True To His Colors
"Not a bit of it," was the prompt response. "Missouri hasn't recognized that flag yet. When she does, I will fight for it as long and as hard as you will."
"Will you join us in a hurrah for it?" continued Rodney.
"No, I won't."
"Three cheers for the Stars and Bars!" shouted Ed Billings. "Long may that flag wave, and may it never be polluted by the touch of a hated Yankee."
The cheers that followed were not cheers; they were whoops and yells – very much like those with which the charging Confederates so often saluted our blue-coats on the field of battle. Dick had half a notion to see if he could not get up a little counter-enthusiasm in behalf of the Stars and Stripes, but was afraid the attempt might result in failure; so after he had secured his mail, he went out on the porch and sat down to read those acts of the Confederate Congress calling for one hundred thousand volunteers, and ordering all who sympathized with the North to leave the limits of the Confederacy within ten days. His secession paper told him all about them, the editor enlarged upon and applauded them, and Dick was forced to the conclusion that things were getting serious; how serious, he little dreamed until four weeks more had passed away.
Dick spent half an hour over his paper and letters, and then Rodney Gray appeared. He had found a stick somewhere and fastened his flag to it. Although these two boys had had some sharp verbal contests during the last three months, they kept up an appearance of friendship, which was real so far as Dick Graham was concerned. The latter could not "swallow Rodney's disunion doctrines," as he often declared, but for all that he had a sincere regard for him, and always spoke of him as one of the finest fellows in school. Perhaps we shall see whether or not Rodney paid him back in kind.
"Give it a cheer, why don't you?" said Rodney, waving his flag over
Dick's head. "Where in the world have you been?"
"Right here, waiting for you."
"Well, come up the road a piece. There's a squad there, and we have been counting noses."
"How many noses do you want, and what do you want them for?" inquired Dick, putting his paper into his pocket and getting upon his feet. "What new nonsense are you up to?"
"There's no nonsense about this, I tell you. It's business. We want as many noses as we can get, and the boys behind them must be true blue. The fellows said I would be wasting time if I came after you, but I want to hear you say so with your own lips before I shall believe it. You have said more than once that if Missouri goes out and joins the Confederacy, you will go with her, haven't you?"
"You bet, and I say so yet. My State, or any State, has the right to go out of the Union as she came into it – of her own free will; and if those fellows up North are going to fight to keep her in, I shall fight to help her out. That's me; but you see Missouri hasn't yet – "
"I have heard that until I am tired of it," interrupted Rodney. "Missouri hasn't gone out yet, but she's going; and in the meantime, what about that flag at the academy? Are you in favor of letting it stay there?"
"That depends entirely upon the colonel," answered Dick. "If he says haul her down, down she comes. If he says let her stay up, up she stays. That's me."
"And will you continue to march and drill under it, now that we have a flag of our own?" demanded Rodney.
"That also depends. If the other boys drill under it and march after it, I will. In fact, I don't know but I shall do it any way, whether the others do or not. I don't know what you mean when you speak of a flag of our own. I don't recognize that thing you are carrying over your shoulder. The old flag is my flag, and will be as long as Missouri stays in the Union. I don't see the least use in rushing things. You and your friends are taking a good deal upon yourselves when you presume to act in advance of the State."
"Well, you see what the business men of Barrington think of the situation, don't you? That notice in the post-office looks and sounds mighty innocent, but reading between the lines – "
"So you read between the lines!" exclaimed Dick. "I did the same, and I tell you that that Committee of Safety is a fraud. Bud Goble has been carrying tales about some innocent men whom, for personal reasons, he does not like, and Mr. Riley and a few other hotheads are trying to find some excuse for driving them out of town. There'll be outrages here the first thing you know and they will be committed under cover of that business men's meeting, and with the connivance of those whose names are signed to that list."
"Do you mean to say that all those prominent men are such ruffians?" cried Rodney, in great excitement. "Why didn't you say as much when you were talking to Mr. Riley? You dared not do it."
"I didn't think of it; but I will wait here while you run back and tell him."
Dick looked sharply at his companion as he said this, and was surprised to see the usually self-possessed Rodney turn as red as a beet. It was plain that he had been touched in some tender spot by these chance words.
"What's he been up to?" was the question Dick Graham propounded to himself. "If I had known that I was going to hit him as hard as that, I wouldn't have said a word. He has been doing something sneaking, and I did not think that of Rodney Gray." Then aloud he said: "I didn't mean to hint that you would do such a thing, but you have been about half-wild during the last few weeks, and I don't believe you know all the time what you are doing."
"Well, if I'm crazy, I have the satisfaction of knowing that there are a good many like me in the South," replied Rodney, with a light laugh; and he uttered nothing but the truth. Taken as a body the Southern people certainly acted as if they had lost their senses. Among all those who rejoiced over South Carolina's reckless act there were few who saw that "it was but the prelude to the most terrible tragedy of the age – the unchaining of a storm that was destined to shake the continent with terror and devastation, leaving the Southern States a wreck, and sweeping from the earth the institution in whose behalf the fatal work was done." You may be sure that Rodney Gray did not see this sad picture, for just at that moment there were few things he could see except the elegant silk banner that waved above his head, and which he was determined to hoist at the academy flag-staff the very next morning.
"Here are the fellows," he added, as he and Dick came up with the squad who were gathered on a street corner waiting for them.
"And a fine-looking lot of lads they are," was Dick's comment. "Rebels the last one of them."
"Washington was a rebel, young fellow," replied one of the students, "and that is what he would be if he were with us to-day."
"Well, seeing that he isn't here to decide the matter, don't let's waste time in talking about it," said Cole. "The question is, Is that flag at the academy going to stay up or come down – which?"
"It's going to come down," replied Billings, very decidedly. "We've got a handsomer flag to take its place. Let's cheer it, and see how many of that crowd on the other side of the street will take off their hats to it."
The cheers were given with a will; and this time Dick Graham joined in – not because he cared a cent for the Stars and Bars, but just to help make a noise. The result was all the boys could have desired. The cheers were answered and hats were lifted in all directions, and handkerchiefs and red, white, and blue rosettes were waved from the windows of neighboring houses.
"Every one in sight made some demonstration," said Rodney gleefully.
"Dick, you are out in the cold."
"I don't feel very forlorn over it," was the reply. "How do you know but that some of those who cheered your old rag are Union at heart? But what are you fellows going to do, and what do you want of me?"
"We intend to hoist Rodney's flag on that tower to-morrow morning immediately after roll-call, and we want to know if you are in."
"No; I'm not in. I'm out. That's me."
"There, Rodney," exclaimed one of the students. "I hope you are satisfied now that you wasted time when you went after Dick Graham. He's a Yankee."
"You're another," retorted Dick.
"Do you still claim to be neutral?"
"I do, for a fact. You see, Missouri – "
"Oh, Dick, have a little mercy on a fellow, and don't say that again," cried half a dozen voices at once.
"Well, then, what do you want me to say? I'll not help you pull down the flag, if that is what you are after. I say, let her alone and she will come down of herself when the sunset gun is fired."
"We don't want her to come down of herself," answered Rodney. "We want the satisfaction of hauling her down."
"Very well, go and do it; but don't come to me whining over the broken heads you will be sure to get before you are through with the business. If you will let the orderly run her down, I will help steal her, so that she can't be run up in the morning; but being neutral, Missouri not having gone out of – "
"That scheme won't work at all," Rodney declared, with some disgust in his tones. "Don't you know that the colonel takes charge of the bunting every night?"
"I believe I have heard something to that effect."
"And don't you know that he keeps it locked in his bureau?" chimed in
Billings.
"Having been on duty at headquarters a time or two I am not ignorant of the fact," answered Dick. "All I ask of you is to do as I say, and I'll get the flag."
Of course the boys were impatient to know what they could do to help, and Dick at once proceeded to unfold his plans; but as they will be revealed presently we do not stop to tell what they were. Some of the combative ones among the students did not like the scheme at all, for there was not enough danger and excitement in it; and if it succeeded, they would be deprived of the pleasure of listening to the praises which they were sure the Barrington people would lavish upon them, when it should become known that they had hauled the flag down after a desperate battle with the Northern sympathizers who had tried to protect it. But these were in the minority. The others had no desire to provoke a fight with Marcy Gray and his friends, and it was finally decided that Dick's plan was the safest and best.
"That rather interferes with your arrangements, Cole," said Ed Billings, as the boys paired off and bent their steps toward the academy, Rodney Gray leading, with the flag in his hand. "Those girls were particular to say that the next time you came to see them you must bring word that the flag had been hauled down. I don't know whether or not they will be quite satisfied when you tell them that it was taken from the colonel's room, after it had been pulled down in the proper way."
Cole wasn't certain on that point, either; but he had said all he could against the adoption of Dick Graham's plan, and that was all anybody could do.
CHAPTER IV
RODNEY'S THREAT"Now, fellows," said Rodney, as soon as the line had been formed, "who knows a song appropriate to the occasion? We want to let the folks in advance of us know that we are coming, so as to see what they will do and say when they behold the banner of our young Republic."
"Hear, hear!" shouted the boys. "Strike up something, somebody." Every one looked at Dick Graham, who was the finest singer in the squad, and the latter, after a moment's reflection, cleared his throat and sang as follows:
"We are many in one while there glitters a starIn the blue of the heavens above,And tyrants shall quail 'mid their dungeons afar,When they gaze on the motto of love.By the bayonet traced at the midnight of war,On the fields where our glory was won —Oh, perish the hand or the heart that would marOur motto of 'Many in One.'"A more disgusted lot of boys had never been seen in Barrington than Rodney and his friends were when Dick finished singing the above, which was a part of two verses of "E Pluribus Unum." Of course the members of the squad all knew the song, but they did not suppose that Dick would have the audacity to mix it up in this way. If they had suspected how the song was going to end, they would have drowned him out in short order.
"That's about the biggest sell that was ever perpetrated on a party of confiding students," said Ed Billings, as soon as the whoops and yells of derision with which the patriotic words were greeted had died away. "Can't some good Southerner sing something that will hit the spot?"
Nobody could; for if any of the Confederate songs, which afterward became so popular on both sides the line, were in existence, they had not yet reached Barrington; so the only thing left for the boys to do was to keep step to "hay-foot, straw-foot, boom, boom, boom!" which they chanted with all the power of their lungs. Dick Graham congratulated himself on having said a word for the Union, and paid no sort of attention to the good-natured prods in the ribs which he received from the boys who were marching beside him. He stoutly affirmed that he had uttered nothing but his honest sentiments, and hoped that every one who took a hand in marring "our motto of many in one" would get whipped for his pains.
The students were well acquainted with the people living along their line of march, and were more than satisfied with the enthusiastic greetings given to them and their flag. When they filed through the gate into the academy grounds the sentry presented arms, and the commandant, who was standing at his window, turned away. The boys saw it, and told one another that the colonel was coming to his senses, and that he would not interpose his authority when they were ready to run up the Stars and Bars on the following morning.
"You fellows are making a heap of fuss about nothing," said Marcy Gray, as his cousin halted beside the camp-chair in which he was sitting and waved the flag over his head, while the rest of the squad trooped up the wide steps that led into the hall. "Take that thing away. The time may come when you will be sorry you ever saw it."
"It shall gleam o'er the sea 'mid the bolts of the storm,
O'er the battle and tempest and wreck,
And flame where our guns with their thunder grow warm – "
sang Rodney. "Look here, old fellow: Couldn't you get up spirit enough to give us a cheer?"
"I don't think I could," replied Marcy. "Did you fellows all have passes? I thought not. If things were as they used to be you would find yourselves in the guard-house in less than ten minutes."
"We are aware of it," answered Rodney; "but if things were as they used to be, we should not have climbed the fence and gone to town without permission. But these are times when rules don't count. There is your mail, and if you will take a friend's advice, you will read that paper carefully. I think there is something in it that concerns you."
"What is it, and where is it? Tell me all about it, and then I shall be spared the trouble of looking it up."
"Well," said Rodney, as if he hardly knew how to give his cousin the desired information, "Congress has passed a law commanding all Northern sympathizers to leave the limits of the Confederacy within ten days."
"Has this State gone out?"
"Not that I know of."
"Then I don't see how that law concerns me. I am not in the Confederacy, am I? As long as the State does not tell me to go, I shall stay where I am until mother writes me to start for home. Has your father written for you yet?"
"No; but I am looking for a letter every day, and I don't see why I don't get it. But it will come fast enough if the Yankees begin preparations for war, as some lunatics seem to think they will."
"Those same lunatics are about the only sensible people there are in the South to-day. The Northern States will not stand by with their hands in their pockets and see this government broken up, and you may depend upon it," said Marcy earnestly. "If they don't hang a few on both sides the line, there will be a war here the like of which the world has never seen."
"Bosh!" exclaimed Rodney, snapping his fingers in the air.
"And some of it will be in your State and mine," continued Marcy.
"Haven't you read our president's speech?" demanded Rodney, almost fiercely. "He says that if war must come, it will be fought on Northern soil."
"It takes two to make a bargain. The Northern States are stronger than we are, and they would be fools to consent to any such arrangement."
"You'll see that it will be done, whether they consent or not," answered Rodney. "Of course they don't want us to separate from them, for they have made a lot of money out of us with their high protective tariff and all that; but how are they to help themselves when there are no laws or ties of blood to hold us together? Although we speak the same language, we do not belong to the same race that they do; we are better every way than they are, and we're not going to be bound to them any longer. The slave-holders of the South ruled the old Union for sixty out of seventy years of her existence, and now that the reins of power have been snatched from their hands, they're not going to stand it. We'll have a nation of our own that will lead the world in everything that goes to make a nation. If North Carolina goes out, what will you do?"
"I shall go home, of course, for mother will need me. Our blacks will all leave us the first chance they get – "
"Bosh!" said Rodney, again. "The niggers know who their friends are, and I'll bet you there are not a hundred in the South today who would go over to the Yankees if they had the opportunity."
"Whether they run away or not, mother will need somebody on the plantation, and I am the only one she can call on, for Jack is at sea," replied Marcy.
"And, what's more, he may never get back," added Rodney. "We shall have a navy of our own pretty soon, and then, if the Yankees declare war against us, every ship that floats the old flag will have to watch out. We'll light bonfires on every part of the ocean. If your State secedes, you will go with her, of course?"
"Of course I'll not do any such thing."
"Marcy Gray, are you really a traitor? Be honest, now."
"Not much. I am true to my colors – the same colors that your grandfather and mine died under."
"But grandfather never dreamed, when he fought under that flag, that it was going to be turned into an emblem of tyranny," answered Rodney impatiently. "I'll bet you he would not fight under it now; and neither would Washington. But how will you fare when you get home? There are plenty of secessionists in your county, and they will have not the first thing to do with you."
"I don't care whether they do or not," replied Marcy, hardly realizing how much meaning there was in his cousin's last words. "Mother will have something to do with me, I reckon; and so will Jack when he returns; and if the neighbors choose to cut me because I am true to my colors, why I don't see that I can help it."
"Will you fight for the Union?"
"I hope I shall not be called upon to choose sides; but you may be sure
I shall not fight against it."
"Well, go your road, and I will go mine; but you will yet see the day when you will wish you had done differently. By the way," added Rodney carelessly; "those Taylor girls hinted that they would be pleased to see you at their house; but you don't want to air any of your disloyal sentiments in their presence, for if you do, they will be likely to tell you that you needn't come again. My paper says that is what the Richmond girls are doing, and our Barrington girls are following suit. And, Marcy, you had better haul in a little, for if you do not, you will get into trouble. The citizens are waking up, and there has been a Committee of Safety appointed to look out for all disturbers of the peace."
"I think such a committee is needed," was Marcy's quiet rejoinder. "The disturbers of the peace are secessionists without exception, and if the committee will shut up every one of that sort they can get their hands on, they will do the public a service. But as I don't care to be snubbed, I don't think I shall go out of my way to call upon those Taylor girls."
"Of course you will do as you please about that. I have simply delivered their message," said Rodney, as he passed up the steps and through the wide archway, waving his flag and making the hall ring with his shouts as he went. "Rally on the center, boys, and yell defiance to the Regicides and Roundheads. Keep your eye on the stairs, Billings, and if the kurn does not come down when he hears the racket, we are all right for to-morrow morning."
For a few minutes the greatest confusion reigned in the corridor. The secessionists yelled themselves hoarse over the Stars and Bars, and, carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, pledged themselves to enlist with the defenders of their respective States within twenty-four hours after they reached home. Then followed a counter-demonstration for the Stars and Stripes, led by the tall student, Dixon, of Kentucky, who was backed up by nearly all the boys from the States that had not yet joined the Confederacy. The noise was deafening, but the colonel did not come out of his room to put a stop to it, and that confirmed Rodney in the belief that he was "all right for tomorrow morning." His friends were greatly encouraged, and one of them, when the evening gun was fired, jerked, rather than pulled, the old flag down from the masthead; and he would have been glad to show his contempt for it by trampling it under his feet, had it not been for the presence of the guard, who paced the top of the tower in plain view of the open door of the belfry.
It was necessary to keep a sentry there now, for when the students found that they could not do as they pleased with the flag, they watched for an opportunity to pull the halliards out of the block at the head of the flagstaff. Of course the rope could and would have been restored to its place, but not without considerable trouble. The staff was so very slender that the lightest boy in school would have thought twice before attempting to climb it, and therefore the staff would have had to come down. Marcy Gray and his friends, who seemed to have a way of finding out all about the plans that were laid against the flag, thought it would be best to ask the colonel commanding to have a guard placed over the halliards, and this was accordingly done.
Although the sentry who was on duty at this particular time had the reputation of being a good soldier, he was not as friendly to the flag as he might have been; consequently he offered no remonstrance when the orderly gathered the colors up in a bunch and started downstairs to deliver them to the head of the school. But there were parties on the watch, as the orderly found when he reached the upper hall, for there he encountered the tall Kentuckian, Dixon, who at once took him to task.
"What made you wuzzle the flag up in that shape?" he demanded, in no friendly tones. "Put it down here on the floor and fold it as it should be, or off comes your head."
The orderly looked at Dixon, and then at the boys who stood behind him, but he could not see a single one of Rodney Gray's followers among them. Having no one to back him up he dared not refuse to obey the order, for he was well aware that he would get into trouble if he did. He folded the flag, and the tall student went with him to make sure that he delivered it to the commandant in good order. He saw it placed on the bureau in the colonel's room, and then posted off to tell Dick Graham all about it.
Supper was over at last; darkness came on apace, and as usual the students gathered in the corridors to discuss the situation. They did not seem to remember that there was a law forbidding this very thing, and the guards did not remind them of it, or try to send them to their rooms, for, besides being interested parties themselves, they knew by past experience that the boys would not pay the least attention to their commands.
These discussions were always conducted with more or less noise and hubbub, according to the humor the debaters happened to be in, but now one and all seemed bent on raising a row. They all talked at once, fists were flourished in the air and pretty close to the noses of some of the disputants, and finally the lie was passed, and Rodney Gray and several other students in the lower hall proceeded to "mix up" promiscuously. Dick Graham was not among them. He stood at the head of the stairs, where he could see all that was going on without being seen himself. When the leaders of the opposing sides ceased their arguments and came to blows, and on being separated by their respective friends surged through the door toward the parade, where the matter in dispute could be settled by a fair fight, Dick sprang into life and action and hurried to the commandant's room.