been
paraded through the streets of Hillsborough, with his face blackened and
a placard on his back. The little Jerseyman also recalled other
incidents, some of them trifling enough, but all of them together going
to show the hot temper of the people around him; and for a day or two he
brooded rather seriously over the situation. He knew that the times were
critical.

For several weeks the excitement in Hillsborough, as elsewhere in the
South, continued to run high. The blood of the people was at fever heat.
The air was full of the portents and premonitions of war. Drums were
beating, flags were flying, and military companies were parading. Jack
Walthall had raised a company, and it had gone into camp in an old field
near the town. The tents shone snowy white in the sun, uniforms of the
men were bright and gay, and the boys thought this was war. But, instead
of that, they were merely enjoying a holiday. The ladies of the town
sent them wagon-loads of provisions every day, and the occasion was a
veritable picnic--a picnic that some of the young men remembered a year
or two later when they were trudging ragged, barefooted, and hungry,
through the snow and slush of a Virginia winter.

But, with all their drilling and parading in the peaceful camp at
Hillsborough, the young men had many idle hours, and they devoted these
to various forms of amusements. On one occasion, after they had
exhausted their ingenuity in search of entertainment, one of them,
Lieutenant Buck Ransome, suggested that it might be interesting to get
up a joke on Little Compton.

"But how?" asked Lieutenant Cozart.

"Why, the easiest in the world," said Lieutenant Ransome. "Write him a
note, and tell him that the time has come for an English-speaking people
to take sides, and fling in a kind of side-wiper about New Jersey."

Captain Jack Walthall, leaning comfortably against a huge box that was
supposed to bear some relation to a camp-chest, blew a cloud of smoke
through his sensitive nostrils and laughed. "Why, stuff, boys!" he
exclaimed somewhat impatiently, "you can't scare Little Compton. He's
got grit, and it's the right kind of grit. Why, I'll tell you what's a
fact--the sand in that man's gizzard would make enough mortar to build a
fort."

"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do," said Lieutenant Ransome. "We'll
sling him a line or two, and if it don't stir him up, all right; but if
it does, we'll have some tall fun."

Whereupon, Lieutenant Ra