Among the camps : or, Young people's stories of the war

By Thomas Nelson Page

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Title: Among the camps
        or, Young people's stories of the war

Author: Thomas Nelson Page

Illustrator: W. A. Rogers
        William Ludwell Sheppard

Release date: March 8, 2025 [eBook #75553]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891

Credits: David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG THE CAMPS ***





AMONG THE CAMPS




BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE.

  ELSKET AND OTHER STORIES. 12mo,                   $1.00
  NEWFOUND RIVER. 12mo,                              1.00
  IN OLE VIRGINIA. 12mo,                             1.25
  THE SAME. Cameo Edition. With an etching
      by W. L. Sheppard. 16mo,                       1.25

  AMONG THE CAMPS. Young People’s
      Stories of the War. Illustrated. Sq. 8vo,      1.50
  TWO LITTLE CONFEDERATES. Illustrated.
      Square 8vo,                                    1.50

  “BEFO’ DE WAR.” Echoes of Negro Dialect.
      By. A. C. Gordon and Thomas
      Nelson Page. 12mo,                             1.00




[Illustration: “HALT!” BANG, BANG, WENT THE GUNS IN HIS VERY FACE.]




  AMONG THE CAMPS

  OR

  _YOUNG PEOPLE’S STORIES OF THE WAR_

  BY
  THOMAS NELSON PAGE

  ILLUSTRATED

  NEW YORK
  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
  1891




  COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

  Press of J. J. Little & Co.
  Astor Place, New York




To Her:




_NOTE._


_My acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Harper & Brothers and to Mr. A.
B. Starey, the Publishers and the Editor of HARPERS’ YOUNG PEOPLE, in
which Magazine I had the pleasure of having these stories, with the
accompanying illustrations, first appear._

                                                            _T. N. P._




_CONTENTS._


  _A Captured Santa Claus_                          _Page   1_

  _Kittykin, and the Part She Played in the War_      “   _41_

  “_Nancy Pansy_”                                     “   _65_

  “_Jack and Jake_”                                   “  _115_




_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS._


  _“Halt!” Bang, bang, went the Guns in His very Face_    _Frontispiece_

  _Colonel Stafford opens the Bundle_                          _Page 11_

  _“What You Children gwine do wid dat little Cat?” asked
    Mammy, severely_                                             “  _40_

  _“I Want My Kittykin,” said Evelyn_                            “  _54_

  _Nancy Pansy clasped Harry closely to Her Bosom_               “  _77_

  _She ran up to Him, putting up Her Face to be Kissed_          “  _91_

  _He drew Them Plans of the Roads and Hills and big Woods_      “ _123_

  _Jack made a running Noose in the Rope and tried to throw
    it over the Horse’s Head_                                    “ _139_




A CAPTURED SANTA CLAUS.


I.

Holly Hill was the place for Christmas! From Bob down to brown-eyed
Evelyn, with her golden hair floating all around her, every one hung up
a stocking, and the visit of Santa Claus was the event of the year.

They went to sleep on the night before Christmas--or rather they went
to bed, for sleep was long far from their eyes,--with little squeakings
and gurglings, like so many little white mice, and if Santa Claus
had not always been so very punctual in disappearing up the chimney
before daybreak, he must certainly have been caught; for by the time
the chickens were crowing in the morning there would be an answering
twitter through the house, and with a patter of little feet and subdued
laughter small white-clad figures would steal through the dim light
of dusky rooms and passages, opening doors with sudden bursts, and
shouting “Christmas gift!” into darkened chambers, at still sleeping
elders, then scurrying away in the gray light to rake open the hickory
embers and revel in the exploration of their crowded stockings.

Such was Christmas morning at Holly Hill in the old times before the
war. Thus it was, that at Christmas 1863, when there were no new toys
to be had for love or money, there were much disappointment and some
murmurs at Holly Hill. The children had never really felt the war until
then, though their father, Major Stafford, had been off, first with
his company and then with his regiment, since April, 1861. Now from
Mrs. Stafford down to little tot Evelyn, there was an absence of the
merriment which Christmas always brought with it. Their mother had done
all she could to collect such presents as were within her reach, but
the youngsters were much too sharp not to know that the presents were
“just fixed up”; and when they were all gathered around the fire in
their mother’s chamber, Christmas morning, looking over their presents,
their little faces wore an expression of pathetic disappointment.

“I don’t think much of _this_ Christmas,” announced Ran, with
characteristic gravity, looking down on his presents with an air of
contempt. “A hatchet, a ball of string, and a hare-trap isn’t much.”

Mrs. Stafford smiled, but the smile soon died away into an expression
of sadness.

“I too have to do without my Christmas gift,” she said. “Your father
wrote me that he hoped to spend Christmas with us, and he has not come.”

“Never mind; he may come yet,” said Bob encouragingly. (Bob always was
encouraging. That was why he was “Old Bob.”) “An axe was just the
thing I wanted, mamma,” said he, shouldering his new possession proudly.

Mrs. Stafford’s face lit up again.

“And a hatchet was what I wanted,” admitted Ran; “now I can make my own
hare-traps.”

“An’ I like a broked knife,” asserted Charlie stoutly, falling
valiantly into the general movement, whilst Evelyn pushed her long hair
out of her eyes, and hugged her baby, declaring:

“I love my dolly, and I love Santa Tlaus, an’ I love my papa,” at which
her mother took the little midget to her bosom, doll and all, and hid
her face in her tangled curls.


II.

The holiday was scarcely over when one evening Major Stafford galloped
up to the gate, his black horse Ajax splashed with mud to his ear-tips.

The Major soon heard all about the little ones’ disappointment at not
receiving any new presents.

“Santa Tlaus didn’ tum this Trismas, but he’s tummin’ next Trismas,”
said Evelyn, looking wisely up at him, that evening, from the rug where
she was vainly trying to make her doll’s head stick on her broken
shoulders.

“And why did he not come this Christmas, Miss Wisdom?” laughed her
father, touching her with the toe of his boot.

“Tause the Yankees wouldn’ let him,” said she gravely, holding her doll
up and looking at it pensively, her head on one side.

“And why, then, should he come next year?”

“Tause God’s goin’ to make him.” She turned the mutilated baby around
and examined it gravely, with her shining head set on the other side.

“There’s faith for you,” said Mrs. Stafford, as her husband asked, “How
do you know this?”

“Tause God told me,” answered Evelyn, still busy with her inspection.

“He did? What is Santa Claus going to bring you?”

The little mite sprang to her feet. “He’s goin’ to bring
me--a--great--big--dolly--with real sure ’nough hair, and blue eyes
that will go to sleep.” Her face was aglow, and she stretched her hands
wide apart to give the size.

“She has dreamt it,” said the Major, in an undertone, to her mother.
“There is not such a doll as that in the Southern Confederacy,” he
continued.

The child caught his meaning. “Yes, he is,” she insisted, “’cause I
asked him an’ he said he would; and Charlie----”

Just then that youngster himself burst into the room, a small whirlwind
in petticoats. As soon as his cyclonic tendencies could be curbed, his
father asked him:

“Well, what did you ask Santa Claus for, young man?”

“For a pair of breeches and a sword,” answered the boy, promptly,
striking an attitude.

“Well, upon my word!” laughed his father, eying the erect little figure
and the steady, clear eyes which looked proudly up at him. “I had no
idea what a young Achilles we had here. You shall have them.”

The boy nodded gravely. “All right. When I get to be a man I won’t let
anybody make my mamma cry.” He advanced a step, with head up, the very
picture of spirit.

“Ah! you won’t?” said his father, with a gesture to prevent his wife
interrupting.

“Nor my little sister,” said the young warrior, patronizingly, swelling
with infantile importance.

“No; he won’t let anybody make _me_ ky,” chimed in Evelyn, promptly
accepting the proffered protection.

“On my word, Ellen, the fellow has some of the old blood in him,” said
Major Stafford, much pleased. “Come here, my young knight.” He drew the
boy up to him. “I had rather have heard you say that than have won a
brigadier’s wreath. You shall have your breeches and your sword next
Christmas. Were I the king I should give you your spurs. Remember,
never let any one make your mother or sister cry.”

Charlie nodded in token of his acceptance of the condition.

“All right,” he said.


III.

When Major Stafford galloped away, on his return to his command, the
little group at the lawn gate shouted many messages after him. The
last thing he heard was Charlie’s treble, as he seated himself on the
gate-post, calling to him not to forget to make Santa Claus bring him a
pair of breeches and a sword, and Evelyn’s little voice reminding him
of her “dolly that can go to sleep.”

Many times during the ensuing year, amid the hardships of the campaign,
the privations of the march, and the dangers of battle, the Major heard
those little voices calling to him. In the autumn he won the three
stars of a colonel for gallantry in leading a desperate charge on a
town, in a perilous raid into the heart of the enemy’s country, and
holding the place; but none knew, when he dashed into the town at the
head of his regiment under a hail of bullets, that his mind was full of
toyshops and clothing stores, and that when he was so stoutly holding
his position he was guarding a little boy’s suit, a small sword with a
gilded scabbard, and a large doll with flowing ringlets and eyes that
could “go to sleep.” Some of his friends during that year had charged
the Major with growing miserly, and rallied him upon hoarding up his
pay and carrying large rolls of Confederate money about his person; and
when, just before the raid, he invested his entire year’s pay in four
or five ten-dollar gold pieces, they vowed he was mad.

The Major, however, always met these charges with a smile. And as soon
as his position was assured in the captured town he proved his sanity.

The owner of a handsome store on the principal street, over which was a
large sign, “Men’s and Boys’ Clothes,” peeping out, saw a Confederate
major ride up to the door, which had been hastily fastened when the
fight began, and rap on it with the handle of his sword. There was
something in the rap that was imperative, and fearing violence if he
failed to respond, he hastily opened the door. The officer entered, and
quickly selected a little uniform suit of blue cloth with brass buttons.

“What is the price of this?”

“Ten dollars,” stammered the shopkeeper.

To his astonishment the Confederate officer put his hand in his pocket
and laid a ten-dollar gold piece on the counter.

“Now show me where there is a toyshop.”

There was one only a few doors off, and there the Major selected a
child’s sword handsomely ornamented, and the most beautiful doll, over
whose eyes stole the whitest of rose-leaf eyelids, and which could talk
and do other wonderful things. He astonished this shopkeeper also by
laying down another gold piece. This left him but two or three more of
the proceeds of his year’s pay, and these he soon handed over a counter
to a jeweller, who gave him a small package in exchange.

All during the remainder of the campaign Colonel Stafford carried a
package carefully sealed, and strapped on behind his saddle. His care
of it and his secrecy about it were the subjects of many jests among
his friends in the brigade, and when in an engagement his horse was
shot, and the Colonel, under a hot fire, stopped and calmly unbuckled
his bundle, and during the rest of the fight carried it in his hand,
there was a clamor that he should disclose the contents. Even an offer
to sing them a song would not appease them.

The brigade officers were gathered around a camp-fire that night on
the edge of the bloody field. A Federal officer, Colonel Denby, who
had been slightly wounded and captured in the fight, and who now sat
somewhat grim and moody before the fire, was their guest.

“Now, Stafford, open the bundle and let us into the secret,” they all
said. The Colonel, without a word, rose and brought the parcel up to
the fire. Kneeling down, he took out his knife and carefully ripped
open the outer cover. Many a jest was levelled at him across the
blazing logs as he did so.

One said the Colonel had turned peddler, and was trying to eke out
a living by running the blockade on Lilliputian principles; another
wagered that he had it full of Confederate bills; a third, that it was
a talisman against bullets, and so on. Within the outer covering were
several others; but at length the last was reached. As the Colonel
ripped carefully, the group gathered around and bent breathlessly over
him, the light from the blazing camp-fire shining ruddily on their
eager, weather-tanned faces. When the Colonel put in his hand and drew
out a toy sword, there was a general exclamation, followed by a dead
silence; but when he took the doll from her soft wrapping, and then
unrolled and held up a pair of little trousers not much longer than a
man’s hand, and just the size for a five-year-old boy, the men turned
away their faces from the fire, and more than one who had boys of his
own at home, put his hand up to his eyes.

One of them, a bronzed and weather-beaten officer, who had charged
the Colonel with being a miser, stretched himself out on the ground,
flat on his face, and sobbed aloud as Colonel Stafford gently told his
story of Charlie and Evelyn. Even the grim face of Colonel Denby looked
somewhat changed in the light of the fire, and he reached over for the
doll and gazed at it steadily for some time.

[Illustration: COLONEL STAFFORD OPENS THE BUNDLE.]


IV.

During the whole year the children had been looking forward to the
coming of Christmas. Charlie’s outbursts of petulance and not rare
fits of anger were invariably checked if any mention was made of his
father’s injunction, and at length he became accustomed to curb himself
by the recollection of the charge he had received. If he fell and hurt
himself in his constant attempt to climb up impossible places, he would
simply rub himself and say, proudly, “I don’t cry now, I am a knight,
and next Christmas I am going to be a man, ’cause my papa’s goin’ to
tell Santa Claus to bring me a pair of breeches and a sword.” Evelyn
could not help crying when she was hurt, for she was only a little
girl; but she added to her prayer of “God bless and keep my papa, and
bring him safe home,” the petition, “Please, God, bless and keep Santa
Tlaus, and let him come here Trismas.”

Old Bob and Ran too, as well as the younger ones, looked forward
eagerly to Christmas.

But some time before Christmas the steady advance of the Union armies
brought Holly Hill and the Holly Hill children far within the Federal
lines, and shut out all chance of their being reached by any message
or thing from their father. The only Confederates the children ever
saw now were the prisoners who were being passed back on their way to
prison. The only news they ever received were the rumors which reached
them from Federal sources. Mrs. Stafford’s heart was heavy within her,
and when, a day or two before Christmas, she heard Charlie and Evelyn,
as they sat before the fire, gravely talking to each other of the
long-expected presents which their father had promised that Santa Claus
should bring them, she could stand it no longer. She took Bob and Ran
into her room, and there told them that now it was impossible for their
father to come, and that they must help her entertain “the children”
and console them for their disappointment. The two boys responded
heartily, as true boys always will when thrown on their manliness.

For the next two days Mrs. Stafford and both the boys were busy. Mrs.
Stafford, when Charlie was not present, gave her time to cutting out
and making a little gray uniform suit from an old coat which her
husband had worn when he first entered the army; whilst the boys
employed themselves, Bob in making a pretty little sword and scabbard
out of an old piece of gutter, and Ran, who had a wonderful turn, in
carving a doll from a piece of hard seasoned wood.

The day before Christmas they lost a little time in following and
pitying a small lot of prisoners who passed along the road by the gate.
The boys were always pitying the prisoners and planning means to rescue
them, for they had an idea that they suffered a terrible fate. Only
one certain case had come to their knowledge. A young man had one day
been carried by the Holly Hill gate on his way to the headquarters of
the officer in command of that portion of the lines, General Denby. He
was in citizen’s clothes and was charged with being a spy. The next
morning Ran, who had risen early to visit his hare-traps, rushed into
his mother’s room white-faced and wide-eyed.

“Oh, mamma!” he gasped, “they have hung him, just because he had on
those clothes!”

Mrs. Stafford, though she was much moved herself, endeavored to explain
to the boy that this was one of the laws of war; but Ran’s mind was not
able to comprehend the principles which imposed so cruel a sentence for
what he deemed so harmless a fault.

This act and some other measures of severity gave General Denby a
reputation of much harshness among the few old residents who yet
remained at their homes in the lines, and the children used to gaze
at him furtively as he would ride by, grim and stern, followed by his
staff. Yet there were those who said that General Denby’s rigor was
simply the result of a high standard of duty, and that at bottom he had
a soft heart.


V.

The approach of Christmas was recognized even in the Federal camps,
and many a song and ringing laugh were heard around the camp-fires,
and in the tents and little cabins used as winter quarters, over the
boxes which were pouring in from home. The troops in the camps near
General Denby’s headquarters on Christmas eve had been larking and
frolicking all day like so many children, preparing for the festivities
of the evening, when they proposed to have a Christmas tree and other
entertainments; and the General, as he sat in the front room in the
house used as his headquarters, writing official papers, had more
than once during the afternoon frowned at the noise outside which had
disturbed him. At length, however, late in the afternoon, he finished
his work, and having dismissed his adjutant, he locked the door, and
pushing aside all his business papers, took from his pocket a little
letter and began to read.

As he read, the stern lines of the grim soldier’s face relaxed, and
more than once a smile stole into his eyes and stirred the corners of
his grizzled moustache.

The letter was scrawled in a large childish hand. It ran:

  “MY DEAREST GRANDPAPA: I want to see you very much. I send you a
  Christmas gift. I made it myself. I hope to get a whole lot of dolls
  and other presents. I love you. I send you all these kisses.... You
  must kiss them.
                            “Your loving little granddaughter,
                                                                “LILY.”

When he had finished reading the letter the old veteran gravely lifted
it to his lips and pressed a kiss on each of the little spaces so
carefully drawn by the childish hand.

When he had done he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose
violently as he walked up and down the room. He even muttered something
about the fire smoking. Then he sat down once more at his table, and
placing the little letter before him, began to write. As he wrote, the
fire smoked more than ever, and the sounds of revelry outside reached
him in a perfect uproar; but he no longer frowned, and when the strains
of “Dixie” came in at the window, sung in a clear, rich, mellow solo,
he sat back in his chair and listened:

  “I wish I were in Dixie, away, away;
   In Dixie’s land I’ll take my stand,
   To live and die for Dixie land,
   Away, away, away down South in Dixie!”

sang the beautiful voice, full and sonorous.

When the song ended, there was an outburst of applause, and shouts
apparently demanding some other song, which was refused, for the noise
grew to a tumult. The General rose and walked to the window. Suddenly
the uproar hushed, for the voice began again, but this time it was a
hymn:

  “While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
     All seated on the ground,
   The angel of the Lord came down,
     And glory shone around.”

Verse after verse was sung, the men pouring out of their tents and huts
to listen to the music.

  “All glory be to God on high,
     And to the earth be peace;
   Good will henceforth from Heaven to men
     Begin and never cease!”

sang the singer to the end. When the strain died away there was dead
silence.

The General finished his letter and sealed it. Carefully folding up
the little one which lay before him, he replaced it in his pocket, and
going to the door, summoned the orderly who was just without.

“Mail that at once,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“By the way,” as the soldier turned to leave, “who was that singing out
there just now? I mean that last one, who sang ‘Dixie,’ and the hymn.”

“Only a peddler, sir, I believe.”

The General’s eyes fixed themselves on the soldier.

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know, sir. Some of the boys had him singing.”

“Tell Major Dayle to come here immediately,” said the General, frowning.

In a moment the officer summoned entered.

He appeared somewhat embarrassed.

“Who was this peddler?” asked the commander, sternly.

“I--I don’t know--” began the other.

“You don’t know! Where did he come from?”

“From Colonel Watchly’s camp directly,” said he, relieved to shift a
part of the responsibility.

“How was he dressed?”

“In citizen’s clothes.”

“What did he have?”

“A few toys and trinkets.”

“What was his name?”

“I did not hear it.”

“And you let him go!” The General stamped his foot.

“Yes, sir; I don’t think--” he began.

“No, I know you don’t,” said the General. “He was a spy. Where has he
gone?”

“I--I don’t know. He cannot have gone far.”

“Report yourself under arrest,” said the commander, sternly.

Walking to the door, he said to the sentinel:

“Call the corporal, and tell him to request Captain Albert to come here
immediately.”

In a few hours the party sent out reported that they had traced
the spy to a place just over the creek, where he was believed to be
harbored.

“Take a detail and arrest him, or burn the house,” ordered the General,
angrily. “It is a perfect nest of treason,” he said to himself as he
walked up and down, as though in justification of his savage order.

“Or wait,” he called to the captain, who was just withdrawing. “I will
go there myself, and take it for my headquarters. It is a better place
than this. I cannot stand this smoke any longer. That will break up
their treasonable work.”


VI.

All that day the tongues of the little ones at Holly Hill had been
chattering unceasingly of the expected visit of Santa Claus that
night. Mrs. Stafford had tried to explain to Charlie and Evelyn that
it would be impossible for him to bring them their presents this year;
but she was met with the undeniable and unanswerable statement that
their father had promised them. Before going to bed they had hung their
stockings on the mantelpiece right in front of the chimney, so that
Santa Claus would be sure to see them.

The mother had broken down over Evelyn’s prayer, “not to forget my
papa, and not to forget my dolly,” and her tears fell silently after
the little ones were asleep, as she put the finishing touches to
the tiny gray uniform for Charlie. She was thinking not only of the
children’s disappointment, but of the absence of him on whose promise
they had so securely relied. He had been away now for a year, and she
had had no word of him for many weeks. Where was he? Was he dead or
alive? Mrs. Stafford sank on her knees by the bedside.

“O God, give me faith like this little child!” she prayed again and
again. She was startled by hearing a step on the front portico and a
knock at the door. Bob, who was working in front of the hall fire,
went to the door. His mother heard him answer doubtfully some question.
She opened the door and went out. A stranger with a large bundle or
pack stood on the threshold. His hat, which was still on his head, was
pulled down over his eyes, and he wore a beard.

“An’, leddy, wad ye bay so koind as to shelter a poor sthranger for a
noight at this blissid toim of pace and goodwill?” he said, in a strong
Irish brogue.

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Stafford with her eyes fixed on him. She moved
slowly up to him. Then, by an instinct, quickly lifting her hand, she
pushed his hat back from his eyes. Her husband clasped her in his arms.

“My darling!”

When the pack was opened, such a treasure-house of toys and things was
displayed as surely never greeted any other eyes. The smaller children,
including Ran, were not awaked, at their father’s request, though Mrs.
Stafford wished to wake them to see him; but Bob was let into the
secrets, except that he was not permitted to see a small package which
bore his name. Mrs. Stafford and the Colonel were like two children
themselves as they “tipped” about stuffing the long stockings with
candy and toys of all kinds. The beautiful doll with flaxen hair, all
arrayed in silk and lace, was seated, last of all, securely on top
of Evelyn’s stocking, with her wardrobe just below her, where she
would greet her young mistress when she should first open her eyes,
and Charlie’s little blue uniform was pinned beside the gray one his
mother had made, with his sword buckled around the waist.

Bob was at last dismissed to his room, and the Colonel and Mrs.
Stafford settled themselves before the fire, hand in hand, to talk over
all the past. They had hardly started, when Bob rushed down the stairs
and dashed into their room.

“Papa! papa! the yard’s full of Yankees!”

Both the Colonel and Mrs. Stafford sprang to their feet.

“Through the back door!” cried Mrs. Stafford, seizing her husband.

“He cannot get out that way--they are everywhere; I saw them from my
window,” gasped Bob, just as the sound of trampling without became
audible.

“Oh! what will you do? Those clothes! If they catch you in those
clothes!” began Mrs. Stafford, and then stopped, her face growing
ashy pale. Bob also turned even whiter than he had been before. He
remembered the young man who was found in citizen’s clothes in the
autumn, and knew his dreadful fate. He burst out crying. “Oh, papa!
will they hang you?” he sobbed.

“I hope not, my son,” said the Colonel, gravely. “Certainly not, if I
can prevent it.” A gleam of amusement stole into his eyes. “It’s an
awkward fix, certainly,” he added.

“You must conceal yourself,” cried Mrs. Stafford, as a number of
footsteps sounded on the porch, and a thundering knock shook the door.
“Come here.” She pulled him almost by main force into a closet or
entry, and locked the door, just as the knocking was renewed. As the
door was apparently about to be broken down, she went out into the
hall. Her face was deadly white, and her lips were moving in prayer.

“Who’s there?” she called, tremblingly, trying to gain time.

“Open the door immediately, or it will be broken down,” replied a stern
voice.

She turned the great iron key in the heavy old brass lock, and a dozen
men rushed into the hall. They all waited for one, a tall elderly man
in a general’s fatigue uniform, and with a stern face and a grizzled
beard. He addressed her.

“Madam, I have come to take possession of this house as my
headquarters.”

Mrs. Stafford bowed, unable to speak. She was sensible of a feeling
of relief; there was a gleam of hope. If they did not know of her
husband’s presence--But the next word destroyed it.

“We have not interfered with you up to the present time, but you have
been harboring a spy here, and he is here now.”

“There is no spy here, and has never been,” said Mrs. Stafford, with
dignity; “but if there were, you should not know it from me.” She spoke
with much spirit. “It is not the custom of our people to deliver up
those who have sought their protection.”

The officer removed his hat. His keen eye was fixed on her white face.
“We shall search the premises,” he said sternly, but more respectfully
than he had yet spoken. “Major, have the house thoroughly searched.”

The men went striding off, opening doors and looking through the rooms.
The General took a turn up and down the hall. He walked up to a door.

“That is my chamber,” said Mrs. Stafford, quickly.

The officer fell back. “It must be searched,” he said.

“My little children are asleep in there,” said Mrs. Stafford, her face
quite white.

“It must be searched,” repeated the General. “Either they must do it,
or I. You can take your choice.”

Mrs. Stafford made a gesture of assent. He opened the door and stepped
across the threshold. There he stopped. His eye took in the scene.
Charlie was lying in the little trundle-bed in the corner, calm and
peaceful, and by his side was Evelyn, her little face looking like a
flower lying in the tangle of golden hair which fell over her pillow.
The noise disturbed her slightly, for she smiled suddenly, and muttered
something about “Santa Tlaus” and a “dolly.” The officer’s gaze swept
the room, and fell on the overcrowded stockings hanging from the
mantel. He advanced to the fireplace and examined the doll and trousers
closely. With a curious expression on his face, he turned and walked
out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

“Major,” he said to the officer in charge of the searching party, who
descended the steps just then, “take the men back to camp, except the
sentinels. There is no spy here.” In a moment Mrs. Stafford came out of
her chamber. The old officer was walking up and down in deep thought.
Suddenly he turned to her: “Madam, be so kind as to go and tell Colonel
Stafford that General Denby desires him to surrender himself.” Mrs.
Stafford was struck dumb. She was unable to move or to articulate. “I
shall wait for him,” said the General, quietly, throwing himself into
an arm-chair, and looking steadily into the fire.


VII.

As his father concealed himself, Bob had left the chamber. He was in a
perfect agony of mind. He knew that his father could not escape, and if
he were found dressed in citizen’s clothes he felt that he could have
but one fate. All sorts of schemes entered his boy’s head to save him.
Suddenly he thought of the small group of prisoners he had seen pass by
about dark. He would save him! Putting on his hat, he opened the front
door and walked out. A sentinel accosted him surlily to know where he
was going. Bob invited him in to get warm, and soon had him engaged in
conversation.

“What do you do with your prisoners when you catch them?” inquired Bob.

“Send some on to prison--and hang some.”

“I mean when you first catch them.”

“Oh, they stay in camp. We don’t treat ’em bad, without they be spies.
There’s a batch at camp now, got in this evening--sort o’ Christmas
gift.” The soldier laughed as he stamped his feet to keep warm.

“Where’s your camp?” Bob asked.

“About a mile from here, right on the road, or rather right on the hill
at the edge of the pines ’yond the crick.”

The boy left his companion, and sauntered in and out among the other
men in the yard. Presently he moved on to the edge of the lawn beyond
them. No one took further notice of him. In a second he had slipped
through the gate, and was flying across the field. He knew every foot
of ground as well as a hare, for he had been hunting and setting traps
over it since he was as big as little Charlie. He had to make a detour
at the creek to avoid the picket, and the dense briers were very bad
and painful. However, he worked his way through, though his face was
severely scratched. Into the creek he plunged. “Outch!” He had stepped
into a hole, and the water was as cold as ice. However, he was through,
and at the top of the hill he could see the glow of the camp-fires
lighting up the sky.

He crept cautiously up, and saw the dark forms of the sentinels pacing
backward and forward wrapped in their overcoats, now lit up by the
fire, then growing black against its blazing embers, then lit up again,
and passing away into the shadow. How could he ever get by them? His
heart began to beat and his teeth to chatter, but he walked boldly up.

“Halt! who goes there?” cried the sentry, bringing his gun down and
advancing on him.

Bob kept on, and the sentinel, finding that it was only a boy, looked
rather sheepish.

“Don’t let him capture you, Jim,” called one of them; “Call the
Corporal of the Guard,” another; “Order up the reserves,” a third; and
so on. Bob had to undergo something of an examination.

“I know the little Johnny,” said one of them.

They made him draw up to the fire, and made quite a fuss over him.
Bob had his wits about him and soon learned that a batch of prisoners
were at a fire a hundred yards further back. He therefore worked his
way over there, although he was advised to stay where he was and get
dry, and had many offers of a bunk from his new friends, some of whom
followed him over to where the prisoners were.

Most of them were quartered for the night in a hut before which a guard
was stationed. One or two, however, sat around the camp-fire, chatting
with their guards. Among them was a major in full uniform. Bob singled
him out; he was just about his father’s size.

He was instantly the centre of attraction. Again he told them he was
from Holly Hill; again he was recognized by one of the men.

“Run away to join the army?” asked one.

“No,” said Bob, his eyes flashing at the suggestion.

“Lost?”

“No.”

“Mother whipped you?”

“No.”

As soon as their curiosity had somewhat subsided, Bob, who had hardly
been able to contain himself, said to the Confederate major in a low
undertone:

“My father, Colonel Stafford, is at home, concealed, and the Yankees
have taken possession of the house.”

“Well?” said the major, looking down at him as if casually.

“He cannot escape, and he has on citizen’s clothes, and--” Bob’s voice
choked suddenly as he gazed at the major’s uniform.

“Well?” The prisoner for a second looked sharply down at the boy’s
earnest face. Then he put his hand under his chin, and lifting it,
looked into his eyes. Bob shivered and a sob escaped him.

The major placed his hand firmly on his knee. “Why, you are wringing
wet,” he said, aloud. “I wonder you are not frozen to death.” He rose
and stripped off his coat. “Here, get into this;” and before the boy
knew it the major had bundled him into his coat, and rolled up the
sleeves so that Bob could use his hands. The action attracted the
attention of the rest of the group, and several of the Yankees offered
to take the boy and give him dry clothes.

“No, sir,” laughed the major; “this boy is a rebel. Do you think he
will wear one of your Yankee suits? He’s a little major, and I’m going
to give him a major’s uniform.”

In a minute he had stripped off his trousers, and was helping Bob into
them, standing himself in his underclothes in the icy air. The legs
were three times too long for the boy, and the waist came up to his
armpits.

“Now go home to your mother,” said the major, laughing at his
appearance; “and some of you fellows get me some clothes or a blanket.
I’ll wear your Yankee uniform out of sheer necessity.”

Bob trotted around, keeping as far away from the light of the
camp-fires as possible. He soon found himself unobserved, and reached
the shadow of a line of huts, and keeping well in it, he came to the
edge of the camp. He watched his opportunity, and when the sentry’s
back was turned slipped out into the darkness. In an instant he was
flying down the hill. The heavy clothes impeded him, and he stopped
only long enough to snatch them off and roll them into a bundle, and
sped on his way again. He struck the main road, and was running down
the hill as fast as his legs could carry him, when he suddenly found
himself almost on a group of dark objects who were standing in the
road just in front of him. One of them moved. It was the picket. Bob
suddenly stopped. His heart was in his throat.

“Who goes there?” said a stern voice. Bob’s heart beat as if it would
spring out of his body.

“Come in; we have you,” said the man, advancing.

Bob sprang across the ditch beside the road, and putting his hand on
the top rail of the fence, flung himself over it, bundle and all, flat
on the other side, just as a blaze of light burst from the picket, and
the report of a carbine startled the silent night. The bullet grazed
the boy’s arm, and crashed through the rail. In a second Bob was on
his feet. The picket was almost on him. Seizing his bundle, he dived
into the thicket as a half-dozen shots were sent ringing after him,
the bullets hissing and whistling over his head. Several men dashed
into the woods after him in hot pursuit, and a couple more galloped up
the road to intercept him; but Bob’s feet were winged, and he slipped
through briers and brush like a scared hare. They scratched his face
and threw him down, but he was up again. Now and then a shot crashed
behind him, but he did not care for that; he thought only of being
caught.

A few hundred yards up, he plunged into the stream, and wading across,
was soon safe from his pursuers. Breathless, he climbed the hill, made
his way through the woods, and emerged into the open fields. Across
these he sped like a deer. He had almost given out. What if they should
have caught his father, and he should be too late! A sob escaped him at
the bare thought, and he broke again into a run, wiping off with his
sleeve the tears that would come. The wind cut him like a knife, but he
did not mind that.

As he neared the house he feared that he might be intercepted again and
the clothes taken from him, so he stopped for a moment, and slipped
them on once more, rolling up the sleeves and legs as well as he could.
He crossed the yard undisturbed. He went around to the same door by
which he had come out, for he thought this his best chance. The same
sentinel was there, walking up and down, blowing his cold hands. Had
his father been arrested? Bob’s teeth chattered, but it was with
suppressed excitement.

“Pretty cold,” said the sentry.

“Ye--es,” gasped Bob.

“Your mother’s been out here, looking for you, I guess,” said the
soldier, with much friendliness.

“I rec--reckon so,” panted Bob, moving toward the door. Did that mean
that his father was caught? He opened the door, and slipped quietly
into the corridor.

General Denby still sat silent before the hall fire. Bob listened at
the chamber door. His mother was weeping; his father stood calm and
resolute before the fire. He had determined to give himself up.

“If you only did not have on those clothes!” sobbed Mrs. Stafford. “If
I only had not cut up the old uniform for the children!”

“Mother! mother! I have one!” gasped Bob, bursting into the room and
tearing off the unknown major’s uniform.


VIII.

Ten minutes later Colonel Stafford, with a steady step and a proud
carriage, and with his hand resting on Bob’s shoulder, walked out into
the hall. He was dressed in the uniform of a Confederate major, which
fitted admirably his tall, erect figure.

“General Denby, I believe,” he said, as the Union officer rose and
faced him. “We have met before under somewhat different circumstances,”
he said, with a bow, “for I now find myself your prisoner.”

“I have the honor to request your parole,” said the General, with great
politeness, “and to express the hope that I may be able in some way
to return the courtesy which I formerly received at your hands.” He
extended his hand and Colonel Stafford took it.

“You have my parole,” said he.

“I was not aware,” said the General, with a bow toward Mrs. Stafford,
“until I entered the room where your children were sleeping, that I had
the honor of your husband’s acquaintance. I will now take my leave and
return to camp, that I may not by my presence interfere with the joy of
this season.”

“I desire to introduce to you my son,” said Colonel Stafford, proudly
presenting Bob. “He is a hero.”

The General bowed as he shook hands with him. Perhaps he had some
suspicion how true a hero he was, for he rested his hand kindly on the
boy’s head, but he said nothing.

Both Colonel and Mrs. Stafford invited the old soldier to spend the
night there, but he declined. He, however, accepted an invitation to
dine with them next day.

Before leaving, he requested permission to take one more look at the
sleeping children. Over Evelyn he bent silently. Suddenly stooping, he
kissed her little pink cheek, and with a scarcely audible “Good-night,”
passed out of the room and left the house.

The next morning, by light, there was great rejoicing. Charlie and
Evelyn were up betimes, and were laughing and chattering over their
presents like two little magpies.

“Here’s my sword and here’s my breeches,” cried Charlie, “two pair; but
I’m goin’ to put on my gray ones. I ain’t goin’ to wear a blue uniform.”

“Here’s my dolly!” screamed Evelyn, in an ecstasy over her beautiful
present. And presently Bob and Ran burst in, their eyes fairly dancing.

“Christmas gift! It’s a real one--real gold!” cried Bob, holding up a
small gold watch, whilst Ran was shouting over a silver one of the same
size.

That evening, after dinner, General Denby was sitting by the fire
in the Holly Hill parlor, with Evelyn nestled in his lap, her dolly
clasped close to her bosom, and in the absence of Colonel Stafford,
told Mrs. Stafford the story of the opening of the package by the
camp-fire. The tears welled up into Mrs. Stafford’s eyes and ran down
her cheeks.

Charlie suddenly entered, in all the majesty of his new breeches,
and sword buckled on hip. He saw his mother’s tears. His little face
flushed. In a second his sword was out, and he struck a hostile
attitude.

“You sha’n’t make my mamma cry!” he shouted.

“Charlie! Charlie!” cried Mrs. Stafford, hastening to stop him.

“My papa said I was not to let any one make you cry,” insisted the boy,
stepping before his mother, and still keeping his angry eyes on the
General.

“Oh, Charlie!” Mrs. Stafford took hold of him. “I am ashamed of
you!--to be so rude!”

“Let him alone, madam,” said the General. “It is not rudeness; it is
spirit--the spirit of our race. He has the soldier’s blood, and some
day he will be a soldier himself, and a brave one. I shall count on him
for the Union,” he said, with a smile.

Mrs. Stafford shook her head.

A few days later, Colonel Stafford, in accordance with an
understanding, came over to General Denby’s camp, and reported to be
sent on to Washington as a prisoner of war. The General was absent on
the lines at the time, but was expected soon, and the Colonel waited
for him at his headquarters. There had been many tears shed when his
wife bade him good-by.

About an hour after the Colonel arrived, the General and his staff were
riding back to camp along the road which ran by the Holly Hill gate.
Just before they reached it, two little figures came out of the gate
and started down the road. One was a boy of five, who carried a toy
sword, drawn, in one hand, whilst with the other he led his companion,
a little girl of three, who clasped a large yellow-haired doll to her
breast.

The soldiers cantered forward and overtook them.

“Where are you going, my little people?” inquired the General, gazing
down at them affectionately.

“I’m goin’ to get my papa,” said the tiny swordsman firmly, turning a
sturdy and determined little face up to him. “My mamma’s cryin’, an’
I’m goin’ to take my papa home. I ain’ goin’ to let the Yankees have
him.”

The officers all broke into a murmur of mingled admiration and
amusement.

“No, we ain’ goin’ let the Yankees have our papa,” chimed in Evelyn,
pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes, and keeping fast hold of
Charlie’s hand for fear of the horses around her.

The General dismounted.

“How are you going to help, my little Semiramis?” he asked, stooping
over her with smiling eyes.

“I’m goin’ to give my dolly if they will give me my papa,” she said,
gravely, as if she understood the equality of the exchange.

“Suppose you give a kiss instead?” There was a second of hesitation,
and then she put up her little face, and the old General dropped on one
knee in the road and lifted her in his arms, doll and all.

“Gentlemen,” he said to his staff, “you behold the future defenders of
the Union.”

The little ones were coaxed home, and that afternoon, as Colonel
Stafford was expecting to leave the camp for Washington with a lot of
prisoners, a despatch was brought in to General Denby, who read it.

“Colonel,” he said, addressing him, “I think I shall have to continue
your parole a few days longer. I have just received information that,
by a special cartel which I have arranged, you are to be exchanged
for Colonel McDowell as soon as he can reach the lines at this point
from Richmond; and meantime, as we have but indifferent accommodations
here, I shall have to request you to consider Holly Hill as your
place of confinement. Will you be so kind as to convey my respects to
Mrs. Stafford, and to your young hero Bob, and make good my word to
those two little commissioners of exchange, to whom I feel somewhat
committed? I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”




[Illustration: “WHAT YOU CHILDREN GWINE DO WID DAT LITTLE CAT?” ASKED
MAMMY, SEVERELY.]




KITTYKIN, AND THE PART SHE PLAYED IN THE WAR.


I.

Kittykin played a part in the war which has never been recorded. Her
name does not appear in the list of any battle; nor is she mentioned
in any history as having saved a life, or as having done anything
remarkable one way or the other. Yet, in fact, she played a most
important part: she prevented a battle which was just going to begin,
and brought about a truce between the skirmish lines of the Union and
the Confederate troops near her home which lasted several weeks, and
probably saved many lives.

There never was a kitten more highly prized than Kittykin, for Evelyn
had long wanted a kitten, and the way she found her was so delightfully
unexpected.

It was during the war, when everything was very scarce down in the
South where Evelyn lived. “We don’t have any coffee, or any kittens,
or _any_thing,” Evelyn said one day to some soldiers who had come to
her home from their camp, which was a mile or so away. You would have
thought from the way she put them together that kittens, like coffee,
were something to have on the table; but she had heard her mamma
wishing for coffee at breakfast that morning, and she herself had long
been wanting a kitten. Indeed, she used to ask for one in her prayers.

Evelyn had no fancy for anything that, in her own words, “was not
live.” A thing that had life was of more value in her eyes than all
the toys that were ever given her. A young bird which, too fat to
fly, had fallen from the nest, or a broken-legged chicken, which was
too lame to keep up with its mother, had her tenderest care; a little
mouse slipping along the wainscot or playing on the carpet excited her
liveliest interest; but a kitten, a “real live kittykin,” she had never
possessed, though for a long time she had set her heart on having one.
One day, however, she was out walking with her mammy in the “big road,”
when she met several small negro children coming along, and one of them
had a little bit of a white kitten squeezed up in his arm. It looked
very scared, and every now and then it cried “Mew, mew.”

“Oh, mammy, look at that dear little kittykin!” cried Evelyn, running
up to the children and stroking the little mite tenderly.

“What you children gwine do wid dat little cat?” asked mammy, severely.

“We gwine _loss_ it,” said the boy who had it, promptly.

“Oh, mammy, don’t let them do that! Don’t let them hurt it!” pleaded
Evelyn, turning to her mammy. “It would get so hungry.”

A sudden thought struck her, and she sprang over toward the boy, and
took the kitten from him, which instantly curled up in her arms just as
close to her as it could get. There was no resisting her appeal, and
a minute later she was running home far ahead of her mammy, with the
kitten hugged tight in her arms. Her mamma was busy in the sitting-room
when Evelyn came rushing in.

“Oh, mamma, see what I have! A dear little kittykin! Can’t I have it?
They were just going to throw it away, and lose it all by itself;” and
she began to jump up and down and rub the kitten against her little
pink cheek, till her mother had to take hold of her to quiet her
excitement.

Kittykin (for that was the name she had received) must have
misunderstood the action, and have supposed she was going to take her
from her young mistress, for she suddenly bunched herself up into a
little white ball, and gave such a spit at Evelyn’s mamma that the lady
jumped back nearly a yard, after which Kittykin quietly curled herself
up again in Evelyn’s arm. The next thing was to give her some warm
milk, which she drank as if she had not had a mouthful all day; and
then she was put to sleep in a basket of wool, where Evelyn looked at
her a hundred times to see how she was coming on.

Evelyn never doubted after that that if she prayed for a thing she
would get it; for she had been praying all the time for a “little
white kitten,” and not only was Kittykin as white as snow, but she was,
to use Evelyn’s words, “even littler” than she had expected. There
could not, to her mind, be stronger proof.

As Kittykin grew a little she developed a temper entirely out of
proportion to her size; when she got mad, she got mad all over. If
anything offended her she would suddenly back up into a corner, her
tail would get about twice as large as usual, and she would spit like
a little fury. However, she never fought her little mistress, and even
in her worst moments she would allow Evelyn to take her and lay her on
her back in the little cradle she had, or carry her by the neck, or
the legs, or almost any way except by the tail. To pull her tail was a
liberty she never would allow even Evelyn to take. If she was held by
the tail her little pink claws flew out as quick as a wink and as sharp
as needles. Evelyn was very kind to Kittykin, however, and was careful
not to provoke her, for she had been told that getting angry and
kicking on the floor, as she herself sometimes did when mammy wanted to
comb her curly hair, would make an ugly little girl, and of course it
would have the same effect on a kitten.

Fierce, however, as Kittykin was, it soon appeared that she was the
greatest little coward in the world. A worm in the walk or a little
beetle running across the floor would set her to jumping as if she had
a fit, and the first time she ever saw a mouse she was far more afraid
of it than it was of her. If it had been a rat, I am sure that she
would have died.

One day Evelyn was sitting on the floor in her mother’s chamber sewing
a little blue bag, which she said was her work-bag, when a tiny mouse
ran, like a little gray shadow, across the hearth. Kittykin was at the
moment busily engaged in rolling about a ball of yarn almost as white
as herself, and the first thing Evelyn knew she gave a jump like a
trap-ball, and slid up the side of the bureau like a little shaft of
light, where she stood with all four feet close together, her small
back roached up in an arch, her tail all fuzzed up over it, and her
mouth wide open and spitting like a little demon. She looked so funny
that Evelyn dropped her sewing, and the mouse, frightened half out of
its little wits, took advantage of her consternation to make a rush
back to its hole under the wainscoting, into which it dived like a
little duck. After holding her lofty position for some time, Kittykin
let her hairs fall and lowered her back, but every now and then she
would raise them again at the bare thought of the awful animal which
had so terrified her. At length she decided that she might go down; but
how was she to do it? Smooth though the mahogany was, she had, under
excitement, gone up like a streak of lightning; but now when she was
cool she was afraid to jump down. It was so high that it made her head
swim; so, after walking timidly around and peeping over at the floor,
she began to cry for some one to take her down, just as Evelyn would
have done under the same circumstances.

Evelyn tried to coax her down, but she would not come; so finally she
had to drag a chair up to the bureau and get up on it to reach her.

Perhaps it was the fright she experienced when she found herself up
so high that caused Kittykin to revenge herself on the little mouse
shortly afterward, or perhaps it was only her cat instinct developing;
but it was only a short time after this that Kittykin did an act which
grieved her little mistress dreadfully. The little mouse had lived
under the wainscot since long before Kittykin had come, and it and
Evelyn were on very good terms. It would come out and dash along by the
wall to the wardrobe, under which it would disappear, and after staying
there some time it would hurry back. This Evelyn used to call “paying
visits;” and she often wondered what mice talked about when they got
together under the wardrobe. Or sometimes it would slip out and frisk
around on the floor--“just playing,” as Evelyn said. There was a
perfect understanding between them: Evelyn was not to hurt the mouse
nor let mammy set a trap for it, and the mouse was not to bite Evelyn’s
clothes--but if it had to cut at all, was to confine itself to her
mamma’s. After Kittykin came, however, the mouse appeared to be much
less sociable than formerly; and after the occasion when it alarmed
Kittykin so, it did not come out again for a long time. Evelyn used to
wonder if its mamma was keeping it in.

One day, however, Evelyn was sewing, and Kittykin was lying by, when
she suddenly seemed to get tired of doing nothing, and began to walk
about.

“Lie down, Kittykin,” said her mistress; but Kittykin did not appear
to hear. She just lowered her head, and peeped under the bureau, with
her eyes set in a curious way. Presently she stooped very low, and slid
along the floor without making the slightest noise, every now and then
stopping perfectly still. Evelyn watched her closely, for she had never
seen her act so before. Suddenly, however, Kittykin gave a spring, and
disappeared under the bureau. Evelyn heard a little squeak, and the
next minute Kittykin walked out with a little mouse in her mouth, over
which she was growling like a little tigress. Evelyn was jumping up to
take it away from her when Kittykin, who had gone out into the middle
of the room, turned it loose herself, and quietly walking away, lay
down as if she were going to sleep. Then Evelyn saw that she did not
mean to hurt it, so she sat and watched the mouse, which remained quite
still for some time.

After a while it moved a little, to see if Kittykin was really asleep.
Kittykin did not stir. Her eyes were fast shut, and the mouse seemed
satisfied; so, after waiting a bit, it made a little dash toward the
bureau. In a single bound Kittykin was right over it, and had laid her
white paw on it. She did not, however, appear to intend it any injury,
but began to play with it just as Evelyn would have liked to do; and,
lying down, she rolled over and over, holding it up and tossing it
gently, quite as Evelyn sometimes did her, or patting it and admiring
it as if it had been the sweetest little mouse in the world. The mouse,
too, appeared not to mind it the least bit; and Evelyn was just
thinking how nice it was that Kittykin and it had become such friends,
and was planning nice games with them, when there was a faint little
squeak, and she saw Kittykin, who had just been petting the little
creature, suddenly drive her sharp white teeth into its neck.

Evelyn rushed at her.

“Oh, you wicked Kittykin! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” she cried,
catching her up by the tail and shaking her well, as the best way to
punish her.

Just then her mamma entered. “Oh, Evelyn, why are you treating kitty
so?” she asked.

“Because she’s so mean,” said Evelyn, severely. “She’s a murderer.”

Her mamma tried to explain that killing the mouse was Kittykin’s
nature; but Evelyn could not see that this made it any the less
painful, and she was quite cool to Kittykin for some time.

The little mouse was buried that evening in a matchbox under a
rose-bush in the garden; and Kittykin, in a black rag which was tied
around her as a dress, was compelled, evidently much against her will,
to do penance by acting as chief mourner.


II.

Kittykin was about five months old when there was a great marching of
soldiers backward and forward; the tents in the field beyond the woods
were taken down and carried away in wagons, and there was an immense
stir. The army was said to be “moving.” There were rumors that the
enemy was coming, and that there might be a battle near there. Evelyn
was so young that she did not understand any more of it than Kittykin
did; but her mother appeared so troubled that Evelyn knew it was very
bad, and became frightened, though she did not know why. Her mammy
soon gave her such a gloomy account, that Evelyn readily agreed with
her that it was “like torment.” As for Kittykin, if she had been born
in a battle, she could not have been more unconcerned. In a day or two
it was known that the main body of the army was some little way off on
a long ridge, and that the enemy had taken up its position on another
hill not far distant, and Evelyn’s home was between them; but there was
no battle. Each army began to intrench itself; and in a little while
there was a long red bank stretched across the far edge of the great
field behind the house, which Evelyn was told was “breastworks” for
the picket line, and she pointed them out to Kittykin, who blinked and
yawned as if she did not care the least bit if they were.

Next morning a small squadron of cavalry came galloping by. A body of
the enemy had been seen, and they were going to learn what it meant. In
a little while they came back.

“The enemy,” they said, “were advancing, and there would probably be a
skirmish right there immediately.”

As they rode by, they urged Evelyn’s mamma either to leave the house
at once or to go down into the basement, where they might be safe from
the bullets. Then they galloped on across the field to get the rest of
their men, who were in the trenches beyond. Before they reached there a
lot of men appeared on the edge of the wood in front of the house. No
one could tell how many they were; but the sun gleamed on their arms,
and there was evidently a good force. At first they were on horseback;
but there was a “Bop! bop!” from the trenches in the field behind the
house, and they rode back, and did not come out any more. Next morning,
however, they too had dug a trench. These, Evelyn heard some one say,
were a picket line. About eleven o’clock they came out into the field,
and they seemed to have spread themselves out behind a little rise or
knoll in front of the house. Mammy’s teeth were just chattering, and
she went to moaning and saying her prayers as hard as she could, and
Evelyn’s mamma told her to take Evelyn down into the basement, and she
would bring the baby; so mammy, who had been following mamma about,
seized Evelyn, and rushed with her down-stairs, where, although they
were quite safe, as the windows were only half above the ground, she
fell on her face on the floor, praying as if her last hour had come.
“Bop! bop!” went some muskets up behind the house. “Bang! bop! bang!”
went some on the other side.

Evelyn suddenly remembered Kittykin. “Where was she?” The last time she
had seen her was a half-hour before, when she had been lying curled up
on the back steps fast asleep in the sun. Suppose she should be there
now, she would certainly be killed, for the back steps ran right out
into the yard so as to be just the place for Kittykin to be shot. So
thought Evelyn. “Bang! bang!” went the guns again--somewhere. Evelyn
dragged a chair up to a window and looked. Her heart almost stopped;
for there, out in the yard, quite clear of the houses, was Kittykin,
standing some way up the trunk of a tall locust-tree, looking curiously
around. Her little white body shone like a small patch of snow against
the dark brown bark. Evelyn sprang down from the chair, and forgetting
everything, rushed through the entry and out of doors.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty!” she called. “Kittykin, come here! You’ll be
killed! Come here, Kittykin!”

Kittykin, however, was in for a game, and as her little mistress, with
her golden hair flying in the breeze, ran toward her, she rushed
scampering still higher up the tree. Evelyn could see that there were
some men scattered out in the fields on either side of her, some of
them stooping, and some lying down, and as she ran on toward the tree
she heard a “Bang! bang!” on each side, and she saw little puffs of
white smoke, and something went “Zoo-ee-ee” up in the air; but she did
not think about herself, she was so frightened for Kittykin.

“Kitty, kitty! Come down, Kittykin!” she called, running up to the tree
and holding up her arms to her. Kittykin might, perhaps, have liked to
come down now, but she could no longer do so; she was too high up. She
looked down, first over one shoulder, and then over the other, but it
was too high to jump. She could not turn around, and her head began to
swim. She grew so dizzy, she was afraid she might fall, so she dug her
little sharp claws into the bark, and began to cry.

[Illustration: “I WANT MY KITTYKIN,” SAID EVELYN.]

Evelyn would have run back to tell her mamma (who, having sent the
baby down-stairs to mammy, was still busy up-stairs trying to hide
some things, and so did not know she was out in the yard); but she was
so afraid Kittykin might be killed that she could not let her get out
of her sight. Indeed, she was so absorbed in Kittykin that she forgot
all about everything else. She even forgot all about the soldiers. But
though she did not notice the soldiers, it seemed that some of them had
observed her. Just as the leader of the Confederate picket line was
about to give an order to make a dash for the houses in the yard,
to his horror he saw a little girl in a white dress and with flying
hair suddenly run out into the clear space right between him and the
soldiers on the other side, and stop under a tree just in the line
of their fire. His heart jumped into his mouth as he sprang to his
feet and waved his hands wildly to call attention to the child. Then
shouting to his men to stop firing, he walked out in front of the line,
and came at a rapid stride down the slope. The others all stood still
and almost held their breaths for fear some one would shoot; but no one
did. Evelyn was so busy trying to coax Kittykin down that she did not
notice anything until she heard some one call out:

“For Heaven’s sake, run into the house, quick!”

She looked around and saw the gentleman hurrying toward her. He
appeared to be very much excited.

“What on earth are you doing out here?” he gasped, as he came running
up to her.

He was a young man, with just a little light mustache, and with a
little gold braid on the sleeves of his gray jacket; and though he
seemed very much surprised, he looked very kind.

“I want my Kittykin,” said Evelyn, answering him, and looking up the
tree, with a little wave of her hand, towards where Kittykin still
clung tightly. Somehow she felt at the moment that this gentleman could
help her better than any one else.

Kittykin, however, apparently thought differently about it; for she
suddenly stopped mewing; and as if she felt it unsafe to be so near a
stranger, she climbed carefully up until she reached a limb, in the
crotch of which she ensconced herself, and peeped curiously over at
them with a look of great satisfaction in her face, as much as to say,
“Now I’m safe. I’d like to see you get me.”

The gentleman was stroking Evelyn’s hair, and was looking at her very
intently, when a voice called to him from the other side:

“Hello, Johnny! what’s the matter?”

Evelyn looked around, and saw another gentleman coming toward them. He
was older than the first one, and had on a blue coat, while the first
had on a gray one. She knew one was a Confederate and the other was a
Yankee, and for a second she was afraid they might shoot each other,
but her first friend called out:

“Her kitten is up the tree. Come ahead!”

He came on, and looked for a second up at Kittykin, but he looked at
Evelyn really hard, and suddenly stooped down, and putting his arm
around her, drew her up to him. She got over her fear in a minute.

“Kittykin’s up there, and I’m afraid she’ll be kilt.” She waved her
hand up over her head, where Kittykin was taking occasion to put a few
more limbs between herself and the enemy.

“It’s rather a dangerous place when the boys are out hunting, eh,
Johnny?” He laughed as he stood up again.

“Yes, for as big a fellow as you. You wouldn’t stand the ghost of a
show.”

“I guess I’d feel small enough up there.” And both men laughed.

By this time the men on both sides began to come up, with their guns
over their arms.

“Hello! what’s up?” some of them called out.

“Her kitten’s up,” said the first two; and, to make good their words,
Kittykin, not liking so many people below her, shifted her position
again, and went up to a fresh limb, from which she again peeped over at
them. The men all gathered around Evelyn, and began to talk to her, and
both she and Kittykin were surprised to hear them joking and laughing
together in the friendliest way.

“What are you doing out here?” they asked; and to all she made the same
reply:

“I want my Kittykin.”

Suddenly her mamma came out. She had just gone down-stairs, and had
learned where Evelyn was. The two officers went up and spoke to her,
but the men still crowded around Evelyn.

“She’ll come down,” said one. “All you have to do is to let her alone.”

“No, she won’t. She can’t come down. It makes her head swim,” said
Evelyn.

“That’s true,” thought Kittykin up in the tree, and to let them
understand it she gave a little “Mew.”

“I don’t see how anything can swim when it’s as dry as it is around
here,” said a fellow in gray.

A man in blue handed him his canteen, which he at once accepted, and
after surprising Evelyn by smelling it--which she knew was dreadfully
bad manners--turned it up to his lips. She heard the liquid gurgling.

As he handed it back to its owner he said: “Yank, I’m mighty glad I
didn’t shoot you. I might have hit that canteen.” At which there was
a laugh, and the canteen went around until it was empty. Suddenly
Kittykin from her high perch gave a faint “Mew,” which said, as plainly
as words could say it, that she wanted to get down and could not.

Evelyn’s big brown eyes filled with tears. “I want my Kittykin,” she
said, her little lip trembling.

Instantly a dozen men unbuckled their belts, laid their guns on the
ground, and pulled off their coats, each one trying to be the first to
climb the tree. It was, however, too large for them to reach far enough
around to get a good hold on it, so climbing it was found to be far
more difficult than it looked to be.

“Why don’t you cut it down?” asked some one.

But Evelyn cried out that that would kill Kittykin, so the man who
suggested it was called a fool by the others. At last it was proposed
that one man should stand against the tree and another should climb up
on his shoulders, when he might get his arms far enough around it to
work his way up. A stout fellow with a gray jacket on planted himself
firmly against the trunk, and one who had taken off a blue jacket
climbed up on his shoulders, and might have got up very well if he
had not remarked that as the Johnnies had walked over him in the last
battle, it was but fair that he should now walk over a Johnny. This
joke tickled the man under him so that he slipped away and let him
down. At length, however, three or four men got good “holds,” and went
slowly up one after the other amid such encouraging shouts from their
friends on the ground below as: “Go it, Yank, the Johnny’s almost got
you!” “Look out, Johnny, the Yanks are right behind you!” etc., whilst
Kittykin gazed down in astonishment from above, and Evelyn looked up
breathless from below. With much pulling and kicking, four men finally
got up to the lowest limb, after which the climbing was comparatively
easy. A new difficulty, however, presented itself. Kittykin suddenly
took alarm, and retreated still higher up among the branches.

The higher they climbed after that, the higher she climbed, until she
was away up on one of the topmost boughs, which was far too slender for
any one to follow her. There she turned and looked back with alternate
alarm and satisfaction expressed in her countenance. If the men
stirred, she stood ready to fly; if they kept still, she settled down
and mewed plaintively. Once or twice as they moved she took fright and
looked almost as if about to jump.

Evelyn was breathless with excitement. “Don’t let her jump,” she
called, “she will get kilt!”

The men, too, were anxious to prevent that. They called to her, held
out their hands, and coaxed her in every tone by which a kitten is
supposed to be influenced. But it was all in vain. No cajoleries, no
promises, no threats, were of the least avail. Kittykin was there safe,
out of their reach, and there she would remain, sixty feet above the
ground. Suddenly she saw that something was occurring below. She saw
the men all gather around her little mistress, and could hear her at
first refuse to let something be done, and then consent. She could not
make out what it was, though she strained her ears. She remembered to
have heard mammy tell her little mistress once that “curiosity had
killed a cat,” and she was afraid to think too much about it so high
up in the tree. Still when she heard an order given, “Go back and get
your blankets,” and saw a whole lot of the men go running off into the
field on either side, and presently come back with their arms full of
blankets, she could not help wondering what they were going to do. They
at once began to unroll the blankets and hold them open all around the
tree, until a large circle of the ground was quite hidden.

“Ah!” said Kittykin, “it’s a wicked trap!” and she dug her little claws
deep into the bark, and made up her mind that nothing should induce her
to jump. Presently she heard the soldiers in the tree under her call to
those on the ground:

“Are you ready?”

And they said, “All right!”

“Ah!” said Kittykin, “they cannot get down, either. Serves them right!”

But suddenly they all waved their arms at her and cried, “Scat!”

Goodness! The idea of crying “scat” at a kitten when she is up in
a tree!--“scat,” which fills a kitten’s breast with terror! It was
brutal, and then it was all so unexpected. It came very near making her
fall. As it was, it set her heart to thumping and bumping against her
ribs, like a marble in a box. “Ah!” she thought, “if those brutes below
were but mice, and I had them on the carpet!” So she dug her claws into
the bark, which was quite tender up there, and it was well she did, for
she heard some one call something below that sounded like “Shake!” and
before she knew it the man nearest her reached up, and, seizing the
limb on which she was, screwed up his face, and--Goodness! it nearly
shook the teeth out of her mouth and the eyes out of her head.

Shake! shake! shake! it came again, each time nearly tearing her little
claws out of their sockets and scaring her to death. She saw the ground
swim far below her, and felt that she would be mashed to death. Shake!
shake! shake! shake! She could not hold out much longer, and she spat
down at them. How those brutes below laughed! She formed a desperate
resolve. She would get even with them. “Ah, if they were but--” Shake!
sha-- With a fierce spit, partly of rage, partly of fear, Kittykin let
go, whirled suddenly, and flung herself on the upturned face of the man
next beneath her, from him to the man below him, and finally, digging
her little claws deep in his flesh, sprang with a wild leap clear of
the boughs, and shot whizzing out into the air, whilst the two men,
thrown off their guard by the suddenness of the attack, loosed their
hold, and went crashing down into the forks upon those below.

The first thing Evelyn and the men on the ground knew was the crash of
the falling men and the sight of Kittykin coming whizzing down, her
little claws clutching wildly at the air. Before they could see what
she was, she gave a bounce like a trap-ball as high as a man’s head,
and then, as she touched the ground again, shot like a wild sky-rocket
hissing across the yard, and, with her tail all crooked to one side and
as big as her body, vanished under the house. Oh, such a shout as there
was from the soldiers! Evelyn heard them yelling as she ran off after
Kittykin to see if she wasn’t dead. They fairly howled with delight
as the men in the tree, with scratched faces and torn clothes, came
crawling down. They looked very sheepish as they landed among their
comrades; but the question whether Kittykin had landed in a blanket or
had hit the solid ground fifty feet out somewhat relieved them. They
all agreed that she had bounced twenty feet.

Why Kittykin was not killed outright was a marvel. One of her eyes was
a little bunged up, the claws on three of her feet were loosened, and
for a week she felt as if she had been run through a sausage mill; but
she never lost any of her speed. Ever afterward when she saw a soldier
she would run for life, and hide as far back under the house as she
could get, with her eyes shining like two little live coals.

For some time, indeed, she lived in perpetual terror, for the soldiers
of both lines used to come up to the house, as the friendship they
formed that day never was changed, and though they remained on the
two opposite hills for quite a while, they never fired a shot at each
other. They used instead to meet and exchange tobacco and coffee, and
laugh over the way Kittykin routed their joint forces in the tree the
day of the skirmish.

As for Kittykin, she never put on any airs about it. She did not care
for that sort of glory. She never afterward could tolerate a tree; the
earth was good enough for her; and the highest she ever climbed was up
in her little mistress’s lap.




“NANCY PANSY.”


I.

“Nancy Pansy” was what Middleburgh called her, though the parish
register of baptism contained nothing nearer the name than that of
one Anne, daughter of Baylor Seddon, Esq., and Ellenor his wife.
Whatever the register may have thought about it, “Nancy Pansy” was what
Middleburgh called her, and she looked so much like a cherub, with her
great eyes laughing up at you and her tangles blowing all about her
dimpling pink face, that Dr. Spotswood Hunter, or “the Old Doctor,” as
he was known to Middleburgh, used to vow she had gotten out of Paradise
by mistake that Christmas Eve.

Nancy Pansy was the idol of the old doctor, as the old doctor was the
idol of Middleburgh. He had given her a doll baby on the day she was
born, and he always brought her one on her birthday, though, of course,
the first three or four which he gave her were of rubber, because as
long as she was a little girl she used to chew her doll after a most
cannibal-like fashion, she and Harry’s puppies taking turn and turn
about at chewing in the most impartial and friendly way. Harry was
the old doctor’s son. As she grew a little older, however, the doctor
brought her better dolls; but the puppies got older faster than Nancy
Pansy, and kept on chewing up her dolls, so they did not last very
long, which, perhaps, was why she never had a “real live doll,” as she
called it.

Some people said the reason the old doctor was so fond of Nancy Pansy
was because he had been a lover of her beautiful aunt, whose picture
as Charity giving Bread to the Poor Woman and her Children was in the
stained-glass window in the church, with the Advent angel in the panel
below, to show that she had died at Christmas-tide and was an angel
herself now; some said it was because he had had a little daughter
himself who had died when a wee bit of a girl, and Nancy Pansy reminded
him of her; some said it was because his youngest born, his boy Harry,
with the light hair, who now commanded a company in the Army of
Northern Virginia, was so fond of Nancy Pansy’s lovely sister Ellen;
some said it was because the old doctor was fond of all children; but
the old doctor said it was “because Nancy Pansy was Nancy Pansy,” and
looked like an angel, and had more sense than anybody in Middleburgh,
except his old sorrel horse Slouch, who, he always maintained, had
sense enough to have prevented the war if he had been consulted.

Whatever was the cause, Nancy Pansy was the old doctor’s boon
companion; and wherever the old doctor was, whether in his old
rattling brown buggy, with Slouch jogging sleepily along the dusty
roads which Middleburgh called her “streets,” or sitting in the
shadiest corner of his porch, Nancy Pansy was in her waking hours
generally beside him, her great pansy-colored eyes and her sunny hair
making a bright contrast to the white locks and tanned cheeks of the
old man. His home was just across the fence from the big house in
which Nancy Pansy lived, and there was a hole where two palings were
pulled off, through which Nancy Pansy used to slip when she went
back and forth, and through which her little black companion, whose
name, according to Nancy Pansy’s dictionary, was “Marphy,” just could
squeeze. Sometimes, indeed, Nancy Pansy used to fall asleep over at the
old doctor’s on the warm summer afternoons, and wake up next morning,
curiously enough, to find herself in a strange room, in a great big
bed, with a railing around the top of the high bedposts, and curtains
hanging from it, and with Marphy asleep on a pallet near by.

“That child is your shadow, doctor,” said Nancy Pansy’s mother one day
to him.

“No, madam; she is my sunshine,” answered the old man, gravely.

Nancy Pansy’s mother smiled, for when the old doctor said a thing he
meant it. All Middleburgh knew that, from old Slouch, who never would
open his eyes for any one else, and old Mrs. Hippin, who never would
admit she was better to any one else, up to Nancy Pansy herself.
Perhaps this was the reason why when the war broke out, and all the
other men went into the army, the old doctor, who was too old and
feeble to go himself, but had sent his only son Harry, was chosen by
tacit consent as Middleburgh’s general adviser and guardian. Thus it
was he who had to advise Mrs. Latimer, the druggist’s wife, how to keep
the little apothecary’s shop at the corner of the Court-house Square
after her husband went into the army; and it was he who advised Mrs.
Seddon to keep the post-office in the little building at the bottom of
her lawn, which had served as her husband’s law office before he went
off to the war at the head of the Middleburgh Artillery. He even gave
valuable assistance as well as advice to Mrs. Hippin about curing her
chickens of the gapes; and to Nancy Pansy’s great astonishment had
several times performed a most remarkable operation by inserting a hair
from old Slouch’s mane down the invalid’s little stretched throat.

He used to go around the town nearly every afternoon, seeing the
healthy as well as the sick, and giving advice as well as physic, both
being taken with equal confidence. It was what he called “reviewing his
out-posts,” and he used to explain to Nancy Pansy that that was the way
her father and his Harry did in their camp. Nancy Pansy did not wholly
understand him, but she knew it was something that was just right; so
she nodded gravely, and said, “Umh-hmh!”

It was not hard to get a doll the first year of the war, but before the
second year was half over there was not one left in Middleburgh. The
old doctor explained to Nancy Pansy that they had all gone away to the
war. She did not quite understand what dollies had to do with fighting,
but she knew that war made the dolls disappear. Still she kept on
talking about the new doll she would get on her birthday at Christmas,
and as the old doctor used to talk to her about it, and discuss the
sort of hair it should have, and the kind of dress it should wear,
she never doubted that she should get it in her stocking as usual on
Christmas morning.


II.

The old doctor’s boots were very bad--those old boots which Middleburgh
knew as well as they knew Nancy Pansy’s eyes or the church steeple.
Mrs. Seddon had taken the trouble to scold him one day in the autumn
when she heard him coughing, and she had sent him a small roll of money
“on account,” she wrote him, “of a long bill,” to get a pair of new
boots. The old doctor never sent in a bill; he would as soon have sent
a small-pox patient into Nancy Pansy’s play-room. He calmly returned
the money, saying he never transacted business with women who had
husbands, and that he had always dressed to suit himself, at which Mrs.
Seddon laughed; for, like the rest of Middleburgh, she knew that those
old boots never stood back for any weather, however bad. She arranged,
however, to have a little money sent to him through the post-office
from another town without any name to the letter enclosing it. But the
old boots were still worn, and Nancy Pansy, at her mother’s suggestion,
learned to knit, that she might have a pair of yarn socks knit for
the old doctor at Christmas. She intended to have kept this a secret,
and she did keep it from every one but the doctor; she did not quite
_tell_ even him, but she could not help making him “guess” about it.
Christmas Eve she went over to the old doctor’s, and whilst she made
him shut his eyes, hung up his stocking herself, into which she poked
a new pair of very queer-shaped yarn socks, a little black in some
places from her little hands, for they were just done, and there had
not been time to wash them. She consulted the old doctor to know if he
really--really, “now, really”--thought Santa Claus would bring her a
doll “through the war;” but she could only get a “perhaps” out of him,
for he said he had not heard from Harry.

It was about ten o’clock that night when the old doctor came home from
his round of visits, and opening his old secretary, took out a long
thin bundle wrapped in paper, and slipping it into his pocket, went out
again into the snow which was falling. Old Limpid, the doctor’s man,
had taken Slouch to the stable, so the old doctor walked, stumbling
around through the dark by the gate, thinking with a sigh of his boy
Harry, who would just have vaulted over the palings, and who was that
night sleeping in the snow somewhere. However, he smiled when he put
the bundle into Nancy Pansy’s long stocking, and he smiled again when
he put his old worn boots to the fire and warmed his feet. But when
Nancy Pansy slipped next morning through her “little doctor’s-gate,” as
she called her hole in the fence, and burst into his room before he was
out of bed, to show him with dancing eyes what Santa Claus had brought
her, and announced that she had “named her ‘Harry,’ all herself,” the
old doctor had to wipe his eyes before he could really see her.

Harry was the first “real doll” Nancy Pansy had ever had--that was what
she said--and Harry soon became as well known in Middleburgh as Nancy
Pansy herself. She used to accompany Nancy Pansy and the old doctor on
their rounds, and instead of the latter two being called “the twins,”
they and Harry were now dubbed “the triplets.” It was astonishing what
an influence Harry came to have on Nancy Pansy’s life. She carried her
everywhere, and the doll would frequently be seen sitting up in the
old doctor’s buggy alone, whilst Slouch dozed in the sun outside of
some patient’s door. Of course, so much work as Harry had to do had the
effect of marring her freshness a good deal, and she met with one or
two severe accidents, such as breaking her leg, and cracking her neck;
but the old doctor attended her in the gravest way, and performed such
successful operations that really she was, except as to looks, almost
as good as new; besides, as Nancy Pansy explained, dolls had to have
measles and “theseases” just like other folks.


III.

In March, 186--, Middleburgh “fell.” That is, it fell into the hands of
the Union army, and remained in their hands afterwards. It was terrible
at first, and Nancy Pansy stuffed Harry into a box, and hid her away.

It was awfully lonesome, however, and to think of the way Harry was
doubled up and cramped down in that box under the floor was dreadful.
So at last, finding that whatever else they did, the soldiers did
not trouble her, she took Harry out. But she never could go about
with her as before, for of course things were different, and although
she got over her fright at the soldiers, as did her sister Ellen and
the rest of Middleburgh, they never were friendly. Indeed, sometimes
they were just the reverse, and at last they got to such a pitch that
the regiment which was there was taken away, and a new regiment, or,
rather, two new companies, were sent there. These were Companies A and
C of the --th Regiment of ---- Veterans. They had been originally known
as Volunteers, but now they were known as “Veterans,” because they had
been in so many battles.

The --th were perhaps the youngest men in that department, being
mainly young college fellows who had enlisted all together. Some of
the regiments composed of older men were at first inclined to laugh
at the smooth-faced youngsters who could hardly raise a mustache to
a mess; but when these same rosy-cheeked fellows flung off their
knapsacks in battle after battle, and went rushing ahead under a hail
of bullets and shell, they changed their tune and dubbed them “The
Baby Veterans.” Thus, in 186--, the Baby Veterans went to Middleburgh
for a double purpose:--first, that they might recruit and rest; and,
secondly, because for the past six months Middleburgh had been causing
much worry, and was regarded as a nest of treason and trouble. The
regiment which had been there before was a new regiment, not long since
recruited, and had been in a continual quarrel with Middleburgh, and as
Middleburgh consisted mainly of women and children, and a few old men,
there was not much honor to be got out of rows with them. Middleburgh
complained that the soldiers were tyrannical and caused the trouble;
the soldiers insisted that Middleburgh was constantly breaking the
regulations, and conducted itself in a high-handed and rebellious way,
and treated them with open scorn. As an evidence, it was cited that
the women in Middleburgh would not speak to the Union soldiers. And
it was rumored that the girls there were uncommonly pretty. When the
Baby Veterans heard this, they simply laughed, pulled their budding
mustaches, and announced that they would “keep things straight in
Middleburgh.”

Tom Adams was first lieutenant of Company C. He had enlisted as a
private, and had been rapidly promoted to corporal, sergeant, and
then lieutenant; and he was in a fair way to be captain soon, as the
captain of his company was at home badly wounded, and if he should be
permanently disabled, Tom was certain of the captaincy. If any man
could bring Middleburgh to terms, Tom Adams was the man, so his friends
declared, and they would like to see any woman who would refuse to
speak to Tom Adams--they really would.

The Baby Veterans reached Middleburgh in the night, and took up their
quarters on the Court-house Square, vacated by the regiment which had
just left. When morning came they took a look at Middleburgh, and
determined to intimidate it on the spot. They drilled, marched and
counter-marched up and down the dusty streets, and around the old
whitewashed court-house, to show that they meant business, and did not
propose to stand any foolishness--not they.

Nancy Pansy and her sister Ellen had been with Harry to see old Mrs.
Hippin, who was sick, to carry her some bread and butter, and were
returning home about mid-day. They had not seen the new soldiers, and
were hurrying along, hoping they might not see them, when they suddenly
heard the drums and fifes playing, and turning the corner, they saw
the soldiers between them and their gate, marching up the road toward
them. A tall young officer was at their head; his coat was buttoned
up very tight, and he carried his drawn sword with the handle in his
right hand and the tip in his left, and carried his head very high. It
was Tom Adams. Nancy Pansy caught tight hold of her sister’s hand, and
clasped Harry closely to her bosom. For a second they stopped; then,
as there was no help for it, they started forward across the road,
just in front of the soldiers. They were so close that Nancy Pansy was
afraid they would march over them, and she would have liked to run. She
clutched sister’s hand hard; but her sister did not quicken her pace at
all, and the young officer had to give the order, “Mark time--march!”
to let them pass. He looked very grand as he drew himself up, but Nancy
Pansy’s sister held her hand firmly, and took not the slightest notice
of him. Lifting her head defiantly in the air, and keeping her dark
eyes straight before her, she passed with Nancy Pansy within two steps
of the young lieutenant and his drawn sword, neither quickening nor
slowing her pace a particle. They might have seemed not to know that
a Federal soldier was within a hundred miles of them but for the way
that Nancy Pansy squeezed Harry, and the scornful air which sat on her
sister’s stern little face and erect figure as she drew Nancy Pansy
closer to her, and gathered up her skirts daintily in her small hand,
as though they might be soiled by an accidental touch.

[Illustration: NANCY PANSY CLASPED HARRY CLOSELY TO HER BOSOM.]

Tom Adams had a mind to give the order “Forward!” and make them run
out of the way, but he did not do it, so he marched back to camp, and
told the story to his mess, walking around the table, holding the
table-cloth in his hand, to show how the little rebel had done. He
vowed he would get even with her.

As the days went on, the Baby Veterans and Middleburgh came no nearer
being acquainted than they were that morning. The Baby Veterans still
drilled, and paraded, and set pickets all around the town; Middleburgh
and Nancy Pansy still picked up their skirts and passed by with
uplifted heads and defiant eyes. The Baby Veterans shouted on the
Court-house Square, “Yankee Doodle” and the “Star-spangled Banner;”
Middleburgh sang on its verandas and in its parlors, “Dixie” and the
“Bonnie Blue Flag.” Perhaps, some evenings Middleburgh may have stopped
its own singing, and have stolen out on its balconies to listen to
the rich chorus which came up from the Court-house Grove, but if so,
the Baby Veterans never knew it; or perhaps, the Baby Veterans some
evenings may have strolled along the shadowed streets, or stretched
themselves out on the grass to listen to the sweet voices which
floated down from the embowered verandas in the Judge’s yard; if so,
Middleburgh never guessed it.

Nancy Pansy used to sing sweetly, and she would often sing whilst her
sister played for her.

The strict regulations established by the soldiers prevented any
letters from going or coming unopened, and Middleburgh never would
tolerate that. So the only mail which passed through the office was
that which the Baby Veterans received or sent. As stated, Nancy
Pansy’s mother, by the old doctor’s advice and for reasons good
to her and her friends, still kept the post-office under a sort of
surveillance, yet the intercourse with the soldiers was strictly
official; the letters were received or were delivered by the
postmistress in silence, or if the Baby Veterans asked a question it
was generally replied to by a haughty bow, or an ungracious “No.”

One mail day Mrs. Seddon was ill, so Nancy Pansy’s sister Ellen had to
go to open the mail, and Nancy Pansy went with her, taking Harry along,
“to take care of them.”

It happened that Tom Adams and a friend came in to ask for their
letters. Nancy Pansy’s sister was standing at the table arranging the
mail, and Nancy Pansy was sitting up on the table by her, holding the
battered but cherished Harry in her lap. The young officer stiffened up
as he saw who was before him.

“Are there any letters for Lieutenant Adams?” he asked, in a very
formal and stately manner.

There was no reply or motion to show that he had been heard, except
that Nancy Pansy’s sister began to go over the letters again from the
beginning of the A’s. Suddenly Nancy Pansy, who was watching her, saw
one, and exclaiming, “Oh! there’s one!” seized it, and slipped down
from the table to give it to its owner, proud to show that she could
read writing. Before she had reached the window, however, her sister
caught her quickly, and taking the letter from her, slowly advanced and
handed it to the young soldier; then turning quietly away, she took
out her handkerchief and wiped her hand very hard where it had touched
the letter, as if it had been soiled. The young officer strode out of
the door with a red face and an angry step, and that evening the story
of the way the little rebel wiped her hands after touching Tom Adams’s
letter was all over camp.


IV.

After this it was pretty well understood that the Baby Veterans and
Middleburgh were at war. The regulations were more strictly enforced
than ever before, and for a while it looked as if it was going to be as
bad as it was when the other regiment was there. Old Limpid, the old
doctor’s man, was caught one night with some letters on his person,
several of them addressed to “Captain Harry Hunter, Army of Northern
Virginia,” etc., and was somewhat severely dealt with, though, perhaps
fortunately for him and his master, the letters, one of which was in
a feminine hand, whilst abusive of the soldiers, did not contain any
information which justified very severe measures, and after a warning
he was set free again.

Nancy Pansy’s sister Ellen was enraged next day to receive again her
letter from a corporal’s guard, indorsed with an official stamp,
“Returned by order,” etc. She actually cried about it.

Nancy Pansy had written a letter to Harry, too--not her own Harry, but
the old doctor’s--and hers came back also; but she did not cry about
it, for she had forgotten to tell Harry that she had a kitten.

Still it was very bad; for after that even the old doctor was once more
subjected to the strict regulations which had existed before the Baby
Veterans came, and he could no longer drive in and out at will, as he
and Nancy Pansy had been doing since the regiment arrived.

It was not, however, long after this that Nancy Pansy had quite an
adventure. She and Harry had been with the old doctor, and the old
doctor had to go and see some children with the measles, so, as Harry
had never had measles, he sent her and Nancy Pansy back; but Nancy
Pansy had found an old cigar-box, which was a treasure, and would have
made a splendid cradle for Harry, except that it was so short that
when Harry’s legs were put into it, her head and shoulders stuck up,
and when her body was in it, her legs hung out. Still, if it would not
do for a cradle, she had got a piece of string, and it would do for a
carriage. So she was coming home very cheerfully, thinking of the way
Harry would enjoy her ride down the walk.

It was just at this time that Tom Adams, feeling thoroughly bored with
his surroundings, left camp and sauntered up the street alone, planning
how he could get his company ordered once more to the front. He could
not stand this life any longer. As he strolled along the walk the sound
of the cheerful voices of girls behind the magnolias and rose bowers
came to him, and a wave of homesickness swept over him as he thought of
his sisters and little nieces away up North.

Suddenly, as he turned a corner, he saw a small figure walking slowly
along before him; the great straw hat on the back of her head almost
concealed the little body, but her sunny hair was peeping down below
the broad brim, and Adams knew the child.

She carried under her arm an old cigar-box, out of one end of which
peeped the head and shoulders of an old doll, the feet of which stuck
out of the other end. A string hung from the box, and trailed behind
her on the pathway. She appeared to be very busy about something, and
to be perfectly happy, for as she walked along she was singing out of
her content a wordless little song of her heart, “Tra-la-la, tra-la-la.”

The young officer fell into the same gait with the child, and
instinctively trod softly to keep from disturbing her. Just then,
however, a burly fellow named Griff O’Meara, who had belonged to one
of the companies which preceded them, and had been transferred to
Adams’s company, came down a side street, and turned into the walkway
just behind the little maid. He seemed to be tipsy. The trailing string
caught his eye, and he tipped forward and tried to step on it. Adams
did not take in what the fellow was trying to do until he attempted it
the second time. Then he called to him, but it was too late; he had
stepped on the cord, and jerked the box, doll and all, from the child’s
arm. The doll fell, face down, on a stone and broke to pieces. The man
gave a great laugh, as the little girl turned, with a cry of anguish,
and stooping, began to pick up the fragments, weeping in a low, pitiful
way. In a second Adams sprang forward, and struck the fellow a blow
between the eyes which sent him staggering off the sidewalk, down in
the road, flat on his back. He rose with an oath, but Adams struck him
a second blow which laid him out again, and the fellow, finding him to
be an officer, was glad to slink off. Adams then turned to the child,
whose tears, which had dried for a moment in her alarm at the fight,
now began to flow again over her doll.

“Her pretty head’s all broke! Oh--oh--oh!” she sobbed, trying vainly to
get the pieces to fit into something like a face.

The young officer sat down on the ground by her. “Never mind, sissy,”
he said, soothingly, “let me see if I can help you.”

She confidingly handed him the fragments, whilst she tried to stifle
her sobs, and wiped her eyes with her little pinafore.

“Can you do it?” she asked, dolefully, behind her pinafore.

“I hope so. What’s your name?”

“Nancy Pansy, and my dolly’s named Harry.”

“Harry!” Tom looked at the doll’s dress and the fragments of face,
which certainly were not masculine.

“Yes, Harry Hunter. He’s my sweetheart,” she looked at him to see that
he understood her.

“Ah!”

“And sister’s,” she nodded, confidently.

“Yes, I see. Where is he?”

“He’s a captain now. He’s gone away--away.” She waved her hand in a
wide sweep to give an idea of the great distance it was. “He’s in the
army.”

“Come along with me,” said Tom; “let’s see what we can do.” He gathered
up all the broken pieces in his handkerchief, and set out in the
direction from which he had come, Nancy Pansy at his side. She slipped
her little hand confidingly into his.

“You knocked that bad man down for me, didn’t you?” she said, looking
up into his face. Tom had not felt until then what a hero he had been.

“Yes,” he said, quite graciously. The little warm fingers worked
themselves yet further into his palm.

At the corner they turned up the street toward the Court-house Square,
and in a few minutes were in camp. At the sight of the child with Adams
the whole camp turned out pell-mell, as if the “long-roll” had beat.

At first Nancy Pansy was a little shy, there was so much excitement,
and she clung tightly to Tom Adams’s hand. She soon found, however,
that they were all friendly.

Tom conducted her to his tent, where she was placed in a great chair,
with a horse-cover over it, as a sort of throne. The story of O’Meara’s
act excited so much indignation that Tom felt it necessary to explain
fully the punishment he had given him.

Nancy Pansy, feeling that she had an interest in the matter, suddenly
took up the narrative.

“Yes, he jus’ knocked him down,” she said, with the most charming
confidence, to her admiring audience, her pink cheeks glowing and her
great eyes lighting up at the recital, as she illustrated Tom’s act
with a most expressive gesture of her by no means clean little fist.

The soldiers about her burst into a roar of delighted laughter, and
made her tell them again and again how it was done, each time renewing
their applause over the ’cute way in which she imitated Tom’s act. Then
they all insisted on being formally introduced, so Nancy Pansy was
stood upon the table, and the men came by in line, one by one, and were
presented to her. It was a regular levee.

Presently she said she must go home, so she was taken down; but before
she was allowed to leave, she was invited to go through the camp, each
man insisting that she should visit his tent. She made, therefore, a
complete tour, and in every tent some souvenir was pressed upon her,
or she was begged to take her choice of its contents. Thus, before she
had gone far, she had her arms full of things, and a string of men were
following her bearing the articles she had honored them by accepting.
There were little looking-glasses, pin-cushions, pairs of scissors,
pictures, razors, bits of gold-lace, cigar-holders, scarf-pins, and
many other things.

When she left camp she was quite piled up with things, whilst Tom
Adams, who acted as her escort, marched behind her with a large
basketful besides. She did not have room to take Harry, so she left
her behind, on the assurance of Tom that she should be mended, and on
the engagement of the entire company to take care of her. The soldiers
followed her to the edge of the camp, and exacted from her a promise
to come again next day, which she agreed to do if her mother would let
her. And when she was out of sight, the whole command held a council of
war over the fragments of Harry.

When Adams reached the Judge’s gate he made a negro who was passing
take the basket in, thinking it better not to go himself up to the
house. He said good-by, and Nancy Pansy started up the walk, whilst he
waited at the gate. Suddenly she turned and came back.

“Good-by!” she said, standing on tiptoe, and putting up her little face
to be kissed.

The young officer stooped over the gate and kissed her.

“Good-by! Come again to-morrow.”

“Yes, if mamma will let me.” And she tripped away with her armful of
presents.

Tom Adams remained leaning on the gate. He was thinking of his home far
away. Suddenly he was aroused by hearing the astonished exclamations in
the house as Nancy Pansy entered. He felt sure that they were insisting
that the things should be sent back, and fearing that he might be
seen, he left the spot and went slowly back to camp, where he found
the soldiers still in a state of pleasurable excitement over Nancy
Pansy’s visit. A collection was taken up for a purpose which appeared
to interest everybody, and a cap nearly full of money was delivered to
Tom Adams, with as many directions as to what he was to do with it as
though it were to get a memorial for the Commander-in-chief. Tom said
he had already determined to do the very same thing himself; still, if
the company wished to “go in” with him, they could do it; so he agreed
to take the money.


V.

On the day following Nancy Pansy’s visit to the camp of the Baby
Veterans, Adams took to the post-office a bundle addressed to
“Nancy Pansy,” and a letter addressed to a friend of his who was in
Washington. The bundle contained “Harry,” as fully restored as her
shattered state would admit of; the letter contained a draft and a
commission, the importance of which latter Captain Adams had put in the
very strongest light.

He held his head very high as he dropped his letter into the box,
for over the table bent the slender figure of the little dark-eyed
postmistress, who had wiped her dainty fingers so carefully after
handling his letter. Perched near her on the table, just as she had
been that day, with her tangled hair all over her face, was Nancy
Pansy. She was, as usual, very busy over something; but, hearing a
step, she glanced up.

“Oh, there’s Tom Adams!” she exclaimed; and, turning over on her face,
she slipped down from the table and ran up to him, putting up her face
to be kissed, just as she always did to the old doctor.

[Illustration: SHE RAN UP TO HIM, PUTTING UP HER FACE TO BE KISSED.]

Adams stooped over and kissed her, though, as he did so, he heard
her sister turn around, and he felt as if she might be going to shoot
him in the back. He straightened up with defiance in his heart. She was
facing him; but what was his astonishment when she advanced, and with a
little smile on her lovely face, said:

“Captain Adams, I am Miss Seddon. My mother has desired me to thank you
in her name, and in all our names, for your act of protection to my
little sister on yesterday.”

“Yes,” said Nancy Pansy; “he jus’ knocked that bad man down,” and she
gave her little head a nod of satisfaction to one side.

The young officer blushed to his eyes. He was prepared for an attack,
but not for such a flank movement. He stammered something about not
having done anything at all worthy of thanks, and fell back behind
Harry, whom he suddenly pulled out and placed in Nancy Pansy’s hands.
It all ended in an invitation from Mrs. Seddon, through Nancy Pansy and
her pretty sister, to come up to the house and be thanked, which he
accepted.

After this the Baby Veterans and Middleburgh came to understand each
other a good deal better than before. Instead of remaining in their
camp or marching up and down the streets, with arrogance or defiance
stamped on every face and speaking from every figure, the Baby Veterans
took to loafing about town in off-duty hours, hanging over the gates,
or sauntering in the autumn twilight up and down the quiet walks.
They and Middleburgh still recognized that there was a broad ground,
on which neither could trespass. The Baby Veterans still sang “The
Star-spangled Banner” in the Court-house Grove, and Middleburgh still
sang “Dixie” and the “Bonnie Blue Flag” behind her rose trellises;
but there was no more gathering up of skirts, and disdainful wiping
of hands after handling letters; and the old doctor was allowed to go
jogging about on his rounds, with Nancy Pansy and the scarred Harry at
his side, as unmolested as if the Baby Veterans had never pitched their
tents on the Court-house Square. It is barely possible that even the
rigid investment of the town relaxed a little as the autumn changed
into winter, for once or twice old Limpid disappeared for several days,
as he used to do before his arrest, and Nancy Pansy’s pretty sister
used to get letters from Harry, who was now a major. Nancy Pansy heard
whispers of Harry’s coming before long, and even of the whole army’s
coming. Somehow a rumor of this must have reached the authorities,
though Nancy Pansy never breathed a word of it; for an officer was sent
down to investigate the matter and report immediately.

Just as he arrived he received secret word from some one that a rebel
officer was actually in Middleburgh.

That afternoon Nancy Pansy was playing in the bottom of the yard when a
lot of soldiers came along the street, and before them rode a strange,
cross-looking man with a beard. Tom Adams was marching with the
soldiers, and he did not look at all pleased. They stopped at the old
doctor’s gate, and the strange man trotted up to her place and asked
Nancy Pansy if she knew Captain Harry Hunter.

“Yes, indeed,” said Nancy Pansy, going up to the fence and poking her
little rosy face over it; “Harry’s a major now.”

“Ah! Harry’s a major now, is he?” said the strange man.

Nancy Pansy went on to tell him how her Harry was named after the other
Harry, and how she was all broken now; but the officer was intent on
something else.

“Where is Harry now?” he asked her.

“In the house,” and she waved her hand toward the old doctor’s house
behind her.

“So, so,” said the officer, and went back to Tom Adams, who looked
annoyed, and said:

“I don’t believe it; there’s some mistake.”

At this the strange man got angry and said: “Lieutenant Adams, if you
don’t want the rebel caught, you can go back to camp.”

My! how angry Tom was! His face got perfectly white, and he said:
“Major Black, you are my superior, or you wouldn’t dare to speak so to
me. I have nothing to say now, but some day I’ll out-rank you.”

Nancy Pansy did not know what they were talking about, but she did not
like the strange man at all; so when he asked her: “Won’t you show me
where Harry is?” at first she said “No,” and then “Yes, if you won’t
hurt him.”

“No, indeed,” said the man. As Tom Adams was there she was not afraid;
so she went outside the gate and on into the old doctor’s yard,
followed by the soldiers and Tom Adams, who still looked angry, and
told her she’d better run home. Some of the soldiers went around behind
the house.

“Where is he?” the strange gentleman asked.

“Asleep up-stairs in the company-room,” said Nancy Pansy in a whisper.
“You mustn’t make any noise.”

She opened the door and they entered the house, Nancy Pansy on tiptoe
and the others stepping softly. She was surprised to see the strange
man draw a pistol; but she was used to seeing pistols, so, though Tom
Adams told her again to run home, she stayed there.

“Which is the company-room?” asked the strange man.

She pointed to the door at the head of the steps. “That’s it.”

He turned to the soldiers.

“Come ahead, men,” he said, in a low voice, and ran lightly up the
stairs, looking very fierce. When he reached the door he seized the
knob and dashed into the room.

Then Nancy Pansy heard him say some naughty words, and she ran up the
stairs to see what was the matter.

They were all standing around the big bed on which she had laid
Harry an hour before, with her head on a pillow; but a jerk of the
counterpane had thrown Harry over on her face, and her broken neck and
ear looked very bad.

“Oh, you’ve waked her up!” cried Nancy Pansy, rushing forward, and
turning the doll over.

The strange man stamped out of the room, looking perfectly furious, and
the soldiers all laughed. Tom Adams looked pleased.


VI.

When Tom Adams next called at the Judge’s, he found the atmosphere much
cooler within the house than it was outside. He had been waiting alone
in the drawing-room for some time when Nancy Pansy entered. She came in
very slowly, and instead of running immediately up to him and greeting
him as she usually did, she seated herself on the edge of a chair and
looked at him with manifest suspicion. He stretched out his hand to her.

“Come over, Nancy Pansy, and sit on my knee.”

Nancy Pansy shook her head.

“My sister don’t like you,” she said slowly, eying him askance.

“Ah!” He let his hand fall on the arm of the chair.

“No; and I don’t, either,” said Nancy Pansy, more confidently.

“Why doesn’t she like me?” asked Tom Adams.

“Because you are so mean. She says you are just like all the rest of
’em;” and, pleased at her visitor’s interest, Nancy Pansy wriggled
herself higher up on her chair, prepared to give him further details.

“We don’t like you at all,” said the child, half confidentially and
half defiantly. “We like our side; we like _Confederates_.” Tom Adams
smiled. “We like Harry; we don’t like you.”

She looked as defiant as possible, and just then a step was heard in
the hall, approaching very slowly, and Nancy Pansy’s sister appeared in
the doorway. She was dressed in white, and she carried her head even
higher than usual.

The visitor rose. He thought he had never seen her look so pretty.

“Good-evening,” he said.

She bowed “Good-evening,” very slowly, and took a seat on a
straight-backed chair in a corner of the room, ignoring the chair which
Adams offered her.

“I have not seen you for some time,” he began.

“No; I suppose you have been busy searching people’s houses,” she said.

Tom Adams flushed a little.

“I carry out my orders,” he said. “These I must enforce.”

“Ah!”

Nancy Pansy did not just understand it all, but she saw there was a
battle going on, and she at once aligned herself with her side, and
going over, stood by her sister’s chair, and looked defiance at the
enemy.

“Well, we shall hardly agree about this, so we won’t discuss it,” said
Tom Adams. “I did not come to talk about this, but to see you, and to
get you to sing for me.” Refusal spoke so plainly in her face that he
added: “Or, if you won’t sing, to get Nancy Pansy to sing for me.”

“_I_ won’t sing for you,” declared Nancy Pansy, promptly and decisively.

“What incorrigible rebels all of you are!” said Tom Adams, smiling.
He was once more at his ease, and he pulled his chair up nearer Nancy
Pansy’s sister, and caught Nancy Pansy by the hand. She was just trying
to pull away, when there were steps on the walk outside--the regular
tramp, tramp of soldiers marching in some numbers. They came up to the
house, and some order was given in a low tone. Both Adams and Nancy
Pansy’s sister sprang to their feet.

“What can it mean?” asked Nancy Pansy’s sister, more to herself than to
Adams.

He went into the hall just as there was a loud rap at the front door.

“What is it?” he asked the lieutenant who stood there.

“Some one has slipped through the lines, and is in this house,” he said.

Nancy Pansy’s sister stepped out into the hall.

“There is no one here,” she said. She looked at Tom Adams. “I give my
word there is no one in the house except my mother, ourselves, and the
servants.” She met Tom Adams’s gaze frankly as he looked into her eyes.

“There is no one here, Hector,” he said, turning to the officer.

“This is a serious matter,” began the other, hesitatingly. “We have
good grounds to believe----”

“I will be responsible,” said Tom Adams, firmly. “I have been here some
time, and there is no one here.” He took the officer aside and talked
to him a moment.

“All right,” said he, as he went down the steps, “as you are so
positive.”

“I am,” said Tom.

The soldiers marched down the walk, out of the gate, and around the
corner. Just as the sound of their footsteps died away on the soft
road, Tom Adams turned and faced Nancy Pansy’s sister. She was leaning
against a pillar, looking down, and a little moonlight sifted through
the rose-bushes and fell on her neck. Nancy Pansy had gone into the
house. “I am sorry I said what I did in the parlor just now.” She
looked up at him.

“Oh!” said Tom Adams, and moved his hand a little. “I--” he began; but
just then there was a sudden scamper in the hall, and Nancy Pansy, with
flying hair and dancing eyes, came rushing out on the portico.

“Oh, sister!” she panted. “Harry’s come; he’s in mamma’s room!”

Nancy Pansy’s sister turned deadly white. “Oh, Nancy Pansy!” she
gasped, placing her hand over her mouth.

Nancy Pansy burst into tears, and buried her face in her sister’s
dress. She had not seen Tom Adams; she thought he had gone.

“I did not know it,” said Nancy Pansy’s sister, turning and facing Tom
Adams’s stern gaze.

“I believe you,” he said, slowly. He felt at his side; but he was in a
fatigue suit, and had no arms. Without finishing his sentence he sprang
over the railing, and with a long, swift stride went down the yard. She
dimly saw him as he sprang over the fence, and heard him call, “Oh,
Hector!”

As he did so, she rushed into the house. “Fly! they are coming!” she
cried, bursting into her mother’s room. “Oh, Harry, they are coming!”
she cried, rushing up to a handsome young fellow, who sprang to his
feet as she entered, and went forward to meet her.

The young man took her hand and drew her to him. “Well,” he said,
looking down into her eyes, and drawing a long breath.

Nancy Pansy’s sister put her face on his shoulder and began to cry, and
Nancy Pansy rushed into her mother’s arms and cried too.

Ten minutes later soldiers came in both at the front and back doors.
Mrs. Seddon met her visitors in the hall. Nancy Pansy’s sister was on
one side, and Nancy Pansy on the other.

Tom Adams was in command. He removed his hat, but said, gravely: “I
must arrest the young rebel officer who is here.”

Nancy Pansy made a movement; but her mother tightened her clasp of her
hand.

“Yes,” she said, bowing. That was all.

Guards were left at the doors, and soldiers went through the house. The
search was thorough, but the game had escaped. They were coming down
the steps when some one said:

“We must search the shrubbery; he will be there.”

“No; he is at his father’s--the old doctor’s,” said Adams.

It was said in an undertone, but Mrs. Seddon’s face whitened; Nancy
Pansy caught it, too. She clutched her mother’s gown.

“Oh, mamma! you hear what he says?”

Her mother stooped and whispered to her.

“Yes, yes,” nodded Nancy Pansy. She ran to the door, and poking her
little head out, looked up and down the portico, calling, “Kitty,
kitty!”

The sentry who was standing there holding his gun moved a little, and,
leaning out, peered into the dusk.

“’Tain’t out here,” he said, in a friendly tone.

Nancy Pansy slipped past him, and went down the steps and around the
portico, still calling, “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!”

“Who goes there?” called a soldier, as he saw something move over
near the old doctor’s fence; but when he heard a childish voice call,
“Kitty! Kitty!” he dropped his gun again with a laugh. “’Tain’t nobody
but that little gal, Nancy Pansy; blest if I wa’n’t about to shoot
her!”

The next instant Nancy Pansy had slipped through her little hole in the
fence, through which she had so often gone, and was in the old doctor’s
yard; and when, five minutes afterward, Tom Adams marched his men up
the walk and surrounded and entered the house, Nancy Pansy, her broken
doll in her arms, was sitting demurely on the edge of a large chair,
looking at him with great, wide-open, dancing eyes. A little princess
could not have been grander, and if she had hidden Harry Hunter behind
her chair, she could not have shown more plainly that she had given him
warning.


VII.

All Middleburgh knew next day how Nancy Pansy had saved Harry Hunter,
and it was still talking about it, when it was one morning astonished
by the news that old Dr. Hunter had been arrested in the night by the
soldiers, who had come down from Washington, and had been carried off
somewhere. There had not been such excitement since the Middleburgh
Artillery had marched away to the war. The old doctor was sacred. Why,
to carry him off, and stop his old buggy rattling about the streets,
was, in Middleburgh’s eyes, like stopping the chariot of the sun, or
turning the stars out of their courses. Why did they not arrest Nancy
Pansy too? asked Middleburgh. Nancy Pansy cried all day, and many times
after, whenever she thought about it. She went to Tom Adams’s camp and
begged him to bring her old doctor back, and Tom Adams said as he had
not had him arrested he could not tell what he could do, but he would
do all he could. Then she wrote the old doctor a letter. However, all
Middleburgh would not accept Tom Adams’s statement as Nancy Pansy
did, and instead of holding him as a favorite, it used to speak of
him as “That Tom Adams.” Every old woman in Middleburgh declared she
was worse than she had been in ten years, and old Mrs. Hippin took to
her crutch, which she had not used in twelve months, and told Nancy
Pansy’s sister she would die in a week unless she could hear the old
doctor’s buggy rattle again. But when the fever broke out in the little
low houses down on the river, things began to look very serious. The
surgeon from the camp went to see the patients, but they died, and
more were taken ill. When a number of other cases occurred in the town
itself, all of the most malignant type, the surgeon admitted that it
was a form of fever with which he was not familiar. There had never
been such an epidemic in Middleburgh before, and Middleburgh said that
it was all due to the old doctor’s absence.

One day Nancy Pansy went to the camp, to ask about the old doctor,
and saw a man sitting astride of a fence rail which was laid on two
posts high up from the ground. He had a stone tied to each foot, and
he was groaning. She looked up at him, and saw that it was the man who
had broken her doll. She was about to run away, but he groaned so she
thought he must be in great pain, and that always hurt her; so she went
closer, and asked him what was the matter. She did not understand just
what he said, but it was something about the weight on his feet; so
she first tried to untie the strings which held the stones, and then,
as there was a barrel standing by, she pushed at it until she got it
up close under him, and told him to rest his feet on that, whilst she
ran home and asked her mamma to lend her her scissors. In pushing the
barrel she broke Harry’s head in pieces; but she was so busy she did
not mind it then. Just as she got the barrel in place some one called
her, and turning around she saw a sentinel; he told her to go away, and
he kicked the barrel from under the man and let the stones drop down
and jerk his ankles again. Nancy Pansy began to cry, and ran off up to
Tom Adams’s tent and told him all about it, and how the poor man was
groaning. Tom Adams tried to explain that this man had got drunk, and
that he was a bad man, and was the same one who had broken her doll.
It had no effect. “Oh, but it hurts him so bad!” said Nancy Pansy, and
she cried until Tom Adams called a man and told him he might go and let
O’Meara down, and tell him that the little girl had begged him off this
time. Nancy Pansy, however, ran herself, and called to him that Tom
Adams said he might get down. When he was on the ground, he walked up
to her and said:

“May the Holy Virgin kape you! Griff O’Meara’ll never forgit you.”

A few days after that, Nancy Pansy complained of headache, and her
mother kept her in the house. That evening her face was flushed, and
she had a fever; so her mother put her to bed and sat by her. She went
to sleep, but waked in the night, talking very fast. She had a burning
fever, and was quite out of her head. Mrs. Seddon sent for the surgeon
next morning, and he came and stayed some time. When he returned to
camp he went to Tom Adams’s tent. He looked so grave as he came in that
Adams asked quickly:

“Any fresh cases?”

“Not in camp.” He sat down.

“Where?”

“That little girl--Nancy Pansy.”

Tom Adams’s face turned whiter than it had ever turned in battle.

“Is she ill?”

“Desperately.”

Tom Adams sprang to his feet.

“How long--how long can she hold out?” he asked, in a broken voice.

“Twenty-four hours, perhaps,” said the surgeon.

Tom Adams put on his cap and left the tent. Five minutes later he was
in the hall at the Judge’s. Just as he entered, Nancy Pansy’s sister
came quickly out of a door. She had been crying.

“How is she? I have just this instant heard of it,” said Tom, with real
grief in his voice.

She put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“So ill,” she sobbed.

“Can I see her?” asked Tom, gently.

“Yes; it won’t hurt her.”

When Tom Adams entered the room he was so shocked that he stopped
still. Mrs. Seddon bent over the bed with her face pale and worn, and
in the bed lay Nancy Pansy, so changed that Tom Adams never would have
known her. She had fallen off so in that short time that he would not
have recognized her. Her face was perfectly white, except two bright
red spots on her cheeks. She was drawing short, quick breaths, and was
talking all the time very fast. No one could understand just what she
was saying, but a good deal of it was about Harry and the old doctor.
Tom bent over her, but she did not know him; she just went on talking
faster than ever.

“Nancy Pansy, don’t you know Tom Adams?” her mother asked her, in a
soothing voice. She had never called the young man so before, and he
felt that it gave him a place with Nancy Pansy; but the child did not
know him; she said something about not having any Harry.

“She is growing weaker,” said her mother.

Tom Adams leaned over and kissed the child, and left the room.

As he came down the steps he met Griff O’Meara, who asked how the
“little gurl” was, “bless her sowl!” When he told him, Griff turned
away and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Tom Adams told him
to stay there and act as guard, which Griff vowed he’d do if the “howl
ribel army kem.”

Ten minutes later Tom galloped out of camp with a paper in his pocket
signed by the surgeon. In an hour he had covered the twelve miles of
mud which lay between Middleburgh and the nearest telegraph station,
and was sending a message to General ----, his commander. At last an
answer came. Tom Adams read it.

“Tell him it is a matter of life and death,” he said to the operator.
“Tell him there is no one else who understands it and can check it, and
tell him it must be done before the afternoon train leaves, or it will
be too late. Here, I’ll write it out.” And he did so, putting all his
eloquence into the despatch.

Late that night two men galloped through the mud and slush in the
direction of Middleburgh. The younger one had a large box before him
on his horse; the other was quite an old man. Picket after picket was
passed with a word spoken by the younger man, and they galloped on. At
last they stopped at the Judge’s gate, and sprang from their splashed
and smoking horses.

As they hurried up the walk, the guard at the steps challenged them in
a rich Irish brogue.

“It’s I, O’Meara. You here still? How is she?”

“’Most in the Holy Virgin’s arms,” said the Irishman.

“Is she alive?” asked both men.

“It’s a docther can tell that,” said the sentinel. “They thought her
gone an hour ago. There’s several in there,” he said to his captain.
“I didn’t let ’em in at firrst, but the young leddy said they wuz the
frien’s of the little gurl, an’ I let ’em by a bit.”

A minute later the old man entered the sick-room, whilst Tom Adams
stopped at the door outside. There was a general cry as he entered of,
“Oh, doctor!”

And Mrs. Seddon called him: “Quick, quick, doctor! she’s dying!”

“She’s dead,” said one of the ladies who stood by.

The old doctor bent over the little still white form, and his
countenance fell. She was not breathing. With one hand he picked up her
little white arm and felt for the pulse; with the other he took a small
case from his pocket. “Brandy,” he said. It was quickly handed him. He
poured some into a little syringe, and stuck it into Nancy Pansy’s arm,
by turns holding her wrist and feeling over her heart.

Presently he said, quietly, “She’s living,” and both Mrs. Seddon and
Nancy Pansy’s sister said, “Thank God!”

All night long the old doctor worked over Nancy Pansy. Just before dawn
he said to Mrs. Seddon: “What day is this?”

“Christmas morning,” said Mrs. Seddon.

“Well, madam, I hope God has answered your prayers, and given your
babe back to you; I hope the crisis is passed. Have you hung up her
stocking?”

“No,” said Nancy Pansy’s mother. “She was so--” She could not say
anything more. Presently she added: “She was all the time talking about
you and Harry.”

The old doctor rose and went out of the room. It was about dawn. He
left the house, and went over to his own home. There, after some
difficulty, he got in, and went to his office. His old secretary had
been opened and papers taken out, but the old man did not seem to
mind it. Pulling the secretary out from the wall, he touched a secret
spring. It did not work at first, but after a while it moved, and he
put his hand under it, and pulled out a secret drawer. In it were a
number of small parcels carefully tied up with pieces of ribbon, which
were now quite faded, and from one peeped a curl of soft brown hair,
like that of a little girl. The old doctor laid his fingers softly on
it, and his old face wore a gentle look. The largest bundle was wrapped
in oil-silk. This he took out and carefully unwrapped. Inside was yet
another wrapping of tissue paper. He put the bundle, with a sigh, into
his overcoat pocket, and went slowly back to the Judge’s. Nancy Pansy
was still sleeping quietly.

The old doctor asked for a stocking, and it was brought him. He took
the bundle from his pocket, and, unwrapping it, held it up. It was a
beautiful doll, with yellow hair done up with little tucking combs such
as ladies used to wear, and with a lovely little old tiny-flowered silk
dress.

“She is thirty years old, madam,” he said gently to Mrs. Seddon, as
he slipped the doll into the stocking, and hung it on the bed-post.
“I have kept her for thirty years, thinking I could never give it to
any one; but last night I knew I loved Nancy Pansy enough to give it
to her.” He leaned over and felt her pulse. “She is sleeping well,” he
said.

Just then the door opened, and in tipped Tom Adams, followed by Griff
O’Meara in his stocking feet, bearing a large baby-house fitted up
like a perfect palace, with every room carpeted and furnished, and with
a splendid doll sitting on a balcony.

“A Christmas gift to that blessed angel from the Baby Veterans, mem,”
he said, as he set it down; and then taking from his bulging pocket
a large red-cheeked doll in a green frock, he placed it in the door
of the house, saying, with great pride: “An’ this from Griff O’Meara.
Heaven bless her swate soul!”

Just then Nancy Pansy stirred and opened her eyes. Her mother bent over
her, and she smiled faintly. Mrs. Seddon slipped down on her knees.

“Where’s my old doctor and my dolly?” she said; and then, presently,
“Where’s Harry and Tom Adams?”




“JACK AND JAKE.”


I.

“Jack and Jake.” This is what they used to be called. Their names
were always coupled together. Wherever you saw one, you were very apt
to see the other--Jack, slender, with yellow hair, big gray eyes,
and spirited look; and Jake, thick-set and brown, close to him, like
his shadow, with his shining skin and white teeth. They were always
in sight somewhere; it might be running about the yard or far down
on the plantation, or it might be climbing trees to look into birds’
nests--which they were forbidden to trouble--or wading in the creek,
riding in the carts or wagons about the fields, or following the
furrow, waiting a chance to ride a plough-horse home.

Jake belonged to Jack. He had been given to him by his old master,
Jack’s grandfather, when Jack was only a few years old, and from that
time the two boys were rarely separated, except at night.

Jake was a little larger than Jack, as he was somewhat older, but Jack
was the more active. Jake was dull; some people on the plantation said
he did not have good sense; but they rarely ventured to say so twice to
Jack. Jack said he had more sense than any man on the place. At least,
he idolized Jack.

At times the people commented on the white boy being so much with
the black; but Jack’s father said it was as natural for them to run
together as for two calves--a black one and a white one--when they were
turned out together; that he had played with Uncle Ralph, the butler,
when they were boys, and had taught the latter as much badness as he
had him.

So the two boys grew up together as “Jack and Jake,” forming a
friendship which prevented either of them ever knowing that Jake was a
slave, and brought them up as friends rather than as master and servant.

If there was any difference, the boys thought it was rather in favor
of Jake; for Jack had to go to school, and sit for some hours every
morning “saying lessons” to his aunt, and had to look out (sometimes)
for his clothes, while Jake just lounged around outside the school-room
door, and could do as he pleased, for he was sure to get Jack’s suit as
soon as it had become too much worn for Jack.

The games they used to play were surprising. Jack always knew of some
interesting thing they could “make ’tence” (that is, pretence) that
they were doing. They could be fishers and trappers, of course; for
there was the creek winding down the meadow, in and out among the
heavy willows on its banks; and in the holes under the fences and by
the shelving rocks, where the water was blue and deep, there were
shining minnows, and even little perch; and they could be lost on
rafts, for there was the pond, and with their trousers rolled up to
their thighs they could get on planks and pole themselves about.

But the best fun of all was “Injins.” Goodness! how much fun there was
in Injins! There were bows and arrows, and tomahawks, and wigwams, and
fires in the woods, and painted faces, and creeping-ups, and scalpings,
and stealing horses, and hot pursuits, and hidings, and captures, and
bringing the horses back, and the full revenge and triumph that are
dear to boys’ hearts. Injins was, of all plays, the best. There was a
dear old wonderful fellow named Leatherstocking, who was the greatest
“Injin”-hunter in the world. Jack knew all about him. He had a book
with him in it, and he read it and told Jake; and so they played Injins
whenever they wanted real fun. It was a beautiful place for Injins; the
hills rolled, the creeks wound in and out among the willows, and ran
through thickets into the little river, and the woods surrounded the
plantation on all sides, and stretched across the river to the Mont Air
place, so that the boys could cross over and play on the other side of
the thick woods.

When the war came, Jack was almost a big boy. He thought he was quite
one. He was ten years old, and grew old two years at a time. His father
went off with the army, and left his mother at home to take care of
the plantation and the children. That included Ancy and wee Martha;
not Jack, of course. So far from leaving any one to take care of Jack,
he left Jack to take care of his mother. The morning he went away he
called Jack to him and had a talk with him. He told him he wanted him
to mind his mother, and look out for her, to help her and save her
trouble, to take care of her and comfort her, and defend her always
like a man. Jack was standing right in front of him, and when the talk
began he was fidgety, because he was in a great hurry to go to the
stable and ride his father’s horse Warrior to the house; but his father
had never talked to him so before, and as he proceeded, Jack became
grave, and when his father took his hand, and, looking him quietly in
the eyes, said, “Will you, my son?” he burst out crying, and flung his
arms around his father’s neck, and said, “Yes, father, I will.”

He did not go out of the house any more then; he left the horse to be
brought down by Uncle Henry, the carriage-driver, and he sat quietly by
his father, and kept his eyes on him, getting him anything he wanted;
and he waited on his mother; and when his father went away, he kissed
him, and said all over again that he would do what he promised. And
when his mother locked herself in her room afterward, Jack sat on the
front porch alone, in his father’s chair, and waited. And when she came
out on the porch, with her eyes red from weeping and her face worn, he
did not say anything, but quietly went and got her a glass of water.
His father’s talk had aged him.

For the first two years, the war did not make much difference to Jack
personally. It made a difference to the country, and to the people, and
to his mother, but not to Jack individually, though it made a marked
difference in him. It made him older. His father’s words never were
forgotten. They had sobered him and steadied him. He had seen a good
deal of the war. The troop trains passed up the railroad, the soldiers
cheering and shouting, filling the cars and crowding on top of them;
the army, or parts of it, marched through the country by the county
roads, camping in the woods and fields. Many soldiers stopped at Jack’s
home, where open house was kept, and everything was gladly given to
them. All the visitors now were soldiers. Jack rode the gentlemen’s
horses to water, with Jake behind him, if there was but one (in which
case the horse was apt to get several waterings), or galloping after
him, if there were more. They were hard riders, and got many falls, for
the young officers were usually well mounted, and their horses were
wild. But a fall was no disgrace. Jack remembered that his father once
said to him, when a colt had thrown him, “All bold riders get falls;
only those do not who ride tame horses.”

All the visitors were in uniform; all the talk was of war; all thoughts
were of the Confederacy. Every one was enthusiastic. No sacrifices
were too great to be made. The corn-houses were emptied into the
great, covered, blue army wagons; the pick of the horses and mules was
given up. Provisions became scanty and the food plain; coffee and tea
disappeared; clothes that were worn out were replaced by homespun.
Jack dressed in the same sort of coarse, grayish stuff of which Jake’s
clothes used to be made; and his boots were made by Uncle Dick at
the quarters; but this did not trouble him. It was rather fun than
otherwise. Boys like to rough it. He had come to care little for these
things. He was getting manlier. His mother called him her protector;
his father, when he came home, as he did once or twice a year, called
him “a man,” and introduced him to his friends as “my son.”

His mother began to consult him, to rely on him, to call on him. He
used to go about with her, or go for her wherever she had business,
however far off it might be.

The war had been going on two years, when the enemy first reached
Jack’s home. It was a great shock to Jack, for he had never doubted
that the Confederates would keep them back. There had been a great
battle some time before, and his father had been wounded and taken
prisoner (at first he was reported killed). But for that, Jack said,
the “Yankees” would never have got there. The Union troops did not
trouble Jack personally; but they made a great deal of trouble about
the place. They took all the horses and mules that were good for
anything and put them in their wagons. This was a terrible blow to
Jack. All his life he had been brought up with the horses; each one
was his pet or his friend.

After that the war seemed to be much more about Jack’s home than it
had been before. The place was in the possession first of one army and
then of the other, and at last, one winter, the two armies lay not
far apart, with Jack’s home just between them. “The Yankees” were the
nearer. Their pickets were actually on the plantation, at the ford, and
at the bridge over the little river into which the creek emptied, in
the big woods. There they lay with their camps over behind the hills, a
mile or two farther away. At night the glow of their camp-fires could
be seen. Jack had a pretty aunt who used to stay with his mother, and
many young officers used to come over from the Confederate side to see
her. In such cases, they usually came at night, leaving their horses,
for scouting parties used to come in on them occasionally and stir them
up. Once or twice skirmishes took place in the fields beyond the creek.

One evening a party of young officers came in and took supper. They had
some great plan. They were quite mysterious, and consulted with Jack’s
mother, who was greatly interested in them. They appeared a little
shy of talking before Jack; but when his mother said he had so much
judgment that he could be trusted, they talked openly in his presence.
They had a plan to go into the Federal camp that night and seize the
commanding officer. They wanted to know all the paths. Jack could tell
them. He was so proud. There was not a cow-path he did not know for
two or three miles around, for he and Jake had hunted all over the
country. He could tell them everything, and he did so with a swelling
heart. They laid sheets of paper down on the dining-table, and he drew
them plans of the roads and hills and big woods; showed where the river
could be waded, and where the ravines were. He asked his mother to let
him go along with them, but she thought it best for him not to go.

[Illustration: HE DREW THEM PLANS OF THE ROADS AND HILLS AND BIG WOODS.]

They set out at bedtime on foot, a half-dozen gay young fellows,
laughing and boasting of what they would do, and Jack watched them
enviously as their forms faded away in the night. They did not succeed
in capturing the officer; but they captured a number of horses and a
picket at the bridge, and came off triumphant, with only one or two
of their number slightly wounded. Shortly afterwards they came over,
and had a great time telling their experiences. They had used the map
Jack made for them, and had got safely beyond the pickets and reached
the camp. There, finding the sentries on guard, they turned back,
and taking the road, marched down on the picket, as if they had come
to relieve them. Coming from the camp in this way, they had got upon
the picket, when, suddenly drawing their pistols and poking them up
against the Yankees, they forced them to surrender, and disarmed them.
Then taking two of them off separately, they compelled them to give
the countersign. Having got this, they left the prisoners under guard
of two of their number, and the rest went back to camp. With the
countersign they passed the sentry, and went into the camp. Then they
found that the commanding officer had gone off somewhere, and was not
in camp that night, and there were so many men stirring about that
they did not dare to wait. They determined, therefore, to capture some
horses and return. They were looking over the lines of horses to take
their pick when they were discovered. Each man had selected a horse,
and was trying to get him, when the alarm was given, and they were
fired on. They had only time to cut the halters when the camp began to
pour out. Flinging themselves on the horses’ backs, they dashed out
under a fusillade, firing right and left. They took to the road, but
it had been picketed, and they had to dash through the men who held it
under a fire poured into their faces. All had passed safely except one,
whose horse had become unmanageable, and had run away, flying the track
and taking to the fields.

He was, they agreed, the finest horse in the lot, and his rider had had
great trouble getting him, and had lingered so long that he came near
being captured. He had finally cut the halter, and had cut it too short
to hold by.

They had great fun laughing at their comrade, and the figure he cut as
his barebacked horse dashed off into the darkness, with him swinging
to the mane. He had shortly been dragged off of him in the woods, and
when he appeared in camp next day, he looked as if he had been run
through a mill. His eyes were nearly scratched out of his head, and
his uniform was torn into shreds.

The young fellow, who still showed the marks of his bruising, took the
chaffing good-naturedly, and confessed that he had nearly lost his life
trying to hold on to his captive. He had been down into the woods the
next day to try and get his horse; though it was the other side of the
little river, and really within the Federal lines. But though he caught
sight of him, it was only a glimpse. The animal was much too wild to be
caught, and the only thing he received for his pains was a grazing shot
from a picket, who had caught sight of him prowling around, and had
sent a ball through his cap.

The narration of the capture and escape made Jack wild with excitement.
All the next day he was in a state of tremor, and that evening he and
Jake spent a long time up in the barn together talking, or rather Jack
talking and Jake listening. Jake seemed to be doubtful; but Jack’s
enthusiasm carried all before him, and Jake yielded, as he nearly
always did.

All that evening after they got back to the house Jack was very quiet.
It was the quiet of suppressed excitement. He was thinking.

Next day, after dinner, he and Jake started out. They were very
mysterious. Jack carried a rope that they got from the stable, and the
old musket that he used in hunting. Jake carried an axe and some corn.
They struck out for the creek as if they were going hunting in the big
woods, which they entered; but at the creek they turned and made for
about opposite where Jack understood his friend had been thrown by the
wild horse that night. They had to avoid the pickets on the roads, so
they stuck to the woods.

At the river the first difficulty presented itself; the bridge and ford
were picketed. How were they to get across? It was over their heads in
the middle. Jack could swim a little, but Jake could not swim a stroke.
Besides, they did not wish to get their clothes wet, as that would
betray them at home. Jack thought of a raft, but that would take too
long to make; so finally they decided to go down the stream and try to
cross on an old tree that had fallen into the water two or three years
before.

The way down was quite painful, for the underbrush along the banks
was very dense, and was matted with brambles and briers, which stuck
through their clothes; added to which there was a danger of “snakes,”
as Jake constantly insisted. But after a slow march they reached the
tree. It lay diagonally across the stream, as it had fallen, its roots
on the bank on their side and the branches not quite reaching the other
bank. This was a disappointment. However, Jack determined to try, and
if it was not too deep beyond the branches, then Jake could come.
Accordingly, he pulled off his clothes, and carefully tying them up
in a bundle, he equipped himself with a long pole and crawled out on
the log. When he got among the branches, he fastened his bundle and
let himself down. It was a little over his head, but he let go, and
with a few vigorous strokes he reached the other side. The next thing
to do was to get Jake over. Jake was still on the far side, and, with
his eyes wide open, was declaring, vehemently, “Nor, sir,” he “warn
gwine to git in that deep water, over his head.” He “didn’t like water
nohow.” Jack was in a dilemma. Jake had to be got over, and so had his
clothes. They had an axe. They could cut poles if he could get back.
There was nothing for it but to try. Accordingly he went up a little
way, took a plunge, and, after hard pulling and much splashing and
blowing, got back to the tree and climbed up. They were afraid the
Yankees might see them if they worked too long on the river, as it was
a little cleared up on the hill above, so they went back into the woods
and set to work. Jack selected a young pine not too large for them to
“tote,” and they cut it down, and cut off two poles, which they carried
down to the river, and finally, after much trouble, worked along the
tree in the water, and got them stretched across from the branch of the
fallen log to the other bank. Jake could hardly be persuaded to try it,
but Jack offered him all his biscuit (his customary coin with Jake),
and promised to help him, and finally Jake was got over, “cooning
it”--by which was meant crawling on his hands and knees.

The next thing was to find the horse, for Jack had determined to
capture him. This was a difficult thing to effect. In the first place,
he might not be there at all, as he might have escaped or have been
caught; and the woods had to be explored with due regard to the
existence of the Federal pickets, who were posted at the roads and
along the paths. If the pickets caught sight of them they might be
shot, or even captured. The latter seemed much the worse fate to Jack,
unless, indeed, the Yankees should send them to Johnson’s Island, where
his father was. In that case, however, what would his mother do? It
would not do to be captured. Jack laid out the plan of campaign. They
would “beat the woods,” going up the stream at a sufficient distance
apart, Jake, with the axe and corn, on the inside, and he, with the gun
and rope, outside. Thus, if either should be seen, it would be he, and
if he came on a soldier, he, having the gun, would capture him. He gave
orders that no word was to be spoken. If any track was found notice was
to be given by imitating a partridge; if danger appeared, it was to be
shown by the cat-bird’s call of “Naik, naik.” This was the way they
used to play “Injins.”

They worked their way along for an hour or two without seeing any
traces, and Jake, contrary to Jack’s command, called out to him:

“Oh, Jack, we ain’ gwine fine no horse down heah; dese woods is too
big; he done los’. There’s a clearin’ right ahead here; let’s go home.”

There was a little field just ahead, with one old cabin in it; a path
ran down from it to the bridge. Jack replied in the cat-bird’s warning
note of “Naik, naik,” but Jake was tired of working his way through
briers and bushes, and he began to come over toward Jack, still
calling to him. Suddenly there was a shout just ahead; they stopped; it
was repeated.

“Who dat calling?” asked Jake, in a frightened undertone.

“Hush! it’s a picket,” said Jack, stooping and motioning him back, just
as a volume of white smoke with blazes in it seemed to burst out of the
woods at the edge of the clearing, and the stillness was broken by the
report of half a dozen carbines. Leaves and pieces of bark fell around
them, but the bullets flew wide of their mark.

“Run, Jake!” shouted Jack, as he darted away; but Jake had not waited
for orders; he had dropped his axe and corn, and was “flying.”

Jack soon came up with him, and they dashed along together, thinking
that perhaps the picket knew where they had crossed the river, and
would try to cut them off.

In their excitement they took a way farther from the river than that by
which they had come. The woods were open, and there were small spaces
covered with coarse grass on the little streams. As they ran along down
a hill approaching one of these, they heard a sound of trampling coming
towards them which brought them to a sudden stand-still with their
hearts in their mouths. It must be the enemy. They were coming at full
gallop. What a crashing they made coming on! They did not have time to
run, and Jack immediately cocked his old musket and resolved at least
to fight. Just then there galloped up to him, and almost over him, a
magnificent bay horse without saddle or bridle. At sight of Jack he
swerved and gave a loud snort of alarm, and then, with his head high in
the air, and with his dilated red nostrils and eyes wide with fright,
went dashing off into the woods.


II.

“The horse! the horse! Here he is! here he is!” shouted Jack, taking
out after him as hard as he could, and calling to Jake to come on. In a
minute or two the horse was far beyond them, and they stopped to listen
and get his direction; and while they were talking, even the sound of
his trampling died away. But they had found him. They knew he was still
there, a wild horse in the woods.

In their excitement all their fear had vanished as quickly as it had
come. Jake suggested something about being cut off at the tree, but
Jack pooh-poohed it now. He was afire with excitement. How glad his
mother would be! What would not the soldiers say? “You didn’t see
him, Jake?” No, Jake admitted he did not, but he heard him. And Jack
described him--two white feet, one a fore foot and one a hind foot,
a star in his forehead, and a beautiful mane and tail. Jake suddenly
found that he had seen him. They went back to the little open place in
the ravine where the horse had been. It was a low, damp spot between
very high banks, that a little higher--at a point where the water in
rainy weather, running over a fallen log in the hill-side, had washed
out a deep hole--had become nothing but a gully, with the banks quite
perpendicular and coming together.

The stream was dry now except for a little water in the hole at the
tree. Trees and bushes grew thick upon the banks to the very edge.
Below, where it widened, the banks became lower, and the little flat
piece between them was covered with coarse grass, now cropped quite
close. The horse evidently fed there. Jack sat down and thought. He
looked all over the ground. Then he got up, and walked along the banks
around the hole; then he came back, and walked up the gully. Suddenly a
light broke over his face.

“I’ve got it, Jake; I’ve got it, Jake. We can trap him. If we get him
in here, we’ve got him.”

Jake was practical. “How you gwine ketch hoss in trap?” he asked, his
idea of a trap being confined to hare gums. “’Twill take all de plank
in de worl’ to make a hoss-trap. Besides, how you gwine git it heah? I
ain’ gwine tote it.”

“Who asked you to?” asked Jack. “I’m going to trap him like they do
tigers and lions.”

“I don’ know nuttin’ ’bout dem beas’es,” said Jake, disdainfully.

“No, you don’t,” said Jack, with fine scorn; “but I do.”

He examined the banks carefully. His first idea was a pitfall trap--a
covering over the hole. But that would not do; it might kill the horse,
or at least break a leg. His eye fell on the tracks up to the water.
His face lit up.

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it! We’ll bait him, and then catch him. Where
are the axe and corn you had?”

He turned to Jake. His mind up to that time had been so busy with,
first, the flight, and then the horse, that he had not noticed that
Jake did not have them.

Jake’s countenance fell. “I done los’ ’em,” he said, guiltily.

Jack looked thunderstruck. “Now you just go and find ’em,” he said,
hotly.

“I los’ ’em when dem Yankees shoot we all. I know I ain’ gwine back
deah,” declared Jake, positively. “I ain’ gwine have no Yankee shootin’
me ’bout a old hoss.”

“Yes, you are,” asserted Jack. “I’m going, and you’ve got to go, too.”
Jake remained impassive. “Never mind, if you don’t go I won’t play with
you any more, and I won’t give you half my biscuit any more.”

These were usually potent threats, but they failed now. “I don’ keer ef
you don’ play wid me,” said Jake, scornfully. “I don’ want play so much
nohow; an’ I don’ want none you’ buscuit. Dee ain’ white like dee use’
to be.”

Jack changed his key.

“Never mind, that was Aunt Winnie’s axe you lost. I’m going to tell her
you lost it, and she’ll cut you all to pieces. I’m mighty glad I didn’t
lose it.”

This was a view of the case which Jake had not thought of. It was true.
The Yankees might not hit him, but if her axe were lost, his mammy
was certain to carry out her accustomed threat of cutting him almost
in two. Jake announced that he would go, but first stipulated for the
biggest half of the next biscuit, and that Jack should go before. They
set off back through the woods toward the opening where they had run on
the picket, Jack in the lead, and Jake a little behind. They had gone
about a half mile, when they heard the sound of some one coming toward
them at a rapid rate.

“Run, Jack; heah dey come,” cried Jake, setting the example, and taking
to his heels, with Jack behind him. They ran, but were evidently being
overtaken, for whoever it was was galloping right after them as hard as
he could tear.

“Hide in the bushes,” cried Jack, and flung himself flat on the ground
under a thick bush. Jake did the same. They were just in time, for the
pursuers were almost on them. Closer and closer they came, galloping as
hard as they could, crashing through the branches. They must have seen
them, for they came straight down on them. Jake began to cry, and Jack
was trembling, for he felt sure they would be killed; there must be a
hundred of them. But no, they actually passed by. Jack found courage to
take a peep. He gave a cry, and sprang to his feet.

“The horse! it’s the horse.” Sure enough, it was the horse they had
seen; all this terrible trampling was nothing but him in the leaves,
galloping back toward the spot from which they had frightened him. They
listened until his long gallop died out in the distance through the
woods. Jake suggested their going back to look and see if he had gone
to the “little pasture,” as they called the place; but Jack was bent on
getting the axe, and the corn with which they proposed to bait him. His
reference to Aunt Winnie’s axe prevailed, and they kept on.

They had some difficulty in finding the place where Jake had dropped
the things, for though they found the clearing, they had to be very
careful how they moved around through the woods. They could see the
picket lounging about, and could hear them talking distinctly. They
were discussing whether the men they had shot at were just scouts or
were pickets thrown out, and whether they had hit any of them. One said
that they were cavalry, for he had seen the horses; another said he
knew they were infantry, for he had seen the men. Jack lay down, and
crept along close up.

Jack’s plan was to set a trap for the horse just at the head of the
ravine, where the banks became very steep and high. He had read how
Indians drove buffalo by frightening them till they all rushed to one
point. He had seen also in a book of Livingston’s travels a plan of
capturing animals in Africa. This plan he chose. He proposed to lay his
bait along up to the gully, and to make a sort of alleyway up which
the horse could go. At the end he would have an opening nearly but not
quite closed by saplings inclined toward each other, and which would
be movable, so that they might interlace. On either side of this he
would have a high barricade. He believed that the horse would be led by
the corn which he would strew along into the trap, and would squeeze
through the pliant saplings, when he would be caught between the high
banks of the gully, and then if he attempted to get back through
the opening, he would push the saplings together. He would fix two
strong poles so that any attempt to push through would bring them into
position. The horse would thus be in a trap formed of the high banks
and the barricade. They set to work and cut poles all the evening; but
it got late before they got enough for the barricade, and they had to
go home. Before leaving, however, Jack dragged some of the poles up,
and laid his corn along leading up to the gully to accustom the horse
to the sight of the poles and to going into the gully among them. They
fixed the two poles firmly at the river crossing from the branch of the
tree to the bank, so that they could get across easily, and then they
crossed on them and came home.

Jack was filled with excitement, and had hard work to keep from telling
his mother and aunt about it, but he did not.

Jake’s fear of his mammy’s finding out about the axe kept him silent.

The next afternoon they went down again, taking more corn with them,
in case the other bait had been eaten. There were fresh tracks up to
the pool, so although they did not see the horse, they knew he had been
there, and they went to work joyfully and cut more poles. They put them
into position across the ravine, and when it got time to go home they
had up the barricade and had fixed the entrance; but this was the most
difficult part, so Jack laid down some more corn along the alley, and
they went home.

The next day was Saturday, so they had a good day’s work before them,
and taking their dinner with them, they started out. Jack’s mother
asked what he was doing; he said, with a smile, “Setting traps.” When
they arrived the horse had been there, and they worked like beavers
all day, and by dinner-time had got the entrance fixed. It worked
beautifully. By pressing in between the two sides they gave way and
then sprang together again until they interlaced, and pushing against
them from within just pushed them tighter together. They laid their
bait down and went home. Monday they visited the trap, but there was no
horse in it; the grain was eaten without--he had been there--but inside
it was untouched. He had pushed some of the poles so that he could not
get in. This was a great disappointment. Jack’s motto, however, was,
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” so they refixed it.
The failure had somewhat dampened their ardor.

[Illustration: JACK MADE A RUNNING NOOSE IN THE ROPE AND TRIED TO THROW
IT OVER THE HORSE’S HEAD.]

The next afternoon, however, when they went, there was the entrance
closed, and inside, turning about continually, with high head and
wide eyes, around the edges of which were angry white rims, was the
horse. He was even handsomer than they had thought him. He was a
dangerous-looking fellow, rearing and jumping about in his efforts to
get out. Jake was wild with excitement. The next thing was to take
him out and get him home. A lasso would be needed to catch him; for
he looked too dangerous for them to go inside the trap to bridle him.
Jack strengthened the entrance by placing a few more poles across it,
and then put his corn inside the trap, and hurried home to get a rope
and bridle. They were dreadfully afraid that some one might see them,
for Jack knew he could not keep the secret now if he met his mother,
and he had pictured himself, with Jake behind him, galloping up into
the yard, with his horse rearing and plunging, and bringing him up
right before his mother, with perhaps a half-dozen officers around her.
They were back in an hour or so with a good rope and bridle.

Jack made a running noose in the rope, and tried to throw it over the
horse’s head. He had practised this on stumps and on Jake, playing
Injins, until he was right skilful at it; but getting it over the head
of a wild and frightened horse was another thing from putting it over a
stump, or even over Jake, and it was a long time before he succeeded.
He stood on the bank over the horse, and would throw and throw, and
fail; the horse got furious, and would rear and strike at them with his
fore-feet. At last, just as he was thinking that he could not do it,
the noose went over the horse’s head. Jack pulled it taut.

In a second the other end was wrapped twice around a small tree on
the bank; for Jack knew how to “get a purchase.” The horse reared and
pulled frightfully, but his pulling only tightened the rope around
his neck, and at last he fell back choking, his eyes nearly starting
out of his head. This was Jack’s opportunity. He had often seen young
steers caught and yoked this way, and he had bridled young colts. In
a second he was in the pen, and had the bridle on the horse, and in
another minute he was out and the rope was loosed. The horse, relieved,
bounded to his feet and began to wheel again; but he was not so fierce
as before. The bridle on his head was recognized by him as a badge of
servitude, and he was quieter. It was now late, and he was too wild to
take out yet, so Jack determined to leave him there, and come again
next day and get him. The next afternoon Jack and Jake set out again
for the little meadow in the woods. Jack was bent on bringing his
captive home this time, whatever happened.

He did not go until late, for he had to pass the pickets on the road
to the river, and he could do this better about dusk than he could in
broad daylight. He had an idea that they might think, as he would come
from toward the Yankee camp, that it would be all right; if not, he
would make a dash for it. He carried a feed of corn with him to give to
the horse for two reasons: the first was that he thought he would need
it, and, besides, it would quiet him. They crossed at the old tree, not
far from the meadow; they had crossed so often that they had made quite
a path now. All the way along Jack was telling Jake how he was going
to ride the horse, no matter what he did. Jake was to stand on the
ground and hold the rope, so that if the horse flung Jack he would not
get loose. They approached the trap with great excitement. They were
careful, however, for they did not want to scare him. As they drew near
they were pleased to find he had got quiet. They came nearer; he was so
quiet that they thought probably he was asleep. So they crept up quite
close, Jack in advance, and peeped over the bank into the trap. Jack’s
heart jumped up into his throat. It was empty! he was gone! Jack could
not help a few tears stealing down his cheeks. Yes, he was gone. At
first he thought he had escaped, and he could catch him again; but no,
an examination of the place showed him that he had been found in the
trap by some one, and had been stolen. The barricade was pulled down,
and the poles of the entrance were thrown back quite out of the way.
Besides, there were men’s tracks in the wet place on the edge of the
pool. Jack sat down and cried. It was some of those Yankees, he knew.
Jake poured out all his eloquence upon the subject. This relieved him.

“If I had my gun I’d go right straight and shoot them,” declared Jack.

This valorous resolve set him to thinking. He got up, and went down
to the gap. He could see the tracks where the horse was led out. He
must have “cut up” a good deal, for the grass outside was very much
trampled. Jack could see where he was led or ridden away. The tracks
went straight toward the clearing where the picket was. They were quite
fresh; he could not very long have been taken. Jack determined to
track him, and find out where he was if possible. They set out through
the woods. They could follow the track quite well in most places, but
in some spots it was almost lost. In such cases Jack followed the
method of woodsmen--he took a circle, and hunted until he found it
again. The trail led straight to the clearing. As they drew near, Jake
became very nervous, so Jack left him lying under a bush, and he crept
up. It was so late now that it was getting quite dusk in the woods,
so Jack could creep up close. He got down on his hands and knees. As
he came near he could see the men sitting about the little old cabin.
They were talking. Their guns were lying against the wall, at some
little distance, and their horses were picketed not far off, rather in
the shadow, Jack observed. Jack lay down at the edge of the wood and
counted them. There were five men and six horses. Yes, one of them must
be his horse. He listened to the men. They were talking about horses.
He crept a little closer. Yes, they were talking over the finding of
his horse. One man thought he knew him, that he was the Colonel’s horse
that had been stolen that night when so many horses were carried off
by the Johnnies; others thought it was a horse some of the negroes had
stolen from the plantation across the river from their master, and had
hidden. There was the pen and the bridle, and there was the path down
to the crossing at the river. Jack’s heart beat faster; so they knew
the crossing. They were very much divided, but on one thing they all
agreed, that anyhow he was a fine animal, worth at least three hundred
dollars, and they would have a nice sum from him when they sold him. It
was suggested that they should play cards for him, and whichever one
should win should have the whole of him. This was agreed to, and they
soon arranged themselves and began to play cards in the moonlight.

Jack could now make out his horse standing tied near the cabin on the
outside of the others. He could see in the moonlight that he was tied
with a rope. He crept back to Jake, and together they went further down
into the woods to consult. Jack had a plan which he unfolded to Jake,
but Jake was obdurate. “Nor, sah, he warn’ gwine ’mong dem Yankees;
Yankees ketch him and shoot him. He was gwine home. Mammy’d whup him if
he didn’; she mought whup him anyway.” Jack pleaded and promised, but
it was useless. He explained to Jake that they could ride home quicker
than they could walk. It was of no avail. Jake recalled that there was
a Yankee picket near the bridge, and that was the only place a horse
could cross since the ford was stopped up. Finally Jack had to let Jake
go.

He told him not to say anything at home as to where he was, which Jake
promised, and Jack helped him across the poles at the tree, and then
went back alone to the clearing. He crept up as before. The men were
still playing cards, and he could hear them swearing and laughing over
their ill or good luck. One of them looked at his watch. The relief
would be along in twenty minutes. Jack’s heart beat. He had no time
to lose. He cut himself a stout switch. He made a little detour, and
went around the other side of the clearing, so as to get the horse
between him and the men. This put him on the side toward the camp, as
the men were on the path which led to the bridge. Without stopping,
he crept up to the open space. Then he flung himself on his face, and
began to crawl up through the weeds toward the horses, stopping every
now and then to listen to the men. As he drew near, one or two of the
horses got alarmed and began to twist, and one of them gave a snort of
fear. Jack heard the men discussing it, and one of them say he would
go and see what was the matter. Jack lay flat in the weeds, and his
heart almost stopped with fright as he heard the man coming around the
house. He could see him through the weeds, and he had his gun in his
hands. He seemed to be coming right to Jack, and he gave himself up as
lost. He could hear his heart thumping so, he was sure the man must
hear it too. He would have sprung up and cut for the woods if he had
had the slightest chance; and as it was, he came near giving himself
up, but though the man seemed to be looking right toward him, Jack was
fortunately so concealed by the weeds that he did not observe him. He
went up to Jack’s horse, and examined the rope. “Tain’t nothing but
this new horse,” he called out to his comrades. “He just wanted to
see his master. I’ll put my saddle on him now, boys. I’ve got him so
certain, and I mean to let him know he’s got a master.” He changed
the saddle and bridle from another horse to that, and then went back
to his comrades, who were all calling to him to come along, and were
accusing him of trying to take up the time until the relief came,
because he was ahead, and did not want to play more and give them a
chance to win the horse back.

Jack lay still for a minute, and then took a peep at the men, who were
all busily playing. Then he crept up. As soon as he was out of sight,
he sprung to his feet and walked boldly up to the horse, caught him
by the bit, and with a stroke of his knife cut the rope almost in two
close up to his head. Then he climbed up on him, gathered up the reins,
fixed his feet in the stirrup leathers, bent over, and with a single
stroke cut the rope and turned him toward the bridge. The horse began
to rear and jump. Jack heard the men stop talking, and one of them say,
“That horse is loose;” another one said, “I’ll go and see;” another
said, “There’s the relief.” Jack looked over his shoulder. There came a
half-dozen men on horses. There was no time to lose. Lifting his switch
above his head, Jack struck the horse a lick with all his might, and
with a bound which nearly threw Jack out of his seat, he dashed out
into the moonlight straight for the road. “He’s loose! there’s a man
on him!” shouted the men, springing to their feet. Jack leaned forward
on his neck and gave him the switch just as a volley was fired at him.
Pop, pop, pop, pop went the pistols; and the bails flew whistling about
Jack’s head: but he was leaning far forward, and was untouched. Under
the lash the horse went flying down the path across the little field.


III.

Jack had often run races on colts, but he had never ridden such a race
as that. The wind blew whistling by him; the leaves of the bushes over
the path cut him, hissing as he dashed along. If he could pass the
picket where the path struck the road near the bridge, he would be
safe. The path was on an incline near the road, and was on a straight
line with the bridge, so he had a straight dash for it. The picket was
just beyond the fork. Jack had often seen them. There were generally
two men on the bridge, and a pole was laid across the railing of the
bridge near the other side. But Jack did not think of that now; he
thought only of the men galloping behind him on his track. He could not
have stopped the horse if he would, but he had no idea of trying it.
He was near the bridge, and his only chance was to dash by the picket.
Down the path he went as straight as an arrow, his splendid horse
leaping under his light weight--down the path like a bullet through
the dusk of the woods. The sleepy picket had heard the firing at the
clearing up on the hill, and had got ready to stop whoever it might be.
They were standing in the road, with their guns ready. They could not
make it out. It was only a single horse coming tearing down toward them.

“Halt, halt!” they called, before Jack was in sight; but it was idle.
Down the path the horse came flying--Jack with his feet in the stirrup
leathers, his hands wrapped in the bridle reins, his body bent forward
on his horse’s neck, and clucking his tongue out. In one bound the
horse was in the road. “Halt!” Bang! bang! went the guns in his very
face. But he was flying. A dozen leaps and he was thundering across the
bridge. Jack was conscious only that a dark form stood in the middle,
throwing up its arms. It was but a second; he saw it shot out into the
water as if struck by a steam-engine. His horse gave one splendid leap,
and the next minute he was tearing up the road toward home, through the
quiet woods, which gave no sound but that of his rushing stride.

Jack had one moment of supreme delight. His mother had got somewhat
anxious about him, and they were all on the front porch when he
galloped up into the yard, his beautiful bay now brought down under
perfect control, but yet full of life and spirit. As they ran to meet
him. Jack sprang from the saddle and presented the horse to his mother.

The next day Jack’s mother called him into her room. She took him by
the hand. “My son,” she said, “I want you to carry the horse back and
return him to the Yankee camp.”

Jack was aghast. “Why, mamma, he’s my horse; that is, he is yours. I
found him and caught him and gave him to you.”

His mother explained to him her reasons. She did not think it was
right for him to keep the horse obtained in such a way. Jack argued
that he had found the horse running wild in their own woods, and did
not know his owner. This made no difference; she told him the horse
had an owner. He argued that the soldiers took horses, had taken all
of theirs, and that their own soldiers--the gentlemen who had come to
tea--had been over and taken a lot from the camp. His mother explained
to him that that was different. They were all soldiers wearing
uniforms, engaged openly in war. What they took was capture; Jack was
not a soldier, and was not treated as one. Jack told her how he had
been shot at and chased. She was firm. She wished the horse returned,
and though Jack wept a little for the joint reason of having to give
up the horse and the mortification of restoring it to the Yankees,
he obeyed. He had some doubt whether he would not be captured; but
his mother said she would write a letter to the commanding officer
over there, explaining why she returned the horse, and this would be
safe-conduct. She had known the colonel before the war, and he had once
stopped at her house after a little battle beyond them. Colonel Wilson
had, in fact, once been a lover of hers.

The idea of going with a safe-conduct was rather soothing to Jack’s
feelings; it sounded like a man. So he went and fed the horse. Then
he went and asked Jake to go with him. Jake was very doubtful. He
was afraid of the Yankees catching him. The glory of Jack’s capture
the night before had, however, given Jack great prestige, and when
Jack told him about the letter his mother was going to write as a
safe-conduct--like a “pass,” he explained--Jake agreed to go, but only
on condition that he might carry the pass. To this Jack consented. It
was late in the afternoon when they started, for the horse had to be
broken to carry double, and he was very lively. Both Jack and Jake went
off again and again. At last, however, they got him steady, and set
out, Jack in the saddle, and Jake behind him clinging on. Jake had the
letter safe in his pocket for their protection. They had a beautiful
ride through the woods, and Jack remembered the glorious race he had
had there the night before. As they approached the bridge, Jack thought
of tying his handkerchief on a stick as a flag of truce; but he was not
sure, as he was not a real soldier, he ought to do so. He therefore
rode slowly on. He pictured to himself the surprise they would have
when he rode up, and they recognized the horse, and learned that he had
captured it.

This feeling almost did away with the mortification of having to return
it. He rode slowly as he neared the bridge, for he did not want them
to think he was a soldier and shoot at him. Jack was surprised when he
got to the bridge to find no men there. He rode across, and not caring
to keep up the main road, turned up the path toward the clearing. He
rode cautiously. His horse suddenly shied, and Jack was startled by
some one springing out of the bushes before him and calling “Halt!” as
he flung up his gun. Jake clutched him, and Jack halted. Several men
surrounded them, and ordered them to get down. They slipped off the
horse, and one of the men took it. They all had guns.

“Why, this is the Colonel’s thoroughbred that was stolen two weeks
ago,” declared one of the men. “Where did you steal this horse?” asked
another of them, roughly.

“We did not steal him,” asserted Jack, hotly. “We found him and caught
him in the woods.”

“You hear that?” The man turned to his comrades. “Come, little Johnnie,
don’t tell lies. We’ve got you, and you were riding a stolen horse, and
there were several others stolen at the same time. You’d better tell
the truth, and make a clean breast of it, if you know what’s good for
you.”

Jack indignantly denied that he had stolen the horse, and told how they
had caught him and were bringing him back. He had a letter from his
mother to Colonel Wilson, he asserted, to prove it.

“Where is the letter?” they asked.

Jack turned to Jake. “Jake’s got it in his pocket.”

“Yes, I got de pass,” declared Jake, feeling in his pocket. He felt
first in one and then another. His countenance fell. “Hi! I done los’
it,” he asserted.

The soldiers laughed. That was a little too thin, they declared.
Come, they must go with them. They proposed to put a stop to this
horse-stealing. It had been going on long enough. A horse was stolen
only last night, and the man had run over one of the pickets on the
bridge, and had knocked him into the river and drowned him. They were
glad to find who it was, etc.

Jack felt very badly. Jake came close up to him and began to whisper.
“Jack, what dey gwine do wid us?” he asked.

“Hang you, you black little horse-stealing imp!” said one of the men,
with a terrific force. “Cut you up into little pieces.”

The others laughed. Men are often not very considerate to children.
They do not realize how helpless children feel in their power. Both
Jack and Jake turned pale.

Jake was ashy. “Jack, I told you not to come,” he cried.

Jack acknowledged the truth of this. He had it on his tongue’s end to
say, “What did you lose the letter for?” but he did not. He felt that
as his father’s son he must be brave. He just walked close to Jake and
touched him. “Don’t be scared,” he whispered. “We will get away.”

Just then one of the men caught Jake and twisted his arm a little. Jake
gave a little whine of fright. In an instant Jack snatched a gun from a
man near by him, and cocking it, levelled it at the soldier. “Let Jake
go, or I’ll blow your brains out,” he said.

A hand seized him from behind, and the gun was jerked out of his hand.
It went off, but the bullet flew over their heads. There was no more
twisting of Jake’s arm, however. The soldiers, after this, made them
march along between them. They carried them to the clearing where the
old house was, and where some of their comrades were on guard awaiting
them. They marched the boys up to the fire. “We’ve got the little
horse-thieves,” they declared. “They were coming over after another
horse; but I guess we’ll break it up now.”

“Why, they are mighty little fellows to be horse-thieves,” said one.

“They are the worst kind,” declared the other.

“Must be right bad, then, corporal, for you are pretty handy yourself,”
declared a comrade.

“We are not any horse-thieves,” asserted Jack. “We found this horse.”

“Shut up!” ordered one of his captors. They began to talk about
what they would do with them. Several methods of securing them were
proposed, and it was finally determined to lock them up in the loft of
the old cabin till morning, when they would carry them to camp, and the
Colonel would make proper disposition of them.

“Can’t they get away in there?” asked one man.

“No; there is a bolt on the outside of the door,” said another.
“Besides, we are all down here.”

They were accordingly taken and carried into the house and up the
rickety old stairs to the loft, where they were left on the bare floor
with a single blanket. It was quite dark in there, and Jack felt very
low down as he heard the bolt pushed into the staple on the outside.
Jake was crying, and Jack could not help sobbing a little himself. He
had, however, to comfort Jake, so he soon stopped, and applied himself
to this work. The only comfort Jake took was in his assurance that he
would get him out.

“How you gwine do it?” asked Jake.

“Never mind, I’ll do it,” declared Jack, though he had no idea how he
was to make good his word. He had taken good notice of the outside of
the cabin, and now he began to examine the inside. As his eyes became
accustomed to the darkness, he could see better, and as they were
barefooted, they could walk about without any noise. The old roof was
full of holes, and they could see the sky grow white with the rising
moon. There was an old window in one end of the loft. There were holes
in the side, and looking out, Jack could see the men sitting about,
and hear their voices. Jack tried the window; it was nailed down. He
examined it carefully; as he did every other part of the room. He
decided that he could cut the window out in less time than he could cut
a hole through the roof.

He would have tried the bolt, but some of the men were asleep in the
room below, and they could not pass them. If they could get out of the
window, they might climb down the chimney. He had nothing but his old
pocket-knife, and unfortunately a blade of that was broken; but the
other was good. He told Jake his plan, who did not think much of it.
Jack thought it was bedtime, so he knelt down and said his prayers.
When he prayed for his mother he felt very badly, and a few tears
stole out of his eyes. When he was done, Jack began to work. He worked
carefully and quietly at first, making a cut or two, and then listening
to see if any one stirred below. This was slow work, and after a while
he began to cut harder and faster. It showed so very little that he
presently got impatient, and dug his knife deeper into the plank. It
took a good hold, he gave a vigorous pull, and the blade snapped off in
the middle. It made so much noise that one of the men below asked:

“What are those boys doin’ up-stairs there? They ain’t tryin’ to git
away, yo’ s’pose, are they? If so, we better fetch ’em down here.”

Jack flung himself down beside Jake and held his breath. The soldiers
listened, and then one of them said:

“Oh, no, ’tain’t nothin’ but rats. They’re fast asleep, I guess.”

Jack almost gave himself up for lost, for he now had only his broken
blade; but after a while he went at it again, more carefully. He could
see that he was making headway now, and he kept on cutting. Jake went
fast asleep in the blanket, but Jack kept on. After a time he had
nearly cut out one of the planks; he could get a hold on it and feel it
give. At this point his impatience overcame him. He took hold and gave
a wrench. The plank broke with a noise which startled not only Jake
lying in his blanket, but the men below, one or two of whom sprang up.
They began to discuss the noise.

“That war’n’t no rats,” said one. “Them boys is trying to git out. I
heard the window open. Go and see what they are doing,” he said to his
comrade.

Jack held his breath.

“You go yourself,” said he. “I say it’s rats.”

“Rats! You’ve got rats,” said the other. “I’ll go, just to show you
’tain’t rats.”

He got up, and taking a torch, came to the stair. Jack felt his heart
jump up in his mouth. He just had time to stuff his hat into the hole
he had made, to shut out the sky, and to fling himself down beside Jake
and roll up in the blanket, when the bolt was pulled back and the man
entered. He held the torch high above his head and looked around. Jack
felt his hair rise. He could hear his heart thumping, and was sure the
man heard it too. Jake stirred. Jack clutched him and held him. The man
looked at them. The flame flickered and died, the man went out, the
bolt grated in the staple, and the man went down the shaky stair.

“Well, you are right for once,” Jack heard him say. “Must have been
rats; they are both fast asleep on the floor.”

Jack waited till the talk died away, and then he went to work again.
He had learned a lesson by this time, and he worked carefully. At last
he had the hole big enough to creep through. It was right over the
shoulder of the rickety old log chimney, and by making a quick turn
he could catch hold of the “chinking” and climb down by it. He could
see the men outside, but the chimney would be partly between them,
and as they climbed down the shadow would, he believed, conceal them.
He did not know how long he had been working, so he thought it best
not to wait any longer. Therefore, after taking a peep through the
cracks down on the men below, and finding them all asleep, he began
to wake Jake. Having got him awake, he lay down by him and whispered
his plans to him. He would go first to test the chimney, and then Jake
would come. They were not to speak under any circumstances, and if
either slipped, they were to lie perfectly still. The blanket--except
one piece, which he cut off and hung over the hole to hide the sky, in
case the men should come up and look for them--was to be taken along
with them to fling over them if their flight should be discovered. The
soldiers might think it just one of their blankets. After they got to
the woods, they were to make for their tree. If they were pursued, they
were to lie down under bushes and not speak or move. Having arranged
everything, and fastened the piece of blanket so that it hung loosely
over the hole, allowing them to get through, Jack crawled out of the
window and let himself down by his hands. His bare feet touched the
shoulder of the chimney, and letting go, he climbed carefully down.
Jake was already coming out of the window. Jack thought he heard a
noise, and crept around the house through the weeds to see what it was.
It was only a horse, and he was turning back, when he heard a great
racket and scrambling, and with a tremendous thump Jake came tumbling
down from the chimney into the weeds. He had the breath all knocked out
of him, and lay quite still. Jack heard some one say, “What on earth
was that?” and he had only time to throw the blanket over Jake and drop
down into the weeds himself, when he heard the man come striding around
the house. He had his gun in his hand. He passed right by him, between
him and the dark blanket lying in the corner. He stopped and looked all
around. He was not ten feet from him, and was right over the blanket
under which Jake lay. He actually stooped over, as if he was going to
pull the blanket off of Jake, and Jack gave himself up for lost. But
the man passed on, and Jack heard him talking to his comrades about the
curious noise. They decided that it must have been a gun which burst
somewhere. Jack’s heart was in his mouth about Jake. He wondered if he
was killed. He was about to crawl up to him, when the blanket stirred
and Jake’s head peeped out, then went back. “Jake, oh, Jake, are you
dead?” asked Jack, in a whisper.

“I dun know; b’lieve I is,” answered Jake. “Mos’ dead, anyway.”

“No, you ain’t. Is your leg broke?”

“Yes.”

“No, ’tain’t,” encouraged Jack. “Waggle your toe; can you waggle your
toe?”

“Yes; some, little bit,” whispered Jake, kicking under the blanket.

“Waggle your other toe--waggle all your toes,” whispered Jack.

The blanket acted as if some one was having a fit under it.

“Your leg ain’t broke; you are all right,” said Jack. “Come on.”

Jake insisted that his leg was broken, and that he could not walk.

“Crawl,” said Jack, creeping up to him. “Come on, like Injins. It’s
getting day.” He started off through the weeds, and Jake crawled after
him. His ankle was sprained, however, and the briers were thick, and
he made slow progress, so Jack crawled along by him through the weeds,
helping him.

They were about half way across the little clearing when they heard a
noise behind them; lights were moving about in the house, and, looking
back, Jack saw men moving around the house, and a man poked his head
out of the window.

“Here’s where they escaped,” they called. Another man below the window
called out, “Here’s their track, where they went. They cannot have gone
far. We can catch them.” They started toward them. It was the supreme
moment.

“Run, Jake; run for the woods,” cried Jack, springing to his feet and
pulling Jake up. They struck out. Jake was limping, however, and Jack
put his arm under him and supported him along. They heard a cry behind
them of, “There they go! catch them!” But they were almost at the
woods, and a second later they were dashing through the bushes, heading
straight for their crossing at the old tree. After a time they had to
slow up, for Jake’s ankle pained him. Jack carried him on his back;
but he was so heavy he had frequently to rest, and it was broad day
before they got near the river. They kept on, however, and after a time
reached the stream. There Jake declared he could not cross the poles.
Jack urged him, and told him he would help him across. He showed him
how. Jake was unstrung, and could not try it. He sat down and cried.
Jack said he would go home and bring him help. Jake thought this best.
Jack crawled over the pole, and was nearly across, when, looking back,
he saw a number of soldiers on the hill riding through the woods.

“Come on, Jake; here they come,” he called. The soldiers saw him at the
same moment, and some of them started down the hill. A shot or two were
fired toward them; Jake began to cry. Jack was safe, but he turned and
crawled back over the pole toward him. “Come on, Jake; they are coming.
They won’t hit you--you can get over.”

Jake started; Jack waited, and reached out his hand to him. Jake had
gotten over the worst part, when his foot slipped, and with a cry he
went down into the water. Jack caught his hand, but it slipped out of
his grasp. He came up with his arms beating wildly. “Help--help me!”
he cried, and went down again. In went Jack head foremost, and caught
him by the arm. Jake clutched him. They came up. Jack thought he had
him safe. “I’ve got you,” he said. “Don’t----” But before he could
finish the sentence, Jake flung his arm around his neck and choked him,
pulling him down under the water, and getting it into his throat and
nostrils. Jack struggled, and tried to get up, but he could not; Jake
had him fast. He knew he was drowning. He remembered being down on the
bottom of the river and thinking that if he could but get Jake to the
top again he would be safe. He thought that the Yankees might save him.
He tried, but Jake had him tight, choking him. He thought how he had
brought him there; he thought of his mother and father, and that he had
not seen his mother that morning, and had not said his prayers, and
then he did not know anything more.

The next thing he knew, some one said, “He’s all right,” and he heard
confused voices, and was suffering some in his chest and throat, and he
heard his mother’s voice, and opening his eyes he was in a tent. She
was leaning over him, crying and kissing him, and there were several
gentlemen around the bed he was on. He was too weak to think much, but
he felt glad that his mother was there. “I went back after Jake,” he
said, faintly.

“Yes, you did, like a man,” said a gentleman in an officer’s uniform,
bending over him. “We saw you.”

Jack turned from him. “Mother,” he said, feebly, “we carried the horse
back, but----”

“He is just outside the door,” said the same gentleman; “he belongs to
you. His owner has presented him to you.”

“To me and Jake!” said Jack. “Where is Jake?” But they would not let
him talk. They made him go to sleep.


THE END.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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