n if you are little more than a child.
It's bad enough for grown men to risk their lives--and bad enough for me
to drag them into such a position,--without getting a plucky boy into the
scrape also. No! Don't ask me to do that."

"But I won't be in any more danger in the South than I am here," pleaded
George. "If I stay here I may be shot in battle, while if I go to Marietta
I----"

"If you go to Marietta, and are found out, you may be hanged as a spy,"
interrupted Andrews. "I'd rather see you shot than strung up with a
rope."

"The Confederates would never hang me if I am little more than a child, as
you call me," urged the lad.

Andrews was evidently impressed by George's persistence, but he hastened
to say: "Anyway, I have no authority to send you off on this chase. You
are a member of General Mitchell's military household, and he alone could
give you the permission."

"Then promise me that if I get his permission you will let me go."

The spy hesitated. He could just discern the earnest, pleading expression
in the upturned face of the boy, upon which the rain-drops were pouring
almost unnoticed.

"Well," he said, at last, "I am going back to camp now, and I start out
before daylight. If you can induce the General to let you accompany us
before that time I'll make no objection."

George gave a little exclamation of delight. "Come," he said, snapping his
fingers at Waggie, "let us see what we can do to talk the old General into
it."

The rain was now coming down in torrents, while the sharp, almost
deafening cracks of thunder sounded as if the whole artillery of the Union
army were engaged in practice. Soon all the conspirators were hurrying
back to camp. Andrews was the very last to leave the woods where he had
divulged his plans.

"Heaven forgive me," he mused, half sadly, "if I am leading these boys
into a death trap." But as a sudden flash of lightning illuminated the wet
landscape, as with the brightness of day, there came into the leader's
strong face a look of calm resolution. "It's worth all the danger," he
added.

* * * * *

An hour later George Knight came running into the tent which Andrews
occupied in the camp on Duck River. The leader was enveloped in a woolen
overcoat, and on his well-shaped head was a slouch hat of the kind
generally worn by Southerners. By the dim, sickly light of the candle
which sputtered on a camp stool it could be seen that