st."

Marcy knew that would be the upshot of the matter. If the captain meant
to put him in arrest, he had no business to permit him to go on that
expedition.

The next morning things went on in their usual haphazard way, and the
colonel did not say a word about disbanding the school. He thought
better of it after he had taken time to cool off; but it was not so with
Rodney Gray. By allowing himself to be led away by the excitement of the
hour he had done something he never could forget if he lived to be a
hundred years old, and he longed to leave the academy and everybody in
it behind him, and mingle with people who believed as he did, and who
did not know of the meanness of which he had been guilty. And, what was
very comforting as well as surprising, the colonel permitted him to go
without asking any disagreeable questions.

"I don't know that I blame you," said he, in a discouraged tone. "I
think I should be glad to go somewhere myself. I have been hoping almost
against hope that these troubles might be settled without a war, but I
don't believe they ever will be. The folks about here seem to think that
the people of the North are cowardly, but they are not. They are simply
patient; but there will come a time when their patience will be
exhausted, and then they will sweep over us like an army of locusts."

"You don't really think they will fight, do you, sir?" said Rodney, who
was surprised to hear the colonel talk in this strain.

"I am sure of it. When Beauregard opens his batteries upon Sumter, you
will see an uprising that will astonish the world. I am sorry to part
with you, but you may go. You would no doubt get a letter from your
father in a few days any way, so I don't suppose it makes much
difference."

Rodney went, but he did not go alone. Instead of one carriage, there
were four that drove away from the academy an hour later, and they were
filled as full of students as they could hold. But the departing crowd
did not whoop and yell as they were in the habit of doing when they set
out for home at vacation time. They were sober and thoughtful, and so
were those they left behind. The events of the last few hours had made
them so. Rodney Gray voiced the sentiments of all of them when he said
to Marcy and Dick, as he extended a hand to each:

"I realize now as I never did before that we're not going to have the
easy times we looked for. I don't back down one inch from my position. I
say the South is ri