*- OE CALIF. LIBRABY, LOS ANGELES APPLETONS' LIBRARY OF HISTORICAL FICTION THE IRON GAME APPLETON'S LIBRARY OF HISTORICAL FICTION THE IRON GAME By HENRY F. KEENAN A STORY OF INTEREST TO ALL A. L. FOWLE NEW YORK 1906 COPYBIOHT, 1891, BY D. APPLBTON AND COMPANY. TO BERNARD JOHN McGRANN WHOSE LIFE AND CONDUCT EMBODY AND ILLUSTRATE THE MANLINESS, MODESTY, AND WORTH THAT FANCY DELIGHTS TO EMBALM IN FICTION THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED BY ONE AMONG THE MANY WITNESSES OF HIS NOBLE CAREER HENRY F. KEENAN NEW YORK, 25th March, 1891. 2136580 CONTENTS. BOOK I. THE CARISEES. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BOY IN BLUE 5 II. FLAG AND FAITH 11 III. MALBROOK S'EN TA-T-EN GUERRE . . . . . 19 IV. GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE ...... 30 V. A NAPOLEONIC EPIGRAM . . . . . . .40 VI. ON THE POTOMAC 47 VII. THE STEP THAT COSTS 55 VIII. AN ARMY WITH BANNERS . . ... .65 IX. " THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF ON THE FOLD" 72 X. BLOOD AND IRON 85 XI. THE LEGIONS OF VARCS , 99 BOOK II. THE HOSTAGES. XII. THE AFTERMATH . . '. , . . .108 XIII. A COMEDY OF TERRORS . . . . ' . .124 XIV. UNDER Two FLAGS . ... . . . .136 XV. ROSEDALE . . . . . . . . , . 144 XVI. A MASQUE IN ARCADY . . . . . . .159 XVII. TREASON AND STRATAGEMS 177 XVni. A CAMPAIGN OF PLOTS 187 XIX. "HE EITHER FKARS HIS FATE TOO MUCH" . . .199 XX. A CATASTROPHE 219 XXL THE STORY OF THE NIGHT . . 231 THE IRON GAME. PACK XXII. A CARPET-KNIGHT 239 XXIII. ALL'S FAIK IN LOVE AJJD WAR . . 263 BOOK HI. THE DESERTERS. XXIV. BBTWEEN THE LINES 275 XXV. PHANTASMAGORIA 287 XXVI. IN THE UNION LINES 301 XXVII. "THE ABSENT ABE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG" . .317 XXVIII. THE WORLD WENT TERT ILL THEN . . . .331 XXIX. A WOMAN'S REASON 339 XXX. A GAME OF CHANCE . . . . . .350 XXXI. Two BLADES OF THE SAME STEEL . . . .364 XXXII. THE LOST CARIBEES 382 XXXELL FATHER ABRAHAM'S JOKE .... . 395 BOOK L THE CARIBEES. CHAPTER I. THE BOY IN BLUE. WHEN expulsion from college, in his junior years, was visited upon Jack Sprague, lie straightway became the hero of Acredale. And, though the grave faculty had felt con- strained to vindicate college authority, it was well known that they sympathized with the infraction of decorum that obliged them to put this mark of disgrace upon one of the most promising of their students. All his young life Jack had dreamed of West Point and the years of training that were to fit him for the glories of war. He knew the battles of the Revolution as other boys knew the child-lore of the nursery. He had the campaigns of Marlborough, the strategy of Turenne, the inspirations of the great Frederick, and the prodigies of Napoleon, as readily on the end of his tongue as his comrades had the struggles of the Giant Killer or the tactics of Robinson Crusoe. When, inspired by the promise of West Point, he had mas- tered the repugnant rubrics of the village academy, the statesman of his district conferred the promised nomination upon his school rival, Wesley Boone, Jack passionately re- fused to pursue the arid paths of learning, and declared his purpose of becoming a pirate, a scout, or some other equally fascinating child of nature delightful to the boyish mind. When Jack Sprague entered Warchester College, he car- ried with him the light baggage of learning picked up at the Acredale Academy. At his entrance to the sequestered (5 THE IROX GAME. quadrangles of Dessau Hall, Jack's frame of mind was very much like the passionate discontent of the younger son of a feudal lord whose discrepant birthright doomed him to the gown instead of the sword. Long before the senior year he had allured a chosen band about him who shared his eager aspiration for war, and when the other fellows dawdled in society or wrangled in debate, these young Alexanders set their tents in the college campus and fought the campaigns of Frederick or Napoleon over again. Jack did not give much heed to the menacing signs of civil war that came day by day from the tempestuous spirits North and South. A Democrat, as his fathers had been before him, he saw no probability of the pomp and cir- cumstance of glorious war in the noisy wrangling of poli- ticians. The defeat of Douglas, the Navarre of the young Democracy of the North, amazed him ; but all thought of Lincoln asserting the national authority, and reviving the splendor of Jackson and Madison, was looked upon as the step between the sublime and the ridiculous that reasoning men refuse to consider. When, however, the stupefying news came that a national garrison had been fired upon by the South Carolinians, in Charleston Harbor, the college boys took sides strongly. There were many in the classes from Maryland and Vir- ginia. These were as ardent in admiration of their Southern compatriots as the Northern boys were for the insulted Union. Months passed, and, although the forces of war were arraying themselves behind the thin veil of compromise and negotia- tion, the public mind only languidly convinced itself that actual war would come. The college was divided into hostile camps. The "Se- cessionists," led by Vincent Atterbury, Jack's old-time chief crony, went so far as to hoist the flag of the Montgomery (Jeff Davis's) government on the campus pole, one morn- ing in April. A fierce fight followed, in which Jack's ardent partisans made painful havoc with the limbs of the enemy Atterbury, their leader, being carted from the cam- pus, under the horrified eyes of the faculty, dying, as it was THE BOY IN BLUE. 7 thought. Then followed expulsion. When the solemn words were spoken in chapel, the culprit bore up with great serenity. But when he announced that he had enlisted in the army, then such an uproar, such an outburst, that the session was at an end. Even the grave president looked sympathetic. The like of it was never seen in a sober college since Antony with Cleopatra invaded the Academy at Alexandria. The boys flung themselves upon the abashed Jack. They hugged him, raised him on their shoulders, carried him out on the campus, and, forming a ring round him, swore, in the classic form dear to collegians, that they would follow him ; that they would be his soldiers, and fight for faepatria in danger. "I have nothing to offer you, boys. I'm only sergeant; but if you will join now, I'm authorized to swear you in provisionally," Jack said, shrewdly, seizing the flood at high tide. So soon as the names could be written the whole senior class (forty-three) were enrolled. Jack refused the prayer- ful urgings of the juniors, who pleaded tearfully to join him. But the president coming out confirmed Jack's decis- ion until the juniors could get the written consent of their parents. The recitations were sadly disjointed that day, and the excited professors were glad when rest came. The humani- ties had received disjointed exposition during that session. Jack had been summoned to the president's sanctuary, where he had been received with a parental tenderness that brought the tears to his big brown eyes. "Ah, ha! soldiers mustn't know tears. You must be made of sterner stuff now, sergeant," the doctor cried, cheeri- ly, as the culprit stood confusedly before him. '' O Jack, Jack, why did you put this hard task upon me ? Why make me drive from Dessau the brightest fellow in the classes ? What will your mother say ? I would as soon have lost my own child as be forced to put this mark on you ? But you know I am bound by the laws of the college. You know I have time and again overlooked your wild pranks. We have already suffered a good deal from the press for wink- 8 THE IKON GAME. ing at the sympathy the college has shown in this political quarrel." " Yes, professor, I haven't a word to say. You did your duty. Now I want you to bear witness how I do mine. I do not complain that I am condemned rather through the form than the fact. I was carried out of my senses by the sight of that rebel flag." The Warchester press, known for many years as the most sprightly and enterprising of the country, was too much taken up with the direful news from Baltimore to even make a note of Jack Sprague's expulsion, and the sol- dier boy was spared that mortification. Nor did he meet the tearful lament and heart-broken remonstrance at home, to which he had looked forward with lively dread. His friends in the village of Acredale were so astonished by his blue regimentals that he reached the homestead door un- questioned. His mother, at the dining-room window, caught sight of the uniform, and did not recognize her son until she was almost smothered in his hearty embrace. " Why, John ! What does this mean ? What what have you on ? " " Mother, I am twenty-two years old. A man who won't fight for his country isn't a good son. He has no right to stay in a country that he isn't willing to fight for ! " and with this specious dictum he drew himself up and met the astonished eyes of his sister Olympia, who had been apprised of his coming. But the maternal fears clouded patriotic conceptions where her darling was involved, and his mother sobbed: " O Jack, Jack ! what shall we do ? How can we live without you ? And oh, my son, you are too young to go to the war. You will break down. You can't manage a a musket, and the the heavy load the soldiers carry. My son, don't break your mother's heart. Don't go don't Jack, Jack! What shall I do? O Polly, what shall we do?" " What shall we do ? Why, we'll just show Jack that all of war isn't in soldiering ; that the women who stay at THE BOY IN BLUE. 9 home help the heroes, though they may not take part in the battle. As to you and me, mamma, we shall be the proudest women in Acredale, for our Jack's the first " she was going to say " boy," but, catching the coming protest in the warrior's glowing eye, substituted " man " with timely magnanimity " the first man that volunteered from Acre- dale. And how shamed you would have been we would have been if Jack hadn't kept up the tradition of the family ! He comes naturally by his sense of duty. Your father's father was the first to join Gates at Saratoga. My father's father was the right hand of Warren at Bunker Hill ! If ever blood ran like water hi our Jack's veins, I should put on trousers and go to the war myself. I'm not sure that I sha'n't as it is," and, affecting Spartan forti- tude, Olympia pretended to be deeply absorbed in adjusting a disarranged furbelow in her attire to conceal the quaver- ing in her voice and the dewy something in her dark eyes. The mother, disconcerted by this defection where she had counted on the blindest adhesion, sank back in the cane rocker, helpless, speechless. " Yes, mother, Polly is right. How could you ever lift up your head if it were said that son of John Sprague's Governor, Senator, minister abroad was the last to fly to his country's call ? Why, Jackson would turn in his grave if a son of John Sprague were not the first to take up arms when the Union that he loved, as he loved his life, was in peril ! " Mrs. Sprague listened with woe-begone perplexity to these sounding periods, conscious only that her darling, her adored scapegrace, had suddenly turned serious, and was using the weapons she had so often employed to justify his conduct. For it was using one of the standing arms in the maternal arsenal, to remind the wild and headstrong lad that his father had been Jackson's confidant that he had been Governor of Imperia, that he had enforced the demands of the United States upon European statesmen, that after a life spent in the public service he had died, reverenced by his party and by his neighbors. Jack, as an infant, had been 10 THE IRON GAME. fondled by "Webster, by Clay, and, one never-to-be-forgot- ten day, Jackson, the Scipio of the republic, had placed his brawny hand upon the infant's head and declared that he would be " worthy of Jack Sprague, who was man enough to make two Kentuckians." " But you you ought to be a colonel. Your father was a major-general in the Mexican War at twenty-five. A Sprague can't be a private soldier ! " she cried, seizing on this as the only tenable ground where she could begin the con- test against the two children confederated against her. " I don't want to owe everything to my father. This is a republic, mamma, and a man is, or ought to be, what he makes himself. I saw in a paper, the other day, that the Government has more brigadiers and colonels and and officers than it knows what to do with. I saw it stated that a stone thrown from Willard's Hotel in Washington hit a dozen brigadiers. I want to earn a commission before I assume it. I'll be an officer soon enough, no fear. I could have had a lieutenant's commission if I had gone in Blandons regi- ment. But I hate Blandon! He is one of those canting sneaks father detested, and I won't serve under such cattle." Mrs. Sprague, like millions of mothers in those days, was cruelly divided in mind. When the neighbors felicitated her on the valor and patriotism of Mr. Jack she was elated and fitfully reconciled. When, in the long watches of the night, she reflected on the hardships, temptations, the dread- ful companions her darling must be thrown with, country, lineage, everything faded into the dreadful reality that her darling was in peril, body and soul. He was so like his father gay, impressionable, easily influenced he would be saint or sinner, just as his surroundings incited him. This was the woe that ate the mother's heart ; this was the sorrow that clouded millions of homes when mothers saw their boys pranked out in the trappings of war. Our jaunty Jack enjoyed the worship that came to him. He was the first boy in blue that appeared in the sandy streets of Acredale. Never had the rascal been so petted, so feted, so adored. He might have been a pasha, had he been FLAG AND FAITH. 11 a Turk. The promising down on his upper lip the object of his own secret solicitude and Olympia's gibes during the junior year was quite worn away by the kissing he under- went among the impulsive Jeannettes of the village, who had a vague notion that soldiers, like sailors, were indurated for battle by adosculation. Jack may have believed this himself, for he took no pains to disabuse the maidens as to the inefficacy of the rite, and bore with galliard fortitude the wear and tear of the nascent mustache, without which, to his mind, a soldier would figure very much as a monk without a shaven crown or a mandarin without a queue. And though presently big Tom Tooker, chief of the rival faction in Acre- dale, gave his name to the recruiting officer in Warchester, and a score more of Jack's rivals and cronies, he was the soldier of the village. For hadn't he given up the glory of graduation and the delights of " commencement " to take up his musket for the Union ? And then the fife was heard in the village street delicious airs from Arcady and a great flag was flung out from the post-office, and Master Jack was installed recruiting sergeant for Colonel Ulrich Oswald's regiment, that was to be raised in Warchester County. For Colonel Oswald, having failed in a third nomination for Congress, had gallantly proffered his services to the Gov- ernor of the State, and, in consideration of his influence with his German compatriots, had been granted a commission, though with reluctance, as he had supported the Democratic party and was not yet trusted in the Republican councils. CHAPTER II. FLAG AND FAITH. IF Acredale had not been for a century the ancestral seat of the Spragues, and in its widest sense typical of the sub- urban Northern town, there would be merely an objective 12 THE IRON GAME. and extrinsic interest in portraying its sequestered life, its monotonous activities. But Acredale was not only a very complete reflex of Northern local sentiment ; its war epoch represented the normal conduct of every hamlet in the Jand during the conflict with the South. Now that the war is becoming a memory, even to those who were actors hi it, the facts distorted and the incidents warped to serve partisan ends or personal pique, the photograph of the tune may have its value. Made up of thriving farmers and semi-retired city men, Acredale mingled the simple conditions of a country village and the easy refinement of city life. The houses were large, the grounds ornate and ample, the society decorously con- vivial. People could be fine at least they were thought very fine without going to the British Isles to recast their home manners or take hints for the fashioning of their grounds and mansions. There was what would be called to-day the English air about the place and some of the peo- ple ; but it was an inheritance, not an imitation. Save in the bustling business segment, abutting the four corners, where the old United States road bore off westward to Bu- cephalo and the lakes, the few score houses were set far back from the highway in a wilderness of shrubbery, secluded by hedges and shaded by an almost primeval growth of elms or maples. The whole hamlet might be mistaken for a lordly park or an old-fashioned German Spa. Family marketing was mostly done in Warchester ; hence the village shops were like Arabian bazaars, few but all-supplying. The most pregnant evidence of the approach of modern ways that tinged the primitive color of the village life, was the then new railway skirting furtively through the meadows on the northern limits, as if decently ashamed of intruding upon such idyllic tranquillity. The little Gothic station, cunningly hidden behind a clustering grove of oaks at a respectful distance from the Corners, like the lodge of a great estate, reconciled those who had at first fought the iron mischief- maker. The public edifices of the town the Episcopal church, FLAG AND FAITH. 13 the free academy, the bank, the young ladies' seminary were very unlike such institutions in the hustling, treeless towns of to-day. Corinthian columns and Greek friezes adorned these architectural evidences of Acredale's affluence and taste. The village had grown up on private grounds, conceded to the public year by year as the children and de- pendents of the founders increased. The Spragues were the founders, and they had never been anxious to alienate their patrimony. Acredale is not now the sylvan sanctuary of rural simplicity it was thirty years ago before the war. The febrile tentacles of Warchester had not yet reached out to make its vernal recesses the court quarter for the " new rich." In Jack Sprague's young warrior days the village was three miles from the most suburban limits of the city. There was not even a horse-car, or, as fashionable Warchesterians have it, a " tram," to remind the tranquil villagers that life had any need more pressing than a jaunt to the post twice a day. Some " city folks " did hold villas on the outskirts, but they tised them only for short seasons in the late summer, when the air at the lake began to grow too sharp for outdoor pleasures. Society in the place was patriarchal as an English shire town. The large Sprague mansion, about which the village clustered at a respectful distance, was the " Castle " of local phrase. Much of the glory of early days had departed, how- ever, when the Senator Jack's papa died. The widow found herself unable to maintain the affluent state her lord had loved. His legal practice, rather than the wide acres of his domain, had supported a hospitality famous from Bu- cephalo to Washington. But with prudent management the family had abundance, and, as Jack often said, he was a for- tune in himself. When the time came he would revive the splendors his father loved to associate with the home of his ancestors. " But where are we to get this splendor now, Jack ? " Olym- pia inquired, as the youth was dilating to his mother on the wonders to come. " "Private soldiers get just thirteen dollars a month ; and if you continue smoking as I am informed 14 THE IRON GAME. all men do in the army I expect to have to stint my pin- money expenses to eke out your tobacco bills." "Oh, I'll bring home glory. Napoleon said that every soldier carried a marshal's bdtOn in his knapsack." " I'm afraid you won't have room for it if you carry all the things that I know of intended for you in this and other families." " Yes ; but, Polly, you know, or perhaps you don't know, a bdton is like a college love no matter how full your heart is, you can always find room for another ! " " John," Mistress Sprague reproves mildly ; " how can you ? I don't like to hear my son talk like that even in jest. Don't get the idea that it is soldierly to treat sacred things with levity. Love is a very sacred thing; it ought to be part of a man's religion; it was of your father's." " Then Jack must be a high priest, for there are a dozen girls here and in the city who believe themselves enshrined in that elastic heart. " '' Olympia, you are a baleful influence on your brother. If anything could reconcile me to his going it is the thought that he will escape the extraordinary speech and manners you have brought back from New York. Do the Misses Pomfret graduate all their young ladies with such a tone and laxity of speech as you have lately shown? Strangers would naturally think that you had no training at home." " Don't fear, mamma; strangers are not favored with my lighter vein ; I assume that for you and Jack, to keep your minds from graver things. I preserve the senatorial suavity of speech and the Sprague austerity of manner ' before folks,' as Aunt Merry would say. Which reminds me, Jack, Kitty Moore declares that you are responsible for Barney's enlist- ing. The family look to you to bring him home safe a colonel at least." "Well, by George, I like that! Why, the beggar was bent on going long ago. He was the first to ask me to run away and enlist. The other day he wanted me to have him sworn in, and I told him to wait until until I got a com- mission." Jack was going to say until he was older, but he FLAG AND FAITH. 15 suddenly recollected that Barney was his own age, and that, in view of his mother's argument, struck him as unfortunate. He saw Olympia smiling mischievously and turned the sub- ject abruptly. " I suppose you know, Polly, that Vincent is going home to join the rebels ? " "Is he?" She had turned swiftly to gather a ball of worsted, and when it was secured began to rummage in her work-basket for something that seemed from her intentness to be vitally necessary to her at the moment. " Yes, he wrote to President Grandison that he should go as soon as his passports and remittances came. He's prom- ised a captain's commission. I'm very, very sorry. Vint is the noblest of fellows. I hate to think of him in the rebel army." " That's the reason you half killed him the other day, I suppose, 1 ' Olympia said, sweetly, still investigating the con- tents of the. basket. " What, John, you've not been in a broil fighting ? " and Mistress Sprague could not, even in imagination, go further in such an odious direction, and let her eyes finish the in- terrogatory. Jack, a good deal subdued by what Olympia had left un- said, rather than what she had said, blurted out : u It was a campus shindy : Vint led the rebel side and they got licked, that's all." " Oh, was that all ? " Olympia had ended her search in the basket and fastened a glance of satiric good humor upon the culprit, which did not tend to relieve the awkwardness of the moment. Jack blushed under the glance and began to hum an air from Figaro, as if the conversation had ebbed into an impass from which it could only be rescued by a lively air. Mrs. Sprague looked at the uneasy warrior, then at her daughter, darting the crochet-needles placidly through the wool. " Well," she said, " never mind what's past ; we must have Vincent out here for a visit before he goes. I must send Mrs. Atterbury a number of things. I hope she won't think 16 THE IRON GAME. that we intend to let the war make any difference in our feeling toward the family." Jack was very glad to set out at once for his quondam foe, and in ten minutes was driving down the road to War- chester. Vincent's bruises were nearly healed, and he sa- luted Jack as a " chum " rather than as the agent of his late discomfiture. "I'm mighty glad you've come to-day. I didn't know whether you meant to break off or not. I don't cherish any rancor. I don't see any use in carrying the war into friend- ships. We made the best fight we could. We did better than your side. You had the most men and the biggest fel- lows. We showed good pluck, if we did get licked. If you hadn't come to-day I should have been gone without seeing you, for I began to think that you were as narrow as these prating abolitionists. My commission is ready for me now at Richmond, and I'm just aching to get my regimentals on. I'm to be with Johnston in the Shenandoah, you know, and-" " You mustn't tell me your army plans, Vint. I'm a sol- dier," and Jack drew himself up with martial pomposity, " and and perhaps I ought to arrest you now as an enemy, you know. I will look in the articles of war and find out my duty in such cases." Jack waved his arm reassuringly, as if to bid the rebel take heart for the moment he would not hurry in the matter. Vincent eyed his comrade with such a woe-begone mingling of alarm and comic indignation that Jack forgot his possible part as agent of his country's laws, and said, soothingly: " Never mind, Vint, I'm not real- ly a full soldier in the technical sense until the regiment is mustered hi at Washington. After that, of course, you know very well it would be treason to give aid or comfort to the country's enemies." Vincent didn't leave next day, nor for a good many days. He seemed to get a good deal of " aid and comfort " from those who should hare been his enemies. Mistress Sprague found that he was not in a fit state to travel ; that he needed nursing to prepare him for his journey, and that no place FLAG AND FAITH. 17 was so fit as the great guest-chamber in the baronial Sprague mansion, near his friend Jack. Strange to say, Vincent's eagerness to get to Richmond and his shoulder-straps were forgotten in the agreeable pastimes of the big house, where he spent hours enlightening Olympia on the wonders the Southern soldiers were to perform and the glory that he (Vincent) was to win. He went of a morning to the post- office, where Jack was installed recruiting-agent for Acre- dale township, and made very merry over the homespun stuff enrolled in defense of the Union. " Our strapping cavaliers will make short work of your gawky bumpkins," he remarked to Jack as the recruits loi- tered about the wide, shaded streets, waiting to be forwarded to the rendezvous. " Don't be too sure of that. These young, boyish-looking fellows are just the sort of men that met the British at Bun- ker Hill. They laughed too, when they saw them ; but they didn't laugh after they met them, nor will your cavaliers," Jack cried, loftily. " But there's not a full-grown man among all these I've seen. How do you suppose they are to endure march and battle ? None of them can ride. All our young men ride, and cavalry is the main thing in modern armies." In the Sprague parlors conversation of this risky sort was eschewed. Mistress Sprague was anxious that the son of her oldest friend should return to his mother with only the mem- ory of amiable hospitality in his heart to show that, although war raged between the people, families were still friends. Vincent's mother had been one of Mistress Sprague's brides- maids, and it was her wish that the children might grow up in the old kindly ties. So Vincent was made much of. There were companies every night, and drives and boating in the afternoons, and such merry-making as it was thought a lad of his years would enjoy. He was a very entertaining guest; that all Acredale had known in the old vacations when, with his sister, the pretty Rosa, he spent a summer with the Spragues. But, now that there was to be a separation involving the 18 THE IRON GAME. unknown in its vaguest form, the lad was treated with a ten- derness that made the swift days very sweet to the young rebel. It was from Olympia that he met the only distinct formality in the manners of his hosts. He had known and adored her in a boyish way for years, and now, as he contem- plated 'going, he thought that she ought to exhibit some- thing of the old-time warmth. In other days she had ridden, walked, and flirted to his heart's desire. Now she avoided him when Jack was not at hand, and when she talked it was in a flippant vein that drove him wild with baffled hope. The day before he was to bid the kind house adieu he had his wish. She was riding with him over the shaded road- way that curves in bewildering beauty toward the lake. She seemed in a gentler mood than he had lately seen her. They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency. " There's only one thing hateful to me in this war," he said, caressing the arching neck of his horse, *' and that is, the better we do our duty as soldiers the more sorrow we must bring upon our own friends." " That's a rather solemn view to take of what Jack re- gards as the path of glory." " Oh, you know what I mean : under the flag there can or ought to be no friendships the bullet sent from the mus- ket, the sword drawn in fight, must be aimed blindly. It might be my fate, for example, to meet Jack, to to " "Yes," Olympia laughed demurely, ignoring the senti- mental aspect of Vincent's remark. " Yes, that might para- lyze the arm of valor; but, then, you and Jack have met be- fore, when duty demanded one thing and affection another: I don't see that the dilemma softened the blows, or that either of you are any the worse for them." Vincent was the real Southerner of his epoch impulsive, sentimental, ardent in all that he espoused, without the slightest notion of humor, though imaginative as a dream- er; love, war, and his State, Virginia, were passions that he thought it a duty to uphold at any and all times. He MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EX GUERRE. 19 colored under the girl's satiric sail y. If she had been a man he would have bid her to battle on the spot. Her sly fun and gentle malice he resented as insulting, coarse, and un- womanly. He flashed a look of piteous, surprised reproach at her as she flecked the flies from the neck of her horse. He rode along moodily too angry, too wretched to trust himself to speak, for he felt sure he must say something bit- ter. But, as she gave no sign of resuming the discourse, he was forced to take up the burden again. Venturing nearer her side, he said in a conciliating, argumentative tone, as if he had not heard the foregoing speech : " Do you know, it seems to me, Olympia, that you of the North do not seem to realize the seriousness of the war, the determination of our side to make the South free ? Here you go about the common business of life, parties, balls, dress, and all the follies of peace, as if war could not affect you at all. Your newspapers are full of coarse jokes at the expense of your own soldiers, your own President. There seems no devotion to your own cause, such as we feel in the South. I believe that if put to a vote more than half the North would side with us to-day." CHAPTER III. MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE. OLYMPIA had been jogging along, apparently oblivious to everything but the blazing vision of sun and cloud above the lake, purpling shapes of mirage, reflecting the smooth surface of the glowing water. But as the young man's voice fallen into a melodious murmur ceased, she took up the theme with unexpected earnestness. " That's the error the South has made from the first. You know my father was a public man. I have been educated more at our dinner-table and in his talks with guests than at 20 THE IRON GAME. school. That is, the things that have taken strongest hold of my mind young girls rarely hear or understand. Now I think I can tell you something that may be of value to you in official places where you are going. The North is not only in earnest it is religiously in earnest. If you know Puritan history you know what that means. For example : If Jack had hesitated a moment or made delay to get rank in the army, I should have abhorred him. So would our mother, though she seems to be dismayed at his serving as a common soldier. I adore Jack ; I think him the finest, the most perfect nature after my father's that lives. But I give him up gladly, because to keep him would be to degrade him. We know that he may fall ; that he may come back to us a cripple, or worse. But, as you see, we make no sign. Not a line of routine has been changed in the house. Jack will march away and never see a tear in my eye or feel my pulse tremble. It is not in our Northern blood to give much expression to sentiment; but we feel none the less deeply much more deeply, I think, than you exuberant Southerners ; you are impulsive, mercurial, and fickle." " Oh, don't say that; I can't bear to hear you say it; we have deep feelings, we are constant, true as steel, chival- rous ' " Yes, you are delightful people : but you are always liv- ing in the past. Shall I say it ? You are womanlike ; you can't reason. What you want at the moment is right, and only that; with us nothing is real until we have tried and proved it. If you count on Northern apathy you will soon see your mistake. When Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter the North was of one mind, and will stay so until all is again as it was." " Pray don't let us talk on this subject. I'm free to own that it does not interest me. Then, 1 ' he added adroitly, " you are readier in argument than I, because you were brought up in it. But what I want to say is, that it seems base for me to turn upon the goodness I have met in this house, and and " "But you need not turn. In battle do your duty like MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE. 21 a man. If it should fall to you to do a kindness to the wounded, do it in memory of the friends you have here. War is less savage now than it was when your ancestors and mine tortured each other in the name of God and the king." "All murder is done for love of one sort or another: war is love of country ; revenge is love of some one else men rarely kill from hate," Vincent stammered, his heart beating at the nearness of what he was dying to say. '* In that case I hope I shall be hated. I shall shun people who love me," and with that she struck the horse a lively tap and soon was far ahead of her tongue-tied wooer. Was this a challenge ? Vincent asked himself, as he sped after her. When he reached her side the tender words were chilled on his lips, for Olympia had in her laughing eye the, to him, odious expression he saw there when she made the irritating speech about himself and Jack a few minutes be- fore. Fearing a teasing retort, he bridled the tender outburst and rode along pensively, revolving pretexts for another day's stay in Acredale. But when they reached home he found an imperative mandate to set out at once, as his lin- gering in the North was subjecting himself and kinsmen to doubt among the zealous partisans of the Davis party. Olympia was alone in the library when he ran down to tell Jack that he must start at once. He took it as an omen, and said, confusedly: " It is decided ; I must go in the morning." As this had been the plan all along, she looked up at him in surprise, not knowing, of course, that he had been think- ing of putting off the fixed time. " Yes, everything has been made ready ; Jack will take you to Warchester, and we shall drive over to see you en route.' 1 ' 1 "It is fortunate the letter from my mother came to- night. " He stood quite, over her chair, his eyes glittering strangely, his manner excited. " Do you know what they think at home ? They say that I I am not true to my cause ; that my heart is with the North that I want to stay here." 22 THE IRON GAME. / " They won't think that when they hear you, as we have, breathing fury and wrath against the Lincolnites," Olympia briskly replied, as if to proffer her services as witness to his misguided loyalty to the South. ' Ah. don't be so ungenerous, now at this time. I never talk like that now here never before you." He hesitated, and his voice dropped. " Why will you put a fellow in a ridiculous light? Your sneers almost make me ashamed of my honest pride in my State my enthusiasm for our sacred cause." "Deep feeling isn't so easily shaken; true love should brave' all things even sneers and blows. " " If I should tell you that I loved somebody, I am sure you would make me seem ridiculous or ignorant of my own mind." " Then pray be wise and don't tell me. It's bad enougl to be in love, without being photographed in the agony." He looked at her in angry perplexity. Could she ever be serious ? Was all the tenderness of the past only heedless coquetry? Had she danced with him, drove with him, sailed with him, walked in the moonlight and made much of him in mere wanton mischief ? What right had she to be so pretty and so without heart or sensibility? A Southern girl with the word love on a young man's lips would have become a Circe of seductive wooing until the tale were told, even though she could not give her heart in return. " I I am going to-morrow, you know, and " Then he almost laughed himself, for the droll inconsequence of this intelligence, after what had passed, touched even his small sense of humor. " O Olympia, I mean that I shall be far away ; that I shall not see you after to-morrow. Won't you say something to encourage me to give me heart for the future ? " *' Let me see," and she leaned on her elbow musingly, as if construing his words literally, and quite unaware of the tender intent of his prayer. " It ought to be a line to go on your s-word there's where you have the advantage of poor Jack, he has only a musket. But, no, you being a South- MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE. 23 erner, have a coat of arms, and the line must go on that. I used to know plenty of stirring phrases suitable to young men setting out for the wars. Perhaps you know them, too ; they are to be found in the copy-books. ' The pen is mightier than the sword ' wouldn't do, would it? Pens are only fit for poets and men of peace ? We should have something brief and epigrammatic. 'That hour is regal when the sentinel mounts on guard.' There is sublimity in that, but you won't go on guard, being an officer. ' No blood-stained woes in mankind's story Should daunt the heart that's set on glory.' That's too trivial the sort of doggerel for newspaper poets' corners rather than a warrior's shield. ' Think on the perils that environ The man that meddles with cold iron ! ' "That's too much like a caution, and a soldier's motto should urge to daring. So we'll none of that. What do you say to the distich in honor of your great ancestor, Poca- hoiitas's husband, John Smith : ' I never yet knew a warrior but thee, From wine, tobacco, debt, and vice so free.' " Perhaps, however, that might be regarded as vaunting over your comrades, who, I've no doubt, relax the tedium of war in temperate indulgence of some of these vices. ' Put up thy sword; states may be saved without it.' would sound out of keeping for a warrior whose States drew the sword when the olive-branch was offered them. You see, I can not select any text quite suitable to your case ? " " O Olympia, I did not believe you could be so heartless ! Be serious." " Well, Mr. Soldier, if you insist, I know nothing better for a warrior to bear in mind in war than these simple lines : ' The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring.' " 24 THE IRON GAME. " You are right, Olympia those are noble lines. It gives me courage; the loving are the daring! I love you; I dare to tell you that I love you ! Ah, Olympia, I love you so well that I have been traitor to my fatherland ! I have loi- tered here in the hope that you would give me some sign some word to take with me in the dark path Fate has set for me to follow." He came back to her side now, passion and zeal in his shining eyes, ardent, elate, expectant. But she put the hand behind her that he reached out to seize as he fell upon one knee by her chair. Her voice softened and a warm light shone in her eye when she spoke : " I beg you to get up ; we cold-blooded people up here don't understand that old-fashioned way." As he started back with something like a groan she gave him a quick glance that electrified him. He seized her hand before she could snatch it away, and pressed it to his lips. " Pray, be serious. You are too young to talk of love." "I am twenty-two; my father was married at nineteen." " No, dear Vincent, don't talk of this now. You don't know your own mind yet. I am sure that when you go home and think over the matter you will see that it would be impossible. But, even if you were sure of yourself, I never could think of it. You are going to take up arms against all I hold dear sacred. If I were your affianced, with the love for you that you deserve, I would break the pledge when you joined in arms against my family and country." " You have known for years, Olympia, that I loved you ; that I was only waiting to finish college to tell you of my love. Why didn't you tell me" " Tell you what ? " " I say, Polly," Jack cried, bursting in, radiant and eager. "I have the last man of the one hundred " Observing Vincent he stopped. It seemed to him a sort of treason to talk of his regiment before the man who was so soon to be in the ranks against them. " Oh, I can't tell our secrets be- fore the enemy," he ended, jocosely. The word went to Vin- MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE. 25 cent's heart like the prod of sharp steel. He gave Olympia one pathetic glance, and, without a word, hastened from the room. In spite of a great many adroit efforts, Vincent could get no further speech with Olympia alone that night. Early in the morning he was driven, with Mrs. Sprague and Jack to the station. Olympia sent down excuses and adieus, al- leging some not incredible ailing of the sort that is always gallantly at the disposal of damsels not minded to do things people expect. Presently, when the lorn lover had been gone three days, a letter came from Washington to Olympia, and, though it was handed to her by her mother, the maiden made no proffer to confide its contents to the naturally curious par- ent. But we, who can look over the reader's shoulder, need not be kept in the dark. "Dear Olympia" (the letter said), "it was hard to leave without a last word. All the way here I have been think- ing of our little talk if that can be called a talk where one side has lost his senses and the other is trifling or mystify- ing. I told you that I loved you. I thrill even yet with the joy of that. You are so wayward and capricious, so coy, that I began to fear that I never could get your ear long enough to tell you what I felt you must have long known. You didn't say that you loved me ; but, dear Olympia, neither did you say that you did not. The rose has fallen on the hem of your robe. When its fragrance steals into your senses, you will stoop and put the blossom in your bosom. It is the war that divides us, you say. It will soon pass. And who knows what may happen to make you glad that, since there must be strife, I am one of the enemy rather than a stranger? I feel that we shall be brought together in danger, when it may be my happiness to serve you or yours. But, even if I am not so favored, I shall still ask your love. You know our Southern ways. Whom I love my mother loves. But my mother and sister Rosa have loved you long and dearly. They have known you as long as I have, and when you con- sent to come to us you will take no stranger's place in the 26 THE IRON GAME. heart and home of the family. Remember the motto you gave me. You are a woman, therefore tender ; I am daring, Heaven knows, in aspiring to such a reward as your love. But I dare to love you ; if you cast that love from you, love will lose its tenderness, bravery its daring. One of the high mountains of hope whereon I sun my fainting soul is the knowledge that you love no one else. I won't say that you should in love hold to the rule ' first come first served,' but I do say, ' first dare, first win.' And when you reflect on what you said about the accident of war separating us, just put Jack in my place. What would you think of a Southern girl who should refuse him because he fought on the side of his family and his State ? What is the old line ? ' I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.' I'm sure I couldn't ask your love if there were not honor in my own. The war will be over and forgotten in six months, but you and I are young; we have long years before us. The right will win in the contest, and, right or wrong, I am yours, and only yours, while there are life in my body and hope in my soul. VINCENT." In a little glow of what was plainly not displeasure, the young woman " filed " this " writ of pre-emption," as Jack afterward called it, in careful hiding, and resumed meditation of the writer. It could not now be answered, for letters be tween the lines were subject to censorship, and Olympia per- haps shrank from adding to her lover's misery by exposing his rejection to the unfeeling eyes of the postal agents. There was pity in the resolve as well as prudence. Had Vincent been able to read the workings of the lady's mind, he would have donned his rebel gray with more buoyant joy that day in Richmond. Another ally of the absent came in the course of the day. Miss Boone, the daughter of the opulent contractor and chief local magnate, called to plan work for the soldiers. Vincent's name being mentioned. Miss Boone said, in the apparent effusion of girlish iuti niacy: "I like Mr. Atterbury very much. He is a charming MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE. 27 fellow. But, for your family's sake, I am glad he is away from this house." At Olympia's surprised start she nodded as if to emphasize this, continuing: "Yes, and for good reasons. You know our house is the high court of aboli- tionism ? Well, papa's cronies have made Mr. Atterbury's visit cause of suspicion." " Suspicion? What do you mean? " Miss Boone was paling and blushing painfully. " Dea" Olympia, I hate to say it; but you should know it. You will hear it elsewhere. Cruel things like this always come out. You know that feeling has been very bitter here since the dreadful attack on the Massachusetts soldiers in Balti- more ? Radicals make no distinction between Democrats and rebels, and I'm to say it but Mr. Atterbury is charged with being a spy here and and your family, being Demo- crats, are thought to sympathize with the rebels. Of course, your friends know better. I and many more know that the Atterburys and Spragues have been intimate for thirty years. But in war-time people seem to lose their senses and change their opinions like lake breezes ; prejudices grow like gourds, and the people who do least and talk loudest make public sentiment." " What an outrageous state of things ! " Olympia cried, hotly. "Our family sympathize with traitors indeed ! Why, it was my father who, in the Senate, upheld Jackson when he stamped out South Carolina in its rebellion. Oh! it is monstrous, such a calumny. Why, just think of it! The only man in the family is a private soldier, when he might have been high in rank, with such influences as we could bring to bear. O Kate! it almost makes one pray for a defeat to punish such ingrates ! " " Yes ; but for Heaven's sake don't let any one hear you say such a thing for your brother's sake ! He is already the victim of the feeling I have spoken about. He was to have had the captaincy of the first one hundred men he raised. But the Governor has been made to change the usual rule, and the colonel is to appoint the officers." " And Jack isn't to have a commission ? " 28 THE IRON GAME. " No, not now ; only men of the war party are to be made officers." " Good heavens ! Nobody could be more eager for the war than Jack. It is his passion. His delight in it shocks my mother, who hates war. What stronger evidence of sympathy for the cause could he show than joining the army before finishing college? " " But he is a Democrat and and only Republicans are to be trusted at first." Miss Boone blushed as she stam- mered this, for it was her own father, in his function as chair- man of the war committee, who had insisted upon this dis- crimination. , Worse still but this Kate did not mention it was Boone's own work that kept Jack from his expected epaulets. There had long been a feud between Boone and the late Senator Sprague, and Olympia conjectured most of what the daughter reserved. "Your brother has done wonders, everybody says; he has the finest fellows in the township, and he ought to be colonel, at least,'' Miss Boone said, rising to go. " Oh, I have no fear that he will not win his way," Olym- pia replied, cheerfully. " The brave in battle are captains, no matter what rank they hold." The odious partisanship and ready calumny of her own compatriots gave a strange bent to her mind in dealing with another problem. Vincent, too, had suffered from the wretched tattle of his family's enemies. After all, might he not be right? Might the war not be a mere game of havoc played by the base and unscrupulous? Country, right or wrong, had been her family watchword since her ancestor flew to fight the British invaders. It was Jack's watchword, too, and his conduct in battle should put these wretches to shame. She thought more kindly of the rebel in this vengeful mood, and straightway ran up-stairs, where, sitting by the open window and lulled by the piping of the robins, she took the letter from its pretty covert, read it again with heightened color, and, smiling rosily at the face she saw in the mirror, raised it to her lips and sighed softly. When a whole people have but one thought in mind MALBROOK S'EX VA-T-EN GUERRE. 29 that thought becomes mania. Acredale had but this one thought, " Beat rebellion and punish rebels." " On to Rich- mond ! " was the cry, and forming ranks to go there the busi- ness that everybody took in hand. These had been great days to Jack. He began to feel something of the burden that a feudal chief must have borne at the summoning of the clans. So soon as it spread in the country-side that " young Sprague had 'listed," all the " ageable " sons of the soil were fired with a burning zeal to take up arms and beat him company. Boys from sixteen to twenty these were fo^ the most part, and there was bitter grumbling when Jack firmly refused to take the names of any under twenty. Some he solaced with a gun, a pistol, or such object as he knew was dear to the country boy's heart. They returned to the relieved hearthstone loud in Jack's praise, having his promise to enlist them when they were twenty, if the war lasted so long; and if the wise smiled at this, wasn't it well known that the great army now gathering was to set out at latest by the 4th of July ? And didn't everybody know that it was going to march direct to Richmond ? There were trying scenes too, in the role Jack had assumed so gayly. He began to see that war had ministers of pain and sorrow hardly less cruel than those dealing death and wounds. Tearful parents came to him day by day to beg his help in restoring sons who had fled to the wars. Others came to warn him that if their boys applied to him he must refuse them, as they were under age. In this list the Perley sisters, Dick's three maiden aunts, came on a respectful embassy to implore Jack to discourage their nephew, who had quite deserted school and gave all his time to drilling with the "college squad." Jack pledged himself that he would hand Dick over to the justice of the peace, to be detained at the house of refuge, if he didn't give up his evil designs. But, when that young aspirant ap- peared, so soon as his aunts had gone, and reminded Jack of years of intimate companionship in dare-deviltry, the elder saw that his own safety would be in flight, and that night, his company was removed to Warchester. There in the 30 THE IRON GAME. great camp, surrounded by sentinels, his Acredale cro- nies were shut out, and Jack began in earnest his soldier CHAPTER IV. GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE. THE shifting of Jack's company to the regimental camp in Warchester left a broad gap in the lines of the social life of Acredale. Jack's going alone, to say nothing of the others, would have eclipsed the gayety of many home groups besides his own, in which the Sprague primacy in a social sense was acknowledged. Since the influx of the new-made rich, under the stimulus of the -war and Acredale's advan- tages as a resort, there were a good many who disputed the Sprague leadership tacitly conceded rather than asserted. Chief of the dissidents was Elisha Boone, who, by virtue of longer tenure, vast wealth, and political precedence, divided not unequally the homage paid the patrician family. Boone was fond of speaking of himself as a " self-made man," and the satirical were not slow to add that he had no other wor- ship than his "creator." This was a gibe made rather for the antithesis than its accuracy, for even Boone's enemies owned that he was a good neighbor, and, where his preju- dices were not in question, a man with few distinctly re- pellent traits. He delighted in showing his affluence not always in good taste. He filled his fine house with bizarre crowds, and made no stint to his friends who needed his purse or his influence. He had in the early days when he came to Acredale aspired to political leadership in the Demo- cratic party. But Senator Sprague was too firmly enshrined in the loy- alty of the district to be overcome by the parvenu's manoeu- vres or his money. His ambition in time turned to rancor as he marked the patrician's disdainful disregard of his GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE. 31 (Boone's) efforts to supplant him. Hatred of the Spragues became something like a passion in Boone. Sarcasms and disparagement leveled at his social and political pretensions he attributed to the Senator and his family. All sorts of slurs and gossip were reported to him by busy bodies, until it became a settled purpose with Boone to make the Sprague family feel heavy heart-burnings for the sum of the affronts he had endured. It was to them he attributed the whis- pered gibes about his illiteracy; his shady business meth- ods ; the awful story of his handiwork in the ruin of Eich- ard Perley, the spendthrift brother of the Misses Perley. Once, too, when he had so well manipulated the district delegates that he was sure of nomination in the convention, Senator Sprague had hurried home from Washington and defeated him just as the prize was in his grasp. The Senator made a speech to the delegates, in which he pointedly de- clared that it was men of honor and brains, not men of money, that should be chosen to make the laws. " The time will come, Senator, that you'll be sorry for this hour's work," Boone said, joining Sprague at the door as he was leaving the hall. " How's that ? " the other asked, with just the shade- of superciliousness in the tone admired in the Senate for suav- ity. " I hope I am always sorry when I do wrong, in speech or act; I teach my children to be." " Well, if you think it right to run the party for a few lordly idlers too proud to mix with the people men who think they are better born and better bred than the rest of us I don't want to have anything more to do with it. I will go elsewhere." " That's your privilege, sir. The Whigs have plenty of room for self-made men. Though I do think you are tak- ing too personal a view of to-day's contest, your defeat was purely a matter of duty. Moore, whom we have chosen, was a poor Irish settler here before you came. He was promised the nomination two years ago." With a lofty bow the Senator turned and' stalked in another direction as if he did not care for the other's further company. Even 3 32 THE IRON GAME. this small and wholly unintended affront worked in the poor, misjudging victim of morbid self-esteem, as a cinder in the eye will torture and Wind the sufferer to all the land- scape. Boone mingled no more with the Democrats. He threw himself with the fervor of the convert into the radi- cal wing of the Whigs, and was brought into close relation with some of the most admired of the band of great men who created the young Republican party. If Douglas, Dickinson, Cass, Van Buren, Seymour, or any eminent Democrat passing through Warchester stopped to break bread with their colleague Sprague in his Acredale retreat, straightway the splendid Sumner, the Ciceronian Phillips, or the Walpole-Seward, or some other of the shining galaxy of agitators, whose light so shone before men that the whole land was presently brought out of darkness, met at Boone's table to maintain the balance in distinction. It was Boone's liberal purse that paid the expenses of the memorable campaign in the Warchester district, wherein the Democrats were first shaken in their hold. It was his money that finally secured the seat in Congress for Oswald, who was his tenant and debtor. It was therefore no surprise when Oswald who had been greatly aided in business af- fairs by Senator Sprague passed over the prior claims of his old patron's son, and gave the cadetship to Wesley Boone, the son of his new liege. It was looked upon as another step in the ladder of gratitude when Wesley carried off the captaincy in the Acredale company, though every- body knew that young Boone was not in any way so well fitted for the " straps " as Jack. When one day an item ap- peared in the local paper to the effect that President Lincoln had shown the ' : sagacity for which he was so well known, in honoring our distinguished townsman, Elisha Boone, Esq., with the appointment of ambassador to Russia," everybody thought the statement only natural. There were many congratulations. But when, having declined this splen- did proffer, the authorities pressed the place of " Assistant Secretary of the Treasury " upon their townsman, the whole village awoke to the fact that all its greatness had GUELPH AND GHIBELLIXE. 33 not gone when Senator Sprague was gathered to his fa- thers. The event was potent as the cross Constantino saw, or dreamed he saw, in the sky, in the conversion of party workers to the new Administration. Everybody looked for- ward to an eminent future for the potent partisan and mill- ionaire, the first of that now not uncommon hierarchy that replace the feudal barons in modern social forces. Had he listened to the eager urging of Kate, his daughter and prime minister, Boone would have accepted the foreign mis- sion ; but he stubbornly refused to listen to her in this. Kate Boone was like her father only hi strong will, vehement purpose, and a certain humorous independence that made her a great delight among even the anti-Boone partisans in both Acredale and Warchester. Since the death of her mother, Kate had been head of her father's household an imperious, capricious, kind-hearted tyrant, who ruled mostly by jokes and persuasions of the gentler sort. It was her father's one lament that Kate was not " the boy of the family, for she had more of the stuff that makes the man in her little finger than Wes had in his whole body." She kept him in a perpetual unrest of delight and dismay. She es- poused none of his piques or prejudices; she was as apt to bring people he disliked to his dinner-table as those he liked. She was forever making him forgive wrongs, or what he fancied to be wrongs, and causing him seem at fault in all his squabbles, so that he was often heard to say, when things went as he didn't want them : " I don't know whether I am to blame or the other fellow until Kate hears the story." His illiteracy and lack of polish were the secret grief of the rich man's life. Kate was quick in detecting this. Much of it she saw was due to the shyness that unschooled men feel in the presence of college men, or those who have been trained. On returning from her seminary life, the young girl set about remedying the single break in her father's per- fections. She was far too clever to let him know her ambi- tious purpose. With a patience almost maternal and an 34: THE IRON GAME. exquisite adroitness, she interested him in her own reading-, which was comprehensive, if not very well ordered. But she won the main point. During the long winter evenings her father found no pleasure like that Kate had always ready for him in the cheery library. He was soon amazed at his keen interest in the world of mind unrolled to his under- standing; more than all, he retained with the receptivity of a boy all that was read to him. Kate made believe that she needed his help in reviewing her own studies, and so carried him through all she had gone over in the seminary classes. Boone began presently to see that education is not the result of mere attendance in schools and the parroting of the classics in a few semesters in college. Without suspecting it, his varied business enterprises and his wide experience of men had grounded him as well in the ordinary forms of knowledge as nine in ten college men attain. " Education, after all, papa, is like a trade. A man may be able to handle all the tools and not know their names. Now, you are a well-informed man, but, because you didn't know logic, grammar, scientific terms, and the like, you thought yourself ignorant" In the new confidence in himself he was surprised at his own ability in launching a subject in the presence of his eminent friends when especially Kate was on hand to sup- port the conversation. She got him not only to buy fine pictures, as most rich men do, but she made him see wherein their value lay, so that when artists and amateurs came to admire his treasures, he could talk to them without gross solecisms. " I'm not a liberal education to you, papa, as Steele said of the Duchess of Devonshire. That implies too much, but I am an index. You can find out what you need to know by keeping track of my ignorance." Elisha Boone's domestic circle was a terrnagancy as Kate often told his guests tempered by wit and good- humor. He was prouder of his daughter than of his self- made rank or his revered million. In moments of expan- sive good-nature he invited business or political associates to GUELPH AXD GHIBELLINE. 35 " Acre Villa," as his place was called, to enjoy the surprise Kate's graces wrought in the guests. But these were not always times of delight to the doting parent. Elate was a shrewd judge of the amenities ; and if the personages who came, at the father's bidding, gave the least sign of a not unnatural surprise to find a girl so well bred and self-con- tained in the daughter of such a man as Boone, she became very frigid and left the father to do the honors of the even- ing visit. No entreaty could move her to reappear on the scene. In time, the prodigal papa was careful to submit a list of the names of his proposed guests, as chamberlains give royalty a descriptive list of those to be bidden to court. Kate was on terms that, if not cordial, were not con- strained, with the Spragues. She had gone to the same seminary with Olympia, had danced with Jack, and, in the cadetship affair, had plainly given her opinion that her brother Wesley, having no taste or fitness for military life, Jack, who had, should have the prize. But two motives en-^ tered into the father's determination : one was to annoy and humiliate the Spragues ; the other, the sleepless craving of the parvenu to get for his son what had not been his, in spite of all the adulation paid him the conceded equality of social condition. The army was then, as I believe it is considered now, the surest sign of higher caste in a democracy. Wes- ley, by the mere right to epaulets, would be of the acknowl- edged gentility. Nobody could sneer at him ; no doors could be opened grudgingly when he called. He would, in virtue of his West Point insignia, be a knighted member of the blood royal of the republic. Some of this mysterious unc- tion would distill itself into the unconsecrated ichor of the rest of the family, and Kate, as well as himself, would be part of the patrician caste. The daughter looked upon all this good-humoredly ; she shared none of her father's mor- bid delusions on the subject. She rallied the cadet a good deal on his mission. When Wesley, after the June exami- nations, which he passed by the narrowest squeeze 'twas said by outside influence came home to display his cadet 36 THE IRON GAME. buttons and his neat gray uniform in Acredale, Kate ban- tered the complacent young warrior jocosely. " We shall all have to live up to your shoulder-straps and brass buttons after this, Wesley," she cried, as the proud young dandy strutted over the arabesques of the li- brary, where the delighted papa marched him, the better to survey the boy's splendor. "And think of the fate that awaits you if, in the esteem of Acredale, you should turn out less than a Napoleon." " Be serious, Elate, and don't tease the boy. Wesley knows what's expected of him ; he has an opportunity to show what is in his stock. Thank God, men in the North can now coming would weigh upon him every minute until he was in some sort relieved of even passive complicity. He would feel that the kind-hearted " Pearls," as the aunts were often called, would look upon him as having led the truants into the army. But Grandison's interposition had shifted from him a weighty anxiety. The boys would not be left friend- less and irresponsible in the turbulent streets of Washing- ton. Nor would they, as orderlies, be in continuous or in- extricable danger in battle for whereas the soldier in the line must keep in ranks even when not in actual battle, with, the enemy's missiles as destructive as in the charge or com- bat, the orderlies may take advantage of the inequalities of ground and natural objects. Jack explained something of this to the young Marlboroughs. and was fairly irritated at the crest-fallen look that came into their eager, shining faces when they comprehended that they were not to be with their hero. " But you couldn't be in the company in any event. You look more like rebels than soldiers, with your gray jackets and trousers " for the boys still wore their Acredale uni- form, an imitation of the West Point cadet's costume. " We. shall be on the march in a few minutes, and there is only >ne of two things to be done. Remain here in the ' unas- signed ' camp, where you may be transferred into any regi- 5 64 THE IRON GAME. ment in the service that needs recruits; or go, as Colonel Grandison has very kindly consented to have you, as order- lies or clerks." The very possibility of being sent into some unknown regiment was a terror so great that the other alternative be- came less odious to the boys, and they trotted after Jack, as he stalked moody and distracted to Major Mike McGoyle's tent, now the only habitable spot left where a few hours be- fore a symmetrical little city had stood. "And so ye want to be solgers, me foine b'yes ? Well, well, 'tis fitter for yer mothers' knees ye are, with yer rosy cheeks and curling locks. It's a poor place here for yer bright oies and soft hands, me lads ; but I'm not the wan to throw the dish after th' milk when it's spilt ! " He stroked the bared heads of the blushing lads, and, turn- ing to their unhappy sponsor, he added with official brevity : *' I will put Twiggs's son at me papers in the adjutant's office. Young Pearley can remain with your company until I make out a detail for him." It was impossible for Jack to sustain the rdle of frowning displeasure as Dick skipped back with him to the company. He remembered his own delight three months before, even with the haunting thoughts of his mothers reproaches to dampen his ardor, and he was soon dazzling the neophyte with the wonders that were just about to begin. It was the afternoon of the 16th of July, and the hill- sides, which the day before were covered with tents as far as the eye could see on every hand, were now blue with masses of men, while other masses had been passing on the red highways since early morning, taking the direction of the Potomac bridges. AN ARMY WITH BANNERS. 65 CHAPTER VIII. AN ARMY WITH BANNERS. IT has always seemed to me that the life, the routine, the many small haps in the daily function of a soldier, which in sum made up to him all that there was in the devoir of death, ought to be read with interest by the millions whose kin were part of the civil war, as well as by those who knew of it only as we know Napoleon's wars or Washington's. For my part, I would find a livelier pleasure in the diary of a common soldier, in any of the great wars, than I do in the confusing pamphlets, bound in volumes called history. I like to read of war as our Uncle Toby related it. I like to know what two observing eyes saw and the feelings that sometimes made the timidest heroes sometimes cravens. For a month yes, months the burden of the press, the prayers of the North, had been, " On to Richmond ! " Jack, through Colonel Grandison, knew that General McDowell and tha commander-in-chief , the venerable soldier Scott, had pleaded and protested against a move until the new levies under the three-months' call could be drilled and disciplined. But on the Fourth of July Congress had assembled, and the raw statesmen with an eye to future elections took up the public clamor. They gave the Cabinet, the President, no peace until General Scott and McDowell had given way and promised the pending movement. " Our soldiers are so green that I shall move with fear," McDowell said to the President. " Well, they " (meaning the rebels) " are green too, and one greenness will offset the other," Lincoln responded with kindly malice. It was useless to argue further ; useless to point out that the rebels were not so " green," for the young men of ihe semi - aristocratic society of the South were trained to arms, whereas it was a mark of lawlessness and vulgarity to carry arms in the Puritan ranks of the North. Something of the unreadiness of the army, every reflecting soldier in the ranks comprehended, when he saw within 6 THE IRON GAME. the precincts of his own brigades the hap-hazard conduct of the quartermaster's and staff departments. Some regi- ments had raw flour dealt them for rations and no bake- ovens to turn it into bread ; some regiments had abundance of bread, but no coffee or meat rations. As to vegetables beans, or anything of the sort if the pockets of the soldiers had not been well supplied from home, the army that set out for Manassas would have been eaten with scurvy and the skin diseases that come from unseasoned food. Now, at the very moment the legions were stripped for the march, many of them were without proper ammunition. Various arms were in use, and the same cartridge did not fit them all. Eager groups could be seen all through the brigades filing down the leaden end of the cartridge to make their weapons effective, until a proper supply could be obtained. This was promised at Fairfax Station, or Centreville, where the army's supplies were to be sent. So, in spite of the high hopes and feverish unrest for the forward movement, there was a good deal of sober foreboding among the men, who held to the American right to criticise as the Briton main- tains his right to grumble. For the soldier in camp or on the march is as garrulous as a tea gossip, and no problem in war or statecraft is too complex or sacred for him to attempt the solution. Of the thirty thousand men leaving the banks of the Potomac that 16th of July there were, at a low esti- mate, ten thousand who believed themselves as fitted to command as the chieftains who led them. By two o'clock the Caribees were in the line that had been passing city-ward since daylight. The sun had baked the sticky clay into brick-like hardness, and the hours of trampling, the tread of heavy teams, and the still heavier ar- tillery, had filled the air with an opaque atmosphere of red- dish powder, through which the masses passed in almost spectral vagueness. The city crowds, usually alert, when great masses of men moved, were discouraged by heat and dust, and the streets were quite given over to the military. Eager as Jack and his friends were to note the impression the march made upon the civilians, most of whom were AN ARMY WITH BANNERS. (J? thought to be secretly in sympathy with the rebellion, it was impossible to even catch sight of any but soldiers. Pennsyl- vania Avenue, when they reached it, was a billowy channel of impalpable powder. But at the Long Bridge the breeze from the wide channel of the river cleared the clouds of dust, and the men, catching glimpses of each other, broke into jocose banter. On the bridge they looked eagerly down the river, where the low roofs of Alexandria were visible, and upward on the Virginia shore where the gleaming walls of Arling- ton recalled to Jack far different times and scenes. " Now we're in Jeff Davis's land," Barney called out from one of the rear files, as the company reached midway in the bridge. " Not by a long shot, " Nick Marsh cried. " Davis's land begins and ends within cannon-shot of himself. He is like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen he has to beg his neighbor's permission to hold battalion drill." " He isn't so polite as the duke ; he takes it without ask- ing," Barney retorts. " But now we are on the ' sacred soil,' " Jack cries, as the company debouched from the bridge up the steep, narrow road that seemed to be taking them to Arlington. In spite of the burning heat and the exhaustion of the three hours' march, the scene was, or rather the imagination of the men, invested each step with a sort of awe. They were at last in the enemy's territory. It had been held by the Union forces, only by dint of large numbers and strong fortifications. There wasn't a man in the company that didn't resent the fact, constantly obtruding itself on the ranks as they marched eagerly onward by every knoll, every bush in the landscape, that Union soldiers had been there before them ! that their devouring eyes were not the first to mark these historic spots. Tired as they were and burdensome as the heavy knap- sacks and still heavier ammunition had become, they heard an aide give the order to bivouac with chagrin ! They so longed to put undebatable ground behind them and really be where the distant coppice might be a curtain to the ene- 68 THE IROX GAilE. my! The Caribees marked with indignant surprise that, when they had turned into a field about seven o'clock, the long line following them pushed onward until far into the night, and they envied the contiguity this would give the lucky laggards to first see and engage the enemy ! But they turned-to very merrily, in this first night of real soldiering. They were " in the field." All the parade part of military life was now relaxed. The hot little dress coats were left behind ; there was no display. Even guard-mount was re- duced to the simplest possible form. With one impulse all the men that is, all who had been alert enough to provide pen and paper bestowed themselves about the candles allotted each group, and began letters u home," dated magniloquently " Headquarters in the Field. Tyler's Division, Sherman's Brigade, 16th July, 1861." The imperial impulse manifested itself in these curt epistles. I can't resist giving Jack's : " DEAR MOTHER : How I wish you and Polly could see us now ! We are really on the march at last. The battle can't be far off. We are not many miles from the enemy, and, if he stands, what glorious news you will hear very soon ! I wish you could have seen us to-day. Colonel Sherman, who is the sternest-looking man I ever saw, a regular army offi- cer, once a professor, told the major you know McGoyle is commanding us now he is a brick Sherman told him that the Caribees did as good marching as the regulars, who came behind us. Dear old Mick, with his brogue and his blarney, has won every heart in the regiment, and you may be sure we shall see the whites of the enemy's eyes under him. which we never should have done under that odious Hessian, Os- wald in hospital now, thank Heaven though some time, when I tell you the story, you will see that in this, as in most other things, Heaven helps those who help themselves. Taps will sound in five minutes, and I can only add that I am in good health, glorious spirits, and unshaken confidence that we shall return to Acredale before your longing to see your son overcomes your love of glory. We shall return AN ARMY WITH BANNERS. 69 victors, if not heroes at least I know that you and Polly will believe this of your affectionate and dutiful son "JACK." Barney read one or two phrases of his composition to the indulgent ear of Jack and the poet, over which they laughed a good deal. " We are," he said, " before the enemy. I feel as our great ancestor, Baron Moore, felt at Fontenoy when the Sassenachs were over against the French lines as if all the blood in Munster was in my veins and I wanted to spill it on the villains ferninst us." The poet declined to quote from his epistle, and the three friends sat in the dim light until midnight, wondering over what the morrow had in store. Dick Perley listened in awe to Jack's wonderful ratiocinations on what was to come se- cretly believing him much more learned in war than this General McDowell who was commanding the army. The first bugle sounded at three in the morning in the Caribees' camp, and when the coffee had been hastily dispatched, the men began to understand the cause of their being shunted into the field so early the evening before while the rear of the column marched ahead of them. The Caribees passed a mile or more of encampments, the men not yet aroused, and when at daylight the whole body was in motion they were in advance, with nothing before them but a few hundred cavalry. A delirious expectation, a rapturous sense of holding the post of danger, kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipa- tion that the hours passed like minutes. The dusty roads, the intolerable thirst, and the nauseous, tepid water, the blis- tered feet, the abraded hips, where the cartridge-box began to wear the flesh all these woes of the march were ignored in the one impulse to see the ground ahead, to note the first sight of the enemy. It was not until four o'clock in the aft- ernoon that the column was halted, and two companies, K and H, were marched out of the column and formed in pla- toons across the line of march, that the regiment learned with mortification that hitherto the route had been inside 70 THE IRON GAME. the Union lines ! They soon saw the difference in the tactics of the march. The company was spread out in groups of four; these again were separated by a few yards, and in this order, sweeping like a drag-net, they advanced over the dry fields, through the clustering pines or into cultivated acres, and through great farm-yards. Back of them the long column came, slowly winding over the sandy highway which curved through the undu- lating land. Here and there the skirmishers for that was the office the two companies were now filling came upon signs of picket-posts ; and once, as Jack hurried beyond his group to the thicket, near a wretched cabin, a horse and rider were visible tearing through the foliage of a winding lane. He drew up his musket in prompt recognition of his duty, but he saw with mortification that the horse and rider con- tinued unharmed. Other shots from the skirmish-line fol- lowed, but Jack's rebel was the only enemy seen, when, in the early dusk, an orderly from the main column brought the command to set pickets and bivouac for the night. Jack would have written with better grounds for his solemnity if he had waited until this evening; but now there was no chance. The companies were the extreme advance of the army ; nothing between them and the enemy but detached pickets of cavalry, at long distances apart, to fly back with the re- port of the least signs made by the rebels. These meager groups were forbidden fires, or any evidence of their pres- ence that might guide hostile movement, and the infantry outposts felt that they were really the guardians of the sleep- ing thousands a mile or so behind them. No one minded the cold water and hard bread which for the first time formed the company's fare that night. Like the cavalry, fire was forbidden them. They formed little groups in the rear of the outer line of pickets, discussing with animation even levity the likelihood of an engagement the next day. It was the general opinion that if Beauregard meant to fight he would have made a stand at some of the excel- lent points of vantage that had been encountered in the AN ARMY WITH BANNERS. 71 day's march. Jack smiled wisely over these amateur guesses, and quite abashed the rest when he said : ' Beauregard is no fool. His army is massed near the point that he is guarding Manassas Junction. You seem to think that war is a game of chance, armies fighting just where they happen to meet each other. Not at all. Our ' business is to march to Richmond ; Beauregard's business is to prevent us. To do this he must, first of all, keep his lines * of supply safe. An army without that is like a ship at sea without food the more of a crew, the worse the situation. Of course, Beauregard had his skirmishers spread out in front of us, but, as there is no use in killing until some end is to be gained, they have got out of our way. If the spies that are in our ranks should send information that promised to give the rebels a chance to get at a big body of our men, before the whole army came up, you'd see a change of things very quick. We've got fifty thousand men, or thereabout" (Jack was wrong; there were but thirty thousand). " Now, these men are stretched back of us to Washington, fifteen miles or more, because the artillery must be guarded, and in- fantry only can do that. Now. suppose Beauregard finds that there is a gap somewhere between the forces stretching back, and he happens to have ten or fifteen thousand men handy ? Why, he just swoops down upon us, and, if we can't defend ourselves until the rest of the army comes up, he has won what is called a tactical victory, and endangered our strategy." " Goodness, Jack, you ought to have been commander-in- chief ! You talk war like a book ! " Barney cried, in mock admiration. The war-talk went on late into the night, for the com- pany, detached from camp, was not obliged to follow the signals of the bugles that came in melodious echoes over the fragrant fields. It was a thrilling sight as the lone watch- ers peered backward. The June fields for miles were dotted with blazing spires, as if the earth had opened to pour out columns of flame, guiding the wanderers on their trying way. The sleep of the night was desultory and fitful, ex- citement stimulating everybody to wakefulness. 72 THE IRON GAME. CHAPTEE IX. "THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN l.TKV. THE WOLF ON THE FOLD." THE next morning the march was resumed by daylight, the two companies remaining on the skirmish-line. The country gradually became more rugged as the route brought them near Centreville. There were no hills a bare but not bleak champaign, mostly without houses or farms, as the. North knows them. Sluggish brooks became more frequent, but none that were not easily fordable. There were no landmarks to hold the mind to the scene, nor, in case of bat- tle, give the strategists points of vantage for the iron game. About noon, the detached groups stalking a little negli- gently now over the tedious plains, were startled by the un- expected. On the green slope of a hill, a mile or more ahead, a score of little puffs of white smoke were seen, then a sharp report, and, in some places near by, the ground was broken as if by a thrust of a spear, and little scraps of clay scattered over the greensward. Then the bugle sounded a halt. A few minutes later the horsemen spread in a chain across the line of march, rode swiftly to a common center, formed in a solid group, turned to the rear and rode back of the skirmishers to the main body. Company K watched them as they galloped back, and as they reached the group at the head of the long line, a half-mile or so distant, a body of men hastened for- ward laden with stretchers and hospital appliances. Ah ! at last ! It is now real war. The bugle sounds Forward ! and with an elastic spring the groups of four push dauntlessly ahead. Their eyes are fixed on the brow of the hill, sepa- rated from them by a narrow depression. The whole line perhaps three miles wide but, of course, not at all regular, conforming largely to the difficulties en- countered, moves down the sloping bank on a run. Before they reach the bottom they are an excellent target, and for the first time that most blood curdling of sounds the half- singing, half -hissing z-z-z-ip of the minie-ball numbs the "THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF." 73 ardor of the bravest. It is such a malignant, direct, devilish admonition of murder ; it comes so unexpectedly, no matter how well you are prepared, that Achilles himself would feel a spasm of fear. And when it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter, that there seems some- thing animate, demoniac in it. The volley, as I said, came as the men were hurried down the hill by their own momen- tum and by the sharp fall in the ground. The balls passed too high or too low, but they impressed the fact on enthusi- asts, who had longed for battle, that one might die for one's country and not die gloriously. It seemed such an ignoble, such a dastardly, outrageous thing, that death could come to them from unseen hands, for as yet they had not seen a soul. But now they are at the foot of the hill though it is not correct to so call it, for it was a long, winding valley, through which ran a dancing streamlet, very welcome to the thirsty warriors when they had succeeded in breaking through the vicious natural chevaux de frise of blackberry-briers and nettles. But now there wasn't much time to slake thirst. The bullets had begun to come regularly; and suddenly, as Jack conducted his squad across the stream, he was startled by the exclamation, uttered rather in reverence, it seemed to him, than surprise or pain : " My God, I'm hit ! " Yes, a fair-haired lad one of his class tottered a second in a limp, helpless way, and fell headlong, pitching into the little stream. Jack ran and lifted him out ; but even before the hospital corps came the boy was dead. The bullet had gone quite through his heart. However, now the first numbing terror of the bullet was changed to a sort of revengeful delight. Relinquishing any return fire for a moment, the company, with a great shout, that sounded all along its front, dashed up the hill, through the scrub-oak at the brow, and then they could see the enemy slowly retiring, a chain of them a mile or more wide. While one of the rebel ranks fired the other knelt, or lay flat upon the ground loading, where there were no natural obstacles to take shelter behind. A vengeful shout ran along the Union lines. 74 THE IROX GAME. " Capture them don't fire ! " and with one impulse the groups fled forward so swiftly that the enemy, believing the rush only momentary, delayed too long, and in two minutes the Union line was pell-mell among them. " Surrender ! " Jack shouted to the squad just ahead of him " surrender, or we'll blow your heads off ! " and along the line for some distance to his left and right he could hear his own exultant demand echoed. There was nothing to do for the rebels, who had neglected to keep their enemies at the proper distance, but throw up their hands. Jack's squad sent back twenty-three prisoners to Major Mike, who took them in proud triumph to General Tyler, riding with the head of the column, now that the tenacity of the rebel skir- mishers made it seem probable that there would be serious work. But though the firing kept up as the Union forces advanced, no obstacle more serious than the thin lines of the skirmishers revealed itself. At dusk the bugles, moving with the captains in the rear, sounded the rally, and then the scattered groups came to- gether in company. They were to bivouac on the spot to await their regiment when it arrived. Meanwhile, to the bitter discontent of the Caribee companies, their post of honor was taken by new troops, and they knew that next day they would march in line. They had so enjoyed the glory of the first volleys, the first deaths, and the first pris- soners, that, not remembering military procedure, they re- sented the change as an aspersion upon their valor. When the regiment came up, however, they forgot their mortification in the eager questioning and envious joculari- ties of the rest. Companies K and H were so beset that they forgot to boil their coffee, and would have gone thirsty to their dewy beds, if the other companies' cooks had not shared then* rations with the gossiping heroes. As darkness fell, the sky was reddened for miles with pillars of fire, and for a time the Caribees thought it was the enemy. But Tom Twigg, who had been with the major at headquarters, ex- plained to Jack that the army was divided into three bodies of about ten thousand men each, and that Tyler's column. "THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF." 75 of which the Caribees were the advance, were the extreme northern body ; that they were now at Vienna, far north of Manassas, where Schenck had been beset a month before in his never-enough-ridiculed reconnaissance by train ; that in the morning they were to push on to Fairfax Court-House and thence to Centreville, where the army was to come to- gether for the blow at the rebels. Jack and his friends were a good deal chagrined to learn that they were not as near the enemy as the column to the south of them, whose fires had been mistaken for Beauregard's. Though the levee came to an end at " taps," no one felt sleepy, and the excite- ment banished the pains of fatigue. Major Mike, saunter- ing through the dark lines near midnight, heard the tale still going on in drowsy monotone, but, good-naturedly, made no sign. Though not given the skirmish-line next day the 17th Jack was delighted to find that the Caribees led all the rest. With them rode the commander of the brigade, Colonel Sherman, whom the soldiers thought a very crabbed and "grumpy" sort of a fellow. His red hair bristled straight up and out when he took his slouch hat off, as he did very often, for the heat was intolerable. His eyes had a merry twinkle, however, that won the hearts of the lads as he rode by, scrupulously striking into the fields to save the panting and heavily laden line every extra step he could. Often, in after-days when Sherman had become the Turenne of the armies Jack, who was often heard to brag of his gift of detecting greatness, used to turn very red in the face when he Avas reminded of a saying of his on that hot July day: " That chap is too lean and hungry to have much stomach for a fight ; he looks better fitted for wielding the ferule than the sword. Schoolmaster is written in every line of his face and stamped in his pedagogue manner." The march that day was south by a little west, and about nine o'clock a cool morning breeze lifted the clouds of dust far enough above the horizon to reveal the distant blue of the mountains. The whole line seemed to come to a pause in the enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. '" The Shenandoah," 76 THE IRON GAME. Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore, naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpre- meditated cosmetic. The march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure in the morn- ing, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon when the Cari- bees passed the hamlet, turning sharply to the right. They marched up the deep cut of projected railway, where, for a tune, they were shaded from the sun by the high banks. But, emerging presently on the Warrenton pike, they saw evidences that other columns whether friends or foes they couldn't tell had recently preceded them. Scores of the raw and overworked were breaking down now every hour. The dust and heat were insupportable. Whenever the march came near water, all thought of discipline was for- gotten, and the panting, miner-like hosts broke for the in- viting stream. The officers were powerless to enforce dis- cipline ; when these breaks happened the column was forced to come to a halt until every man had filled his canteen and here is one, among the many trivial causes, that brought about the reverses of McDowell's masterly campaign. A march that ought to have been made in twenty-four hours, or thirty at the utmost, took more than three days ! One of those days saved to the army would have enabled McDowell to finish Beauregard before the ten thousand re-enforcements from the Shenandoah came upon his flank at Bull Run. But we shall see that in proper time, for there is nothing more dramatically timely, or untimely, than this incident in the history of battles, unless it be Bliicher's miraculous appear- ance at Waterloo, when Napoleon supposed that Grouchy was pummeling him twenty miles away. There was no provost guard to spur on the stragglers ; and when, late in the afternoon, the way-worn columns spread themselves on the western slope of the hamlet of Centreville, at least a third of each regiment was far in the rear. Nearly every man had, in the heat and burden of the march, thrown away the provisions in his haversack, and that night ten "THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF." 77 thousand men lay down supperless on the grateful green- sward, happy to rest and sleep. Mother Earth must have ministered to the weary flesh, for at sunrise, when the music of the bugles aroused them, they started up with the alert vivacity of old campaigners. Provisions, that should have been with the column the night before, arrived in the morn- ing. While the reinvigorated ranks were at coffee, there was a great clatter in the rear, and presently a cortege of mounted officers appeared, General McDowell among them. Dick Perley, who was at the brigade headquarters, with Grandison, came to the Caribees presently with great news. The battle was to begin that very day. General Tyler was to go forward to a river called Bull Run, where Beaure- gard was waiting. The whole army was to spread out like a fan and fight him. He had seen the map on the table, and the place couldn't be more than four miles away. Yes, they all looked eagerly to the westward now. The mountains in the distance rolled themselves down into lower and lower ridges, and just about four miles ahead could be seen a range that seemed to melt into a wide plateau fringed deeply with scrub-oak and,clusters of pine. Jack had provided himself with a field-glass. Standing in the middle of the Warren- ton pike, a fine highway, that ran downward as solid as a Roman causeway, for four or five miles, he could see the break made by the Bull Run River, and yes, by the glaive of battle ! he could see the glistening of bayonets now and then, where the screen of woods grew thinner. The general, too, was examining the distant lines, and Jack took it as a good omen that Sherman grew jocose and appeared to be making merry with Tyler, whose face looked troubled, now that the decisive moment seemed at hand. But the day passed, and there was no advance. It was not until late in the evening that the cause became known. The army had been waiting for supplies, ammunition, and what not, that should have been on the field the day before. The Caribees were made frantic, too, by what seemed a battle going on to the south of them, a few miles to the left. The carnp that night was a grand debating society, every man 78 THE IRON GAME. propounding a theory of strategy that would have edified General McDowell, no doubt, if he could have been given a precis of the whole. How such things become known it is difficult to guess, but every man in the columns knew that the general had planned to put forward his thirty thousand men in the form of a half-moon, covering about ten miles from tip to tip. The right or northward horn was to be con- siderably thicker and of more body than the left or south- ern. When the time came this right was to curve in like a hook and cut the ground out from the left wing of the rebel army. This is the homely way these unscientific strategists made the movement known to each other, and it very aptly de- scribes the formulated plan of battle, save that, of course, there were gaps between the forces here and there along this human crescent. Long before daylight Sherman's brigade, with a battery of guns and a squadron of cavalry, set out clue south, leaving the broad Warrenton pike far to their right hand. Such a country as the march led into, no one had ever seen in the North outside of mountain regions deep gullies; wastes of gnarled and aggressive oaks, that tore clothes and flesh in the passage ; sudden hillocks rising coni- cal and inconsequent every few rods ; deep chasms conduct- ing driblets of water ; morasses covered with dark and stagnant pools, where the pioneers fairly picked their steps among squirming reptiles. A stream, sometimes large as a river, crawling languidly through deep fissures in the red shale, protected the left flank of the column. The cavalry was forced to hold the narrow wood- road, as the bush was hardly passable for men. " Hi, Jack ! " Barney cries, catching his breath at the edge of a muddy stream, " what sort of a place must the rebels be in if they let us promenade through such a jungle as this unopposed ? " " I have been thinking of that," Jack replies. And so had every man in the expedition for to think was one of the drawbacks as well as one of the excellences of the soldier in the civil war. But presently, after five hours of labo- "THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF." 79 rious work, a halt is called. The men dive into their hav- ersacks, and even the brackish water in the nearest sedge pond has a flavor of nectar and the invigoration of a tonic. On they tear again, the whole body pushing on in skirmish- like dispersion. Suddenly the land changes. They are climbing a rolling table-land, cleared in some places as though the axe of the settler had been at work. The march is now easier and the picket-lines are strengthened. Then a sharp volley comes, as if from the tree-tops. The march is instantly halted. The mass, moving in a column, is deployed that is, stretched out to cover a mile or more as it moves forward ; the cavalry divides and rides far to right and left, to see that no ambush is set to enable the rebels to sneak in behind the vast human broom, as it sweeps through the solemn aisles of the pines, now rising in vernal columns thicker and thicker. The firing is going on now in scattering volleys, and soon the wounded a dozen or more are carried back through the silent ranks. Joking has now ceased. Lips are compressed ; eyes glitter, and the men avoid meeting each other's gaze. It is the moment of all moments, the most trying to the soldier, when he is ex- pecting every instant a hurricane of bullets, and yet sees no one to avenge his anguish on or forestall in the deadly work. But they have been moving forward all the time, the hurtling bullets sweeping through the leafy covering, now and then thumping into the soft pine with a vicious joyousness, as if to say to each man, " The next is for you, see how well our work is done." For these hideous missiles have a language of their own, as every man that stood fire can tell. The skirmishers are now all drawn in. The solid line must do the work at hand. No one but the commander and his confidants knew the work intended, save that to kill and be killed was the business to be done. The panting lines are on high cleared ground now, and they can see ab- solutely nothing but the irregular depressions that mark the channel of the Bull Eun, as it rushes down to the Eap- pahannock. The line is moving along steadily. Looking to left and right, Jack can see the colors of three regiments, 80 THE IRON GAME. and his eye rests with pleasure on the bright, shining folds of the Caribees' dark-blue State flag spread to the breeze beside the stars of the Union. Are they to cross the river ? Evidently, for the command is still " Forward, bear center, bear right." Then, square in front, where the thick, broad leaves of the oak glitter in the sun, there is seen a cylinder of steamilike smoke, with fiery gleams at the end, a crack- ling explosion of a hogshead of fire-crackers, then a rushing, screaming sound in their very faces, then a few rods behind a ringing, vicious explosion. They are in the very teeth of a masked battery. The Union skirmishers have been with- drawn too soon. The main line will be torn to pieces, for retreat is as fatal as advance. " Lie down, men ! " The command rings out and is echoed along the column. The guns have the range, and the enemy knows the ground. The Caribees are directly in the sweep of the artillery, and the command comes to them by company to crawl backward, exposing themselves as lit- tle as may be. Presently two brass guns are brought up behind the Caribees. The gunners have noted the point of the enemy's fire. The men point the big muzzles with in- trepid equanimity, firing over the prostrate blue coats. For twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour, this is kept up ; then there is silence on the hill beyond. The column rises to its feet, and at the command, " Forward ! " they start with a rush and a cheer. Five hundred yards onward, and a solid mass of gray coats confront them. A volley is fired and returned ; the exulting Caribees, with two lines behind them, give a loud cheer and, in an instant, the gray mass has disappeared, as if the earth had opened. The skirmish -line, advancing now, picks up a half-dozen or more wounded rebels, besides two or three who had become confused in the hasty retreat and run toward the " Yankees " instead of their own line. Jack's comrade held this conversation with one of the pris- oners : " I say, reb, what place is this ? " "Mitchell's Ford." u Much of your army here ? " "THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF." 81 " 'Nuff to lick you uns out of your boots, I reckon."