One of the most soul-stirring scenes that Rodney Gray ever witnessed occurred a short time subsequent to the fall of Vicksburg. He and his father and Ned Griffin stood on the Baton Rouge levee and saw the steamer Imperial dash by on her way to New Orleans. The swift vessel, which came from St. Louis, moved as if she were a living thing and knew that she was speaking not only to the Confederacy, but to the world. To the Confederates she said that the last vestige of their power and authority had disappeared from the Mississippi forever; that its waters were free to the commerce of the great West, which should nevermore be interrupted. And to France and England, who had been hoping and plotting for our downfall, she said that “thenceforth the country was to be one nation, under one flag, with Liberty and Union forever.”

Exciting and interesting events happened rapidly after that, but we can touch upon but few of them, for our “War Series” ought to end with the war record of the characters that have appeared in it. Rodney, who was waiting impatiently for Sailor Jack to make his appearance, spent the most of his time on the Baton Rouge levee, so as to be the first to welcome him when he came up with his trading boat. On one memorable night he reached home after dark, as he usually did, put his horse into the stable-yard, and went into the house; and there, just as we found him on a former occasion, seated in Rodney’s own rocking-chair, with his feet resting upon the back of another and a book in his hand, was Dick Graham. When Rodney entered the room Dick merely turned his head slightly and looked at him as he might have done if they had parted an hour or two before.

“I always knew you had cheek,” exclaimed Rodney, as soon as he could speak. “Dick, old boy, how are you?”

“Pretty and well, thank you,” answered Dick, dropping the book and jumping to his feet.

We shall not attempt to describe that meeting, for we could not do it justice. Just consider that they have got through gushing over each other, and that they are sitting down quietly, talking like veterans who have seen fifteen months of the hardest kind of service.

“I don’t know how I missed seeing you,” said Rodney, “for I was on the levee almost all day yesterday, and saw every boat that came in. How did you get home? and where did you leave your folks?”

“I got home easy enough, and left the folks in St. Louis. My discharge from Bragg’s army put me on the right side of both rebs and Yanks, and the money you so generouslygenerously provided brought me all the grub I wanted. I found the folks at home, but they didn’t remain there long after I joined them, for there was almost too much guerilla warfare going on in Kansas and western Missouri to make it pleasant for non-combatants. So we dug out for St. Louis, and we’ve been there ever since. I couldn’t get a letter to you, but I knew I could come myself as soon as the river was opened, and here I am. A pass from the provost marshal took me through the lines, and Mr. Turnbull was kind enough to hitch up a team and bring me to your father’s house, where I stopped last night. I heard some astonishing stories about Marcy and that sailor brother of his, and am sorry indeed that Marcy has gone home to stay. I should like much to see him.”

“And he would be delighted to see you, but I don’t look for him until this trouble is all over. Sailor Jack is liable to come along any day; and Dick, we’ll go with him and help him buy cotton.”

“Oh, you needn’t think that you and Jack are going to have a picnic,” replied Dick with a smile. “I talked with some of the officers of the boat on my way down, and they seemed to think that Uncle Sam’s tin-clads will have all they can do to keep the river clear of guerillas. They’ll not let traders take cotton out of the country if they can help it.”

It goes without saying that in Dick Graham’s company Rodney was almost as happy as he desired to be. He was blessed with perfect health, his family had in a great measure escaped the horrors of war which fell to the lot of so many others, there was no cotton in the woods for him to worry over, the man Lambert, who was a thorn in his side for so many months, had been sent to Camp Douglas for his merciless persecution of the Union people in the settlement, his father’s check was good at the bank for a larger amount than it had ever been before, and one of the few things Rodney had to wish for now was that the war might end with the battle of Gettysburg. Many brave soldiers on both sides declared that would have been the result of the fight if the arrogance of Jeff Davis had not stood in the way. He continued to slaughter men and desolate homes in the vain effort to make himself the head of a new nation. Great battles were yet to be fought to satisfy one man’s ambition and desire for power. Hood’s army of forty-five thousand men was to be annihilated at Nashville, and Sherman’s march to the sea accomplished before the “day of Appomattox” dawned upon the country. And Sailor Jack was to try his hand at being a trader.

He made his appearance about a week after Dick Graham did, and quite as unexpectedly, and so the boys were not on the levee to meet him. He secured a pass from the provost marshal, borrowed a horse, and rode out to his uncle’s plantation. Dick Graham had never seen him before, but when he got through shaking hands he was willing to believe that the sailor was glad to make his acquaintance.

“If I do say it myself I think I am well equipped for the business,” said Jack in response to Rodney’s inquiries. “My boat is the Venango, which is guaranteed to carry a full deck-load on a heavy dew, my officers are all river men and my deck-hands whites; for I wasn’t going to take darkies among the rebels to be captured and sent back into slavery.”

“Why, Jack,” said Mrs. Gray, “you talk as if you were going into danger.”

“Well, I am not as sanguine of keeping out of it as I was a few weeks ago,” said the sailor. “If I can hold fast to the Venango until I can load up the Hyperion twice, I shall think myself lucky. And I shall make a good thing out of it besides.”

Mr. Gray did not raise any objections when Rodney and Dick made ready to accompany Jack to Baton Rouge on the following morning, for he knew that if he were a boy he would want to go himself. He went with them to the city, and stood on the levee when the Venango backed away from it and turned her head up the river. When the boys could no longer distinguish him among the crowd which had assembled to see them off, they went into the cabin that Jack occupied in common with the river captain whom he had hired to run the vessel, and sat down to wait for dinner.

“This looks to me like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” said Rodney. “How are you going to manage? Do you intend to keep on up the river until someone hails you with the information that he has cotton to sell?”

“Not precisely,” laughed Jack. “We don’t do business in that uncertain way. My first landing will be at a plantation ten miles above Bayou Sara, if you know where that is, and there I hope to find cotton enough to load this boat about four times.”

“Why, how did you hear of it?”

“I received my orders from our agent in New Orleans, if that is what you mean; but how he heard of it I don’t know, and didn’t think to inquire. I wish this steamer was four times bigger than she is.”

“Why didn’t you charter a large one while you were about it?”

“I couldn’t, for their owners were too anxious to have them go back to their regular trade, which has so long been interrupted by the blockade at Vicksburg. They can make more money at it.”

After dinner had been served and eaten in what had once been the Venango’s passenger cabin, but which was now given over to the use of the officers of the boat, the boys walked out on the boiler-deck and saw a stern-wheeler coming toward them with a big bone in her teeth. She was painted a sort of dirt color that did not show very plainly against the background of the high bank she was passing, and it was a long time before the boys could make her out; but they told each other that she was the oddest looking craft they had ever seen. She had no “Texas” (that is the name given to the cabin in which the officers sleep), and her pilot house stood on the roof of her passenger cabin. Her main deck was not open like the Venango’s, but was inclosed with casemates provided with port-holes, two in the bow and three on the side that was turned toward them. She was following the channel in the right of the bend while the light-draft trading boat was holding across the point of the bar on the opposite side, so that there was the width of the river between them; but when they came abreast of each other, the stranger’s bow began swinging around, and in a few minutes she was running back up the Mississippi in company with the Venango, and only a few rods astern.

“She must be one of the mosquito fleet—a tin-clad,” exclaimed Dick. “They say the river is full of them, but I didn’t happen to see one on my way down. She and her kind are intended to fight guerillas.”

“That’s what she is,” said Jack. “And she’s the first I ever saw.”

“But what is she following us for?” asked Rodney. “Perhaps she wants to see your papers.”

“Then why doesn’t she whistle five times to let me know that she wants to communicate?” answered Jack. “She is giving us a convoy.”

“It’s very kind of Admiral Porter, or whoever it was told her to do it,” said Rodney. “If we are to be protected in this way we shall never have anything to fear from guerillas. She has six broadside guns, two bow-chasers, and a field howitzer on her roof, nine in all. She ought to make a good fight.”

“Oh, she will do well enough for guerillas,” said Jack, “but how long do you imagine she would stay above water if a battery should open on her?”

Jack Gray was not the only one who had little faith in tin-clads, but some of the most desperate engagements that were fought in Western waters were fought by these very vessels. If they wanted to go anywhere they did not stop because there was a battery in their way. Take one exploit of the Juliet as a fair specimen of what they could do as often as the exigencies of the service demanded it. When this fleet little gunboat was commanded by Harry Gorringe, the man who afterward brought over the Egyptian obelisk that now stands in Central Park, New York, she carried Admiral Porter past a long line of Confederate batteries, which poured upon her a fire so accurate and rapid that thirty-five shells were exploded inside her casemates in less than three minutes. The engineer on watch was killed with his hand on the throttle, but her machinery was not touched; and finding that she had come through the ordeal safe if not sound, she rounded to and went back to help a vessel which had not been so fortunate as herself. The Venango’s escort kept company with her until she turned in to the plantation where Jack hoped to obtain his first load of cotton, and then turned about and went down the river again, Jack and the boys waving their thanks to the officers who stood on her boiler-deck, and the Venango’s pilot wishing her good luck and warning the master of the plantation at the same time by giving a long blast on his whistle.

Sailor Jack began his trading at a fortunate time and under the most favorable conditions. Not only was he one of the first to enter the field after Vicksburg fell, but the men with whom his mother’s thirty thousand dollars enabled him to form partnership were so influential and shrewd, and had so many ways of finding out things which no one inside the Union lines was supposed to know anything about, that Jack never left port without knowing right where to find his next cargo of cotton. That is to say, he knew it on every occasion except one, and then he was ordered into a trap which he would have kept out of if he had been left to himself.

The cotton he found above Bayou Sara was on what was known as the Stratton plantation, and there was so much of it that he had to make four trips to carry it to New Orleans, where it was loaded into the Hyperion’s hold. One day when his own deck-hands and all the plantation darkies were busy loading for the last run, Jack was approached by three men in butternut, who wanted to know what he was giving for cotton, whether he paid in greenbacks or Confederate scrip, and if he would be willing to run up the river two hundred miles farther and get a thousand bales that several citizens up there were anxious to sell.

“Which side of the river is the cotton on?” asked Jack.

“Over there,” said one of the men, pointing toward the opposite shore.

“Too many rebs,” said Jack shortly.

“Thar haint been ary reb in our country fur more’n six months, dog-gone if thar has,” replied the man earnestly.

“Well, I can’t make any promises. The matter does not rest with me, but with the agent in New Orleans.”

“I suppose you pay cash on delivery?”

“Hardly. I don’t carry enough money to make it an object for prowling guerillas to rob me.”

“What’s Stratton got to show fur the cotton of his’n you have tooken down the river?”

“Due-bills, which will be cashed on sight.”

“But he’ll have to go to New Orleans to have ’em cashed, an’ me an’ my neighbors dassent go thar. We’ve been in the Confedrit army.”

“Is there no Union man up there whom you can trust to do business for you?”

“Thar aint one of that sort within forty mile of us.”

“Then you are in a bad way, and I don’t know how you will work it to get greenbacks for your cotton.”

“Couldn’t you run up there an’ buy it out an’ out if we gin you a little somethin’ for your trouble?”

“No, I couldn’t. I am not the only trader there is on the river, and if you watch out you may find somebody willing to take the risk. I am not willing.”

“They gave up mighty easy,” observed Rodney, as the three men turned away and walked slowly up the bank.

“Don’t you know the reason?” replied Jack. “They had no use for me when they found that I don’t carry a large sum of money with me. They haven’t a bale of cotton, and I doubt if they have been in the rebel army. They are guerillas and robbers like those in Missouri that Dick told us about. No doubt I shall have to go up into that country after this lower river has been cleared of cotton, but I’ll tell the captain to keep as far from the Arkansaw shore as the channel will let him go.”

This little incident reminded the boys that the war was not yet ended, and that they might hear more about it at any time. They heard more about it when they arrived at New Orleans and found the steamer Von Phul lying at the levee with her cabin shot full of holes. She had been fired into by a battery of field-pieces twenty miles below Memphis, but her captain was brave, as most of the river men were, and could not be stopped as long as his engines were in working order. He reported the matter to the captain of the first gunboat he met, and the latter hastened up and shelled the woods until he set them on fire; but the battery that did the mischief was probably a dozen miles away.

“There’s no telling how long it will be before we shall come here with our boat looking just like that,” said Jack. “And the worst of it is, we shall have to take whatever the rebs please to give us without firing a shot in reply. I don’t like that pretty well.”

But for a long time the Venango was a lucky vessel. She was not obliged to go very far out of reach of a gunboat to find her cargoes, for the planters who owned cotton took pains to place it on the river at points where it would be under Federal protection. But the supply was exhausted after a while, and then Jack was ordered into the dreaded Arkansas region, where guerillas were plenty and gunboats and soldiers stationed far apart. Then their troubles began, and Rodney and Dick smelled powder again. On one trip the Venango was fired into at three different points, but owing to her speed and the width of the river, which was almost bank full, she escaped without a scratch. On another occasion the rebels shot with better aim, and sent a shell through one of her smoke-stacks and two more through her cabin; but little damage was done, for the missiles did not explode until they passed through the steamer and struck the bank on the opposite side. After that it was seldom that Jack reported to his agent without adding: “Of course I was fired into on the way down,” and sometimes he was obliged to say that he had had men killed or wounded. But that was to be expected. A wooden boat couldn’t make a business of running batteries at regular intervals without losing men once in a while.

The winter passed in this way, Rodney and Dick never missing a trip, and all the while the agent was besieged by planters living along the Arkansas shore who had cotton to sell, who had permits to ship it and papers to prove that they had always been loyal to the government, and who were ready to stake their reputation as gentlemen upon the truth of the statement that the trading boat that came to their landings would not run the slightest risk of falling into the hands of guerillas. When the agent spoke to Jack about it the latter said:

“If you want to take the responsibility, why, all right. If you order me to go after that cotton I’ll go; but before you do it, I’d like to have you recall the fact that the trading boats Tacoma and George Williams were all right and made money until they were sent to the Arkansas shore, and then they went up in smoke. And every shot that has been fired at my boat came from the west bank of the river.”

“This cotton is at Horseshoe Bend opposite Friar’s Point,” continued the agent, “and you will have five or six gunboats within less than a dozen miles of you.”

“What of that?” replied Jack. “A party of half a dozen men could set fire to the boat and ride away to Texas before the gunboats would know anything about it. They might as well be a hundred miles away.”

“And more,” the agent went on, “two of the planters who own this cotton are willing to remain here as hostages, and they say that if anything happens to you or your boat we can do what we please with them.”

“What of that?” repeated Jack. “If the Venango is burned, who is going to punish those hostages? We have no right to do it, and you do not for a moment suppose that General Banks would interest himself in the matter? He’s got government business to attend to, and don’t care a cent what happens to us or any other civilians. I’ll go after the cotton if you say so, but you’ll never see the Venango again, and the firm will have to pay for her.”

This frightened the agent for a while, and he told Jack to stay on the safe side of the river and let the Arkansaw people get their cotton to market the best way they could. These orders remained in force about three months, and then came a fateful day when the only cotton the agent knew anything about was on the Arkansas side, eight miles above Skipwith’s Landing.

“I really think it will be a safe undertaking,” said the agent, “for you will be within plain sight of two iron-clads and the ram Samson, which are lying at Skipwith’s.”

“I wouldn’t give that for all the help I’ll get from the whole of them,” declared Jack, snapping his fingers in the air. “They’ll not know that trouble has come to me till they see my boat in flames, and how long will it take one of those tubs of iron-clads to get up steam and run eight miles against the current of the Mississippi? The Venango will be in ashes before one of them will come within shelling distance of us.”

“But there’s the Samson. She can run seventeen miles an hour against a four-mile current.”

“And what is the Samson but a carpenter shop, with no guns and a crew of darkies? Do you want me to go there or not?”

The agent did what Longstreet is said to have done when General Lee told him to order Pickett’s useless charge at Gettysburg; he looked down at the ground and evaded a direct answer.

“We want cotton enough to fill out the Hyperion’s cargo,” said he, “and that’s the only batch on the river that I have been able to hear of.”

“Then I’ll start after it in less than an hour; but whether or not I’ll get it is another and a deeper question. Good-by.”

Jack walked off whistling, for trouble sat lightly on his broad shoulders, but the moment he stepped on the Venango’s boiler-deck and faced the two boys sitting there, they knew what had happened as well as they did when it was explained to them.

“I can see Arkansas written all over you,” exclaimed Rodney.

“And can you see that I want you two to be ready to leave the boat at Baton Rouge?” replied Jack. “We’ll not make a landing, but just run close enough to give you a chance to jump.”

“I never could jump worth a cent,” said Dick.

“Look here, Jack, we’re not little boys to be disposed of in any such way as you propose. We have seen as much service as you have, and if it is all the same to you we’ll stay here. I am not going home to worry my folks with the report that you are going into such danger that you thought it best to drop us overboard,” chimed in Rodney.

“If the guerillas catch us they’ll only put us afoot,” observed Dick. “That’s what they did with the Tacoma’s crew.”

Good-natured Jack turned on his heel and walked away, showing by his actions that he did not expect his order to be obeyed. In an hour’s time the Venango was on her way up the river. She passed Skipwith’s Landing the next night after dark, running close enough in to give the boys an indistinct view of the long black hull of the ram Samson, lying alongside the repair shops, and the battle-scarred iron-clads at anchor a short distance farther up, and in due time she was whistling for the landing on the Arkansas shore eight miles above. It was dark there, and the boys could see nothing but a dense forest outlined against the sky, and not the first sign of a clearing; but that there was somebody on the watch was made evident a few minutes later, for an iron torch basket filled with blazing “fat wood,” such as steamers use when making a landing or coaling at night, was planted upon the levee, and the pilot steered in by the aid of the light it threw out. There were three men on the levee and a few bales of cotton near by.

“Is that all you have?” demanded Jack, as the Venango’s bow touched the bank and a couple of deck-hands sprang ashore with a line.

“What boat is that?” asked one of the men.

Jack gave her name, adding the information that he had been sent there for cotton, and there wasn’t enough in sight to load a skiff.

“Oh, we’ve got plenty more back there in the woods,” was the answer.

“But I don’t want it back there in the woods,” shouted Jack, from his perch on the roof. “I want it on the levee where I can get at it.”

“We’ve got teams enough to haul it out faster than you can load it. It’s all right, cap’n. I had a long talk with your agent only a few days ago.”

“It’s all wrong, and you may depend upon it,” said Rodney in a low tone.

Jack Gray was of the same opinion, and if he had not been afraid that the men with whom he was associated in business would accuse him of cowardice, he would have cut the bow-line, which had by this time been made fast to a tree on the bank, and backed away with all possible speed. Instead of doing that, he descended the stairs and walked down the gang-plank, while Rodney and Dick drew off to one side to compare notes.

“If it’s all right, what’s the reason they didn’t have the cotton ready for us?” said the latter.

“That’s what I’d be pleased to know,” said Rodney. “Do you believe there’s any cotton here?”

“Not a bale except the few you see on the levee, and which were put there for a blind. Your cousin believes he’s in a trap or else his face told a wrong story.”

“That’s my opinion, too. Now don’t you think it would be a good plan for us to put the skiff into the water and go down and tell those gunboats about it?”

“It might, but what shall we tell them? There’s been nothing done yet,” replied Dick, as he followed Rodney to the main-deck.

That was true, but there was something done by the time they got the skiff overboard. It was lying bottom up on the guard just abaft the door that gave entrance into the engine-room on the port side, that is, the side away from the bank, and the oars that belonged to it were stowed under the thwarts. Jack was ashore, the mates were on the forecastle, the deck-hands busy with the breast and stern lines, the captain was at his post on the roof, the engineer was at the throttle, slowly turning the wheel to work the boat broadside to the bank, and there was no one to observe their movements. Noiselessly they pushed the skiff into the water, then stepped in and shipped the oars and pulled toward the steamer’s bow, edging away a little into the darkness so that they could not be seen by anyone on shore. A subdued exclamation of surprise and alarm burst from their lips when they pulled far enough ahead so that they could look over the bow toward the cotton-bales on the bank. There were a score of men there now, and with the exception of the three who were there when the boat touched the bank, they were all armed and wore spurs.

“Guerillas?” whispered Dick.

“Do you think we will have anything to tell the gunboats?” asked Rodney. “Turn her around and pull the best you know how.”

“It looks cowardly to run away and leave Jack,” replied Dick, laying out all his strength on his oar.

“We wouldn’t do it if we could help him in any other way. But they won’t hurt him. It’s the boat they’re after,” said Rodney; but even while the words were on his lips he could not help wondering if the guerillas did not expect to find a large sum of money on the boat, and whether their disappointment would not make them so angry that they would take vengeance on somebody. But there was no way in which he could stop it except by bringing a gunboat to the rescue, and with this object in view he “pulled the best he knew how.” He and Dick kept the skiff in the channel in order to get the benefit of the current, and in less time than they thought to do so, brought themselves within hailing distance of one of the iron-clads.

“Boat ahoy!” shouted a hoarse voice from her deck.

“Trading boat Venango!” responded Rodney, hoping to give the officer of the deck some idea of the nature of their business.

The latter must have heard and understood, for he told them to come alongside; and when the order had been obeyed, not without a good deal of difficulty, for the current ran like a mill sluice, and the officer of the deck had listened to their hasty story, he went below to speak to the captain, who, after a long delay, sent word for them to be brought into the cabin. But the sequel proved that he had done something in the meantime. He had told the ensign on watch to arouse the executive, to have two companies of small-arm men called away, and to send word to the Samson to raise steam immediately. Being a regular, the captain lost no time. After listening to what the boys had to say, he gave them permission to go aboard the Samson with the small-arm men, and in ten minutes more the boat that could run seventeen miles an hour against a four-mile current was ploughing her way up the river at an astonishing rate of speed. But the guerillas hadn’t wasted any time either. Before the ram had left the iron-clads a mile astern, a small, bright light, which grew larger and brighter every instant, shone through the darkness ahead, and presently the Venango came floating down with the current, a mass of flame. After robbing her of everything of value, the guerillas had applied the torch and turned her adrift. But where were Jack Gray and her crew? This question was answered at day-light the next morning when Rodney and Dick pulled the skiff back to the landing, where they found Jack sitting on a cotton-bale, and whittling a stick as composedly as though such a thing as a guerilla had never been heard of. His crew were asleep behind the levee, and Jack was keeping watch for a steamer bound down. The guerillas hadn’t bothered him any to speak of, he said, although they did swear a little when they learned that he had no money. They affirmed that if they couldn’t make a dollar a pound out of their cotton, the Yankees shouldn’t do it, and they would burn every trading boat that Jack or anybody else put on the river. But they never burned another boat for Jack. A steamer which came along that afternoon took him and his crew to New Orleans, and there he took leave of the boys, who did not see him again for a long time. But before they parted, however, he showed them a letter from Marcy, in which the latter stated that Charley Bowen had shipped on a Union gunboat at Plymouth. Being a deserter from the rebel army, he was afraid to enlist in the land forces, for if he were captured and recognized he would certainly be shot to death. He thought there would be little danger of that if he went to sea.

The trading business having been broken up Rodney was anxious to see his home once more, and that was where he and Dick started for as soon as they had seen the Hyperion drop down the river with Jack Gray on board. Rodney’s father and mother had heard of the loss of the Venango, but they did not know what had become of her company, and the boys’ return was an occasion for rejoicing. At the end of the month Dick Graham also went home, and then Rodney was lonely indeed. If he hadn’t had plenty of work and energy enough to go at it, it is hard to tell what he would have done with himself. For want of some better way of passing his leisure moments he made an effort to learn what had become of Billings, Cole, Dixon, and all the other Barrington boys who had promised, with him, to enlist in the Confederate army within twenty-four hours after they reached home. He knew their several addresses, but the only one he heard from was Dixon, the tall Kentuckian who, good rebel as he was, always interfered whenever the hot heads among the academy boys tried to haul down the Old Flag and run the Stars and Bars up in its place. And the reply he received did not come from Dixon himself but from his sister, who told Rodney that her brother had been killed at the head of his regiment while gallantly leading a charge upon a Federal battery. He went into the Confederate army a private and died a colonel.

“Bully for Dixon,” said Rodney, with tears in his eyes. “He always was a brave boy.”

At last Atlanta fell, Sherman marched to the sea, the battle of Five Forks was fought, the grand result of which was to reduce General Lee’s army of seventy-six thousand to less than twenty-nine thousand men, and then came the surrender at Appomattox. A short time afterward came also a joyous letter from Marcy Gray, in which he said that although Plymouth had once been recaptured by the rebels, aided by their formidable iron-clad, the Albemarle, which had worsted the Union gunboats every time they met her, the city did not remain in the hands of the enemy any longer than it took Lieutenant Cushing to blow up the iron-clad with his torpedo; and then, their main-stay being gone, the rebels again surrendered. He and his mother had not been troubled in any way since the night Captain Fletcher took him to Williamston jail. If it had not been for the papers that occasionally came into their hands, they would not have known that dreadful battles were being fought in the next State. There had been peace and quiet in the settlement since Allison, Goodwin, and Beardsley were bushwhacked. It was a terrible thing for Christians to do, but the refugees had been driven to it, and through no fault of their own. The two foragers who were captured on the night that Ben Hawkins was surprised in his father’s house, and who were sent South to act as guards at the Andersonville prison pen, had escaped after a few months’ service, and were now at home with their families. So were Hawkins and all the rest of the prisoners who were captured and paroled at Roanoke Island, and they had never been molested. No word had been received from Charley Bowen since he shipped in the Union Navy, but Marcy hoped to see him again at no distant day, for he never could forget that Charley saved his life. Sailor Jack had made a “good thing” out of his trading, and had promised his mother that he would not go to sea any more. As a family they were prosperous and hoped to be happy, now that the cause of the war was dead and the war itself ended. Marcy concluded his interesting letter by saying:

“While I write, the flag my Barrington girl gave me is waving from the house-top, and there is not a rebel banner floating to taint the breeze that kisses it. May it ever be so—one flag, one country, one destiny.”

“Amen,” said Rodney Gray solemnly.

No author of the present day has become a greater favorite with boys than “Harry Castlemon;” every book by him is sure to meet with hearty reception by young readers generally. His naturalness and vivacity lead his readers from page to page with breathless interest, and when one volume is finished the fascinated reader, like Oliver Twist, asks “for more.”

? Any volume sold separately.

Horatio Alger, Jr., has attained distinction as one of the most popular writers of books for boys, and the following list comprises all of his best books.

? Any volume sold separately.

Specimen Cover of the Wyoming Series.