lump of laurel he is confronted by two men, muskets in hand.

"A Yank, by the Lord! Surrender, you damned mudsill!"

For answer Jack raised the pistol in his hand and fired. The man fell,
with a frightful yell. The other leveled his musket fairly in Jack's
face; but before he could pull the trigger a report at his ear deafened
Jack, and the second man staggered against the tree.

"Ah, ha! me boy, the rear rank did the best work there," Barney cried,
as Jack turned to see whence the timely aid had come, "A day after the
fair's better than the fair itself, if the rain has kept the girls
away," and Barney laughed good-humoredly.

"Well, 'pon my soul, Barney, it's a shameful thing to say, but all
thought of you had gone from my mind. I should not have let you come if
you had proposed it, but now we're in for it. Ah--!"

As he spoke the Union flag he had seen came forward, but it was in the
hands of a rebel bearer, and was upside down in mockery. The sight was
enough. He fired the shots as agreed upon, firing two at the group
marching heedlessly forward, as the skirmish-line was far ahead, or they
supposed it was, for the two men disabled by Jack and Barney were the
advance, as it was not supposed that any but stragglers were near at
hand, and the company were returning to their regiment. In an instant a
fierce volley is returned, and Barney, who is fairly in the bush behind
a huge tree, hears a low groan. He looks where Jack had been and sees
him lying on the ground, stifling an agonized cry by holding his left
arm over his mouth. Barney might have escaped, at least he might have
delayed capture, but coming from behind the tree, he holds up his hands,
and flinging himself on the ground beside his comrade takes his head
upon his knee and awaits the worst.

BOOK II.

_THE HOSTAGES_.

CHAPTER XII.

THE AFTERMATH.

There were not so many millions of Americans in 1861 as there are
to-day. But they were more American then than they are now. That is, the
Old World had not sent the millions to our shores that now people the
waste places of the West. It was not until after the civil war that
those prodigious hosts came--enough to make the populace of such empires
as fill the largest space in history. That part of the land that loved
the flag cherished it with a fervor deeper than the half-alien race that
first flung it to the breeze under Washington. They loved the republic
with something of that passionate