ws and laid as many of his assailants at his feet; roaring,
meanwhile, oaths as thunderous as they were unintelligible.

"_Sacre-e nom!_" he shouted as he saw me; "shoot 'em, me boy!
_Poltrons_, egad! Laugh at me! D----n their eyes! _Can-n-naille!_"

There was a wicked light in my fat friend's eye, and he had recovered
his second wind; so we sallied out, the colonel still clinging to his
weapon of chance.

"Good enough for these dogs!" he roared, wrathfully shaking the bar.
"Saves the pistol."

That night at "the Ranche," as later about many a camp-fire, our French
visitors declared that the colonel's bar had done more effective
service than their revolvers; and, as it stood dented and blood-smeared
in the corner of that vine-clad porch, it did not belie their praise.

CHAPTER X.

EN ROUTE FOR THE BORDER.

Very soon after their state went out of the Union, and it became
settled that the policy of the central Government was to take
possession of the border states by force, the people of Virginia
decided that the battle was to be fought on her soil. Her nearness to
Washington, the facility of land communication, and the availability of
her waterways for transportation purposes, all pointed to this; and the
southern Government also became aware that the Potomac boundary of the
Confederacy was the one to be most jealously guarded. Under these
circumstances, when the tender of the use of the state capital at
Richmond was made to the Montgomery Government, the advantages of the
move were at once apparent, and the proffer was promptly accepted.

When we returned to Montgomery, preparations for removal were in such
state of progress that the change would be made in a few days. Archives
and public property not in daily use had already been sent on, and some
of the force of the executive departments were already in the new
capital, preparing for the reception of the remainder. Troops in large
bodies had already been forwarded to Virginia from all parts of the
South, and all indications were that, before the summer was over, an
active campaign on the soil of the Old Dominion would be in progress.

About this time, a telegram from Montgomery appeared in the New York
_Tribune_, which created as much comment at the South as at the North.
It stated, in so many words, that the whole South was in motion; that a
few days would see Mr. Davis in Virginia at the head of thirty thousand
men, Beauregard second in command. Wi