All personal griefs, everything but the pending battle, were

driven from the men's minds as the signs of the momentous work of the

morrow accumulated. The hospital corps was up in force. The yellow flag

floated from an immense tent near the roadway. A great _cortége_ of

general officers rode away from McDowell's quarters about ten in the

evening. The haversacks were filled with three days' cooked rations. One

hundred rounds of ammunition to a man were dealt out to each company.

Everything not absolutely necessary was ordered to the company wagons.

The talk in the camp that night was of home--of anything and everything

but the dreadful to-morrow, so long looked forward to with eager hope,

now regarded with uncertainty that was not so much fear as the memory of

the panic at Blackburn's Ford. Jack was provided with a large atlas map

of Virginia, and with the bits of information given by Dick he was able

to conjecture the probable plan of the next day. The cronies of Company

K listened in delight to his exposition of the action.

"Here," he said, "is the Bull Run. It makes two big elbows eastward

toward us--one about four miles to the northwest of us, the other about

eight miles to the southeast of that, and about four miles from our

right hand here! The rebel we quizzed yesterday says that there are five

fords between the Warrenton pike bridge--that's just ahead of us yonder

at the end of the road we are on--the last one is McLean's Ford, at the

very knuckle of the elbow that is crooked toward us a mile west of where

we were yesterday. That is near the railway, which it is Beauregard's

business to fight for and our business to get, for then he will have to

fall back near Richmond to feed his army. Now from the railway where it

crosses Bull Run near Mitchell's Ford to the Warrenton road, which

Beauregard must also hold, is about nine miles. He must guard all these

fords, and we must fight for any one or two of them that we need to

cross by. The only problem is, whether our general is going to strike

with his right arm at Mitchell's Ford, his left arm at this very

Warrenton road we are on, or whether he means to butt the middle of the

line of Beauregard's battle to break him into two pieces?"

"What would Frederick the Great or Napoleon do?" Nick asked, absorbed in

Jack's confident predications.

"If Frederick had equal forces he would have a reserve just where we

shall be in the morning--there at that point marked 'Stone Ridge,' and

move a heavy mass to the southwest below McLean's Ford there, where you

see the railway runs along the run for a half-mile or more. Or he would

send this body to the northeast, over there where you see Sudley Springs

marked in rather large letters, and he would by either one of these

movements turn the enemy's flank--that is, get in behind him and force

him to change front to fight, something that is rarely done successfully

in battle. Napoleon would, on the contrary, mass all his best troops at

the stone bridge, open the fight with every piece of artillery he could

bring to bear, and in the panic send divisions ten deep across

the bridge."

"Which would be the better plan?"

"Ah! that no one can say. The first is sure enough and less dangerous,

if the commander is not certain of his men, because you notice that we

felt excellent and confident all day, so long as we were marching

forward and pushing the enemy from our path. The trial in battle is to

be kept standing under fire, not sure where your enemy is; and then you

noticed that our own guns behind us, sending shot and shells over us,

were just as trying as the rebels'. Only soldiers of the very first

class can be depended on in the Napoleon tactics. We are not soldiers of

the first class; and you may be sure McDowell, who was many years in

Europe, and who is a trained officer, will make use of the manoeuvres

best calculated to bring out whatever there is in his men. As a matter

of opinion, I should say that, in view of the miserable affair on the

right yesterday, he will strike out for Sudley Springs, where we shall

have the rebels just as you would have me if you were at my side, held

my left arm behind me, ready to break my back with your knee planted

in it."

Jack was sergeant of the guard that night, and it was in the group of

sentries awaiting their relief every two hours, re-enforced by his

tent-mates of Company K, that these learned dissertations on war were

carried on. It was a never to be forgotten Saturday night to millions

yet living. In Washington the President and his Cabinet sat far into the

morning hours receiving the dispatches from the weary and disappointed

chief--for, if Tyler had not made his miserable attempt to reach

Manassas, the battle would have been fought that vital Saturday, and the

result would have been another story in history. As the morning broke,

red and murky, the army was up and in line, but without the usual noisy

signals. The artillery-horses began to move first wherever it was

possible. The heavy guns were pushed forward on the sward, to prevent

the loud metallic clangor that penetrated the still air like clashing

anvils. By half after six, the advance brigade, the Caribees in their

old place, were within gunshot of the stone bridge.

"Ah ha, Jack! It is the Napoleonic plan!" Barney cried, as the artillery

took places in front of the masses lying on the ground.

"Wait," Jack cried, owlishly. "The battle isn't fought always where the

guns are loudest."

But the guns were now loud and quick. The rebels, behind a thick screen

of trees, took up the challenge, and every sound was drowned in the roar

of the artillery. A few far in the rear were wounded--those nearest the

rebels were in the least danger, whether because the guns could not be

sufficiently depressed, or because the gunners were poor hands, couldn't

be determined. A breathless suspense, an insatiate craving to see, to

move, to fly forward, or do anything, devoured the prostrate ranks. The

firing had gone on two hours or more, which seemed only so many minutes,

when to the group near General Tyler a courier, panting and dusty, rode

in great excitement.

"General Tyler, the major-general has just learned that the enemy have

crossed in force at Blackburn's Ford, below you. You are at once to take

measures to protect your left flank."

"Ah ha, Jack; Frederick's on the other side, eh?" Barney said, as,

standing near the group, these words reached their ears.

"Perhaps there are two Fredericks at work. Look yonder!" handing him his

glass as he spoke.

"Thunder! our whole army is marching over there to the right, and we

sha'n't even see the battle. They are four miles off. Why, what an

immense army we must have! I thought this was the bulk of it, but we're

not a brigade compared to that."

"Now, Barney, I feel confident that is the grand movement. Look how they

fly along! The fields are as good as roads out there, and if it were not

for the artillery they could make five miles an hour. Now, keep your

ears open, my lad: you'll hear music off there to the northwest, music

that will make Beauregard sick, if that courier's information is exact.

For, don't you see, as we are placed here, with that gully to our left

and the thick woods in front, we could hold this ground against six

times our number."

Company K were now sent forward to the right to relieve a body of

skirmishers that had been hidden on the margin of Bull Run, some

distance to the westward of the stone bridge. Jack, going forward with

his glass, noticed an officer among the men, but not catching sight of

his face did not recognize him.

"Is that a rebel or one of our fellows?" one of the men said, pointing

to a horseman disappearing in the woods four hundred yards to the right

and in front of the company, marching in a straggling line two abreast,

"by the flank," as it is called. Jack took his glass to discover, but

the rider had disappeared. An instant after from a knoll, Jack, glass at

eye, was examining eagerly the field on the other side of the river,

when a horseman suddenly shot into view, riding desperately.

"By George, it is the same man! I wonder how he crossed the stream?

There must be a bridge down there among those thick trees and bushes,"

Jack said, excitedly.

"Are you sure, sergeant, that is the same man that was in the woods to

the right there, five minutes ago?"

Jack turned; the officer was at his shoulder. He saluted respectfully,

recognizing, with a thrill of joy, old Red Top, as the company

called Sherman.

"Yes, colonel, it's the same man. He was in his shirtsleeves and had a

blue scarf tied about his arm. There can be no mistake; several of us

saw him quite plainly."

"If that be true, we've gained a half-day's work in two minutes." He was

looking diligently through the glass as he spoke, and his eye brightened

as he marked the man until he disappeared. He turned to an orderly that

was following at a distance leading a horse. Mounting this lightly the

colonel rode to the head of the company and said in a short,

decisive tone:

"Come ahead men, at a double-quick, until you strike the stream." He

kept beside the men as they moved. In fifteen minutes they were at the

water's edge. Then the company was deployed as skirmishers, two thirds

halting where they struck the water and the rest keeping on up the bank

of the river for a few hundred yards. Sherman was eying every inch of

the bank until, suddenly reaching a break where fresh tracks of a horse

were visible, he directed his orderly to follow, and plunged into the

water. It was not up to the horses' knees from bank to bank. Riding

back, his face aglow, the colonel ordered the captain to cross half his

men and station them up and down on the bank where they would not be

seen by the rebels on the high ground above. Then, addressing Jack,

he said:

"Sergeant, select two or three trusty men. Follow the bank of the stream

until you come to General Hunter's division, which may be a mile,

perhaps more, to the right yonder; you can tell by the firing soon. Tell

General Hunter that we have discovered a ford and shall not have to

fight for the stone bridge. We shall be across in no time and take the

enemy in the rear. If you can't find Hunter, give this intelligence to

any officer in command. Stay."

He scribbled a line on a sheet of his order-book, saying: "This will be

your authority. It's better not to write the rest for fear you should be

captured. In case you are in danger tell each man with you what to say,

so that there will be more chances of getting the information where it

will do good; and remember, sergeant, that this news in Hunter's hands

will be almost equivalent to victory. Ah!"

He paused again. Reverberating crashes came from the high grounds up the

river. "You will have no trouble in finding him now. Those are Hunter's

guns. Hurry."

Glowing, grateful, big with the fate of the battle, Jack had Barney,

Nick, and another, whom he charged with the duty of historian, detailed

for this duty of glory. The group set off with a fervent Godspeed from

the company sheltered among the thick pines and oaks.

"Now, boys," Jack said, every inch the captain, "we must spread out like

skirmishers. Our chief danger will be from the left, as no one will be

likely to be in the water but our own men, and we must look as sharply

for them as for the enemy. I will take the center; you, Barney, the

left, next to me; and you, Nick, four paces farther to the left." Jack

looked at his watch. It was just 9.30, Sunday morning, July 21, 1861.

The crash of musketry ahead now became one unbroken roar, with a

_crescendo_ of artillery that fairly shook the ground the messengers

were darting over, for all were on a dead run. The bushes grew thick on

the hillside and their branches were stubborn as crab thorns. Hell, as

Barney afterward remarked, would have been cool in comparison to the

heat as the adventurers tugged and wrestled forward. Now guns were

roaring on every side save the river. Behind, before, to the left, the

thunders played upon the parched land. At the end of a half-hour the

bullets and shells passed over the group as Jack and his squad pushed

along the hilly way. Twice, commands, and even the clicking, of what

Jack knew must be rebel guns sounded not twenty paces away, but, thanks

to the thick bushes, the scouts passed unseen, and, thanks to the noise

of battle, unheard. But now the danger is from friends, not enemies.

Balls come hurtling through the trees across the stream, and in a low

voice Jack bids Barney summon Nick. Then all slip down to the water's

edge, and make their way painfully through the marshy swamps, the

cane-like rushes that fill the narrow valley. The run has been a fearful

strain upon Nick, and at length he falls, gasping, in a clump of

cat-tails.

"What is it, old fellow?" Jack cries in alarm.

"O Jack! I can't go a step farther. You go on and leave me. I shall

follow when I get breath."

He was white and gasping. Barney filled his canteen from the running

water, and, wetting his handkerchief, laid it on Nick's parboiled head

and temples.

"Best a few minutes," Jack said, soothingly. "I will reconnoitre a bit."

Stripping off his accoutrements, he clasped a tall sycamore growing at

the crest of the ravine, and when far up brought his glass to bear. A

third of a mile to the left and southward, he could see a regiment with

a flag bearing a single star, surrounding a small stone farm-house on

the brow of a gentle hill. They were firing to the west and toward the

north, where the black clouds obscured his view. But the red gleam in

the smoke told of at least a dozen guns, and he knew that the main

battle was there, though the fury of it reached far to the east, near

the stone bridge which he had quit an hour before. Then through the veil

of smoke long, deep masses of blue emerge and make for the rebel front

on the brow of the hill, fairly at Jack's feet; the enemy redoubles the

fire; two guns at their left pour canister into the advancing wall of

blue. It never wavers, but, as a group falls to the earth, the rest

close together and the mass whirls on.

Jack feels like flying. Oh, the grandeur of it, the fearlessness, the

intoxication! He almost falls from the tree in his excitement. But he

takes a last sweep of the belching hill. Hark! Loud cheers in the trees

back of the rebels, far to the southeast, perhaps a mile and a half;

then the flaunting Palmetto flag flying forward in the center of deep

masses of gray. Which will reach the hill first? He can not quit the

deadly sight. Ah! the blue lines are pressing on now; the cannon-shots

pass over their heads into the devoted line of gray, desperately

thinned, but clinging to the key of the battle-field. But, great God!

Perhaps his delay is aiding the enemy. He sees the route now

clear--straight to the west--and no rebels near enough to intervene. He

descends so fast that his hands and legs are blistered, but he is down.

"Look sharp, boys; you must follow me as best you can. I know the

route--there is a forest path directly to our lines, and we shall be

there in twenty minutes--I shall, at least." He doesn't stop to see

whether he is followed or not, but dashes on, and the rest after him. He

is far out of sight in an instant. It is only by the crackling of the

branches that the others keep his course. The way is between steep,

precipitous hills, which explains how they could be so near the battle

and yet not in it, nor harmed by the missiles flying sometimes very near

them. At a deep branch of the stream the three rearmost came in sight of

Jack, up to his armpits in water and pushing for the shore.

While they are hailing him exultantly he sinks out of sight; an awful

anguish almost stops the others, but Barney, flinging his musket and

impediments off as he runs, leaps far into the stream, and when the rest

reach the spot he has Jack by the hair, dragging him to the bank. He is

fairly worn out by the stress, and the others loosen his coat, stretch

him on the brown sward and rub his hands, his body. It is ten minutes,

it seemed an hour, before he is able to get up, and the rest insist on

carrying his accoutrements. Then the wild race is begun again, every

instant bringing them nearer the pandemonium of battle. Suddenly the

sharp commands of officers are heard in front and to the left. Is it the

enemy, or is it friends? The group halts in an agony of doubt. How can

they find out? Barney takes out his handkerchief and puts it on his gun,

which he was careful to go back and recover when Jack was on the bank. A

ray of bright red suddenly flits above the thick tops of the scrub-oaks.

Yes, God be praised, there is the flag of stars, and there are blue

uniforms! With a wild hurrah, drowned in the musketry to the left, they

rush forward, are halted by a picket guard, exhibit Sherman's order, and

are directed to the commanding-officer. That personage has no knowledge

of General Hunter's whereabouts, but Colonel Andrew Porter is just

beyond, commanding the brigade. To him Jack makes known Sherman's

message, and is directed farther to the southwest, the Union right now

facing nearly to the east in the execution of McDowell's admirable flank

manoeuvre.

Now among their own, Sherman's couriers run more peril than when

skirting the edge of the battle, for the shells are directed at the line

they are pursuing. They push to the rear and continue southeastward,

where Hunter's headquarters are supposed to be. But Jack is easy on the

score of his mission, since the general, who is nearest the stone

bridge, has been apprised, and well knows that the fire which has been

coming near his left flank is Sherman's. Until, however, he has executed

his orders literally Jack won't be satisfied, and plunges on, the others

following, nothing loath. But it is a way of pain for the lads now.

Every step they come upon the dead and dying. The air is filled with

moaning men, whinnying horses, the hurried movement of stretchers, the

solemn solicitude of the hospital corps. The line of foremost battle is

less terrifying, less trying than this inner way of Golgotha, and the

four are well-nigh unnerved when they reach a group where the commanding

officer has been pointed out.

"General Hunter?" Jack says, addressing an officer with a star.

"My name is Franklin. General Hunter was wounded an hour ago. What's the

matter?"

Jack gave his message, and Franklin said, cheerfully: "That's good news.

You're a very brave fellow. Go a few yards in the rear yonder and you'll

find General McDowell. He'll enjoy your message."

On the hill they halt electrified.

Thick copses of scrub-pine dot the gently sloping sward. Here and there

clumps of tall pines stand in the bare, brown sod as if to guard the

young outshoots clustering about them in wanton dispersion. Cow-paths,

marked only by the worn edges of the bushes, run in zigzags across the

hillside and up to the plateau. The remnants of rail fences strew the

ground here and there. The low roof of the farm-house can be seen far

back even from the depression, where the lines of blue are now resting a

brief, deadly half-hour.

The sun is now behind the halted line of blue; the bayonets, catching

the light, make a sea of liquid, mirror-like rivulets hovering in the

air, with the bushy branches of pine rising like green isles in the

shimmering tide. The men are filling their cartridge-boxes; new

regiments are gliding into the gaps where death has cut the widest

swath. From the woods, cries, groans, commands, clashing steel as the

men hustle against each other in the rush into line, prelude the Vulcan

clamor soon to begin. Men, bent, sometimes crawling, with stretchers on

their shoulders, glide through the maimed and shrieking fragments of

bodies, picking out here and there those seeming capable of carriage.

Other men, prone on their faces, hold canteens of tepid, muddy

water--but ah! a draught to the feverish lips which seems godlike

nectar. Against the stout bodies of the trees, armless men, legless

trunks, the maimed in every condition of death's fantastic sport, hold

themselves limply erect, to gain succor or save some of the vital stream

pouring from their gaping wounds.

Couriers dash up to the impassive chief, calm-eyed, keen, alert,

surveying the line, dispatching brief commands, receiving reports. It is

Franklin. With the air of a marshal on a civic pageant, perplexed only

by some geometrical problem denying the possibility of two right lines

on the same plane, he glances upward toward the brow of the plateau. The

four flags had been increased by half a dozen. Ah, they have received

aid! A tremendous crash comes from the left. That must be Sherman. He is

on the rebel rear. One strong pull, and the two bodies will be united,

his left arm reaching Sherman's right. The shining mirage of steel above

the green isle sinks. The clash of hurtling accoutrements comes up

musically, tranquilly from the low ground. The blue mass, first

deliberately, then in a quiet, regular run, passes like a moving

barricade up the sloping hillside. Then from one end of the long wall to

the other white puffs as of some monster breathing spasmodically.

The air is a blur of sulphurous blackness. The bullets are as thick as

if a swarm of leaden locusts had been routed from the foliage, and taken

wing hillward. Then behind, through the gaps in the trees, big, whining,

screeching swarms of another caliber shells fly over the wall of blue.

In a moment the ground of the plateau is torn, the red clay flying far

into the air. But now the blue wall is girdling the very crest of the

hill; it stops, shrivels. Long gaps are cut in its broken surface. The

hillside is dotted with sprawling figures. The crest is a ragged edge of

writhing bodies and struggling limbs. Forward! The wall is advancing,

but shorter. It is within reach of the shining guns--spouting flame and

iron in the very face of the dauntless wall. Then there is a pause. The

smoke hides everything but the maimed and quivering heaps that strive to

crawl backward, back to the crest, back to the deeps that are not rest

nor security. The hillside is like a field, covered with sheaved

grain--with a thousand mangled bodies that had been men.

Then to these wrestling specters--for in the dim smoke and Tartarean

atmosphere the actions of loading and aiming take the shape of huge

writhing, convulsing, monstrous, grappling--come quick-moving lines of

help. They rush through them, over them. The thirteen cannon behind the

struggling hydra of gray seem one vortex--sulphurous, flaming, spitting,

as from one vast mouth, scorching fire, huge mouthfuls of granite venom.

Back--back, the gray masses break in sinuous, definite, slow-yielding

disruption.

Then a sudden inrush from the left of the broken gray, where smoke and

space play fantastic tricks with the sunshine. Miraculously a dark mass

is projected on the shimmering spectrum, and a ringing voice is heard:

"We are saved; we are re-enforced. We will die here!" Then high above

the din, in the exultant tumult of the deadly won ground, the nearest in

blue hear a stentorian voice--grim, deliberate, exultant:

"Look where Jackson stands like a stone-wall! At them, men! Let us

determine to die here, and we will conquer."

Die he did, when the yelling horde in the sudden outrush grazed the edge

of the Union besom sweeping over the plain in a rush of death. Then

behind these spectral shapes came others--thousands--with wild, fierce

shouts. The blue mass is thinned to a single line. Men in command look

anxiously to the rear. Where is Burnside? Where are the twelve thousand

men whom Hunter and Heintzelman deployed in these woods two hours since?

Back, slowly, fiercely, but backward, the slender wall of blue is

forced; not defeated, but not victorious. All this Jack sees, and he

turns heartsick from the sight.

When the straggling couriers reached the point designated as McDowell's

headquarters, he had gone to the eastward of the line, and, faithful to

the command given him, Jack set out with Barney, leaving the others to

deliver the message in case he missed the general. They emerged

presently on the edge of a plateau, whence nearly the whole battle could

be seen. Jack climbed a tall oak to reconnoitre the ground for McDowell,

but, as his glass revealed the battling lines, he shouted to Barney to

climb for a moment, to impress the frightful yet grandiose spectacle

upon his mind. Far off toward the stone bridge, now a mile or more

northeast of them, they could see the Union flags waving, and mark the

white puffs of smoke that preceded the booming of the cannon. Every

instant the clouds of smoke came southward, where the rebel lines were

concealed by the thick copses. But they were breaking--always breaking

back anew. In twenty minutes more, at the same rate, the hill upon which

the rebel lines nearest the tree held the Union right at bay would be

surrounded on two sides.

This, for the moment, was a sulphurous crater, the fire-belching demons,

invisible in the smoke. Through the glass Jack could see the lines

clearly--or the smoke arising above them. The enemy had been pushed back

nearly two miles since he had left Colonel Sherman a few rods above the

stone bridge. The Union force, as marked by the veil of smoke, curved,

about the foemen, a vast crescent, seven miles or more from tip to tip.

The bodies opposing were scattered like a gigantic staircase, with the

angles of the steps confronting each other step by step. But now the

Union ranks at Jack's feet rush forward; a group of riders are coming to

the tree, and Jack descends hastily to meet the general. He is again

disappointed. It is not McDowell. At a loss what to do, he salutes one

of the officers and states his case, recognizing, as he turns,

General Franklin.

"I don't see that you can do better than remain where you are, or, still

better, push to the brow of that hill yonder and act as a picket. In

case you see any force approaching from this side, which is not likely,

give warning. Our cavalry ought to be here, but it isn't. If you are

called to account when the battle is done, give me as your authority. I

take it your brigade will be around here pretty soon, if they make as

rapid work all the way as they have made since eleven o'clock. If the

cavalry come, you can report to the nearest officer for assignment."

CHAPTER XI.

THE LEGIONS OF VARUS.

The two free lances set out now, relieved of all responsibility, and

determined to watch the open fields and woods to see that this part of

the field was not surprised. The hill to which the general had directed

them was farther from the battle than they had yet been, but the work

going on to the northeast showed that this would soon be the western

edge of the combat if Sherman continued advancing. They are soon on the

hill, and Jack posts himself in a tree with his glass. There is a lull

in the quarter they have just quit. The smoke rolls away, and now he can

see streams of gray-coats hurrying to the edge of the plateau, where,

two hours before, he had encountered Porter's brigade. Can it be

possible that Porter's troops do not see these on-rushing hordes? They

are moving on the right point of the crescent, and unless the Union

commander is alert they will break in on the back of the point; for

Jack, without knowing it, was virtually in the rebel lines--that is, he

was nearer the rebel left flank, the foot of the long, bow-shaped

staircase, than he was to the tip of the Union crescent.

But no! The Stars and Stripes fly forward; they are on the very crest

whence the defiant guns spat upon them. But now the smoke covers

everything. Then there is a calm. The ground is clear again. The gray

masses are pouring up to the crest in still greater numbers; a large

body of them march down the hill in the rear of the Union line concealed

by the woods; they march right up to the ranks where the red-barred flag

is flying! What can it mean? Neither side fires. There must surely be

some mistake. Hark! now the blue line discovers--too late--that the mass

is the enemy, and half the line withers in the point-blank discharge.

They are swept from the ground. Jack is trembling--demoniac. The gray

mass springs forward; they have seized the guns--four of them--and turn

them upon the disappearing blue. Then a hoarse shout of delirious

triumph. The guns are lost; the day is lost, for now there are no

blue-coats in sight. But no! A still wilder shout--electrifying,

stentorian--comes across the plateau. The blue mass reappears; they come

with a wild rush in well-ordered array; they are the regulars, Jack can

tell by their movements. It must be the famous Rickett's battery he saw

at Centreville in the morning. In five minutes the tale was retold, and

the guns, snatched from the worsted gray-coats, are safe in the hands of

their masters. Again the smoke obscures the picture; again it clears

away, and now the gray are in greater force than before, and the

horseless batteries are again the prize of this rapacious grapple.

Swarming in from three sides, the gray again hold the contested pieces.

The blue vanish into the thick bushes. Another irruption, another pall

of smoke, and Jack's heart bounds in exultant joy, for he sees the New

York flag in the van. Sherman has reached the point of dispute. But

alas! the guns are run back, and as the gray lines sway rearward in

billowy, regular measure, they retain the Titanically contested trophies.

The sun is now far beyond the meridian. The Union lines are closing up

compactly. One more such grapple as the last and the broad plateau where

the rebel artillery is massed, pointing westward, northward, eastward,

will be won. But a palsy seems to have settled on the lines of blue.

They are motionless, while their adversaries are hurrying men from some

secret place, where they seem to be inexhaustible. The whole battle is

now within the compass of a mile. But where can these hordes come from?

Surely, General McDowell has never been mad enough to leave them

disengaged along the fords! No; they do not come from that direction.

They come at the very center of the rebel rear. Can it be that troops

are arriving from Richmond? The Southern lines are longer than the

Northern, but they have been since the first moment Jack got a glimpse

of them. He could see, too, that they were thinner: that on the spur of

the plateau in front of the massed rebel artillery a single brigade was

holding the Union mass at bay. He can almost hear the rebel commands as

the re-enforcements pour in. But now the thunder breaks out anew, rolls

in vengeful fury around the western and northern base of the plateau.

The gray lines stagger; the falling men block the steps of the living.

Surely now McDowell is going to do or die. Yes. The iron game goes on;

the blue lines jostle and crush forward. They are at the last wall of

resistance. But what is the sound at his very feet? As Jack looks down

in the narrow way between the hill he is on and the plateau on the very

edge of the Union line--in fact, behind it now, for it has moved forward

since he took post--a rushing mass of gray-clad soldiery is moving

forward on the dead run. In one instant the head of the column is where

General Franklin rode but an hour or two before. He looks for Barney. He

can see him nowhere. He climbs down in haste and discovers his comrade

soundly sleeping against the base of the tree.

"Barney, the army is ruined!"

"Is the battle over?"

"Oh, no, no, but it will be in a moment. Hark, hear that!"

A roar of musketry--it seemed at their very feet. Then an outbreak of

yells, so sharp, so piercing, so devilish the sound, that the marrow

froze in their veins, arose, as if from the whole thicket about them.

"Is it too late to warn General Franklin?" Barney asked, trembling.

"Ah, Barney, we are as bad as traitors; we ought to have seen these

rebels before they got near. If we had done our duty this would never

have happened. Perhaps it is not too late to get back. Let me go up and

see where we can find a way without running into the enemy."

Reaching his perch again, Jack cast his despairing eyes toward the fatal

hill. It was now clear of smoke, and there wasn't a regiment left on it.

His heart leaped for an instant, the next it was lead, for the ranks

that had disappeared were down on the brow of the hill--in the valley--

rushing forward, unresisted, the red and blue of the Union, mixed with

the stars and bars of the rebellion; but, worse than all, the ranks of

gray were sweeping in overwhelming masses quite behind the lines of

blue, cutting them down as a scythe when near the end of the furrow. To

the eastward Sherman still clung desperately to the crests he had won,

but Jack saw with agony that, slipping between him and the river, a

great wedge of gray was hurrying forward. His last despairing glance

caught a body of jet black horses galloping wildly into the dispersing

ranks of blue. He came down from the tree limp, nerveless, unmanned.

"Well?" Barney asked.

"It's all over--we are ruined!"

"The army, you mean?"

"Ah, yes! the army and we too."

"But what's going to become of us?"

"I don't much care what becomes of us--at least I don't care what

becomes of me!"

"But if we don't get back to our regiment, they'll think we're

deserters."

"Good God, yes! I forgot that; I think I can find the way back. But

we'll have to be careful, the enemy are all around us. I can hear them

plainly, very near. Follow me, and don't speak above a whisper."

Then, with swift movement, always as near the thick bushes as they could

push, they fled faster and faster, as fear fell more and more heavily

upon their quickened fancies. The thought of the repute of deserters

lent them endurance, or they must have broken down before the weary

shiftings of that dreadful flight. They are now near the spot where they

had met Porter's pickets in the morning. The sounds of battle had died

out at intervals, renewed now and again by an outcry of cheers, a quick

fusillade, then more cheers, and then an ominous silence. But now there

is a continuous roll of musketry near the knoll, back of the Warrenton

road. The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces,

halt, gasping, to take their bearings. They can see the turnpike far

beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing

in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden

down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles

overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by

the rebel shells; they see an army, in every sense a mob, swarming

behind the deserted rebel forts; they see orderly ranks of shining black

horses this side the stone bridge charging the fleeing lines of blue;

they see shells whirling like huge blackbirds in the sky, suddenly

falling among the skurrying thousands; they see a shell finally burst on

the bridge, shiver a caisson to fragments, and then all sign of

organized flight comes to an end.

But near them, meanwhile, a sullen fire replies with desperate

promptitude to the rebel shots.

"If we can get over to the men fighting at the edge of the woods, we may

be killed or captured, but we won't be disgraced!" Jack cries.

Again they make a wide circuit through the woods, and now the firing is

near at hand, coming slowly toward them. They have only to wait and they

will be among the forlorn hope. Ah, with what fervent joy Jack marks the

Union banner, flapping its twin streamers among the hurtling pines! They

are near it; they are under it! Their own guns are no longer available;

hundreds are lying at hand; they seize them. The line is firing in

retreat. It is a sadly depleted battalion of Keyes's regulars,

steadfast, imperturbable, devoted. A handful of them has been forgotten

or misdirected. The rebels, uncertain whether it was not a trap to snare

them, move with caution, while far to the left a turning column is

hurrying to hem the Union group in on every side. There are hardly three

hundred blue-coats in the mass, but their volleys are so swift, so

regular, so steady, that they make the impression of a thousand. The

enemy felt sure, as was afterward learned, that there was at least

a regiment.

A young captain, soiled, ragged, his sleeves hanging in ribbons, the

whole skirt of his coat gone, moves alertly, composedly in the center,

seizing a gun when one comes handy on the ground, where there are plenty

scattered.

"Steady, men, steady! We shall be at the water's edge, soon, and then we

can give them hell!"

Never music sounded sweeter in Jack's car than that jaunty epithet

"hell"! How inspiring! How little of the ordinary association the word

brought up! Now they were traversing slowly the very ground Jack and his

comrades had flown over in the morning. Still firing--still working with

all his heart in the deadly play, Jack sidles to the officer and

cries out:

"Captain, I know a ford that will take us across above the stone bridge.

We discovered it this morning. Shall I guide that way?"

"Guide if you can; but fire like seven devils, above all!" the captain

cried, seizing two or three pouches lying in a mass and emptying the

cartridges into his pockets.

"There, keep to the left sharp, and we shall come to a deep gully where

the water is only knee-deep," Jack cries, also replenishing his

cartridge-box, which had shrunk under the rapid work of the last

half-hour.

"What regiment are you, sergeant?" the captain cries, looking for a

moment at the tattered recruit.

"Caribees of New York, Sherman's brigade."

"And how came you off here? Your brigade was near the right of the line

at the stone budge." The captain asked this with a shade of suspicion in

his voice.

Jack explained his mission, and the officer, who had been dealing out

the timely windfall of ammunition, nodded.

"Poor Hunter was shot early in the advance. It would have been victory

to our flag if the poor old follow had been wounded before the action

began. He lost three hours in the attack, and gave the rebels a chance

to come up from Winchester."

Now Jack understood the mysterious legions that seemed to spring from

the earth. They were Johnston's army from the Shenandoah.

"Keep up heart, men: Burnside and Schenck are near us somewhere. They

are in reserve, and they'll give these devils a warm welcome, if they

push far enough after us."

Then the steady volleys grew swifter, if that were possible, the enemy

moving steadily after the slowly retiring group. But now there is a

clear field to cross, so wide that the smallness of the force must be

detected. The captain halts the line, takes his bearings, divides the

little army into two bodies, orders one to move at a double-quick

directly across the open; the rest are stretched out as skirmishers. He

retires with the first squad across the field, directing the skirmishers

to hold the ground until they hear three musket-shots from the wood

behind. The rebels can now be seen closing in very near. But the

skirmish-line, spreading over a wider front, evidently perplexes them,

and they halt. The three shots are presently heard, then the

skirmish-line flees in groups across the bare downs, the vociferating

yells of the gray-coats fairly drowning the hideous clamor of

the muskets.

"Ah! we're saved," a lieutenant cries, waving his cap like a madman.

"Look! there are men in the wood yonder, to our right; they are coming

this way!"

Jack turned, he was near the captain; and he marked, with deadly panic,

a look of despair settle down on the heroic, handsome face. What could

it mean? Didn't he believe that there were men there? Jack handed him

his own glass--the captain had none.

"By Heaven, our flag! But what troops can they be in that quarter? They

must be surrounded, like ourselves.--Sergeant, can you undertake a

dangerous duty?"

"With all my heart," Jack cried, heartily.

"What's your name and company?"

"John Sprague, Caribees, Company K."

"Slip around the edge of the skirt of bushes. You'll be within an arm's

length of the enemy all the way. Reach the place where we saw those men

a moment since. When you get there, if they are friendly, fire a shot.

Here, take this pistol. Fire that; I shall recognize it from the

musketry. If they are the enemy, fire all the barrels as fast as you can

and retreat. You run great danger; you can only by a miracle escape

capture; but it is our only resource for the next charge. We must

surrender or die," he added, looking wofully at the meager remnant of

his company. Before the words had fairly ended, Jack is off like a shot,

forgetting Barney, forgetting everything but the extrication of this

grand young Roman. As he skurried along, sometimes on hands and knees,

he blames himself for not learning the captain's name. He feels sure

that a day will come when the world will know and admire it. He has

gained the other corner, and in a moment he will be in the thick copse

where the Union flag had been seen, but as he makes a dash through a

clump of laurel he is confronted by two men, muskets in hand.

"A Yank, by the Lord! Surrender, you damned mudsill!"

For answer Jack raised the pistol in his hand and fired. The man fell,

with a frightful yell. The other leveled his musket fairly in Jack's

face; but before he could pull the trigger a report at his ear deafened

Jack, and the second man staggered against the tree.

"Ah, ha! me boy, the rear rank did the best work there," Barney cried,

as Jack turned to see whence the timely aid had come, "A day after the

fair's better than the fair itself, if the rain has kept the girls

away," and Barney laughed good-humoredly.

"Well, 'pon my soul, Barney, it's a shameful thing to say, but all

thought of you had gone from my mind. I should not have let you come if

you had proposed it, but now we're in for it. Ah--!"

As he spoke the Union flag he had seen came forward, but it was in the

hands of a rebel bearer, and was upside down in mockery. The sight was

enough. He fired the shots as agreed upon, firing two at the group

marching heedlessly forward, as the skirmish-line was far ahead, or they

supposed it was, for the two men disabled by Jack and Barney were the

advance, as it was not supposed that any but stragglers were near at

hand, and the company were returning to their regiment. In an instant a

fierce volley is returned, and Barney, who is fairly in the bush behind

a huge tree, hears a low groan. He looks where Jack had been and sees

him lying on the ground, stifling an agonized cry by holding his left

arm over his mouth. Barney might have escaped, at least he might have

delayed capture, but coming from behind the tree, he holds up his hands,

and flinging himself on the ground beside his comrade takes his head

upon his knee and awaits the worst.

BOOK II.

_THE HOSTAGES_.