ting upwards; "there! the man that killed
Atwater!"

And in the branches of a tree, which stood but a few paces in front of
them, he showed, half hidden by the thick masses, the figure of a rebel.

The sharpshooter was loading his piece. Frank saw the movement, and would
have hastened to avenge the death of his friend before the assassin could
fire again. But he was out of caps, and must borrow. Tucket's gun was
ready.

"'Die thou shalt, gray-headed ruffian!'"

Seth shouted the words up at the man in the tree, and lying on his back,
brought the butt of his gun to his shoulder, aimed heavenward, and fired.

Scarce had flame shot from the muzzle, when down came the rebel's gun
tumbling to the ground; pursued out of the tree by something that
resembled a huge bird, with spread wings, swooping down terribly, and
striking the ground with a jar heard even amid the thunder of battle.

It was the rebel himself.

"'Rattling, crashing, thrashing, thunder down!'" screamed Seth Tucket,
his ruling passion, poetry, strong even in battle.

The man, pitching forwards in his fearful somerset, had fallen within a
few feet of Frank. The boy recovering from his astonishment at the awful
sight, felt a strange curiosity to see if he was dead.

He looked over the log. There lay the wretch, a hideous heap, the face of
him upturned and recognizable.

Where had Frank seen that grim countenance, that short, stiff, iron-gray
hair? Somewhere, surely. He looked again, trying to fix his memory.

"I swan to man, ef it ain't old Buckley!"

Seth was right. It was the Maryland secessionist whose turkeys the boys
had stolen, and who, in consequence, had made haste to avenge his wrongs
by joining the confederate army.

A strange, sickening sensation came over Frank at the discovery. Thus the
evil he had done followed him. But for that wild freak of plundering the
poor man's poultry-yard, he might be plodding now on his Maryland farm,
and Atwater would not be lying there so white and still with a bullet in
his breast.

XXXI.

"VICTORY OR DEATH."

Where all this time was the old drum-major? He too had disappeared from
the ambulance corps to assume, like Frank, a position of still more
arduous service and greater danger.

Shortly after Frank left him, word came that the battery of
boat-howitzers, which, from a curve in the road that commanded the rebel
works, had been doing