ry place under this tree," said St. Clair. "Let's
sit down and talk. You're the new Captain in our regiment, are you not?"

"Yes," replied Bertrand. "I've just come from Richmond, where I met my
chief, that valiant man, Colonel Leonidas Talbot. I have been serving
mostly on the coast of the Carolinas, and when I asked to be sent to the
larger theater of war they very naturally assigned me to one of my own
home regiments. Alas! there is plenty of room for me and many more in
the ranks of the Invincibles."

"We have been well shot up, that's true," said Langdon, whom nothing
could depress more than a minute, "but we've put more than a million
Yankees out of the running."

"How are your Knights of the Golden Circle getting on?" asked Harry.

Bertrand flushed a little, despite his swarthiness.

"Not very well, I fear," he replied. "It has taken us longer to conquer
the Yankees than we thought."

"I don't see that we've begun to conquer them as a people or a section,"
said St. Clair, who was always frank and direct. "We've won big
victories, but just look and you'll see 'em across the river there,
stronger and more numerous than ever, and that, too, on the heels of the
big defeat they sustained at Fredericksburg. And, if you'll pardon me,
Captain, I don't believe much in the great slave empire that the Knights
of the Golden Circle planned."

Bertrand's black eyes flashed.

"And why not?" he asked sharply.

"To take Cuba and Mexico would mean other wars, and if we took them we'd
have other kinds of people whom we'd have to hold in check with arms.
A fine mess we'd make of it, and we haven't any right to jump on Cuba
and Mexico, anyway. I've got a far better plan."

"And what is that?" asked Bertrand, with an increasing sharpness of
manner.

"The North means to free our slaves. We'll defeat the North and show to
her that she can't. Then we'll free 'em ourselves."

"Free them ourselves!" exclaimed Bertrand. "What are we fighting for
but the right to hold our own property?"

"I didn't understand it exactly that way. It seems to me that we went
to war to defend the right of a state to go out of the Union when it
pleases."

"I tell you, this war is being fought to establish our title to our own."

"It's all right, so we fight well," said Harry, who saw Bertrand's
rising color and who believed him to be tinged with fanaticism; "it's
all that can be asked of us. After Happy Tom sleeps in the White Hou