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The Guns of Bull Run: A Story of the Civil War's Eve

by Joseph A. Altsheler · English · Gutenberg #3653 · 523,362 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Guns of Bull Run: A Story of the Civil War's Eve

Author: Joseph A. Altsheler


        
Release date: January 1, 2003 [eBook #3653]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Ken Reeder.  HTML version by Al Haines.


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THE GUNS OF BULL RUN

A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAR'S EVE


by

JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER




THE CIVIL WAR SERIES


 VOLUMES IN THE CIVIL WAR SERIES

  THE GUNS OF BULL RUN.
  THE GUNS OF SHILOH.
  THE SCOUTS OF STONEWALL.
  THE SWORD OF ANTIETAM.
  THE STAR OF GETTYSBURG.
  THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA.
  THE SHADES OF THE WILDERNESS.
  THE TREE OF APPOMATTOX.


 PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN THE CIVIL WAR SERIES

  HARRY KENTON, A Lad Who Fights on the Southern Side.
  DICK MASON, Cousin of Harry Kenton, Who Fights on the Northern Side.
  COLONEL GEORGE KENTON, Father of Harry Kenton.
  MRS. MASON, Mother of Dick Mason.
  JULIANA, Mrs. Mason's Devoted Colored Servant.
  COLONEL ARTHUR WINCHESTER, Dick Mason's Regimental Commander.
  COLONEL LEONIDAS TALBOT, Commander of the Invincibles,
   a Southern Regiment.
  LIEUTENANT COLONEL HECTOR ST. HILAIRE, Second in Command of the
   Invincibles.
  ALAN HERTFORD, A Northern Cavalry Leader.
  PHILIP SHERBURNE, A Southern Cavalry Leader.
  WILLIAM J. SHEPARD, A Northern Spy.
  DANIEL WHITLEY, A Northern Sergeant and Veteran of the Plains.
  GEORGE WARNER, A Vermont Youth Who Loves Mathematics.
  FRANK PENNINGTON, A Nebraska Youth, Friend of Dick Mason.
  ARTHUR ST. CLAIR, A Native of Charleston, Friend of Harry Kenton.
  TOM LANGDON, Friend of Harry Kenton.
  GEORGE DALTON, Friend of Harry Kenton.
  BILL SKELLY, Mountaineer and Guerrilla.
  TOM SLADE, A Guerrilla Chief.
  SAM JARVIS, The Singing Mountaineer.
  IKE SIMMONS, Jarvis' Nephew.
  AUNT "SUSE," A Centenarian and Prophetess.
  BILL PETTY, A Mountaineer and Guide.
  JULIEN DE LANGEAIS, A Musician and Soldier from Louisiana.
  JOHN CARRINGTON, Famous Northern Artillery Officer.
  DR. RUSSELL, Principal of the Pendleton School.
  ARTHUR TRAVERS, A Lawyer.
  JAMES BERTRAND, A Messenger from the South.
  JOHN NEWCOMB, A Pennsylvania Colonel.
  JOHN MARKHAM, A Northern Officer.
  JOHN WATSON, A Northern Contractor.
  WILLIAM CURTIS, A Southern Merchant and Blockade Runner.
  MRS. CURTIS, Wife of William Curtis.
  HENRIETTA CARDEN, A Seamstress in Richmond.
  DICK JONES, A North Carolina Mountaineer.
  VICTOR WOODVILLE, A Young Mississippi Officer.
  JOHN WOODVILLE, Father of Victor Woodville.
  CHARLES WOODVILLE, Uncle of Victor Woodville.
  COLONEL BEDFORD, A Northern Officer.
  CHARLES GORDON, A Southern Staff Officer.
  JOHN LANHAM, An Editor.
  JUDGE KENDRICK, A Lawyer.
  MR. CULVER, A State Senator.
  MR. BRACKEN, A Tobacco Grower.
  ARTHUR WHITRIDGE, A State Senator.


 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States.
  JEFFERSON DAVIS, President of the Southern Confederacy.
  JUDAH P. BENJAMIN, Member of the Confederate Cabinet.
  U. S. GRANT, Northern Commander.
  ROBERT E. LEE, Southern Commander.
  STONEWALL JACKSON, Southern General.
  PHILIP H. SHERIDAN, Northern General.
  GEORGE H. THOMAS, "The Rock of Chickamauga."
  ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON, Southern General.
  A. P. HILL, Southern General.
  W. S. HANCOCK, Northern General.
  GEORGE B. McCLELLAN, Northern General.
  AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, Northern General.
  TURNER ASHBY, Southern Cavalry Leader.
  J. E. B. STUART, Southern Cavalry Leader.
  JOSEPH HOOKER, Northern General.
  RICHARD S. EWELL, Southern General.
  JUBAL EARLY, Southern General.
  WILLIAM S. ROSECRANS, Northern General.
  SIMON BOLIVAR BUCKNER, Southern General.
  LEONIDAS POLK, Southern General and Bishop.
  BRAXTON BRAGG, Southern General.
  NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST, Southern Cavalry Leader.
  JOHN MORGAN, Southern Cavalry Leader.
  GEORGE J. MEADE, Northern General.
  DON CARLOS BUELL, Northern General.
  W. T. SHERMAN, Northern General.
  JAMES LONGSTREET, Southern General.
  P. G. T. BEAUREGARD, Southern General.
  WILLIAM L. YANCEY, Alabama Orator.
  JAMES A. GARFIELD, Northern General, afterwards President of
   the United States.

  And many others


 IMPORTANT BATTLES DESCRIBED IN THE CIVIL WAR SERIES

  BULL RUN
  KERNSTOWN
  CROSS KEYS
  WINCHESTER
  PORT REPUBLIC
  THE SEVEN DAYS
  MILL SPRING
  FORT DONELSON
  SHILOH
  PERRYVILLE
  STONE RIVER
  THE SECOND MANASSAS
  ANTIETAM
  FREDERICKSBURG
  CHANCELLORSVILLE
  GETTYSBURG
  CHAMPION HILL
  VICKSBURG
  CHICKAMAUGA
  MISSIONARY RIDGE
  THE WILDERNESS
  SPOTTSYLVANIA
  COLD HARBOR
  FISHER'S HILL
  CEDAR CREEK
  APPOMATTOX



CONTENTS

    I.  NEWS FROM CHARLESTON
   II.  A COURIER TO THE SOUTH
  III.  THE HEART OF REBELLION
   IV.  THE FIRST CAPITAL
    V.  THE NEW PRESIDENT
   VI.  SUMTER
  VII.  THE HOMECOMING
 VIII.  THE FIGHT FOR A STATE
   IX.  THE RIVER JOURNEY
    X.  OVER THE MOUNTAINS
   XI.  IN VIRGINIA
  XII.  THE FIGHT FOR THE FORT
 XIII.  THE SEEKER FOR HELP
  XIV.  IN WASHINGTON
   XV.  BATTLE'S EVE
  XVI.  BULL RUN




THE GUNS OF BULL RUN




CHAPTER I

NEWS FROM CHARLESTON


It would soon be Christmas and Harry Kenton, at his desk in the
Pendleton Academy, saw the snow falling heavily outside.  The school
stood on the skirt of the town, and the forest came down to the edge of
the playing field.  The great trees, oak and ash and elm, were clothed
in white, and they stood out a vast and glittering tracery against the
somber sky.

The desk was of the old kind, intended for two, and Harry's comrade in
it was his cousin, Dick Mason, of his own years and size.  They would
graduate in June, and both were large and powerful for their age.
There was a strong family resemblance and yet a difference.  Harry's
face was the more sensitive and at times the blood leaped like
quicksilver in his veins.  Dick's features indicated a quieter and more
stubborn temper.  They were equal favorites with teachers and pupils.

Dick's eyes followed Harry's, and he, too, looked at the falling snow
and the white forest.  Both were thinking of Christmas and the holiday
season so near at hand.  It was a rich section of Kentucky, and they
were the sons of prosperous parents.  The snow was fitting at such a
time, and many joyous hours would be passed before they returned to
school.

The clouds darkened and the snow fell faster.  A wind rose and drove it
against the panes.  The boys heard the blast roaring outside and the
comfort of the warm room was heightened by the contrast.  Harry's eyes
turned reluctantly back to his Tacitus and the customs and manners of
the ancient Germans.  The curriculum of the Pendleton Academy was simple,
like most others at that time.  After the primary grades it consisted
chiefly of the classics and mathematics.  Harry led in the classics and
Dick in the mathematics.

Bob Turner, the free colored man, who was janitor of the academy,
brought in the morning mail, a dozen letters and three or four
newspapers, gave it to Dr. Russell and withdrew on silent feet.

The Doctor was principal of Pendleton Academy, and he always presided
over the room in which sat the larger boys, nearly fifty in number.
His desk and chair were on a low dais and he sat facing the pupils.
He was a large man, with a ruddy face, and thick hair as white as the
snow that was falling outside.  He had been a teacher fifty years,
and three generations in Pendleton owed to him most of the learning that
is obtained from books.  He opened his letters one by one, and read
them slowly.

Harry moved far away into the German forest with old Tacitus.  He was
proud of his Latin and he did not mean to lose his place as first in the
class.  The other boys also were absorbed in their books.  It was seldom
that all were studious at the same time, but this was one of the rare
moments.  There was no shuffling of feet, and fifty heads were bent over
their desks.

It was a full half hour before Harry looked up from his Tacitus.
His first glance was at the window.  The snow was driving hard, and the
forest had become a white blur.  He looked next at the Doctor and he saw
that the ruddy face had turned white.  The old man was gazing intently
at an open letter in his hand.  Two or three others had fallen to the
floor.  He read the letter again, folded it carefully, and put it in his
pocket.  Then he broke the wrapper on one of the newspapers and rapidly
read its columns.  The whiteness of his face deepened into pallor.

The slight tearing sound caused most of the boys to look up, and they
noticed the change in the principal's face.  They had never seen him
look like that before.  It was as if he had received some sudden and
deadly stroke.  Yet he sat stiffly upright and there was no sound in the
room but the rustling of the newspaper as he turned its pages.

Harry became conscious of some strange and subtle influence that had
crept into the very air, and his pulse began to leap.  The others felt
it, too.  There was a tense feeling in the room and they became so still
that the soft beat of the snow on the windows could be heard.

Not a single eye was turned to a book now.  All were intent upon the
Doctor, who still read the newspaper, his face without a trace of color,
and his strong white hands trembling.  He folded the paper presently,
but still held it in his hand.  As he looked up, he became conscious of
the silence in the room, and of the concentrated gaze of fifty pairs
of eyes bent upon him.  A little color returned to his cheeks, and his
hands ceased to tremble.  He stood up, took the letter from his pocket,
and opened it again.

Dr. Russell was a striking figure, belonging to a classic type found
at its best in the border states.  A tall man, he held himself erect,
despite his years, and the color continued to flow back into the face,
which was shaped in a fine strong mold.

"Boys," he said, in a firm, full voice, although it showed emotion,
"I have received news which I must announce to you.  As I tell it,
I beg that you will restrain yourselves, and make little comment here.
Its character is such that you are not likely ever to hear anything of
more importance."

No one spoke, but a thrill of excitement ran through the room.  Harry
became conscious that the strange and subtle influence had increased.
The pulses in both temples were beating hard.  He and Dick leaned
forward, their elbows upon the desk, their lips parted a little in
attention.

"You know," continued Dr. Russell in the full voice that trembled
slightly, "of the troubles that have arisen between the states, North
and South, troubles that the best Americans, with our own great Henry
Clay at the head, have striven to avert.  You know of the election of
Lincoln, and how this beloved state of ours, seeking peace, voted for
neither Lincoln nor Breckinridge, both of whom are its sons."

The trembling of his voice increased and he paused again.  It was
obvious that he was stirred by deep emotion and it communicated itself
to the boys.  Harry was conscious that the thrill, longer and stronger
than before, ran again through the room.

"I have just received a letter from an old friend in Charleston,"
continued Dr. Russell in a shaking voice, "and he tells me that on the
twentieth, three days ago, the state of South Carolina seceded from the
Union.  He also sends me copies of two of the Charleston newspapers of
the day following.  In both of these papers all despatches from the
other states are put under the head, 'Foreign News.'  With the
Abolitionists of New England pouring abuse upon all who do not agree
with them, and the hot heads of South Carolina rushing into violence,
God alone knows what will happen to this distracted country that all
of us love so well."

He turned anew to his correspondence.  But Harry saw that he was
trembling all over.  An excited murmur arose.  The boys began to talk
about the news, and the principal, his thoughts far away, did not call
them to order.

"I suppose since South Carolina has gone out that other southern states
will do the same," said Harry to his cousin, "and that two republics
will stand where but one stood before."

"I don't know that the second result will follow the first," replied
Dick Mason.

Harry glanced at him.  He was conscious of a certain cold tenacity in
Dick's voice.  He felt that a veil of antagonism had suddenly been drawn
between these two who were the sons of sisters and who had been close
comrades all their lives.  His heart swelled suddenly.  As if by
inspiration, he saw ahead long and terrible years.  He said no more,
but gazed again at the pages of his Tacitus, although the letters only
swam before his eyes.

The great buzz subsided at last, although there was not one among the
boys who was not still thinking of the secession of South Carolina.
They had shared in the excitement of the previous year.  A few had
studied the causes, but most were swayed by propinquity and kinship,
which with youth are more potent factors than logic.

The afternoon passed slowly.  Dr. Russell, who always heard the
recitations of the seniors in Latin, did not call the class.  Harry was
so much absorbed in other thoughts that he did not notice the fact.
Outside, the clouds still gathered and the soft beat of the snow on the
window panes never ceased.  The hour of dismissal came at last and the
older boys, putting on their overcoats, went silently out.  Harry did
not dream that he had passed the doors of Pendleton Academy for the
last time, as a student.

While the seniors were quiet, there was no lack of noise from the
younger lads.  Snowballs flew and the ends of red comforters, dancing
in the wind, touched the white world with glowing bits of color.  Harry
looked at them with a sort of pity.  The magnified emotions of youth had
suddenly made him feel very old and very responsible.  When a snowball
struck him under the ear he paid no attention to it, a mark of great
abstraction in him.

He and his cousin walked gravely on, and left the shouting crowd behind
them.  Three or four hundred yards further, they came upon the main
street of Pendleton, a town of fifteen hundred people, important in
its section as a market, and as a financial and political center.  It
had two banks as solid as stone, and it was the proud boast of its
inhabitants that, excepting Louisville and Lexington, its bar was of
unequalled talent in the state.  Other towns made the same claim,
but no matter.  Pendleton knew that they were wrong.  Lawyers stood
very high, especially when they were fluent speakers.

It was a singular fact that the two boys, usually full of talk, after
the manner of youth, did not speak until they came to the parting of
their ways.  Then Harry, the more emotional of the two, and conscious
that the veil of antagonism was still between them, thrust out his hand
suddenly and said:

"Whatever happens, Dick, you and I must not quarrel over it.  Let's
pledge our word here and now that, being of the same blood and having
grown up together, we will always be friends."

The color in the cheeks of the other boy deepened.  A slight moisture
appeared in his eyes.  He was, on the whole, more reserved than Harry,
but he, too, was stirred.  He took the outstretched hand and gave it a
strong clasp.

"Always, Harry," he replied.  "We don't think alike, maybe, about the
things that are coming, but you and I can't quarrel."

He released the hand quickly, because he hated any show of emotion,
and hurried down a side street to his home.  Harry walked on into the
heart of the town, as he lived farther away on the other side.  He soon
had plenty of evidence that the news of South Carolina's secession had
preceded him here.  There had been no such stir in Pendleton since they
heard of Buena Vista, where fifty of her sons fought and half of them
fell.

Despite the snow, the streets about the central square were full of
people.  Many of the men were reading newspapers.  It was fifteen miles
to the nearest railroad station, and the mail had come in at noon,
bringing the first printed accounts of South Carolina's action.  In this
border state, which was a divided house from first to last, men still
guarded their speech.  They had grown up together, and they were all of
blood kin, near or remote.

"What will it mean?" said Harry to old Judge Kendrick.

"War, perhaps, my son," replied the old man sadly.  "The violence of New
England in speech and the violence of South Carolina in action may start
a flood.  But Kentucky must keep out of it.  I shall raise my voice
against the fury of both factions, and thank God, our people have never
refused to hear me."

He spoke in a somewhat rhetorical fashion, natural to time and place,
but he was in great earnest.  Harry went on, and entered the office of
the Pendleton News, the little weekly newspaper which dispensed the news,
mostly personal, within a radius of fifty miles.  He knew that the News
would appear on the following day, and he was anxious to learn what
Mr. Gardner, the editor, a friend of his, would have to say in his
columns.

He walked up the dusty stairway and entered the room, where the
editor sat amid piles of newspapers.  Mr. Gardner was a youngish man,
high-colored and with longish hair.  He was absorbed so deeply in a copy
of the Louisville Journal that he did not hear Harry's step or notice
his coming until the boy stood beside him.  Then he looked up and said
dryly:

"Too many sparks make a blaze at last.  If people keep on quarreling
there's bound to be a fight some time or other.  I suppose you've heard
that South Carolina has seceded."

"Dr. Russell announced it at the school.  Are you telling, Mr. Gardner,
what the News will have to say about it?"

"I don't mind," replied the editor, who was fond of Harry, and who liked
his alert mind.  "If it comes to a breach, I'm going with my people.
It's hard to tell what's right or wrong, but my ancestors belonged to
the South and so do I."

"That's just the way I feel!" exclaimed Harry vehemently.

The editor smiled.

"But I don't intend to say so in the News tomorrow," he continued.
"I shall try to pour oil upon the waters, although I won't be able to
hide my Southern leanings.  The Colonel, your father, Harry, will not
seek to conceal his."

"No," said Harry.  "He will not.  What was that?"

The sound of a shot came from the street.  The two ran hurriedly down
the stairway.  Three men were holding a fourth who struggled with them
violently.  One had wrenched from his hand a pistol still smoking at the
muzzle.  About twenty feet away was another man standing between two who
held him tightly, although he made no effort to release himself.

Harry looked at the two captives.  They made a striking contrast.
The one who fought was of powerful build, and dressed roughly.  His
whole appearance indicated the primitive human being, and Harry knew
immediately that he was one of the mountaineers who came long distances
to trade or carouse in Pendleton.

The man who faced the mountaineer, standing quietly between those who
held him, was young and slender, though tall.  His longish black hair
was brushed carefully.  The natural dead whiteness of his face was
accentuated by his black mustache, which turned up at the ends like
that of a duelist.  He was dressed in black broadcloth, the long coat
buttoned closely about his body, but revealing a full and ruffled
shirt bosom as white as snow.  His face expressed no emotion, but the
mountaineer cursed violently.

"I can read the story at once," said the editor, shrugging his
shoulders.  "I know the mountaineer.  He's Bill Skelly, a rough man,
prone to reach for the trigger, especially when he's full of bad whiskey
as he is now, and the other, Arthur Travers, is no stranger to you.
Skelly is for the abolition of slavery.  All the mountaineers are.
Maybe it's because they have no slaves themselves and hate the more
prosperous and more civilized lowlanders who do have them.  Harry,
my boy, as you grow older you'll find that reason and logic seldom
control men's lives."

"Skelly was excited over the news from South Carolina," said Harry,
continuing the story, which he, too, had read, as an Indian reads a
trail, "and he began to drink.  He met Travers and cursed the
slave-holders.  Travers replied with a sneer, which the mountaineer
could not understand, except that it hurt.  Skelly snatched out his
pistol and fired wildly.  Travers drew his and would have fired,
although not so wildly, but friends seized him.  Meanwhile, others
overpowered Skelly and Travers is not excited at all, although he
watches every movement of his enemy, while seeming to be indifferent."

"You read truly, Harry," said Gardner.  "It was a fortunate thing for
Skelly that he was overpowered.  Somehow, those two men facing each
other seem, in a way, to typify conditions in this part of the country
at least."

Harry was now watching Travers, who always aroused his interest.
A lawyer, twenty-seven or eight years of age, he had little practice,
and seemed to wish little.  He had a wonderful reputation for dexterity
with cards and the pistol.  A native of Pendleton, he was the son of
parents from one of the Gulf States, and Harry could never quite feel
that he was one of their own Kentucky blood and breed.

"You can release me," said Travers quietly to the young men who stood on
either side of him holding his arms.  "I think the time has come to hunt
bigger game than a fool there like Skelly.  He is safe from me."

He spoke with a supercilious scorn which impressed Harry, but which
he did not wholly admire.  Travers seemed to him to have the quiet
deadliness of the cobra.  There was something about him that repelled.
The men released him.  He straightened his long black coat, smoothed the
full ruffles of his shirt and walked away, as if nothing had happened.

Skelly ceased to struggle.  The aspect of the crowd, which was largely
hostile, sobered him.  Steve Allison, the town constable, appeared and,
putting his hand heavily upon the mountaineer's shoulder, said:

"You come with me, Skelly."

But old Judge Kendrick intervened.

"Let him go, Steve," he said.  "Send him back to the mountains."

"But he tried to kill a man, Judge."

"I know, but extraordinary times demand extraordinary methods.  A great
and troubled period has come into all our lives.  Maybe we're about to
face some terrible crisis.  Isn't that so?"

"Yes," replied the crowd.

"Then we must not hurry it or make it worse by sudden action.  If Skelly
is punished, the mountaineers will say it is political.  I appeal to you,
Dr. Russell, to sustain me."

The white head of the principal showed above the crowd.

"Judge Kendrick is right," he said.  "Skelly must be permitted to go.
His action, in fact, was due to the strained conditions that have long
prevailed among us, and was precipitated by the alarming message that
has come today.  For the sake of peace, we must let him go."

"All right, then," said Allison, "but he goes without his pistol."

Skelly was put upon his mountain pony, and he rode willingly away amid
the snow and the coming dusk, carrying, despite his release, a bitter
heart into the mountains, and a tale that would inflame the jealousy
with which upland regarded lowland.

The crowd dispersed.  Gardner returned to his office, and Harry went
home.  He lived in the best house in or about Pendleton and his father
was its wealthiest citizen.  George Kenton, having inherited much land
in Kentucky, and two or three plantations further south had added to
his property by good management.  A strong supporter of slavery, actual
contact with the institution on a large scale in the Gulf States had not
pleased him, and he had sold his property there, reinvesting the money
in his native and, as he believed, more solid state.  His title of
colonel was real.  A graduate of West Point, he had fought bravely with
Scott in all the battles in the Valley of Mexico, but now retired and a
widower, he lived in Pendleton with Harry, his only child.

Harry approached the house slowly.  He knew that his father was a
man of strong temper and he wondered how he would take the news from
Charleston.  All the associations of Colonel Kenton were with the
extreme Southern wing, and his influence upon his son was powerful.

But the Pendleton home, standing just beyond the town, gave forth
only brightness and welcome.  The house itself, large and low, built
massively of red brick, stood on the crest of a gentle slope in two
acres of ground.  The clipped cones of pine trees adorned the slopes,
and made parallel rows along the brick walk, leading to the white
portico that formed the entrance to the house.  Light shone from a
half dozen windows.

It seemed fine and glowing to Harry.  His father loved his home, and so
did he.  The twilight had now darkened into night and the snow still
drove, but the house stood solid and square to wind and winter, and the
flame from its windows made broad bands of red and gold across the snow.
Harry went briskly up the walk and then stood for a few moments in the
portico, shaking the snow off his overcoat and looking back at the town,
which lay in a warm cluster in the hollow below.  Many lights twinkled
there, and it occurred to Harry that they would twinkle later than usual
that night.

He opened the door, hung his hat and overcoat in the hall, and entered
the large apartment which his father and he habitually used as a reading
and sitting room.  It was more than twenty feet square, with a lofty
ceiling.  A home-made carpet, thick, closely woven, and rich in colors
covered the floor.  Around the walls were cases containing books,
mostly in rich bindings and nearly all English classics.  American work
was scarcely represented at all.  The books read most often by Colonel
Kenton were the novels of Walter Scott, whom he preferred greatly to
Dickens.  Scott always wrote about gentlemen.  A great fire of hickory
logs blazed on the wide hearth.

Colonel Kenton was alone in the room.  He stood at the edge of the
hearth, with his back to the fire and his hands crossed behind him.
His tanned face was slightly pale, and Harry saw that he had been
subjected to great nervous excitement, which had not yet wholly abated.

The colonel was a tall man, broad of chest, but lean and muscular.
He regarded his son attentively, and his eyes seemed to ask a question.

"Yes," said Harry, although his father had not spoken a word.  "I've
heard of it, and I've already seen one of its results."

"What is that?" asked Colonel Kenton quickly.

"As I came through town Bill Skelly, a mountaineer, shot at Arthur
Travers.  It came out of hot words over the news from Charleston.
Nobody was hurt, and they've sent Skelly on his pony toward his
mountains."

Colonel Kenton's face clouded.

"I'm sorry," he said.  "I fear that Travers will be much too free with
stinging remarks.  It's a time when men should control their tongues.
Do you be careful with yours.  You're a youth in years, but you're a man
in size, and you should be a man in thought, too.  You and I have been
close together, and I have trusted you, even when you were a little boy."

"It's so, father," replied Harry, with affection and gratitude.

"And I'm going to trust you yet further.  It may be that I shall give
you a task requiring great skill and energy."

The colonel looked closely at his son, and he gave silent approval to
the tall, well-knit form, and the alert, eager face.

"We'll have supper presently," he said, "and then we will talk with
visitors.  Some you know and some you don't.  One of them, who has come
far, is already in the house."

Harry's eyes showed surprise, but he knew better than to ask questions.
The colonel had carried his military training into private life.

"He is a distant relative of ours, very distant, but a relative still,"
continued Colonel Kenton.  "You will meet him at supper.  Be ready in a
half hour."

The dinner of city life was still called supper in the South, and
Harry hastened to his room to prepare.  His heart began to throb with
excitement.  Now they were to have visitors at night and a mysterious
stranger was there.  He felt dimly the advance of great events.

Harry Kenton was a normal and healthy boy, but the discussions, the
debates, and the passions sweeping over the Union throughout the year
had sifted into Pendleton also.  The news today had merely struck fire
to tinder prepared already, and, infused with the spirit of youth,
he felt much excitement but no depression.  Making a careful toilet
he descended to the drawing room a little before the regular time.
Although he was early, his father was there before him, standing in his
customary attitude with his back to the hearth, and his hands clasped
behind him.

"Our guest will be down in a few minutes," said Colonel Kenton.  "He
comes from Charleston and his name is Raymond Louis Bertrand.  I will
explain how he is related to us."

He gave a chain of cousins extending on either side from the Kenton
family and the Bertrand family until they joined in the middle.  It was
a slender tie of kinship, but it sufficed in the South.  As he finished,
Bertrand himself came in, and was introduced formally to his Kentucky
cousin.  Harry would have taken him for a Frenchman, and he was, in very
truth, largely of French blood.  His black eyes and hair, his swarthy
complexion, gleaming white teeth and quick, volatile manner showed a
descendant of France who had come from the ancient soil by way of Hayti,
and the great negro rebellion to the coast of South Carolina.  He seemed
strange and foreign to Harry, and yet he liked him.

"And this is my young cousin, the one who is likely to be so zealous for
our cause," he said, smiling at Harry with flashing black eyes.  "You
are a stalwart lad.  They grow bigger and stronger here than on our warm
Carolina coast."

"Raymond arrived only three hours ago," said Colonel Kenton in
explanation.  "He came directly from Charleston, leaving only three
hours after the resolution in favor of secession was adopted."

"And a rough journey it was," said Bertrand vivaciously.  "I was
rattled and shaken by the trains, and I made some of the connections by
horseback over the wild hills.  Then it was a long ride through the snow
to your hospitable home here, my good cousin, Colonel Kenton.  But I had
minute directions, and no one noticed the stranger who came so quietly
around the town, and then entered your house."

Harry said nothing but watched him intently.  Bertrand spoke with a
rapid lightness and grace and an abundance of gesture, to which he was
not used in Kentucky.  He ate plentifully, and, although his manners
were delicate, Harry felt to an increasing degree his foreign aspect and
spirit.  He did not wonder at it when he learned later that Bertrand,
besides being chiefly of French blood, had also been educated in Paris.

"Was there much enthusiasm in South Carolina when the state seceded,
Raymond?" asked Colonel Kenton.

"I saw the greatest joy and confidence everywhere," he replied, the
color flaming through his olive face.  "The whole state is ablaze.
Charleston is the heart and soul of our new alliance.  Rhett and Yancey
of Alabama, and the great orators make the souls of men leap.  Ah, sir,
if you could only have been in Charleston in the course of recent
months!  If you could have heard the speakers!  If you could have
seen how the great and righteous Calhoun's influence lives after him!
And then the writers!  That able newspaper, the Mercury, has thundered
daily for our cause.  Simms, the novelist, and Timrod and Hayne, the
poets have written for it.  Let the cities of the North boast of their
size and wealth, but they cannot match Charleston in culture and spirit
and vivacity!"

Harry saw that Bertrand felt and believed every word he said, and his
enthusiasm was communicated to the colonel, whose face flushed, and to
Harry, too, whose own heart was beating faster.

"It was a great deed!" exclaimed Colonel Kenton.  "South Carolina has
always dared to speak her mind, but here in Kentucky some of the cold
North's blood flows in our veins and we pause to calculate and consider.
We must hasten events.  Now, Raymond, we will go into the library.
Our friends will be here in a half hour.  Harry, you are to stay with
us.  I told you that you are to be trusted."

They left the table, and went into the great room where the fire had
been built anew and was casting a ruddy welcome through the windows.
The two men sat down before the blaze and each fell silent, engrossed in
his thoughts.  Harry felt a pleased excitement.  Here was a great and
mysterious affair, but he was going to have admittance to the heart
of it.  He walked to the window, lifted the curtain and looked out.
A slender erect figure was already coming up the walk, and he recognized
Travers.

Travers knocked at the door and was received cordially.  Colonel Kenton
introduced Bertrand, saying:

"The messenger from the South."

Travers shook hands and nodded also to signify that he understood.
Then came Culver, the state senator from the district, a man of middle
years, bulky, smooth shaven, and oratorical.  He was followed soon by
Bracken, a tobacco farmer on a great scale, Judge Kendrick, Reid and
Wayne, both lawyers, and several others, all of wealth or of influence
in that region.  Besides Harry, there were ten in the room.

"I believe that we are all here now," said Colonel Kenton.  "I keep my
son with us because, for reasons that I will explain later, I shall
nominate him for the task that is needed."

"We do not question your judgment, colonel," said Senator Culver.
"He is a strong and likely lad.  But I suggest that we go at once to
business.  Mr. Bertrand, you will inform us what further steps are to be
taken by South Carolina and her neighboring states.  South Carolina may
set an example, but if the others do not follow, she will merely be a
sacrifice."

Bertrand smiled.  His smile always lighted up his olive face in a
wonderful way.  It was a smile, too, of supreme confidence.

"Do not fear," he said.  "Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana
are ready.  We have word from them all.  It is only a matter of a few
days until every state in the lower south goes out, but we want also and
we need greatly those on the border, famous states like your Kentucky
and Virginia.  Do you not see how you are threatened?  With the triumph
of the rail-splitter, Lincoln, the seat of power is transferred to the
North.  It is not alone a question of slavery.  The balance of the
Union is destroyed.  The South loses leadership.  Her population is not
increasing rapidly, and hereafter she will merely hold the stirrup while
the North sits in the saddle."

A murmur arose from the men.  More than one clenched his hands, until
the nails pressed into the flesh.  Harry, still standing by the window,
felt the influence of the South Carolinian's words more deeply perhaps
than any other.  The North appeared to him cold, jealous, and vengeful.

"You are right about Kentucky and Virginia," said Senator Culver.
"The secession of two such strong states would strike terror in the
North.  It would influence the outside world, and we would be in a far
better position for war, if it should come.  Governor Magoffin will have
to call a special session of the legislature, and I think there will
be enough of us in both Senate and House to take Kentucky out."

Bertrand's dark face glowed.

"You must do it!  You must do it!" he exclaimed.  "And if you do our
cause is won!"

There was a thoughtful silence, broken at last by Colonel Kenton,
who turned an inquiring eye upon Bertrand.

"I wish to ask you about the Knights of the Golden Circle," he said.
"I hear that they are making great headway in the Gulf States."

Raymond hesitated a moment.  It seemed that he, too, felt for the first
time a difference between himself and these men about him who were so
much less demonstrative than he.  But he recovered his poise quickly.

"I speak to you frankly," he replied.  "When our new confederation is
formed, it is likely to expand.  A hostile union will lie across our
northern border, but to the south the way is open.  There is our field.
Spain grows weak and the great island of Cuba will fall from her grasp.
Mexico is torn by one civil war after another.  It is a grand country,
and it would prosper mightily in strong hands.  Beyond lie the unstable
states of Central America, also awaiting good rulers."

Colonel Kenton frowned and the lawyers looked doubtful.

"I can't say that I like your prospect," the colonel said.  "It seems to
me that your knights of the Golden Circle meditate a great slave empire
which will eat its way even into South America.  Slavery is not wholly
popular here.  Henry Clay long ago wished it to be abolished, and his is
a mighty name among us.  It would be best to say little in Kentucky of
the Knights of the Golden Circle.  Our climate is a little too cold for
such a project."

Bertrand bit his lip.  Swift and volatile, he showed disappointment, but,
still swift and volatile, he recovered quickly.

"I have no doubt that you are right, Colonel Kenton," he said, in the
tone of one who conforms gracefully, "and I shall be careful when I go
to Frankfort with Senator Culver to say nothing about it."

But Harry, who watched him all the time, read tenacity and purpose in
his eyes.  This man would not relinquish his great southern dream,
a dream of vast dominion, and he had a powerful society behind him.

"What news, then, will you send to Charleston?" asked Bertrand at
length.  "Will you tell her that Kentucky, the state of great names,
will stand beside her?"

"Such a message shall be carried to her," replied Colonel Kenton,
speaking for them all, "and I propose that my son Harry be the
messenger.  These are troubled times, gentlemen, and full of peril.
We dare not trust to the mails, and a lad, carrying letters, would
arouse the least suspicion.  He is strong and resourceful.  I, his
father, should know best and I am willing to devote him to the cause."

Harry started when he heard the words of his father, and his heart gave
a great leap of mingled surprise and joy.  Such a journey, such an
enterprise, made an instant appeal to his impulsive and daring spirit.
But he did not speak, waiting upon the words of his elders.  All of them
looked at him, and it seemed to Harry that they were measuring him,
both body and mind.

"I have known your boy since his birth," said Senator Culver, "and he
is all that you say.  There is none stronger and better.  The choice is
good."

"Good!  Aye, good indeed!" said the impetuous Bertrand.  "How they will
welcome him in Charleston!"

"Then, gentlemen," said Colonel Kenton, very soberly, "you are all
agreed that my son shall carry to South Carolina the message that
Kentucky will follow her out of the Union?"

"We are," they said, all together.

"I shall be glad and proud to go," said Harry, speaking for the first
time.

"I knew it without asking you," said Colonel Kenton.  "I suggest to you,
friends, that he start before dawn, and that he go to Winton instead
of the nearest station.  We wish to avoid observation and suspicion.
The fewer questions he has to answer, the better it will be for all of
us."

They agreed with him again, and, in order that he might be fresh and
strong for his journey, Harry was sent to his bedroom.  Everything
would be made ready for him, and Colonel Kenton would call him at the
appointed hour.  As he withdrew he bade them in turn good night, and
they returned his courtesy gravely.

It was one thing to go to his room, but it was another to sleep.
He undressed and sat on the edge of the bed.  Only when he was alone did
he realize the tremendous change that had come into his life.  Nor into
his life alone, but into the lives of all he knew, and of millions more.

It had ceased snowing and the wind was still.  The earth was clothed
in deep and quiet white, and the pines stood up, rows of white cones,
silvered by the moonlight.  Nothing moved out there.  No sound came.
He felt awed by the world of night, and the mysterious future which must
be full of strange and great events.

He lay down between the covers and, although sleep was long in coming,
it came at last and it was without dreams.




CHAPTER II

A COURIER TO THE SOUTH


Harry was awakened by his father shaking his shoulder.  It was yet dark
outside, but a small lamp burned on his table.

"It is time for you to go, Harry," said Colonel Kenton, somewhat
unsteadily.  "Your horse, bridle and saddle on, is waiting.  Your
breakfast has been cooked for you, and everything else is ready."

Harry dressed rapidly in his heaviest and warmest clothing.  He and his
father ate breakfast by lamplight, and when he finished it was not yet
dawn.  Then the Colonel himself brought him his overcoat, comforter,
overshoes, and fur cap.

"The saddlebags are already on your horse," he said, "and they are
filled with the things you will need.  In this pocket-book you will
find five hundred dollars, and here is, also, an order on a bank in
Charleston for more.  See that you keep both money and order safely.
I trust to you to spend the money in the proper manner."

Harry put both in an inside pocket of his waistcoat, and then his father
handed him a heavy sealed letter.

"This you must guard with your life," he said.  "It is not addressed
to anybody, but you can give it to Senator Yancey, who is probably
in Charleston, or Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, or General
Beauregard, who, I understand, is coming to command the troops there,
and whom I knew in former days, or to General Ripley.  It contains
Kentucky's promise to South Carolina, and it is signed by many of us.
And now, Harry, let prudence watch over action.  It is no common errand
upon which you ride."

The colonel walked with him to the gate where the horse stood.  Harry
did not know who had brought the animal there, but he believed that his
father had done so with his own hand.  The boy sprang into the saddle,
Colonel Kenton gave him a strong grasp of the hand, undertook to say
something but, as he did so, the words choked in his throat, and he
walked hastily toward the house.

Harry spoke to his horse, but a hundred yards away, before he came to
the first curve in the road, he stopped and looked back.  Colonel Kenton
was standing in the doorway, his figure made bright in the moonlight.
Harry waved his hand and a hand was waved in return.  Tears arose to his
own eyes, but he was youth in the saddle, with the world before him,
and the mist was gone quickly.

The snow was six or eight inches deep, and lay unbroken in the road.
But the horse was powerful, shod carefully for snow and ice, and Harry
had been almost from infancy an expert rider.  His spirits rose.
He had no fear of the stillness and the dark.  But one could scarcely
call it the dark, since brilliant stars rode high in a bright blue
heaven, and the forest on either side of him was a vast and intricate
tracery of white touched with silver.

He examined his saddle bags, and found in them a silver-mounted pistol
and cartridges which he transferred to his belt.  The line of the
mountains lay near the road, and he remembered Bill Skelly and those
like him.  The weapon gave him new strength.  Skelly and his comrades
might come on any pretext they chose.

The road lay straight toward the south, edged on either side by forest.
Now and then he passed a silent farm house, set back among the trees,
and once a dog barked, but there was no sound, save the tread of the
horse's feet in the snow, and his occasional puff when he blew the steam
from his nostrils.  Harry did not feel the cold.  The heavy overcoat
protected his body, and the strong action of the heart, pouring the
blood in a full tide through his veins, kept him warm.

The east whitened.  Dawn came.  Thin spires of smoke began to rise from
distant houses in the woods or fields.  Harry was already many miles
from Pendleton, and then something rose in his throat again.  He
remembered his father standing in the portico, and, strangely enough,
the Tacitus lying in his locked desk at the academy.  But he crushed
it down.  His abounding youth made him consider as weak and unworthy,
an emotion which a man would merely have reckoned as natural.

The station at Winton was a full twenty miles from Pendleton and,
with such heavy snow, Harry did not expect to arrive until late in the
afternoon.  Nor would there be any need for him to get there earlier,
as no train for Nashville reached that place until half past six in the
evening.  His horse showed no signs of weariness, but he checked his
speed, and went on at an easy walk.

The road curved nearer to a line of blue hills, which sloped gradually
upward for scores of miles, until they became mountains.  All were
clothed with forest, and every tree was heavy with snow.  A line between
the trees showed where a path turned off from the main road and entered
the hills.  As Harry approached it, he heard the crunching of horses'
hoofs in the snow.  A warning instinct caused him to urge his own horse
forward, just as four riders came into view.

He saw that the men in the saddles, who were forty or fifty yards away,
were mountaineers, like Skelly.  They wore fur caps; heavy blanket
shawls were drooped about their shoulders and every one carried a rifle.
As soon as they saw the boy they shouted to him to halt.

Harry's alert senses took alarm.  They must have gained some knowledge
of his errand and its nature.  Perhaps word had been sent from Pendleton
by those who were arraying themselves on the other side that he be
intercepted.  When they cried to him to stop, he struck his horse
sharply, shouted to him, and bent far over against his neck.  Colonel
Kenton had chosen well.  The horse responded instantly.  He seemed to
gather his whole powerful frame compactly together, and shot forward.
The nearest mountaineer fired, but the bullet merely whistled where the
horse and rider had been, and sent snow flying from the bushes on the
other side of the road.  A second rifle cracked but it, too, missed the
flying target, and the mountaineers, turning into the main road, gave
pursuit.

Harry felt a cold shiver along his spine when the leading man pulled
trigger.  It was the first time in his life that any one had ever fired
upon him, and the shiver returned with the second shot.  And since they
had missed, confidence came.  He knew that they could not overtake him,
and they would not dare to pursue him long.  He glanced back.  They
were a full hundred yards in the rear, riding all four abreast.  He
remembered his own pistol, and, drawing it from his belt, he sent a
bullet toward the pursuit.  It was too long a range for serious work,
but he intended it as a warning that he, too, was armed and would fight.

The road still ran through the forest with the hills close on the left.
Up went the sun, casting a golden glory over the white earth.  Harry
beheld afar only a single spire of smoke.  The houses were few in that
region, and he might go four or five miles without seeing a single human
being, save those who pursued.  But he was not afraid.  His confidence
lay chiefly in the powerful animal that he rode, and he saw the distance
between him and the four men lengthen from a hundred to two hundred
yards.  One of them fired another shot at him, but it only shook the
snow from a tree fifteen feet away.  He could not keep from sending back
a taunting cry.

On went the sun up the curve of the heavens, and the brilliant light
grew.  The forest thinned away.  The line of hills retreated, and before
him lay fields, extending to both right and left.  The eye ranged over
a great distance and he counted the smoke of five farm houses.  He
believed that the men would not pursue him into the open country,
but he urged his horse to greater speed, and did not turn in his saddle
for a quarter of an hour.  When he finally looked back the mountaineers
were gone.  He could see clearly a half-mile, and he knew now that his
surmise had come true.  They dared to pursue only in the forest, and
having failed, they would withdraw into the hills.

He drew his horse down to a walk, patted his shoulder, and spoke to him
words of approval.  He was not sorry now that he had passed through the
adventure.  It would harden him to risks and dangers to come.  He made
up his mind, also, to say nothing about it.  He could send a warning
back from Winton, but the men in Pendleton knew how to protect
themselves, and the message might fall into wrong hands.

His journey continued in such peace that it was hard to believe men had
fired upon him, and in the middle of the afternoon he reached Winton.
He left his horse, saddle and bridle at a livery stable, stating that
they would be called for by Colonel Kenton, who was known throughout the
region, and sought food at the crude little wooden hotel.  He was glad
that he saw no one whom he knew, because, after the fashion of the
country, they would ask him many questions, and he felt relief, too,
when the train arrived.

Dark had already come when Harry entered the car.  There were no coaches
for sleepers, and he must make himself comfortable as best he could on
the red plush seat, sprinkled thickly with ashes and cinders from the
engine.  Fortunately, he had the seat alone, although there were many
people in the car.

The train, pouring out a huge volume of black smoke, pulled out of the
station with a great clatter that never ceased.  Now Harry felt an ebb
of the spirits and melancholy.  He was leaving behind Pendleton and all
that he had known.  In the day the excitement, the cold air, and the
free world about him had kept him up.  Now the swaying and jarring
of the train, crude like most others in that early time of railways,
gave him a sense of illness.  The window at his elbow rattled
incessantly, and the ashes and cinders sifted in, blackening his face
and hands.  Three or four smoking lamps, hung from the ceiling, lighted
the car dimly, and disclosed but partly the faces of the people around
him.  Some were asleep already.  Others ate their suppers from baskets.
Harry felt of his pockets at intervals to see that his money and letters
were safe, and he kept his saddle bags closely on the seat beside him.

The nausea created by the motion of the train passed away soon.  He put
his face against the dusty window pane and tried to see the country.
But he could catch only glimpses of snowy woods and fields, and, once
or twice, flashes of water as they crossed rivers.  The effort yielded
little, and he turned his attention to the people.  He noted only one
who differed in aspect from the ordinary country passenger.

A man of middle years sat rigidly erect at the far end of the car.
He wore a black hat, broad of brim, and all his clothing was black and
precise.  His face was shaven smoothly, save for a long gray mustache
with an upward curve.  While the people about him talked in a
miscellaneous fashion, he did not join them, and his manner did not
invite approach even in those easy times.

Harry was interested greatly.  The stranger presently opened a valise,
took out some food and ate delicately.  Then he drew a small silver
cup from the same valise, filled it at the drinking stand, drank and
returned it to the valise.  Without a crumb having fallen on clothing
or floor, he resumed his seat and gazed straight before him.

Harry's interest in the stranger increased.  He had a fine face, cut
clearly, and of a somewhat severe and melancholy cast.  Always he gazed
straight before him, and his mind seemed to be far from the people in
the car.  It was obvious that he was not the ordinary traveler, and the
boy spent some time in trying to guess his identity.  Then he gave it up,
because he was growing sleepy.

Excitement and the long physical strain were now telling upon Harry.
He leaned his head against the corner of the seat and the wall, drew his
overcoat as a blanket about his body and shoulders, and let his eyelids
droop.  The dim train grew dimmer, and he slept.

The train was due at Nashville between midnight and morning, and Harry
was awakened by the conductor a half hour before he reached the city.
He shook himself, put on his overcoat that he had used as a blanket,
and tried to look through the window.  He saw only darkness rushing past,
but he knew that he had left Kentucky behind, and it seemed to him that
he had come into an alien land, a land of future friends, no doubt,
but as yet, the land of the stranger.

All the people in the train were awakening, and were gathering their
baggage sleepily about them.  But the stranger, who drank from the
silver cup, seemed not to have been asleep at all.  He still sat rigidly
erect, and his melancholy look had not abated.  His valise lay on the
seat beside him.  Harry noticed that it was large and strong, with metal
clasps at the corners.

The engine was whistling already for Nashville, and Harry threw his
saddle bags over his arm.  He was fully awake now, alert and eager.
This town of Nashville was full of promise.  It had been the home of
the great Andrew Jackson, and it was one of the important cities of the
South, where cities were measured by influence rather than population,
because all, except New Orleans, were small.

As the train slowed down, Harry arose and stood in the aisle.  The
stranger also stood up, and Harry noticed that his bearing was military.
He looked around, his eyes met Harry's--perhaps he had been observing
him in the night--and he smiled.  It was a rare, illuminating smile that
made him wonderfully attractive, and Harry smiled back.  He did not know
it, but he was growing lonely, with the loneliness of youth, and he
wanted a friend.

"You are stopping in Nashville?" said the man with the friendliness of
the time.

"For a day only.  I am then going further south."

Harry had answered without hesitation.  He did not believe it possible
that this man could be planning anything against him or his errand.
The tall stranger looked upon him with approval.

"I noticed you in the train last night when you slept," he said,
speaking in the soft, musical accents of the seaboard South.  "Your
sleep was very deep, almost like collapse.  You showed that you had
been through great physical and mental strain, and even before you
fell asleep your anxious look indicated that you rode on an errand
of importance."

Harry gazed at him in surprise, mingled with a little alarm.  The
strange man laughed musically and with satisfaction.

"I am neither a detective nor a conspirator," he said.  "These are times
when men travel upon anxious journeys.  I go upon one myself, but since
we are in Tennessee, well south of the Mason and Dixon line, I make no
secret of it.  I am Leonidas Talbot, of South Carolina, until a week ago
a colonel in the American army, but now bound for my home in Charleston.
You boarded this train at a station in Kentucky, either the nearest or
among the nearest to Pendleton.  A resemblance, real or fancied, has
caused me to notice you closely."

The man was looking at him with frank blue eyes set well apart, and
Harry saw no need of concealing his identity.

"My name is Kenton, Henry Kenton--though people generally call me
Harry--and I live at Pendleton in Kentucky," he replied.

Now the smile of Leonidas Talbot, late colonel U. S. A., became rarely
sweet.

"I should have guessed it," he said.  "The place where you joined us and
the strong resemblance should have made me know.  You must be the son of
Colonel George Kenton."

"Yes," said Harry.

"Then, young sir, let me shake your hand."

His manner seemed so warm and natural that Harry held out his hand,
and Colonel Talbot gave it a strong clasp.

"Your father and I have served together," he said.  "We were in the
same class at West Point, and we fought in the same command against the
Indians on the plains.  I saw him again at Cerro Gordo, and we were side
by side at Contreras, Molino del Rey, and the storming of Chapultepec.
He left the service some time after we came back from Mexico, but I
remained in it, until--recent events.  It is fitting that I should meet
his son here, when we go upon errands which are, perhaps, similar in
nature.  I infer that your destination is Charleston!"

"Yes," said Harry impulsively, and he was not sorry that he had obeyed
the impulse.

"Then we shall go together," said Colonel Talbot.  "I take it that many
other people are now on their way to this same city of Charleston,
which since the secession of South Carolina has become the most famous
in the Union."

"I shall be glad if you will take me with you," said Harry.  "I know
little of Charleston and the lower South, and I need company."

"Then we will go to a hotel," said Colonel Talbot.  "On a journey like
this two together are better than one alone.  I know Nashville fairly
well, and while it is of the undoubted South, it will be best for us,
while we are here, to keep quiet tongues in our heads.  We cannot get a
train out of the city until the afternoon."

They were now in the station and everybody was going out.  It was not
much past midnight, and a cold wind blowing across the hills and the
Cumberland River made Harry shiver in his overcoat.  Once more he was
glad of his new comradeship with a man so much his superior in years and
worldly wisdom.

Snow lay on the ground, but not so deep as in Kentucky.  Houses, mostly
of wood, and low, showed dimly through the dusk.  No carriages met the
train, and the people were melting away already to their destinations.

"I'll lead the way," said Colonel Talbot.  "I know the best hotel,
and for travelers who need rest the best is always none too good."

He led briskly through the silent and lonely streets, until they came
to a large brick building with several lights shining from the wide and
open door.  They entered the lobby of the hotel, one carrying his saddle
bags, the other his valise, and registered in the book that the sleepy
clerk shoved toward them.  Several loungers still sat in cane-bottomed
chairs along the wall, and they cast curious glances at Harry and the
colonel.

The hotel was crowded, the clerk said.  People had been crowding into
town in the last few days, as there was a great stir in the country
owing to the news from Charleston.  He could give them only one room,
but it had two beds.

"It will do," said the colonel, in his soft but positive voice.  "My
young friend and I have been traveling hard and we need rest."

Harry would have preferred a room alone, but his trust in Colonel Talbot
had already become absolute.  This man must be what he claimed to be.
There was no trace of deceit about him.  His heart had never before
warmed so much to a stranger.

Colonel Talbot closed and locked the door of their room.  It was a large
bare apartment with two windows overlooking the town, and two small beds
against opposite walls.  The colonel put his valise at the foot of one
bed, and walked to the window.  The night had lightened somewhat and he
saw the roofs of buildings, the dim line of the yellow river, and the
dusky haze of hills beyond.  He turned his head and looked steadily in
the direction in which lay Charleston.  A look of ineffable sadness
overspread his face.

The light on the table was none too bright, but Harry saw Colonel
Talbot's melancholy eyes, and he could not refrain from asking:

"What's the trouble, colonel?"

The South Carolinian turned from the window, sat down on the edge of the
bed and smiled.  It was an illuminating smile, almost the smile of youth.

"I'm afraid that everything's the matter, Harry, boy," he said.  "South
Carolina, the state that I love even more than the Union to which it
belongs, or belonged, has gone out, and, Harry, because I'm a son of
South Carolina I must go with it--and I don't want to go.  But I've been
a soldier all my life.  I know little of politics.  I have grown up with
the feeling that I must stay with my people through all things.  I must
be kin by blood to half the white people in Charleston.  How could I
desert them?"

"You couldn't," said Harry emphatically.

Colonel Leonidas Talbot smiled.  It is possible that, at the moment,
he wished for the sanguine decision of youth, which could choose a side
and find only wrong in the other.

"In my heart," he continued, "I do not wish to see the Union broken up,
although the violence of New England orators and the raid of John Brown
has appalled me.  But, Harry, pay good heed to me when I say it is not a
mere matter of going out of the Union.  It may not be possible for South
Carolina and the states that follow her to stay out."

"I don't understand you," said the boy.

"It means war!  It means war, as surely as the rising of the sun in the
morning.  Many think that it does not; that the new republic will be
formed in peace, but I know better.  A great and terrible war is coming.
Many of our colored people in Charleston and along the Carolina coast
came by the way of the West Indies.  They have strange superstitions.
They believe that some of their number have the gift of second sight.
In my childhood I knew two old women who claimed the power, and they
gave apparent proofs that were extraordinary.  I feel just now as if I
had the gift myself, and I tell you, Harry, although you can see only a
dark horizon from the window, I see one that is blood red all the way
to the zenith.  Alas, our poor country!"

Harry stared at him in amazement.  The colonel, although he had called
his name, seemed to have forgotten his presence.  A vivid and powerful
imagination had carried him not only from the room, but far into the
future.  He recovered himself with an abrupt little shrug of the
shoulders.

"I am too old a man to be talking such foolishness to a boy," he said,
briskly.  "To bed, Harry!  To bed!  Your sleep on the train was brief
and you need more!  So do I!"

Harry undressed quickly, and put himself under the covers, and the
colonel also retired, although somewhat more leisurely.  The boy could
not sleep for some time.  One vision was present in his mind, that of
Charleston, the famous city to which they were going.  The effect of
Colonel Talbot's ominous words had worn off.  He would soon see the city
which had been so long a leader in Southern thought and action, and he
would see, too, the men who had so boldly taken matters in their own
hands.  He admired their courage and daring.

It was late when Harry awoke, and the colonel was already up and
dressed.  But the man waited quietly until the boy was dressed also,
and they went down to breakfast together.  Despite the lateness of
the hour the dining-room was still crowded, and the room buzzed with
animated talk.  Harry knew very well that Charleston was the absorbing
topic, just as it had been the one great thought in his own mind.
The people about him seemed to be wholly of Southern sympathies, and
he knew very well that Tennessee, although she might take her own time
about it, would follow South Carolina out of the Union.

They found two vacant seats at a table, where three men already sat.
One was a member of the Legislature, who talked somewhat loudly; the
second was a country merchant of middle age, and the third was a young
man of twenty-five, who had very little to say.  The legislator, whose
name was Ramsay, soon learned Colonel Talbot's identity, and he would
have proclaimed it to everybody about him, had not the colonel begged
him not to do so.

"But you will at least permit me to shake your hand, Colonel Talbot,"
he said.  "One who can give up his commission in the army and come back
to us as you have done is the kind of man we need."

Colonel Talbot gave a reluctant hand.

"I am proud to have felt the grasp of one who will win many honors in
the coming war," said Ramsay.

"Or more likely fill a grave," said Colonel Talbot, dryly.

The silent young man across the table looked at the South Carolinian
with interest, and Harry in his turn examined this stranger.  He was
built well, shaven smoothly, and did not look like a Tennesseean.
His thin lips, often pressed closely together, seemed to indicate a
capacity for silence, but when he saw Harry looking at him he smiled
and said:

"I gather from your conversation that you are going to Charleston.
All southern roads seem to lead to that town, and I, too, am going
there.  My name is Shepard, William J. Shepard, of St. Louis."

Colonel Talbot turned a measuring look upon him. It was so intent and
comprehensive that the young man flushed slightly, and moved a little in
his seat.

"So you are from St. Louis?" said the colonel.  "That is a great city,
and you must know something about the feeling there.  Can you tell me
whether Missouri will go out?"

"I cannot," replied Shepard.  "No man can.  But many of us are at work."

"What do you think?" persisted Colonel Talbot.

"I am hoping.  Missouri is really a Southern state, the daughter of
Kentucky, and she ought to join her Southern sisters.  As the others
go out one by one, I think she will follow.  The North will not fight,
and we will form a peaceful Southern republic."

Colonel Leonidas Talbot of South Carolina swept him once more with that
intent and comprehensive gaze.

"The North will fight," he said.  "As I told my young friend here last
night, a great and terrible war is coming."

"Do you think so?" asked Shepard, and it seemed to Harry that his tone
had become one of overwhelming interest.  "Then Charleston, as its
center and origin, ought to be ready.  How are they prepared there for
defense?"

Colonel Talbot's eyes never left Shepard's face and a faint pink tint
appeared again in the young man's cheeks.

"There are the forts--Sumter, Moultrie, Johnson and Pinckney," replied
the South Carolinian, "and I heard to-day that they are building
earthworks, also.  All are helping and it is said that Toutant
Beauregard is going there to take command."

"A good officer," said Shepard, musingly.  "I believe you said you were
leaving for Charleston this afternoon?"

"No, I did not say when," replied Colonel Talbot, somewhat sharply.
"It is possible that Harry and I may linger a while in Nashville.
They do not need us yet in Charleston, although their tempers are pretty
warm.  There has been so much fiery talk, cumulative for so many years,
that they regard northern men with extremely hostile eyes.  It would not
take much to cause trouble."

Colonel Talbot continued to gaze steadily at Shepard, but the Missourian
looked down into his plate.  It seemed to Harry that there was some sort
of play between them, or rather a thread of suspicion, a fine thread
in truth, but strong enough to sustain something.  He could see, too,
that Colonel Talbot was giving Shepard a warning, a warning, veiled and
vague, but nevertheless a warning.  But the boy liked Shepard.  His face
seemed to him frank and honest, and he would have trusted him.

They rose presently and went into the lobby, where the colonel evaded
Shepard, as the place was now crowded.  More news had come from
Charleston and evidently it was to their liking.  There was a great
amount of talk.  Many of the older men sprinkled their words with
expressive oaths.  The oaths came so naturally that it seemed to be a
habit with them.  They chewed tobacco freely, and now and then their
white shirt fronts were stained with it.  All those who seemed to be of
prominence wore long black coats, waistcoats cut low, and trousers of
a lighter color.

Near the wall stood a man of heavy build with a great shaggy head and
thick black hair all over his face.  He was dressed in a suit of rough
gray jeans, with his trousers stuffed into high boots.  He carried in
his right hand a short, thick riding whip, with which he occasionally
switched the tops of his own boots.

Harry spoke to him civilly, after the custom of the time and place.
He took him for a mountaineer, and he judged by the heavy whip he
carried, that he was a horse or cattle trader.

"They talk of Charleston," said Harry.

"Yes, they talk an' talk," said the man, biting his words, "an' they do
nothin'."

"You think they ought to take Tennessee out right away?"

"No, I'm ag'in it.  I don't want to bust up this here Union.  But I
reckon Tennessee is goin' out, an' most all the other Southern states
will go out, too.  I 'low the South will get whipped like all tarnation,
but if she does I'm a Southerner myself, an' I'll have to git whipped
along with her.  But talkin' don't do no good fur nobody.  If the South
goes out, it's hittin' that'll count, an' them that hits fastest,
hardest, truest an' longest will win."

The man was rough in appearance and illiterate in speech, but his
manner impressed Harry in an extraordinary manner.  It was direct and
wonderfully convincing.  The boy recognized at once a mind that would
steer straight through things toward its goal.

"My name is Harry Kenton," he said politely.  "I'm from Kentucky,
and my father used to be a colonel in the army."

"Mine," said the mountaineer, "is Nat Forrest, Nathan Bedford Forrest
for full and long.  I'm a trader in live stock, an' I thought I'd look
in here at Nashville an' see what the smart folks was doin'.  I'd tell
'em not to let Tennessee go out of the Union, but they wouldn't pay any
'tention to a hoss-tradin' mountaineer, who his neighbors say can't
write his name."

"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Forrest," said Harry, "but I'm afraid we're
on different sides of the question."

"Mebbe we are 'til things come to a head," said the mountaineer,
laughing, "but, as I said, if Tennessee goes out, I reckon I'll go with
her.  It's hard to go ag'in your own gang.  Leastways, 't ain't in me
to do it. Now I've had enough of this gab, an' I'm goin' to skip out.
Good-bye, young feller.  I wish you well."

Bringing his whip once more, and sharply this time, across the tops of
his own boots, he strode out of the hotel.  His walk was like his talk,
straight and decisive.  Harry saw Shepard in the lobby making friends,
but, imitating his older comrade, he avoided him, and late that
afternoon Colonel Talbot and he left for Charleston.




CHAPTER III

THE HEART OF REBELLION


Harry, with his friend Colonel Leonidas Talbot, approached Charleston
on Christmas morning.  It was a most momentous day to him.  As he came
nearer, the place looked greater and greater.  He had read much about
it in the books in his father's house--old tales of the Revolution and
stories of its famous families--and now its name was in the mouths of
all men.

He had felt a change in his own Kentucky atmosphere at Nashville,
but it had become complete when he drew near to Charleston.  It was a
different world, different alike in appearance and in thought.  The
contrast made the thrill all the keener and longer.  Colonel Talbot,
also, was swayed by emotion, but his was that of one who was coming home.

"I was born here, and I passed my boyhood here," he said.  "I could not
keep from loving it if I would, and I would not if I could.  Look how
the cold North melts away.  See the great magnolias, the live oaks,
and the masses of shrubbery!  Harry, I promise you that you shall have
a good time in this Charleston of ours."

They had left the railroad some distance back, and had come in by stage.
The day was warm and pleasant.  Two odors, one of flowers and foliage,
and the other of the salt sea, reached Harry.  He found both good.
He felt for the thousandth time of his pocket-book and papers to see that
they were safe, and he was glad that he had come, glad that he had been
chosen for such an important errand.

The colonel asked the driver to stop the stage at a cross road, and he
pointed out to Harry a low, white house with green blinds, standing on a
knoll among magnificent live oaks.

"That is my house, Harry," he said, "and this is Christmas Day.  Come
and spend it with me there."

Harry felt to the full the kindness of Colonel Leonidas Talbot, for whom
he had formed a strong affection.  The colonel seemed to him so simple,
so honest and, in a way, so unworldly, that he had won his heart almost
at once.  But he felt that he should decline, as his message must be
delivered as soon as he arrived in Charleston.

"I suppose you are right," said the colonel, when the boy had explained
why he could not accept.  "You take your letters to the gentlemen who
are going to make the war, and then you and I and others like us,
ranging from your age to mine, will have to fight it."

But Harry was not to be discouraged.  He could not see things in a gray
light on that brilliant Christmas morning.  Here was Charleston before
him and in a few hours he would be in the thick of great events.
A thrill of keen anticipation ran through all his veins.  The colonel
and he stood by the roadside while the obliging driver waited.  He
offered his hand, saying good-bye.

"It's only for a day," said Colonel Leonidas Talbot, as he gave the
hand a strong clasp.  "I shall be in Charleston tomorrow, and I shall
certainly see you."

Harry sprang back to his place and the stage rolled joyously into
Charleston.  Harry saw at once that the city was even more crowded than
Nashville had been.  Its population had increased greatly in a few weeks,
and he could feel the quiver of excitement in the air.  Citizen soldiers
were drilling in open places, and other men were throwing up earthworks.

He left the stage and carried over his arm his baggage, which still
consisted only of a pair of saddle bags.  He walked to an old-fashioned
hotel which Colonel Talbot had selected for him as quiet and good,
and as he went he looked at everything with a keen and eager interest.
The deep, mellow chiming of bells, from one point and then from another,
came to his ears.  He knew that they were the bells of St. Philip's and
St. Michael's, and he looked up in admiration at their lofty spires.
He had often heard, in far Kentucky, of these famous churches and their
silver chimes.

It seemed to Harry that the tension and excitement of the people in the
streets were of a rather pleasant kind.  They had done a great deed, and,
keyed to a high pitch by their orators and newspapers, they did not fear
the consequences.  The crowd seemed foreign to him in many aspects,
Gallic rather than American, but very likeable.

He reached his hotel, a brick building behind a high iron fence, kept by
a woman of olive complexion, middle years, and pleasant manners, Madame
Josephine Delaunay.  She looked at him at first with a little doubt,
because it was a time in Charleston when one must inspect strangers,
but when he mentioned Colonel Leonidas Talbot she broke into a series of
smiles.

"Ah, the good colonel!" she exclaimed.  "We were children at school
together, but since he became a soldier he has gone far from here.
And has he returned to fight for his great mother, South Carolina?"

"He has come back.  He has resigned from the army, and he is here to do
South Carolina's bidding."

"It is like him," said Madame Delaunay.  "Ah, that Leonidas, he has a
great soul!"

"I travelled with him from Nashville to Charleston," said Harry, "and I
learned to like and admire him."

He had established himself at once in the good graces of Madame Delaunay
and she gave him a fine room overlooking a garden, which in season
was filled with roses and oranges.  Even now, pleasant aromatic odors
came to him through the open window.  He had been scarcely an hour in
Charleston but he liked it already.  The old city breathed with an ease
and grace to which he was unused.  The best name that he knew for it was
fragrance.

He had a suit of fresh clothing in his saddle bags, and he arrayed
himself with the utmost neatness and care.  He felt that he must do so.
He could not present himself in rough guise to a people who had every
right to be fastidious.  He would also obtain further clothing out of
the abundant store of money, as his father had wished him to make a good
appearance and associate with the best.

He descended, and found Madame Delaunay in the garden, where she gave
him welcome, with grave courtesy.  She seemed to him in manner and
bearing a woman of wealth and position, and not the keeper of an inn,
doing most of the work with her own hands.  He learned later that the
two could go together in Charleston, and he learned also, that she was
the grand-daughter of a great Haytian sugar planter, who had fled from
the island, leaving everything to the followers of Toussaint l'Ouverture,
glad to reach the shores of South Carolina in safety.

Madame Delaunay looked with admiration at the young Kentuckian, so tall
and powerful for his age. To her, Kentucky was a part of the cold North.

"Can you tell me where I am likely to find Senator Yancey?" asked Harry.
"I have letters which I must deliver to him, and I have heard that he is
in Charleston."

"There is to be a meeting of the leaders this afternoon in St. Anthony's
Hall in Broad street.  You will surely find him there, but you must have
your luncheon first.  I think you must have travelled far."

"From Kentucky," replied Harry, and then he added impulsively: "I've
come to join your people, Madame Delaunay.  South Carolina has many and
powerful friends in the Upper South."

"She will need them," said Madame Delaunay, but with no tone of
apprehension.  "This, however, is a city that has withstood much fire
and blood and it can withstand much more.  Now I'll leave you here
in the garden.  Come to luncheon at one, and you shall meet my other
guests."

Harry sat down on a little wooden bench beneath a magnolia.  Here in the
garden the odor of grass and foliage was keen, and thrillingly sweet.
This was the South, the real South, and its warm passions leaped up in
his blood.  Much of the talk that he had been hearing recently from
those older than he passed through his mind.  The Southern states did
have a right to go if they chose, and they were being attacked because
their prominence aroused jealousy.  Slavery was a side issue, a mere
pretext.  If it were not convenient to hand, some other excuse would be
used.  Here in Charleston, the first home of secession, among people who
were charming in manner and kind, the feeling was very strong upon him.

He left the house after luncheon, and, following Madame Delaunay's
instructions, came very quickly to St. Andrew's hall in Broad street,
where five days before, the Legislature of South Carolina, after
adjourning from Columbia, had passed the ordinance of secession.

Two soldiers in the Palmetto uniform were on guard, but they quickly let
him pass when he showed his letters to Senator Yancey.  Inside, a young
man, a boy, in fact, not more than a year older than himself, met him.
He was slender, dark and tall, dressed precisely, and his manner had
that easy grace which, as Harry had noticed already, seemed to be the
characteristic of Charleston.

"My name is Arthur St. Clair," he said, "and I'm a sort of improvised
secretary for our leaders who are in council here."

"Mine," said Harry, "is Henry Kenton.  I'm a son of Colonel George
Kenton, of Kentucky, late a colonel in the United States Army, and I've
come with important messages from him, Senator Culver and other Southern
leaders in Kentucky."

"Then you will be truly welcome.  Wait a moment and I'll see if they are
ready to receive you."

He returned almost instantly, and asked Harry to go in with him.
They entered a large room, with a dais at the center of the far wall,
and a number of heavy gilt chairs covered with velvet ranged on either
side of it.  Over the dais hung a large portrait of Queen Victoria as a
girl in her coronation robes.  A Scotch society had occupied this room,
but the people of Charleston had always taken part in their festivities.
In those very velvet chairs the chaperons had sat while the dancing had
gone on in the hall.  Then the leaders of secession had occupied them,
when they put through their measure, and now they were sitting there
again, deliberating.

A man of middle years and of quick, eager countenance arose when young
St. Clair came in with Harry.

"Mr. Yancey," said St. Clair, "this is Henry Kenton, the son of Colonel
George Kenton, who has come from Kentucky with important letters."

Yancey gave him his hand and a welcome, and Harry looked with intense
interest at the famous Alabama orator, who, with Slidell, of South
Carolina, and Toombs of Georgia, had matched the New England leaders in
vehemence and denunciation.  Mr. Slidell, an older man, was present and
so was Mr. Jamison, of Barnwell, who had presided when secession was
carried.  There were more present, some prominent, others destined to
become so, and Harry was introduced to them one by one.

He gave his letters to Yancey and retired with young St. Clair to the
other end of the room, while the leaders read what had been written from
Kentucky.  Harry was learning to become a good observer, and he watched
them closely as they read.  He saw a look of pleasure come on the face
of every one, and presently Yancey beckoned to him.

"These are fine assurances," said the orator, "and they have been
brought by the worthy son of a worthy father.  Colonel Kenton, Senator
Culver and others, have no doubt that Kentucky will go out with us.
Now you are a boy, but boys sometimes see and hear more than men,
and you are old enough to think; that is, to think in the real sense.
Tell us, what is your own opinion?"

Harry flushed, and paused in embarrassment.

"Go on," said Mr. Yancey, persuasively.

"I do not know much," said Harry slowly, wishing not to speak, but
feeling that he was compelled by Mr. Yancey to do so, "but as far as I
have seen, Kentucky is sorely divided.  The people on the other side
are perhaps not as strong and influential as ours, but they are more
numerous."

A shade passed over the face of Yancey, but he quickly recovered his
good humor.

"You have done right to tell us the truth as you see it," he said,
"but we need Kentucky badly.  We must have the state and we will get it.
Did you hear anything before you left, of one Raymond Bertrand, a South
Carolinian?"

"He was at my father's house before I came away.  I think it was his
intention to go from there to Frankfort with some of our own people,
and assist in taking out the state."

Yancey smiled.

"Faithful to his errand," he said.  "Raymond Bertrand is a good lad.
He has visions, perhaps, but they are great ones, and he foresees a
mighty republic for us extending far south of our present border.
But now that you have accomplished your task, what do you mean to do,
Mr. Kenton?"

"I want to stay here," replied Harry eagerly.  "This is the head and
center of all things.  I think my father would wish me to do so.
I'll enlist with the South Carolina troops and wait for what happens."

"Even if what happens should be war?"

"Most of all if it should be war.  Then I shall be one of those who will
be needed most."

"A right and proper spirit," said Mr. Jamison, of Barnwell.  "When we
can command such enthusiasm we are unconquerable.  Now, we'll not keep
you longer, Mr. Kenton.  This is Christmas Day, and one as young as you
are is entitled to a share of the hilarity.  Look after him, St. Clair."

Harry went out with young St. Clair, whom he was now calling by his
first name, Arthur.  He, too, was staying with Madame Delaunay, who was
a distant relative.

Harry ate Christmas dinner that evening with twenty people, many of
types new to him.  It made a deep impression upon him then, and one yet
greater afterward, because he beheld the spirit of the Old South in its
inmost shrine, Charleston.  It seemed to him in later days that he had
looked upon it as it passed.

They sat in a great dining-room upon a floor level with the ground.
The magnolias and live oaks and the shrubs in the garden moved in the
gentle wind.  Fresh crisp air came through the windows, opened partly,
and brought with it, as Harry thought, an aroma of flowers blooming in
the farther south.  He sat with young St. Clair--the two were already
old friends--and Madame Delaunay was at the head of the table, looking
more like a great lady who was entertaining her friends than the keeper
of an inn.

Madame Delaunay wore a flowing white dress that draped itself in folds,
and a lace scarf was thrown about her shoulders.  Her heavy hair,
intensely black, was bound with a gold fillet, after a fashion that
has returned a half century later.  A single diamond sparkled upon her
finger.  She seemed to Harry foreign, handsome, and very distinguished.

About half the people in the room were of French blood, most of whom
Harry surmised were descendants of people who had fled from Hayti or
Santo Domingo.  One, Hector St. Hilaire, almost sixty, but a major in
the militia of South Carolina, soon proved that the boy's surmise was
right.  Lemonade and a mild drink called claret-sanger was served to
the boys, but the real claret was served to the major, as to the other
elders, and the mellowness of Christmas pervaded his spirit.  He drank a
toast to Madame Delaunay, and the others drank it with him, standing.
Madame Delaunay responded prettily, and, in a few words, she asked
protection and good fortune for this South Carolina which they all loved,
and which had been a refuge to the ancestors of so many of them.
As she sat down she looked up at the wall and Harry's glance followed
hers.  It was a long dining-room, and he saw there great portraits in
massive gilt frames.  They were of people French in look, handsome,
and dressed with great care and elaboration.  The men were in gay coats
and knee breeches, silk stockings and buckled shoes.  Small swords were
at their sides.  The women were even more gorgeous in velvet or heavy
satin, with their hair drawn high upon their heads and powdered.
One had a beauty patch upon her cheek.

Major St. Hilaire saw Harry's look as it sped along the wall.  He smiled
a little sadly and then, a little cheerfully:

"Those are the ancestors of Madame Delaunay," he said, "and some,
I may mention in passing, are my own, also.  Our gracious hostess and
myself are more or less distantly related--less, I fear--but I boast of
it, nevertheless, on every possible occasion.  They were great people in
a great island, once the richest colony of France, the richest colony
in all the world.  All those people whom you see upon the walls were
educated in Paris or other cities of France, and they returned to a life
upon the magnificent plantations of Hayti.  What has become of that
brightness and glory?  Gone like snow under a summer sun.  'Tis
nothing but the flower of fancy now.  The free black savage has made a
wilderness of Hayti, and our enemies in the North would make the same
of South Carolina."

A murmur of applause ran around the table.  Major St. Hilaire had spoken
with rhetorical effect and a certain undoubted pathos.  Every face
flushed, and Harry saw the tears glistening in the eyes of Madame
Delaunay who, despite her fifty years, looked very handsome indeed in
her white dress, with the glittering gold fillet about her great masses
of hair.

The boy was stirred powerfully.  His sensitive spirit responded at
once to the fervid atmosphere about him, to the color, the glow, the
intensity of a South far warmer than the one he had known.  Their
passions were his passions, and having seen the black and savage Hayti
of which Major St. Hilaire had drawn such a vivid picture, he shuddered
lest South Carolina and other states, too, should fall in the same way
to destruction.

"It can never happen!" he exclaimed, carried away by impulse.  "Kentucky
and Virginia and the big states of the Upper South will stand beside her
and fight with her!"

The murmur of applause ran around the table again, and Harry, blushing,
made himself as small as he could in his chair.

"Don't regret a good impulse.  Mr. Kenton," said a neighbor, a young
man named James McDonald--Harry had noticed that Scotch names seemed to
be as numerous as French in South Carolina--"the words that all of us
believe to be true leaped from your heart."

Harry did not speak again, unless he was addressed directly, but he
listened closely, while the others talked of the great crisis that was
so obviously approaching.  His interest did not make him neglect the
dinner, as he was a strong and hearty youth.  There were sweets for
which he did not care much, many vegetables, a great turkey, and venison
for which he did care, finishing with an ice and coffee that seemed to
him very black and bitter.

It was past eight o'clock when they rose and any lingering doubts that
Harry may have felt were swept away.  He was heart and soul with the
South Carolinians.  Those people in the far north seemed very cold and
hard to him.  They could not possibly understand.  One must be here
among the South Carolinians themselves to see and to know.

Harry went to his room, after a polite good-night to all the others.
He was not used to long and heavy dinners, and he felt the wish to rest
and take the measure of his situation.  He threw back the green blinds
and opened the window a little.  Once more the easy wind brought him
that odor of the far south, whether reality or fancy he could not say.
But he turned to another window and looked toward the north.  Away from
the others and away from a subtle persuasiveness that had been in the
air, some of his doubts returned.  It would not all be so easy.  What
were they doing in the far states beyond the Ohio?

He heard footsteps in the hail and a voice that seemed familiar.
He had left his door partly open, and, when he turned, he caught a
glimpse of a face that he knew.  It was young Shepard, whom he and Major
Talbot had met in Nashville.  Shepard saw Harry also, and saluted him
cheerfully.

"I've just arrived," he said, "and through letters from friends in
St. Louis, members of one of the old French families there, I've been
lucky enough to secure a room at Madame Delaunay's inn."

"Fortune has been with us both," said Harry, somewhat doubtfully,
but not knowing what else to say.

"It certainly has," said Shepard, with easy good humor.  "I'll see you
again in the morning and we'll talk of what we've been through, both of
us."

He walked briskly on and Harry heard his firm step ringing on the floor.
The boy retired to his own room again and locked the door.  He had liked
Shepard from the first.  He had seemed to him frank and open and no
one could deny his right to come to Charleston if he pleased.  And yet
Colonel Talbot, a man of a delicate and sensitive mind, which quickly
registered true impressions, had distrusted him.  He had even given
Harry a vague warning, which he felt that he could not ignore.  He made
up his mind that he would not see Shepard in the morning.  He would make
it a point to rise so early that he could avoid him.

His conclusion formed, he slept soundly until the first sunlight poured
in at the window that he had left open.  Then, remembering that he
intended to avoid Shepard, he jumped out of bed, dressed quickly and
went down to breakfast, which he had been told he could get as early
as he pleased.

Madame Delaunay was already there, still looking smooth and fresh in
the morning air.  But St. Clair was the only guest who was as early as
Harry.  Both greeted him pleasantly and hoped that he had slept well.
Their courtesy, although Harry had no doubt of its warmth, was slightly
more ornate and formal than that to which he had been used at home.
He recognized here an older society, one very ancient for the New World.

The breakfast was also different from the solid one that he always ate
at home.  It consisted of fruits, eggs, bread and coffee.  There was no
meat.  But he fared very well, nevertheless.  St. Clair, he now learned,
was a bank clerk, but after office hours he was drilling steadily in one
of the Charleston companies.

"If you enlist, come with me," he said to Harry.  "I can get you a place
on the staff, and that will suit you."

Harry accepted his offer gladly, although he felt that he could not take
up his new duties for a few days.  Matters of money and other things
were to be arranged.

"All right," said St. Clair.  "Take your time.  I don't think there's
any need to hurry."

Harry left Madame Delaunay's house immediately after breakfast, still
firm in his purpose to avoid Shepard, and went to the bank, on which
he held drafts properly attested.  Not knowing what the future held,
and inspired perhaps by some counsel of caution, he drew half of it
in gold, intending to keep it about his person, risking the chance of
robbery.  Then he went toward the bay, anxious to see the sea and those
famous forts, Sumter, Moultrie and the others, of which he had heard
so much.

It was a fine, crisp morning, one to make the heart of youth leap,
and he soon noticed that nearly the whole population of the city was
going with him toward the harbor.  St. Clair, who had departed for his
bank, overtook him, and it was evident to Harry that his friend was not
thinking much now of banks.

"What is it, Arthur?" asked Harry.

"They stole a march on us yesterday," replied St. Clair.  "See that dark
and grim mass rising up sixty feet or more near the center of the harbor,
the one with the Stars and Stripes flying so defiantly over it?  That's
Fort Sumter.  Yesterday, while we were enjoying our Christmas dinner and
talking of the things that we would do, Major Anderson, who commanded
the United States garrison in Fort Moultrie, quietly moved it over to
Sumter, which is far stronger.  The wives and children of the soldiers
and officers have been landed in the city with the request that we
send them to their homes in the states, which, of course, we will do.
But Major Anderson, who holds the fort in the name of the United States,
refuses to give it up to South Carolina, which claims it."

Harry felt an extraordinary thrill, a thrill that was, in many ways,
most painful.  Talk was one thing, action was another.  Here stood South
Carolina and the Union face to face, looking at each other through the
muzzles of cannon.  Sumter had one hundred and forty guns, most of which
commanded the city, and the people of Charleston had thrown up great
earthworks, mounting many cannon.

Boy as he was, Harry was old enough to see that here were all the
elements of a great conflagration.  It merely remained for somebody to
touch fire to the tow.  He was not one to sentimentalize, but the sight
of the defiant flag, the most beautiful in all the world, stirred him in
every fiber.  It was the flag under which both his father and Colonel
Talbot had fought.

"It has to be, Harry," said St. Clair, who was watching him closely.
"If it comes to a crisis we must fire upon it.  If we don't, the South
will be enslaved and black ignorance and savagery will be enthroned upon
our necks."

"I suppose so," said Harry.  "But look how the people gather!"

The Battery and all the harbor were now lined with the men, women and
children of Charleston.  Harry saw soldiers moving about Sumter, but no
demonstration of any kind occurred there.  He had not thought hitherto
about the garrison of the forts in Charleston harbor.  He recognized for
the first time that they might not share the opinions of Charleston,
and this name of Anderson was full of significance for him.  Major
Anderson was a Kentuckian.  He had heard his father speak of him; they
had served together, but it was now evident to Harry that Anderson would
not go with South Carolina.

"You'll see a small boat coming soon from Sumter," said St. Clair.
"Some of our people have gone over there to confer with Major Anderson
and demand that he give up the fort."

"I don't believe he'll do it," said Harry impulsively.  Some one touched
him upon the shoulder, and turning quickly he saw Colonel Leonidas
Talbot.  He shook the colonel's hand with vigor, and introduced him to
young St. Clair.

"I have just come into the city," said the colonel, "and I heard only
a few minutes ago that Major Anderson had removed his garrison from
Moultrie to Sumter."

"It is true," said St. Clair.  "He is defiant.  He says that he will
hold the fort for the Union."

"I had hoped that he would give up," said Colonel Talbot.  "It might
help the way to a composition."

He pulled his long mustache and looked somberly at the flag.  The wind
had risen a little, and it whipped about the staff.  Its fluttering
motions seemed to Harry more significant than ever of defiance.  He
understood the melancholy ring in Colonel Talbot's voice.  He, too,
like the boy's father, had fought under that flag, the same flag that
had led him up the flame-swept slopes of Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec.

"Here they come," exclaimed St. Clair, "and I know already the answer
that they bring!"

The small boat that he had predicted put out from Sumter and quickly
landed at the Battery.  It contained three commissioners, prominent men
of Charleston who had been sent to treat with Major Anderson, and his
answer was quickly known to all the crowd.  Sumter was the property
of the United States, not of South Carolina, and he would hold it for
the Union.  At that moment the wind strengthened, and the flag stood
straight out over the lofty walls of Sumter.

"I knew it would be so," said Colonel Talbot, with a sigh.  "Anderson is
that kind of a man.  Come, boys, we will go back into the city.  I am to
help in building the fortifications, and as I am about to make a tour of
inspection I will take you with me."

Harry found that, although secession was only a few days old, the work
of offense and defense was already far advanced.  The planters were
pouring into Charleston, bringing their slaves with them, and white
and black labored together at the earthworks.  Rich men, who had never
soiled their hands with toil before now, wielded pick and spade by the
side of their black slaves.  And it was rumored that Toutant Beauregard,
a great engineer officer, now commander at the West Point Military
Academy, would speedily resign, and come south to take command of the
forces in Charleston.

Strong works were going up along the mainland.  The South Carolina
forces had also seized Sullivan's Island, Morris Island, and James
Island and were mounting guns upon them all.  Circling batteries would
soon threaten Sumter, and, however defiantly the flag there might snap
in the breeze, it must come down.

As they were leaving the last of the batteries Harry noticed the broad,
strong back and erect figure of a young man who stood with his hands in
his pockets.  He knew by his rigid attitude that he was looking intently
at the battery and he knew, moreover, that it was Shepard.  He wished
to avoid him, and he wished also that his companion would not see him.
He started to draw Colonel Talbot away, but it was too late.  Shepard
turned at that moment, and the colonel caught sight of his face.

"That man here among our batteries!" he exclaimed in a menacing tone.

"Come away, colonel!" said Harry hastily.  "We don't know anything
against him!"

But Shepard himself acted first.  He came forward quickly, his hand
extended, and his eyes expressing pleasure.

"I missed you this morning, Mr. Kenton," he said.  "You were too early
for me, but we meet, nevertheless, in a place of the greatest interest.
And here is Colonel Talbot, too!"

Harry took the outstretched hand--he could not keep from liking
Shepard--but Colonel Talbot, by turning slightly, avoided it without
giving the appearance of brusqueness.  His courtesy, concerning which
the South Carolinians of his type were so particular, would not fail him,
and, while he avoided the hand, he promptly introduced Shepard and
St. Clair.

"I did not expect to find events so far advanced in Charleston," said
Shepard.  "With the Federal garrison concentrated in Sumter and the
batteries going up everywhere, matters begin to look dangerous."

"I suppose that you have made a careful examination of all the
batteries," said Colonel Talbot dryly.

"Casual, not careful," returned Shepard, in his usual cheerful tones.
"It is impossible, at such a time, to keep from looking at Sumter,
the batteries and all the other preparations.  We would not be human if
we didn't do it, and I've seen enough to know that the Yankees will have
a hot welcome if they undertake to interfere with Charleston."

"You see truly," said Colonel Talbot, with some emphasis.

"A happy chance has put me at the same place as Mr. Kenton," continued
Shepard easily.  "I have letters which admitted me to the inn of Madame
Delaunay, and I met him there last night.  We are likely to see much of
each other."

Colonel Leonidas Talbot raised his eyebrows.  When they walked a little
further he excused himself, saying that he was going to meet a committee
of defense at St. Andrew's Hall, and Harry and Arthur, after talking a
little longer with Shepard, left him near one of the batteries.

"I'm going to my bank," said St. Clair.  "I'm already long overdue,
but it will be forgiven at such a time as this.  And I must say, Harry,
that Colonel Talbot does not seem to like your acquaintance, Mr. Shepard."

"It is true, he doesn't, although I don't know just why," said Harry.

He saw Shepard at a distance three more times in the course of the day,
but he sedulously avoided a meeting.  He noticed that Shepard was always
near the batteries and earthworks, but hundreds of others were near them,
too.  He did not return to Madame Delaunay's until evening, when it
was time for dinner, where he found all the guests gathered, with the
addition of Shepard.

Madame Delaunay assigned the new man to a seat near the foot of the
table and the talk ran on much as it had done at the Christmas dinner,
Major St. Hilaire leading, which Harry surmised was his custom.  Shepard,
who had been introduced to the others by Madame Delaunay, did not have
much to say, nor did the South Carolinians warm to him as they had to
Harry.  A slight air of constraint appeared and Harry was glad when
the dinner was over.  Then he and St. Clair slipped away and spent the
evening roaming about the city, looking at the old historic places,
the fine churches, the homes of the wealthy and again at the earthworks
and the harbor forts.  The last thing Harry saw as he turned back toward
Madame Delaunay's was that defiant flag of the Union, still waving above
the dark and looming mass of old Sumter.

He was unlocking the door to his room when Shepard came briskly down the
hall, carrying his candle in his hand.

"I want to tell you good-bye, Mr. Kenton," he said, "I thought we were
to be together here at the inn for some time, but it is not to be so."

"What has happened?"

"It appears that my room had been engaged already by another man,
beginning tomorrow morning.  I was not informed of it when I came here,
but Madame Delaunay has recalled the fact and I cannot doubt the word
of a Charleston lady.  It appears also that no other room is vacant,
owing to the great number of people who have come into the city in the
last week or two.  So, I go."

He did not seem at all discouraged, his tone being as cheerful as ever,
and he held out his hand.  Harry liked this man, although it seemed that
others did not, and when he released the hand he said:

"Take good care of yourself, Mr. Shepard.  As I see it, the people of
Charleston are not taking to you, and we do not know what is going to
happen."

"Both statements are true," said Shepard with a laugh as he vanished
down the hail.  Nothing yet had been able to disturb his poise.

Harry went into his own room, and, throwing open his front window to let
in fresh air, he heard the hum of voices.  He looked down into a piazza
and he saw two figures there, a man and a woman.  They were Colonel
Talbot and Madame Delaunay.  He closed the blind promptly, feeling that
unconsciously he had touched upon something hallowed, the thread of
an old romance, a thread which, though slender, was nevertheless yet
strong.  Nor did he doubt that the suggestion of Colonel Leonidas Talbot
had caused the speedy withdrawal of Shepard.

Several more days passed.  Harry found that he was taken into the city's
heart, and its spell was very strong upon him.  He knew that much of his
welcome was due to the powerful influence of Colonel Leonidas Talbot and
to the warm friendship of Arthur St. Clair, who apparently was related
to everybody.  A letter came from his father, to whom he had written at
once of his purpose, giving his approval, and sending him more money.
Colonel Kenton wrote that he would come South himself, but he was needed
in Kentucky, where a powerful faction was opposing their plans.  He said
that Harry's cousin, Dick Mason, had joined the home guards, raised in
the interests of the old Union, and was drilling zealously.

The letter made the boy very thoughtful.  The news about his cousin
opened his eyes.  The line of cleavage between North and South was
widening into a gulf.  But his spirits rose when he enlisted in the
Palmetto Guards, and began to see active service.  His quickness and
zeal caused him to be used as a messenger, and he was continually
passing back and forth among the Confederate leaders in Charleston.
He also came into contact with the Union officers in Fort Sumter.

The relations of the town and the garrison were yet on a friendly basis.
Men were allowed to come ashore and to buy fresh meat, vegetables,
and other provisions.  Strict orders kept anyone from offering violence
or insult to them.  Harry saw Anderson once, but he did not give him his
name, deeming it best, because of the stand that he had taken, that no
talk should pass between them.

He picked up a copy of the Mercury one morning and saw that a steamer,
the Star of the West, was on its way to Charleston from a northern
port with supplies for the garrison in Fort Sumter.  He read the brief
account, threw down the paper and rushed out for his friend, St. Clair.
He knew that the coming of this vessel would fire the Charleston heart,
and he was eager to be upon the scene.




CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST CAPITAL


Harry and Arthur stood two days later upon the sea wall of Charleston.
Sumter rose up black and menacing in the clear wintry air.  The muzzles
of the cannon seemed to point into the very heart of the city, and over
it, as ever, flew the defiant flag, the red and blue burning in vivid
colors in the thin January sunshine.  The heart of Charleston, that most
intense of all Southern cities, had given forth a great throb.  The Star
of the West was coming from the North with provisions for the garrison
of beleaguered Sumter.  They would see her hull on the horizon in
another hour.

Both Harry and Arthur were trembling with excitement.  They were not on
duty themselves, but they knew that all the South Carolina earthworks
and batteries were manned.  What would happen?  It still seemed almost
incredible to Harry that the people of the Union--at least of the Union
that was--should fire upon one another, and his pulse beat hard and
strong, while he waited with his comrade.

As they stood there gazing out to sea, looking for the black speck
that should mark the first smoke of the Star of the West, Harry became
conscious that another man was standing almost at his elbow.  He glanced
up and saw Shepard, who nodded to him.

"I did not know that I was standing by you until I had been here some
time," said Shepard, as if he sought to indicate that he had not been
seeking Harry and his comrade.

"I thought you had left Charleston," said Harry, who had not seen him
for a week.

"Not at such a time," said Shepard, quietly.  "So much of overwhelming
interest is happening here that nobody who is alive can go away."

He put a pair of powerful glasses to his eyes and scanned the sea's rim.
He looked a long time, and then his face showed excitement.

"It comes!  It comes!" he exclaimed, more to himself than to Harry and
Arthur.

"Is it the steamer?  Is it the Star of the West?" exclaimed Harry
forgetting all doubts of Shepard in the thrill of the moment.

"Yes, the Star of the West!  It can be no other!" replied Shepard.
"It can be no other!  Take the glasses and see for yourself!"

When Harry looked he saw, where sea and sky joined, a black dot that
gradually lengthened out into a small plume.  It was not possible to
recognize any ship at that distance, but he felt instinctively that it
was the Star of the West.  He passed the glasses to Arthur, who also
took a look, and then drew a deep breath.  Harry handed the glasses back
to Shepard, saying:

"I see the ship, and I've no doubt that it's the Star of the West.
Do you know anything about this vessel, Mr. Shepard?"

"I've heard that she's only a small steamer, totally unfitted for
offense or defense."

"If the batteries fire upon her she's bound to go back."

"You put it right."

"Then, in effect, this is a test, and it rests with us whether or not to
fire the first shot."

"I think you're right again."

Others also saw the growing black plume of smoke rising from the
steamer's funnel, and a deep thrilling murmur ran through the crowd
gathered on the sea walls.  To many the vessel, steaming toward the
harbor, was foreign, carrying a foreign flag, but to many others it
was not and could never be so.

Shepard passed the glasses to the boy again, and he looked a second time
at the ship, which was now taking shape and rising fast upon the water.
Then he examined the walls of Sumter and saw men in blue moving there.
They, too, were watching the coming steamer with the deepest anxiety.

Arthur took his second look also, and Shepard watched through the
glasses a little longer.  Then he put them in the case which he hung
over his shoulder.  Glasses were no longer needed.  They could now see
with the naked eye what was about to happen--if anything happened at all.

"It will soon be decided," said Shepard, and Harry noticed that his
voice trembled.  "If the Star of the West comes without interference up
to the walls of Sumter there will be no war.  The minds of men on both
sides will cool.  But if she is stopped, then--"

He broke off.  Something seemed to choke in his throat.  Harry and
Arthur remained silent.

The ship rose higher and higher.  Behind her hung the long black trail
of her smoke.  Soon, she would be in the range of the batteries.
A deep shuddering sigh ran through the crowd, and then came moments of
intense, painful silence.  The little blue figures lining the walls of
Sumter were motionless.  The sea moved slowly and sleepily, its waters
drenched in wintry sunshine.

On came the Star of the West, straight toward the harbor mouth.

"They will not fire!  They dare not!" cried Shepard in a tense, strained
whisper.

As the last word left his lips there was a heavy crash.  A tongue of
fire leaped from one of the batteries, followed by a gush of smoke,
and a round shot whistled over the Star of the West.  A tremendous shout
came from the crowd, then it was silent, while that tongue of flame
leaped a second time from the mouth of a cannon.  Harry saw the water
spring up, a spire of white foam, near the steamer, and a moment later
a third shot clipped the water close by.  He did not know whether the
gunners were firing directly at the vessel or merely meant to warn her
that she came nearer at her peril, but in any event, the effect was
the same.  South Carolina with her cannon was warning a foreign ship,
the ship of an enemy, to keep away.

The Star of the West slowed down and stopped.  Then another shout,
more tremendous than ever, a shout of triumph, came from the crowd,
but Harry felt a chill strike to his heart.  Young St. Clair, too,
was silent and Harry saw a shadow on his face.  He looked for Shepard,
but he was gone and the boy had not heard him go.

"It is all over," said St. Clair, with the certainty of prophecy.
"The cannon have spoken and it is war. Why, where is Shepard?"

"I don't know.  He seems to have slipped away after the first two or
three shots."

"I suppose he considered the two or three enough.  Look, Harry!  The
ship is turning!  The cannon have driven her off!"

He was right.  The Star of the West, a small steamer, unable to face
heavy guns, had curved about and was making for the open sea.  There was
another tremendous shout from the crowd, and then silence.  Smoke from
the cannon drifted lazily over the town, and, caught by a contrary
breeze, was blown out over the sea in the track of the retreating
steamer, where it met the black trail left by that vessel's own funnel.
The crowd, not cheering much now, but talking in rather subdued tones,
dispersed.

Harry felt the chill down his spine again.  These were great matters.
He had looked upon no light event in the harbor of Charleston that day.
He and Arthur lingered on the wall, watching that trailing black dot on
the horizon, until it died away and was gone forever.  The blue figures
on the walls of Sumter had disappeared within, and the fortress stood up,
grim and silent.  Beyond lay the blue sea, shimmering and peaceful in
the wintry sunshine.

"I suppose there is nothing to do but go back to Madame Delaunay's,"
said Harry.

"Nothing now," replied St. Clair, "but I fancy that later on we'll have
all we can do."

"If not more."

"Yes, if not more."

Both boys were very grave and thoughtful as they walked to Madame
Delaunay's most excellent inn.  They realized that as yet South Carolina
stood alone, but in the evening their spirits took a leap.  News came
that Mississippi also had gone out.  Then other planting states followed
fast.  Florida was but a day behind Mississippi, Alabama went out the
next day after Florida, Georgia eight days later, and Louisiana a
week after Georgia.  Exultation rose high in Charleston.  All the Gulf
and South Atlantic States were now sure, but the great border states
still hung fire.  There was a clamor for Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland
and Missouri, and, though the promises from them came thick and fast,
they did not go out.  But the fiery energy of Charleston and the lower
South was moving forward over all obstacles.  Already arrangements had
been made for a great convention at Montgomery in Alabama, and a new
government would be formed differing but little from that of the old
Union.

Now Harry began to hear much of a man, of whom he had heard his father
speak, but who had slipped entirely from his mind.  It was Jefferson
Davis, a native of Kentucky like Abraham Lincoln.  He had been a brave
and gallant soldier at Buena Vista.  It was said that he had saved the
day against the overwhelming odds of Santa Anna.  He had been Secretary
of War in the old Union, now dissolved forever, according to the
Charleston talk.  Other names, too, began to grow familiar in Harry's
ears.  Much was said about the bluff Bob Toombs of Georgia, who feared
no man and who would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker
Hill monument.  And there was little weazened Stephens, also of Georgia,
a great intellect in a shrunken frame, and Benjamin of the oldest race,
who had inherited the wisdom of ages.  There would be no lack of numbers
and courage and penetration when the great gathering met at Montgomery.

These were busy and on the whole happy days for Harry and St. Clair.
Harry drilled with his comrade in the Palmetto Guards now, and, in due
time, they were going to Montgomery to assist at the inauguration of the
new president, whoever he might be.  No vessel had come in place of the
Star of the West.  The North seemed supine, and Sumter, grim and dark
though she might be, was alone.  The flag of the Stars and Stripes still
floated above it.  Everywhere else the Palmetto flag waved defiance.
But there was still no passage of arms between Sumter and its hostile
neighbors.  Small boats passed between the fort and the city, carrying
provisions to the garrison, and also the news.  The Charlestonians told
Major Anderson of the states that went out, one by one, and the brave
Kentuckian, eating his heart out, looked vainly toward the open sea for
the help that never came.

Exultation still rose in Charleston.  The ball was rolling finely.
It was even gathering more speed and force than the most sanguine had
expected.  Every day brought the news of some new accession to the cause,
some new triumph.  The Alabama militia had seized the forts, Morgan and
Gaines; Georgia had occupied Pulaski and Jackson; North Carolina troops
had taken possession of the arsenal at Fayetteville, and those of
Florida on the same day had taken the one at Chattahoochee.  Everywhere
the South was accumulating arms, ammunition and supplies for use--if
they should be needed.  The leaders had good cause for rejoicing.
They were disappointed in nothing, save that northern tier of border
states which still hesitated or refused.

Harry in these days wondered that so little seemed to happen in the
North.  His strong connections and his own good manners had made him a
favorite in Charleston.  He went everywhere, perhaps most often to the
office of the Mercury, controlled by the powerful Rhett family, among
the most fiery of the Southern leaders.  Exchanges still came there from
the northern cities, but he read little in them about preparations for
war.  Many attacked Buchanan, the present President, for weakness,
and few expected anything better from the uncouth western figure,
Lincoln, who would soon succeed him.

Meanwhile the Confederate convention at Montgomery was acting.  In those
days apathy and delay seemed to be characteristic of the North, courage
and energy of the South.  The new government was being formed with speed
and decision.  Jefferson Davis, it was said, would be President, and
Stephens of Georgia would be Vice-President.

The time for departure to Montgomery drew near.  Harry and Arthur were
in fine gray uniforms as members of the Palmetto Guards.  Arthur, light,
volatile, was full of pleased excitement.  Harry also felt the thrill
of curiosity and anticipation, but he had been in Charleston nearly six
weeks now, and while six weeks are short, they had been long enough
in such a tense time to make vital changes in his character.  He was
growing older fast.  He was more of a man, and he weighed and measured
things more.  He recognized that Charleston, while the second city of
the South in size and the first in leadership, was only Charleston,
after all, far inferior in weight and numbers to the great cities of
the North.  Often he looked toward the North over the vast, intervening
space and tried to reckon what forces lay there.

The evening before their departure they sat on the wide piazza that
swept along the entire front of the inn of Madame Delaunay.  Colonel
Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St. Hilaire sat with them.  They, too,
were going to Montgomery.  Mid-February had passed, and the day had been
one of unusual warmth for that time of the year, like a day in full
spring.  The wind from the south was keen with the odor of fresh foliage
and of roses, and of faint far perfumes, unknown but thrilling.  A sky
of molten silver clothed city, bay, and forts in enchantment.  Nothing
seemed further away than war, yet they had to walk but a little distance
to see the defiant flag over Sumter, and the hostile Palmetto flags
waving not far away.

Madame Delaunay appeared in the doorway.  She was dressed as usual in
white and her shining black hair was bound with the slender gold fillet.

"We are going away tomorrow, Madame," said Colonel Talbot, "and I know
that we cannot find in Montgomery any such pleasant entertainment as my
young friends have enjoyed here."

Harry was confirmed in his belief that the thread of an old romance
still formed a firm tie between them.

"But you will come back," said Madame Delaunay.  "You will come back
very soon.  Surely, they will not try to keep us from going our ways in
peace."

A sudden thrill of passion and feeling had appeared in her voice.

"That no one can tell, Julie," said Colonel Talbot very gravely--it
was the first time that Harry had ever heard him call her by her first
name--"but it seems to me that I should tell what I think.  A Union such
as ours has been formed amid so much suffering and hardship, courage and
danger, that it is not to be broken in a day.  We may come back soon
from Montgomery, Julie, but I see war, a great and terrible war, a war,
by the side of which those we have had, will dwindle to mere skirmishes.
I shut my eyes, but it makes no difference.  I see it close at hand,
just the same."

Madame Delaunay sighed.

"And you, Major St. Hilaire?" she said.

"There may be a great war, Madame Delaunay," he said, "I fear that
Colonel Talbot is right, but we shall win it."

Colonel Talbot said nothing more, nor did Madame Delaunay.  Presently
she went back into the house. After a long silence the colonel said:

"If I were not sure that our friend Shepard had left Charleston long
since, I should say that the figure now passing in the street is his."

A small lawn filled with shrubbery stretched before the house, but from
the piazza they could see into the street.  Harry, too, caught a glimpse
of a passing figure, and like the colonel he was sure that it was
Shepard.

"It is certainly he!" he exclaimed.

"After him!" cried Colonel Talbot, instantly all action.  "As sure as we
live that man is a spy, drawing maps of our fortifications, and I should
have warned the Government before."

The four sprang from the piazza and ran into the street.  Harry,
although he had originally felt no desire to seize Shepard, was carried
along by the impetus.  It was the first man-hunt in which he had ever
shared, and soon he caught the thrill from the others.  The colonel,
no doubt, was right.  Shepard was a spy and should be taken.  He ran
as fast as any of them.

Shepard, if Shepard it was, heard the swift footsteps behind him,
glanced back and then ran.

"After him!" cried Major St. Hilaire, his volatile blood leaping high.
"His flight shows that he's a spy!"

But the fugitive was a man of strength and resource.  He ran swiftly
into a cross street, and when they followed him there he leaped over
the low fence of a lawn, surrounding a great house, darted into the
shrubbery, and the four, although they were joined by others, brought
by the alarm, sought for him in vain.

"After all, I'm not sorry he got away," said Colonel Talbot, as they
walked back to Madame Delaunay's.  "There is no war, and hence, in a
military sense, there can be no spies.  I doubt whether we should have
known what to do with him had we caught him, but I am certain that he
has complete maps of all our defenses."

Harry, with Arthur and many others whom he knew, started the next day
for Montgomery.  Jefferson Davis had already been chosen President,
and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President, and Davis was on his way
from his Mississippi home to the same town to be inaugurated.  In the
excitement over the great event, so near at hand, Harry forgot all about
Shepard and his doubts.  He bade a regretful farewell to Charleston,
which had taken him to its heart, and turned his face to this new place,
much smaller, and, as yet, without fame.

Harry, Arthur, and their older friends began the momentous journey
across the land of King Cotton, passing through the very heart of the
lower South, as they went from Charleston to Montgomery.  Davis and
Stephens would be inaugurated on the 17th of that month, which was
February.  But the Palmetto Guards would arrive at Montgomery before
Davis himself, who had left his home and who would cross Mississippi,
Alabama, and a corner of Georgia before he reached the new capital to
receive the chief honor.

Trains were slow and halting, and Harry had ample opportunity to see
the land and the people who crowded to the stations to bring news or to
hear it.  He crossed a low, rolling country with many rivers, great and
small.  He saw large houses, with white-pillared porticos, sitting back
among the trees, and swarms of negro cabins.  Much of the region was yet
dead and brown from the touch of winter, but in the valleys the green
was appearing.  Spring was in the air, and the spirits of the Palmetto
Guards, nearly all of whom were very young, were rising with it.

The train drew into Montgomery, the little city that stood on the high
banks of the Alabama River.  Here they were in the very heart of the
new Confederacy, and Harry and Arthur were eager to see the many famous
Southern men who were gathered there to welcome the new President.
Jefferson Davis was expected on the morrow, and would be inaugurated on
the day following.  They heard that his coming was already a triumphal
progress.  Vast crowds held his train at many points, merely to see him
and listen to a few words.  Generally he spoke in the careful, measured
manner that was natural to him, but it was said that in Opelika, in
Alabama, he had delivered a warning to the North, telling the Northern
states that they would interfere with the Southern at their peril.

Harry and Arthur, despite their eagerness to see the town and the great
men, were compelled to wait.  The Palmetto Guards went into camp on the
outskirts, and their commander, Colonel Leonidas Talbot, late of the
United States Army, was very strict in discipline.  His second in
command, Major Hector St. Hilaire, was no whit inferior to him in
sternness.  Harry had expected that this old descendant of Huguenots,
reared in the soft air of Charleston, would be lax, or at least easy
of temper, but whatever of military rigor Colonel Talbot forgot,
Major St. Hilaire remembered.

The guards were about three hundred in number, and their camp was
pitched on a hill, a half mile from the town.  The night, after a
beautiful day, turned raw and chill, warning that early spring, even
in those southern latitudes, was more of a promise than a performance.
But the young troops built several great fires and those who were not
on guard basked before the glow.

Harry had helped to gather the wood, most of which was furnished by the
people living near, and his task was ended.  Now he sat on his blanket
with his back against a log and, with a great feeling of comfort,
saw the flames leap up and grow.  The cooks were at work, and there
was an abundance of food.  They had brought much themselves, and the
enthusiastic neighbors doubled and tripled their supplies.  The pleasant
aroma of bacon and ham frying over the coals and of boiling coffee
arose.  He was weary from the long journey and the work that he had done,
and he was hungry, too, but he was willing to wait.

All the troops were South Carolinians except Harry and perhaps a dozen
others.  They were a pleasant lot, quick of temper, perhaps, but he
liked them.  Their prevailing note was high spirits, and the most
cheerful of all was a tall youth named Tom Langdon, whose father owned
one of the smaller of the sea islands off the South Carolina coast.
He was quite sanguine that everything would go exactly as they wished.
The Yankees would not fight, but, if by any chance they did fight,
they would get a most terrible thrashing.  Tom, with a tin cup full of
coffee in one hand and a tin plate containing ham and bread in the other,
sat down by the side of Harry and leaned back against the log also.
Harry had never seen a picture of more supreme content than his face
showed.

"In thirty-six hours we'll have a new President, do you appreciate that
fact, Harry Kenton?" asked young Langdon.

"I do," replied Harry, "and it makes me think pretty hard."

"What's the use of worrying?  Why, it's just the biggest picnic that
I ever took part in, and if the Yankees object to our setting up for
ourselves I fancy we'll have to go up there and teach 'em to mind their
own business.  I wouldn't object, Harry, to a march at somebody else's
expense to New York and Philadelphia and Boston.  I suppose those cities
are worth seeing."

Harry laughed.  Langdon's good spirits were contagious even to a nature
much more serious.

"I don't look on it as a picnic altogether," he said.  "The Yankees will
fight very hard, but we live on the land almost wholly, and the grass
keeps on growing, whether there's war or not.  Besides, we're an outdoor
people, good horsemen, hunters, and marksmen.  These things ought to
help us."

"They will and we'll help ourselves most," said Langdon gaily.  "I'm
going to be either a general or a great politician, Harry.  If it's a
long war, I'll come out a general; if it's a short one, I mean to enter
public life afterward and be a great orator.  Did you ever hear me speak,
Harry?"

"No, thank Heaven," replied Harry fervently.  "Don't you think that
South Carolina has enough orators now?  What on earth do all your people
find to talk about?"

Langdon laughed with the utmost good nature.

"We fire the human heart," he replied.  "'Words, words, empty words,' it
is not so.  Words in themselves are often deeds, because the deeds start
from them or are caused by them.  The world has been run with words.
All great actions result from them.  Now, if we should have a big war,
it would be said long afterward that it was caused by words, words
spoken at Charleston and Boston, though, of course, the things they say
at Boston are wrong, while those said at Charleston are right."

Harry laughed in his turn.

"It's quite certain," he said, "that you'll have no lack of words
yourself.  I imagine that the sign over your future office will read,
'Thomas Langdon, wholesale dealer in words.  Any amount of any quality
supplied on demand.'"

"Not a bad idea," said Langdon.  "You mean that as satire, but I'll
do it.  It's no small accomplishment to be a good dictionary.  But my
thoughts turn back to war.  You think I never look beyond today, but I
believe the North will come up against us.  And you'll have to go into
it with all your might, Harry.  You are of fighting stock.  Your father
was in the thick of it in Mexico.  Remember the lines:

          "We were not many, we who stood
            Before the iron sleet that day;
           Yet many a gallant spirit would
           Give half his years if he but could
            Have been with us at Monterey."

"I remember them," said Harry, much stirred.  "I have heard my father
quote them.  He was at Monterey and he says that the Mexicans fought
well.  I was at Frankfort, the capital of our state, myself with him,
when they unveiled the monument to our Kentucky dead and I heard them
read O'Hara's poem which he wrote for that day.  I tell you, Langdon,
it makes my blood jump every time I hear it."

He recited in a sort of low chant:

          "The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
              The bugle's stirring blast,
           The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
              The din and shout are past.

          "Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal
              Shall fill with fierce delight
           Those breasts that never more may feel
              The rapture of the fight."

They were very young and, in some respects, it was a sentimental time,
much given to poetry.  As the darkness closed in and the lights of the
little city could be seen no longer, their thoughts took a more solemn
turn.  Perhaps it would be fairer to call them emotions or feelings
rather than thoughts.  In the day all had been talk and lightness,
but in the night omens and presages came.  Langdon was the first to
rouse himself.  He could not be solemn longer than three minutes.

"It's certain that the President is coming tomorrow, Harry, isn't it?"
he asked.

"Beyond a doubt.  He is so near now that they fix the exact hour,
and the Guards are among those to receive him."

"I wonder what he looks like.  They say he is a very great man."

They were interrupted by St. Clair, who threw himself down on a blanket
beside them.

"That's the third cup of coffee you're taking, Tom," he said to Langdon.
"Here, give it to me.  I've had none."

Langdon obeyed and St. Clair drank thirstily.  Then he took from the
inside pocket of his coat a newspaper which he unfolded deliberately.

"This came from Montgomery," he said.  "I heard you two quoting poetry,
and I thought I'd come over and read some to you.  What do you think of
this?  It was written by a fellow in Boston named Holmes and published
when he heard that South Carolina had seceded.  He calls it: 'Brother
Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline.'"

"Read it!" exclaimed the others.

"Here goes:

    "She has gone--she has left us in passion and pride,
     Our stormy-browed sister so long at our side!
     She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
     And turned on her brother the face of a foe.

    "O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,
     We can never forget that our hearts have been one,
     Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name
     From the fountain of blood with the fingers of flame."

St. Clair read well in a full, round voice, and when he stopped with the
second verse Harry said:

"It sounds well.  I like particularly that expression, 'the fingers of
flame.'  After all, there's some grief in parting company, breaking up
the family, so to speak."

"But he's wrong when he says we left in passion and pride," exclaimed
Langdon.  "In pride, yes, but not in passion.  We may be children of
the sun, too, but I've felt some mighty cold winds sweeping down from
the Carolina hills, cold enough to make fur-lined overcoats welcome.
But we'll forget about cold winds and everything else unpleasant,
before such a jolly fire as this."

They finished an abundant supper, and soon relapsed into silence.
The flames threw out such a generous heat that they were content to rest
their backs against the log, and gaze sleepily into the coals.  Beyond
the fire, in the shadow, they saw the sentinels walking up and down.
Harry felt for the first time that he was really within the iron bands
of military discipline.  He might choose to leave the camp and go into
Montgomery, but he would choose and nothing more.  He could not go.
Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St. Hilaire were friends,
but they were masters also, and he was recognizing sooner than some of
the youths around him that it was not merely play and spectacle that
awaited them.




CHAPTER V

THE NEW PRESIDENT


Their great day came.  Clear sunlight shone over the town, the hills and
the brown waters of the Alabama.  It was a peculiarly Southern country,
different, Harry thought, from his own Kentucky, more enthusiastic,
perhaps, and less prone to count the cost.  The people had come not only
on the railroad, but they were arriving now from far places in wagons
and on horseback.  Men of distinction, almost universally, wore black
clothes, the coats very long, black slouch hats, wide of brim, and white
shirts with glistening or heavily ruffled fronts.  There were also many
black people in a state of pleasurable excitement, although the war--if
one should come--would be over them.

Harry and his two young friends were anxious to visit Montgomery and
take a good look at the town, but they did not ask for leave, as Colonel
Talbot had already sternly refused all such applications.  The military
law continued to lie heavily upon them, and, soon after they finished
a solid breakfast with appetites sharpened by the open air, they were
ordered to fall into line.  Arrayed in their fine new uniforms, to which
the last touch of neatness had been added, they marched away to the
town.  They might see it as a company, but not as individuals.

They walked with even step along the grassy slopes, their fine
appearance drawing attention and shouts of approval from the dense
masses of people of all ages and all conditions of life who were
gathering.  Harry, a cadet with a small sword by his side, felt his
heart swell as he trod the young turf, and heard the shouting and
applause.  The South Carolinians were the finest body of men present,
and they were conscious of it.  Eyes always to the front, they marched
straight on, apparently hearing nothing, but really hearing everything.

They reached the houses presently and Harry saw the dome of the capitol
on its high hill rising before them, but a moment or two later the
Guards, with the Palmetto flag waving proudly in front, wheeled and
marched toward the railroad station.  There they halted in close ranks
and stood at attention.  Although the young soldiers remained immovable,
there was not a heart in the company that did not throb with excitement.
Colonel Talbot and Major St. Hilaire were a little in advance, erect and
commanding figures.

Other troops, volunteer companies, were present and they spread to right
and left of the South Carolinians.  Behind and everywhere except in the
cleared space before them gathered the people, a vast mass through which
ran the hum and murmur of expectancy.  Overhead, the sun leaped out and
shone for a while with great brilliancy.  "A good omen," many said.
And to Harry it all seemed good, too.  The excitement, the enthusiasm
were contagious.  If any prophet of evil was present he had nothing to
say.

A jet of smoke standing black against the golden air appeared above a
hill, and then came the rumble of a train.  It was that which bore the
President elect, coming fast, and a sudden great shout went up from the
multitude, followed by silence, broken only by the heavy breathing of so
many.  Harry's heart leaped again, but his will kept his body immovable.

The rumble became a roar, and the jet of smoke turned to a cloud.
Then the train drew into the station and stopped.  The people began a
continuous shout, bands played fiercely, and a tall, thin man of middle
years, dressed in black broadcloth, descended from a coach.  All the
soldiers saluted, the bands played more fiercely than ever, and the
shouting of the crowd swelled in volume.

It was the first time that Harry had ever seen Jefferson Davis, and the
face, so unlike that which he expected, impressed him.  He saw a cold,
gray, silent man with lips pressed tightly together.  He did not behold
here the Southern fire and passion of which he was hearing so much talk,
but rather the reserve and icy resolve of the far North.  Harry at first
felt a slight chill, but it soon passed.  It was better at such a time
to have a leader of restraint and dignity than the homely joker, Lincoln,
of whom such strange tales came.

Mr. Davis lifted his black hat to the shouting crowd, and bowed again
and again.  But he did not smile.  His face remained throughout set in
the same stern mold.  As the troops closed up, he entered the carriage
waiting for him, and drove slowly toward the heart of the city, the
multitude following and breaking at intervals into shouts and cheers.

The Palmetto Guards marched on the right of the carriage, and Harry
was able to watch the President-elect all the time.  The face held his
attention.  Its sternness did not relax.  It was the face of a man who
had seen the world, and who believed in the rule of strength.

The procession led on to a hotel, a large building with a great portico
in front.  Here it stopped, the bands ceased to play, Mr. Davis
descended from the carriage and entered the portico, where a group of
men famous in the South stood, ready to welcome him.  The troops drew up
close to the portico, and back of them, every open space was black with
people.

Harry, in the very front rank, saw and heard it all.  Mr. Davis stopped
as soon as he reached the portico, and Yancey, the famous orator of
Alabama, to whom Harry had delivered his letters in Charleston, stepped
forward, and, in behalf of the people of the South, made a speech of
welcome in a clear, resonant, and emphatic tone.  The applause compelled
him to stop at times, but throughout, Mr. Davis stood rigid and
unsmiling.  His countenance expressed none of his thoughts, whatever
they may have been.  Harry's eyes never wandered from his face, except
to glance now and then at the weazened, shrunken, little man who stood
near him, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, who would take the oath of
office as Vice-President of the new Confederacy.  He had been present
throughout the convention as a delegate from Georgia, and men talked of
the mighty mind imprisoned in the weak and dwarfed body.

Harry thrilled more than once as the new President spoke on in calm,
measured tones.  He was glad to be present at the occurrence of great
events, and he was glad to witness this gathering of the mighty.
The tide of youth flowed high in him, and he believed himself fortunate
to have been at Charleston when the cannon met the Star of the West,
and yet more fortunate to be now at Montgomery, when the head of the
new nation was taking up his duties.

His gaze wandered for the first time from the men in the portico to the
crowd without that rimmed them around.  His eyes, without any particular
purpose, passed from face to face in the front ranks, and then stopped,
arrested by a countenance that he had little expected to see.  It was
the shadow, Shepard, standing there, and listening, and looking as
intently as Harry himself.  It was not an evil face, cut clearly and
eager, but Harry was sorry that he had come.  If Colonel Talbot's
beliefs about him were true, this was a bad place for Shepard.

But his eyes went back to the new President and the men on the portico
before him.  The first scene in the first act of a great drama, a mighty
tragedy, had begun, and every detail was of absorbing interest to him.
Shepard was forgotten in an instant.

Harry noticed that Mr. Davis never mentioned slavery, a subject which
was uppermost in the minds of all, North and South, but he alluded to
the possibility of war, and thought the new republic ought to have an
army and navy.  The concluding paragraph of his speech, delivered in
measured but feeling tones, seemed very solemn and serious to Harry.

"It is joyous in the midst of perilous times," he said, "to look around
upon a people united in heart, where one purpose of high resolve
animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made are not
weighed in the balance against honor and right and liberty and equality.
Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a
movement sanctified in justice and sustained by a virtuous people.
Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us
in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which by his blessing they
were able to vindicate, establish, and transmit to their posterity.
With the continuance of his favor ever gratefully acknowledged we may
look hopefully forward to success, to peace and to prosperity."

The final words were received with a mighty cheer which rose and swelled
thrice, and again.  Jefferson Davis stood calmly through it all, his
face expressing no emotion.  The thin lips were pressed together
tightly.  The points of his high collar touched his thick, close beard.
He wore a heavy black bow tie and his coat had broad braided lapels.
His hair was thick and slightly long, and his face, though thin, was
full of vitality.  It seemed to Harry that the grave, slightly narrowed
eyes emitted at this moment a single flash of triumph or at least of
fervor.

Mr. Davis was sworn in and Mr. Stephens after him, and when the shouting
and applause sank for the last time, the great men withdrew into the
hotel, and the troops marched away.  The head of the new republic had
been duly installed, and the separation from the old Union was complete.
The enthusiasm was tremendous, but Harry, like many others, had an
underlying and faint but persistent feeling of sadness that came from
the breaking of old ties.  Nor had any news come telling that Kentucky
was about to join her sister states of the South.

The Palmetto Guards marched back to their old camp, and Harry, Langdon,
and St. Clair obtained leave of absence to visit the town.  Youth had
reasserted itself and Harry was again all excitement and elation.
It seemed to him at the moment that he was a boy no longer.  The Tacitus
lying peacefully in his desk was forgotten.  He was a man in a man's
great world, doing a man's great work.

But both he and his comrades had all the curiosity and zest of boys as
they walked about the little city in the twilight, looking at everything
of interest, visiting the Capitol, and then coming back to the Exchange
Hotel, which sheltered for a night so many of their great men.

They stayed a while in the lobby of the hotel, which was packed so
densely that Harry could scarcely breathe.  Most of the men were of the
tall, thin but extremely muscular type, either clean shaven or with
short beards trimmed closely, and no mustaches.  Black was the
predominant color in clothing, and they talked with soft, drawling
voices.  But their talk was sanguine.  Most of them asked what the North
would do, but they believed that whatever she did do the South would go
on her way.  The smoke from the pipes and cigars grew thicker, and Harry,
leaving his comrades in the crowd, walked out upon the portico.

The crisp, fresh air of the February night came like a heavenly tonic.
He remained there a little while, breathing it in, expanding his lungs,
and rejoicing.  Then he walked over to the exact spot upon which
Jefferson Davis had stood, when he delivered his speech of acceptance.
He was so full of the scene that he shut his eyes and beheld it again.
He tried to imagine the feelings of a man at such a moment, knowing
himself the chosen of millions, and feeling that all eyes were upon him.
Truly it would be enough to make the dullest heart leap.

He opened his eyes, and although he stood in darkness on the portico,
he saw a dusky figure at the far edge of it, standing between two
pillars, and looking in at one of the windows.  The man, whoever he was,
seemed to be intently watching those inside, and Harry saw at once that
it was not a look of mere curiosity.  It was the gaze of one who wished
to understand as well as to know.  He moved a little nearer.  The figure
dropped lightly to the ground and moved swiftly away.  Then he saw that
it was Shepard.

The boy's feelings toward Shepard had been friendly, but now he felt a
sudden rush of hostility.  All that Colonel Talbot had hinted about him
was true.  He was there, spying upon the Confederacy, seeking its inmost
secrets, in order that he might report them to its enemies.  Harry was
armed.  He and all his comrades carried new pistols at their belts,
and driven by impulse he, too, dropped from the portico and followed
Shepard.

He saw the dusky figure ahead of him still going swiftly, but with his
hand on the pistol he followed at greater speed.  A minute later Shepard
turned into a small side street, and Harry followed him there.  It was
not much more than an alley, dark, silent, and deserted.  Montgomery
was a small town, in which people retired early after the custom of the
times, and tonight, the collapse after so much excitement seemed to have
sent them sooner than usual into their homes.  It was evident that the
matter would lie without interference between Shepard and himself.

Shepard went swiftly on and came soon to the outskirts of the town.
He did not look back and Harry wondered whether he knew that he was
pursued.  The boy thought once or twice of using his pistol, but could
not bring himself to do it.  There was really no war, merely a bristling
of hostile forces, and he could not fire upon anybody, especially upon
one who had done him no harm.

Shepard led on, passed through a group of negro cabins, crossed an old
cotton field, and entered a grove, with his pursuer not fifty yards
behind.  The grove was lighted well by the moon, and Harry dashed
forward, pistol in hand, resolved at last to call a halt upon the
fugitive.  A laugh and the blue barrel of a levelled pistol met him.
Shepard was sitting upon a fallen log facing him.  The moon poured a
mass of molten silver directly upon him, showing a face of unusual
strength and power, set now with stern resolution.  Harry's hand was
upon the butt of his own pistol, but he knew that it was useless to
raise it.  Shepard held him at his mercy.

"Sit down, Mr. Kenton," said Shepard.  "Here's another log, where you
can face me.  You feel chagrin, but you need not.  I knew that you
were following me, and hence I was able to take you by surprise.  Now,
tell me, what do you want?"

Harry took the offered log.  He was naturally a lad of great courage and
resolution, and now his presence of mind returned.  He looked calmly at
Shepard, who lowered his own pistol.

"I'm not exactly sure what I want," he replied with a little laugh,
"but whatever it is, I know now that I'm not going to get it.  I've
walked into a trap.  I believed that you were a spy, and it seemed to
me that I ought to seize you.  Am I right?"

Shepard laughed also.

"That's a frank question and you shall have a frank reply," he said.
"The suspicions of your friend, Colonel Talbot, were correct.  Yes,
I am a spy, if one can be a spy when there is no war.  I am willing to
tell you, however, that Shepard is my right name, and I am willing to
tell you also, that you and your Charleston friends little foresee the
magnitude of the business upon which you have started.  I don't believe
there is any enmity between you and me and I can tell the thoughts that
I have."

"Since you offered me no harm when you had the chance," said Harry,
"I give my word that I will seek to offer none myself.  Go ahead,
I think you have more to say and I want to listen."

Shepard thrust his pistol in his belt and his face relaxed somewhat.
As they faced each other on the logs they were not more than ten feet
part and the moon poured a shower of silver rays upon both.  Although
Shepard was a few years the older, the faces showed a likeness,
the same clearness of vision and strength of chin.

"I liked you, Harry Kenton, the first time I met you," said Shepard,
"and I like you yet.  When I saw that you were following me, I led you
here in order to say some things to you.  You are seeing me now probably
for the last time.  My spying is over for a long while, at least.
A mile further on, a horse, saddled and bridled, is waiting for me.
I shall ride all the remainder of the night, board a train in the
morning, and, passing through Memphis and Louisville, I shall be in the
North in forty-eight hours."

"And what then?"

"I shall tell to those who ought to know what I have seen in Charleston
and Montgomery.  I have seen the gathering of forces in the South,
and I know the spirit that animates your people, but listen to me,
Harry Kenton, do you think that a Union such as ours, formed as ours was,
can be broken up in a moment, as you would smash a china plate?  The
forces on the other side are sluggish, but they are mighty.  I foresee
war, terrible war, crowded with mighty battles.  Now, I'm going to offer
you my hand and you are going to take it.  Don't think any the less of
me because I've been playing the spy.  You may be one yourself before
the year is out."

His manner was winning, and Harry took the offered hand.  What right
had he to judge?  Each to his own opinion.  Despite himself, he liked
Shepard again.

"I'm glad I've known you, but at the same time I'm glad you're leaving,"
he said.

Shepard gave the boy's hand a hearty grasp, which was returned in kind.
Then he turned and disappeared in the forest.  Harry walked slowly
back to Montgomery.  Shepard had given him deep cause for thought.  He
approached the Exchange Hotel, thinking that he would find his friends
there and return with them to the camp.  But it was later than he had
supposed.  As he drew near he saw that nearly all the lights were out
in the hotel, and the building was silent.

He was sure that St. Clair and Langdon had already gone to the camp,
and he was about to turn away when he saw a window in the hotel thrown
up and a man appear standing full length in the opening.

It was Jefferson Davis.  The same flood of moonlight that had poured
upon Shepard illuminated his face also.  But it was not the face of a
triumphant man.  It was stern, sad, even gloomy.  The thin lips were
pressed together more tightly than ever, and the somber eyes looked
out over the city, but evidently saw nothing there.  Harry felt
instinctively that his thoughts were like those of Shepard.  He, too,
foresaw a great and terrible war, and, so foreseeing, knew that this
was no time to rejoice and glorify.

Harry, held by the strong spell of time and place, watched him a full
half hour.  It was certain now that Jefferson Davis was thinking,
not looking at anything, because his head never moved, and his eyes were
always turned in the same direction--Harry noticed at last that the
direction was the North.

The new President stepped back, closed the window and no light came from
his room.  Harry hurried to the camp, where, as he had surmised, he
found St. Clair and Langdon.  He gave some excuse for his delay, and
telling nothing of Shepard, wrapped himself in his blankets.  Exhausted
by the stirring events of the day and night he fell asleep at once.

Three days later they were on their way back to Charleston.  They heard
that the inauguration of the new President had not been well received by
the doubtful states.  Even the border slave states were afraid the lower
South had been a little too hasty.  But among the youths of the Palmetto
Guards there was neither apprehension nor depression.  They had been
present at the christening of the new nation, and now they were going
back to their own Charleston.

"Everything is for the best," said young Langdon, whose unfailing
spirits bubbled to the brim, "we'll have down here the tightest and
finest republic the world ever heard of.  New Orleans will be the
biggest city, but our own Charleston will always be the leader, its
center of thought."

"What you need, Tom," said Harry, "is a center of thought yourself.
Don't be so terribly sanguine and you may save yourself some smashes."

"I wouldn't gain anything even then," replied Langdon joyously.  "I'll
have such a happy time before the smash comes that I can afford to pay
for it.  I'm the kind that enjoys life.  It's a pleasure to me just to
breathe."

"I believe it is," said Harry, looking at him with admiration.  "I think
I'll call you Happy Tom."

"I take the name with pleasure," said Langdon.  "It's a compliment to be
called Happy Tom.  Happy I was born and happy I am.  I'm so happy I must
sing:

    "Ol Dan Tucker was a mighty fine man,
     He washed his face in the frying pan,
     He combed his hair with a wagon wheel
     And died with a toothache in his heel."

"That's a great poem," said a long North Carolina youth named Ransome,
"but I've got something that beats it all holler.  'Ole Dan Tucker' is
nothing to 'Aunt Dinah's Tribberlations.'"

"How does it go?" asked St. Clair.

"It's powerful pathetic, telling a tale of disaster and pain.  The first
verse will do, and here it is:

    "Ole Aunt Dinah, she got drunk,
     Felled in a fire and kicked up a chunk,
     Red-hot coal popped in her shoe,
     Lord a-mighty! how de water flew!"

"We've had French and Italian opera in Charleston," said St. Clair,
"and I've heard both in New Orleans, too, but nothing quite so moving
as the troubles of Ole Dan Tucker and Ole Aunt Dinah."

They sang other songs and the Guards, who filled two coaches of a train,
joined in a great swinging chorus which thundered above the rattle of
the engine and the cars, so noisy in those days.  Often they sang negro
melodies with a plaintive lilt.  The slave had given his music to his
master.  Harry joined with all the zest of an enthusiastic nature.
The effect of Shepard's words and of the still, solemn face of
Jefferson Davis, framed in the open window, was wholly gone.

Spring was now advancing.  All the land was green.  The trees were in
fresh leaf, and when they stopped at the little stations in the woods,
they could hear the birds singing in the deep forest.  And as they sped
across the open they heard the negroes singing, too, in their deep
mellow voices in the fields.  Then came the delicate flavor of flowers
and Harry knew that they were approaching Charleston.  In another hour
they were in the city which was, as yet, the heart and soul of the
Confederacy.

Charleston, with its steepled churches, its quaint houses, and its
masses of foliage, much of it in full flower, seemed more attractive
than ever to Harry.  The city preserved its gay and light tone.  It was
crowded with people.  All the rich planters were there.  Society had
never been more brilliant than during those tense weeks on the eve
of men knew not what.  But the Charlestonians were sure of one fact,
the most important of all, that everything was going well.  Texas had
joined the great group of the South, and while the border states still
hung back, they would surely join.

Harry found that the batteries and earthworks had increased in size and
number, forming a formidable circle about the black mass of Sumter,
above which the defiant flag still swung in the wind.  The guards were
distributed among the batteries, but St. Clair, Langdon, and Harry
remained together.  Toutant Beauregard, after having resigned the
command at West Point, as the Southern leaders had expected, came
to Charleston and took supreme command there.  Harry saw him as he
inspected the batteries, a small, dark man, French in look, as he was
French in descent, full of nervous energy and vitality.  He spoke
approving words of all that had been done, and Harry, St. Clair and Tom,
glowed with enthusiasm.

"Didn't I tell you that everything would come just right!" exclaimed
Happy Tom.  "We're the boys to do things.  I heard today that they were
preparing a big fleet in the North to relieve Sumter, but no matter how
big it is, it won't be able to get into Charleston harbor.  Will it,
old fellow?"

He addressed his remarks to one of the great guns, and he patted the
long, polished barrel.  Harry agreed with him that Charleston harbor
could be held inviolate.  He did not believe that ships would have much
chance against heavy cannon in earthworks.

He was back in Charleston several days before he had a chance to go to
Madame Delaunay's.  She was unfeignedly glad to see him, but Harry saw
that she had lost some of her bright spirits.

"Colonel Talbot tells me," she said, "that mighty forces are gathering,
and I am afraid, I am afraid for all the thousands of gallant boys like
you, Harry."

But Harry had little fear for himself.  Why should he, when the Southern
cause was moving forward so smoothly?  They heard a day or two later
that the rail-splitter, Lincoln, had been duly inaugurated President of
what remained of the old Union, although he had gone to Washington at
an unexpected hour, and partly in disguise.  On the same day the
Confederacy adopted the famous flag of the Stars and Bars, and Harry and
his friends were soon singing in unison and with fiery enthusiasm:

    "Hurrah!  Hurrah! for Southern rights, hurrah!
     Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag that bears a single star!"

The spring deepened and with it the tension and excitement.  The warm
winds from the South blew over Charleston, eternally keen with the odor
of rose and orange blossom.  The bay moved gently, a molten mass now
blue, now green.  The blue figures could be seen now and then on the
black walls of Sumter, but the fortress was silent, although the muzzles
of its guns always threatened.

Harry received several letters from his father.  The latest stated that
he might want him to return, but he was not needed yet.  The state had
proved more stubborn than he and his friends had expected.  A powerful
Union element had been disclosed, and there would be an obstinate fight
at Frankfort over the question of going out.  He would let him know when
to come.

Harry was perhaps less surprised than his father over the conflict of
opinion in Kentucky, but his thoughts soon slipped from it, returning to
his absorption in the great and thrilling drama in Charleston, which was
passing before his eyes, and of which he was a part.

April came, and the glory of the spring deepened.  The winds blowing
from the soft shores of the Gulf grew heavier with the odors of blossom
and flower.  But Charleston thrilled continually with excitement.
Fort after fort was seized by the Southerners, almost without opposition
and wholly without the shedding of blood.  It seemed that the stars in
their courses fought for the South, or at least it seemed so to the
youthful Harry and his comrades.

"Didn't I tell you everything would come as we wished it?" said the
sanguine Langdon.  "Abe Lincoln may be the best rail-splitter that ever
was, but I fancy he isn't such a terrible fighter."

"Let's wait and see," said Harry, with the impression of Shepard's
warning words still strong upon him.

His caution was not in vain.  That day the rulers of Charleston received
a message from Abraham Lincoln that Sumter would be revictualled,
whether Charleston consented or not.  The news was spread instantly
through the city and fire sprang up in the South Carolina heart.
The population, increased far beyond its normal numbers by the influx
from the country, talked of nothing else.  Beauregard was everywhere
giving quick, nervous orders, and always strengthening the already
powerful batteries that threatened Sumter.




CHAPTER VI

SUMTER


Harry saw an increase of energy after the arrival of Beauregard.
There were fresh rumors about the great fleet the North was going to
send down for the relief of Sumter.  Major Anderson, the commander in
the fort, steadily refused all demands for surrender.  It was said
freely that the Northern States did not intend to let their Southern
sisters go in peace.  The Mercury, with all the power and fire of the
Rhett family behind it, thundered continually for action.  Sumter with
its guns menacing the city should not be allowed to remain under the
hostile flag.

It seemed to Harry afterward that he was in a sort of fever, not a fever
that parched and burned, but a fever that made his pulse leap faster,
and his heart long for the thrill of conflict.  Often he sat with
St. Clair and Langdon on their earthworks, and looked at Sumter.

"I wonder when the word will come for us to turn these big guns loose?"
Langdon said one day, as he looked at the cannon.  "Seems to me we ought
to take Sumter before that fleet comes."

"But wouldn't it be better for them to make the first hostile movement,
Happy?" asked Harry.  "Then we'd put them in the wrong."

"What difference does it make if we should happen to fight them, anyhow?
The question who began it we'd settle afterwards on victorious fields.
Oh, we're bound to win, Harry!  We can't help it.  If there's any war,
I expect inside of a year to sleep with my boots on in the President's
bed in the White House, and then I'd go on to Philadelphia and New York
and Boston and show myself as a fair specimen of the unconquerable
Southern soldier."

"Happy," said Harry, in a rebuking tone, "you're the most terrific
chatterer I ever heard.  Before you've done anything whatever, you talk
about having done it all."

"And they call us Charlestonians fiery boasters," said St. Clair.
"Why, there's nobody in all Charleston who's half a match for this sea
islander, Happy Tom Langdon."

Charleston received Lincoln's threat and gave it back.  Many were glad
that he had made the issue.  The enthusiasm swelled yet further, when
they heard that the Confederate envoys at Washington, treating for a
peaceful separation, had left the capital at once when Lincoln had sent
his message that Sumter would be relieved.

"It looks more like war now," said Langdon, with satisfaction, "and I
may make my victorious march into the North after all."

Harry said nothing.  As events marched forward on swift foot, he felt
more intensely their gravity.  For every month that had passed since he
put the Tacitus in his desk at Pendleton Academy, the boy had grown a
year in mind and thought.  So, that rumor about the relieving fleet had
come true and they might look for it in Charleston in two or three days.

Harry had his place in one of the batteries nearest Sumter, and he often
went with Colonel Talbot on tours of inspection and once or twice he was
in General Beauregard's own party.  The fact that his father had been
a graduate of West Point and for years an officer, was of the greatest
service to him.  In the little army of the United States before the
Civil War, the officers constituted a family.  Everybody knew who
everybody else was, and those of the same age had been at West Point
together.  General Beauregard and Colonel Kenton had met often, and the
Southern commander became very partial to the Colonel's son.

Harry was present when Beauregard, some of his more important officers
and the civil authorities of Charleston, conferred after Lincoln's
warning message came.

"If Lincoln's fleet tries to force the harbor," said Rhett, "we must
fire upon it.  Sumter should be ours, and if Lincoln succeeds in
revictualling the fort it will be a great blow to our prestige.
It will hurt the whole South.  What do you think, General?"

"I think as you do, Mr. Rhett," replied Toutant Beauregard.  "But have
no fear, gentlemen.  No fleet that Lincoln may send can reach Sumter.
Our batteries are able to blow out of the water every vessel that flies
the Northern flag."

"We must reduce Sumter itself before the fleet comes," said Jamison,
of Barnwell.

Beauregard smiled slightly.

"We can do that, too," he said, "and I am glad to see that you gentlemen
are for action.  The fleet, I am accurately informed, consists of the
warship Baltic, three sloops of war and two tenders.  The Baltic,
with Fox, the assistant secretary of the Northern Navy, on board,
left New York two days ago.  The other vessels started earlier, and we
may expect the whole fleet in a day."

"Then," said Rhett, "we must send to Sumter another and a final demand
for its surrender."

They were all agreed, and Beauregard chose his messengers, putting Harry
among the number.  Hoisting a white flag, they entered a large boat and
were rowed by powerful oarsmen toward Sumter.  Harry, looking back,
saw the whole front of the harbor lined with people.  Even at the
distance it looked like a holiday crowd.  He saw hundreds of women and
girls in white and pink dresses, and there were roses of the same colors
in hats and bonnets.  Great parasols of every shade threw back the
brilliant sunlight.  It was still a holiday spectacle, a pageant,
and many of the light hearts along the sea wall could not realize that
it might yet be something far more.

Anderson, the commander of Sumter, appeared upon the esplanade to
meet the boat coming with the white flag.  Harry watched him closely.
He saw a face worn, but set hard and firm, and a figure upright and
steady.  The Southerners tied their boat to the wall and climbed upon
the esplanade.

"What do you want, gentlemen?" asked Anderson.

"We have come with our final demand for your surrender," replied the
chief Southern officer.  "If you do not yield we fire upon you."

Anderson shrugged his shoulders.

"I hear that a fleet from New York is coming to my relief."

"It will never be able to force a passage into the harbor."

"That may or may not be, but in any event, gentlemen, I tell you that
the flag will not come down.  If you fire, we fire back."

He spoke with no quiver in his voice, although his supply of ammunition
was low, and the fort had a food supply for only four days.

"Then it is scarcely worth while for us to talk longer."

"No, it would be a waste of time by both of us."  The Southerners turned
back to their boat.  Harry was the last and Anderson said to him in a
low tone:

"I am sorry to see your father's son here."

"I am where he would wish me to be," replied the boy stiffly.

"Even so, I hope you will come to no harm," said Anderson in a generous
tone.

After such a noble rejoinder Harry's heart softened instantly, and he
returned the wish.  Then he followed the others into the boat, and they
pulled back to the mainland.

The crowd surmised from the quick return of the boat the nature of the
answer that it brought.  It seemed to feel one gigantic throb of passion,
and perhaps of relief also, that the issue was made after so many weeks
of waiting.  Yet the holiday aspect disappeared, as if a cloud had
passed suddenly before the sun.

Harry noted the shadow even before he landed.  The people had become
silent, and faces that had laughed turned grave.  As they set foot upon
the mainland, they told their news freely, and then the crowd dispersed
almost in silence.  It was the first time that Harry had seen Charleston,
gay and light of heart, in the shadow, but he was sure that it could not
last long.  His errand over, he returned to his own battery and told
Langdon and St. Clair of everything that had happened.

"It's all for the best," said Langdon cheerfully.  "Sumter will be ours
in another day."

"Wait and see, Happy," said Harry.

"All right, old Wait-and-See, I will," returned Langdon.

Harry tried to suppress, or at least conceal his intense excitement.
The whole city was in the same state.  The batteries were filled with
men of wealth and position, serving as mere volunteer privates.  The
wives and daughters of many of them were at the Charleston Hotel or the
Mills House, or at such inns as that kept by Madame Delaunay.  Governor
Pickens and his wife were at the Charleston Hotel, and with them were
chief officers of the city and state.  Nearly everybody knew that
something was going to happen, but few knew when it would happen.

Harry noticed a tightening of discipline at their battery.  The orders
were sharp and they had to be obeyed.  Nothing was wasted in politeness.
Visitors were no longer allowed to gratify curiosity.  Women and girls
in their white or pink dresses were not permitted to come near and smile
at their husbands or brothers or sweethearts in the trenches.  The
ammunition was stacked neatly behind the guns, and every man was
compelled to be ready at an instant's notice.

"Looks like business," Langdon whispered joyfully to his comrades.
"I'm hoping that fleet will come just as soon as it can."

"Happy, you sanguinary wretch," Harry whispered back, "I'm thinking the
fleet will come soon enough for you and all the rest of us."

The afternoon faded.  The sun sank in the hills behind them, and dusk
came over city and harbor.  But Harry, from the battery, could still see
the black bulk of Sumter, and above it the gleaming red and blue of a
flag.

Coffee and food were served to his comrades and himself in the battery,
and then they remained by their guns waiting.  The night deepened.
Harry could yet see the flash of waters and the dim bulk of Sumter,
but the flag itself was no longer visible.  No sound came from the city.
The silence there seemed singular and heavy.

The boy felt the night and the waiting.  Even Happy Tom ceased to be
light and frivolous.  The three had nothing to do and they sat together,
always looking toward the sea where the smoke of the relieving fleet
might appear.  Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St. Hilaire
passed together on a tour of inspection.  They gave approving looks to
the three trim youths, with the frank open faces, but said nothing and
went on.  Harry heard their footsteps for a moment or two, and then the
oppressive silence came again.

The same stillness endured for a long time, so long that the three began
to believe nothing would happen.  Despite himself, Harry began to nod
and he was forced to bring himself back to earth with a jerk.  Then he
stretched a little and peered over the earthwork.  It was brighter now.
A fine moon rode high, and the sea was dusted with starshine.  The bulk
of Sumter, black no longer, was coated with silver.

"Looks peaceful enough," whispered Langdon.  "The ships have heard that
you and St. Clair and I are here waiting for them and have turned back."

Harry made no answer.  This waiting in the silence and the night made
his blood quiver just a little.  He was about to turn back when he saw a
sudden flash of fire from another point further up.  It was followed by
a heavy crash that echoed and re-echoed over the still sea and city.
Harry's heart leaped, but his body stiffened to attention.  Tom and
St. Clair by his side pressed against the earthwork.

"What is it?" they whispered.

"The moonlight is good," replied Harry, "but I don't see any ship.
It must be a signal of some kind."

"Hush!" said Langdon, "there it goes again!"

Another cannon thundered, and the echoes, as before, came back from sea
and shore, followed, as the echoes died, by that strange, heavy silence.
But, straining their eyes to the utmost, the three boys could see
nothing on the sea.  It swayed gently like a vast mass of molten silver
in the starshine, and lapped softly against the shore.  The report of a
third heavy gun came, and then the reports of several more.  After that
the silence was complete.  It had seemed to Harry, his brain surcharged
with excitement, like the tolling of great bells.  Langdon and St. Clair
whispered together, but he said nothing.

It was permitted to the three to lie down in their blankets in the
earthwork and sleep, but they did not think of trying it.  They wished
to know the meaning of those cannon shots and they waited, tense with
excitement.  It was nearly midnight when Colonel Leonidas Talbot came.

"We have learned that the Northern vessels will appear before Charleston
tomorrow," he said, "and the shots were a signal to all our people to be
ready.  The attack on Sumter will begin in the morning.  Now you three
boys must go to sleep.  We shall need tomorrow soldiers who are fresh
and strong, not those who are worn and weak from loss of sleep."

They tried it and found it easier now because they knew the mystery of
the shots.  Harry became conscious that the night was crisp and cold,
and, wrapped in his blanket, he lay with his back against an inner wall
of the earthwork.  The blood, the result of his tension and excitement,
pounded in his ears for some time, but, at last, his pulses became quiet,
and his heavy eyes closed.

He was awakened at the first shoot of dawn by Colonel Leonidas Talbot.

"Up, boys!" he said, "snatch a bite of food and a drink of coffee,
and make yourselves as neat as possible.  General Beauregard is coming
to this very battery."

His voice was quick and sharp, and the boys obeyed with the lightning
speed of youth.  It was a pale dawn.  Gray clouds drifted along the
sea's far rim, and a sharp wind came out of the Northwest.  Heavy waves
rolled into the mouths of the narrow and difficult passes that led into
the bay.

"The Lord Himself fights for us," Harry heard Colonel Leonidas Talbot
murmur.  "No ships on such a sea would dare the passes in the face of
our guns."

The pale light widened.  Sumter was black and threatening again,
and the flag waved there before it.

General Beauregard, his staff and a body of civilians arrived, and
almost overflowed the battery.  Harry noticed among the civilians an
old man, seventy-five at least, with long hair, snow white.  Despite
his years, his face was as keen and eager as that of any boy.

"Who is he?" Harry whispered to St. Clair, who knew everybody.

"His name's Ruffin, but he's not a South Carolinian.  He's a Virginian,
but he has come to join us, and he's heart and soul with us.  He's ready
to fight at the drop of a hat."

Harry--their battery stood on Coming's Point--glanced toward the city
and uttered a low cry of surprise.

"Look!" he said to his friends, "all Charleston is here."

"Yes, and a lot more of South Carolina, too," said St. Clair.

The people, learning the meaning of those signal guns in the night,
were packed in every open space, and the very roofs were black with
them.  Forty or fifty thousand, men, women and children, were looking on,
but nothing more than a murmur ran through the great mass.  Harry knew
that every heart in the fifty thousand beat, like his own, with strained
expectancy.

A great gun in the battery was trained upon Sumter, and the gunner stood
ready at the lanyard, but the old man with the long white hair and the
keen, eager face, stepping forward, begged General Beauregard to allow
him the honor of firing the first shot.  The General consented at once,
and the old man pulled the lanyard.

There was a terrific crash that almost deafened Harry, a gush of flame,
followed by smoke, and a shell, screaming in a curve, dropped upon
Sumter. For a few moments no one spoke, and Harry could hear the blood
pounding in his ears.  In a sudden flash of insight he saw a long and
terrible road that they must tread.  But neither he nor any other
present realized to the full what had happened.  The first real shot in
the mightiest war of history had been fired, and the years of promises,
kept or broken, of mutual jealousies and mutual abuse had ended at the
cannon's mouth.

The silence was broken by a shout like the roar of a storm, that came
from the people in the town.  A puff of smoke rose from Sumter and the
fort sent its answering shot, but it struck no enemy and again the shout
came from the town, now a cry of derision.

Then all the batteries in the wide curve about Sumter leaped into fiery
life.  Cannon after cannon poured shot and shell against the black
walls.  The fort was ringed with fire.  It seemed to Harry that the
earth rocked.  He tried to speak to his comrades, but he could not hear
his own voice.  He thought he was about to be deafened for his whole
life, but Langdon handed him pieces of cotton which he quickly stuffed
in his ears.  Langdon and St. Clair had already taken the precaution.
Happy Tom had proved himself the most forethoughtful of them all.
And yet Langdon, careless and easy, was aflame with the fire of battle.
It seemed to Harry that he thought little of consequences.

"Listen to it!" he shouted in excited tones to Harry and St. Clair.
"Hark to the thudding of the great guns!  It's war, the greatest of all
games!"

Harry felt an intense excitement also.  These were his people.  He was
of their bone and sinew, and he was with them, heart and soul.  He
did his part at the guns, and, although his excitement grew, he said
nothing.  He saw that the return fire from the fort was far inferior
to that of the South Carolinians, and that it was doing no damage.

"Using their light guns only," he heard Colonel Talbot say during a
momentary lull.  "They must be short of ammunition."

The morning wore slowly on.  From every battery along the mainland and
on the islands, the storm of projectiles yet beat upon Sumter, and,
at intervals, the fort replied, still using the light guns.  Once Harry
heard the whistle of a shell over his head, and he ducked automatically,
while the others laughed.  Another time, a solid shot sent the dirt
flying in all their faces, stinging like driven sand, but that was the
nearest any missile ever came to them.

Beauregard, after a while, gave an order for the firing to cease,
and the city and harbor rose again, clear and distinct, in the pale
sunlight.  The great crowd of people was still there, all watching and
waiting, The fort was battered and torn, but above it still hung the
defiant flag, and there was no offer of surrender.

"Look!  Look!" Langdon cried suddenly, reckless of all discipline,
as he pointed a forefinger toward the sea.

Harry saw a column of smoke rising, and defining itself clearly against
the pale blue sky.

"The Yankee fleet!" cried one of the officers, as he put his glasses to
his eyes.

General Beauregard, General Ripley, and officers in every other battery,
also were watching that new column of smoke through glasses.  The dark
spire in truth rose from the Baltic, the chief ship of the Union,
having on board the energetic Fox himself, and two hundred soldiers.
But chance and the elements seemed to have conspired against the
secretary.  One of his strongest ships had gone to the relief of another
fort further south, others had been scattered by a storm, and the Baltic
had only two sister vessels as she approached, over a rolling gray sea,
the fiery volcano that was once the peaceful harbor of Charleston.

Harry saw the first column of smoke increase to three, and they knew
then that the number of the Union vessels was far less than had been
expected.

"Will they undertake to force the harbor and reach Sumter?" he asked of
Colonel Talbot, who was then in the battery.

"If they do," replied the Colonel, "it will be a case of the most
reckless folly.  They would be sunk in short order, as they come right
into the teeth of our guns.  The sea itself, is against them.  The waves
are rolling worse than ever."

Colonel Talbot knew what he was saying.  Vainly the men in Sumter looked
for relief by sea.  They, too, had seen the three ships off the harbor,
and they knew whence they came and for what purpose.  But they had
reached the end of their journey, and had fallen short with the object
of it in sight.  They were compelled to swing back and forth, while
they watched the circle of batteries pour a continuous fire upon the
crumbling fort.

After the Southern officers had taken a long look at the Union ships,
and had seen that they could do nothing, the fire on Sumter was renewed
with increased volume.  It lasted all through the day and the vast crowd
of spectators did not diminish in numbers.  Many of the wealthier were
in carriages.  If one went away for food or refreshment another took his
place.

When the wind at times lifted the smoke, Harry saw that the wooden
buildings standing on the esplanade of the fort were burning fiercely,
set on fire by the bursting shells.  The iron cisterns, too, although he
did not know it until later, were smashed, and columns of smoke from the
flaming buildings were pouring into the fort, threatening its defenders
with destruction.

Night came on, and most of the people, lining the harbor, were compelled
to go to their homes, but the fire of the Southern batteries continued,
always converging upon the scarred and blackened walls of Sumter,
from which came an occasional shot in return.  Harry had now grown used
to this incessant, rolling crash.  He could hear his comrades speak,
their voices coming in an under note, and now and then they discussed
the result.  They agreed that Sumter was bound to fall.  The Union fleet
could bring it no relief, and such a continuous rain of balls and shells
must eventually pound it to pieces.

They ate and drank after dark.  They had food in abundance and
delicacies of many kinds from which to choose.  Charleston poured forth
its plenty for its heroes, and in those days of fresh young enthusiasm
there was no lack of anything.

"The Yankees hold out well," said Langdon, "but I'm willing to bet a
hundred to one that nobody sleeps in that fort tonight.  You can't see
the smoke of the ships any more.  I suppose that for safety in the night
they've had to go further out to sea.  I'm glad I'm not on one of them,
rolling and tumbling in those high waves.  Well, everything is for the
best, and if Sumter doesn't fall into our laps tonight she'll fall
tomorrow, and if she doesn't fall tomorrow she'll fall the next day.
What do you say to that, old Wait-and-See?"

"Wait and see," replied Harry so naturally that the others laughed.

The bombardment went on all through the night.  Harry continually
breathed smoke and the odor of burned gunpowder, which seemed to keep
his nerves keyed to a great pitch, and to maintain the heat of his
blood.  Yet, after a while, he lay down, when his turn at the guns
ceased, and slept through sheer exhaustion.  His eyes closed to the
thunder of cannon and they awoke at dawn to the same heavy thudding.

The fire had not ceased at any time in the course of the night, and
Sumter looked like a ruin, but the flag still floated over it.
St. Clair and Langdon were awakened a few minutes later, and they
also stood up, rubbed their eyes, stared at the fort and listened
to the firing.  Harry laughed at their appearance.

"You fellows are certainly grimy," he said.  "You look as if you hadn't
seen water for a month."

"We can't see ourselves, old Wait-and-See," retorted Langdon, "but I
guess we're beauties alongside of you.  If I didn't have the honor of
your acquaintance, I wouldn't know whether you came from the Indian
Territory, Ashantee or the Cannibal Islands."

"And the music goes merrily on," said St. Clair.  "I went to sleep with
the cannon firing, and I wake up with them still at it.  I suppose a
fellow will get used to it after a while."

"You can get used to anything," said an officer who heard them.  "Now,
you boys eat your breakfasts.  Your turn at the guns will come again
soon."

They took breakfast willingly, although they found a strong flavor of
smoke, sand, and burned gunpowder in everything they ate and drank.
Then they went to their guns, but, when a few more shots were fired,
a trumpet blew a signal, and it was echoed from battery to battery.
Every cannon ceased, and, in the silence and under the lifting smoke,
Harry saw a white flag going up on the fort.

Sumter was about to yield.




CHAPTER VII

THE HOMECOMING


A great and exultant cheer went up from the massed thousands in
Charleston.  A smile passed over Beauregard's swarthy face and he showed
his white teeth.  Colonel Leonidas Talbot regarded the white flag with
feelings in which triumph and sadness were mingled strangely.  But
the emotions of Harry and his comrades were, for the moment, those of
victory only.

Boats put out both from the fort and the shore.  Discipline was relaxed
now, and Harry, St. Clair and Langdon went outside the battery.  A light
breeze had sprung up, and it was very grateful to Harry, who for hours
had breathed the heavy odors of smoke and burned gunpowder.  The smoke
itself, which had formed a vast cloud over harbor, forts and city,
was now drifting out to sea, leaving all things etched sharply in the
dazzling sunlight of a Southern spring day.

"Well, old Wait-and-See, you have waited, and you have seen," said
Langdon to Harry.  "That white flag and those boats going out mean that
Sumter is ours.  Everything is for the best and we win everywhere and
all the time."

Harry was silent.  He was watching the boats.  But the negotiations were
soon completed.  Sumter, a mass of ruins, was given up, and the Star and
Bars, taking the place of the Stars and Stripes, gaily snapped defiance
to the whole North.  "It begins to look well there," said Beauregard,
gazing proudly at the new flag.

All the amenities were preserved between the captured garrison and their
captors.  Anderson was sent to the Baltic, which still hovered outside,
and the Union vessels disappeared on their way back to the North.
Peace, but now the peace of triumph, settled again over Charleston,
and throughout the South went the joyous tidings that Sumter had been
taken.  The great state of Virginia, Mother of Presidents, went out of
the Union at last, and North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas followed
her, but Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri still hung in the balance.

Lincoln had called for volunteers to put down a rebellion, but Harry
heard everywhere in Charleston that the Confederacy was now secure.
The Southerners were rising by the thousands to defend it.  The women,
too, were full of zeal and enthusiasm and they urged the men to go to
the front.  With the full consent of the lower South the capital was to
be moved from Montgomery to Richmond, the capital of Virginia, on the
very border of the Confederacy, to look defiantly, as it were, across
at Washington over a space which was to become the vast battlefield of
America, although few then dreamed it.  The progress of President Davis
to the new capital, set in the very face of the foe, was to be one huge
triumph of faith and loyalty.

Harry heard nothing in Charleston but joyful news.  There was not a
single note of gloom.  Europe, which must have its cotton, would favor
the success of the South.  Women who had never worked before, sewed
night and day on clothing for the soldiers.  Men gave freely and without
asking to the new government.  An extraordinary wave of emotion swept
over the South, carrying everybody with it.  Charleston shouted anew as
the newspapers announced the news of distinguished officers who had gone
out with the Southern States.  There were the two Johnstons, the one of
Virginia and the other of Kentucky; Lee, Bragg, of Buena Vista fame;
Longstreet, and many others, some already celebrated in the Mexican War,
and others with a greater fame yet to make.

Harry heard it all and it was transfused into his own blood.  Now a
letter came from his father.  That obstinate faction in Kentucky still
held the state to the Union.  Since Sumter had fallen and Charleston was
safe, he wished his son to rejoin him in Pendleton, whence they would
proceed together to Frankfort, and help the Southern party.  His
personal account of the glowing deed that had been done in Charleston
harbor would help.  He was sure that his old friend, General Beauregard,
would release him for this important duty.

Harry's heart and judgment alike responded to the call.  He took the
letter to General Beauregard, finding him at the Charleston Hotel with
Governor Pickens and officers of his staff, and stood aside while the
general read it.  Beauregard at once wrote an order.

"This is your discharge from the Palmetto Guards," he said.  "Colonel
Kenton writes wisely.  We need Kentucky and I understand that a very
little more may bring the state to us.  Go with your father.  I
understand that you have been a brave young soldier here and may you
do as well up there."

Harry, feeling pride but not showing it, saluted and left the room,
going at once to Madame Delaunay's, where he had left his baggage.
He intended to leave early in the morning, but first he sought his
friends and told them good-bye.

"Don't forget that we're going to have a great war," said Colonel
Leonidas Talbot, "and the first battle line will be far north of
Charleston.  I shall look for you there."

"God bless you, my boy," said Major Hector St. Hilaire.  "May you come
back some day to this beautiful Charleston of ours, and find it more
beautiful than ever."

"I'll meet you at Richmond later on," said Arthur St. Clair, "and then
we'll serve together again."

"I'll join you at the White House in Washington," said Tom Langdon,
"and I'll give you the next best bed to sleep in with your boots on."

Harry gave his farewells with deep and genuine regret.  Whether their
manner was grave or frivolous, he knew that these were good friends
of his, and he sincerely hoped that he would meet them again.  Madame
Delaunay spoke to him almost as if he had been a son of hers, and there
was dew in his eyes, because he could never forget her kindness to the
lad who had been a stranger.

He resumed his civilian clothing and put his gray uniform, fine and new,
of which he was so proud, in his saddle bags.  Kentucky had declared
herself neutral ground, warning the armies of both North and South to
keep off her sacred soil, and he did not wish to invite undue attention.
He intended, moreover, to leave the train when he neared Pendleton,
at the same little station at which he had taken it when he started
south.

It was a different Harry who started home late in April.  Four months
had made great changes.  He bore himself more like a man.  His manner
was much more considered and grave.  He had seen great things and he had
done his share of them.  He gazed upon a world full of responsibilities
and perils.

But he looked back at Charleston the gay, the volatile and the beautiful,
with real affection.  It was almost buried now in flowers and foliage.
Spring was at the full, every breeze was sharply sweet with grassy
flavors.  The very triumph and joy of living penetrated his soul.
Youth swept aside the terrors of war.  He was going home after victory.
He soon left Charleston out of sight.  A last roof or steeple glittered
for a moment in the sun and then was gone.  Before him lay the uplands
and the ridges, and in another day he would be in another land.

He crossed the low mountains, passed through Nashville again, although
he did not stop there, his train making immediate connection, and once
more and with a thrill, entered his own state.  He learned from casual
talk on the trains that affairs in Kentucky were very hot.  The special
session of the Legislature, called by Governor Magoffin, was to meet at
Frankfort early in May.  The women of the state had already prepared an
appeal to the Legislature to save them from the horrors of civil war.

Harry saw that he had not left active life behind him when he came away
from Charleston.  The feeling of strife had spread over a vast area.
The atmosphere of Kentucky, like that of South Carolina, was surcharged
with intensity and passion, but it had a difference.  All the winds
blew in the same direction in South Carolina and they sang one song of
triumph, but in Kentucky they were variable and conflicting, and their
voices were many.

He felt the difference as soon as he reached the hills of his native
state.  People were cooler here and they were more prone to look at
the two sides of a question.  The air, too, was unlike that of South
Carolina.  There was a sharper tang to it.  It whipped his blood as it
blew down from the slopes and crests.

It was afternoon when he reached the little station of Winton and left
the train, a tall, sturdy boy, the superior of many a man in size,
strength and agility.  His saddle bags over his arm, he went at once
to the liveryman with whom he had left his horse on his journey to
Charleston, and asked for another, his best, for the return ride to
Pendleton.  The liveryman stared at him a moment or two and then burst
into an exclamation of surprise.

"Why, it's Harry Kenton!" he said.  "Harry, you've changed a lot in so
short a time!  You were at the bombardment of Fort Sumter, they tell me!
It's made a mighty stir in these parts!  There were never before such
times in old Kentucky!  Yes, Harry, I'll give you the best horse I've
got, there ain't one more powerful in the state, but pushin' as hard as
you will you can't reach Pendleton before dark, an' you look out."

"Look out for what?"

"Bill Skelly an' his gang.  Them mountaineers are up.  They say they're
goin' to beat the rich men of the lowlands an' keep Kentucky in the
Union, but between you an' me, Harry, it's the hate they feel for
them that think harder an' work harder an' make more than themselves.
Bill Skelly is the worst man in the mountains an' he has gathered about
him a big gang of toughs.  They're carin' mighty little about the Union
or the freedom of the slaves, but they expect to make a lot out of this
for themselves.  Now I tell you again, Harry, to look out as you go
through the dark to Pendleton.  The country is mighty troubled."

"I will," replied Harry, with vivid recollection of his ride from
Pendleton to Winton.  "I am armed, Mr. Collins, and I have seen war.
I served in one of the batteries that reduced Fort Sumter."

He did not say the last as a boast, but merely as an assurance to the
liveryman, who he saw was anxious on his account.

"If you've got pistols, just you think once before you shoot," said
Collins.  "Things are shorely mighty troubled in these parts an' they're
goin' to be worse."

"Have you heard anything of my father?  Is he at Pendleton?"

"He was two days ago.  He'd been up to Louisville where the Southern
leaders had a meetin', but couldn't make things go as they wanted 'em
to go, an' so he come back to Pendleton.  People are tellin' that he's
goin' to Frankfort soon."

Harry thanked him, threw his saddle bags across the horse, a powerful
bay, and, giving a final wave of his hand to the sympathetic liveryman,
rode away.  He had little fear.  He carried a pair of heavy
double-barreled pistols in holsters, and a smaller weapon in his pocket.
The horse, as he soon saw, was of uncommon power and spirit and he
snapped his fingers at Skelly and his gang.

He rode first at a long, easy walk, knowing too well to push hard at
the beginning, and the afternoon passed without anything worthy of his
notice save the loneliness of the road.  In the two hours before sundown
he met less than half a dozen persons.  All were men, and with a mere
nod they went on quickly, regarding him with suspicion.  This was not
the fashion of a year ago, when they exchanged a friendly word or two,
but Harry knew its cause.  Now nobody could trust anybody else.

The setting sun was uncommonly red, tinting all the forest with a fiery
glow and Harry looked apprehensively at the line of blue hills now on
his right, whence danger had come before.  But he saw nothing that moved
there.  No signal lights twinkled.  The intervening space was a mass of
heavy green foliage, which the eye, now that the twilight was at hand,
could penetrate only a few score yards.  A northeast wind off the
distant mountain tops was cold and sharp, and Harry, who wore no
overcoat, shivered a little.

Young though he was, he remembered the liveryman's caution, and he
watched the forest on either side, as well as he could.  But he depended
more upon his keenness of ear.  He did not believe the stirring of any
large force in the thickets could pass him unheard, and, having nursed
the strength of his great horse, he felt that he could leave almost any
pursuit far behind.

The twilight sank into a dark and heavy night.  The moon and stars lay
behind drifting clouds and, now and then, came a swish of cold rain.
Harry was not able to see more than a few yards to right or left,
when the road ran through the woods, as it did most of the time, and
not much further when fields chanced to lie on either side.

He was within a mile of Pendleton, and his heart began to throb, not
with thoughts of Skelly, but because he would soon be in his old home
again.  Ten or fifteen minutes more, and he would see the solid red
brick house rising among the clipped pines.  But as he passed the
junction of a small road coming down from the hills, his attentive ear
gave warning.  He heard the sound of hoofs and many of them.  He drew
in for a moment under the boughs and listened.

Harry's instinct warned him against the troop of men that he heard.
Collins, the liveryman, had told him that the country was full of
trouble.  This region was neither North nor South.  It was debatable
land, of which raiding bands would take full advantage, and, despite the
risk, he wished to know what was on foot.  He was almost invisible under
the boughs of a great oak which hung over the road, and the horse,
after so many miles of hard riding, was willing enough to stand still.
The rain swished in his face and the leaves gave forth a chilly rustle,
but he held himself firmly to his task.

The hoofbeats came nearer and then ceased.  The horsemen stopped at
the point, where the narrower road merged into the larger and, as they
were clear of the foliage, Harry caught a view of them.  There was no
moonlight, bu

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