incessantly of the storm-swept "front"--of terrific battles, perilous
adventures, heroic achievements, death, wounds and marvelous escapes.
The older boys were all at the front, or going there, or coming back
with heroic marks of shot and shell. The one burning aspiration in every
well-constructed boy's heart was to get big enough to crowd past the
recruiting officer, and go where he could see with his own eyes the
thunderous drama. There was concentrated all that fills a healthy boy's
imagination and stirs his blood--something greater than Indian-fighting,
or hunting lions and tigers. They looked on Si and Shorty with little
short of reverence. Here were two men who had captured a rebel flag in
a hand-to-hand fight, both of whom had been left for dead, and both
promoted for gallantry. What higher pinnacle of greatness could any boy
hope to reach?

They began at once seriously imitating the walk and manners of their
heroes. The tall, lank boys modeled themselves on Shorty, and the short,
chubby ones on Si. And there at once rose contention between them as to
which was the greater hero.

"I heard," said Henry Joslyn, "that Corpril Elliott was the first to
reach the rebel flag, he havin' much the longest legs, but jest as he
grabbed it a big rebel knocked him, and then they all piled on to him,
and about had him finished when Serg't Klegg reached there at a charge
bayonets, and he bayoneted everybody in sight, until a sharpshooter in
a tree shot him with an explosive bullet that tore his breast all to
pieces, but he kept right on bayonetin' 'em till he dropped from loss
o' blood. Then they fired a cannon at the sharpshooter and blowed him
to pieces just as you'd blow a chippy to pieces with a bullet from a
bear-gun."

"'Twan't that way at all," said tall, lathy Gid Mackall. "A whole lot
of 'em made for the flag together. A charge o' grapeshot come along and
blowed the rest away, but Serg't Klegg and Corpril Elliott kep' right
on. Then Corpril Elliott he lit into the crowd o' rebels and laid a
swath right around him, while Sergint Klegg grabbed the flag. A rebel
Colonel shot him, but they couldn't stop Corpril Elliott till they shot
a brass six-pounder at him."

The boys stood on the banks of the Ohio River and gazed eagerly at the
other side. There was the enemy's country--there the theater in
which the great drama was being enacted. Everything there had a weird
fascination for them, as a part of, or accessory to, th