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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44132 ***
+
+                 STORIES OF ADVENTURE IN THE
+
+                     YOUNG UNITED STATES
+
+                  _By ALFRED BISHOP MASON_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                     WASHINGTON'S SCOUT
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                         BOY-CAPTAIN
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                           JUNIOR
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                            THIRD
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+                   Publishers      New York
+
+
+
+
+        [Illustration: ST. GAUDENS' STATUE OF LINCOLN]
+
+
+
+
+                          TOM STRONG,
+                        LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+             _A STORY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE
+                 TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS_
+
+
+                               By
+
+                      ALFRED BISHOP MASON
+
+    Author of "Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom Strong,
+            Boy-Captain," Tom Strong, Junior," and
+                      "Tom Strong, Third"
+
+
+                          ILLUSTRATED
+
+                         [Illustration]
+
+                           NEW YORK
+                    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+                             1919
+
+
+
+
+                       COPYRIGHT, 1919
+                             BY
+                   HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+
+                 The Quinn & Boden Company
+                     BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+                 RAHWAY         NEW JERSEY
+
+
+
+
+                  DEDICATED BY PERMISSION
+
+                             TO
+
+                     THEODORE ROOSEVELT
+
+                   INSPIRER OF PATRIOTISM,
+                      A GREAT AMERICAN
+
+
+
+
+                          OYSTER BAY
+                       LONG ISLAND, N.Y.
+
+                                                 August 31st, 1917.
+
+  Dear Mr. Mason:
+
+  All right, I shall break
+  my rule and have you dedicate that book to
+  me. Thank you!
+
+                              Faithfully yours,
+
+[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt signature]
+
+  Mr. Alfred B. Mason,
+  University Club,
+  New York City.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Many of the persons and personages who appear
+upon the pages of this book have already
+lived, some in history and some in the pages of
+"Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom
+Strong, Boy-Captain," "Tom Strong, Junior,"
+or "Tom Strong, Third." Those who wish to
+know the full story of the four Tom Strongs,
+great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son,
+should read those books, too.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                         CHAPTER I
+                                                             PAGE
+
+  TOM RIDES IN WESTERN MARYLAND--HALTED BY ARMED
+  MEN--JOHN BROWN--THE ATTACK UPON HARPER'S FERRY--THE
+  FIGHT--JOHN BROWN'S SOUL GOES MARCHING ON                     3
+
+
+                         CHAPTER II
+
+  OUR WAR WITH MEXICO--KIT CARSON AND HIS LAWYER, ABE
+  LINCOLN--TOM GOES TO LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION--S. F. B.
+  MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE TELEGRAPH--TOM BACK IN
+  WASHINGTON                                                   22
+
+
+                         CHAPTER III
+
+  CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS--MR. STRONG GOES TO RUSSIA--TOM
+  GOES TO LIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE--BULL RUN--"STONEWALL"
+  JACKSON--GEO. B. MCCLELLAN--TOM STRONG, SECOND-LIEUTENANT,
+  U. S. A.--THE BATTLE OF THE "MERRIMAC" AND THE "MONITOR"     40
+
+
+                         CHAPTER IV
+
+  TOM GOES WEST--WILKES BOOTH HUNTS HIM--DR. HANS ROLF
+  SAVES HIM--HE DELIVERS DESPATCHES TO GENERAL GRANT           71
+
+
+                         CHAPTER V
+
+  INSIDE THE CONFEDERATE LINES--"SAIREY" WARNS TOM--OLD MAN
+  TOMBLIN'S "SETTLEMINT"--STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE--WILKES
+  BOOTH GIVES THE ALARM--A WILD DASH FOR THE UNION LINES       90
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VI
+
+  TOM UP A TREE--DID THE CONFEDERATE OFFICER SEE HIM?--THE
+  FUGITIVE SLAVE GUIDES HIM--BUYING A BOAT IN THE
+  DARK--ADRIFT IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY                         117
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VII
+
+  TOWSER FINDS THE FUGITIVES--TOWSER BRINGS UNCLE
+  MOSES--MR. IZZARD AND HIS YANKEE OVERSEER, JAKE
+  JOHNSON--TOM IS PULLED DOWN THE CHIMNEY--HOW UNCLE
+  MOSES CHOKED THE OVERSEER--THE FLIGHT OF THE FOUR           129
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VIII
+
+  LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF
+  LINCOLN--THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS
+  NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA
+  FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE RUSSIAN FLEET
+  COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER                      160
+
+
+                         CHAPTER IX
+
+  TOM GOES TO VICKSBURG--MORGAN'S RAID--GEN. BASIL W. DUKE
+  CAPTURES TOM--GETTYSBURG--GEN. ROBERT E. LEE GIVES TOM
+  HIS BREAKFAST--IN LIBBY PRISON--LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT
+  GETTYSBURG                                                  182
+
+
+                         CHAPTER X
+
+  TOM IS HUNGRY--HE LEARNS TO "SPOON" BY SQUADS--THE BULLET
+  AT THE WINDOW--WORKING ON THE TUNNEL--"RAT HELL"--THE
+  RISK OF THE ROLL-CALL--WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE JOHNSON,
+  CONFEDERATE SPY--TOM IN LIBBY PRISON--HANS ROLF ATTENDS
+  HIM--HANS REFUSES TO ESCAPE--THE FLIGHT THROUGH THE
+  TUNNEL--FREE, BUT HOW TO STAY SO?                           213
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XI
+
+  TOM HIDES IN A RIVER BANK--EATS RAW FISH--JIM GRAYSON
+  AIDS HIM--DOWN THE JAMES RIVER ON A TREE--PASSING THE
+  PATROL BOATS--CANNONADED--THE END OF THE VOYAGE             249
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XII
+
+  TOWSER WELCOMES TOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE--LINCOLN
+  RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT--GRANT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--SHERMAN
+  MARCHES FROM ATLANTA TO THE SEA--TOM ON GRANT'S
+  STAFF--FIVE FORKS--FALL OF RICHMOND--HANS ROLF FREED--BOB
+  SAVES TOM FROM CAPTURE--TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO
+  ACTION--LEE SURRENDERS--TOM STRONG, BREVET-CAPTAIN,
+  U. S. A.                                                    265
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XIII
+
+  THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN                        307
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XIV
+
+  TOM HUNTS WILKES BOOTH--THE END OF THE MURDERER--ANDREW
+  JOHNSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES--TOM AND TOWSER
+  GO HOME                                                     315
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN                                  _Frontispiece_
+    St. Gaudens Statue, Lincoln Park, Chicago
+                                                          PAGE
+
+  JOHN BROWN                                                   10
+
+  THE ATTACK UPON THE ENGINE HOUSE                             17
+
+  BATTLE OF THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC"                   66
+
+  ADMIRAL FARRAGUT                                             72
+
+  MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS                                   85
+
+  THE LOCOMOTIVE TOM HELPED TO STEAL                          106
+
+  TOWSER                                                      157
+
+  GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES                               191
+
+  ARLINGTON                                                   198
+
+  GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER                              201
+
+  LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR                                  214
+
+  FIGHTING THE RATS                                           224
+
+  LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL                                 229
+
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1864                                     269
+
+  GEN. W. T. SHERMAN                                          272
+    St. Gaudens Statue, Central Park Plaza, New York
+
+  BOB                                                         275
+
+  GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN                                     278
+    Sheridan Square Statue, Washington, D. C.
+
+  TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO ACTION                             292
+
+  THE MCLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE                     299
+
+  LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT                                     302
+
+  GEN. U. S. GRANT                                            304
+
+
+                         MAP
+
+  EASTERN HALF OF UNITED STATES                                 2
+
+
+
+
+                      TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE EASTERN UNITED STATES
+               (Showing places mentioned in this book)]
+
+
+
+
+                      TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+     TOM RIDES IN WESTERN MARYLAND--HALTED BY ARMED MEN--JOHN BROWN--THE
+     ATTACK UPON HARPER'S FERRY--THE FIGHT--JOHN BROWN'S SOUL GOES
+     MARCHING ON.
+
+
+On a beautiful October afternoon, a man and a boy were riding along a
+country road in Western Maryland. To their left lay the Potomac, its
+waters gleaming and sparkling beneath the rays of the setting sun. To
+their right, low hills, wooded to the top, bounded the view. They had
+left the little town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, an hour before; had
+crossed to the Maryland shore of the Potomac; and now were looking for
+some country inn or friendly farmhouse where they and their horses could
+be cared for overnight.
+
+The man was Mr. Thomas Strong, once Tom Strong, third, and the boy was
+his son, another Tom Strong, the fourth to bear that name. Like the
+three before him he was brown and strong, resolute and eager, with a
+smile that told of a nature of sunshine and cheer. They were looking for
+land. Mr. Strong had inherited much land in New York City. The growth of
+that great town had given him a comfortable fortune. He had decided to
+buy a farm somewhere and a friend had told him that Western Maryland was
+almost a paradise. So it was, but this Eden had its serpent. Slavery was
+there. It was a mild and patriarchal kind of slavery, but it had left
+its black mark upon the countryside. Across the nearby Mason and Dixon's
+line, Pennsylvania was full of little farms, tilled by their owners, and
+of little towns, which reflected the wealth of the neighboring farmers.
+Western Maryland was largely owned by absentee landlords. Its towns were
+tiny villages. Its farms were few and far between. The free State was
+briskly alive; the slave State was sleepily dead.
+
+The two riders were splendidly mounted, the father on a big bay
+stallion, Billy-boy, and the son on a black Morgan mare, Jennie.
+Billy-boy was a descendant of the Billy-boy General Washington had given
+to the first Tom Strong, many years before. Jennie was a descendant of
+the Jennie Tom Strong, third, had ridden across the plains of the great
+West with John C. Fremont, "the Pathfinder," first Republican candidate
+for President of the United States.
+
+"We haven't seen a house for miles, Father," said the boy.
+
+"And we were never out of sight of a house when we were riding through
+Pennsylvania. There's always a reason for such things. Do you know the
+reason?"
+
+"No, sir. What is it?"
+
+"The sin of slavery. I don't believe I shall buy land in Maryland. I
+thought I might plant a colony of happy people here and help to make
+Maryland free, in the course of years, but I'm beginning to think the
+right kind of white people won't come where the only work is done by
+slaves. We must find soon a place to sleep. Perhaps there'll be a house
+around that next turn in the road. Billy-boy whinnies as though there
+were other horses near."
+
+Billy-boy's sharp nose had not deceived him. There were other horses
+near. Just around the turn of the road there were three horses. Three
+armed men were upon them. Father and son at the same moment saw and
+heard them.
+
+"You stop! Who be you?"
+
+The sharp command was backed by uplifted pistols. The Strongs reined in
+their horses, with indignant surprise. Who were these three farmers who
+seemed to be playing bandits upon the peaceful highroad? The boy glanced
+at his father and tried to imitate his father's cool demeanor. He felt
+the shock of surprise, but his heart beat joyously with the thought:
+"This is an adventure!" All his young life he had longed for adventures.
+He had deeply enjoyed the novel experience of the week's ride with the
+father he loved, but he had not hoped for a thrill like this.
+
+Mr. Strong eyed the three horsemen, who seemed both awkward and uneasy.
+"What does this mean?" he asked.
+
+"Now, thar ain't goin' to be no harm done you nor done bub, thar,
+neither," the leader of the highwaymen answered, with a note almost of
+pleading in his voice. "Don't you be oneasy. But you'll have to come
+with us----"
+
+"And spend Sunday with us----" broke in another man.
+
+"Shet up, Bill. I'll do all the talkin' that's needed."
+
+"That's what you do best," the other man grumbled.
+
+"Well, Tom," said Mr. Strong, turning with a smile to his son, "we seem
+to have found that place to spend the night." He faced his captors.
+"This is a queer performance of yours. You don't look like highwaymen,
+though you act like them. Do you mean to steal our horses?" he added,
+sharply.
+
+"We ain't no hoss thieves," replied the leader. "You've got to come with
+us, but you needn't be no way oneasy. You, Bill, ride ahead!"
+
+Bill turned his horse and rode ahead, Mr. Strong and Tom riding behind
+him, the other two men behind them. It was a silent ride, but not a long
+one. Within a mile, they reached a rude clearing that held a couple of
+log huts. The sun had set; the short twilight was over. Firelight
+gleamed in the larger of the huts. The prisoners were taken to it. A man
+who was lounging outside the door had a whispered talk with the three
+horsemen. Then he turned rather sheepishly; said: "Come in, mister; come
+in, bub;" opened the door, called within: "Prisoners, Captin' Smith,"
+and stepped aside as father and son entered.
+
+There were a dozen men in the big room, farmers all, apparently. They
+were all on their feet, eyeing keenly the unexpected prisoners. Their
+eyes turned to a tall man, who stepped forward and held out his hand,
+saying:
+
+"Sorry the boys had to take you in, but you and your hosses are safe and
+we won't keep you long. The day of the Lord is at hand."
+
+There was a grim murmur of approval from the other men. The Lord's day,
+as Sunday is sometimes called, was at hand, for it was then the evening
+of Saturday, October 15, 1859. But that was not what the speaker meant.
+He was not what his followers called him, Captain Smith. He was John
+Brown, of North Elba, New York, of Kansas ("bleeding Kansas" it was
+called then, when slaveholders from Missouri and freedom-lovers under
+John Brown had turned it into a battlefield), and he was soon to be John
+Brown of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, first martyr in the cause of Freedom
+on Virginian soil. To him "the day of the Lord" was the day when he was
+to attack slavery in its birthplace, the Old Dominion, and that attack
+had been set by him for Sunday, October 16. His plan was to seize
+Harper's Ferry, where there was a United States arsenal, arm the slaves
+he thought would come to his standard from all Virginia, and so compass
+the fall of the Slave Power. A wild plan, an impossible plan, the plan
+of an almost crazy fanatic, and a splendid dream, a dream for the sake
+of which he was glad to give his heroic life.
+
+He had rented this Maryland farm in July, giving his name as Smith and
+saying he expected to breed horses. By twos and threes his followers had
+joined him in this solitary spot, until now there were twenty-one of
+them. The few folk scattered through the countryside had begun to be
+suspicious of this strange gathering of men. All sorts of wild stories
+circulated, though none was as wild as the truth. The men themselves
+were tense under the strain of the long wait. They feared discovery and
+attack. For the three days before "the day of the Lord" they had
+patrolled the one road, looking out for soldiers or for spies. Tom and
+his father had been their sole captives.
+
+John Brown was one of Nature's noblemen and among his friends in
+Massachusetts and New York were some of the foremost men of their time,
+so he had learned to know a real man when he met one. He soon found
+out that Mr. Strong was a real man. He told him of his plans, and urged
+him to join in the projected foray on Harper's Ferry. But when Mr.
+Strong refused and tried to show him how mad his project was, the fires
+of the fanatic blazed within him.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BROWN]
+
+"Did not Joshua bring down the walls of Jericho with a ram's horn?" he
+shouted. "And with twenty armed men cannot I pull down the walls of the
+citadel of Slavery? Are you a true man or not? Will you join me or not?
+Answer me yes or no."
+
+"No," was the response, quiet but firm.
+
+"You shall join me; you and your boy," thundered the crusader, hammering
+the table with his mighty fist. "Here, Jim, put these people under guard
+and keep them until we start."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tom and his father were well-treated, but they were kept under guard
+until the next night and were then taken along by John Brown's "army,"
+which trudged off into the darkness afoot, while Billy-boy and Jennie
+and the other horses in the corral whinnied uneasily, sensing, as
+animals do, the stir of a departure which is to leave them behind. In
+the center of the little column the two captives marched the five miles
+to Harper's Ferry and started across the bridge that led to that tiny
+town.
+
+A brave man, one Patrick Hoggins, was night-watchman of the bridge. He
+heard the trampling of many feet upon the plank-flooring. He hurried
+towards the strange sound.
+
+"Halt!" shouted somebody in the column.
+
+"Now I didn't know what 'halt' mint then," Patrick testified afterwards,
+"anny more than a hog knows about a holiday."
+
+But he had seen armed men and he turned to run and give an alarm. A
+bullet was swifter than he, but not swifter than his voice. He fell, but
+his shouts had alarmed the town. There were two or three watchmen at the
+arsenal. They came forward, only to be made prisoners. The few citizens
+who had been aroused could do nothing. The "army" seized the arsenal
+without difficulty.
+
+Five miles from Harper's Ferry lived Col. Lewis W. Washington,
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, great-grand-nephew of another
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, George Washington. At midnight,
+Colonel Washington was awakened by a blow upon his bedroom door. It
+swung open and the light of a burning torch showed the astonished
+Southerner four armed men, one of them a negro, who bade him rise and
+dress. They were a patrol sent out by Brown. Their leader, Stevens,
+asked:
+
+"Haven't you a pistol Lafayette gave George Washington and a sword
+Frederick the Great sent him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Downstairs."
+
+His four captors tramped downstairs with him. Pistol and sword were
+found.
+
+"I'll take the pistol," said Stevens. "You hand the sword to this
+negro."
+
+John Brown wore this sword during the fighting that followed. It is now
+in the possession of the State of New York. While its being sent George
+Washington by Frederick the Great is doubtful--the story runs that the
+Prussian king sent with it a message "From the oldest general to the
+best general"--its being surrendered by Lewis Washington to the negro is
+true.
+
+Lewis was then on the staff of the Governor of Virginia, and had
+acquired in this way his title of Colonel. He was put into his own
+carriage. His slaves, few in number, were bundled into a four-horse
+farm-wagon. They were told to come and fight for their freedom. Too
+scared to resist, they came as they were bidden to do, but they did no
+fighting. At Harper's Ferry they and their fellow-slaves, seized at a
+neighboring plantation, escaped back to slavery at the first possible
+moment. Not a single negro voluntarily joined John Brown. He had
+expected a widespread slave insurrection. There was nothing of the sort.
+By Monday morning he knew he had failed, failed utterly.
+
+Before Monday's sun set, Harper's Ferry was full of soldiers, United
+States regulars and State militia. Brown, his men and his white
+captives, eleven of the latter, were shut up in the fire-engine house of
+the armory. The militia refused to charge the engine-house, saying that
+this might cost the captives their lives. Many of them were drunk; all
+of them were undisciplined; their commander did not know how to command.
+The situation changed with the arrival of the United States Marines led
+by Lieut.-Col. Robert E. Lee, afterwards the famous chief of the army of
+the Confederate States.
+
+By this time Tom was beginning to think he had had enough adventure. He
+had enjoyed that silent tramp through the darkness beside his father. He
+had enjoyed it the more because they were both prisoners-of-war. Being a
+prisoner was an amazingly thrilling thing. He was sorry when brave
+Patrick Hoggins was shot and glad to know the wound was slight, but
+sharing in the skirmish, even in the humble capacity of a captive, had
+excited the boy immensely. Now that there was almost constant firing
+back and forth, when two or three wounded men were lying on the floor,
+and when his father and he and Colonel Washington were perforce risking
+their lives in the engine-house, with nothing to gain and everything to
+lose, and when scanty sleep and little food had tired out even his stout
+little body, Tom felt quite ready to go home and have his adored mother
+"mother" him. His father saw the homesickness in his eyes.
+
+"Steady, my son," said Mr. Strong. "This won't last long. No stray
+bullet is apt to reach this corner, where Captain Brown has put us. The
+only other danger is when the regulars rush in here, but unless they
+mistake us for the raiders, there'll be no harm done then. Steady." He
+looked through a bullet-hole in the boarded-up window and added: "Here
+comes a flag of truce. Listen."
+
+The scattering fire died away. The hush was broken by a commanding
+voice, demanding surrender.
+
+"There will be no surrender," quoth grim John Brown.
+
+At dawn of Tuesday, two files of United States Marines, using a long
+ladder as a battering ram, attacked the door. It broke at the second
+blow. The marines poured in, shooting and striking. The battle was over.
+John Brown, wounded and beaten to the floor, lay there among his men.
+The captives were free. Their captors had changed places with them.
+
+[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE]
+
+Colonel Washington took Mr. Strong and Tom home with him, for a rest
+after the strain of the captivity. He was much interested when he found
+out that Tom's great-grandfather had visited General Washington at Mount
+Vernon and Tom was intensely interested in seeing the home and home life
+of a rich Southern planter. The Colonel asked his guests to stay until
+after the trial of their recent jailer. They did so and Mr. Strong,
+after some hesitation, decided to take Tom to the trial and afterwards
+to the final scene of all. He wrote to his wife: "Life is rich, my dear,
+in proportion to the number of our experiences and their depth.
+Ordinarily, I would not dream of taking Tom to see a criminal hung. But
+John Brown is no ordinary criminal. He is wrong, but he is heroic. He
+faces his fate--for of course they will hang him--like a Roman. I think
+it will do Tom good to see a hero die."
+
+Whether or no his father was right, Tom was given these experiences. He
+sat beside his father and Colonel Washington at the trial. He heard them
+testify. He noted the angry stir of the mob in the court-room when Mr.
+Strong made no secret of his admiration for the great criminal.
+
+Robert E. Lee, who captured Brown, said: "I am glad we did not have to
+kill him, for I believe he is an honest, conscientious old man."
+Virginia, Lee's State, thought she did have to kill this invader of her
+soil and disturber of her slaves.
+
+November 2, John Brown was sentenced to be hung December 2. The next day
+he added this postscript to a letter he had already written to his wife
+and children:
+
+     "P.S. Yesterday Nov. 2d I was sentenced to be hanged on Decem 2d
+     next. Do not grieve on my account. I am still quite cheerful. God
+     bless you all."
+
+Northern friends offered to try to help him to break jail. He put aside
+the offer with the calm statement: "I am fully persuaded that I am worth
+inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."
+
+December 2, John Brown started on his last journey. He sat upon his
+coffin in a wagon and as the two horses paced slowly from jail to
+gallows, he looked far afield, over river and valley and hill, and said:
+"This _is_ a beautiful country." He was sure he was upon the threshold
+of a far more beautiful country. The gallows were guarded by a militia
+company from Richmond, Virginia. In its ranks, rifle on shoulder, stood
+Wilkes Booth, a dark and sinister figure, who was to win eternal infamy
+by assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Beside the militia was a trim lot of
+cadets, the fine boys of the Virginia Military Institute. With them was
+their professor, Thomas J. Jackson, "Stonewall" Jackson, one of the
+heroic figures upon the Southern side of our Civil War.
+
+When the end came, Stonewall Jackson's lips moved with a prayer for John
+Brown's soul; Colonel Washington's and Mr. Strong's eyes were wet; and
+Tom Strong sobbed aloud. Albany fired a hundred guns in John Brown's
+honor as he hung from the gallows. In 1859 United States troops captured
+him that he might die. In 1899 United States troops fired a volley of
+honor over his grave in North Elba that the memory of him might live.
+Victor Hugo called him "an apostle and a hero." Emerson dubbed him
+"saint." Oswald Garrison Villard closes his fine biography of John Brown
+with these words: "Wherever there is battling against injustice and
+oppression, the Charlestown gallows that became a cross will help men to
+live and die."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     OUR WAR WITH MEXICO--KIT CARSON AND HIS LAWYER, ABE LINCOLN--TOM
+     GOES TO LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION--S. F. B. MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE
+     TELEGRAPH--TOM BACK IN WASHINGTON.
+
+
+In 1846, Mr. Strong, long enough out of Yale to have begun business and
+to have married, had heard his country's call and had helped her fight
+her unjust war with Mexico. General Grant, who saw his first fighting in
+this war and who fought well, says of it in his Memoirs that it was "one
+of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
+
+Much more important things were happening here then than the Mexican
+War. In 1846 Elias Howe invented the sewing-machine. In 1847 Robert Hoe
+invented the rotary printing press. Great inventions like these are the
+real milestones of the path of progress.
+
+Mr. Strong served as a private in the ranks throughout the war. He
+refused a commission offered him for gallantry in action because he knew
+he did not know enough then to command men. It is a rare man who knows
+that he does not know. His regiment was mustered out of service at the
+end of the war in New Orleans. The young soldier decided to go home by
+way of St. Louis because of his memories of that old town in the days
+when he had followed Fremont. He went again to the Planters' Hotel and
+there by lucky accident he met again the famous frontiersman Kit Carson.
+Carson was away from the plains he loved because of a lawsuit. A sharp
+speculator was trying to take away from him some land he had bought
+years ago near the town, which the growth of the town had now made quite
+valuable. Carson was heartily glad to see his "Tom-boy" once more. He
+insisted upon his staying several days, took him to court to hear the
+trial, and introduced him to his lawyer, a tall, gaunt, slab-sided,
+slouching, plain person from the neighboring State of Illinois.
+Everybody who knew him called him "Abe." His last name was Lincoln.
+
+"I'd heard so much of Abe Lincoln," said Carson, "that when this
+speculator who's trying to do me hired all the big lawyers in St. Louis,
+I just went over to Springfield, Illinois, to get Abe. When I saw him I
+rather hesitated about hiring such a looking skeesicks, but when I came
+to talk with him, he did the hesitating. I asked him what he'd charge
+for defending a land-suit in St. Louis. He told me. I sez: 'All right.
+You're hired. You're my lawyer.'
+
+"'Wait a bit,' sez he.
+
+"'What for?' sez I. 'I'll pay what you said.'
+
+"'That ain't all,' sez he. 'Before I take your money, Kit, I've got to
+know your side of the case is the right side.'
+
+"'What difference does that make to a lawyer?' sez I.
+
+"'It makes a heap o' difference to this lawyer,' sez he. 'You've got to
+prove your case to me before I'll try to prove it to the court. If you
+ain't in the right, Abe Lincoln won't be your lawyer.'
+
+"Darned if he didn't make me prove I was in the right, too, before he'd
+touch my money. No wonder they call him 'Honest Abe.'"
+
+It took Lincoln a couple of days to win Kit Carson's suit. During those
+two days young Strong saw much of him and came to admire the sterling
+qualities of the man. Lincoln, too, liked this young college-bred fellow
+from the East, unaffected, well-mannered, friendly, and gay. There was
+the beginning of a friendship between the Westerner and the Easterner.
+Thereafter they wrote each other occasionally. When Lincoln served his
+one brief term in Congress, Mr. Strong spent a week with him in
+Washington and asked him (but in vain) to visit him in New York.
+
+So, when this new giant came out of the West and Illinois gave her
+greatest son to the country, as its President, Mr. Strong went to
+Washington to see him inaugurated and took with him his boy Tom, as his
+father had taken him in 1829 to Andrew Jackson's inauguration.
+
+Washington was still a great shabby village, not much more attractive
+March 4, 1861, than it was March 4, 1829. The crowds at the two
+inaugurations were much alike. In both cases the favorite son of the
+West had won at the polls. In both cases the West swamped Washington.
+But in 1829 there was jubilant victory in the air. In 1861 there was
+somber anxiety. Seven Southern States had "seceded" and had formed
+another government. Other States were upon the brink of secession. Was
+the great democratic experiment of the world about to end in failure?
+Would there be civil war? What was this unknown man out of the West
+going to do? Could he do anything?
+
+Mr. Strong and Tom, with a few thousand other people, went to the
+reception at the White House on the afternoon of March fourth. President
+Lincoln was laboriously shaking hands with everybody in the long line.
+Almost every one of them seemed to be asking him for something. He was
+weary long before Tom and his father reached him, but his face
+brightened as he saw them. A boy always meant a great deal to Abraham
+Lincoln. "There _may_ be so much in a boy," he used to say. He greeted
+the two warmly.
+
+"Howdy, Strong? Glad to see you. This your boy? Howdy, sonny?"
+
+Tom did not enjoy being called "sonny" much more than he had enjoyed
+being called "bub," but he was glad to have this big man with a woman's
+smile call him anything. He wrung the President's offered hand,
+stammered something shyly, and was passing on with his father, when
+Lincoln said:
+
+"Hold on a minute, Strong. You haven't asked me for anything."
+
+"I've nothing to ask for, Mr. President. I'm not here to beg for an
+office."
+
+"Good gracious! You're the only man in Washington of that kind, I
+believe. Come to see me tomorrow morning, will you?"
+
+"Most gladly, sir."
+
+The impatient man behind them pushed them on. They heard him begin to
+plead: "Say, Abe, you know I carried Mattoon for you; I'd like to be
+Minister to England."
+
+Boys and girls always appealed to the President's heart. When there were
+talks of vital import in his office, little Tad Lincoln often sat upon
+his father's knee. At a White House reception, Charles A. Dana once put
+his little girl in a corner, whence she saw the show. The father tells
+the story. When the reception was over, he said to Lincoln: "'I have a
+little girl here who wants to shake hands with you.' He went over to her
+and took her up and kissed her and talked to her. She will never forget
+it if she lives to be a thousand years old."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning Tom followed his father into a room on the second floor
+of the White House. Lincoln sat at a flat-topped desk, piled high with
+papers. He was in his shirt-sleeves, with shabby black trousers, coarse
+stockings, and worn slippers. He stretched out his long legs, swung his
+long arms behind his head, and came straight to the point.
+
+"Strong, I'm going to need you. Your country is going to need you. I
+want you to go straight home and fix up your business affairs so you can
+come whenever I call you. Will you do it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+President and citizen rose and shook hands upon it. The citizen was
+about to go when Tom, with his heart in his mouth, but with a fine
+resolve in his heart, suddenly said:
+
+"Oh, Father! Oh, Mr. President----"
+
+Then he stopped short, too shy to speak, but Lincoln stooped down to
+him, patted his young head and said with infinite kindness in his tone:
+
+"What is it, Tom? Tell me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. President, I'm only a boy, but can't I do something for my
+country, right now? Can't I stay here? Father will let me, won't you,
+Father?"
+
+Mr. Strong shook his head. The boy's face fell. It brightened again when
+Lincoln told him:
+
+"When I send for your father, I'll send for you, Tom."
+
+With that promise ringing in his ears, Tom went home to New York City.
+Home was a fine brick house at the northeast corner of Washington Place
+and Greene Street. The house was a twin brother of those that still
+stand on the north side of Washington Square. Tom had been born in it.
+Not long after his birth, his parents had given a notable dinner in it
+to a notable man. Tom had been present at the dinner, and he remembered
+nothing about it. As he was at the table but a few minutes, in the arms
+of his nurse, and less than a year old, it is not surprising that he did
+not remember it. His proud young mother had exhibited him to a group of
+money magnates, gathered at Mr. Strong's shining mahogany table for
+dinner, at the fashionable hour of three P.M., to see another young
+thing, almost as young as Tom. This other young thing was the
+telegraph, just invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, at the University of the
+City of New York, which then filled half of the eastern boundary of
+Washington Square.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Tom waited in the old brick house and played in Washington Square,
+history was making itself. Pope Walker, first Secretary of War of the
+Confederate States, sitting in his office at the Alabama Statehouse at
+Montgomery, the first Confederate capital, said: "It is time to sprinkle
+some blood in the face of the people." So he telegraphed the fateful
+order to fire on Fort Sumter, held by United States troops in Charleston
+harbor. Sumter fell. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Virginia, the
+famous Old Dominion, "the Mother of Presidents"--Washington, Jefferson,
+Madison, and Monroe were Virginians--seceded. The war between the States
+began.
+
+Mr. Strong found in his mail one day this letter:
+
+                                           "The Executive Mansion,
+                                           Washington, April 17, 1861.
+
+      Sir:
+
+      The President bids me say that he would like to have you come to
+      Washington at once and bring your son Tom with you.
+
+                                            Respectfully,
+
+                                                             JOHN HAY,
+                                         Assistant Private Secretary."
+
+Tom and his father started at once, as the President bade them. At
+Jersey City, they found the train they had expected to take had been
+pre-empted by the Sixth Massachusetts, a crack militia regiment of the
+Old Bay State, which was hurrying to Washington in the hope of getting
+there before the rebels did. The cars were crammed with soldiers. A
+sentry stood at every door. No civilian need apply for passage. However,
+a civilian with a letter from Lincoln's secretary bidding him also hurry
+to Washington was in a class by himself. With the help of an officer,
+the father and son ran the blockade of bayonets and started southward,
+the only civilians upon the train. It was packed to suffocation with
+soldiers. Mr. Strong sat with the regimental officers, but he let Tom
+roam at will from car to car. How the boy enjoyed it. The shining
+gun-barrels fascinated him. He joined a group of merry men, who hailed
+him with a shout:
+
+"Here's the youngest recruit of all."
+
+"Are you really going to shoot rebels?" asked Tom.
+
+"If we must," said Jack Saltonstall, breaking the silence the question
+brought, "but I hope it won't come to that."
+
+"The war will be over in three months," Gordon Abbott prophesied.
+
+"Pooh, it will never begin,--and I'm sorry for that," said Jim Casey,
+"I'd like to have some real fighting."
+
+Within about three hours, Jim Casey was to see fighting and was to die
+for his country. The beginning of bloodshed in our Civil War was in the
+streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, just eighty-six years to a day
+from the beginning of bloodshed in our Revolution on Lexington Common.
+Massachusetts and British blood in 1775; Massachusetts and Maryland
+blood in 1861.
+
+When the long train stopped at the wooden car-shed which was then the
+Baltimore station, the regiment left the cars, fell into line and
+started to march the mile or so of cobblestone streets to the other
+station where the train for Washington awaited it. The line of march was
+through as bad a slum as an American city could then show. Grog-shops
+swarmed in it and about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of Baltimore.
+They were known locally as "plug-uglies." Like the New York "Bowery
+boys" of that time, they affected a sort of uniform, black dress
+trousers thrust into boot-tops and red flannel shirts. Far too poor to
+own slaves themselves, they had gathered here to fight the slave-owners'
+battles, to keep the Massachusetts troops from "polluting the soil of
+Maryland," as their leaders put it, really to keep them from saving
+Washington.
+
+A roar of jeers and taunts and insults hailed the head of the marching
+column. Tom was startled by it. He turned to his father. The two were
+walking side by side, in the center of the column, between two companies
+of the militia. He found his father had already turned to him.
+
+"Keep close to me, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
+
+The storm of words that beat upon them increased. At the next corner,
+stones took the place of words. The mob surged alongside the soldiers,
+swearing, stoning, striking, finally stabbing and shooting. The Sixth
+Massachusetts showed admirable self-restraint, which the "plug-uglies"
+thought was cowardice. They pressed closer. With a mighty rush, five
+thousand rioters broke the line of the thousand troops. The latter were
+forced into small groups, many of them without an officer. Each group
+had to act for itself. Tom and his father found themselves part of a
+tiny force of about twenty men, beset upon every side by desperadoes now
+mad with liquor and with the lust of killing. Jack Saltonstall took
+command by common consent. Calmly he faced hundreds of rioters.
+
+"Forward, march!"
+
+As he uttered the words, he pitched forward, shot through the chest. A
+giant "plug-ugly" bellowed with triumph over his successful shot, yelled
+"kill 'em all!" and led the mob upon them. But Mr. Strong had snatched
+Saltonstall's gun as it fell from his nerveless hands, had leveled and
+aimed it, and had shouted "fire!" to willing ears. A score of guns rang
+out. The mob-leader whirled about and dropped. Half-a-dozen other
+"plug-uglies" lay about him. This section of the mob broke and ran. Some
+of them fired as they ran, and Jim Casey's life went out of him.
+
+"Take this gun, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
+
+The boy took it, reloading it as he marched, while his sturdy father
+lifted the wounded Saltonstall from the stony street and staggered
+forward with the body in his arms. Casey and two other men were dead.
+Their bodies had to be left to the fury of the mob. Saltonstall lived
+to fight to the end. As the survivors of the twenty pressed forward, the
+mob behind followed them up. Bullets whizzed unpleasantly near. Twice,
+at Mr. Strong's command, the men faced about and fired a volley. In both
+these volleys, Tom's gun played its part. He had hunted before, but
+never such big game as men. The joy of battle possessed him. Since it
+was apparently a case of "kill or be killed," he shot to kill. Whether
+he did kill, he never knew. The two volleys checked two threatening
+rushes of the rioters and enabled Mr. Strong to bring what was left of
+the gallant little band safely to the railroad station. An hour later
+the Sixth Massachusetts was in Washington. During that hour Tom had been
+violently sick upon the train. He was new to this trade of man-killing.
+
+At Washington, once vacant spaces were soon filled with camps. Soldiers
+poured in on every train. Orderlies were galloping about. Artillery
+surrounded the Capitol. And from its dome Tom saw a Confederate flag,
+the Stars-and-Bars, flying defiantly in nearby Alexandria.
+
+Those were dark days. There were Confederate forces within a few miles
+of the White House. Sumter surrendered April 15th. Virginia seceded on
+the 17th. Harper's Ferry fell into Southern hands on the 18th. The Sixth
+Massachusetts had fought its way through Baltimore on the 19th. Robert
+E. Lee resigned his commission in our army on the 20th and left
+Arlington for Richmond, taking with him a long train of army and navy
+officers whose loyal support, now lost forever, had seemed a national
+necessity. Lincoln spent many an hour in his private office, searching
+with a telescope the reaches of the Potomac, over which the troop-laden
+transports were expected. Once, when he thought he was alone, John Hay
+heard him call out "with irrepressible anguish": "Why don't they come?
+Why don't they come?" In public he gave no sign of the anxiety that was
+eating up his heart. He had the nerve to jest about it. The Sixth
+Massachusetts, the Seventh New York, and a Rhode Island detachment had
+all hurried to save Washington from the capture that threatened. When
+the Massachusetts men won the race and marched proudly by the White
+House, Lincoln said to some of their officers: "I begin to believe there
+is no North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is another.
+You are the only real thing." They were very real, those men of
+Massachusetts, and they were the vanguard of the real army that was to
+be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+     CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS--MR. STRONG GOES TO RUSSIA--TOM GOES TO LIVE
+     IN THE WHITE HOUSE--BULL RUN--"STONEWALL" JACKSON--GEO. B.
+     MCCLELLAN--TOM STRONG, SECOND LIEUTENANT, U. S. A.--THE BATTLE OF
+     THE "MERRIMAC" AND THE "MONITOR."
+
+
+A few days passed before the President had time to see Mr. Strong and
+Tom. When they were finally ushered into his working-room, they found
+there, already interviewing Lincoln, the hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed
+Secretary of State, William H. Seward of New York, scholar, statesman,
+and gentleman, and a short, grizzled man, the worthy inheritor of a
+great tradition. He was Charles Francis Adams of Boston, son and
+grandson of two Presidents of the United States. He had been appointed
+Minister to England, just then the most important foreign appointment
+in the world. What England was to do or not do might spell victory or
+defeat for the Union. Mr. Adams had come to receive his final
+instructions for his all-important work. And this is what happened.
+
+Shabby and uncouth, Lincoln faced his two well-dressed visitors, nodding
+casually to the two New Yorkers as they entered at what should have been
+a great moment.
+
+"I came to thank you for my appointment," said Adams, "and to ask
+you----"
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied Lincoln, "thank Seward. He's the man
+that put you in." He stretched out his legs and arms, and sighed a deep
+sigh of relief. "By the way, Governor," he added, turning to Seward,
+"I've this morning decided that Chicago post-office appointment. Well,
+good-by."
+
+And that was all the instruction the Minister to Great Britain had from
+the President of the United States. Even in those supreme days, the rush
+of office-seekers, the struggle for the spoils, the mad looting of the
+public offices for partisan purposes, was monopolizing the time and
+absorbing the mind of our greatest President. There is a story that one
+man who asked him to appoint him Minister to England, after taking an
+hour of his time, ended the interview by asking him for a pair of old
+boots. Civil Service Reform has since gone far to stop this scandal and
+sin, but much of it still remains. Today you can fight for the best
+interests of our beloved country by fighting the spoils system in city,
+state, and nation.
+
+Adams, amazed, followed Secretary Seward out of the little room. Then
+Lincoln turned to the father and son.
+
+Tom had more time to look at him now. He saw a tall man with a thin,
+muscular, big nose, with heavy eyebrows above deep-set eyes and below a
+square, bulging forehead, and with a mass of black hair. The face was
+dark and sallow. The firm lips relaxed as he looked down upon the boy. A
+beautiful smile overflowed them. A beautiful friendliness shone from the
+deep-set eyes.
+
+"So this is another Tom Strong," he said. "Howdy, Tommy?"
+
+The boy smiled back, for the welcoming smile was irresistible. He put
+his little hand into Lincoln's great paw, hardened and roughened by a
+youth of strenuous toil. The President squeezed his hand. Tom was happy.
+
+"You're to go to Russia, Strong," Mr. Lincoln said to the father.
+"England and France threaten to combine against us. You must get Russia
+to hold them back. We'll have a regular Minister there, but I'm going to
+depend upon you. See Governor Seward. He'll tell you all about it. Will
+you take Mrs. Strong with you?"
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"Well, I s'posed you would. And how about Tom here?"
+
+Tom's heart beat quick. What was coming now?
+
+"Mrs. Strong must decide that. I suppose he had better keep on with his
+school in New York."
+
+"Why not let him come to school in Washington?" asked Lincoln. "In the
+school of the world? You see," he added, while that irresistible smile
+again softened the firm outlines of his big man's mouth, "you see I've
+taken a sort of fancy to your boy Tom. S'pose you give him to me while
+you're away. There are things he can do for his country."
+
+It was perhaps only a whim, but the whims of a President count. A month
+later, Mr. and Mrs. Strong started for St. Petersburg and Tom reported
+at the White House. He was welcomed by John Hay, a delightful young man
+of twenty-three, one of the President's two private secretaries. The
+welcome lacked warmth.
+
+"You're to sleep in a room in the attic," said Hay, "and I believe
+you're to eat with Mr. Nicolay and me. I haven't an idea what you're to
+do and between you and me and the bedpost I don't believe the Ancient
+has an idea either. Perhaps there won't be anything. Wait a while and
+see."
+
+The Ancient--this was a nickname his secretaries had given him--had a
+very distinct idea, which he had not seen fit to tell his zealous young
+secretary. Tom found the waiting not unpleasant. He had a good many
+unimportant things to do. "Tad" Lincoln, though younger, was a good
+playmate. The White House staff was kind to him. Even Hay found it
+difficult not to like him. Then there was the sensation of being at the
+center of things, big things. He saw men whose names were household
+words. Half a dozen times he lunched with the President's family, a
+plain meal with plain folks. Even the dinners at the White House, except
+the state dinners, were frugal and plain. Lincoln drank little or no
+wine. He never used tobacco. This was something of a miracle in the case
+of a man from the West, for in those days, particularly in the
+unconventional West, practically every man both smoked and chewed
+tobacco. The filthy spittoon was everywhere conspicuous. We fiercely
+resented the tales told our English cousins, first by Mrs. Trollope and
+then by Charles Dickens, about our tobacco-chewing, but the resentment
+was so fierce because the tales were so true. Those were dirty days. In
+1860 there were few bathrooms except in our largest cities. Those that
+existed were mostly new. In 1789, when the present Government of the
+United States came into being, in New York City, there was not one
+bathroom in the whole town.
+
+At these family luncheons, Tom was apt to become conscious that
+Lincoln's eyes were bent beneath their shaggy eyebrows full upon him.
+There was nothing unkind in the glance, but the boy felt it go straight
+through him. He wondered what it all meant. Why was he not given more
+work to do? Had he been weighed and found wanting? He waited in suspense
+a good many months.
+
+The early months of waiting were not merry months. In July, 1861, the
+first battle of Bull Run had been fought and had been lost. Our troops
+ran nearly thirty miles. Telegram after telegram brought news of
+disgrace and defeat to the White House. In the afternoon Lincoln went
+to see Gen. Winfield S. Scott, then commander-in-chief of our armies.
+The fat old general was taking his afternoon nap. Awakened with
+difficulty, he gurgled that everything would come out well. Then he fell
+asleep again. Before six o'clock it was known that everything had turned
+out most badly. Washington itself was threatened by the Confederate
+pursuit. Lincoln had no sleep that night. The gray dawn found him at his
+desk, still receiving dispatches, still giving orders. When he left the
+desk, Washington was safe.
+
+It was at the beginning of the battle of Bull Run, when the Confederates
+came near running away but did not do so because the Union troops ran
+first, that "Stonewall" Jackson got his famous nickname. The brigade of
+another Southern soldier, Gen. Bernard Bee, was wavering and falling
+back. Its commander, trying to hearten his men, called out to them:
+"Look! there's Jackson standing like a stone wall!" The men looked,
+rallied, and went on fighting. It may have been that one thing of
+Jackson's example that turned the tide at Bull Run, gave the battle to
+the South, and prolonged the war by at least two years. Stonewall
+Jackson's soldiers were called foot-cavalry, because under his inspiring
+leadership they made marches which would have been a credit to mounted
+men. It was his specialty to be where it was impossible for him to be,
+by all the ordinary rules of war. He was a thunderbolt in attack, a
+stone wall in defense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In November of that sad year of 1861, the President made another
+noteworthy call upon the then commander-in-chief, Gen. George B.
+McClellan. President and Secretary of State, escorted by young Hay and
+younger Tom, called upon the General at the latter's house, in the
+evening. They were told he was out, but would return soon, so they
+waited. McClellan did return and was told of his patient visitors. He
+walked by the open door of the room where they were seated and went
+upstairs. Half an hour later Lincoln sent a servant to tell him again
+that they were there. Word came back that General McClellan had gone to
+bed. John Hay's diary justly speaks of "this unparalleled insolence of
+epaulettes." As the three men and the boy walked back to the White
+House, Hay said:
+
+"It was an insolent rebuff. Something should be done about it."
+
+Lincoln's almost godlike patience, however, had not been worn out.
+
+"It is better," the great man answered, "at this time not to be making a
+point of etiquette and personal dignity."
+
+The President, however, stopped calling upon the pompous General. After
+that experience, he always sent word to McClellan to call upon him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, at the close of a family luncheon, the President said to Tom:
+"Come upstairs with me."
+
+In the little private office, Lincoln took off his coat and waistcoat
+with a sigh of relief and lounged into his chair. He bade Tom take a
+chair nearby. Then he looked at the boy for a moment, while his
+wonderful smile overflowed his strong lips.
+
+"I've been studying you a bit, Tom. I think you'll do. Now I'll tell you
+what I want you to do."
+
+The smile died quite away.
+
+"Are you sure you can keep still when you ought to keep still? Balaam's
+ass isn't the only ass that ever talked. Most asses talk--and always at
+the wrong time."
+
+"The last thing Father told me," Tom answered, "was never to say
+anything to anybody 'less I was sure you'd want me to say it."
+
+"Your father is a wise man, my boy. Pray God he does what I hope he will
+in Russia."
+
+The serious face grew still more serious. The long figure slouching in
+the chair straightened and stiffened. The sloping shoulders seemed to
+broaden, as if to bear steadfastly a weight that would have crushed
+most men. The dark eyes gleamed with a solemn hope. Tom longed to ask
+what his father was to try to do, but he was not silly enough to put his
+thought into words. Another good-by counsel his father had given him was
+never to ask the President a question, unless he had to do so. There was
+silence for a moment. Then Lincoln spoke again:
+
+"You're to carry dispatches for me, Tom. This may take you into the
+enemy's country sometimes. If you were captured and were a civilian, it
+might go hard with you. So I've had you commissioned as a second
+lieutenant. If you should slip into a fight occasionally I wouldn't
+blame you much. Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, kicked about it. He
+said he didn't believe in giving commissions to babies. I told him you
+could almost speak plain and could go 'round without a nurse. Finally he
+gave in. I haven't much influence with this Administration"--here Tom
+looked puzzled until the President smiled over his own jest--"but I did
+get you the commission. Here it is."
+
+He laid the precious parchment on the desk, put on his spectacles, took
+up his quill pen, and wrote at the foot of it
+
+[Illustration: Autograph, A. Lincoln]
+
+The boy's heart thrilled and throbbed. He had never dreamed of such an
+opportunity and such an honor. He was an officer of the Union. He was to
+carry dispatches for the President of the United States. His hand shook
+a little as he took the commission, reverently.
+
+"You've been detailed for special service, Tom. Stanton wanted to know
+whether your special service was to be to play with my boy, Tad. Stanton
+was pretty mad; that's a fact. Well, well, you must do your work so well
+that he'll get over the blow. You would have thought I was asking him
+for a brigadier's commission for a girl. Well, well. Being a war
+messenger is only one of your duties, son. You're to be my scout. Keep
+your ears and eyes both open, Tom, and your mouth shut. Ever hear the
+story of what Jonah said to the whale when he got out of him? The whale
+said to Jonah: 'You've given me a terrible stomach-ache.' And Jonah
+said: 'That's what you got because you didn't have sense enough to keep
+your mouth shut.' But remember, Tom, to go scouting in the right way.
+What I want is the truth. It's a hard thing for a President to get. I
+don't want tittle-tattle, evil gossip, idle talk. When I was in
+Congress, there was a fine old fellow in the House from Florida. I
+remember he said once that the Florida wolf was 'a mean critter that'd
+go snoopin' 'round twenty miles a night ruther than not do a mischief.'
+Don't be a wolf, Tom,--but don't be a lamb either, with the wool pulled
+over your eyes and ears. Here's your first job. This envelope"--Lincoln
+took from the desk a sealed envelope, not addressed, and handed it to
+the boy--"this envelope is for the commander of the 'Cumberland,' in
+Hampton Roads. This War Department pass will carry you anywhere. When
+Stanton signed it, he asked me whether he was to spend a whole day
+signing things for you to play with. Mrs. Lincoln has had a uniform made
+for you, on the sly. I rather think you'll find it in your room, Tom.
+You'd better start tomorrow."
+
+"Mayn't I start this afternoon, Mr. President?"
+
+"Good for you. Of course you may. I'll say good-by to the folks for you.
+God bless you, son."
+
+Lincoln waved a kindly farewell as Tom, with drumbeats in his young
+heart, gave a fair imitation of an officer's salute--and strode out of
+the room with what he meant to be a manly step. Once outside, the step
+changed to a run. He flew along the halls and up the stairs to the
+attic. He burst into his room. On his narrow bed lay his new uniform.
+Mrs. Lincoln, kindly housewife that she was, had done her part in the
+little conspiracy for the benefit of the boy who was Tad Lincoln's
+beloved playmate. She had herself smuggled an old suit of Tom's to a
+tailor, who had made from its measure the resplendent new blue uniform
+that now greeted Tom's enraptured eyes.
+
+That afternoon, Lieutenant Tom Strong left the White House for Hampton
+Roads. A swift dispatch boat carried him there. He reached the flagship
+on a lovely, peaceful, spring day, and delivered his dispatches. The
+boat that had taken him there was to take him back the next morning. He
+was glad to have a night on a warship. It was a new experience. And his
+father had told him that experience was the best teacher in the world.
+The beautiful lines of the frigate were a joy to see. Her spick and span
+cleanliness, the trim and trig sailors and marines, the rows of polished
+cannon that thrust their grim mouths out of the portholes, these things
+delighted him. He was standing on the quarter-deck with Lieutenant
+Morris, almost wishing he could exchange his brand-new lieutenancy in
+the army for one in the navy, when from the Norfolk navy yard a rocket
+flared up into the air.
+
+"What is that, sir?" asked Tom. "Is it a signal to you?"
+
+"I fancy it is," Morris answered, "but it isn't meant to be. That's a
+rebel rocket. You know we lost the navy-yard early in the war and we
+haven't got it back--yet. That rocket went up from there. The Secesh are
+up to some deviltry. They've been signaling a good bit of late. I wish
+they'd come out and give us a chance at them. Hampton Roads is dull as
+ditchwater, with not a thing happening."
+
+The gallant lieutenant yawned prodigiously. He little knew what terrible
+things were to happen on the morrow. That rocket meant that the rebel
+ram, the "Merrimac," the first iron-clad vessel that ever went into
+action, was to sail down Hampton Roads, where nothing ever happened, the
+next morning and was to make many things happen. The Confederates had
+converted the old Union frigate, the "Merrimac," into a new, strange,
+and monstrous thing. They had placed a battery of cannon of a size never
+before mounted on shipboard upon her deck, close to the water-line;
+they had built over the battery a framework of stout timbers, covered
+with armor rolled from rails, and they had put a cast-iron bow upon this
+marine marvel. A wooden ship was a mere toy to her.
+
+The next morning came--it was March 8, 1862--and the "Merrimac" came. As
+she emerged from distance and mist, our scout-boats came racing to the
+"Cumberland" with news of the danger that was fast nearing her. The news
+was a tonic to officers and to men. Here at last was something to fight.
+Here at last was something to do. They were all weary of having the
+flagship lie, week after week,
+
+    "As idle as a painted ship
+    Upon a painted ocean."
+
+The men sprang to quarters with a joyful cheer. The officers were at
+their posts. The gun-crews waited impatiently for the order to fire. And
+Tom, again upon the quarter-deck, thrilled with the thrill of all about
+him, was glad to know that the dispatch boat would not sail until that
+afternoon and that he could see the fight. Everyone around him was sure
+of victory. The foe was soon to be sunk. The Stars-and-Bars, now flying
+so impudently at her stern, was to be hung up as a trophy in the
+ward-room of the "Cumberland." It never was.
+
+The ram steered straight for the flagship. She did not fire a shot,
+though the flagship's cannon roared. A tongue of fire blazed from every
+porthole of the starboard side, towards which she came, silently and
+swiftly. Behind every tongue of fire there rushed a cannon-ball. Many a
+ball hit the "Merrimac." A wooden ship would have been blown to bits by
+the concentrated fury of the cannonade. Alas! the cannon-balls glanced
+from her armored sides "like peas from a pop-gun." They rattled like
+hail upon her and did her no more hurt than hail-stones would have done.
+She came on like an irresistible Fate. There had been shouts of savage
+joy below decks when the first order to fire had echoed through them. A
+burst of wild cheering from the gun-crews had almost drowned the first
+thunder of the guns. There were no shouts or cheers now. Sharp orders
+pierced the clangor of artillery.
+
+"Stand by to board!"
+
+The marines formed quickly at the starboard bow of the "Cumberland."
+Then at last the guns of the "Merrimac" spoke. She was close upon her
+prey now. The sound of her first volley was the voice of doom. Her great
+cannon sent masses of iron through and through the pitiful wooden walls
+that had dared to stand up against walls of iron. The shrieks of wounded
+men, of men screaming their mangled lives away, rolled up to the
+quarter-deck. A messenger dashed up there.
+
+"Half the gun-crew officers are dead. Send us others!"
+
+"Go below," said Lieutenant Morris, turning to two young midshipmen who
+stood near Tom, "keep the guns manned."
+
+The two middies bounded below and Tom bounded down with them. There was
+no hope of victory now, but the fight must be fought to a finish. If
+the cannon could still be served, a lucky shot might strike the foe in a
+vital part, might disable her engines, might carry away her
+steering-gear, might--there was a long chapter of possible accidents to
+the "Merrimac" that might still save the "Cumberland" from what seemed
+to be her sure destruction. As the three boys raced down to the
+gun-deck, they saw a fearful scene. Dead and wounded men lay everywhere.
+The sawdust that in those days used to be strewn about, before entering
+action, in order to soak up the blood of the men who fell and keep the
+decks from growing slippery with it, had soaked up all it could, but
+there were thin red trickles flowing along the deck. Two or three of the
+cannon had been dismounted. Crushed masses that had been human flesh lay
+beneath them. A dying officer half raised himself to give one last
+command and fell back dead before he could speak. The men were standing
+to their task as American sailors are wont to do, but like all men they
+needed leaders. Three leaders came. The two middies and Tom took
+command of these officerless cannon. The other two boys knew their work
+and did it. Tom knew that it was his business to keep his cannon at work
+and he did it. He repeated, mechanically:
+
+"Load! Fire! Load! Fire!"
+
+His men responded to the command. The cannon roared once, twice. Then
+there came a sickening shock. The rebel ram drove its iron prow home
+through the side of the "Cumberland." The good ship reeled far over
+under the deadly blow, righted herself, but began to sink. Her race was
+run. The black bulk of the "Merrimac" was just opposite the porthole of
+the gun Tom was handling. There was a last order. With the lips of their
+muzzles wet with the engulfing sea, the cannon of the "Cumberland"
+roared their last defiance of death. Down went the ship. The sea about
+her was black with wreckage and with struggling men. Boats from other
+ships and from the shore darted among them, picking them up. The
+dispatch boat that had brought Tom down was busy with that good work.
+The "Merrimac" could have sunk her without effort, but of course the
+Confederates never dreamed of making the effort. Americans do not fire
+at drowning men. When Tom jumped into the water, as the ship sank
+beneath him, he swam to a shattered spar and clutched it. But other men
+who could not swim clutched at it too. It threatened to sink with their
+added weight and carry them down with it. So the boy, thoroughly at home
+in the water, let go, turned upon his back, floated with his nose just
+above the surface, and waited for the help that was at hand. A boat-hook
+caught his trousers at the waist-band. He was pulled up to the deck of
+the dispatch boat. It was not quite the way in which he had expected to
+board her. From her bridge, with the deck below him crowded with the
+rescued sailors of the "Cumberland," he saw the second sad act of that
+day's tragedy.
+
+The "Merrimac" had backed away, after that terrible thrust of her iron
+ram, until she was free from the ship she had destroyed. Then she laid
+her course for the "Congress," invincible yesterday, today helplessly
+weak in the face of this new terror of the seas. The "Congress" fought
+to the last gasp, but that last gasp came all too soon. Raked fore and
+aft by her adversary's guns, unable to fire a single effective shot in
+reply, she ran upon a shoal while trying to escape from being rammed and
+lay there, no longer a fighting machine, but a mere target for her foe.
+Her captain could not hope to save his ship. The only thing he could do
+was to save the lives of such of his crew as were still alive. And there
+was but one way to do that. The "Congress" surrendered. The
+Stars-and-Stripes fluttered down from her masthead. In place of the flag
+of the free, the Stars-and-Bars, symbol of slavery, flew above the
+surrendered ship. The "Cumberland," going down with her flag, had had
+the better fate of the two.
+
+The "Merrimac," justly satisfied with her day's work and with the toll
+she had taken of the Union squadron, steamed proudly back to Norfolk, to
+repair the slight damages she had suffered and to make ready to
+complete her conquest on the morrow. Three Union ships still lay in
+Hampton Roads, great frigates, the finest of their kind then afloat,
+perfectly appointed, fully manned,--and as useless as though they had
+been the toy-boats of a child. The "Minnesota," now the flagship,
+signaled Captain Lawrence's stirring slogan: "Don't give up the ship!"
+It might have been called a bit of useless bravery, but no bravery is
+useless. At least the officers and men of the three doomed ships would
+fight for the flag until they died. It was just possible that one of the
+three might so maneuver that she would strike the foe amidships and sink
+with her to a glorious death.
+
+That night the wild anxiety at Hampton Roads was more than echoed at New
+York and Washington. The wires had told the terrible tale of the
+"Merrimac." It was thought she could go straight to New York, sink all
+the shipping there, command the city and levy tribute upon it. Lincoln's
+Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles of Connecticut, wrote in his diary
+that night: "The most frightened man on that gloomy day was the
+Secretary of War. He was at times almost frantic.... He ran from room to
+room, sat down and jumped up after writing a few words, swung his arms,
+and scolded and raved." Hay records that "Stanton was fearfully
+stampeded. He said they would capture our fleet, take Fort Monroe, be in
+Washington before night."
+
+Without consulting the Secretary of the Navy, Stanton had some fifty
+canal-boats loaded with stone and sent them to be sunk on Kettle Bottom
+Shoals, in the Potomac, to keep the "Merrimac" from reaching Washington.
+The canal-boats reached the Shoals, but the order to sink them was
+countermanded by cooler heads. They were left in a long row, tied up to
+the river bank.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three doomed ships at Hampton Roads soon knew that at nine o'clock
+of that fateful night there had steamed in from the ocean a Union
+iron-clad. Her coming, however, brought scant comfort.
+
+"What is she like?" asked the first captain to hear the news.
+
+"Like? She's like a cheese-box on a raft."
+
+[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC"]
+
+It was not a bad description. She was the "Monitor," an unknown boat of
+an unknown type that day, and on the morrow the most famous fighting
+craft that ever sailed the seas. She was born of the brain of a
+Swedish-American, Capt. John Ericsson, whose statue stands in Battery
+Park, the southern tip of the metropolis, looking down to the ocean he
+saved for freedom's cause.
+
+Lieut. A. L. Worden, commanding the "Monitor," was soon in consultation
+with the other commanders. They scarcely tried to disguise their belief
+that he had merely brought another predestined victim. His ship was
+tiny, compared with the "Merrimac." She was not built to ram, as was her
+terrible antagonist. Her guns were of a greater caliber, to be sure,
+than any wooden ship mounted, but there were but two of them and they
+could be brought to bear only by revolving the "Monitor's" turret,--a
+newfangled device in everyday use now, but then unknown and consequently
+despised. Men either fear or despise the unknown. They are usually wrong
+in doing either. The council of captains agreed upon a plan for the next
+day's fight. The plan was based upon the theory that the "Monitor" would
+be speedily sunk. Nevertheless, she was to face the foe first of all.
+
+Again the next morning came and again there came the rebel ram. Decked
+out in flags as if for a festival, proudly certain of victory, the
+"Merrimac" steamed down Hampton Roads. The cheese-box on a raft steamed
+out to meet her. It was David confronting Goliath. Goliath had fourteen
+guns and David had two. The iron-clads came nearer and the most famous
+sea-duel ever fought began. Tom saw it all from the bridge of the
+"Minnesota." Both vessels fired and fired again, without result. Their
+armor defied even the big guns they carried. Then the "Merrimac" tried
+to bring her deadly ram into play. The "Monitor" dodged into shoal
+water, hoping her foe would follow her and run aground. The "Merrimac"
+did not fall into the trap. On the contrary, she left her adversary and
+made a headlong course for the helpless "Minnesota." On board the
+latter, drums beat to quarters, shrill whistles gave orders, and the
+great ship moved forward to what seemed certain destruction. But the
+"Monitor" slipped away from the shoals and made after the "Merrimac,"
+firing her guns as rapidly as her creaking turret could turn. The
+"Merrimac" faced about, bound this time to make short work of this
+wretched little gnat that was seeking to sting her. This time the two
+came to close grips. Each tried to ram the other down. Each struck the
+other, but struck a glancing blow. They lay almost alongside and pounded
+each other with their giant guns. A missile from the "Monitor" came
+through a porthole of the "Merrimac," breaking a cannon and dealing
+death and destruction within her iron sides. She turned and ran for
+safety to the shelter of the Confederate batteries at Norfolk. The
+"Monitor" lay almost unharmed upon the gentle waves of Hampton Roads,
+the ungainly master of the seas. The "Merrimac" never dared again to try
+conclusions with her stout little rival. She stayed at her moorings
+until she was blown up there just before the Union forces captured
+Norfolk. The Union blockade was never broken. The "Monitor" survived the
+fight only to founder later in "the graveyard of ships," off Cape
+Hatteras.
+
+The wires had told the story of the famous fight before Tom reached
+Washington, but he was the first eye-witness of it to reach there and he
+had to tell the tale many and many a time. His first auditors were
+Lincoln and Secretary Welles. The dispatch boat that carried him back
+put him on board the President's boat, south of Kettle Bottom Shoals, on
+the Potomac, in obedience to orders signaled to it. When he had finished
+his story, there was silence for a moment. The boy saw Lincoln's lips
+move, perhaps in prayer, perhaps in thanksgiving. Then the grave face
+relaxed and the pathetic eyes twinkled with humor. The President laid
+his hand upon the Secretary's arm and pointed to a long line of
+stone-laden canal-boats that bordered the bank.
+
+"There's Stanton's navy," said Lincoln.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+     TOM GOES WEST--WILKES BOOTH HUNTS HIM--DR. HANS ROLF SAVES HIM--HE
+     DELIVERS DISPATCHES TO GENERAL GRANT.
+
+
+At the end of the next month, April, 1862, Admiral Farragut gallantly
+forced open the closed mouth of the Mississippi. He took his wooden
+ships into action against forts and iron-clad gunboats and captured New
+Orleans. Within fifteen months thereafter, the North was in practical
+control of the whole Mississippi. By July, 1863, the Confederacy had
+been split into two parts, east and west of the "Father of Waters." That
+was the poetic Indian name of the Mississippi. Farragut's fleet began
+the driving of the wedge. Grant's army drove it home. When the driving
+home had just begun, Tom, to his intense delight, was sent West with
+dispatches for Grant. He left on an hour's notice.
+
+[Illustration: ADMIRAL FARRAGUT]
+
+During that hour, a colored servant employed in the White House, whose
+heart was blacker than his sooty skin, had left the mansion, had sought
+a tumble-down tenement in the slums, and had found there a vulture of a
+man, very white as to face, very black as to the masses of hair that
+fell to his shoulders.
+
+"Dat dar boy Strong, he's dun sure goin'," said the darkey, "wid papers
+fur dat General Grant out West."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Coz I listened to de door, when dey-uns wuz a-talkin'."
+
+"He'll have to go West by Baltimore," mused the white man. "The next
+train leaves in half an hour. I can make it. Here, Reub, here's your
+pay."
+
+He took a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket. The negro clutched at
+it. Then what was left of his conscience stirred within him. He said,
+pleadingly, hesitatingly:
+
+"Massa, you knows I'se doin' dis coz old Massa told me to. You ain't
+a-goin' to hurt dat boy Strong, is you? He's a nice boy. Eberybody lubs
+him up dar."
+
+"What is it to you, confound you!" snarled the man, "whether I hurt him
+or not? What's a boy's life to winning the war? You keep on doing what
+old Massa told you to do, or I'll cut your black heart out."
+
+With a savage gesture, he thrust the trembling negro out of the dingy
+room. With savage haste, he packed his scanty belongings. With a pistol
+in his hip pocket, with a bowie-knife slung over his left breast beneath
+his waistcoat, with a vial of chloroform in his valise, Wilkes Booth
+left Washington on the trail of Tom Strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hunter and hunted were in the same car. Tom little dreamed that a few
+seats behind him sat a deadly foe, who would stick at nothing to get the
+precious papers he carried. Washington swarmed with Confederate spies.
+The face of everybody at the White House was well known to every spy.
+The hunter did not have to guess where the hunted sat.
+
+General Grant had begun his career of victory in the West. It was
+all-important to the Confederacy to know where his next blow was to be
+aimed. The papers in the scout's possession would tell that great
+secret. Wilkes Booth meant to have those papers soon. As the train
+bumped over the rough iron rails, towards Baltimore, Booth went to the
+forward end of the car for a glass of water and as he walked back along
+the aisle with a slow, lounging step, he stopped where Tom sat and held
+out his hand, saying:
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Strong? I'm Mr. Barnard. I have had the pleasure of
+seeing you about the White House sometimes, when I have been calling on
+our great President. Lincoln will crush these accursed rebels soon!"
+
+It was a trifle overdone, a trifle theatrical. Wilkes Booth could never
+help being theatrical. His greeting was one of the few times Tom had
+ever been called "Mister." He felt flattered and took the proffered hand
+willingly, but he searched his memory in vain for any real recollection
+of the striking face of the man who spoke to him. There was some vague
+stirring of memory about it, but certainly this had no relation to that
+happy life at the White House. Something evil was connected with it.
+Puzzled, he wondered. He had seen Booth under arms at John Brown's
+scaffold, but he did not remember that.
+
+The alleged Mr. Barnard slipped into the seat beside him and began to
+talk. He talked well. Little by little, suspicion fell asleep in Tom's
+mind as his companion told of adventures on sea and land. Booth was
+trying to seem to talk with very great frankness, in order to lure Tom
+into a similar frankness about himself. He larded all his talk with
+protestations of fervent loyalty to the Union. Tom bethought himself of
+a favorite quotation his father often used from Shakespeare's great play
+of "Hamlet." The conscience-stricken queen says to Hamlet, her son:
+
+"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
+
+Wilkes Booth was protesting too much. The drowsy suspicion in Tom's mind
+stirred again. But he was but a boy and Booth was a man, skilled in all
+the craft of the stage. Once more his easy, brilliant talk lulled
+caution to sleep. Tom, questioned so skillfully that he did not know he
+was being drawn out, little by little told the story of his short life.
+But the story ended with his saying he was going to Harrisburg "on
+business." He was still enough on his guard not to admit he was going
+further than Harrisburg.
+
+"You're pretty young to be on the way to the State Capitol on business,"
+said the skillful actor, hoping to hear more details in answer to the
+half-implied sneer. But just then Tom remembered what his father had
+advised: "Never say anything to anybody, unless you are sure the
+President would wish you to say it." He shut up like a clam. Booth could
+get nothing more out of him. But he meant to get those dispatches out of
+him. They were either in the boy's pocket or his valise, probably in his
+pocket. When he fell asleep, the spy's time would come. So the spy
+waited.
+
+Darkness came. Two smoky oil-lamps gave such light as they could. The
+train rumbled on in the night. There were no sleeping cars then. People
+slept in their seats, if they slept at all. Booth's tones grew soothing,
+almost tender. They served as a lullaby. Tom slept. The spy beside him
+drew a long, triumphant breath. His time had come.
+
+Some time before, he had shifted his traveling-bag to this seat. Now he
+drew from it, gently, quietly, the little bottle of chloroform and a
+small sponge, which he saturated with the stupefying drug. Then he
+slipped his arm under the sleeping boy's head, drew him a little closer
+to himself, and glanced through the dusky car. Nearly everybody was
+asleep. Those who were not were trying to go to sleep. No one was
+watching. Booth pressed the sponge to Tom's nostrils. Tom stirred
+uneasily. "Sh-sh, Tom," purred the actor, "go to sleep; all's well." The
+drug soon did its work. The boy was dead to the world for awhile. Only a
+shock could rouse him.
+
+The shock came. Booth's long, sensitive, skilled fingers--the fingers of
+a musician--ransacked his coat and waistcoat pockets swiftly, finding
+nothing. But beneath the waistcoat their tell-tale touches had detected
+the longed-for papers. The waistcoat was deftly unbuttoned--it could
+have been stripped off without arousing the unconscious boy--and a
+triumphant thrill shot through Booth's black heart as he drew from an
+inner pocket the long, official envelope that he knew must hold what he
+had stealthily sought. He was just about to slip it into his own pocket
+and then to leave his stupefied victim to sleep off the drug while he
+himself sought safety at the next station, when one of those little
+things which have big results occurred. The sturdy man who was snoring
+in the seat behind this one happened to be a surgeon. He was returning
+from Washington, whither he had gone to operate on a dear friend, a
+wounded officer. Chloroform had of course been used, but the patient had
+died under the knife. It had been a terrible experience for the
+operator. It had made his sleep uneasy. A mere whiff from the sponge
+Booth had used reached the surgeon's sensitive nostril. It revived the
+poignant memories of the last few hours. He awoke with a start that
+brought him to his feet. And there, just in front of him, he saw by the
+dim light a boy sunk in stupefied slumber and a man glancing guiltily
+back as he tried to thrust a stiff and crackling paper into his pocket.
+The sponge had fallen to the floor, but its fumes, far-spreading now,
+told to the practiced surgeon a story of foul play. He grabbed the man
+by the shoulder and awoke most of the travelers, but not Tom, with a
+stentorian shout: "What are you doing, you scoundrel?"
+
+The scoundrel leaped to his feet, throwing off the doctor's hand, and
+sprang into the aisle, clutching the long envelope in his left hand,
+while his right held a revolver. He rushed for the door, pursued by half
+a dozen men, headed by the doctor. Close pressed, he whirled about and
+leveled his pistol at his unarmed pursuers. They fell back a pace. He
+whirled again, stumbled over a bag in the aisle, fell, sprang to his
+feet once more. A brakeman opened the door. He was hurrying to see what
+this clamor meant. Wilkes Booth fired at him pointblank. The bullet
+missed, but it made the brakeman give way. Booth rushed by him, gained
+the platform and leaped from the slow train into the sheltering night.
+
+The shock that waked Tom was the sound of the shot. Weak, dizzy, and
+sick, he knew only that some terrible thing was happening.
+Instinctively, his hand sought that inner pocket, only to find it empty.
+Then, indeed, he was wide awake. The horror of his loss burned through
+his brain. He shouted: "Stop him! Stop thief!" and collapsed again into
+his seat.
+
+He was in fact a very sick boy. The dose of chloroform that had been
+given him would have been an overdose for a man. Notwithstanding his
+awakening, he might have relapsed into sleep and death, had not the
+skillful surgeon been there to devote himself to him. An antidote was
+forced down his throat. Willing volunteers, for of course the whole car
+was now awake in a hurly-burly of question and answer, rubbed life back
+into him. When he was a bit better, he was kept walking up and down the
+aisle, while two strong men held him up and his head swayed helplessly
+from side to side. But the final cure came when the surgeon who had kept
+catlike watch upon him saw that he could now begin to understand things.
+
+"Here is something of yours," he whispered into the lad's
+half-unconscious ear. "That scoundrel stole it from you. When he fell,
+he must have dropped it on the floor. I found it there after he had
+jumped off the platform."
+
+Tom's hand closed over the fateful envelope. His trembling fingers ran
+along its edges. It had not been opened. He had not betrayed his trust.
+A profound thankfulness and joy stirred within him. Within an hour he
+was practically himself again. Then he poured out his heart in thanks to
+the sturdy surgeon who had saved not only his life, but his honor. He
+asked his name and started at his reply:
+
+"Dr. Hans Rolf, of York, Pennsylvania."
+
+"Dr. Hans Rolf," repeated Tom, "but perhaps you are the grandson of the
+Hans Rolf I've heard about all my life. My father is always telling me
+of things Hans Rolf did for my grandfather and great-grandfather."
+
+"And what is _your_ name?" queried the doctor, surprised as may be
+imagined that this unknown boy should know him so well.
+
+"Tom Strong."
+
+"By the Powers," shouted the hearty doctor, seizing the boy's hand and
+wringing it as his grandfather used to wring the hand of the Tom Strongs
+he knew, "By the Powers, next to my own name there's none I know so well
+as yours. My grandfather never wearied of talking about the two Tom
+Strongs, father and son. The last day he lived, he told me how your
+great-grandfather saved his life."
+
+"And you know he saved great-grandfather's, too," answered Tom, "and now
+you have saved mine."
+
+He looked shyly at his preserver. He was still weak with the
+after-effects of the drug that had been given him. The Hans Rolf he saw
+was a bit blurred by the unshed tears through which he saw him.
+
+"Nonsense," said the surgeon, "whatever I've done is just in the day's
+work. But you must stop at York and rest. I can't let my patient travel
+just yet, you know. And this may be your last chance to see me at home.
+I go into the army next month."
+
+However, Tom was not to be persuaded to stop. Duty called him Westward
+and to the West he went, as fast as the slow trains of those days could
+carry him. But when Hans Rolf and he parted, a few hours after they had
+met, they were friends for life.
+
+It took Tom two days to get from Harrisburg to Cairo, the southernmost
+town in Illinois. It lies at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio
+rivers. The latter pours a mass of beautiful blue water--the early
+French explorers named the Ohio "the beautiful river"--into the muddy
+flood of the Mississippi. For miles below Cairo the blue and yellow
+streams seem to flow side by side. Then the yellow swallows the blue and
+the mighty Mississippi rolls its murky way to the Gulf of Mexico. A
+gunboat took the young messenger from Cairo to General Grant's
+headquarters.
+
+[Illustration: MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS]
+
+A Western gunboat was an odd thing. James B. Eads, an eminent engineer,
+who after the war built the St. Louis bridge and the New Orleans
+jetties, which keep the mouth of the Mississippi open, had launched a
+flotilla of gunboats for the government within four months of the time
+when the trees which went to their making were growing in the forests.
+On a flat-boat of the ordinary Western-river type, Mr. Eads put a long
+cabin, framed of stout timbers, cut portholes in the sides, front and
+rear of it, mounted cannon inside it, covered it with rails outside
+(later armor-plate was used), and behold, a gunboat. The one which sped
+swiftly with Tom down the Mississippi and waddled slowly with him up the
+Tennessee, against the current of the Spring freshets, finally landed
+him at Grant's headquarters.
+
+Tom approached the tent over which headquarters' flag was flying with a
+beating heart. It beat against the long envelope that lay in the inner
+pocket of his waistcoat. He was about to finish his task and he was
+about to see the one successful soldier of the Union, up to that time.
+The Northern armies had not done well in the East--the defeat had been
+disgraceful and the panic sickening with the raw troops at Bull Run,
+Virginia, and little had been gained elsewhere--but in the West Grant
+was hammering out success. All eyes turned to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon the top of a low knoll, half a dozen packing-boxes were grouped in
+front of the tent. Two or three officers, most of them spick and span,
+sat upon each box except one. Upon that one there lounged a man,
+thick-set, bearded, his faded blue trousers thrust into the tops of
+dusty boots, his blue flannel shirt open at the throat, his worn blue
+coat carrying on each shoulder the single star of a brigadier-general.
+
+It was General Grant, Hiram Ulysses Grant, now known as U. S. Grant.
+When the Confederate commander of Fort Donelson had asked him for terms
+of surrender, he had answered practically in two words: "unconditional
+surrender." The curt phrase caught the public fancy, and gave his
+initials a new meaning. He was long known as "Unconditional Surrender"
+Grant.
+
+Born in Ohio, he had been educated at West Point, had fought well in our
+unjust war against Mexico, had resigned in the piping times of peace
+that followed, had been a commercial failure, and was running an
+insignificant business as a farmer in Galena, Illinois, an obscure and
+unimportant citizen of that unimportant town, when the Civil War began.
+Eight years afterwards, he became President of the United States and
+served as such for eight years, doing his dogged best, but far less
+successful as a statesman than he had been as a soldier. He was a
+patriot and a good man. In the last years of his life, ruined
+financially by a wicked partner and tortured by the cancer that finally
+killed him, he wrote his famous memoirs, which netted his family a
+fortune after the grave had closed upon this great American. He ran a
+race with Death to write his life. And he won the grim race.
+
+The young second-lieutenant saluted and explained his mission. The long
+envelope, deeply dented with the mark of Wilkes Booth's dirty thumb and
+finger, had reached its destination at last. Grant took it, opened it,
+read it without even a slight change of expression, though it contained
+not only orders for the future, but Lincoln's warm-hearted thanks for
+the past and the news of his own promotion to be major-general. Not only
+Tom, but every member of his staff was watching him. The saturnine face
+told no one anything. The little he said at the moment was said to Tom.
+
+"The President tells me he would like to have you given a glimpse of the
+front. Have you had any experience?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"When were you commissioned?"
+
+"A week ago, sir."
+
+"Are all the Eastern boys of your age in the army?"
+
+"They would like to be, sir."
+
+"Well," said Grant, with a kindly smile, "perhaps a little experience at
+the front may make up for the years you lack. Send him to General
+Mitchell, Captain," he added, turning to a spruce aide who rose from his
+packing-box seat to acknowledge the command.
+
+"Pray come with me, Mr. Strong," said the captain.
+
+Tom saluted, turned, and followed his guide. A backward glance showed
+him the general, his eyes now bent sternly upon Lincoln's letter, his
+staff eyeing him, a group of quiet, silent figures. And that was all
+that Tom saw, at that time, of the greatest general of our Civil War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+     INSIDE THE CONFEDERATE LINES--"SAIREY" WARNS TOM--OLD MAN TOMBLIN'S
+     "SETTLEMINT"--STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE--WILKES BOOTH GIVES THE
+     ALARM--A WILD DASH FOR THE UNION LINES.
+
+
+Three days afterwards, Tom found himself "on special service," on the
+staff of Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing towards
+Huntsville, Alabama. They occupied that delightfully sleepy old town,
+the center of a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but Tom was
+not then with the column. Five days before, with Mitchell's permission,
+he had volunteered for a gallant foray into the enemy's country. He had
+taken prompt advantage of Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if he
+wanted to do so. He was to have his fill of fighting now.
+
+Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who left camp before dawn on April
+7, under the command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a man, who had
+persuaded General Mitchell to let him try to slip across the lines with
+a handful of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order to steal a
+locomotive and rush it back to the Union front, burning all the railroad
+bridges it passed. The railroads to be crippled were those which ran
+from the South to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and from the East through
+Chattanooga and Huntsville to Memphis. A few miles from camp, Andrews
+gave his men their orders. They were to separate and singly or in groups
+of two or three were to make their way to the station of Big Shanty,
+Georgia, where they were to meet on the morning of Saturday, April 12.
+Andrews took Tom with him. For two days they hid in the wooded hills by
+day and traveled by night, guided by a compass and by the stars. Then
+their scanty supply of food was exhausted and they had to take to the
+open. Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellow with the oil of the
+butternut, the chief dye-stuff the South then had, their belts with
+"C.S.A."--"Confederate States of America"--upon them, their Confederate
+rifles (part of the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray slouched
+hats made them look like the Confederate scouts they had to pretend to
+be.
+
+Danger lurked about them and detection meant death. They did their best
+to talk in the soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts in the
+hills and asked for food, but the drawl was hard for a Northern tongue
+to master and more than one bent old woman or shy and smiling girl
+started with suspicion at the strange accents of these "furriners." The
+men of the hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On the fourth
+day they reached a log-hut or rather a home made of two log-huts, with a
+floored and roofed space between them, a sort of open-air room where all
+the household life went on when good weather permitted. An old, old
+woman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy with a rag quilt, her
+toothless gums busy with holding her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sat
+her granddaughter, busy too with her spinning wheel. The two women with
+their home as a background made a pleasing and a peaceful picture.
+
+"Howdy," said Andrews.
+
+The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched upon the old woman's lap. She
+took her pipe from her mouth.
+
+"Howdy," said she.
+
+The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are not quick of speech.
+
+"Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk?" asked Tom.
+
+"Sairey," called the old dame, "you git sum milk."
+
+Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, trying to hide her bare feet
+with her short skirt and not succeeding, and walked back of the house to
+the "spring-house," a square cupboard built over a neighboring spring.
+It was dark and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill-folk knew.
+While she was away, her grandmother began to talk. The man and boy would
+much rather she had kept still. For she peered at them suspiciously, and
+said:
+
+"How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I hearn thar wuz a right smart
+heap o' Yankee sojers not fur off'n hereabouts."
+
+At this moment Sairey fortunately returned. She brought in her brown
+hand an old glass goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brim
+with a foaming mixture that looked like delicious milk. Alas! Tom, who
+loathed buttermilk, was now to learn that in the hills "milk" meant
+"buttermilk." He should have asked for "sweet milk." Sairey handed him
+the goblet with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's hand touched
+hers. He lifted it eagerly to his thirsty lips, took a long draught, and
+sputtered and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking and the girl had
+gone a hundred yards to get him what she thought he wanted. He was a
+boy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed the nauseous stuff to the last
+drop, and made his best bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old woman
+said to him:
+
+"Where wuz you born, bub?"
+
+"New--New----" stammered Tom. His tongue did not lend itself readily to
+a lie, even in his country's cause. When he was still too young to
+understand what the words meant, his mother had told him: "A lie soils a
+boy's mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that big truth into his
+small mind. Now, taken by surprise, the habit of his young life asserted
+itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been born in New York was on
+his unsoiled lips, when Andrews finished the sentence for him.
+
+"New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly.
+
+"He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old beldam.
+
+"He was raised up No'th," Andrews explained, "but soon as this yer
+onpleasantness began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns."
+
+Andrews had overdone his dialect.
+
+"Sairey," commanded the old woman, "put up the flag."
+
+"Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where she had taken refuge behind her
+grandmother's chair, "what's the use?"
+
+"Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag."
+
+From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands in a warning gesture, and
+then, before she entered one of the log-houses, she pointed to a
+cart-track that wound up the hill before the hut. She came out with a
+Confederate flag, made of part of an old red petticoat with white
+stripes sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long sapling. She put the
+staff into a rude socket in front of the platform. As she passed Tom in
+order to do this, she whispered to him: "You-uns run!"
+
+"What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar?" her grandmother asked in anger.
+
+"I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah replied.
+
+But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old woman's, sharpened by fear, had
+caught the words.
+
+"We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. "You-uns haz bin right down good to
+us. Thanky, ma'am."
+
+"Jes' wait a minute," the old woman answered. "I'll give you somethin'
+fer yer to eat as ye mosey 'long."
+
+She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into the dark log-room. Sairey
+wrung her hand and whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track." Instantly
+the grandmother appeared on the threshold, her old eyes flashing, a
+double-barreled shot-gun in her shaking hands. She tried to cover both
+man and boy, as she screamed at them:
+
+"You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees! My man'll know what to do with
+you-uns."
+
+Their guns were at her feet. There was no way to get them, even if they
+would have used them against a woman.
+
+"Run!" shouted Andrews and bounded towards the cart-track.
+
+Tom sprang after him, but not in time to escape a few birdshot which the
+old woman's gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting of them
+redoubled his speed. The second barrel sent its load far astray. They
+had run just in time, for from another hilltop behind the hut a dozen
+armed men came plunging down to the house, shouting after the scared
+fugitives. The raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon signal for
+their coming. Sairey's father and several other men had taken to the
+nearby hills to avoid being impressed into the Confederate army, but
+they adored the Confederacy, up to the point of fighting for it, and
+they would have rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old woman's
+eyes and ears had pierced the thin disguise of the raiders. So she had
+forced her granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid to disobey
+her fierce old grandmother but loath to see the boy she had liked at
+first sight captured, had warned him to flee. Man and boy were out of
+gunshot, but still in sight, when their pursuers reached the house,
+yelled with joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the cart-track
+like hounds hot upon the scent. As Tom and Andrews panted to the
+hilltop, they saw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart-track. At
+the summit, it branched into half a dozen lanes which wound through a
+pine forest. Lanes and woodlands were covered with pineneedles, the
+deposit of years, which rose elastic under their flying feet and left no
+marks by which they could be tracked. And beyond the forest was a vast
+laurel-brake in which a regiment could have hidden, screened from
+discovery save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter and safety. Once
+they heard the far-off voices of their pursuers, but only once. Ere many
+hours they had the added security of the night.
+
+When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny brook that flowed at the
+roots of the laurel-bushes, Tom found that his wound, forgotten in the
+fierce excitement of the flight, had begun to pain him. His left
+shoulder grew stiff. When Andrews examined it, all it needed was a
+little care. Three or four birdshot had gone through clothing and skin,
+but they lay close beneath the skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smears
+of red blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. They were picked out with
+the point of a knife. The cool water of the brook washed away the blood
+and stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a bit of his own shirt,
+soaked it in the brook, and bandaged the shoulder in quite a good
+first-aid-to-the-injured way. Tom and he were none the worse, except for
+the loss of their guns. And that was the less serious because both
+knives and pistols were still in their belts.
+
+They slept that night in the laurel-brake, forgetting their hunger in
+the soundness of their sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled to
+hear a human voice. But it was the voice of a gentle girl. It kept
+calling aloud "Coo, boss, coo, boss," while every now and then it said
+in lower tones: "Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's suthin' to eat." At first
+they thought it was a trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred by
+hunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and found it was Sairey who
+was calling them. When she saw them, she ran towards them, while the
+cows she had collected from their pasture stared with dull amazement.
+
+"Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her hands in anxiety.
+
+Reassured as to this, she produced the cold cornbread and bacon she had
+taken from the spring-house when she left home that morning for her
+daily task of gathering the family cows. Man and boy bolted down the
+food.
+
+"You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom.
+
+"Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl replied, peering slyly out
+of her big sunbonnet and digging her brown toes into the earth, "but I
+dun it, kase--kase--I jes' had to. Kin you get away today?"
+
+"We'll try."
+
+"Whar be you goin'?"
+
+Should they tell her where they were going? It was a risk, but they took
+it. They were glad they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help them
+on their way, but could be of real aid. Once in her life she had been at
+Big Shanty. She told them of a short cut through the hills, by which
+they would pass only one "settle_mint_," as the infrequent clearings in
+the hills were called.
+
+"When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_," said Sairey, "I
+'low you-uns better stand at the fence corner and holler. Old Man
+Tomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when furriners don't do no
+hollerin'. But when he comes out, you-uns tell him Old Man Gernt's
+Sairey told you he'd take care of you-uns. 'N he will. 'N you kin tell
+Bud Tomblin--no, you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by."
+
+The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up to Andrews and smiled as
+she shook hands. She looked down at Tom--she was half a head taller than
+he--and smiled again as she shook hands. Then suddenly she stooped and
+kissed the startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane by which she
+had come, leaving the placid cows and the thankful man and boy behind
+her. With a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare, brown
+feet, she vanished from their sight.
+
+Thanks to her directions, they found Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_
+without difficulty. They duly stood at the corner of the sagging rail
+fence and there duly "hollered." Old Man Tomblin and Bud Tomblin came
+out of the cabin, each with a gun, and were proceeding to study the
+"furriners" before letting them come in, when Andrews repeated what Old
+Man Gernt's Sairey had told them to say. There was an instant welcome.
+Bud Tomblin was even more anxious than his father to do anything Sairey
+Gernt wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had been scouting near
+General Mitchell's line of march and had lost their guns and nearly lost
+themselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was accepted without demur. Old
+Mrs. Tomblin, decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill-folk,
+whose hard living conditions make women old at forty and venerable at
+fifty, cackled a welcome to them from the corner of the fireplace where
+she sat "dipping" snuff. "Lidy" Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped and
+hindered by the rest of a brood of children, took care of their comfort.
+They feasted on the best the humble household had to offer. They slept
+soundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr. and Mrs. Tomblin and
+Lidy, slept in the same room. In the morning they were given a bountiful
+breakfast and were bidden good-by as old friends.
+
+"I hate to deceive good people like the Tomblins," said Tom, when they
+were out of earshot.
+
+"Sometimes the truth is too precious to be told," laughed Andrews.
+
+But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as he tramped along. He made up
+his mind to fight for his country, the next time he had a chance, in
+some other way. Telling a lie and living a lie were hateful to him.
+
+The next morning found them at Big Shanty, a tiny Georgia village, which
+the war had made a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed day,
+Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty-two men who had started with
+Andrews, eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The train for
+Chattanooga stopped there for breakfast on those infrequent days when it
+did not arrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It was what is
+called a "mixed" train, both freight and passenger, with many freight
+cars following the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby passenger
+cars. On this particular morning it surprised everybody, including its
+own train-crew, by being on time. Passengers and crew swarmed in to
+breakfast. The train was deserted. The time for the great adventure had
+come.
+
+Before the train was seized, one thing must be done. The telegraph wire
+between Big Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this were left
+intact, their flight, sure to be discovered as soon as the train-crew
+finished their brief breakfast, would end at the next station, put on
+guard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest and most agile of the
+party, the task of cutting the wire had been assigned. He was already at
+the spot selected for the attempt, a clump of trees a hundred yards from
+the station, where the wire was screened from sight by the foliage. As
+soon as the train came in, Tom started to climb the telegraph-pole. He
+had just started when he heard a most unwelcome sound.
+
+"Hey, thar! What's you doin'?"
+
+He turned his head and saw a Confederate sentry close beside him. He
+recognized him as a man with whom he had been chatting around a
+camp-fire early that morning. His name was Bill Coombs. Tom's ready wit
+stood by him.
+
+"Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you. Somethin's wrong with the wire.
+The Cunnel's sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?"
+
+The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and watched him without a thought
+of his doing anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top of the rickety
+pole, cut the one wire it carried, fastened the ends to the pole so that
+from the ground nobody could tell it was cut, and climbed down. Bill
+urged him to stay and talk awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentries
+mustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon ran towards the
+station. He had to run to catch the train. The instant Andrews saw him
+returning, he sprang into the cab of the locomotive.
+
+[Illustration: THE LOCOMOTIVE TOM HELPED TO STEAL]
+
+One of his men had already uncoupled the first three freight cars from
+the rest of the train. All the men jumped into the cab or the tender or
+swarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews jerked the throttle wide
+open. The engine jumped forward, the tender and the three cars bounding
+after it. The crowd upon the platform gaped after the retreating train,
+without the slightest idea of what was happening under their very noses.
+A boy came running like an antelope from the end of the platform. He
+jumped for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched by a half-dozen
+hands and drawn aboard. But as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reason
+to remember call out:
+
+"They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong, a Yankee! Stop 'em! Shoot
+'em!"
+
+Livid with rage, his long black hair streaming in the wind as he ran
+after them, Wilkes Booth fired his pistol at them, while the motley
+crowd his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley after the train.
+Nobody was hurt then, but the danger to everybody had just begun.
+
+There was instant pursuit. The train-crew, startled by the sound of the
+departing train, came running from the station. They actually started to
+run along the track after the flying locomotive. They jerked a hand-car
+off a siding and chased the fugitives with that. At a station not far
+off, they found a locomotive lying with steam up. They seized that and
+thundered ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more even terms. The
+hunters reached Kingston, Georgia, within four minutes after the hunted
+had left. The latter had had to make frequent stops, to cut the wires,
+to take on fuel, to bundle into the freight cars ties that could be used
+to start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear up an occasional
+rail. This last expedient delayed their pursuers but little. When a
+missing rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore up a rail
+behind them, slipped it into the vacant place, and rushed ahead again.
+
+Andrews was running the captured train on its regular time schedule, so
+he could not exceed a certain speed. From Kingston, however, where the
+only other train of the day met this one, he expected a free road and
+plenty of time to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet the regular
+train at Kingston, but alas! it carried on its engine a red flag. That
+meant that a second section of the same train was coming behind it.
+There was nothing to do but to wait for this second section. The
+railroad was single-track, so trains could pass only where there was a
+siding. But in every moment of waiting there lurked the danger of
+detection. Southerners, soldiers, and civilians, crowded about the
+locomotive as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston sidetrack,
+puffing away precious steam and precious time.
+
+"Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man. "I cum hyar to meet up with
+Cunnel Tompkins. Whar's he'n the rest of 'em?"
+
+"We were ordered to drop everything at Big Shanty," explained Andrews,
+"except these three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on General
+Beauregard's staff and am taking the stuff to him at Corinth. Jove,
+there's the whistle of the second section. I'm glad to hear it."
+
+He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he had bundled most of his men
+into the freight cars. The cars were battered old things without any
+locks. If a carelessly curious hand were to slide back one of the doors
+and reveal within, not powder, but armed men, all their lives would pay
+the forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with engineer, fireman, and Tom, who
+had been helping the fireman feed wood into the maw of the furnace on
+every mile of the run. His young back ached with the strain of the
+unaccustomed toil. His young neck felt the touch of the noose that
+threatened them all.
+
+"Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch for us as soon as the other
+train pulls in," said Andrews. "We mustn't keep General Beauregard
+waiting for this powder a minute longer than we can help. He needs it to
+blow the Yankees to smithereens."
+
+So Tom ran ahead, stood by the switch as the second section came in, and
+promptly threw the switch as it passed. But his train did not move and
+a brakeman jumped off the rear platform of the caboose of the second
+section, as it slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a fool, pushed
+him out of the way and reset the switch.
+
+"You plum fool," shouted the brakeman, after much stronger expressions,
+"didn't ye see the flag fur section three?"
+
+Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it, but it was too true that the
+engine of section two also bore the red flag that meant that section
+three was coming behind it.
+
+Again there was a long wait, again the sense of danger closing in upon
+them, again the thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity of
+playing their parts with laughter and good-natured chaff amid the foes
+who thought them friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves away. At
+last the third section came whistling and lumbering in. Thank fortune,
+it bore no red flag. This time Tom threw the switch unchecked and then
+jumped on the puffing engine as she reached the main-track and sped
+onwards.
+
+"Free, by Jove!" said Andrews, with a deep breath of deep relief. "Now
+we can burn Johnny Reb's bridges for him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Four minutes later, while section three of the train that had so long
+delayed them was still at Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed into
+the station. Its occupants, shouting a story of explanation that put
+Kingston into a frenzy, ran from it to an engine that lay upon a second
+sidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They had reached Kingston so
+speedily by using their last pint of water and their last stick of wood.
+They saved precious minutes by changing engines.
+
+Five seconds after their arrival, the station-agent had been at the
+telegraph-key, frantically pounding out the call of a station beyond
+Andrews's fleeing train. There was no reply.
+
+"Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the station. Of course that had
+been done by the fugitives just out of sight of Kingston. "Wire cut! I
+kain't git no message through."
+
+"We'll take the message!" answered the Confederate commander, from the
+cab of the locomotive that was already swaying with her speed, as she
+darted ahead.
+
+They came near delivering the message within four miles of Kingston.
+Andrews's men, with a most comforting sense of safety had stopped and
+were pulling up a rail, when they heard the whistle of their avenging
+pursuer.
+
+"Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called. "They're closer'n I like to
+have 'em."
+
+Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates came closer still. Around
+the next curve, quite hidden from sight until close upon it, the
+fugitives had put a rail across the track. It delayed the pursuit not
+one second. Whether the cowcatcher of the engine thrust it aside or
+broke it or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody knew then in
+the wild excitement of the chase and nobody knows now. The one thing
+certain is that there was no delay. Very likely the rail broke. Rails
+of those days were of iron, not steel, and throughout the South they
+were in such condition that at the close of the Civil War one of the
+chief Southern railroads was said to consist of "a right-of-way and two
+streaks of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly and sped on.
+
+On the Union train, Tom had crept back to the rear car along the
+rolling, jumping carroofs, with orders to set it on fire and stand ready
+to cut it off. The men inside arranged a pile of ties, thrust fat pine
+kindling among them, and touched the mass with a match. It burst into
+flame as they scuttled to the roof and passed to the car ahead. A long
+covered wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway across it, Andrews
+stopped, dropped the flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very few
+minutes the bridge would have been a burning mass, but the few minutes
+were not to be had. The Confederate locomotive was now close upon them.
+It dashed upon the bridge, drove the burning car across the bridge
+before it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and again whistled
+triumphantly as it took up the fierce chase. The two remaining cars were
+detached, one by one, but in vain. The game was up.
+
+"Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly, as he looked back over the
+tender, now almost empty of wood, to the smokestack that was belching
+sooty vapor within a mile of them. "By this time, they've got a telegram
+ahead of us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods. We must take to
+the woods. Don't try to keep together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star.
+Make the Union lines if you can. We've done our best."
+
+The engine checked its mad pace, slowed, stopped.
+
+"Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he sprang from the engine and
+disappeared in the forest that there bordered the track. "We'll meet
+again."
+
+Seven of them did meet him again. It was upon a Confederate scaffold,
+where he and they were hung. The other six of the fourteen who were
+captured were exchanged, a few months later. Three others reached the
+Union lines within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom Strong?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     TOM UP A TREE--DID THE CONFEDERATE OFFICER SEE HIM?--A FUGITIVE
+     SLAVE GUIDES HIM--BUYING A BOAT IN THE DARK--ADRIFT IN THE ENEMY'S
+     COUNTRY.
+
+
+At first, Tom was up a tree. When he jumped from the abandoned
+locomotive, his mind was working as quickly as his body. He reasoned
+that the Confederates would expect them all to run as fast and as far
+away as they could; that they would run after them; that they would very
+probably catch him, utterly tired out as he was, so tired that even fear
+could not lend wings to his leaden feet; that the pursuit, however,
+would not last long, because the Confederates would wish to reach a
+station soon, in order both to report their success and to send out a
+general alarm and so start a general search for the fugitives; and that
+he would best hide as near at hand as might be. In other words, he
+thought, quite correctly, that the best thing to do is exactly what your
+enemy does not expect you to do. He picked out a big oak tree quite
+close to the track, its top a mass of thick-set leaves such as a
+Southern April brings to a Southern oak. He climbed it, nestled into a
+sheltered crotch high above the ground, and waited. He did not have to
+wait long. He could still hear the noise of his comrades plunging
+through the woods when the Confederate engine drew up beneath his feet.
+Before it stopped, the armed men who clustered thick upon locomotive and
+tender were on the ground and running into the woods. A gallant figure
+in Confederate gray led them. He heard the rush of them, then a shot or
+two, exultant yells, and ere long the tramp of returning feet. They came
+back in half a dozen groups, bringing with them three of his comrades in
+flight, less fortunate than he, at least less fortunate up to that time.
+Andrews was one of the prisoners. He had slipped and fallen, had
+strained a sinew, and had lain helpless until his pursuers reached him.
+Tom, peering cautiously through his leafy shelter, saw that his late
+leader was limping and was held upright by a kindly Confederate, who had
+passed his arm about him.
+
+"'Tain't fur," said his captor, cheerily, "hyar's the injine."
+
+"The Yank's goin' fur," sneered a soldier of another kind, "he's goin'
+to Kingdom Cum, blast him!" He lifted his fist to strike the helpless
+man, but the young officer in command caught the upraised arm.
+
+"None of that," he said, sternly. "Americans don't treat prisoners that
+way. You're under arrest. Put down your gun and climb into the tender.
+Do it now and do it quick." Sulkily the brute obeyed. "Lift him in,"
+went on the officer to the man who was supporting Andrews. This was
+gently done. The other two captives climbed in. So did the Confederates.
+Their officer turned to them.
+
+"You've done your duty well," he said. "You've been chasing brave men.
+They've done their duty well too.
+
+    "'For such a gallant feat of arms
+    Was never seen before.'"
+
+Tom started with surprise. The young officer was quoting from Macaulay's
+"Lays of Ancient Rome." The boy had stood beside his mother's knee when
+she read him the "Lays" and had often since read them himself.
+
+That start of surprise had almost been Tom's undoing. He had rustled the
+leaves about him. A tiny shower of pale green things fell to the ground.
+
+"Captain, there's somebody up that tree," said a soldier, pointing
+straight at the point where Tom sat. "I heard him rustle."
+
+The captain looked up. The boy always thought the officer saw him and
+spared him, partly because of his youth--he knew the fate the prisoners
+faced--and partly because of his admiration for "the gallant feat of
+arms." Be that as it may, he certainly took no step just then to make
+another prisoner. Instead he laughed and answered:
+
+"That's a 'possum. We haven't time for a coon-hunt just now. Get ahead.
+We'll send an alarm from the next station and so bag all the Yankees."
+
+The engine, pushing the recaptured one before it, started and
+disappeared around the end of the short curve upon which Andrews had
+made his final stop. For the moment at least, Tom was safe. But he knew
+the hue-and-cry would sweep the country. Everybody would be on the
+lookout for stray Yankees. And as everybody would think the estrays
+were all going North, Tom decided to go South. He slid down the
+tree, looked at his watch, studied the sunlight to learn the points of
+the compass, drew his belt tighter to master the hunger that now
+assailed him, and so began his southward tramp, a boy, alone, in the
+enemy's country.
+
+That part of Georgia is a beautiful country and Tom loved beauty, but it
+did not appeal to him that afternoon. He was hungry; he was tired; the
+excitement that had upheld him through the hours of flight on the
+captured engine was over. He plodded through a little belt of forest
+and found himself in a broad valley, with a ribbon of water flowing
+through it. He stumbled across plowed fields to the little river. A
+dusty road, with few marks of travel, meandered beside the stream. He
+was evidently near no main highway. Not far away a planter's home, with
+a stately portico, gleamed in the sunlight through its screen of trees.
+In the distance lay a little village. There was food in both places and
+he must have food. To which should he go? It was decided for him that he
+was to go to neither. As he slipped down the river bank, to quench his
+burning thirst and to wash his dusty face and hands, he almost stepped
+upon a negro who lay full length at the foot of the bank, hidden behind
+a tree that had been uprooted by the last flood and left stranded there.
+The boy was scared by the unexpected meeting, but not half as much as
+the negro.
+
+"Oh, Massa," said the negro, on his knees with outstretched hands, "don'
+tell on me, Massa. I'll be your slabe, Massa. Jes' take me with you.
+Please don't tell on me. You kin make a lot o' money sellin' me, Massa.
+Please lemme go wid you."
+
+"What is your name?" asked Tom.
+
+"Morris, Massa."
+
+"Where did you come from?"
+
+"From dat house, Massa." He pointed to the big house nearby.
+
+"And what are you doing here?"
+
+Little by little, Morris (reassured when he found Tom was a Northern
+soldier and like himself a fugitive) told his story. He had been born on
+this plantation. Reared as a house-servant, he could read a little. He
+had learned from the newspapers his master took that a Northern army was
+not far away. He made up his mind to try for freedom. His master kept
+dogs to track runaways, but no dog can track a scent in running water.
+It was not probable his flight would be discovered until after
+nightfall. So he had stolen to his hiding-place in the afternoon,
+intending to wade down the tiny stream as soon as darkness came. Two
+miles below, the stream merged itself into a larger one. There he hoped
+to steal a boat, hide by day and paddle by night until he reached the
+Tennessee. "Dat ribber's plum full o' Massa Lincum's gunboats," he
+assured Tom.
+
+"How are you going to live on the journey?" asked the boy.
+
+"I spec' dey's hen-roosts about," quoth Morris with a chuckle, "and I'se
+got a-plenty to eat to start wid. Dis darkey don' reckon to starve
+none."
+
+"Give me something to eat, quick!"
+
+Morris willingly produced cornpone and bacon from a sack beside him. Tom
+wanted to eat it all, but he knew these precious supplies must be kept
+as long as possible, so he did not eat more than half of them. The two
+agreed to keep together in their flight for freedom. As soon as it was
+dark, they began their wading. The two miles seemed an endless distance.
+The noises of the night kept their senses on the jump. Once a distant
+bloodhound's bay scared Morris so much that his white teeth clattered
+like castanets. Once the "too-whit-too" of a nearby owl sent Tom into an
+ecstasy of terror. He fairly clung to Morris, who, just ahead of him,
+was guiding his steps through the shallow water. When he found he had
+been scared by an owl, he was so ashamed that he forced himself to be
+braver thereafter. At last they reached their first goal, the larger
+river. Here Morris's knowledge of the ground made him the temporary
+commander of the expedition. He knew of a little house nearby, the home
+of a "poor white," who earned part of his precarious livelihood by
+fishing. Morris knew just where he kept his boat. There was no light in
+the little house and no sound from it as they crept stealthily along the
+bank to the tree where the boat was tied. Tom drew his knife to cut the
+rope.
+
+"No, Massa," whispered Morris. "Not dat-a-way. Ef it's cut, dey'll know
+it's bin tuck and dey'll s'picion us. Lemme untie it. Den dey'll t'ink
+it's cum loose and floated away. 'N dey'll not hurry after it. Dey'll
+t'ink dey kin fin' it in some cove any time tomorrer."
+
+Morris was right. It did not take him long to untie the clumsy knot.
+Three oars and some fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat. They
+got into it, pushed off, and floated down the current without a sound.
+Morris steered with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot, they rowed
+as fast as the darkness, intensified by the shadows of the overhanging
+trees, permitted.
+
+Just before they had pushed off, Tom had asked:
+
+"What is this boat worth, Morris?"
+
+"Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one jest like it, dis lastest
+week."
+
+Tom's conscience had told him that even though a fugitive for his life
+in the enemy's country he ought not to take the "poor white's" boat
+without paying for it. He unbuttoned an inside pocket in his shirt and
+drew out a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces. There were twenty
+of them, each wrapped in tissue-paper and the whole then bound together
+in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so that there would be no
+sound of clinking gold as he walked. He figured that the three oars and
+the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth more than the boat was, so
+he took out two coins and put them in a battered old pan that lay beside
+the stump to which the boat was tied. There the "cracker"--another name
+for the "poor white"--would be sure to see them in the morning. As a
+matter of fact he did. And they were worth so much more than his
+vanished property that he was inclined to think an angel, rather than a
+thief, had passed that way. Tom's conscientiousness spoiled Morris's
+plan of having the owner think the boat had floated away, but the
+"cracker" was glad to clutch the gold and start no hue-and-cry. He was
+afraid that if he recovered his boat, he would have to give up the gold.
+It was much cheaper to make another. So he kept still.
+
+And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they paddled slowly down
+the stream until the first signs of dawn sent them into hiding. They
+hid the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth of a tiny creek
+and they themselves crept a few yards into the forest, ate very much
+less than they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's scanty store
+of food, and went to sleep. They slept until--but that is another
+story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+     TOWSER FINDS THE FUGITIVES--TOWSER BRINGS UNCLE MOSES--MR. IZZARD
+     AND HIS YANKEE OVERSEER, JAKE JOHNSON--TOM IS PULLED DOWN THE
+     CHIMNEY--HOW UNCLE MOSES CHOKED THE OVERSEER--THE FLIGHT OF THE
+     FOUR.
+
+
+They slept until late in the afternoon.
+
+Then Morris woke up with a yell. A dog's cold nose was thrusting itself
+against his cheek. He thought his master's bloodhounds were upon him and
+that the whipping-post was the least he had to fear. As Tom, startled
+from sound sleep by the negro's scream of terror, sprang to his feet, he
+saw Morris crouching upon the ground, babbling "Sabe me, good Lord, sabe
+old Morris!" The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel, a very distant
+cousin of the bloodhound the scared darkey imagined him to be, was
+looking with a grieved surprise at the cowering man. He was a most
+good-natured beast, accustomed to few caresses and many kicks, and he
+had never before seen a man who was afraid of him. As he turned to Tom,
+he saw a boy who wasn't afraid of him. Tom, who had always been loved by
+dogs and children, smiled at the big yellow mongrel, said "Come here,
+old fellow," and in an instant had the great hound licking his hand and
+looking up to him with the brown-yellow eyes full of a dog's faith and a
+dog's fidelity. These are great qualities. A cynic once said: "The more
+I see of men the more I like dogs." That cynic probably got from men
+what he gave to them. But still it is true that the unfaltering faith of
+a dog and a child, once their confidence has been won, is a rare and a
+precious thing. Tom patted his new friend's head. The big tail wagged
+with joy. The hound looked reproachfully at Morris, as much as to say:
+"See how you misunderstood me; I want to be friends: but here"--he
+turned and looked at the boy who was smiling at him--"here is my best
+friend."
+
+He stayed with them an hour, contented and happy, humbly grateful for a
+tiny piece of meat they gave him. Then, as dark drew near, he became
+uneasy. Two or three times he started as if to leave them, turned to see
+whether they were following him, looked beseechingly at them, barked
+gently, put his big paw on Tom's arm and pulled at him. Evidently he
+wanted them to come with him, but this they did not dare to do.
+
+"Ef we lets him go, he'll bring his folkses here," Morris whispered.
+
+"I suppose we must tie him up," Tom reluctantly assented. "I hate to
+treat him that way, for he's a good dog. But if we leave him tied and
+push off in the boat, he'll howl after a while and his master will find
+him. Take a bit of fishing-line and tie him."
+
+Morris turned towards the hidden boat, but the hound, as if aware of
+what they had said, suddenly started for his hidden home and vanished
+into the underbrush before Tom could catch hold of him. When Tom called,
+he stopped once and looked back, but he did not come back. He
+shouldered his way into the bushes and trotted off, with that amusing
+air of being in a hurry to keep a most important appointment which all
+dogs sometimes show. And as he started, Morris appeared again, with a
+shrill whisper: "De boat's dun sunk hisself."
+
+Tom ran to the bank of the creek. The news was too true. The boat had
+sunk. The rotten caulking had dropped from one of the rotten seams. The
+bow, tied to a tree in the canebrake, was high in air. The stern was
+under five feet of water. The oars had floated away. The fishing-pole
+was afloat, held to the old craft by the hook-and-line, which had caught
+in the sunken seat. What were they to do? They felt as a Western trapper
+used to feel, when he had lost his horse and saw himself compelled to
+make his perilous way on foot through a country swarming with savage
+foes. What to do?
+
+"We must raise the boat, Morris, get her on shore, turn her over, caulk
+her with something, make some paddles somehow and get off."
+
+They did, by great effort and with much more noise than they liked to
+make, drag the crazy old craft upon the bank of the creek. They turned
+her bottom-side up. The negro plucked down a long, waving mass of
+Spanish moss from a cypress that grew in the swampy soil. Children in
+the South call this Spanish moss "old men's gray beards." Each long
+drift of it looks as if it might have grown on the chin of an aged
+giant. They were pressing it into the gaping seam with feverish haste,
+listening the while for any sign of that dreaded coming of the big
+hound's "folkses." The short twilight of Southern skies ended. A deep
+curtain of darkness fell upon them. And through it they heard the nearby
+patter of the dog's paws and the shuffling footfalls of a man. And they
+saw the gleam of a lantern.
+
+"We'se diskivered, Massa Tom," old Morris whispered, "we'se diskivered."
+
+As he spoke, he slipped over the bank into the creek and lay in much his
+attitude when Tom had first "diskivered" him, except that the water
+covered all of him except mouth and nose and eyes. Tom bent down to him.
+
+"Hush," he said, "keep still. There's only one man coming. The dog's all
+right. I'll meet the man. You stay here."
+
+Then he stepped into a circle of light cast by the lantern upon a mass
+of underbrush and said, with a cheerful confidence he did not feel:
+
+"Howdy, neighbor?"
+
+The big yellow dog was fawning at his feet in a second. A quavering old
+voice came from behind the light of the lantern.
+
+"Howdy, Massa," it said. "Is I intrudin' on you?"
+
+An old, old negro shambled up to him, the lantern in one hand, a ragged
+hat in another. He bowed his crown of white kinky hair respectfully
+before the white boy. There was no enemy to be feared here. The boy's
+heart bounded with relief and he laughed as he answered:
+
+"No, Uncle, you're not intruding. I'm glad to see you. I'm sure you'll
+help us. Come here, Morris."
+
+Morris scrambled up the bank, the wettest man in the world. His eyeballs
+shone as he neared them. They shone still more as he stood before the
+old negro, held out his hand, and said:
+
+"Unk' Moses, I'se po'erful glad to meet up wid you."
+
+Uncle Moses almost dropped his rude lantern in his surprise.
+
+"Well, ef it ain't Massa Pinckney's Morris! Howdy, Morris? How cum so as
+you-uns is here, a-hidin'? I know'd de way dat ar Towser wuz a-actin'
+when he dun cum home dat dere wuz sum-un in de bush out hyar, but I
+neber s'picioned t'wuz you, Morris. Is you dun run away?"
+
+The situation was soon explained. Uncle Moses had already become
+familiar with it. Hunted men, both white and black, were no novelty to
+him by that time. He had helped many of them on their scared way. Too
+old to work, he lived alone in a little cabin on the outskirts of his
+owner's plantation. He tilled a tiny plot of vegetables when "de
+rumatiz" permitted and with these and some rations from "de big house"
+he eked out a scanty living. This owner's self-respect had not prevented
+his working Moses through all a long life, with no payment except food
+and lodging, and behind these always the shadow of the whip. But the
+slave's self-respect required him to work for the hand that fed him, so
+long as failing strength permitted. All he could do now was to scare
+crows from the cornfield, but that he could do well, for his one suit of
+the ragged remains of what had been several other people's clothes made
+him a perfect scarecrow. Besides his vegetables, he had some chickens, a
+sacred possession. "Old Unk' Mose" was known and respected through all
+the countryside. No chicken-thief ever came to his cabin. The kind old
+patriarch was reaping the reward of a kind long life. He dwelt in peace.
+
+He took Tom and Morris to the lonely cabin and treated them there with a
+royal hospitality. Despite his protests, Tom was obliged to take the
+one bed. Unk' Mose and Morris slept upon the floor. First, they had a
+mighty dinner. Two of Moses's fattest chickens and everything Moses had
+in the way of other food filled their starved stomachs. Then to sleep.
+The last thing Tom heard that night was the swish of Towser's mighty
+tail upon the earthen floor as the dog lay beside his cot. The last
+thing of which he was conscious was Towser's gently licking the hand
+that hung down from the cot.
+
+The next day they toiled with such feeble help as Moses could give them
+upon their leaky boat. They put it in fair shape and then, with a rusty
+ax which was one of Unk' Mose's most precious possessions, they
+fashioned a couple of rough oars. Then they spent a day trying to
+persuade Moses to seek freedom with them. It was in vain.
+
+"I'se too old, Massa Tom," said Uncle Moses. "Dey wuz timeses when I dun
+thought all de days and dun prayed all de nights dat freedum'd cum along
+or dat I cud go to freedum. It's too late nowadays. Unk' Mose mus' jes'
+sot hyar, a-waitin'. P'raps, ef I keeps a-helpin' udder folkses to find
+deir freedum, p'raps sum day, 'fore I'se troo' a-waitin', de angel ob de
+Lawd'll cum a-walkin' up to my do' and he'll be a-holdin' by de han' ob
+a great big udder angel 'n de udder angel he'll dun smile at me and say:
+'Unk' Moses, I'se Freedum 'n I'se cum to you.' Den I'll say: 'Thank de
+good Lawd,' and I'll be so happy I guess I'll jes' die 'n go to de great
+White Throne, whar ebberybody's free."
+
+Late that afternoon when they had had to give up the hope of taking
+Uncle Mose with them, they were making a bundle of the food he had given
+them. It was a big bundle. He would have slaughtered his last chicken
+for them, had they permitted it. Suddenly there came the sound of a
+long, shrill whistle. Uncle Moses, tying up the bundle on his knees,
+forgot "de rumatiz" and almost sprang to his feet.
+
+"Lawd-a-massy, dat's de oberseer! He's dun callin' de hands to de
+quarters." The quarters were the slave-quarters which always clustered
+at a respectful distance in the rear of a planter's home. "Dat ar
+oberseer mebbe'll cum hyar. You folkses mus' hide."
+
+The whistle had sounded dangerously near. As they looked out of the one
+door that gave light to the slave's cabin, they saw three horsemen
+trotting towards it, two white men and a negro. They were Moses's
+master, the dreaded overseer, and a groom. It was impossible to run
+across the small cleared space about the cabin and seek the woods
+without being seen. But where could they hide in a one-roomed hut?
+
+"De chimbley, quick, de chimbley," gasped Uncle Mose.
+
+A big chimney, full of the soot of many years of wood-fires on the broad
+hearth below, filled half one side of the room. Tom and Morris rushed to
+it, climbed up the rough stone sides, found a precarious footing just
+above the fireplace, and waited. Fortunately the fire upon which the
+food for the journey had been cooked had almost died down. A little
+smoke floated up the wide opening. The smoke and the soot tickled the
+boy's nostrils until it seemed to him that he must sneeze. A sneeze
+might mean death. With a mighty effort he kept still for what seemed to
+him an hour. It was really about five minutes.
+
+Mr. Izzard, owner of Uncle Moses and of some hundreds of other black
+men, Jake Johnson, his overseer, a renegade Yankee, with a face that
+told of the cruel soul within him, trotted up to the door, the black
+groom a few yards behind them. Uncle Moses had thrust the bundle of food
+far back under the bed. He stood respectfully in his doorway, bowing to
+the ground. Towser cowered beside him. Towser had felt more than once
+the sting of the long whip Jake Johnson carried. He feared and he hated
+the overseer.
+
+"Howdy, Massa Izzard?" said Moses. "Howdy, Mista Johnsing? Will you-uns
+light down 'n cum in?"
+
+"Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied. He was a tall, pale,
+well-born, well-bred, well-educated man, as kind a man as ever held his
+fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was justified in doing so by
+the laws of both God and man as the German emperor was that he ruled a
+subject people by divine right. "No, we won't light down. We just came
+to say howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you want anything, come
+up to the big house and ask for it."
+
+He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the old negro as he stammered a
+few words of thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked:
+
+"Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's Morris, Mose?"
+
+"No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen hide nor har ob Morris. Has
+dat fool nigger runned away?"
+
+Johnson looked at him sharply.
+
+"If I thought you knew already he had run away," said he, "I'd"--he
+cracked his whip in the air to show what he would have done.
+
+Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard told Johnson to stop
+frightening "the best darkey on the place" and they rode away. Mose
+dropped upon his one chair and was just about to give fervent thanks for
+the escape from detection, when Johnson, who had turned a short distance
+away and had galloped back, flung himself off his horse at the door and
+strode into the dusky hut.
+
+"I b'lieve you know something about that Morris," he roared at the
+shrinking old negro. "You looked guilty. Tell me what you know or I'll
+thrash you within an inch of your black life." He cracked his dreaded
+whip again.
+
+"I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista Johnsing," Moses pleaded.
+
+Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved too much for the overtried
+nostrils of Tom. He sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held back.
+His "at-choo! at-choo!" sounded down the chimney like a chorus of
+bassoons. Johnson was across the room in a bound. He knelt upon the
+hearth, groped up the chimney, caught the boy by the ankle and pulled
+him down. The soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer was sure he had
+caught the fleeing Morris.
+
+At that terrible moment, when Johnson's throat was swelling for a yell
+of triumph that would surely have brought Mr. Izzard back to the hut,
+Uncle Moses cast the traditions of a life of servile fear of the white
+man behind him. Never had he dreamed of laying a finger on one of his
+owner's race, even in those long-ago days when stout thews and muscles
+made him fit to fight. Now, in trembling old age, the truth of the
+poet's saying,
+
+    "Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,"
+
+put spirit for a second into his old heart. He knew the danger that lay
+in that yell. He meant to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was
+still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching Tom's ankle, the boy
+still sprawling on the hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery
+and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old body hurled itself upon
+the overseer's broad back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's
+windpipe and choked him into a second's silence. That second was enough.
+Tom sprang to his feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and good
+old Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that beckoned to him, sunk his
+teeth in Johnson's shoulder and tore him down from the back while Tom
+struck his strongest just below the overseer's chin and knocked him out
+for the time being. Before he came to, he had been lashed hand-and-foot
+into a long bundle, had been effectually gagged with his own whip, had
+been blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the bed, from under which
+the food had been hurriedly withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had neither been
+seen nor heard. Tom called up the chimney to him to come down.
+
+"I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice. It had never occurred to
+Morris to slip down and help in the fight he heard going on below. His
+one thought had been to escape himself. So he had climbed still higher
+up the chimney and in his frantic haste he had so wedged himself into it
+that it took Tom an hour to pull him down. It was a battered, bruised,
+and bleeding negro who finally appeared. That was a very long hour. Mr.
+Izzard might return in search of his overseer at any moment. The
+overseer himself must be conscious by this time. His ears must have told
+him much. Tom whispered to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His anxious
+gesture toward the bed beneath which Johnson lay frightened both negroes
+into scared silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's ears had told
+him nothing. Towser's teeth had drawn so much blood--the mighty hound
+had been pried off his foe with difficulty--that the man lay in a faint
+until the four fugitives had fled. For there were four fugitives now.
+Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face the coming wrath. The rest
+of Moses's chickens were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered.
+When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until she had a scant two
+inches of free-board above the water, was slipping down the river again.
+Uncle Moses was no longer "a-waitin' fer freedum." He was going in
+search of the freedom he had so long craved. He and his fellows had two
+clear days in which to get away without pursuit, for Johnson lay in his
+dark prison beneath the bed for fortyeight hours before he was found.
+One of the ropes used to bind him had caught upon an old nail in the
+wall. He was too weak to tear it away and so could not even roll himself
+to the outer air. On the second day of his unexplained absence, Mr.
+Izzard had sent all the negroes in search of him and had offered a
+reward for his finding. The discovery of his horse in a distant part of
+the plantation had concentrated the search there. The darkies who
+finally got the reward did not rejoice much in it, for in finding the
+overseer, they knew they were finding a cruel taskmaster and his cruel
+whip. But the story of his discomfiture by three negroes, for he had
+never known that Tom's sooty face was really white, soon spread through
+the countryside. He became a neighborhood joke and in his wrath at being
+made a butt he resigned as Mr. Izzard's overseer. Leaving this place
+deprived him of his immunity from conscription. He was promptly seized
+by the nearest Confederate officer and impressed into the army. The
+Izzard negroes had the infinite joy of seeing their hated ex-overseer
+marched off under guard to a Confederate camp, to serve as a private
+soldier.
+
+Tom was destined to see Jake Johnson again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two nights they rowed down the river, almost without a word, afraid to
+speak lest someone in the infrequent houses and still more infrequent
+villages along the banks should hear them. Wise old Towser knew enough
+not to bark when men about him kept so still. He lay always where with
+nose or paw or tail he could touch Tom. The latter was the commander of
+the expedition and Towser felt it and became his abject slave
+accordingly. At the close of the second night they had reached the
+Tennessee River. By day they camped upon shore in some hidden place,
+first craftily secreting the boat amid rushes and reeds. From their
+second hiding-place, they saw about noon a Confederate gunboat, a small
+stern-wheel steamboat, with cotton-bales at her bow and stern screening
+her two guns. Though she was making all possible speed up the current,
+she moved but slowly. Her decks were thick with excited men. A babble of
+voices reached the fugitives, peering at her behind a mass of bushes.
+The few words that could be made out told them nothing. The sight of
+her, however, warned them that a new danger might await them on the
+traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their hearts would have beat higher,
+had they known that General Mitchell had pushed south from Huntsville
+and that Union forces were then encamped in strength upon the river, not
+many miles below where they were cowering. The Confederate gunboat had
+been steaming upstream to escape capture.
+
+When darkness came, they embarked again upon what proved to be the last
+chapter in the history of the old flat-boat. The next morning, caught in
+an eddy at the mouth of a small, swift tributary of the Tennessee, she
+whirled about, the Spanish moss dropped out of her rotten seams, she
+filled and sank. She dropped so swiftly beneath them that before they
+realized their danger they were all floundering in water over their
+heads. Tom could swim like a fish. That is one of the first things a boy
+should learn to do. To his delight, he found Uncle Moses was also
+surprisingly at home in the water, considering his years. Towser
+accepted the situation as something he did not understand, but which was
+doubtless entirely all right, as his lord and master, Tom, was in the
+water too. Morris, however, could not swim a stroke and saw only certain
+death before him. He gave a yell of terror as he went under. That yell
+came near costing them dear. As he rose to the surface, Tom on one side
+and Uncle Mose on the other, acting under Tom's instructions, edged a
+shoulder under him, and started to swim to shore with him. Again he
+yelled. This time Moses lost patience.
+
+"Shet up, you fool nigger. You sho'ly needs to be 'mersed."
+
+With this whispered menace, he reached up one hand and ducked Morris's
+head quite under water. That stopped all further sound from him. And by
+this time their feet had touched bottom. They waded ashore, with Towser
+wagging a triumphant tail, shaking himself and sending showers of spray
+over them. There they stood, wet as water-rats, with nothing in the
+world except the dripping clothes they wore. And there was no
+hiding-place near. For half a mile on either side of them a cleared
+field lay open to the day and the day was upon them. They had tempted
+Fate by rowing on too long after the first signs of dawn. Fate had
+turned the trump upon them. The sun rolled up above the eastern horizon
+at their back. It showed them, not half a mile away, a plantation house.
+It showed them a swarm of field-hands coming to the day's toil. It
+showed them a mounted overseer, only a few hundred feet away, riding up
+to the flat range of the field from a ravine that had hidden him. He had
+heard Morris's yells. He saw the three and rode furiously at them,
+calling out:
+
+"What are you niggers doin' here?"
+
+Tom stepped forward to meet him. His two companions were useless in an
+emergency like this. They cowered back and were dumb. Towser strode
+ahead beside Tom and barked. The overseer pulled up short. He saw he was
+dealing with a white man, or rather with a white boy. The circumstances
+were suspicious. Who were these three dripping ragamuffins? But since
+one of them was white, the man's tone changed and he modified his
+question.
+
+"Who are ye? And what are ye doin' here?"
+
+"I am on my way to Vicksburg," Tom answered, "by the river. My boat sunk
+just off shore here and we swam ashore. Can you give me another boat?"
+
+"I mout 'n I moutn't."
+
+"I am carrying dispatches," said Tom, sternly. "You will delay me at
+your peril. I shall take one of those boats, whether you consent or
+not."
+
+With this he pointed at the most encouraging thing the sunrise had shown
+him. This was a line of three boats fastened to a wooden landing-place
+by the river.
+
+"I b'lieve you're a Yankee," said the horseman, "and these are runaway
+niggers. You and they must come up to the big house with me. If you're
+all right, we'll send you on your way. If you're not, well, we know what
+to do with Yanks and runaway niggers! March!"
+
+He slipped his hand behind him, as if to draw a pistol. Tom was already
+making the same gesture. Neither of them had a pistol. Tom's had gone to
+the bottom. It was pure bluff on both sides. And in a moment, seeing
+this and being Americans, both laughed. But none the less the overseer
+demanded that they should go to the big house. Tom, protesting, but
+apparently half-yielding, edged along until he was near the
+landing-platform. Then, shouting "Come on, boys!" he ran to it, the
+frightened negroes following at his heels and Towser running ahead. He
+hustled them into the boat at the eastern end of the pier, jumped in
+himself, jerked the rope off the wooden peg that insecurely held it, and
+pushed off. The overseer, angrily protesting, stood a moment watching
+his prey escape and then galloped like mad for the big house, shouting
+"Yanks! spies!! thieves!!! Yanks!!!!" He was met halfway by half a dozen
+men in Confederate gray, roused by his yells. They were officers who had
+spent the night at the hospitable house, had breakfasted at daybreak,
+and were just about to mount for their day's march when the overseer
+gave the alarm. It was lucky for the fugitives that officers do not
+carry anything bigger than pistols. A fusillade of revolver-bullets all
+fell short of the fleeing mark. Tom and Morris were pulling an oar
+apiece--they had found but two in the boat--with a desperate energy. But
+it was unlucky for the fugitives that they had not thought to steal or
+to scuttle the other two boats. This was Tom's fault, for he was
+captain.
+
+"I'll know better next time," said Tom to himself ruefully, as he saw
+three men spring into each boat for the pursuit. "I'll know better next
+time--if there ever is a next time."
+
+It did not seem likely that there would be a next time. One of the
+pursuing boats fell behind, to be sure. In it, too, there were but two
+oars and the men who plied them could not match the black man and the
+white boy who rowed for freedom's sake and life's sake. But in the other
+boat, two strong men each pulled two oars, while the third man crouched
+in the bow, pistol in hand, calling out steering instructions. This boat
+gained upon them, bit by bit. The fugitives could hear the lookout call
+"Port, hard-a-port!" and could almost see the extra weight thrown into
+the sweep of the starboard oars to send the boat's head the right way.
+Once the man at the bow took a chance on a long shot. His bullet fell
+harmlessly two hundred feet astern of Towser who stood in the stern of
+the fleeing boat, barking savagely. Thrice they turned a sharp bend and
+were out of sight of their enemy for a moment, but each time there was a
+shorter interval before the enemy shot into sight behind them. A fourth
+point lay just ahead. Tom looked back over his shoulder and measured the
+distance with his eye.
+
+"We can just make that next point," he panted. "Soon as we do, we'll
+land and run. It's our only chance."
+
+"I kain't run," said Uncle Moses, "but you'se right, Massa Tom. Dey'll
+catch us ef we keep a-rowin'."
+
+They had almost reached the bend. Another strong pull would have sent
+them around it. But the pursuers had now so gained upon them that the
+lookout chanced another shot. By chance or by skill, it was a very good
+shot. The bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade. The blade
+dropped off as Tom was putting every ounce of his failing strength into
+a prodigious pull. The handle, released from all pressure, flew through
+the air and Tom rolled over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a
+shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent to their work with a
+fierce vigor, feeling the victory won. Morris gave one last pull with
+his one oar and it sent the boat around the bend.
+
+"And dere," as Uncle Moses with widespread arms used to tell the tale
+thereafter, "and dere wuz Massa Lincum's gunboats, a-crowdin' ob de
+ribber--'n de Stars-'n-Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky!"
+
+[Illustration: TOWSER]
+
+And so Unk' Mose and Morris came to their freedom and Tom came to his
+own. Towser became Tom's own. Uncle Moses insisted upon this and Towser
+highly approved of it. The giant hound worshiped the boy. Morris was
+speedily put to work driving a four-mule team for the commissary
+department of General Mitchell's force. He was accustomed to having food
+and lodging doled out to him, so it seemed quite natural to be given
+sleeping quarters (usually under the canvas cover of the wagon he drove)
+and rations, but it took him some months to recover from the shock of
+actually being paid wages for his work. When this too became natural, he
+felt that he was really free. Uncle Moses was too old for that sort of
+thing. He was bewildered by the rough and teeming life of an army-camp.
+He clung to Tom, was as devoted to him as Towser was, and much more
+helpless than the dog was. Towser made friends and important friends at
+once. It happened that food was rather short at headquarters the day
+after the fugitives found safety. Tom, waiting for a chance to go North,
+had been asked to share the tent of a staff-officer and to eat at
+headquarters' mess. An hour before dinner, one of his hosts was
+bewailing the scanty fare they were to have when Towser sidled around
+the corner of the tent with a fat chicken in his mouth and laid it with
+respectful devotion at his master's feet. There was a shout of applause
+and a roar from the assembled officers of "Good dog, good dog, Towser,
+do it again!" Whereupon, after some majestic wags of his mighty tail, he
+disappeared for a few minutes and did do it again. When the second
+chicken was laid at Tom's feet, Towser's position was assured. He was
+named an orderly by acclamation and was given a collar made of an old
+army belt, with the magic letters "U. S. A." upon it, a collar which he
+wore proudly through his happy life.
+
+Tom, who felt quite rich when his arrears of pay were handed him,
+decided to give himself a treat by making Uncle Moses happy. That is the
+best kind of treat man or boy can give himself. Make somebody else happy
+and you will be happy yourself. Try it and see. So, when he finally
+started back for Cairo and Washington he took both Uncle Moses and
+Towser with him. Neither of them had ever been on a railroad train
+before. Equally bewildered and equally happy, they sped by steam across
+the thousand miles between Cairo and Washington. In those days dogs
+could travel with their masters, without being banished to the
+baggage-car. As the three neared the latter city, the great dome of the
+Capitol sprang into sight. Tom eagerly pointed it out.
+
+"Look, Uncle Mose, look, Towser, there's the Capitol."
+
+"Dat's Freedum's home," murmured Unk' Mose.
+
+And Towser, stirred by the others' emotion, barked joyfully. He felt at
+home, too, because he was with Tom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF LINCOLN--THE
+     EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES
+     RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE
+     RUSSIAN FLEET COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER.
+
+
+Tom neared the White House with a beating heart. He had done what
+Lincoln had bade him do. The dispatches had been carried safely and had
+been put into General Grant's hands. But he had taken a rather large
+advantage of the President's smiling suggestion that he might
+occasionally slip into a fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteered
+to go with Andrews on the railroad raid, which was to take a week, and
+he had been away for many weeks, during which he had been carried on the
+army-rolls as "missing." Would the President think of him as a truant,
+who had run away and stayed away from duty? John Hay's welcome of him
+was frigid. The boy's heart went down into his boots. But it sprang up
+into his mouth when he was ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted
+with the winning smile he knew so well and to be congratulated both on
+his bravery in going with Andrews and on his good fortune in finally
+getting back to the Union lines.
+
+The President was not alone when Tom entered the room. There sat beside
+the desk a middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes red with weeping,
+her rusty black dress spotted with recent tears. Her thin hands were
+nervously twisting the petition someone had prepared for her to present
+to the President. She looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he
+turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk with her which Tom's
+entrance had interrupted.
+
+"So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" he
+asked.
+
+"No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the woman. "He said--he said it
+was time to make an example and that my boy Jim ought to be shot and
+would be shot at--at--sunrise tomorrow."
+
+The sentence ended in a wail and the woman crumpled up into a heap and
+slid down to the floor at the President's feet. She had gained one
+moment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the only son of his mother and she a
+widow," had overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried before a
+court-martial of elderly officers who were tired of hearing the
+frivolous excuses of careless boys for not coming back promptly to the
+front, had been found guilty of desertion, and had been sentenced to be
+shot in a week. Six days the mother had haunted the crowded anteroom of
+the stern Secretary of War, bent beneath the burden of her woe. Admitted
+at last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life had been ruthlessly
+refused.
+
+"The life of the nation is at stake, madam," Stanton had growled at her.
+"We must keep the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life to that
+of our country? It is unfortunate," the grim Secretary's tones grew
+softer at the sight of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunate
+that the life happens to be that of your boy, but an example is needed
+and an example there shall be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise.
+Good-day."
+
+He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing mother was ushered out and
+the next person on the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards she was
+with Lincoln. There was no six days' wait at the White House for the
+mother of a Union soldier.
+
+When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom sprang to help her, but the
+President was quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her like a
+child and laid her upon a sofa. He touched a bell and sent word to Mrs.
+Lincoln asking her to come to him. When she did so, she took charge of
+Mrs. Jenkins and speedily revived her. But it was the President, not his
+wife, who completed the cure and saved the weeping woman's reason from
+wreck and her life from long anguish. He pointed to the petition which
+had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor.
+
+"Hand me that paper, Tom."
+
+He put on his spectacles and started to read it. The glasses grew misty
+with the tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna
+handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and wrote beneath it in bold
+letters: "This man is pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held the
+petition close to the sofa so that the first thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as
+she came back to consciousness in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins's
+pardon. It was that blessed news which made her herself again. She broke
+into a torrent of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved aside.
+
+"You see, ma'am," said the President, "I don't believe the way to keep
+the fighting ranks full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's
+been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb: 'Never drown a boy
+baby.' I guess that means that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to
+give him a chance not to make another. You tell Jim from me to do
+better after this. Tom, you take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and
+show him that little line of mine. He won't like it very much. Usually
+he has his own way, but sometimes I have mine and this happens to be one
+of those times. Glad you came to see me, Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of
+things you can do to an American boy that are better than shooting him.
+Here's a little note you can read later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a
+bit. Good-by--and God bless you."
+
+Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her happiness, to the War
+Department, where the formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins
+back to the front, resolute to pay his country for the life the
+President had given him. Only when the order had been entered did the
+mother remember the envelope clutched in her hand which the President
+had given her. It contained no words, unless it be true that "money
+talks." It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had spent her last
+cent on her journey to Washington and her six days' stay there. Abraham
+Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and happiness. When once
+again she had occasion to weep over her son, a year later, her tears
+were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins died a hero's death at
+Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide of
+the Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate commander,
+saw the surge of his splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks of
+the Union line, in the heart of the North. The bullet that killed Jim
+Jenkins tore through the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always wore over
+his heart. And Lincoln found time in that great hour of the country's
+salvation to turn aside from the myriad duties of every day long enough
+to write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter about her dead son's gift of his
+life to his country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and of a wondrous
+consolation, which was buried with the soldier's mother not long
+afterwards, when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier son.
+
+Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a typical one. Everybody
+hated to come in contact with the surly Secretary. One day, when Private
+Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came into the offices with a letter in
+his hand and a cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants me to take
+some people to see Stanton," he said. "I would rather make the tour of a
+smallpox hospital."
+
+Lincoln always shrank from studying the records of court-martials, but
+he often had to do so, that justice or injustice might be tempered by
+mercy. He caught at every chance of showing mercy. A man had been
+sentenced to be shot for cowardice.
+
+"Oh, I won't approve that," said the President. "'He who fights and runs
+away, may live to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is a
+coward, it would frighten him too terribly to shoot him."
+
+The next case was that of a deserter. After sentence, he had escaped and
+had reached Mexico.
+
+"I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln commented. "We can't catch
+him, you see. We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana,
+'as they run.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this time the fortunes of war were not favoring the North. There were
+days of doubt, days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse of the
+President sounded from many Northern newspapers. Its keynote was struck
+by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_ and the foremost
+man in a group of great editors such as the country has never seen
+since. They were Horace Greeley of the _Tribune_, Henry J. Raymond of
+the _New York Times_, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.)
+_Republican_. Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan"; Raymond
+demanded that he be "superseded" as President; and Greeley, in a letter
+that was published in England and that greatly harmed the Union cause,
+said Lincoln ruled "a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."
+
+In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three were household words and names
+by which to conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln pierced his
+heart, but his gentle patience never gave way. He bore with their
+well-meant but unjust criticism as he bore with so much else in those
+dark days, careless of hurt to himself, if he could but serve his
+country and do his duty as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one
+great duty and this he did. On September 22, 1862, he signed his famous
+Emancipation Proclamation, which with its sequence the Thirteenth
+Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ended forever slavery
+wherever the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days of that great
+September, even a boy could feel in the tense atmosphere of the White
+House that some great event was impending. Nobody knew upon just what
+the master mind was brooding, but the whole world was to know it soon.
+It was not until Lincoln had written with his own hand in the solitude
+of his own room the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves that he
+called together his Cabinet, not to advise him about it, but to hear
+from him what he had resolved to do. The messenger who summoned the
+Cabinet officials to that historic session was none other than Uncle
+Moses. Tom of course had long since told the story of his flight for
+freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted attack at the very nick of
+time upon the overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of the old
+negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring Moses to see him and Moses emerged
+from that interview the proudest darkey in the world, for he was made a
+messenger and general utility man at the White House. Part of his duty
+was to keep in order the room where the Cabinet met and to summon its
+members when a meeting of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly but
+majestically from the White House to the different Departments, bearing
+a message from the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a very
+different person from the Unk' Mose who had cared for Tom and Morris in
+the Alabama canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man. On these little
+journeys, Tad Lincoln often went with him, his small white hand
+clutching one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although Moses knew
+nothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting at
+which the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day of
+his life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a
+great event in the world's history.
+
+"I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say with
+ever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, he
+came to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet,
+instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which the
+Proclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. So
+Unk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residence
+of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. He
+wrote that evening in his diary: "They all seemed to feel a sort of new
+and exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's Proclamation
+had freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called
+themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of
+appropriating that horrible name." The Proclamation made it respectable
+to be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until it
+succeeds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man has
+made a New Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in
+bondage--emancipation was to take place wherever the Stars-and-Stripes
+flew on January 1, 1863--such a man must have a wonderful glow of
+reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keen
+eye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.
+
+Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's office. Lincoln
+was stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long
+legs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foot
+telescope to his eyes, its other end resting upon his toes. He was
+looking at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news did
+they bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head,
+called out: "Come in, Tommy."
+
+Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, a
+telegram in his hand, saying:
+
+"Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He is
+behaving very badly."
+
+"Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busy
+to quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll
+never hear of it."
+
+He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds.
+
+That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and Hay had asked him to spend the
+evening, after the household had gone to bed, in their office. Crackers
+and cheese and a jug of milk were the refreshments and John Hay's talk
+was the delight of the little gathering. Midnight had just struck when
+the door opened quietly and the President slipped into the room. Never
+had Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he had on was a short
+nightshirt and carpet-slippers. He was smiling as he entered.
+
+"Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the 'Biglow Papers.' That fellow
+Lowell knows how to put things. Just hear this. He puts these Yankee
+words into Jeff Davis's mouth:
+
+    "'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over
+    Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done
+    Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day
+    Consists in triumphantly gettin' away!'
+
+And here," continued the President, utterly unaware of the oddity of his
+garb, "and here is a good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the
+'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear this:
+
+    "'An' why should we kick up a muss
+        About the Pres'dent's proclamation?
+    It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us
+        Ef we don't like emancipation.
+    The right to be a cussed fool
+        Is safe from all devices human.
+    It's common (ez a gin'l rule)
+        To every critter born o' woman.'"
+
+Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly unconscious," says Hay's
+diary, "that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs and
+setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was
+infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at."
+
+"That fellow Lowell" was James Russell Lowell, an American critic, poet,
+and essayist, later our Minister to England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day Tom had a welcome letter from his father, saying he was on his
+way home and would be in Washington almost as soon as his letter was.
+The letter was written from St. Petersburg and had upon its envelope
+Russian stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp before. He showed the
+envelope as a curiosity to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's
+eager request gave it to him. Tom happened to lunch with the Lincoln
+family that day. Tad produced his new possession at the table, crying to
+his mother:
+
+"See what Tommy has given me."
+
+"Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs. Lincoln.
+
+"My father," the boy answered. "He sent me good news. He's coming home
+right away."
+
+"Your father sent me good news, too," said Mr. Lincoln from the head of
+the table.
+
+"What was that?" interjected the first lady of the land.
+
+"You shall know soon, my dear." Then the beautiful smile came to the
+President's firm lips and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said
+to Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans could give to a fellow-citizen
+was to decree that he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That can be
+said of your father now. He has deserved well of the Republic. Before
+long, the world will know what he has done. Until then," he turned as he
+spoke to his wife, "until then we'd better not talk about it."
+
+This talk was in early June of 1863. By September the whole world, or at
+least all the governments of the world, did know what Mr. Strong had
+done after Lincoln sent him abroad. The whole world saw the symbol of
+his work, without in many cases knowing what the symbol signified. That
+symbol was the famous visit of the Russian fleet to New York City in
+September of 1863.
+
+The governing classes of both England and France were in favor of the
+South during our Civil War. The English and French Empires were jealous
+of the growth of the Republic and wished to see it torn asunder. France
+hoped to establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France, if the
+Confederacy won. England needed Southern cotton and could not get it
+unless our blockade of Southern ports was broken. The people of both
+France and England had little to say as to what their governments would
+do. Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side and the mass of
+Englishmen were also on our side, but the latter were helpless in the
+grip of their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their belief,
+however, splendidly. In the height of what was called "the cotton
+famine," when the Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the fleecy
+staple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives were facing actual
+starvation, a tiny group of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas
+Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout Lancashire on behalf of the
+Northern cause. There was to be a great meeting at Manchester, in the
+heart of the stricken district. The cost of hall, lights, advertising,
+etc., was considerable. Someone suggested charging an admission fee. It
+was objected that the unemployed poor could not afford to pay anything.
+Finally it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with placards saying
+that anyone who chose could give something towards the cost of the
+meeting. When it was over, the baskets were found to hold over four
+bushels of pennies and ha'pennies. The starving poor of Lancashire had
+given them, not out of their abundance, but out of their grinding want.
+
+This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.
+
+The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon the Little," as the great
+French poet and novelist, Victor Hugo, called him, asked England to
+have the English fleet join the French fleet in breaking our blockade
+and in making Slavery triumph. England hesitated before the proposed
+crime, but finally said it was inclined to follow the Napoleonic lead,
+if Russia would do likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote what is
+called a holographic letter, that is, a letter entirely in his own
+handwriting, to the then Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his
+fleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.
+
+Russia was then a despotism, with one despot. It was not only a European
+and an Asiatic Power, but an American Power as well, for it did not sell
+Alaska to the United States until 1867. Despotism does not like to see
+Liberty flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty is a
+contagious thing. Might not the American example infect Alaska, spread
+through Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne at St.
+Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the work of our Minister to Russia
+and of our extra-official representative there, the Hon. Thomas Strong,
+Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian Czar wrote the French Emperor
+that the Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed attack upon
+the Northern navy, but that on the contrary it was about to sail for New
+York in order that its commander might place it at the disposal of the
+President of the United States in case any Franco-English squadron
+appeared with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.
+
+This was the beginning of the traditional friendship between America and
+Russia. It explains why New York and Washington went mad in those
+September days of 1863 in welcoming the Russian fleet and the Russian
+officers. It explains why Lincoln told Tom that his father had "deserved
+well of the Republic."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at about this time that John Hay once asked Tom:
+
+"What do you think of the Tycoon by this time, my boy?"
+
+"Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were names his rather irreverent secretaries
+had given Lincoln. Nevertheless they both reverenced and loved him.
+Their nicknames for him were born of affection.
+
+"Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite know how to put into fitting
+words all he felt about his chief. But John Hay, who was never much
+interested in the opinion on anything of anybody but himself, went on:
+
+"I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods Jupiter. He sits here
+and wields both the machinery of government and the bolts of war. A
+backwoods Jupiter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+     TOM GOES TO VICKSBURG--MORGAN'S RAID--GEN. BASIL W. DUKE CAPTURES
+     TOM--GETTYSBURG--GEN. ROBERT E. LEE GIVES TOM HIS BREAKFAST--IN
+     LIBBY PRISON--LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG.
+
+
+Late in June of 1863 Tom again left General Grant's headquarters. These
+were then in the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The long siege of
+that town, held by a considerable Confederate force under General
+Pemberton, was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at the death, but
+that could not be. He had been sent with dispatches to Grant and this
+time there had been no suggestion by the President that he might fight a
+bit if he felt like it. So he was now again on his way to Washington. He
+was a long time getting there, nearly a year; and this was the way of
+it.
+
+July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant and daring Confederate
+cavalry commander, got his troops across the Cumberland River at
+Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats and canoes lashed
+together. None but he and his second in command knew whither the
+proposed raid was to lead. People about their starting-point thought
+Morgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creek
+went along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a
+"salt-lick" a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines.
+He expected to go and come back safely with Morgan's men. After he had
+been through a few marches and more fights and saw no chance of ever
+getting home, he plaintively said: "I swar ef I wouldn't give all the
+salt in Kaintucky to stand once more safe and sound on the banks of
+Calfkills Creek."
+
+Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had not reckoned upon John H.
+Morgan, general C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward from
+Cairo. No one dreamed that Morgan would dare do what he did do. The
+Confederate cavalry rode northward across Kentucky, with one or two
+skirmishes per day to keep it busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for
+the South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati. It threw southern
+Indiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damage
+such as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men were
+Americans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms was
+killed. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies were
+taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn up, and a clean sweep
+was made of all the horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry was in
+sad need of new horses. The Union officer who led the pursuit of Morgan
+said, in his official report: "His system of horse-stealing was
+perfect." But so far as war can be a Christian thing Morgan made it so.
+
+Now the railroad which suffered most from the Confederate raid was the
+one upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had taken came
+to a sudden stop at a way-station in Ohio, where a red flag was
+furiously waved.
+
+"Morgan's torn up the track just ahead," shouted the man who held the
+flag.
+
+Nothing more could be learned there and then. Of course the raiders had
+cut the wires. By and by fugitives began to straggle in from the
+eastward, farmers who had fled from their farms driving their horses
+before them, villagers who feared the sack and ruin that really came to
+no one, women and children on foot, on horseback, in carts, in wagons,
+in buggies. Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell, but nobody
+really knew anything. Tom questioned each newcomer. Piecing together
+what they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that the
+track had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that
+the quickest way for him to get to Washington was to walk across the
+short gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could find
+no one who would go with him, even as a guide, but well-meant directions
+were showered upon him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten warnings
+to one direction. The railroad, however, was his best guide-post. He
+started eastward, riding a horse he had bought from one of the
+fugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen hands high, but the
+price Tom paid for him was a good deal higher than the horse.
+
+All went well at first. He soon reached the place where the Confederates
+had wrecked the railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every little
+bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails and ties had been torn up, the
+ties massed together and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the burning
+ties and twisted by the heat into sinuous snakes of iron. Occasionally a
+hot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set of
+loops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. The
+telegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into a
+broken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirely
+disappeared. Doubtless these had been thrown into the little streams
+which the burned bridges had spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as
+if some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake had co-operated in
+its destruction. It would be many a day before a train could again run
+upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a railroad was almost as perfect as
+his system of horse-stealing.
+
+A country-road wandered along beside where the railroad had been, so
+Tom's progress was easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke, but the
+little streams were shallow and could be forded without difficulty, for
+June had been rainless and hot that year. The few houses the boy passed
+were shut-up and deserted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countryside
+bare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of a
+region normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to
+see a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind,
+but he was still in an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as dusk came,
+he rejoiced to see the gleam of a candle in a farmhouse not far ahead.
+He was so sure Morgan's whole command was by this time far to the
+northward that he galloped gayly up to the house--and, perforce,
+presented to the Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the entire
+raid.
+
+The gleam had come from a back window. The whole front of the house was
+closed, but that is common in rustic places and Tom was sure he would
+find the family in the kitchen, with both food and news to give him.
+Instead he found just outside the kitchen, as he and the big bay turned
+the corner, a group of dismounted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A
+mounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon,
+was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bent
+close to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of the
+men was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared and plunged
+and kicked. The rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from the
+saddle and landed on his hands and knees before the group. It was rather
+an abject position in which to be captured. The Southerners roared with
+good-humored laughter as they picked him up. Even the officer smiled at
+the boy's plight.
+
+Before the men, on a table outside the kitchen door, lay a half-dozen
+appetizing apple pies, evidently of that day's baking. The farmer's
+wife, before she fled, had put them there with the hope that they might
+propitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house from
+destruction. She did not know that Morgan's men did not make war that
+way. Those of them who had come there suspected a trap in this open
+offer of the pies.
+
+"They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.
+
+At that moment, when they were hesitating between hunger and fear, Tom
+butted in upon them and was seized.
+
+"Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a second soldier when the
+little scurry of the capture was over. This met instant approval and
+Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward to the table when the
+officer spoke, with a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend as
+well as the commander of his rude soldiery.
+
+"I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a pie."
+
+He bit with strong white teeth through the savory morsel and detected no
+foreign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of them down
+Tom's hungry throat. Then the officer spoke to him.
+
+"Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that uniform somewhere, didn't
+you? You're too young to wear it by right. Who are you?"
+
+He was a man of medium height, spare but splendidly built, with his face
+bronzed by long campaigning in the open air, regular features, piercing
+black eyes that twinkled, but could shoot fire, waving black hair above
+a beautiful brow, dazzling white teeth--altogether a vivid man. His
+mustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln
+was plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southern
+aristocrat, the other the son of a Southern poor white, an elusive
+resemblance. It may have been the innate nobleness and kindliness of
+both men. It may have been the Kentucky blood which was their common
+portion. At any rate, the resemblance was there.
+
+[Illustration: From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
+               GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES]
+
+Tom took one glance at the chief of his captors and then saluted with
+real respect as he replied:
+
+"I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant, U. S. A."
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it. We don't make war on boys. If
+you had been, as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I would have
+turned you loose at once. Now I must take you with us."
+
+Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with Tom, disarmed but unbound,
+in the middle of it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards ahead of
+it the officer rode with a free bridle rein, chatting with an aide
+beside him. He rode like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the finest
+soldiers he had ever seen. And so he was. He was Gen. Basil W. Duke,
+brother-in-law, second in command, and historian of General Morgan. He
+was a soldier and a gentleman, if ever God made one.
+
+A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost constant fighting, much of it
+with home-guards and militia who feared Morgan too much to fight him
+hard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers who fought as good Americans
+should, Morgan crossed the Ohio again into the comparative safety of
+West Virginia. He took across with him his few prisoners, including Tom.
+Then, finding that the mass of his brigade had been cut off from
+crossing, the Confederate general detached a dozen men to take the
+prisoners south while he himself with most of the troopers with him
+recrossed to where danger beckoned. On July 26, 1862, at Salineville,
+Ohio, not far from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered, he
+surrendered with the 364 men who were all that were left of his gallant
+band. Our government made the mistake of treating him and his officers
+not as captured soldiers but as arrested bandits. They were sent to the
+Ohio State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a daring escape not long
+afterwards. He made his way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile, Tom
+had been taken to captivity on that same soil. He was in Libby Prison,
+at the Confederate Capital, Richmond, Virginia.
+
+His journey thither had been long and hard and uneventful, except for
+the gradual loss of the few things he had with him. His pistol and his
+money had been taken when he was first captured. Now, as he was turned
+over to one Confederate command after another, bit by bit his belongings
+disappeared. His boots went early in the journey. His cap was plucked
+from his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by a Confederate spy, who
+meant to use it in getting inside the Union lines. When he was finally
+turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief Confederate army,
+commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and had
+nothing to wear except an old Confederate gray shirt and the ragged
+remains of what had once been a pair of Confederate gray trousers, held
+about his waist by a string. He was hungry and tired and unbelievably
+dirty. The one good meal he had had on his long march had been given him
+at Frederick, Maryland, by a delightful old lady whom Tom always
+believed to be Barbara Frietchie.
+
+It was August now. On July 4, Grant had taken Vicksburg and Meade had
+defeated Lee at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy had begun to
+dawn. None the less Robert E. Lee's tattered legions, forced back from
+the great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn defense of Richmond,
+trusted, worshiped, and loved their great general.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meade, the Union commander, by excess of caution, had let Lee escape
+after Gettysburg. He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln was
+deeply grieved.
+
+"We had them within our grasp," he said, throwing out his long arms. "We
+had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours. And nothing I
+could say or do could make our army move."
+
+Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of New York, a gallant fighter,
+one of the corps commanders who had tried to spur the too-prudent Meade
+into attacking, came to the White House.
+
+"Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly asked him.
+
+"Because nobody stopped him."
+
+And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been stopped, the war would
+have ended nearly two years before it did end. It is a wonderful proof
+of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that though he repeated: "Our
+army held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not close
+it," he added at once: "Still, I am very, very grateful to Meade for the
+great service he did at Gettysburg."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lee was a son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, the daring cavalry commander
+of the Revolution and the author of the immortal phrase about
+Washington: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
+his countrymen." Robert E. Lee had had an honorable career at West Point
+and in the war with Mexico and was Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers in
+the United States army when the war between the States began. He loved
+his country and her flag, but he had been bred in the belief that his
+loyalty was due first to Virginia rather than to the Union. When the Old
+Dominion, after first refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut.-Col.
+Lee, U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great efforts were made to
+keep him on the Union side. It is said he was offered the chief command
+of our army. Sadly he did his duty as he saw it. He put aside the offers
+made him, resigned his commission, and left Arlington for Richmond.
+
+Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union soldiers, crowns a hill on the
+Virginia side of the Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its feet.
+The valley of the Potomac spreads before it. From the portico of the
+old-fashioned house, a portico upheld by many columns, one can look
+towards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but hid from sight by
+clustering hills. The house was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke
+Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was his aide at Yorktown in
+1783, and grandson of Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in 1858,
+directed in his will that his slaves should be freed in five years. Lee,
+his son-in-law and executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and gave
+them passes through the Confederate lines. He had already given freedom
+to his own slaves. Long before the war, he wrote from Fort Brown, Texas,
+to his wife: "In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but will
+acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political
+evil in any country.... I think it is a greater evil to the white than
+the black race."
+
+[Illustration: ARLINGTON
+               Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. New York.]
+
+Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four Virginians. He ranks with
+George Washington, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No praise could
+be greater. When "the Lost Cause," as the Southerners fondly call their
+great fight for what they believed to be right, reeled down to decisive
+defeat, the general whom they had worshiped in war proved himself a
+great patriot in peace. His last years were passed as President of
+Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Long before his death, his
+name was honored by every fair-minded man on the Northern as well as the
+Southern side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the noblest eulogies of
+him was voiced upon the centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, at
+Washington and Lee University, by Charles Francis Adams. The best blood
+of Massachusetts honored the best blood of Virginia. Our country was
+then again one country and all of it was free.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tom Strong was standing with a group of other prisoners, all Northern
+officers, under guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at Lee's
+headquarters. These were upon a little knoll, from which the eye ranged
+over the long lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush that gave
+such shelter as they could to the ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions
+of the Confederacy. It was early in the morning. Scanty breakfasts were
+cooking over a thousand fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters, there
+came an odor of bubbling coffee that made the prisoners' hunger the
+harder to bear. The whole camp was strangely silent.
+
+Then, in the distance, there was a storm of cheering. It gained in sound
+and shrillness. The soldiers poured out of their tents by the thousand.
+Those who had hats waved them; those who had not waved their arms; and
+every throat joined in the famous "rebel yell." Through the shouting
+thousands rode a half-dozen superbly mounted horsemen, at their head a
+gallant figure, with close-cropped white beard, whiskers, and mustache,
+seated upon a superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the famous
+Traveler.
+
+[Illustration: GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER]
+
+It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the Confederacy. Even his iron
+self-control almost broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which he
+was hailed by the survivors of the gallant gray army he had launched in
+vain against the bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush almost as
+red as that of youth crept across his pale cheeks and a mist crept into
+his eyes. His charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll where the
+Union prisoners were huddled together. As his glance swept over them,
+he noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy who stood in the
+front line. Many a boy as young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks
+Lee led. Many an old man bent under the weight of his gun in those
+ranks. The Confederacy, by this time almost bled white, was said to
+have "robbed the cradle and the grave" to keep its armies at fighting
+strength. The North, with many more millions of people, had not been
+driven to do this. Tom was one of the few boys in the armies of the
+Union.
+
+"Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked Traveler before the group.
+
+"Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy.
+
+"Your rank?"
+
+"Second-lieutenant, sir."
+
+"Where were you captured?"
+
+"In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan."
+
+Tom was faint with hunger as he was put through this little catechism.
+As he made the last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner, Col.
+Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught and held him. Lee misunderstood
+the movement. His lip curled with disgust as he said:
+
+"Are you--a boy--drunk?"
+
+Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose and a half-dozen others
+answered for him.
+
+"Not drunk, but hungry, General."
+
+"I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian replied, "but at least you
+shall be hungry no longer. My staff and I will postpone our breakfast
+until you have eaten. Pompey!" An old negro came out of the cook-tent.
+He had been one of George Washington Parke Custis's slaves. When freed,
+he had refused to leave "Marse Robert," whose cook he had become. He
+wore the remains of a Confederate uniform. "Pompey, give these
+gentlemen our breakfast. We will wait."
+
+"But--but--Marse Robert, I'se dun got real coffee dis mornin'."
+
+"Our involuntary guests," said Lee with a gentle smile as he turned to
+the prisoners, "will, I hope, enjoy the real coffee."
+
+And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread and bacon that came with it
+were nectar and ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only fleck upon
+the feast was when one of them, in his hurry to be served, spoke rudely
+to old Pompey. The negro turned away without a word, but his feelings
+were deeply hurt. When the Union officer hurled after him a word of foul
+abuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand upon his ragged uniform, and
+said:
+
+"I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah, but you must 'speck de
+unicorn."
+
+After that the "unicorn" and the fine old negro who wore it were both
+amply respected. When everything in sight had been eaten, the prisoners
+were ordered to fall in line. Their guards stood in front of the little
+column, beside it, behind it.
+
+"Forward, march!"
+
+They marched southward for a few miles, tramped through the swarming,
+somber streets of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its doors closed
+behind them with a clang. Captivity in the open had been hard enough to
+bear. This new kind of captivity, within doors, with barred windows, was
+to be harder yet. Tom was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln made his wonderful
+Gettysburg speech.
+
+The battlefield of Gettysburg was made sacred by the men who died there
+for Freedom's sake and also by the men who died there for the sake of
+what they honestly thought were the rights of the Slave States. Congress
+made the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to be dedicated to its
+great memories on November 19, 1863. The morning before a special train
+left Washington for Gettysburg. It carried President Lincoln, Secretary
+of State Seward, two other members of the Cabinet, the two private
+secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished Pennsylvanian, Wayne
+MacVeagh, later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our Minister to
+Italy, and others of lesser note. Among those latter was the Hon. Thomas
+Strong, who had been made one of the party by Lincoln's kind
+thoughtfulness. It was he who afterwards told his son the story of
+Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the moment, but long
+since recognized as one of the masterpieces of English literature.
+
+The little town of Gettysburg was in a ferment that November night, when
+the President's train arrived. It was full of people and bands and
+whisky. Crowds strolled through the streets, serenading statesmen and
+calling for speeches with an American crowd's insatiable appetite for
+talky-talk. "MacVeagh," says Hay, "made a most beautiful and touching
+speech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian made a most
+disgusting and drunken speech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of his
+party of course had no share in all this brawling merriment. He and
+Seward had talked briefly to shouting thousands early in the evening.
+
+On the way up from Washington, the President had sat in a sad
+abstraction. He took little part in the talk that buzzed about him.
+Once, when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming about the way the Southern
+magnates were misleading the Southern masses, Lincoln said with a weary
+smile one of those sayings of his which will never be forgotten. "You
+can fool part of the people all the time; you can fool all the people
+part of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Then
+he became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on the
+morrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts,
+a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. He had been
+Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to England, Secretary of State,
+United States Senator. He was handsome, distinguished, graceful. The
+ungainly President felt that he and his words would be but a foil to
+Everett and his sonorous sentences, sentences that were sure to come
+rolling in like "the surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett had
+graduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log-cabin. Both must face on the
+morrow the same audience.
+
+The President searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil. From
+the aisle of the car, he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper,
+thrown there by Seward, who had just opened a package of books in the
+opposite seat. He penciled a few words, bent his head upon his great
+knotted hand in thought, then penciled a few more. Then he struck out
+some words and added others, read his completed task and did not find it
+good. He shook his head, stuffed the brown wrapping paper into his
+pocket, and took up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh.
+
+At eleven the next morning, from an open-air platform on the
+battlefield, Everett held the vast audience through two hours of fervent
+speech, fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bitterness against
+the men he called "the Southern rebels." His speech was literature and
+his voice was music. As the thunder of his peroration ended a
+thunderstorm of applause began. When it, too, died away, there shambled
+to the front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed man, contrasting
+sharply and in every way disadvantageously with Everett of the silver
+tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too. He tried to pitch his voice
+to reach all that vast audience and his first words came in a squeaking
+falsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lincoln stopped speaking.
+There were a few seconds of painful silence. Then he came to his own.
+With a voice enriched by a passionate sincerity, he began again and
+finished his Gettysburg speech. Here it is:
+
+"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this
+Continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
+proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
+great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so
+conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
+battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a
+final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation
+might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
+But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
+cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
+struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
+to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say
+here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
+living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
+who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to
+be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these
+honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
+here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve
+that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under
+God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the
+people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
+
+The President ceased to speak. There was no thunderstorm of applause
+such as had followed Everett's studied sentences and polished periods.
+There was no applause at all. One long stir of emotion throbbed through
+the silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitude
+dispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of what Lincoln
+had said. Most of the notables on the platform thought the President's
+speech a failure. Time has shown that it was one of the greatest things
+even he ever did.
+
+Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written in her short story "The Perfect
+Tribute" the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy who would know
+what manner of man our Abraham Lincoln was should read "The Perfect
+Tribute." One of the characters in the story, a dying Confederate
+officer, says to Lincoln without knowing to whom he was speaking: "The
+speech so went home to the hearts of all those thousands of people that
+when it ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath--there was
+not a hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud the Lord's
+prayer--it would be sacrilege. And they all felt it--down to the lowest.
+There was a long minute of reverent silence, no sound from all that
+great throng--it seems to me, an enemy, that it was the most perfect
+tribute that has ever been paid by any people to any orator."
+
+The Gettysburg speech was not for the moment. It is for all time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     TOM IS HUNGRY--HE LEARNS TO "SPOON" BY SQUADS--THE BULLET AT THE
+     WINDOW--WORKING ON THE TUNNEL--"RAT HELL"--THE RISK OF THE
+     ROLL-CALL--WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE JOHNSON, CONFEDERATE SPY--TOM IN
+     LIBBY PRISON--HANS ROLF ATTENDS HIM--HANS REFUSES TO ESCAPE--THE
+     FLIGHT THROUGH THE TUNNEL--FREE, BUT HOW TO STAY SO?
+
+
+When the war between the States began, Libby & Son were a thriving firm
+of merchants in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse, which fronted on
+Carey Street and extended back over land that sloped down to another
+street, which occupied all the space between the southern wall of the
+warehouse and the canal that here bordered the James River. The building
+was full before the war of that rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray
+praises in "The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands of the Old
+Dominion can no longer produce.
+
+[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR]
+
+The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to eat. The whole South was
+hungry. When Confederate soldiers were starving, Confederate prisoners
+could not expect to fatten. Nor was this the only evil thing. The prison
+was indescribably unclean. The cellar and the lower floor, upon which no
+prisoners were allowed except in the dining-room in the middle of the
+floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats which climbed upstairs at
+night and nipped mouthfuls of human flesh when they could. There was no
+furniture. The prisoners slept on the floor, so crowded together that
+they had to lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all. They had
+divided themselves into squads and had chosen commanders. Tom found
+himself assigned to Squad Number Four. The first night, when he had at
+last sunk into uncomfortable sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened
+by the sharp command of the captain of his group:
+
+"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to spoon! One, two, spoon!"
+
+The squad flopped over, from one weary bruised side to another. It
+seemed to the worn-out boy that he had just "spooned," when again he
+waked to hear the queer command and again he flopped. This was a sample
+of many nights.
+
+On the following morning Tom had one of the narrow escapes of his life.
+He was leaning against one of the barred windows, looking at the broad
+valley of the James, when he was suddenly seized violently by the arm
+and jerked to one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip that had
+been laid upon it and his knees, sticking through his torn trousers, had
+been barked against the floor, as he was dragged back, but he turned to
+the man who had laid hold of him, not with anger, but with thankfulness.
+For, at the second he had been seized a bullet had whizzed through the
+window just where his head had been. If he had not been jerked away, the
+Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended then and there.
+
+If Tom was not angry, the man was. He glared at him.
+
+"You little fool, don't you know better than that?"
+
+When the boy heard himself called a fool, he did become angry, but after
+all this big person had saved his life, even if he did call him names.
+So he swallowed his wrath--which is an excellent thing to do with
+wrath--and answered quite meekly:
+
+"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look out of the windows?"
+
+"Hasn't anybody told you that?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool." Tom smiled and nodded in
+acceptance of the implied apology. "The sentries outside have orders to
+fire whenever they see anybody at a window. Last week two men were
+killed that way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when I saw you
+looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but it's better to be hurt than to be
+killed. Shake."
+
+The boy wrung the big man's hand and thanked him for his timely aid.
+They strolled together up and down the big room now deserted by most of
+its occupants, who had begun below their patient wait for dinner. The
+man was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an
+intelligent boy in his business. Just then Colonel Rose's business was
+to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet
+it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundred
+intelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a
+most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to
+find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the
+plan a reality. One trouble about the former plans at Libby had been
+that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. There must always
+be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the
+crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the
+crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once
+or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had
+found their first free breath their last, for they had stumbled into a
+trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom.
+More often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without
+warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to
+despair. Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts. He
+planned along new lines. He decided upon absolute secrecy, except for
+the men who were actually to do the work. This work involved a good
+deal of burrowing into holes that must be particularly narrow at first
+and never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get into a hole where a
+stout man could not go. Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men
+could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human mole. He had picked Tom Strong
+for the job. Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy of the plan
+and asked his aid. Tom's shining eyes threatened to tell how important
+the talk was.
+
+"Act as though you were uninterested, my boy," Colonel Rose warned him.
+"Keep your eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."
+
+So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at all his natural appearance.
+He studied the floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it. He
+yawned so prodigiously as to attract the attention he was trying to
+escape. An amateur actor is apt to overact his part. And all the time he
+was listening with a passionate interest to Colonel Rose's story of the
+way to freedom. Of course he was glad to try to help make the hope a
+fact.
+
+That night the work began. The kitchen dining-hall was deserted from 10
+P.M. to 4 A.M., so it was selected as the field of operation. Below the
+kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No opening could be made into that
+without instant detection. On the same floor with the kitchen and just
+east of it was the hospital. That room must be avoided too. Below the
+hospital was an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and all full
+of squealing rats. It was called "Rat Hell." Outside of it was a small
+sewer that led to a larger one which passed under the canal and emptied
+its contents into the James River. These sewers were to be the highway
+to freedom. The first step must be to get from the kitchen to Rat Hell.
+To do this it was necessary to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed
+"S," like this:
+
+[Illustration: Reverse S]
+
+The upper end of the secret passage was to open into the kitchen
+fireplace, the lower into Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the
+secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had just one tool, an old knife.
+One of them owned a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress and
+sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new use now. It was spread upon the
+kitchen hearth in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was pulled
+down upon it. Then the mortar between a dozen bricks at the back of the
+fireplace was cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out of place.
+This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton, Colonel Rose's chief assistant.
+He carefully replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of soot over them.
+He and Rose crept upstairs, carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them,
+and slept through what was left of the night. The next day was an
+anxious time for them. When they went down to the kitchen, where a
+couple of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to them that the marks of
+their toil by night were too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their
+nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody saw what had been done. That
+night, as soon as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton again
+removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn stone behind the fireplace.
+Fortunately the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were pried out of
+the loosened mortar.
+
+Now came Tom's chance to serve the good cause. He was a proud boy, a few
+nights later, when he was permitted to go down to the kitchen with the
+Colonel and the Major, in order that he might creep into the hole they
+had made and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air. He laid upon his
+stomach in the upper part of the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as
+vigorously as it could be plied without making a tell-tale noise. When
+he had widened the passage, one of the men took his place in it and
+drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose in his eagerness got into the
+opening before the lower part of it had been sufficiently enlarged and
+stuck there. It was only by a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom
+finally dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping for breath.
+Finally, after many nights, Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen
+from about a box of food sent a prisoner, had been made into a rope
+ladder. It was hung from the edge of the hole. The three crept
+cautiously down to Rat Hell. This haven did not seem much like heaven.
+With squeals of wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the intruders
+fled up their ladder. They were no match for a myriad rats. Moreover
+they feared lest the noise would bring into the basement the sentry
+whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk outside. So they fled,
+taking their rope-ladder with them, and again, as ever, they replaced
+the bricks and painted them with the friendly soot.
+
+The next night, armed this time with sticks of wood, they fought it out
+with the rats and made them understand their masters had come to stay.
+Fortunately the fight was short. It was noisy and the sentry came. But
+when he opened the door from the street and looked into the darkness of
+the basement, the Union officers were safely hid under the straw and
+only a few of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the tunnel to
+the sewer could be begun. Colonel Rose had long since decided, by
+forbidden, stealthy glances from an upper window, just where it was to
+be. The measurement made above was now made below, the straw against
+the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old knife, or what was left of
+it after its battle with brick and stone, was put to the easier task of
+digging dirt.
+
+[Illustration: FIGHTING THE RATS
+
+From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War."
+
+The Century Co.]
+
+Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before the tunnel was five feet
+long, the air in it became so foul that candles went out in it. So would
+the lives of the diggers have gone out if they had stayed in it long.
+Five of the fifteen now went down each night, so that everybody had two
+nights' rest out of three. But the progress made was pitifully slow. Man
+after man was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous pit, almost at
+his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton had been brought out and was being
+fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom, the boy whispered:
+
+"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"
+
+Nobody had thought of that obvious plan. Like most great inventions it
+was simple--when seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at the end
+of the tunnel fanning air into it with their hats. But even so, many a
+candle went out and many a digger was pulled out, black in the face and
+almost dead.
+
+The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to reach the sewer. It sloped
+too far down. It got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton was
+caught in it by the rush of water and almost drowned. So much work had
+to be done over again. Then came a crushing blow. When the small sewer
+was finally reached, it proved to be too small for a man to pass through
+it. But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by bit taken off. When
+this had been done to within a few feet of the main sewer, two men were
+detailed to cut their way through. The next night was set as the time
+for the escape. None of the thirteen slept while the two were cutting
+away the final obstacle. The thirteen did not sleep the next night
+either, for it was 36 hours before the two came back with their
+heartbreaking news. They had found the last few feet of the sewer-lining
+made of seasoned oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The poor
+old knife that had served them so long and so well, could not even
+scratch the toughened oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had ended
+in failure.
+
+Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new problem. There were two
+roll-calls every day, at 9 A.M. and 4 P.M. How were the two absent men
+to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in one long line and everybody
+was counted. If the count were two short, there would be swift search
+for the missing. And the beginning of the tunnel was hidden only by a
+few bundles of straw. This was before they knew the tunnel was useless,
+but had they known it they would have been scarcely less anxious, for
+its discovery would have made all future attempts to escape more
+dangerous and more doubtful. However, the roll-call problem was safely
+solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper end of the line and two of
+them, as soon as they had answered to their own names, dropped back,
+crouched down, crept behind the backs of many men to the other end of
+the line, slipped into place, and there answered for the missing men,
+without detection. In the afternoon, they came very near being caught.
+Some of the other prisoners thought this was being done just for fun, to
+confuse the Confederate clerk who called the roll, and thought they
+would take a hand in the fun too. There was so much dodging and double
+answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored little clerk, lost his
+temper and ordered the captives to stand in squads of ten to be counted.
+By this time he had called the roll half a dozen times, with results
+varying from minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his order, an order
+obedience to which would have certainly told the tale of two absentees,
+he went on to explain why he gave it.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho'; there's eight or ten of you-uns
+yere that ain't yere."
+
+This remarkable statement brought a shout of laughter from the
+Confederate guards. The prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself
+caught the contagion and also began to laugh.
+
+[Illustration: From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
+
+     SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL
+
+     1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4.
+     Chickamauga room (upper); 5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6.
+     Dining-room; 7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg
+     room (upper); 9. Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11.
+     East or "Rat Hell" cellar; 12. South side Canal street, ten feet
+     lower than Carey street; 13. North side Carey street, ground
+     sloping toward Canal; 14. Open lot; 15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17.
+     Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James River Towing Co.; 20.
+     Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.]
+
+The dreaded order was laughed out of court and forgotten.
+
+The two men crept upstairs early the next morning. The first night
+daylight had caught them at work, so they had not dared to return, but
+had stayed and had worked through the 36 hours. They brought back the
+handle of the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and the depressing
+news of failure. But men who are fit for freedom do not cease to strive
+for it. If one road to it is blocked, they seek another. That very day,
+when the fifteen had gathered together and the two had told their tale,
+a pallor of despair crept over some of the faces, but it was dispelled
+by the flush of hope when Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south,
+we'll go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the vacant lot. We'll
+begin tonight."
+
+"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from the yard we'd have to come
+out on the street. There's a gas-lamp there--and a sentry."
+
+"We can put out the lamp and if need be the sentry," Colonel Rose
+answered, "when we get to them. The thing now is to get there. We have
+fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my figures are correct. That's a
+job of a good many nights. This night will see the job begun."
+
+It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate had put in their way and with
+a big wooden spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with earth, was
+pulled out, emptied, and returned for a fresh load. A fortnight
+afterwards the officer who was digging that night made a mistake in
+levels and came too near the surface, which broke above him. Dismayed,
+he backed out and reported the blunder. The hole was in plain sight.
+Discovery was certain if it were not hidden. The story was but half told
+when Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.
+
+"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the dirt and won't show. Stuff
+it into the hole so it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"
+
+Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole. There he smeared some more
+dirt on the dirty blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care, and
+wriggled back. That morning at sunrise, when they peeked down from
+their prison windows into the eastern lot, even their straining eyes
+could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that showed. No casual glance
+would detect it. Of that they were sure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every few days new prisoners were thrust into Libby. Whenever this
+happened it was the custom that on the first evening they should tell
+whatever news they could of the outside world and of their own capture
+to the whole prison community. One morning the keeper of Libby receipted
+for another captured Yankee and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in
+the grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially, rather too
+cordially, to the greetings he received. It soon became understood that
+he was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee. Now neither side was
+overproud of the guerillas who infested the borderland, who sometimes
+called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates, and who did more
+stealing than fighting. So a rather cold shoulder was turned to the new
+captive, though the community's judgment upon him was deferred until
+after he should have been heard that evening. He seemed to try to warm
+the cold shoulder by a certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts
+at too familiar conversation. He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon
+shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy
+was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him.
+Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There
+was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an
+undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time,
+but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely
+a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant
+fact. He peered about and sidled about in a way that might be due only
+to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like it. He disliked Johnson more
+and more as the newcomer kept returning to him and growing more
+confidential. His talk was on various natural enough themes, but it
+kept veering back to the chances of escape.
+
+"I don't mean to stay in this hole long," Johnson whispered. "Pretty
+mean-spirited in all these fellows to just hang around here, without
+even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye say 'bout our trying it on,
+son?"
+
+The familiar address increased the boy's dislike of the man, but he was
+too young to realize that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He was old
+enough, however, to know how to keep his mouth shut about the pending
+plan for an escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out of him, but in
+the many half-confidential talks the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him,
+perhaps he had revealed something after all. Perhaps, however, the
+newcomer got such information as he did from other men in the secret.
+Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the plan of escape.
+
+That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting men to tell his
+story,--a simple tale of Northern birth, of a Southern home, of belief
+in the Union, of raising a guerilla company to fight for it, of capture
+in a raid on a Confederate supply-depot,--the unpleasant memory which
+had been troubling Tom came back and hammered at his head until
+suddenly, as if a flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw
+himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle Mose's slave-cabin, with this
+man's hand clutching his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside
+Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:
+
+"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He was overseer on a plantation in
+Alabama. He 'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."
+
+Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's eye fixed upon him. He had
+seen Tom whisper to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat down.
+Rose walked across the circle and sat beside him. He had snapped his
+fingers as he walked and half a dozen men had answered the signal and
+were now close at hand.
+
+"What did you do before you turned guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.
+
+"I don't know that that's any of your darned business," said Johnson.
+
+"Answer me."
+
+The stronger man dominated the weaker. The spy sulkily said:
+
+"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."
+
+"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ever do anything else in the South?"
+
+"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such questions?"
+
+The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:
+
+"Major Hamilton."
+
+"Here, sir," answered the Major.
+
+"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before the war?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Seven years."
+
+"Who kept the general store there?"
+
+"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."
+
+"Did you know him?"
+
+"Rather. We were chums. He and I left Jonesboro' together to join the
+army."
+
+"Is this man he?"
+
+Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his feet, cowering, covering
+his face with his hands. Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's
+hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.
+
+"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than he's General Grant."
+
+By this time the whole prison community was crowded about Colonel Rose.
+The latter called again:
+
+"Mr. Strong."
+
+"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.
+
+"Do you know this man?"
+
+"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson on the Izzard plantation.
+
+There was an ominous low growl from the audience. Yankee overseers of
+Southern plantations were not exactly popular in that crowd of Northern
+officers. And evidently this particular overseer had been lying. But
+Colonel Rose lifted his hand and said:
+
+"Silence. No violence. What we do will be done decently and in order."
+After this impressive speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you would, would
+you?" and choked Johnson with every pound of strength he could put into
+the process. He had just seen him slip a bit of paper into his mouth and
+he meant to know what that paper was. It was plucked out of the spy's
+throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the spy's pencil had written:
+
+"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows about it. Think Colonel Rose
+heads it."
+
+It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report in his new business of
+being a spy. It put an end to all business on his part forever. Gagged
+and tied, he was pushed across the big room, while Tom watched
+uncomprehendingly, wondering what was to be done with the writhing man.
+Suddenly he understood, for he saw it done. Johnson was pushed into a
+window. Two kneeling men held his legs and another, standing beside him
+but screened by the wall, pushed him in front of the window. The
+Confederate sentry below obeyed his orders. There was no challenge, no
+warning. He aimed and fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws of
+the prison by looking out of the window. What had been Jake Johnson,
+Yankee, negro-overseer, Confederate conscript, volunteer spy, fell in a
+dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag and bonds were quickly removed, so
+there was nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause of the man's
+death when they came to remove the body. They had unwittingly executed
+their own spy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was right that the man should die, but the shock of seeing him done
+to death was too much for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship of
+the long captivity during which he had been carried from Ohio to
+Virginia and worn out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the toil
+of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake Johnson did and for a few
+moments seemed as dead as the man was. He was taken to the
+hospital-room, but the hospital in Libby was usually only the anteroom
+of the graveyard at Libby. One of the scarcest things in the
+Confederacy, the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The armies in the
+field needed far more doctors than there were in the whole South, at the
+outbreak of the war. Medical schools were quickly created, but the
+demand for doctors so far outran the supply that by this time ignorant
+country lads were being rushed through the schools, with reckless haste,
+so that they were graduated when they knew but little more than when
+they began. A so-called surgeon was handling his scalpel six months
+after he had been handling a plow. Some of them barely knew how to read
+and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals should be manned
+by the poorest of the poor among the graduates of these wretched
+schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is for Tom, gave him,
+however, care that was both skilful and tender.
+
+A few hours after the righteous execution of Jake Johnson there had been
+thrust into Libby a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeight
+hours before. Among them towered a jovial, bearded giant, an army
+surgeon, Major Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with talk of what
+had happened there that day. The new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson
+and of Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had given his parole not to
+try to escape and had been allowed to station himself beside Tom's bed.
+Through that night and through the next day, he fought Tom's battle for
+him, doing all that man could do. When the boy struggled out of his
+delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming upon him, his first thought
+was that he was still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad
+car. His right hand plucked feebly at his left side, where he had then
+carried the dispatches Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and understood the
+movement.
+
+"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's all right. Go to sleep."
+
+And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything was all right and
+that he was home in New York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. A
+gracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who gave her days to caring for
+her country's enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's eyes
+gleamed with a mistaken belief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled back and sank gently into a profound
+sleep, from which he awoke to life and health. Again a Hans Rolf had
+saved a Tom Strong's life.
+
+Night after night passed, one night of work by each man followed by two
+of such rest as lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed. On the
+seventeenth night of the new tunnel work, Colonel Rose was digging away
+in it. It was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered and went out.
+The foul air closed in upon him. Hats were fanning to and fro, back in
+Rat Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not reach him. He felt
+himself suffocating. With one last effort he thrust his strong fists
+upward and broke through the surface. Soon revived by the rush of fresh
+air into the tunnel, he dragged himself out and found himself in the
+yard that had been their aim. The tunnel had reached its goal. He
+climbed out and studied the situation. A high fence screened the yard
+from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door screened it from the
+street. At three A.M., February 6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to
+prison.
+
+That morning he told his news. Most of the men wanted to try for freedom
+the next night, but there was much to do to erase all traces of their
+work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith discovered after their
+flight, it could be used later by other fugitives. With a rare
+unselfishness, they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile each of the
+fifteen had been authorized to tell one other man, so that thirty in all
+could make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt that this was the
+limit. A general prison-delivery would, he believed, result in a general
+recapture. Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep a whisper of
+it spread through the prison.
+
+When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he had been at once taken into the
+inner councils of the tunnel group. He had not expressed as much joy in
+the plan as Tom had expected. The reason of this was now revealed. He
+declined to go.
+
+"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and Tom, "I gave my parole not
+to try to escape when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in order to be
+allowed to take care of him. I made up my mind not to ask to be relieved
+from it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected some plan to
+escape was on hand. And they seem to have forgotten all about it, for
+they haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in honor not to go.
+Don't bother, Tom." The boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans
+Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't
+bother. 'Twon't be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I can save
+some lives here by staying. Don't bother. It's all right. I rather like
+this boarding-house."
+
+The giant's great laugh rang out. The heartiness of it amazed the weary
+men scattered about the room. It brought smiles to lips that had not
+smiled for many a day. Laughter that comes from a clean heart does good
+to all who hear it.
+
+It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was an officer and a gentleman.
+Honor forbade it. Sadly, Tom left him.
+
+On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when the chosen thirty had crawled
+down the inverted "S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col. H. C.
+Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly offered to stay behind,
+so that he could replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced
+them. But before he could get upstairs, some hundreds of men had come
+down. The secret was a secret no longer. There was a fierce struggle to
+get to the fireplace, a struggle all the fiercer because it had to be
+made in grim silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet away, on the
+other side of the wall, in the hospital. The bricks were taken out
+again. In all, one hundred and nine Union officers got through the hole.
+Then, warned by approaching daylight, the less fortunate in the fight
+for freedom put back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs, resolved
+to try their luck the next night, if the tunnel were not before that
+discovered.
+
+Tom had wormed his way through the inverted "S" among the first fifteen.
+On the rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap upon the floor of
+Rat Hell. The huge rodents swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He
+almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he sprang to his feet, threw
+off his tormentors, and ran across the room to the opening of the
+tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more ragged and his face and hands
+were bleeding from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this. Was he
+not on his way to freedom? On his way, yes; but the way was a long one.
+He might never reach the end. When he had pushed and pulled himself
+through the tunnel; when he had come out into the yard and gone through
+the shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in the canal street was at
+the further end of his beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and
+turned in the opposite direction,--when all this had happened, he was
+out of prison, to be sure, but he was in the heart of the enemy's
+country, with all the risks of recapture or of death still to be run.
+
+The men had all been cautioned to stroll away in a leisurely fashion, on
+no account to run or even to walk fast, and not to try to get away in
+groups of more than two or three. It was hard to walk slowly to the next
+corner. The boy made himself do so, however. Half a block ahead of him
+on the side street, he saw a couple of men walking with a somewhat
+faster stride. He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate patrol
+turned the corner of Carey Street. He heard the two men challenged and
+he heard the little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief moment of
+freedom had passed. He stepped to one side of the wooden sidewalk and
+crawled under it. There was just space enough for him to lie at full
+length. Hurrying feet, the feet of men hunting other men, trampled an
+inch above his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it must be heard.
+The patrol reached the street along the canal and peered into the
+darkness there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering gas-lamp.
+Fortunately, nobody came out of the shed just then. The sentry happened
+to be coming towards it and the men inside were waiting for him to turn.
+The patrol had no thought of a general jail-delivery. It turned back
+with its two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head to Carey Street,
+and took its captives to the prison. The boy crawled out from under the
+sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of them, reached the
+corner. He ran down to them and warned them of the Carey Street patrol.
+The three men turned with him and walked along the canal. It was just
+after midnight. Not a soul was stirring. Not a light showed. As they
+walked unquestioned, their spirits rose. How fine to be free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+     TOM HIDES IN A RIVER BANK--EATS RAW FISH--JIM GRAYSON AIDS
+     HIM--DOWN THE JAMES RIVER ON A TREE--PASSING THE PATROL
+     BOATS--CANNONADED--THE END OF THE VOYAGE.
+
+
+Tom had made up his mind how he would try to reach the Union lines. As
+he had escaped before from the locomotive-foray by pushing boldly into
+the enemy's country, so he would do now. He would try his luck in
+following the James River to the sea, for off the river's mouth he knew
+there lay a squadron of Northern ships, blockading Hampton Roads. The
+"Merrimac's" attempt of March, 1862, had never been repeated. Our flag
+was still there, in these February days of 1864, and Tom knew it. He had
+resolved to seek it there.
+
+He explained his plan to his three comrades. They would steal a boat,
+row or drift down the James by night, hide and sleep by day, forage for
+food upon the rich plantations, many of them the historic homes of
+Virginia, that bordered the broad river, and finally float to freedom
+where our war-ships lay. But the three men would have nothing to do with
+it. By land the Union lines were much nearer. They meant to stick to the
+land. They asked the boy to go with them, but he stuck to his plan. So,
+with hearty handshakes and a whispered "good luck!" he left them, went
+over a canal-bridge, and found himself upon the bank of the river. He
+was again alone.
+
+Of his three temporary companions, one finally reached our lines, one
+was shot within a few hundred yards of his goal, and one was recaptured.
+Of the 109 who escaped from Libby, 48 were caught and thrust back into
+prison.
+
+Tom walked along the river bank, prying in the welcome darkness for a
+boat. It would not have been difficult to steal it, if he could have
+found it. But at this point the James is wide and shallow and full of
+miniature rapids. It was utterly bare of boats. The boy's search could
+not be carried on after dawn. He spent that day hidden in a clump of
+willows by the waterside. The excitement of the night had kept him up.
+Now the reaction from it left him limp and miserable and hungry as he
+never remembered being hungry before. It was hard work to "grin and bear
+it," but at least he tried to grin and he reminded himself a thousand
+times through that long, long day that he was much better off than if he
+were still a prisoner in Libby.
+
+That night he followed the bank until he was below the city, still
+without finding a boat. There had been plenty of boats along this part
+of the river the morning before, but as soon as the escape from Libby
+had been discovered, all boats had been seized by the military
+authorities, to prevent their being used by the fugitives. They had been
+taken to a point below the town. As Tom wormed himself cautiously near
+this point, very cautiously, for he heard voices upon the bank above his
+head, and also the crackle of a camp-fire, he saw in the gray dawn a
+flotilla of boats just below him. At first sight, his heart leaped into
+his mouth with joy. At the second sight, it sank down into his boots.
+For above the boats he saw a big Confederate camp and beyond them he saw
+a half-dozen small craft, negroes at the oars and armed men at bow and
+stern, patrolling the river. Hope left him. He crawled into a
+hiding-place in the bank. He was so hungry that he cried. But not for
+long. Stout hearts do not yield to such weakness long. If he could not
+escape in a boat fashioned by man's hands, why not in one fashioned by
+God? The early spring freshets of the James were making the river higher
+every hour. He saw in cautious peeps from the hole where he had hidden
+great trees from far-off forests, uprooted there by the high water, come
+plunging down mid-channel like battering rams. He noted that the
+patrol-boats gave these dangerous monsters a wide berth. If a trunk of a
+tree were to ram them or if the far-flung branches were to strike them,
+their next patrol would be at the bottom of the river. On a sandbank not
+a hundred yards from the boy's lair a big oak had stranded. It lay
+quite still now, but it evidently would not do so for many hours, for
+the rising water lapped higher and higher against it. Tom made up his
+mind that that tree should be his boat--if only it were still there when
+it was dark enough for him to swim out to it. Through the daylight hours
+he watched it with lynx eyes, fearing lest it were swept along towards
+the sea before he could shelter himself in it. And through these
+daylight hours he grew ever more faint with hunger, until he told
+himself that he must have food, at any risk, at any cost. Without the
+strength it would give, he felt he could not possibly swim even the
+hundred yards that lay between him and the now tossing tree. There is
+truth in the line:
+
+    "Fate cannot harm me; I have dined today."
+
+It is too much to do to face Fate on an empty stomach. Napoleon said
+that an army traveled on its belly. Men must have food if they are to
+march and fight.
+
+A Confederate soldier sauntered along the shore and stopped just in
+front of the boy's hiding-place. He had a rude fish-pole. Either he knew
+how to fish, or the James River fish were very hungry. A string of a
+dozen hung from his shoulder. The sight of them was too much for Tom to
+stand. A raw fish seemed to him the most toothsome morsel in the world.
+He knew he was courting certain capture, but he was starving. He would
+pretend to be a Confederate himself. He spoke to the soldier, not out of
+the fullness of his heart, but out of the emptiness of his stomach.
+
+"I'm hungry," he said, "give a fellow a fish, will you?"
+
+The soldier turned with a start. He was a tall, gaunt man, an East
+Tennessee mountaineer, who had started to join the Union army when a
+Confederate conscript-officer seized him and sent him South, under
+guard, to serve the cause he had meant to fight against. East Tennessee
+was, as a rule, loyal to the Union. The men from there who were found in
+the Confederate army were like the poor peons who are supposed to
+"volunteer" in the Mexican army. "I send you fifty volunteers," wrote a
+Mexican mayor to a Mexican general, "please return me the ropes." Jim
+Grayson had not been tied up with a rope, but he had had a bayonet
+behind him, when he was put into the Confederate ranks. He was a man of
+intelligence and of rather more education than most of his fellow
+mountaineers. Many of them could not even read and write. Grayson had
+learned both at a "deestrik skule" and had actually had a year, a
+precious year, at a "high skule." The last thing he had read before
+starting to fish that morning had been the printed handbills that had
+been flung broadcast by the Confederate authorities, announcing the
+escape of 108 men and one boy from Libby Prison and offering rewards for
+their recapture. And the first thing he thought as he saw Tom in his
+hole in the bank was that he was probably the boy of the handbills. He
+meant to give the fellow a fish, of course, but if he found the fellow
+was that boy he also meant to do what he could to help him go where he
+himself wanted to go, to the Union lines.
+
+"Sholy, I'll give you a fish," he said. "You can have all you want. I'll
+light a fire and cook some for you."
+
+"I can't wait," gasped Tom, wolf-hunger in his gleaming eyes. "I'm
+starving."
+
+He tried to reach out for the fish and collapsed in utter weakness. With
+food at last within his grasp, he was too far gone to take it. Jim
+Grayson had been very hungry more than once in his thirty years of hard
+life. He saw that Tom was telling the truth.
+
+"Hush," he whispered, for he had caught sight of some fellow soldiers on
+the bank, not a hundred feet away. "Hush, sumbuddy's comin'. You mus'
+take little pieces first. I'll cut one up for you."
+
+He was drawing out his knife from a deep pocket when the soldiers
+stopped on the bank above their heads and shouted down, asking him to
+give them some fish too.
+
+"Sholy," laughed Jim. "Here's some for you-uns."
+
+He tossed half a dozen up to them and then sat down at the mouth of the
+hole that sheltered Tom, thinking to hide him in case the others came
+down the bank. His back was towards the boy. What was left of his catch
+hung within two inches of Tom's nose. That was Tom's chance. He tore off
+a couple of little fish and tore them to bits with his teeth. His first
+sensation was one of deathly sickness; his next one of returning
+strength. Grayson twitched the remaining fish into his lap. He knew the
+boy had already had too much food, for a first meal. Meanwhile he was
+chatting cheerily with his fellow soldiers, who fortunately did not come
+down the bank and soon moved off, leaving Jim and Tom alone. Now was the
+time for explanations.
+
+"Don't be afeard," said Jim, with a kindly smile. "I 'low you be Tom
+Strong, bean't you? I guess you was in Libby day afore yisterday. I
+ain't goin' to give you up. I'm Union, I be, ef I do wear Secesh gray.
+How kin I help you?"
+
+The sense of safety, safety at least for the moment, was too much for
+Tom. He could not speak.
+
+"Thar, thar," Jim went on, "it's all right. Jes' tell me what I can do.
+I'll bring you eatins soon ez night comes, but what'll you do then?"
+
+Tom told him what he hoped to do then. It was a wild scheme to float
+down nearly two hundred miles of river through a hostile country, but
+yet it offered a chance of success. And if there was a chance of success
+for the boy, why not for the man?
+
+"Ef so be's ez you'se sot on it," Jim said, at the end of the talk, "I
+vum I'll run the resk with you. You ain't no ways fit to start off
+alone. Ef you have to hist that thar tree into the James River, you
+cudn't a-do it. I kin. 'N ef you wuz all alonst, you mout fall off'n be
+drownded. We-uns'll go together. 'N then I'll hev a chanst to fight fer
+the old Union."
+
+Tom was only too glad of the promised company. It was arranged that Jim
+was to come to him as soon as possible after nightfall, with whatever
+provisions he could lay his hands upon, and that then they were to get
+away on the queer craft Providence seemed to have prepared for them,
+provided only that Providence did not send the big tree swirling
+southward to the sea before they could reach it. The river was now
+considerably higher. It was tugging hard at its prey. Sometimes the tree
+shook with the impact of the rushing waves as if it had decided to let
+go the sandbank forthwith. If it did go before nightfall, they must try
+to find another. There were always others in sight, but they were far
+away in mid-channel, floating swiftly seaward. How could one of these be
+reached, if their fellow on the sandbank joined them? There was nothing
+to be done, however, except to wait. Tom's waiting was solaced by the
+eating of the rest of the fish. Man and boy agreed that the man must
+loiter there no longer. Making a fire would delay him beyond roll-call.
+So Jim went and Tom again ate raw fish, trying to do so slowly, but not
+making a great success of that. He felt as if he could eat a whale.
+
+Darkness came only a few minutes before Jim Grayson did. He brought with
+him a bundle of food, upon part of which Tom forthwith supped. He also
+brought his gun. "I'm a deserter now, you see," he explained to the boy,
+"and I'll be shot ef so be I'm caught. But ef I be caught, I'll shoot
+some o' they-uns fust."
+
+They could dimly see the outlines of the big tree, now tossing in the
+waves that broke above the submerged sandbank, as if it were struggling
+to be free. They swam out to it, Jim strongly, Tom weakly. They reached
+it none too soon. Ten minutes later it would have started of its own
+accord. Jim's task in "histing" it was easy. They were afloat at once.
+The top of the tree, a mass of bare branches, for the tiny tender leaves
+of the early Southern spring had been swept away by the water, formed
+the bow of their craft. They both perched far back, leaning against the
+tangled roots. Jim gave a final push with one dangling foot and they
+were off. That was all Tom knew for some time. He had fallen asleep as
+soon as he had snuggled securely into his place. He did not know it when
+they swept through the cordon of patrol-boats below, which hastened to
+give room to the vast battering ram. He did not even know that Jim's arm
+held him in place as the tree lurched and wobbled on its downward road.
+A few hours afterwards, he awoke, refreshed and hopeful, a new man, or
+rather a new boy. The night was clear. The outlines of both shores were
+visible. A young moon added its feeble light to the brilliant radiance
+of the stars.
+
+"Where are we?" whispered Tom. He knew the human voice carries a great
+distance over water and while there seemed to be no one who could
+overhear, he would run no unnecessary risk.
+
+"I never sailed no river before," Jim cheerily answered, "'n I dun know
+nothin' 'bout the Jeems River, but I 'low we've come 'bout a thousand
+mile. 'N it's nigh sun-up. How'll we-uns git to sho' 'n hide?"
+
+"If we did that," said Tom, "we'd have to give up our ship. Don't let us
+do that. Let's say what Captain Lawrence said: 'Don't give up the ship!'
+We'll call her the 'Liberty' and sail her down to Hampton Roads. We can
+hide in the branches or the roots if we meet anybody on the river.
+Everybody will give us a wide berth. We have some food, thanks to you.
+Forty-eight hours more will see us through."
+
+"All right, Captain," Jim Grayson replied. "You're the commander."
+
+Up to that time, the Confederate private had been in command of the
+expedition, but now that the Union officer was himself again, he took
+charge of everything, much to Jim's content and also, we must admit,
+much to Tom's content.
+
+The good ship "Liberty," Tom Strong, captain, Jim Grayson, mate, made a
+prosperous voyage. Its crew was thoroughly scared three or four times by
+the sight of Confederate craft, small and large. When a gunboat selected
+it as a floating target and plumped half-a-dozen cannon balls around it,
+the crew thought the end had come. But nobody on the gunboat saw the
+two people cowering amid the branches of the tree. The gunners were
+untrained. Their aim was poor. And powder and cannon-balls were not so
+abundant in the Confederacy that the practice-firing could continue
+long. Early on the third morning of the voyage, they were in Hampton
+Roads, borne by the ebbing tide towards the Union squadron that lay
+under the guns of Fortress Monroe. As the sun rose above the horizon,
+our flag sprang to the mastheads of the ships. Tom felt like echoing
+Uncle Mose's triumphant phrase: "De Stars 'n de Stripeses, dey jest
+kivered de sky."
+
+The "Liberty" would have gone straight out to sea, so far as any control
+by its crew was concerned. It did go out to sea, indeed, but not until
+after Tom and Jim had been taken from it by a boat from the Admiral's
+ship. Jim had fired off his gun to attract attention, as the "Liberty"
+neared the squadron, and then he and Tom had both stood up on the
+teetering trunk of their tree and shouted and waved their shirts, which
+they had taken off for that purpose, as they had nothing else to wave,
+until help came. The "Liberty" had brought them to liberty. They said
+good-by to her almost with regret. But their joy was deep when they
+stood on the deck of the flagship, under the flag of the free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+     TOWSER WELCOMES TOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE--LINCOLN RE-ELECTED
+     PRESIDENT--GRANT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--SHERMAN MARCHES FROM ATLANTA
+     TO THE SEA--TOM ON GRANT'S STAFF--FIVE FORKS--FALL OF
+     RICHMOND--HANS ROLF FREED--BOB SAVES TOM FROM CAPTURE--TOM TAKES A
+     BATTERY INTO ACTION--LEE SURRENDERS--TOM STRONG, BREVET-CAPTAIN U.
+     S. A.
+
+
+The warmest welcome Tom had at the White House was given him by Towser.
+The next warmest was given him by Uncle Moses and the next by Lincoln.
+The staff was glad to see him back, but many of them were jealous of the
+President's evident liking for him and would not have sorrowed overmuch
+if he had not come back at all. The patient President found time, amid
+all his myriad cares, to listen to Tom's story and to make Secretary
+Stanton give a captain's commission to Jim Grayson, who was sent to his
+own mountains to gather recruits for the Union army. For Towser, time
+existed only to be spent in welcoming his young master home. He clung
+close to him, with slobbering jaws and thumping tail, through the first
+day, and the first night he managed to escape from Uncle Mose's care in
+the basement and to find Tom's attic room. Thenceforth, as long as Tom
+stayed at the White House, Towser stretched his yellow bulk across the
+threshold of his door every night and slept there the sleep of the
+utterly happy.
+
+There were no utterly happy men under the White House roof. Lincoln's
+presidential term was drawing to a close. He was renominated by the
+Republicans, but his re-election at times seemed impossible. The
+Democrats had put forward Gen. George B. McClellan, once chief commander
+of the Union forces, but a pitiful failure as an aggressive general. A
+discontented wing of the Republicans had nominated Gen. John C.
+Fremont. Fremont had not fulfilled the promise of his youth. At the
+beginning of the war, he had been put in command at St. Louis, had
+proved to be incompetent, and had been retired. He was still strong in
+the hearts of many people, but Lincoln feared the success, not of
+Fremont, but of McClellan. John Hay once said to the President:
+
+"Fremont might be dangerous if he had more ability and energy."
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "he is like Jim Jett's brother. Jim used to say
+that his brother was the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the
+infinite mercy of Providence he was also the greatest fool."
+
+Family sayings, when they are not loving, are apt to be bitter. One of
+the Vanderbilts said of a connection of his by marriage that he was
+"more kinds of a fool to the square inch than anybody else in the
+world."
+
+McClellan, who seemed practically certain of success in August, 1864,
+was badly beaten in November, when the battle of parties was fought out
+at the polls. Fremont had retired from the contest early in the
+campaign. At the first Cabinet meeting after the election, November 11,
+1864, the President took a paper out of his desk and said:
+
+"Gentlemen, do you remember last summer I asked you all to sign your
+names to the back of a paper, of which I did not show you the inside?
+This is it. Now, Mr. Hay, see if you can get this open without tearing
+it."
+
+Its cover was so thoroughly pasted up that it had to be cut open. This
+done, Lincoln read it aloud. Here it is:
+
+                                           "Executive Mansion,
+                                           Washington, August 23, 1864.
+
+     "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable
+     that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my
+     duty to so co-operate with the President elect as to save the Union
+     between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured
+     his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
+     afterwards.
+
+                                                          A. LINCOLN."
+
+In that memorandum is the sign-manual of a great soul. Lincoln,
+believing his own defeat was written in the stars, thought, not of
+himself, but of how he, defeated, could best save the cause of the Union
+from defeat. A small man thinks first of himself. A big man thinks first
+of his duty.
+
+Life was happy at the White House now. The President had been re-elected
+and it was clear that long before his second term was over, he would
+have won a victorious peace. The South was still fighting with all the
+energy brave men can show for a cause in the righteousness of which they
+believe, but after all the energy was that of despair. Grant was now in
+supreme command of the Union forces, East and West. He had been
+commissioned Lieutenant-General and put in command March 17, 1864. In
+commemoration of this event, the turning point in the great struggle,
+Lincoln had had a photograph of himself taken. But two copies of it were
+printed. One Lincoln kept himself. One he gave Grant. Here is the one
+given Grant.
+
+[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
+
+The new Lieutenant-General was hammering away at Richmond. The
+Mississippi, now under Union control, cut the Confederacy in two. All
+the chief Southern seaports, except Savannah and Charleston, had been
+captured. And in this same month of November, 1864, Gen. William
+Tecumseh Sherman, who ranked only second to Grant in the United States
+army, cut loose from Atlanta, Georgia, captured two months before and
+began his famous march to the sea, with Savannah as his destination. He
+illustrated his own well-known saying: "War is hell." If it was hell in
+Sherman's time, what word can describe the horror of it in our day? He
+swept with sword and fire a belt of fertile country, sixty miles wide,
+from Atlanta to the sea. He found it smiling and rich; he left it a bare
+and blackened waste. He had destroyed the granary of the Confederacy and
+before the next month ended he had made his country a Christmas present
+of the remaining chief Southern seaport, Savannah. He wrote to Lincoln:
+"I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with
+one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also
+twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Cotton was worth a dollar a pound
+in those days.
+
+Early in 1865 Sherman swung northward from Savannah, forced the
+surrender of Charleston, South Carolina, and joined Union forces
+advancing from the North at Goldsboro', North Carolina, March 23. Six
+days later Grant began the final campaign against the Confederacy. Six
+days before, Lincoln had said to the boy:
+
+"Tom, would you like to see some more fighting?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. President; very much."
+
+"Well, you needn't tell anybody, but I guess there'll be some to see
+before long near Richmond. I've had you ordered from special service at
+the White House to special service with the Lieutenant-General. Here's
+the order and here's a letter to General Grant. I wouldn't wonder if he
+put you on his staff."
+
+"How can I thank you, Mr. Lincoln?"
+
+"The best way to thank anybody is to do well the work he gives you to
+do. Good-by, my son, and good luck."
+
+[Illustration: GEN. W. T. SHERMAN
+               St. Gaudens' Statue, New York]
+
+With a pressure of Lincoln's huge hand Tom was sped on his rejoicing
+way. Two days later he was at Grant's headquarters, at City Point,
+Virginia, near Fortress Monroe. He saluted and handed the General
+Lincoln's letter. The soldier sat, a silent sphinx, for a moment. Then
+he looked up at Tom with a quizzical but not unkindly smile, and said:
+
+"Have you learned anything since you brought me dispatches at Fort
+Donelson and Vicksburg?"
+
+"I hope so, General."
+
+"Sometimes the President sends me people for political reasons. I
+suppose he has to. But I don't take them if I know it. Have you any
+political influence behind you?"
+
+"Not a bit, sir." Tom laughed at the thought.
+
+"You laugh well. You and Horace Porter ought to get on together. He
+laughs well, too. You can serve on my staff.
+
+"I thank you, General."
+
+Tom saluted and walked away, to find Horace Porter, whom he found to be
+a very nice fellow indeed. One of the first things the nice fellow did
+for him was to get him a good horse. There was no lack of horses at
+headquarters. The difficulty was not to find one, but to choose the best
+of many good ones. Tom, who had a good eye for a horse, found one that
+exactly suited him except as to color. He was of a mottled gray. The boy
+did not much care for such a color, but he knew it had its advantages.
+It does not advertise its presence. Where a black, a white or a bay
+horse would stand out and make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a
+mottled gray might well elude their view. And the horse, apart from
+this, was just what he wanted. He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he
+walked fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment in a horse. The
+average horse walks, as a rule, slower than the average man. In an hour,
+he covers a quarter-of-a-mile less ground. One question remained to be
+settled.
+
+"Can he jump?" asked Tom.
+
+"Jump, is it?" answered the soldier-groom. "Shure, the cow that jumped
+over the moon couldn't lift a leg to him."
+
+"You bet your life he can jump," said Horace Porter. "General Grant has
+ridden him twice and I saw him put Bob over a fence or two."
+
+[Illustration: BOB]
+
+Not long afterwards Tom did bet his life on Bob's jumping. He was named
+Bob before the United States took him. He had been captured the month
+before and had come across the lines with his name embroidered by some
+woman's hand on his saddle-blanket and with his late owner's blood upon
+his saddle. He was a tall, leggy animal who showed a trace of Arabian
+blood and who needed to be gentled a bit to get his best work out of
+him. His mouth was appreciative of sugar and his eyes were appreciative
+of kindness.
+
+Both dogs and horses talk with their eyes.
+
+"I like my new master," was what Bob's eyes said to Tom.
+
+It was through a chance suggestion of Colonel Porter that the boy saw
+most of what he did see of the final fight for freedom. Porter had
+presented Tom to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who was then at City Point,
+receiving Grant's final instructions for the twelve-day campaign that
+ended in the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's brave army.
+Sheridan was a stocky, red-faced young Irishman, a graduate of West
+Point, and a born leader of men, especially of cavalrymen. He liked the
+clear-eyed lad who stood respectfully before him. He had done too much
+in his own youth to think Tom was useless because he was so young.
+Porter saw that the boy had made a good impression. He ventured a
+suggestion.
+
+"Why don't you take young Strong with you, General?"
+
+Sheridan turned sharply to Tom, asking:
+
+"Can you ride?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. I've ridden ever since I can remember."
+
+"Well, that's not so very long a time. But I'll take your word for it.
+Would you like to go with me?"
+
+"I'd like it better than anything else in the world, General."
+
+Tom had rejoiced in the idea of being with Grant, but he knew that the
+commander-in-chief must stay behind his lines and that his staff could
+catch but glimpses of the fighting, when they were sent forward with
+orders, whereas with Sheridan he might be in the very thick of the
+fighting itself. His ready answer and the joy that beamed in his eyes
+pleased the fighting Irishman.
+
+"Can I borrow him of General Grant?" Sheridan asked Porter.
+
+"I'll answer for that," Porter replied. "The General told me to put
+Strong to whatever work I could find for him to do."
+
+"Come ahead," said Sheridan. "You'll see some beautiful fighting!"
+
+Sheridan loved fighting, but he made no pretense of never being afraid.
+He thought a general should be close to the front, to keep his soldiers'
+spirits high.
+
+"Are you never afraid?" Charles A. Dana, then Assistant Secretary of
+War, once asked him.
+
+"If I was, I should not be ashamed of it. If I should follow my natural
+impulse, I should run away always at the beginning of the danger. The
+men who say they are never afraid in a battle do not tell the truth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+March 29, 1865, the twelve-day campaign began. The cavalry swung out
+towards Five Forks, where Lee's right wing lay behind deep
+entrenchments. April 1, Sheridan attacked in force. Americans fought
+Americans with stubborn bravery on both sides. The issue was long in
+doubt. Sheridan and his staff were close to the firing-line, so that Tom
+had but a few hundred yards to gallop under fire when his general said
+to him:
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN
+               Sheridan Square, Washington, D. C.
+               Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York.]
+
+"Tell General Griffin to charge and keep charging."
+
+Griffin's order to his troops was so quickly given that it seemed an
+echo of the order Tom brought him. It was the boy's business to return
+forthwith and report upon his mission, but he simply couldn't do it.
+There were the Confederate lines manned with hungry soldiers in the
+remnants of their gray uniforms, the Stars-and-Bars flying above them.
+And there were battalions of blue-clad cavalry, men and horses in prime
+condition, straining to start like hounds upon a leash. Griffin's order
+was the electric spark that fired the battery. The men shouted with joy
+as they spurred their horses into a mad gallop. The shout was answered
+by the shrill "rebel yell" from the dauntless foe in the trenches. The
+charging column shook the ground. In its foremost files rode
+Second-lieutenant Tom Strong, forgetful of everything else in the world
+but the joy of battle. Musketry and artillery tore bloody lanes in the
+close-packed column. Men and horses fell in heaps upon the blood-stained
+ground. But the column went on. At dusk of that April day it poured over
+the parapets so bravely held. Even then the fight was not over. There
+was still stout resistance. The two armies were a mass of struggling
+men, shooting, stabbing, striking. The battle had become a series of
+duels man to man. Tom, pistol in hand, rode at a big Kentuckian, but the
+gray-clad giant dodged the bullet, caught his own unloaded musket by the
+muzzle, and dealt the boy a blow with its butt that knocked him off his
+horse and left him senseless on the ground.
+
+A few minutes later, when he came to his senses, he felt as if he were a
+boy annexed to a shoulder twice as big as all the rest of his body. It
+was on his shoulder that the blow of the clubbed musket had gone home.
+The fall from his horse had stunned him. Bob was standing over him, as
+Black Auster stood over Herminius, nuzzling at the outstretched hand of
+this silent, motionless thing that had been his master. They had been
+together for less than a week, but a day is often long enough for a
+horse to find out that his master is his friend. Tom had been more
+careful of his horse's comfort than of his own. Now the good gray had
+stood by him and over him, perhaps saving him from being trampled to
+death in that fierce last act of the Drama of Five Forks. Bob whinnied
+with joy as Tom's eyes slowly opened again. He thrust his muzzle down
+along the boy's cheek and the boy caught hold of the flowing mane with
+his right hand and pulled himself upon his feet again. His left arm hung
+useless by his side. One glance told him the battle was won. The duels
+were over. The Confederates were in full retreat. A stream of prisoners
+was already flowing by him. He mounted and followed it to Sheridan's
+headquarters. There the skillful fingers of a surgeon found that no
+bones were broken. The swollen shoulder was dressed and bandaged. The
+healthy blood that filled Tom's veins did much to make a speedy cure.
+So did the joy of victory. Sheridan had done what Grant had given him to
+do. He had driven back Lee's right flank and cut the railroad by which
+Lee must escape from Richmond, if escape he could.
+
+Richmond was doomed. The next morning, Sunday, April 2, 1865, Jefferson
+Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, sat in his pew in
+St. Paul's Church, Richmond. The solemn service began. Soon there was a
+stir at the door, a rustle, a turning of heads away from the chancel,
+where the gray-haired rector stood. Swiftly a messenger came up the
+aisle. Davis rose from his knees to receive the message. The service
+stopped. Every eye was bent upon the leader of the Lost Cause. He put on
+his spectacles, opened the missive, and read it amid a breathless
+silence. It told him that the Cause was lost indeed. It was from Lee,
+who wrote: "My lines are broken in three places. Richmond must be
+evacuated this evening." There was no sign of feeling upon Jefferson
+Davis's impassive face, as he read the fateful dispatch. Without a
+word, without a sign, he left the church with the wife whose utter
+devotion had helped him bear the burden of those terrible years, during
+which proud hope gradually gave way to sickening fear. Davis was not of
+those weak men who despair. There was still a little hope in his heart,
+despite the tremendous blow Lee's letter had dealt him. He walked down
+the aisle with head as high as though he were marching to assured
+victory. But through the congregation there ran the whisper "Richmond is
+to be evacuated." A panic-stricken mob poured out of the church with
+faltering steps behind Jefferson Davis's firm, proud ones. Early that
+afternoon the Confederate Government fled. Early the next morning,
+Monday, April 3, 1865, Gen. Godfrey Weitzel marched his negro troops
+into the Confederate capital. The flag of the free floated from the dome
+of the Statehouse, which almost from the earliest days of the war had
+sheltered what was now indeed the Lost Cause. It was raised there by
+Lieut. Johnston L. De Peyster, a youth of eighteen, who had carried it
+wrapped around the pommel of his saddle for some days, hoping for the
+chance that now came to him. The second Union flag that was raised that
+day in Richmond was over Libby. The prison gates gave up their prey. The
+prisoners poured out, some too weak to do more than smile, others in a
+frenzy of joy. Major Hans Rolf, reduced by hunger to a long lath of a
+man, had lost none of his spirit.
+
+"Now, boys," he shouted, "three times three for the old flag!"
+
+The cheers rang out in a feeble chorus and then there rang out Han's
+contagious laughter.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he roared. "We're free, boys, we're free."
+
+By that Sunday night, the fate of Petersburg was sealed.
+Grant had ordered an assault in force at six o'clock Monday morning, but
+the Confederates abandoned their works in the gray dawn and our troops
+met little resistance in taking over the town. "General Meade and I,"
+says General Grant in his "Personal Memoirs," "entered Petersburg
+on the morning of the third and took a position under cover of a house
+which protected us from the enemy's musketry which was flying thick and
+fast there. As we would occasionally look around the corner, we could
+see ... the Appomattox bottom ... packed with the Confederate army.... I
+had not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a mass of defeated and
+fleeing men and I hoped to capture them soon."
+
+"Let us follow up Lee," Meade suggested. He was a better follower than a
+fighter. He had followed Lee before, from Gettysburg to Richmond,
+without ever attacking him.
+
+"On the contrary," Grant replied, "we will cut off his retreat by
+occupying the Danville railroad and capture him. He must get to his food
+to keep his troops alive. We will get between him and his food."
+
+With constant fighting this was done. By Wednesday, April 5, the Union
+lines were drawn about the Confederate army. Sheridan, hampered by
+Meade's slowness, was urgent that Grant should come to the front. He
+sent message after message to that effect to Grant on Wednesday. A
+scout in gray uniform was entrusted with the second message. He was made
+up to look like a Confederate scout, but he was Tom Strong. He had put
+on his disguise at Sheridan's headquarters. As he stood at attention to
+receive his orders, Sheridan laughed and said:
+
+"You make a good 'Johnny Reb.' Do you chew tobacco?"
+
+Surprised at the question, Tom said he didn't.
+
+"Well, you may have to begin the habit today. You're to take this
+message to General Grant. If you're caught, chew it--and swallow it
+quick."
+
+He handed the boy a bit of tinfoil. It looked like a small package of
+chewing-tobacco, but it contained a piece of tissue-paper upon which
+Sheridan's message was written.
+
+The ride from the left flank to the center was not without danger. Tom,
+duly provided with the password, could go by any Union forces without
+difficulty, but the country swarmed with Confederates, some of them
+deserters, many of them straggling detachments cut off from the main
+army and seeking to rejoin it, all of them more than ready to capture a
+Union soldier and his horse.
+
+The boy climbed a little clumsily into the saddle. His left shoulder
+still felt like a big balloon stuffed full of pain. But there was
+nothing clumsy in his seat, as Bob shot off like an arrow at the touch
+of Tom's heel on his flank. It was a beautiful, bright April morning,
+too beautiful a day for men to be killing each other. Evidently,
+however, it did not seem so to the commander of a company of Confederate
+cavalry, who had laid an ambush into which Tom gayly galloped. He heard
+a sharp order to halt. He saw men ride across the road in front of him.
+He whirled about, only to see the road behind him blocked. He was fairly
+trapped. But there was one chance of escaping from the trap and Tom took
+it. His would-be captors had come from the left of the road, its
+northern side, for he was traveling east. On the south was a high
+rail-fence, laid in the usual zigzags, one of the few which had not fed
+the camp-fires of Northern Virginia. It was a good five feet high; it
+was only a few feet away; Bob was standing still for a second in
+slippery mud. It was not at all the kind of place to select for a jump,
+but the Confederates had selected the place, not Tom. He remembered
+Colonel Porter's saying "You can bet your life Bob can jump," and he bet
+his life on Porter's being right. He put Bob at the fence. The gallant
+gray, as if he sensed his master's danger, took one bound toward the
+rails, gathered himself together into a tense mass of muscle, and rose
+into the air like a bird. As he flew over the top-rail, carbines cracked
+behind him, but as he leaped southward across the countryside, a ringing
+cheer followed him too. The brave Southerners rejoiced in the brave feat
+that took their captive into freedom. Their jaded horses could not
+follow. There was no pursuit.
+
+It took Tom some hours to double back towards Grant's headquarters. He
+met long lines of Union cavalry, infantry, and artillery pressing
+forward to strengthen Sheridan's forces. They were going west and they
+choked every road and lane and path by which the boy sought to go east.
+They had begun their march at three o'clock that morning. They had had
+no breakfast. They carried no food. Their wagon-trains were miles in the
+rear. It was their fourth day of continuous fighting. They had a right
+to be tired, but they were not tired. They had a right to be hungry, but
+they were not hungry. When the air was full of victory, what did an
+empty stomach matter? Cheering and singing, they swept along. The end of
+four years' fighting was in sight. The hunted foe was trying to slink
+away to safety, as many a fox, with hounds and huntsmen closing in upon
+him, had tried to do on these Virginian fields. Never were huntsmen more
+anxious to be "in at the death" than were those joyous Union soldiers on
+that memorable April day.
+
+It was nearly night when the boy reached headquarters, saluted the
+commander-in-chief, said "A message from General Sheridan," and handed
+over the little tinfoil package.
+
+"You can go back with me," said Grant. "That horse of yours is Bob,
+isn't it?" Grant never forgot a horse he had once ridden.
+
+Within an hour the General and his staff, with a small cavalry escort,
+started for Sheridan's headquarters. By ten that night the two were
+together. Sheridan was almost crying over the orders Meade had given
+him. By midnight Sheridan was happy. "I explained to Meade," say the
+"Personal Memoirs," "that we did not want to follow the enemy; we wanted
+to get ahead of him; and that his orders would allow the enemy to
+escape.... Meade changed his orders at once."
+
+That change of orders incidentally put Tom Strong the next day into the
+hottest fight of his life. This was the battle of Sailor's Creek, almost
+forgotten since amid the mightier happenings of that wonderful April
+week, but never forgotten by Tom Strong. Our forces had attacked Lee's
+retreating legions, retreating toward the provision trains that were
+their only hope of food. The fight was fierce. We had attacked with
+both infantry and cavalry, but our gallant fellow-countrymen held their
+lines unbroken. Then with a thunder of wheels our field artillery came
+into action. The Confederate guns were shelling the hillside up which
+the plunging horses drew our cannon. There were six horses in each team,
+an artilleryman riding each near horse and holding the off horse of the
+pair by a bridle. Tom had come up with orders and was standing by
+General Wright as the guns bounded up the hillside. Bob stood behind his
+master, whinnying a bit with excitement.
+
+General Wright snapped his watch shut impatiently.
+
+"They're ten minutes late," he complained. "We're beaten if we don't get
+'em into action instantly. Good Heavens! there goes our first gun to
+destruction!"
+
+A Confederate shell had struck and burst close to the leaders. A
+fragment of it swept the foremost rider from his seat and from life. The
+two horses he had handled reared, plunged, jumped to one side. The six
+horses were huddled into a frightened heap. The two other soldiers could
+do nothing with the leaders out of control. The gun stopped short. And
+behind it stopped all of one of the two lines of advancing artillery.
+
+"Take that gun into action!"
+
+Tom heard the General's brief command and ran toward the huddled horses.
+He sprang into the saddle, seized both bridles, and drove on. As he did
+so, another Confederate shell burst beside the off horse. Its fragments
+spared the foremost rider this time, but they dealt death to one of his
+two comrades. The man in control of the wheelers threw his right arm out
+and toppled over into the road, dead before the heavy cannon-wheel
+crashed and crushed over him. The leaders, so skillfully handled that
+their very fear made them run more madly into danger, tore ahead,
+keeping the other four horses galloping behind them, until the gun was
+in position. It roared the news of its coming with a well-aimed shot
+into the midst of the enemy's forces.
+
+[Illustration: TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO ACTION]
+
+Its fellows fell into line and followed suit. The infantry and cavalry
+attacked with renewed spirit. Sullenly and savagely, fighting until
+darkness forbade more fighting, Lee's troops withdrew towards the west,
+with the Union forces pounding away at them. They left a mass of dead
+upon the battlefield, lives finely lost for the Lost Cause, and they
+also left as prisoners six general officers and seven thousand men. More
+than a third of all the prisoners taken in the battles before the final
+surrender were taken at the battle of Sailor's Creek. Tom had stuck to
+his new arm of the service through the three hours of fighting. The guns
+had been continually advanced as the Southerners retreated. They had
+been continually under fire. Nearly half the gunners had been killed or
+wounded. When the fight was over, Tom remembered for the first time his
+own wounded shoulder. He had never thought of it from the moment when he
+had sprung upon the artillery horse. Now it began to throb with a
+renewed and a deeper pain, as if resenting his ignoring of it so long,
+but the new pain also vanished when he rejoined General Wright and heard
+him say:
+
+"Mr. Strong, you helped to save the day. I shall recommend you for
+promotion for distinguished bravery under fire."
+
+The boy saluted, his heart too full to speak. As he rode away upon Bob,
+some of the joy in his heart must have got into Bob's heels, for Bob
+pirouetted up the main street of the little town of Farmville, late that
+night, as though he were prouder than ever of his master.
+
+Farmville was now headquarters. Grant was there, in a bare hotel, not
+long before a Confederate hospital. It was from the Farmville hotel that
+he wrote to Lee a historic note. It ran thus:
+
+                                     "Headquarters Armies of the U. S.
+                                             5 P.M., April 7, 1865.
+
+     "General R. E. Lee,
+       Commanding C. S. A.:
+
+     The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness
+     of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia
+     in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to
+     shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of
+     blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the
+     Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
+
+                                                     U. S. GRANT,
+                                                     Lieut.-General."
+
+Under a flag of truce, this note reached General Lee that evening, so
+near together were the headquarters of the contending armies in those
+last days. His letter in reply, asking what terms of surrender were
+offered, reached Grant the next morning while he was talking on the
+steps of the Farmville hotel to a Confederate Colonel.
+
+"Jes' tho't I'd repo't to you, General," said the Colonel.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You see I own this hyar hotel you're a-occupyin'."
+
+"Well, sir, we shall move out soon. We are moving around a good deal,
+nowadays. Why aren't you with your regiment?"
+
+"Well, you see, General, I am my regiment."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"All the men wuz raised 'round hyar. A few days ago they jes' begun
+nachally droppin' out. They all dun dropped out, General, so I jes'
+tho't there wan't any use being a cunnel without no troops and I dun
+dropped out too. Here I be? What you goin' to do with me, General?"
+
+"I'm going to leave you here to take care of your property. Don't go
+back to your army and nobody'll bother you."
+
+That was a sample of the way in which the beaten army was melting away.
+Not even the magic of Lee's great name could hold it together now. But
+the men who did not drop out fought with heroism to the bitter end.
+
+The next day, Saturday, April 8, 1865, Sheridan captured some more of
+Lee's provision trains at Appomattox Station and on Sunday, April 9,
+Lee's whole army attacked there, still seeking to cut its way out of
+its encircling foes. Its brave effort was in vain. Held in a vice, it
+threw up its hands. A white flag flew above the Confederate lines.
+
+Grant had spent Saturday night struggling with a sick headache, his feet
+in hot water and mustard, his wrists and the back of his neck covered
+with mustard-plasters. On Sunday morning, still sick and suffering, he
+was jogging along on horseback towards the front, when a Confederate
+officer was brought before him. He carried a note from Lee offering to
+surrender. "When the officer reached me," writes Grant, "I was still
+suffering with the sick headache; but the instant I saw the contents of
+the note, I was cured." The ending of the war ended Grant's headache.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two commanders met at Appomattox Court House, a sleepy Virginian
+village, five miles from the railroad and endless miles from the great
+world. It lies in a happy valley, not wrapped in happiness that April
+day, for Sheridan's forces held the crest at the south and Lee's were
+deployed along the hilltop to the north. A two-hour armistice had been
+granted. If that did not bring the end desired, that end was to be
+fought out with all the horrors of warfare amid the peaceful houses that
+had straggled together to make the peaceful little town.
+
+At the northern end of the village street, surrounded by an apple
+orchard, stood a two-story brick house with a white wooden piazza in
+front of it. It was the home of Wilmer McLean, a Virginia farmer upon
+whose farm part of the battle of Bull Run had been fought at the
+outbreak of the war. Foreseeing that other battles might be fought
+there--as the second battle of Bull Run, in 1862, was--he had sold his
+property there and had moved by a strange chance to the very village and
+the very house in which the final scene of the great tragedy of this war
+between brothers was to be played. Here Lee awaited Grant.
+
+The Union general had gone to Sheridan's headquarters before riding up
+to the McLean house. Sheridan and his staff had gone on with him. Least
+important of the little group of Union officers who followed Grant into
+the presence of Lee was Tom Strong, but the boy's heart beat as high as
+that of any man there.
+
+[Illustration: THE McLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE]
+
+It was in the orchard about the house that the myth of "the apple-tree
+of Appomattox" was born. Millions of men and women have believed that
+Lee surrendered to Grant under an apple tree at Appomattox. That apple
+tree is as famous in mistaken history as is that other mythical tree,
+the cherry tree which George Washington did not cut down with his little
+hatchet. Washington could not tell a lie, it is true, but he never
+chopped down a cherry tree and then said to his angry, questioning
+father: "Father, I cannot tell a lie; I cut it down with my little
+hatchet." That fairy story came from the imagination of one Parson
+Weems, who did not resemble our first President in the latter's
+inability to tell lies. Perhaps the myth of the apple tree will never
+die, as the myth of the cherry tree has never died. In 1880, when
+Grant's mistaken friends tried to nominate him for a third Presidential
+term, other candidates had been urged because this one, it was said,
+could carry Ohio, that one Maine, and so on. Then Roscoe Conkling of New
+York strode upon the stage to nominate Grant and declaimed to a hushed
+audience of twenty thousand men:
+
+    "And if you ask what State he comes from,
+    Our sole reply shall be:
+    HE comes from Appomattox
+    And the famous apple tree!"
+
+The twenty thousand were swept off their feet by the magic of that myth.
+Grant was almost nominated--but not quite.
+
+The historic interview began in the room to the left of the front door
+in the McLean house. Two very different figures confronted each other.
+Grant had not expected the meeting to take place so soon and had left
+the farmhouse where he had spent the night before in rough garb. He
+writes: "I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback in
+the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the
+shoulder-straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was.... General
+Lee was dressed in a full uniform, which was entirely new, and was
+wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had
+been presented by the State of Virginia.... In my rough traveling suit,
+the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must
+have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six
+feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I
+thought of until afterwards."
+
+Lee requested that the terms to be given his army should be written out.
+Grant asked General Parker of his staff, a full-blooded American Indian,
+for writing materials. He had prepared nothing beforehand, but he knew
+just what he wanted to say and he wrote without hesitation terms such as
+only a great and magnanimous nation could offer its conquered citizens.
+After providing for the giving of paroles (that is, an agreement not to
+take up arms again unless the paroled prisoner is later exchanged for a
+prisoner of the other side) and for the surrender of arms, artillery,
+and public property, he added: "This will not embrace the sidearms of
+the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each
+officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be
+disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their
+paroles and the laws in force where they reside." There are some
+mistakes in grammar in these words, but there are no mistakes in
+magnanimity. When Lee, having put on his glasses, had read the first
+sentence quoted above, he said with feeling:
+
+[Illustration: LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT]
+
+"This will have a happy effect upon my army."
+
+He went on to say that many of the privates in the Confederate cavalry
+and artillery owned their own horses; could they retain them? Grant did
+not change the written terms, but he said his officers would be
+instructed to let every Confederate private who claimed to own a horse
+or mule take the animal home with him. "It was doubtful," writes Grant,
+"whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and
+their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses
+they were then riding." Again Lee remarked that this would have a happy
+effect. He then wrote and signed an acceptance of the proposed terms of
+surrender. The war was over. The first act of peace was our issuing
+25,000 rations to the army we had captured. For some days it had lived
+on parched corn.
+
+[Illustration: GEN. U. S. GRANT]
+
+The news of the surrender flashed along the waiting lines like wildfire
+and the Union forces began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of
+the victory. "I at once sent word," says Grant, "to have it stopped. The
+Confederates were now our prisoners and we did not want to exult over
+their downfall." This was the spirit of a great man and of a great
+nation. It was not the soldiers who fought the war who kept its rancors
+alive after peace had come, It was the politicians, who tore open the
+old wounds and kept the country bleeding for a dozen years after the
+Lost Cause was lost.
+
+On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 1865, Grant and Lee again met
+between the lines and sitting on horseback talked for half an hour. Then
+Grant began his journey to Washington. His staff, including Tom, went
+with him. When they reached their goal, Second-Lieutenant Strong found
+he was that no longer. For General Wright had done what he had told Tom
+he meant to do. The recommendation had been heeded. Lincoln himself
+handed the boy his new commission as a brevet-captain.
+
+"I was glad to sign that, Tom," the President told him, "and even
+Stanton didn't kick this time."
+
+"You don't know how glad I am to get it, Mr. President," was the reply.
+"Now I'm a boy-captain, as my great-grandfather was before me."
+
+"I'm not much on pedigrees and ancestry and genealogical trees, my boy,"
+answered Lincoln. "Out West we think more of trees that grow out of the
+ground than we do of trees that grow on parchment. But you're right to
+be proud of an ancestry of service to your country. When family pride is
+based on money or land or social standing, it is one of the most foolish
+things God Almighty ever laughed at, but when it is based on service,
+real service, to your country, to your fellowmen, to the world, why,
+then, Tom, it's one of the biggest and best things in God's kingdom. But
+remember this, son,"--Lincoln's eyes flashed in their deep sockets--"if
+a boy has an ancestor who has done big things, the way to be proud of
+him is to do big things yourself. Living on the glory of what somebody
+else has done before you is a mighty poor kind of living. I never knew
+but one man that was perfect and I'd never have known he was if he
+hadn't told me so. Nobody else ever found it out. But if we can't be
+perfect, we can grow less imperfect by trying every day to serve our
+fellowmen. Remember that, Tom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+
+On the evening of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Laura Keene, an English
+actress of great repute in America, was to play _Our American Cousin_ at
+Ford's Theater, the chief place of amusement for war-time Washington.
+
+That afternoon, Assistant-Secretary-of-War Dana was notified by wire
+that Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, once Secretary of the Interior under
+our poor old wavering President, Buchanan, afterwards a leading
+Secessionist, would take a steamship for England that evening at
+Portland, Maine.
+
+"What shall I do?" Dana asked Stanton.
+
+"Arrest him! No, wait; better go over and see the President."
+
+So Dana went to the White House. Office-hours were over. He found
+Lincoln washing his hands.
+
+"Halloo, Dana!" was Lincoln's greeting. "What's up?"
+
+The telegram was read aloud.
+
+"What does Stanton say?"
+
+"He says to arrest him, but that I should refer the question to you."
+
+"Well, no, I rather think not. When you have got an elephant by the hind
+legs and he's trying to run away; it's best to let him run."
+
+Dana reported this to Stanton.
+
+"Oh, stuff!" said Stanton.
+
+But Thompson was not arrested, so that the last recorded act of Lincoln
+as President was one of mercy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the upper stage-box, to the right of the audience, that evening, sat
+Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, Mrs. Lincoln, a friend,
+Miss Harris, and an officer, Major Henry R. Rathbone. The cares of State
+seemed to have slipped for the moment from Lincoln's shoulders. He had
+bowed smilingly from the box in response to the cheers of the packed
+audience in the body of the house. He had followed intently the action
+of the amusing play, constantly smiling, often applauding. The eyes of
+the little party of four were bent upon the stage, about ten o'clock,
+when the door of the box was jerked violently open behind them. As they
+turned at the noise, Death stalked in upon them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five minutes before, Tom Strong had been idly strolling along Tenth
+Street and had paused at the theater door to read the play-bills posted
+there. A small group of belated play-goers was at the ticket-booth. A
+man shoved roughly through them. A woman's "Oh!" of surprise and protest
+drew Tom's attention to the man. He had seen him but thrice before, yet
+the man's face was engraved upon his memory. Once, at Charlestown,
+Virginia, Wilkes Booth had stood in the ranks of the militia, eagerly
+awaiting the execution of John Brown. Once, upon a railroad train north
+of Baltimore, Wilkes Booth had drugged the boy and left him, as the
+scoundrel thought, to die. Once, upon a railroad platform at Kingston,
+Alabama, Wilkes Booth had recognized him and had again sought his death.
+Whose death did he seek to compass now? What was the Confederate spy
+doing here? Tom had scarcely glimpsed the hawk-like features, the pallid
+face, the flowing black hair of his foe, when Booth disappeared from his
+sight in the crowded lobby of the theater.
+
+Instantly Tom pursued him. But he was delayed by the little group
+through whom Booth had elbowed his rough way. And when he reached the
+ticket-window, he found no money in his pocket with which to buy
+admittance. He had put on civilian clothes that evening and had left his
+scanty store of currency in his uniform. The wary ticket-seller, used to
+all sorts of dodges by people who wanted to get in without paying,
+laughed at his story and refused to give him a ticket on trust. Tom's
+claim that he was an officer caused especial amusement.
+
+"That won't go down, bub," said the ticket-seller. "Try to think up a
+better lie next time. And clear out now. Don't block up the
+passageway."
+
+"I _must_ get in," said Tom.
+
+"You shan't," snarled the man, sure that he was being imposed upon.
+
+The doorkeeper, attracted by the little row, had come towards the
+ticket-window. He swung his right arm with a threatening gesture. As Tom
+started towards him he struck the threatened blow, but his clenched fist
+hit nothing. The boy had ducked under his arm and had fled into the
+theater. The doorkeeper pursued him. But Tom was now making his way like
+a weasel through the crowd. He had caught sight of Wilkes Booth nearly
+at the top of the right-hand staircase that led to the aisle from which
+the upper right-hand box was reached. Without any actual premonition of
+the coming tragedy which was to echo around the world upon the morrow,
+he still felt that Booth had in mind some evil deed and that it was his
+duty to prevent him. As he struggled toward the foot of the stairway,
+Booth saw him, recognized him and smiled at him, a smile of triumphant
+hideous evil. Tom yelled:
+
+"Spy! Confederate spy! Stop him! Let me follow!"
+
+Upon the startled crowd there fell a sudden stillness. Nobody laid hand
+upon Booth, but everybody made way for the frantic boy who rushed up the
+stairway as the scoundrel he chased ran down the corridor. He clutched
+the newel post at the head of the stairway just as Booth flung open the
+door of the box. Tom ran towards him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door of the box was violently jerked open. Wilkes Booth sprang
+across the threshold. He put his pistol close to the head of the unarmed
+man he meant to murder. He fired. The greatest American sank forward
+into his wife's arms. High above her shrieks rose the actor's trained
+voice. He leaped upon the balustrade of the box, shouted "_Sic semper
+tyrannis!_" and jumped down to the stage. He was booted and spurred for
+his escape. His horse was held for him near the stage-door. One of his
+spurs caught upon the curtain of the box, so that he stumbled and fell
+heavily. But he had played his part upon that stage many a time before.
+He knew every nook and cranny of the mysterious labyrinth behind the
+footlights. He rose to his feet, disregarding a twisted ankle, and
+rushed to safety--for a few hours. He reached his horse and galloped
+into the calm night of God, profaned forever by this hideous crime of a
+besotted fanatic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The martyred President was taken to a neighboring house, No. 453 Tenth
+Street. In a back hall bedroom, upon the first floor, that that was
+still Abraham Lincoln, but was soon to cease to be so, was laid upon a
+narrow bed. Tom had helped to carry him there. Wife and son, John Hay,
+Secretary-of-War Stanton, and a few others crowded into the tiny room.
+Doctors worked feverishly over the dying man. Their skill was in vain.
+The slow and regular breathing grew fainter. The automatic moaning
+ceased. A look of unspeakable peace came to the face the world now knows
+so well. In a solemn hush, at twenty-two minutes after seven in the
+morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865, the great soul of Abraham Lincoln
+went back to the God Who had given him to America and to the world. A
+moment later Stanton spoke:
+
+"Now he belongs to the ages."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+     TOM HUNTS WILKES BOOTH--THE END OF THE MURDERER--ANDREW JOHNSON,
+     PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES--TOM AND TOWSER GO HOME.
+
+
+The assassination of Lincoln was not the only crime that stained that
+memorable night. Secretary-of-State Seward was stabbed in his sick-bed
+by one of Booth's co-conspirators. Attempts were made upon the lives of
+other Cabinet ministers. Many arbitrary arrests had been made during the
+war by Secretary Stanton. It had been said that whenever Stanton's
+little bell rang, somebody went to prison. That little bell had little
+rest this Saturday. Wholesale arrests were made of suspected Southern
+sympathizers who might have known something of the hideous conspiracy of
+murder. Stanton put all the grim energy of him into the pursuit of the
+leading criminals. He was said never to forget anything. One of the
+things he had not forgotten was that Tom Strong knew Wilkes Booth by
+sight. He sent him from Lincoln's bedside, hours before Lincoln died, to
+join a troop of cavalry that was to pursue Booth. The road by which the
+murderer had left Washington was known. Hard upon his heels rode the
+avengers of crime. Wherever there was a light in one of the few houses
+along the lonely road, often where there was no light, the occupants
+were seized, questioned, sometimes sent to Washington under guard,
+sometimes released and sternly bidden to say nothing of the midnight
+ride. Piecing together scraps of information gathered here and there,
+studying every crossroad for possible hoof-marks of flight, the silent
+commander of the cavalrymen at last convinced himself that he was on the
+trail of the quarry. The troops broke into full gallop. A few minutes
+before dawn they reached a small village on the bank of the Potomac,
+where the fires of a smithy gleamed. They pulled up short as the
+startled blacksmith came out of his sooty shed.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded the captain.
+
+"I've been--I've been--putting on a horseshoe, sir."
+
+"For what kind of a looking man?"
+
+"He said his name was Barnard."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Tom from his saddle, "but Barnard was the
+name Wilkes Booth once gave me for his own." At the beginning of the
+ride, Tom had described Booth's appearance to the captain.
+
+"Was the man pale? Did he have long black hair?"
+
+"Long black hair," answered the blacksmith, "but his cheeks were red. He
+seemed excited. While I was replacing the shoe his horse had cast, he
+kept drinking brandy from a bottle he carried. He never gave me none of
+it," the man added with an injured air.
+
+"Did he say anything?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He said I'd hear great news later today, that the
+Southerners had won their greatest victory. I asked him where and he
+swore at me and told me to shut up. But he gave me a silver dollar.
+Perhaps it's bad. Is it?"
+
+The blacksmith pulled out of his grimy pocket a dollar and showed it to
+the captain.
+
+"Do you know who that man was?" was the stern command.
+
+"No, sir, o' course I don't. I s'pose he was Mr. Barnard."
+
+"He was Judas. He has murdered Abraham Lincoln. And he has given you one
+of the forty pieces of silver."
+
+With wild-eyed horror, the smith started back. He flung the accursed
+dollar far into the Potomac.
+
+"God's curse go with it," he cried. "Captain, the man went straight down
+the river road. He gave his horse a cut with his whip 'n he yelled
+'Carry me back to ole Virginny!' and he went off lickety-split. He ain't
+half-an-hour ahead of you."
+
+No need to command full speed now. Every man was riding hard. Every
+horse was putting his last ounce of strength into his stride. Within an
+hour, the hounds saw the slinking fox they chased. Booth, abandoning his
+exhausted steed, took refuge in a tumble-down barn. A cordon was thrown
+about it and he was called on to surrender. The reply was a shot. Tom
+heard the whiz of the bullet as it tore by him. The cavalry pumped lead
+into the barn. Once, twice, thrice they fired. At the first volley, the
+trapped murderer had again fired. There was no answer to the second and
+third. With reloaded carbines, the troopers charged, burst open the
+barred door, and rushed into the rickety shed. A man lay on the earthen
+floor, breath and blood struggling together in his gaping mouth. As they
+gathered about him, the Captain asked:
+
+"Do you know this man, Captain Strong?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Wilkes Booth, sir."
+
+The sound of his own name half recalled Booth to life. He looked up at
+the boy who stood beside him and recognized him. Ferocious hate filled
+the glazing eyes. Then Wilkes Booth went to his eternal doom, hating to
+the end.
+
+"Is he dead?" said the Captain, turning to a major of the medical
+service, who had galloped beside Tom on that fierce ride of the
+avengers. A big, bearded man knelt beside the body of Wilkes Booth, put
+his finger where the pulse had been and laid his hand where the heart
+had once beat.
+
+"He is dead," answered Major Hans Rolf.
+
+His body was thrust somewhere into the earth he had disgraced or else
+was flung, weighted with stones, into the river, all the flood tides of
+which could not wash away the black guilt of him. No man knows where the
+body of Wilkes Booth was buried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The king is dead! Long live the king!"
+
+When Tom rode sadly up Pennsylvania Avenue, with a crape-laden flag at
+half-mast over the Capitol, glad for the stern justice that had been
+dealt out to the murderer he loathed, but bowed down with grief for the
+murdered President he had loved, Abraham Lincoln was no longer President
+of the United States. In his stead, our uncrowned king was Andrew
+Johnson, of Tennessee, a Southern Unionist who had been elected Vice
+President when the people chose Lincoln a second time for their ruler.
+Johnson had been born to grinding poverty in a rough community where
+"skule-l'arnin'" was not to be had. He was a grown man, earning a scanty
+livelihood as a village tailor, when his wife taught him to read and
+write. He worked his hard way up in life, became a man of prominence in
+his village, in his county, in his State, until he was chosen for
+Lincoln's running-mate as a representative Southern Unionist. He was of
+course a man of native force, but he sometimes drowned his mind in
+liquor. That fatal habit pulled him down. He was a failure as a
+President, though thereafter he served his State and his country well
+as a United States Senator from Tennessee.
+
+The White House was changed under its new ruler. John Hay, full of cheer
+and wit, was abroad as a secretary of legation. Nicolay, his superior
+officer, was a consul in Europe. The Lincoln family had gone West
+through a sorrowing country, bearing the body of the martyr-President to
+its burial-place in Springfield, Illinois. For a while some familiar
+faces were left. At first, the same Cabinet ministers served the new
+President. For some time, Uncle Moses had to learn no new names as he
+carried about the summons to the Cabinet meetings. But the visitors to
+the White House had changed mightily. Rough men from Tennessee and the
+other Border States, some of them diamonds in the rough, swarmed there.
+Lincoln had never used tobacco. The new-comers both smoked and chewed.
+Clouds of smoke filled the lower story and giant spittoons lined the
+corridors and invaded the public rooms. Gradually the Republican leaders
+ceased to wait upon the President.
+
+Among the people who left the White House soon after Lincoln left it was
+Tom Strong. On a bright May morning he walked across the portico, where
+Towser was eagerly awaiting him and where Uncle Moses followed him. Unk'
+Mose lifted his withered black hands and called down blessings on the
+boy who had been his angel of freedom and had led him out of bondage.
+
+"De good Lawd bress you, Mas'r Tom. And de good Lawd bress dat dar
+wufless ol' houn' dawg Towser, too. 'Kase Towser, he lubs you, Mas'r
+Tom,--and so duz I," Uncle Moses shyly added.
+
+The venerable old negro and the white boy shook hands in a long farewell
+upon the steps of the White House. Then Tom turned away from the
+historic roof that had so long sheltered him and walked to the railroad
+station, to take the train for New York. Towser trotted stiffly by his
+side, trying at every step to lick his master's hand.
+
+Tom Strong studied hard at home and then went to Yale, as his father
+had done before him.
+
+Towser could not go with him. The laws of Yale forbade it. That is one
+of the chief disadvantages of being a dog. Soon after Tom went to New
+Haven, Towser went to heaven. At least, let us hope he did. He deserved
+to do so. One of the human things about Martin Luther, the stern founder
+of Protestantism in Germany in the Sixteenth Century, was that he once
+said to a tiny girl, weeping over the death of her tiny dog: "Do not
+cry, little maid; for you will find your dog in heaven and he will have
+a golden tail."
+
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+[Illustration: TOWSER
+               "MAY HE REST IN PEACE"]
+
+
+
+
+                       BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS
+
+
+                        THE DOGS OF BOYTOWN
+
+                         By WALTER A. DYER
+
+             _Author of "Pierrot, Dog of Belgium," etc._
+                      _Illustrated. $1.50 net_
+
+  _New York Sun_: "It takes the cake--in this case, of course, a dog
+  biscuit.... It is the most unusual book of its kind.... Dyer enters a
+  new field for boys ... all boys will want to know about Dogs--their ways
+  and habits, their histories and origins.... Threaded through this
+  wonderful textbook on dogs is the story of adventures of two boys ...
+  shows the reader where to find out about everything from bench shows and
+  the care of puppies to fleas...."
+
+
+                 THE FIVE BABBITTS AT BONNYACRES
+
+                         By WALTER A. DYER
+
+            _Illustrated, by J. O. Chapin. $1.50 net_
+
+  A back-to-the-farm story for young folks based on actual experience. The
+  farm problems and results are such as could actually occur on thousands
+  of American farms.
+
+
+                  MAGIC PICTURES OF THE LONG AGO
+
+                      By ANNA CURTIS CHANDLER
+
+            _With some forty illustrations. $1.30 net_
+
+  Each recounts the youth and something of the later life of some striking
+  character in art, history, or literature, and is made very vivid by
+  reproductions of famous pictures, etc.
+
+
+                           BLUE HERON COVE
+
+                       By FANNIE LEE MCKINNEY
+
+                 _Author of "Nora-Square-Accounts."_
+
+                      _Illustrated. $1.35 net_
+
+  Tells how Blue Heron Island and its seafaring folks change "a little
+  German countess in white satin" into "a real, authentic American girl."
+
+
+                             THE GUN BOOK
+
+                          By THOMAS H. MCKEE
+
+                  _Profusely illustrated. $1.60 net_
+
+  A book about guns for boys of all ages. The history is accurate; boys
+  will remember the anecdotes; and the technical parts are sensibly
+  adapted to show "just how it works."
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                  COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE
+
+                  FOR BOYS     By CHARLES P. BURTON
+
+
+                        THE BOYS OF BOB'S HILL
+
+         Illustrated by GEORGE A. WILLIAMS. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+   A lively story of a party of boys in a small New England town.
+
+     "A first-rate juvenile ... a real story for the live human boy--any
+     boy will read it eagerly to the end ... quite thrilling
+     adventures."--_Chicago Record-Herald_.
+
+
+                          THE BOB'S CAVE BOYS
+
+               Illustrated by VICTOR PERARD. $1.35 net.
+
+     "It would be hard to find anything better in the literature of New
+     England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, human boys, full of fun,
+     into trouble and out again, but frank, honest, and clean."--_The
+     Congregationalist._
+
+
+                         THE BOB'S HILL BRAVES
+
+             Illustrated by H. S. DELAY. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  The "Bob's Hill" band spend a vacation in Illinois, where they play at
+  being Indians, hear thrilling tales of real Indians, and learn much
+  frontier history. A history of especial interest to "Boy Scouts."
+
+     "Merry youngsters. Capital. Thrilling tales of the red men and
+     explorers. These healthy red-blooded, New England
+     boys."--_Philadelphia Press._
+
+
+                      THE BOY SCOUTS OF BOB'S HILL
+
+             Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  The "Bob's Hill" band organizes a Boy Scouts band and have many
+  adventures. Mr. Burton brings in tales told around a camp-fire of La
+  Salle, Joliet, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Northwestern
+  Reservation.
+
+
+                            CAMP BOB'S HILL
+
+                Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. $1.35 net.
+
+  A tale of Boy Scouts on their summer vacation.
+
+
+                    THE RAVEN PATROL OF BOB'S HILL
+
+                Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. $1.35 net.
+
+  The account of a camping trip of the Raven Patrol of the Boy Scouts to
+  the Massachusetts coast, with much real boy fun and wholesome
+  adventure.
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                        BY ALICE CALHOUN HAINES
+
+               _For Young Folks from 9 to 16 Years old._
+
+
+                           PARTNERS FOR FAIR
+
+             With illustrations by FAITH AVERY. $1.35 net
+
+  A story full of action, not untinged by pathos, of a boy and his
+  faithful dog and their wanderings after the poor-house burns down.
+  They have interesting experiences with a traveling circus; the boy is
+  thrown from a moving train, and has a lively time with the Mexican
+  Insurrectos, from whom he is rescued by our troops.
+
+
+                    THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS
+
+         Illustrated by FRANCIS DAY. 300 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  A family story of city life. Lightened by humor and an airship.
+
+     "Among the very best of books for young folks. Appeals especially
+     to girls."--_Wisconsin List for Township Libraries._
+
+     "Promises to be perennially popular. A family of happy, healthy,
+     inventive, bright children make the best of restricted conditions
+     and prove themselves masters of circumstances."--_Christian
+     Register._
+
+     "Sparkles with cleverness and humor."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+
+                          COCK-A-DOODLE HILL
+
+          A sequel to the above. Illustrated by FRANCIS DAY.
+
+                       296 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  "Cockle-a-doodle Hill" is where the Dudley Graham family went to live
+  when they left New York, and here Ernie started her chicken-farm, with
+  one solitary fowl, "Hennerietta." The pictures of country scenes and
+  the adventures and experiences of this household of young people are
+  very life-like.
+
+     "No better book for young people than 'The Luck of the Dudley
+     Grahams' was offered last year. 'Cock-a-Doodle Hill' is another of
+     similar qualities."--_Philadelphia Press._
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                        By ALFRED BISHOP MASON
+
+
+                   TOM STRONG, WASHINGTON'S SCOUT
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  A story of adventure. The principal characters, a boy and a trapper,
+  are in the Revolutionary army from the defeat at Brooklyn to the
+  victory at Yorktown.
+
+
+                       TOM STRONG, BOY-CAPTAIN
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Tom Strong and a sturdy old trapper take part in such stirring events
+  following the Revolution as the Indian raid with Crawford and a
+  flat-boat voyage from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, etc.
+
+
+                          TOM STRONG, JUNIOR
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  The story of the son of Tom Strong in the young United States. Tom
+  sees the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr; is in
+  Washington during the presidency of Jefferson; is on board of the
+  "Clermont" on its first trip, and serves in the United States Navy
+  during the War of 1812.
+
+
+                           TOM STRONG, THIRD
+
+                        Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Tom Strong, Junior's son helps his father build the first railroad
+  in the United States and then goes with Kit Carson on the Lewis and
+  Clarke Expedition.
+
+
+                     TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+                        Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Serving under President Lincoln, the fourth Tom Strong becomes an
+  actor in the most stirring events of the Civil War.
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+               _STANDARD CYCLOPÆDIAS FOR YOUNG OR OLD_
+
+
+                              CHAMPLIN'S
+
+                      Young Folks' Cyclopædias
+
+                        By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN
+
+        _Late Associate Editor of the American Cyclopædia_
+
+  Bound in substantial red buckram. Each volume complete in itself
+  and sold separately. 12mo, $3.00 per volume, net.
+
+
+                            COMMON THINGS
+
+       New, Enlarged Edition, 850 pp. Profusely Illustrated
+     "A book which will be of permanent value to any boy or girl to whom
+     it may be given, and which fills a place in the juvenile library,
+     never, so far as I know, supplied before."--_Susan Coolidge._
+
+
+                         PERSONS AND PLACES
+
+      New, Up-to-Date Edition, 985 pp. Over 375 Illustrations
+
+     "We know copies of the work to which their young owners turn
+     instantly for information upon every theme about which they have
+     questions to ask. More than this, we know that some of these copies
+     are read daily, as well as consulted; that their owners turn the
+     leaves as they might those of a fairy book, reading intently
+     articles of which they had not thought before seeing them, and
+     treating the book simply as one capable of furnishing the rarest
+     entertainment in exhaustless quantities.--_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+
+                         LITERATURE AND ART
+
+                     604 pp. 270 Illustrations
+
+     "Few poems, plays, novels, pictures, statues, or fictitious
+     characters that children--or most of their parents--of our day are
+     likely to inquire about will be missed here. Mr. Champlin's
+     judgment seems unusually sound."--_The Nation._
+
+
+                         GAMES AND SPORTS
+
+              By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN and ARTHUR BOSTWICK
+
+             Revised Edition, 784 pp. 900 Illustrations
+
+     "Should form a part of every juvenile library, whether public or
+     private."--_The Independent._
+
+
+                          NATURAL HISTORY
+
+        By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN, assisted by FREDERICK A. LUCAS
+
+                 725 pp. Over 800 Illustrations
+
+     "Here, in compact and attractive form, is valuable and reliable
+     information on every phase of natural history, on every item of
+     interest to the student. Invaluable to the teacher and school, and
+     should be on every teacher's desk for ready reference, and the
+     children should be taught to go to this volume for information
+     useful and interesting."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44132 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44132 ***</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<table border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" summary="table of contents">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="360" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Stories of Adventure in The<br />
+      Young United States</span></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><i>By ALFRED BISHOP MASON</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Washington's Scout</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Boy-Captain</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Junior</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Third</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em">HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</span><br />
+      <span class="font09">Publishers&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;New York</span><br />
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p class="p3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 457px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_003.jpg" width="457" height="700" alt="St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln</span>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h1>TOM STRONG,<br />
+LINCOLN'S SCOUT</h1>
+
+<p class="p2 center font12 pmb3">A STORY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE<br />
+TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS</p>
+
+<p class="center font09 pmb1">By</p>
+
+<p class="center font14">ALFRED BISHOP MASON</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb3 pmb2">Author of "Tom Stron, Washington's Scout," Tom Strong,<br />
+Boy-Captain," "Tom Strong, Junior," and<br />
+"Tom Strong, Third"</p>
+
+<p class="center font11 pmb3">Illustrated</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
+  <img src="images/liber.jpg" width="75" height="100" alt="logo -- decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<p class="center font11">NEW YORK</p>
+<p class="center font12">HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</p>
+<p class="center font11 pmb3">1919</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center pmb3 pmb3"><span class="font08">
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1919<br />
+BY<br />
+HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</span><br /></p>
+
+<p class="center font07 pmb3">The Quinn &amp; Boden Company<br />
+BOOK MANUFACTURERS<br />
+RAHWAY&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW JERSEY</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font08 pmb1">DEDICATED BY PERMISSION</p>
+
+<p class="center font08 pmb1">TO</p>
+
+<p class="center font13 pmb1">THEODORE ROOSEVELT</p>
+
+<p class="center font11 pmb3">INSPIRER OF PATRIOTISM,<br />
+A GREAT AMERICAN</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="block1">
+<p class="center font08 pmb1">
+<tt>OYSTER BAY,<br />
+LONG ISLAND, N. Y.</tt></p>
+<p class="i50 font11 pmb3"><tt>August 31st, 1917.</tt></p>
+
+<p class="font11 pmb1"><tt>Dear Mr. Mason:</tt></p>
+
+<p class="i5 font11 pmb1"><tt>All right, I shall break my rule
+and have you dedicate that book to me. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Thank you<i>!</i></tt></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" summary="Signature">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="50%" /> <col width="50%" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">
+      <div class="figcenter" style="width: 270px;">
+      <img src="images/illo_007_sign.jpg" width="270" height="32" alt="Signature T. Roosevelt" title="" />
+      </div>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p class="left font11 pmb1"><tt>Mr. Alfred B. Mason,<br />
+University Club,<br />
+New York City.</tt></p>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD">FOREWORD</a></h2>
+
+
+<p class="pmb2">Many of the persons and personages who appear
+upon the pages of this book have already
+lived, some in history and some in the pages of
+"Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom
+Strong, Boy-Captain," "Tom Strong, Junior,"
+or "Tom Strong, Third." Those who wish to
+know the full story of the four Tom Strongs,
+great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son,
+should read those books, too.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="1" summary="table of contents1">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="410" /> <col width="60" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right" valign="top"><span style="font-size:.6em">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER I</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Rides in Western Maryland&mdash;Halted
+      by Armed Men&mdash;John Brown&mdash;The Attack
+      upon Harper's Ferry&mdash;The Fight&mdash;John
+      Brown's Soul Goes Marching On</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="font10">CHAPTER II</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Our War with Mexico&mdash;Kit Carson and His
+      Lawyer, Abe Lincoln&mdash;Tom Goes to Lincoln's
+      Inauguration&mdash;S. F. B. Morse, Inventor
+      of the Telegraph&mdash;Tom Back in
+      Washington</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="font10">CHAPTER III</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2 font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Charles Francis Adams&mdash;Mr. Strong Goes
+      to Russia&mdash;Tom Goes to Live in the
+      White House&mdash;Bull Run&mdash;&quot;Stonewall&quot;
+      Jackson&mdash;Geo. B. McClellan&mdash;Tom
+      Strong, Second-Lieutenant, U. S. A.&mdash;The
+      Battle of the &quot;Merrimac&quot; and the
+      &quot;Monitor&quot;</span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER IV</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Goes West&mdash;Wilkes Booth Hunts Him&mdash;Dr.
+      Hans Rolf Saves Him&mdash;He Delivers
+      Despatches to General Grant</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER V</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Inside the Confederate Lines&mdash;"Sairey"
+      Warns Tom&mdash;Old Man Tomblin's "Settlemint"&mdash;Stealing
+      a Locomotive&mdash;Wilkes
+      Booth Gives the Alarm&mdash;A
+      Wild Dash for the Union Lines</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER VI</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom up a Tree&mdash;Did the Confederate Officer
+      See Him?&mdash;The Fugitive Slave
+      Guides Him&mdash;Buying a Boat in the Dark&mdash;Adrift
+      in the Enemy's Country</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER VII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Towser Finds the Fugitives&mdash;Towser Brings
+      Uncle Moses&mdash;Mr. Izzard and His Yankee
+      Overseer, Jake Johnson&mdash;Tom Is
+      Pulled Down the Chimney&mdash;How Uncle
+      Moses Choked the Overseer&mdash;The
+      Flight of the Four</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER VIII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life&mdash;Newspaper
+      Abuse of Lincoln&mdash;The Emancipation
+      Proclamation&mdash;Lincoln in His
+      Night-shirt&mdash;James Russell Lowell&mdash;"Barbara
+      Frietchie"&mdash;Mr. Strong Comes
+      Home&mdash;The Russian Fleet Comes to
+      New York&mdash;A Backwoods Jupiter</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER IX</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Goes to Vicksburg&mdash;Morgan's Raid&mdash;Gen.
+      Basil W. Duke Captures Tom&mdash;Gettysburg&mdash;Gen.
+      Robert E. Lee Gives
+      Tom His Breakfast&mdash;In Libby Prison&mdash;Lincoln's
+      Speech at Gettysburg</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span>
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER X</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Is Hungry&mdash;He Learns to "Spoon" by
+      Squads&mdash;The Bullet at the Window&mdash;Working
+      on the Tunnel&mdash;"Rat Hell"&mdash;The
+      Risk of the Roll-call&mdash;What Happened
+      to Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy&mdash;Tom
+      in Libby Prison&mdash;Hans Rolf
+      Attends Him&mdash;Hans Refuses to Escape&mdash;The
+      Flight Through the Tunnel&mdash;Free,
+      but How to Stay So?</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XI</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Hides in a River Bank&mdash;Eats Raw Fish&mdash;Jim
+      Grayson Aids Him&mdash;Down the
+      James River on a Tree&mdash;Passing the Patrol
+      Boats&mdash;Cannonaded&mdash;The End of
+      the Voyage</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Towser Welcomes Tom to the White House&mdash;Lincoln
+      Re-elected President&mdash;Grant
+      Commander-in-Chief&mdash;Sherman Marches
+      from Atlanta to the Sea&mdash;Tom on
+      Grant's Staff&mdash;Five Forks&mdash;Fall of
+      Richmond&mdash;Hans Rolf Freed&mdash;Bob Saves
+      Tom from Capture&mdash;Tom Takes a Battery
+      into Action&mdash;Lee Surrenders&mdash;Tom
+      Strong, Brevet-Captain, U. S. A.</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XIII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XIV</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Hunts Wilkes Booth&mdash;The End of the
+      Murderer&mdash;Andrew Johnson, President
+      of the United States&mdash;Tom and Towser
+      Go Home</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</a></h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="1" summary="list of illustrations">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="80" /> <col width="320" /> <col width="110" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right" valign="top"><span style="font-size:.6em">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Abraham Lincoln</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><i>Frontispiece</i></span></td>
+  </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+        <td align="left">
+          <span class="font08">St. Gaudens Statue, Lincoln Park, Chicago</span></td>
+        <td align="right"><span class="font08">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">John Brown</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">The Attack upon the Engine House</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Battle of the &quot;Monitor&quot; and the &quot;Merrimac&quot;</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Admiral Farragut</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Mississippi River Gunboats</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">The Locomotive Tom Helped to Steal</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Towser</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">General Duke Samples the Pies</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Arlington</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. Robert E. Lee on Traveler</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Libby Prison after the War</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_214">214</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Fighting the Rats</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Libby Prison and the Tunnel</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Abraham Lincoln in 1864</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. W. T. Sherman</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+        <td align="left">
+          <span class="font08">St. Gaudens Statue, Central Park Plaza, New York</span></td>
+        <td align="right"><span class="font08">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Bob</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. Philip H. Sheridan</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+        <td align="left">
+          <span class="font08">Sheridan Square Statue, Washington, D. C.</span></td>
+        <td align="right"><span class="font08">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Tom Takes a Battery into Action</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">The McLean House, Appomattox Courthouse</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Lee Surrenders to Grant</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_302">302</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. U. S. Grant</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="3">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2><a name="MAP" id="MAP">MAP</a></h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="1" summary="list of illustrations">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="80" /> <col width="320" /> <col width="110" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right" valign="top"><span style="font-size:.6em">&nbsp;</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Eastern Half of United States</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_2">2</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font20 pmb3"><b>TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT</b></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 506px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_017.jpg" width="506" height="700" alt="Map of the Eastern United States" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">THE EASTERN UNITED STATES<br />
+  (Showing places mentioned in this book)</span>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font20 pmb3"><b>TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT</b></p>
+
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Rides in Western Maryland&mdash;Halted by
+Armed Men&mdash;John Brown&mdash;The Attack
+upon Harper's Ferry&mdash;The Fight&mdash;John
+Brown's Soul Goes Marching On.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>On a beautiful October afternoon, a man and
+a boy were riding along a country road
+in Western Maryland. To their left lay the
+Potomac, its waters gleaming and sparkling
+beneath the rays of the setting sun. To their
+right, low hills, wooded to the top, bounded the
+view. They had left the little town of Harper's
+Ferry, Virginia, an hour before; had crossed to
+the Maryland shore of the Potomac; and now
+were looking for some country inn or friendly
+farmhouse where they and their horses could be
+cared for overnight.</p>
+
+<p>The man was Mr. Thomas Strong, once Tom
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+Strong, third, and the boy was his son, another
+Tom Strong, the fourth to bear that name. Like
+the three before him he was brown and strong,
+resolute and eager, with a smile that told of a
+nature of sunshine and cheer. They were looking
+for land. Mr. Strong had inherited much
+land in New York City. The growth of that
+great town had given him a comfortable fortune.
+He had decided to buy a farm somewhere
+and a friend had told him that Western Maryland
+was almost a paradise. So it was, but this
+Eden had its serpent. Slavery was there. It
+was a mild and patriarchal kind of slavery, but
+it had left its black mark upon the countryside.
+Across the nearby Mason and Dixon's line,
+Pennsylvania was full of little farms, tilled by
+their owners, and of little towns, which reflected
+the wealth of the neighboring farmers. Western
+Maryland was largely owned by absentee
+landlords. Its towns were tiny villages. Its
+farms were few and far between. The free State
+was briskly alive; the slave State was sleepily
+dead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The two riders were splendidly mounted, the
+father on a big bay stallion, Billy-boy, and the
+son on a black Morgan mare, Jennie. Billy-boy
+was a descendant of the Billy-boy General
+Washington had given to the first Tom Strong,
+many years before. Jennie was a descendant
+of the Jennie Tom Strong, third, had ridden
+across the plains of the great West with John
+C. Fremont, "the Pathfinder," first Republican
+candidate for President of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't seen a house for miles, Father,"
+said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"And we were never out of sight of a house
+when we were riding through Pennsylvania.
+There's always a reason for such things. Do
+you know the reason?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The sin of slavery. I don't believe I shall
+buy land in Maryland. I thought I might plant
+a colony of happy people here and help to make
+Maryland free, in the course of years, but I'm
+beginning to think the right kind of white people
+won't come where the only work is done by
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+slaves. We must find soon a place to sleep.
+Perhaps there'll be a house around that next
+turn in the road. Billy-boy whinnies as though
+there were other horses near."</p>
+
+<p>Billy-boy's sharp nose had not deceived him.
+There were other horses near. Just around the
+turn of the road there were three horses. Three
+armed men were upon them. Father and son
+at the same moment saw and heard them.</p>
+
+<p>"You stop! Who be you?"</p>
+
+<p>The sharp command was backed by uplifted
+pistols. The Strongs reined in their horses,
+with indignant surprise. Who were these three
+farmers who seemed to be playing bandits upon
+the peaceful highroad? The boy glanced at his
+father and tried to imitate his father's cool demeanor.
+He felt the shock of surprise, but his
+heart beat joyously with the thought: "This is
+an adventure!" All his young life he had
+longed for adventures. He had deeply enjoyed
+the novel experience of the week's ride with the
+father he loved, but he had not hoped for a
+thrill like this.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong eyed the three horsemen, who
+seemed both awkward and uneasy. "What
+does this mean?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, thar ain't goin' to be no harm done
+you nor done bub, thar, neither," the leader of
+the highwaymen answered, with a note almost
+of pleading in his voice. "Don't you be oneasy.
+But you'll have to come with us&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And spend Sunday with us&mdash;&mdash;" broke in
+another man.</p>
+
+<p>"Shet up, Bill. I'll do all the talkin' that's
+needed."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what you do best," the other man
+grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Tom," said Mr. Strong, turning with
+a smile to his son, "we seem to have found that
+place to spend the night." He faced his captors.
+"This is a queer performance of yours. You
+don't look like highwaymen, though you act like
+them. Do you mean to steal our horses?" he
+added, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't no hoss thieves," replied the
+leader. "You've got to come with us, but you
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+needn't be no way oneasy. You, Bill, ride
+ahead!"</p>
+
+<p>Bill turned his horse and rode ahead, Mr.
+Strong and Tom riding behind him, the other
+two men behind them. It was a silent ride, but
+not a long one. Within a mile, they reached a
+rude clearing that held a couple of log huts.
+The sun had set; the short twilight was over.
+Firelight gleamed in the larger of the huts. The
+prisoners were taken to it. A man who was
+lounging outside the door had a whispered talk
+with the three horsemen. Then he turned
+rather sheepishly; said: "Come in, mister;
+come in, bub;" opened the door, called within:
+"Prisoners, Captin' Smith," and stepped aside
+as father and son entered.</p>
+
+<p>There were a dozen men in the big room,
+farmers all, apparently. They were all on their
+feet, eyeing keenly the unexpected prisoners.
+Their eyes turned to a tall man, who stepped
+forward and held out his hand, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry the boys had to take you in, but
+you and your hosses are safe and we won't
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+keep you long. The day of the Lord is at
+hand."</p>
+
+<p>There was a grim murmur of approval from
+the other men. The Lord's day, as Sunday is
+sometimes called, was at hand, for it was then
+the evening of Saturday, October 15, 1859. But
+that was not what the speaker meant. He was
+not what his followers called him, Captain
+Smith. He was John Brown, of North Elba,
+New York, of Kansas ("bleeding Kansas" it
+was called then, when slaveholders from Missouri
+and freedom-lovers under John Brown had
+turned it into a battlefield), and he was soon to
+be John Brown of Harper's Ferry, Virginia,
+first martyr in the cause of Freedom on Virginian
+soil. To him "the day of the Lord" was
+the day when he was to attack slavery in its
+birthplace, the Old Dominion, and that attack
+had been set by him for Sunday, October 16.
+His plan was to seize Harper's Ferry, where
+there was a United States arsenal, arm the
+slaves he thought would come to his standard
+from all Virginia, and so compass the fall of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+the Slave Power. A wild plan, an impossible
+plan, the plan of an almost crazy fanatic, and a
+splendid dream, a dream for the sake of which
+he was glad to give his heroic life.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He had rented this Maryland farm in July,
+giving his name as Smith and saying he expected
+to breed horses. By twos and threes his followers
+had joined him in this solitary spot, until
+now there were twenty-one of them. The few
+folk scattered through the countryside had begun
+to be suspicious of this strange gathering of
+men. All sorts of wild stories circulated, though
+none was as wild as the truth. The men themselves
+were tense under the strain of the long
+wait. They feared discovery and attack. For
+the three days before "the day of the Lord"
+they had patrolled the one road, looking out
+for soldiers or for spies. Tom and his father had
+been their sole captives.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 582px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_026.jpg" width="582" height="700" alt="Portrait of John Brown" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">John Brown</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John Brown was one of Nature's noblemen
+and among his friends in Massachusetts and
+New York were some of the foremost men of
+their time, so he had learned to know a real man
+when he met one. He soon found out that Mr.
+Strong was a real man. He told him of his
+plans, and urged him to join in the projected
+foray on Harper's Ferry. But when Mr. Strong
+refused and tried to show him how mad his
+project was, the fires of the fanatic blazed within
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Did not Joshua bring down the walls of
+Jericho with a ram's horn?" he shouted. "And
+with twenty armed men cannot I pull down the
+walls of the citadel of Slavery? Are you a true
+man or not? Will you join me or not? Answer
+me yes or no."</p>
+
+<p>"No," was the response, quiet but firm.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall join me; you and your boy,"
+thundered the crusader, hammering the table
+with his mighty fist. "Here, Jim, put these
+people under guard and keep them until we
+start."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Tom and his father were well-treated, but they
+were kept under guard until the next night
+and were then taken along by John Brown's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+"army," which trudged off into the darkness
+afoot, while Billy-boy and Jennie and the other
+horses in the corral whinnied uneasily, sensing,
+as animals do, the stir of a departure which is to
+leave them behind. In the center of the little
+column the two captives marched the five miles
+to Harper's Ferry and started across the bridge
+that led to that tiny town.</p>
+
+<p>A brave man, one Patrick Hoggins, was night-watchman
+of the bridge. He heard the trampling
+of many feet upon the plank-flooring. He
+hurried towards the strange sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt!" shouted somebody in the column.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I didn't know what 'halt' mint then,"
+Patrick testified afterwards, "anny more than a
+hog knows about a holiday."</p>
+
+<p>But he had seen armed men and he turned
+to run and give an alarm. A bullet was swifter
+than he, but not swifter than his voice. He
+fell, but his shouts had alarmed the town.
+There were two or three watchmen at the
+arsenal. They came forward, only to be made
+prisoners. The few citizens who had been
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+aroused could do nothing. The "army" seized
+the arsenal without difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Five miles from Harper's Ferry lived Col.
+Lewis W. Washington, gentleman-farmer and
+slave-owner, great-grand-nephew of another
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, George
+Washington. At midnight, Colonel Washington
+was awakened by a blow upon his bedroom
+door. It swung open and the light of a burning
+torch showed the astonished Southerner four
+armed men, one of them a negro, who bade him
+rise and dress. They were a patrol sent out by
+Brown. Their leader, Stevens, asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you a pistol Lafayette gave George
+Washington and a sword Frederick the Great
+sent him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>His four captors tramped downstairs with
+him. Pistol and sword were found.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take the pistol," said Stevens. "You
+hand the sword to this negro."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John Brown wore this sword during the fighting
+that followed. It is now in the possession
+of the State of New York. While its being sent
+George Washington by Frederick the Great is
+doubtful&mdash;the story runs that the Prussian king
+sent with it a message "From the oldest general
+to the best general"&mdash;its being surrendered
+by Lewis Washington to the negro is true.</p>
+
+<p>Lewis was then on the staff of the Governor
+of Virginia, and had acquired in this way his
+title of Colonel. He was put into his own carriage.
+His slaves, few in number, were bundled
+into a four-horse farm-wagon. They were told
+to come and fight for their freedom. Too scared
+to resist, they came as they were bidden to do,
+but they did no fighting. At Harper's Ferry
+they and their fellow-slaves, seized at a neighboring
+plantation, escaped back to slavery at the
+first possible moment. Not a single negro voluntarily
+joined John Brown. He had expected
+a widespread slave insurrection. There was
+nothing of the sort. By Monday morning he
+knew he had failed, failed utterly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before Monday's sun set, Harper's Ferry was
+full of soldiers, United States regulars and State
+militia. Brown, his men and his white captives,
+eleven of the latter, were shut up in the fire-engine
+house of the armory. The militia refused
+to charge the engine-house, saying that this
+might cost the captives their lives. Many of
+them were drunk; all of them were undisciplined;
+their commander did not know how to
+command. The situation changed with the arrival
+of the United States Marines led by
+Lieut.-Col. Robert E. Lee, afterwards the famous
+chief of the army of the Confederate
+States.</p>
+
+<p>By this time Tom was beginning to think he
+had had enough adventure. He had enjoyed
+that silent tramp through the darkness beside
+his father. He had enjoyed it the more because
+they were both prisoners-of-war. Being a prisoner
+was an amazingly thrilling thing. He was
+sorry when brave Patrick Hoggins was shot and
+glad to know the wound was slight, but sharing
+in the skirmish, even in the humble capacity of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+a captive, had excited the boy immensely. Now
+that there was almost constant firing back and
+forth, when two or three wounded men were
+lying on the floor, and when his father and he
+and Colonel Washington were perforce risking
+their lives in the engine-house, with nothing to
+gain and everything to lose, and when scanty
+sleep and little food had tired out even his stout
+little body, Tom felt quite ready to go home and
+have his adored mother "mother" him. His
+father saw the homesickness in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady, my son," said Mr. Strong. "This
+won't last long. No stray bullet is apt to reach
+this corner, where Captain Brown has put us.
+The only other danger is when the regulars rush
+in here, but unless they mistake us for the
+raiders, there'll be no harm done then. Steady."
+He looked through a bullet-hole in the boarded-up
+window and added: "Here comes a flag of
+truce. Listen."</p>
+
+<p>The scattering fire died away. The hush was
+broken by a commanding voice, demanding surrender.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There will be no surrender," quoth grim
+John Brown.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">At dawn of Tuesday, two files of United
+States Marines, using a long ladder as a battering
+ram, attacked the door. It broke at the
+second blow. The marines poured in, shooting
+and striking. The battle was over. John Brown,
+wounded and beaten to the floor, lay there
+among his men. The captives were free. Their
+captors had changed places with them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_034.jpg" width="600" height="398" alt="THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Colonel Washington took Mr. Strong and
+Tom home with him, for a rest after the strain
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+of the captivity. He was much interested when
+he found out that Tom's great-grandfather had
+visited General Washington at Mount Vernon
+and Tom was intensely interested in seeing the
+home and home life of a rich Southern planter.
+The Colonel asked his guests to stay until after
+the trial of their recent jailer. They did so and
+Mr. Strong, after some hesitation, decided to
+take Tom to the trial and afterwards to the final
+scene of all. He wrote to his wife: "Life is
+rich, my dear, in proportion to the number of
+our experiences and their depth. Ordinarily, I
+would not dream of taking Tom to see a criminal
+hung. But John Brown is no ordinary criminal.
+He is wrong, but he is heroic. He faces his fate&mdash;for
+of course they will hang him&mdash;like a
+Roman. I think it will do Tom good to see a
+hero die."</p>
+
+<p>Whether or no his father was right, Tom was
+given these experiences. He sat beside his
+father and Colonel Washington at the trial. He
+heard them testify. He noted the angry stir of
+the mob in the court-room when Mr. Strong
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+made no secret of his admiration for the great
+criminal.</p>
+
+<p>Robert E. Lee, who captured Brown, said:
+"I am glad we did not have to kill him, for I
+believe he is an honest, conscientious old man."
+Virginia, Lee's State, thought she did have to
+kill this invader of her soil and disturber of her
+slaves.</p>
+
+<p>November 2, John Brown was sentenced to be
+hung December 2. The next day he added this
+postscript to a letter he had already written to
+his wife and children:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"P.S. Yesterday Nov. 2d I was sentenced to
+be hanged on Decem 2d next. Do not grieve on
+my account. I am still quite cheerful. God
+bless you all."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Northern friends offered to try to help him to
+break jail. He put aside the offer with the calm
+statement: "I am fully persuaded that I am
+worth inconceivably more to hang than for any
+other purpose."</p>
+
+<p>December 2, John Brown started on his last
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+journey. He sat upon his coffin in a wagon and
+as the two horses paced slowly from jail to gallows,
+he looked far afield, over river and valley
+and hill, and said: "This <i>is</i> a beautiful country."
+He was sure he was upon the threshold of a far
+more beautiful country. The gallows were
+guarded by a militia company from Richmond,
+Virginia. In its ranks, rifle on shoulder, stood
+Wilkes Booth, a dark and sinister figure, who
+was to win eternal infamy by assassinating
+Abraham Lincoln. Beside the militia was a trim
+lot of cadets, the fine boys of the Virginia Military
+Institute. With them was their professor,
+Thomas J. Jackson, "Stonewall" Jackson, one
+of the heroic figures upon the Southern side of
+our Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>When the end came, Stonewall Jackson's lips
+moved with a prayer for John Brown's soul;
+Colonel Washington's and Mr. Strong's eyes
+were wet; and Tom Strong sobbed aloud.
+Albany fired a hundred guns in John Brown's
+honor as he hung from the gallows. In 1859
+United States troops captured him that he
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+might die. In 1899 United States troops fired
+a volley of honor over his grave in North Elba
+that the memory of him might live. Victor
+Hugo called him "an apostle and a hero."
+Emerson dubbed him "saint." Oswald Garrison
+Villard closes his fine biography of John
+Brown with these words: "Wherever there is
+battling against injustice and oppression, the
+Charlestown gallows that became a cross will
+help men to live and die."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Our War with Mexico&mdash;Kit Carson and His
+Lawyer, Abe Lincoln&mdash;Tom Goes to Lincoln's
+Inauguration&mdash;S. F. B. Morse, Inventor
+of the Telegraph&mdash;Tom Back in
+Washington.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>In 1846, Mr. Strong, long enough out of Yale
+to have begun business and to have married,
+had heard his country's call and had helped her
+fight her unjust war with Mexico. General
+Grant, who saw his first fighting in this war and
+who fought well, says of it in his Memoirs that
+it was "one of the most unjust ever waged by
+a stronger against a weaker nation."</p>
+
+<p>Much more important things were happening
+here then than the Mexican War. In 1846
+Elias Howe invented the sewing-machine. In
+1847 Robert Hoe invented the rotary printing
+press. Great inventions like these are the real
+milestones of the path of progress.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong served as a private in the ranks
+throughout the war. He refused a commission
+offered him for gallantry in action because he
+knew he did not know enough then to command
+men. It is a rare man who knows that he does
+not know. His regiment was mustered out of
+service at the end of the war in New Orleans.
+The young soldier decided to go home by way
+of St. Louis because of his memories of that old
+town in the days when he had followed Fremont.
+He went again to the Planters' Hotel and there
+by lucky accident he met again the famous
+frontiersman Kit Carson. Carson was away
+from the plains he loved because of a lawsuit.
+A sharp speculator was trying to take away
+from him some land he had bought years ago
+near the town, which the growth of the town
+had now made quite valuable. Carson was
+heartily glad to see his "Tom-boy" once more.
+He insisted upon his staying several days, took
+him to court to hear the trial, and introduced
+him to his lawyer, a tall, gaunt, slab-sided,
+slouching, plain person from the neighboring
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+State of Illinois. Everybody who knew him
+called him "Abe." His last name was
+Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd heard so much of Abe Lincoln," said
+Carson, "that when this speculator who's trying
+to do me hired all the big lawyers in St. Louis,
+I just went over to Springfield, Illinois, to get
+Abe. When I saw him I rather hesitated about
+hiring such a looking skeesicks, but when I
+came to talk with him, he did the hesitating. I
+asked him what he'd charge for defending a
+land-suit in St. Louis. He told me. I sez: 'All
+right. You're hired. You're my lawyer.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wait a bit,' sez he.</p>
+
+<p>"'What for?' sez I. 'I'll pay what you said.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That ain't all,' sez he. 'Before I take your
+money, Kit, I've got to know your side of the
+case is the right side.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What difference does that make to a
+lawyer?' sez I.</p>
+
+<p>"'It makes a heap o' difference to this
+lawyer,' sez he. 'You've got to prove your case
+to me before I'll try to prove it to the court. If
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+you ain't in the right, Abe Lincoln won't be your
+lawyer.'</p>
+
+<p>"Darned if he didn't make me prove I was in
+the right, too, before he'd touch my money. No
+wonder they call him 'Honest Abe.'"</p>
+
+<p>It took Lincoln a couple of days to win Kit
+Carson's suit. During those two days young
+Strong saw much of him and came to admire
+the sterling qualities of the man. Lincoln, too,
+liked this young college-bred fellow from the
+East, unaffected, well-mannered, friendly, and
+gay. There was the beginning of a friendship
+between the Westerner and the Easterner.
+Thereafter they wrote each other occasionally.
+When Lincoln served his one brief term in
+Congress, Mr. Strong spent a week with him in
+Washington and asked him (but in vain) to visit
+him in New York.</p>
+
+<p>So, when this new giant came out of the
+West and Illinois gave her greatest son to the
+country, as its President, Mr. Strong went to
+Washington to see him inaugurated and took
+with him his boy Tom, as his father had taken
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+him in 1829 to Andrew Jackson's inauguration.</p>
+
+<p>Washington was still a great shabby village,
+not much more attractive March 4, 1861, than
+it was March 4, 1829. The crowds at the two
+inaugurations were much alike. In both cases
+the favorite son of the West had won at the
+polls. In both cases the West swamped Washington.
+But in 1829 there was jubilant victory
+in the air. In 1861 there was somber anxiety.
+Seven Southern States had "seceded" and had
+formed another government. Other States
+were upon the brink of secession. Was the
+great democratic experiment of the world about
+to end in failure? Would there be civil war?
+What was this unknown man out of the West
+going to do? Could he do anything?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong and Tom, with a few thousand
+other people, went to the reception at the White
+House on the afternoon of March fourth.
+President Lincoln was laboriously shaking
+hands with everybody in the long line. Almost
+every one of them seemed to be asking him for
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+something. He was weary long before Tom
+and his father reached him, but his face brightened
+as he saw them. A boy always meant a
+great deal to Abraham Lincoln. "There <i>may</i>
+be so much in a boy," he used to say. He
+greeted the two warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Strong? Glad to see you. This
+your boy? Howdy, sonny?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom did not enjoy being called "sonny"
+much more than he had enjoyed being called
+"bub," but he was glad to have this big man
+with a woman's smile call him anything. He
+wrung the President's offered hand, stammered
+something shyly, and was passing on with his
+father, when Lincoln said:</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on a minute, Strong. You haven't
+asked me for anything."</p>
+
+<p>"I've nothing to ask for, Mr. President. I'm
+not here to beg for an office."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious! You're the only man in
+Washington of that kind, I believe. Come to
+see me tomorrow morning, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most gladly, sir."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The impatient man behind them pushed them
+on. They heard him begin to plead: "Say, Abe,
+you know I carried Mattoon for you; I'd like to
+be Minister to England."</p>
+
+<p>Boys and girls always appealed to the President's
+heart. When there were talks of vital
+import in his office, little Tad Lincoln often sat
+upon his father's knee. At a White House reception,
+Charles A. Dana once put his little girl
+in a corner, whence she saw the show. The
+father tells the story. When the reception was
+over, he said to Lincoln: "'I have a little girl
+here who wants to shake hands with you.' He
+went over to her and took her up and kissed
+her and talked to her. She will never forget
+it if she lives to be a thousand years
+old."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next morning Tom followed his father
+into a room on the second floor of the White
+House. Lincoln sat at a flat-topped desk, piled
+high with papers. He was in his shirt-sleeves,
+with shabby black trousers, coarse stockings,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+and worn slippers. He stretched out his long
+legs, swung his long arms behind his head, and
+came straight to the point.</p>
+
+<p>"Strong, I'm going to need you. Your country
+is going to need you. I want you to go
+straight home and fix up your business affairs
+so you can come whenever I call you. Will you
+do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>President and citizen rose and shook hands
+upon it. The citizen was about to go when
+Tom, with his heart in his mouth, but with a
+fine resolve in his heart, suddenly said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Father! Oh, Mr. President&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then he stopped short, too shy to speak, but
+Lincoln stooped down to him, patted his young
+head and said with infinite kindness in his
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Tom? Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. President, I'm only a boy, but can't
+I do something for my country, right now?
+Can't I stay here? Father will let me, won't
+you, Father?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong shook his head. The boy's face
+fell. It brightened again when Lincoln told
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"When I send for your father, I'll send for
+you, Tom."</p>
+
+<p>With that promise ringing in his ears, Tom
+went home to New York City. Home was a
+fine brick house at the northeast corner of
+Washington Place and Greene Street. The
+house was a twin brother of those that still
+stand on the north side of Washington Square.
+Tom had been born in it. Not long after his
+birth, his parents had given a notable dinner in
+it to a notable man. Tom had been present at
+the dinner, and he remembered nothing about
+it. As he was at the table but a few minutes,
+in the arms of his nurse, and less than a year
+old, it is not surprising that he did not remember
+it. His proud young mother had exhibited him
+to a group of money magnates, gathered at Mr.
+Strong's shining mahogany table for dinner, at
+the fashionable hour of three <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, to see
+another young thing, almost as young as Tom.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+This other young thing was the telegraph, just
+invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, at the University
+of the City of New York, which then
+filled half of the eastern boundary of Washington
+Square.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>While Tom waited in the old brick house and
+played in Washington Square, history was making
+itself. Pope Walker, first Secretary of War
+of the Confederate States, sitting in his office at
+the Alabama Statehouse at Montgomery, the
+first Confederate capital, said: "It is time to
+sprinkle some blood in the face of the people."
+So he telegraphed the fateful order to fire on
+Fort Sumter, held by United States troops in
+Charleston harbor. Sumter fell. Lincoln called
+for 75,000 volunteers. Virginia, the famous Old
+Dominion, "the Mother of Presidents"&mdash;Washington,
+Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were
+Virginians&mdash;seceded. The war between the
+States began.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong found in his mail one day this
+letter:</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="block2">
+
+<p class="right">"The Executive Mansion,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+Washington, April 17, 1861.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Sir:</p>
+
+<p>The President bids me say that he would like
+to have you come to Washington at once and
+bring your son Tom with you.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Respectfully,</p>
+
+<p class="right pmb2"><span class="smcap">John Hay</span>,<br />
+Assistant Private Secretary."<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Tom and his father started at once, as the
+President bade them. At Jersey City, they
+found the train they had expected to take had
+been pre-empted by the Sixth Massachusetts, a
+crack militia regiment of the Old Bay State,
+which was hurrying to Washington in the hope
+of getting there before the rebels did. The
+cars were crammed with soldiers. A sentry
+stood at every door. No civilian need apply for
+passage. However, a civilian with a letter
+from Lincoln's secretary bidding him also hurry
+to Washington was in a class by himself. With
+the help of an officer, the father and son ran the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+blockade of bayonets and started southward, the
+only civilians upon the train. It was packed to
+suffocation with soldiers. Mr. Strong sat with
+the regimental officers, but he let Tom roam at
+will from car to car. How the boy enjoyed it.
+The shining gun-barrels fascinated him. He
+joined a group of merry men, who hailed him
+with a shout:</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the youngest recruit of all."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really going to shoot rebels?"
+asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"If we must," said Jack Saltonstall, breaking
+the silence the question brought, "but I hope it
+won't come to that."</p>
+
+<p>"The war will be over in three months,"
+Gordon Abbott prophesied.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh, it will never begin,&mdash;and I'm sorry for
+that," said Jim Casey, "I'd like to have some
+real fighting."</p>
+
+<p>Within about three hours, Jim Casey was to
+see fighting and was to die for his country. The
+beginning of bloodshed in our Civil War was in
+the streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, just
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+eighty-six years to a day from the beginning of
+bloodshed in our Revolution on Lexington Common.
+Massachusetts and British blood in 1775;
+Massachusetts and Maryland blood in 1861.</p>
+
+<p>When the long train stopped at the wooden
+car-shed which was then the Baltimore station,
+the regiment left the cars, fell into line and
+started to march the mile or so of cobblestone
+streets to the other station where the train for
+Washington awaited it. The line of march was
+through as bad a slum as an American city
+could then show. Grog-shops swarmed in it and
+about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of
+Baltimore. They were known locally as "plug-uglies."
+Like the New York "Bowery boys"
+of that time, they affected a sort of uniform,
+black dress trousers thrust into boot-tops and
+red flannel shirts. Far too poor to own slaves
+themselves, they had gathered here to fight the
+slave-owners' battles, to keep the Massachusetts
+troops from "polluting the soil of Maryland," as
+their leaders put it, really to keep them from
+saving Washington.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A roar of jeers and taunts and insults hailed
+the head of the marching column. Tom was
+startled by it. He turned to his father. The
+two were walking side by side, in the center of
+the column, between two companies of the
+militia. He found his father had already turned
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep close to me, Tom," said Mr. Strong.</p>
+
+<p>The storm of words that beat upon them increased.
+At the next corner, stones took the
+place of words. The mob surged alongside the
+soldiers, swearing, stoning, striking, finally stabbing
+and shooting. The Sixth Massachusetts
+showed admirable self-restraint, which the
+"plug-uglies" thought was cowardice. They
+pressed closer. With a mighty rush, five thousand
+rioters broke the line of the thousand
+troops. The latter were forced into small
+groups, many of them without an officer. Each
+group had to act for itself. Tom and his father
+found themselves part of a tiny force of about
+twenty men, beset upon every side by desperadoes
+now mad with liquor and with the lust
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+of killing. Jack Saltonstall took command by
+common consent. Calmly he faced hundreds of
+rioters.</p>
+
+<p>"Forward, march!"</p>
+
+<p>As he uttered the words, he pitched forward,
+shot through the chest. A giant "plug-ugly"
+bellowed with triumph over his successful shot,
+yelled "kill 'em all!" and led the mob upon
+them. But Mr. Strong had snatched Saltonstall's
+gun as it fell from his nerveless hands,
+had leveled and aimed it, and had shouted
+"fire!" to willing ears. A score of guns rang
+out. The mob-leader whirled about and
+dropped. Half-a-dozen other "plug-uglies" lay
+about him. This section of the mob broke and
+ran. Some of them fired as they ran, and Jim
+Casey's life went out of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this gun, Tom," said Mr. Strong.</p>
+
+<p>The boy took it, reloading it as he marched,
+while his sturdy father lifted the wounded
+Saltonstall from the stony street and staggered
+forward with the body in his arms. Casey and
+two other men were dead. Their bodies had to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+be left to the fury of the mob. Saltonstall lived
+to fight to the end. As the survivors of the
+twenty pressed forward, the mob behind followed
+them up. Bullets whizzed unpleasantly
+near. Twice, at Mr. Strong's command, the
+men faced about and fired a volley. In both
+these volleys, Tom's gun played its part. He
+had hunted before, but never such big game as
+men. The joy of battle possessed him. Since
+it was apparently a case of "kill or be killed,"
+he shot to kill. Whether he did kill, he never
+knew. The two volleys checked two threatening
+rushes of the rioters and enabled Mr. Strong
+to bring what was left of the gallant little band
+safely to the railroad station. An hour later the
+Sixth Massachusetts was in Washington. During
+that hour Tom had been violently sick upon
+the train. He was new to this trade of man-killing.</p>
+
+<p>At Washington, once vacant spaces were soon
+filled with camps. Soldiers poured in on every
+train. Orderlies were galloping about. Artillery
+surrounded the Capitol. And from its
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+dome Tom saw a Confederate flag, the Stars-and-Bars,
+flying defiantly in nearby Alexandria.</p>
+
+<p>Those were dark days. There were Confederate
+forces within a few miles of the White
+House. Sumter surrendered April 15th. Virginia
+seceded on the 17th. Harper's Ferry fell
+into Southern hands on the 18th. The Sixth
+Massachusetts had fought its way through Baltimore
+on the 19th. Robert E. Lee resigned his
+commission in our army on the 20th and left
+Arlington for Richmond, taking with him a long
+train of army and navy officers whose loyal support,
+now lost forever, had seemed a national
+necessity. Lincoln spent many an hour in his
+private office, searching with a telescope the
+reaches of the Potomac, over which the troop-laden
+transports were expected. Once, when he
+thought he was alone, John Hay heard him call
+out "with irrepressible anguish": "Why don't
+they come? Why don't they come?" In public
+he gave no sign of the anxiety that was eating
+up his heart. He had the nerve to jest
+about it. The Sixth Massachusetts, the Seventh
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+New York, and a Rhode Island detachment had
+all hurried to save Washington from the capture
+that threatened. When the Massachusetts men
+won the race and marched proudly by the White
+House, Lincoln said to some of their officers:
+"I begin to believe there is no North. The Seventh
+Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is
+another. You are the only real thing." They
+were very real, those men of Massachusetts, and
+they were the vanguard of the real army that
+was to be.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Charles Francis Adams&mdash;Mr. Strong Goes to
+Russia&mdash;Tom Goes to Live in the White
+House&mdash;Bull Run&mdash;"Stonewall" Jackson&mdash;Geo.
+B. McClellan&mdash;Tom Strong, Second
+Lieutenant, U. S. A.&mdash;The Battle of the
+"Merrimac" and the "Monitor."</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A few days passed before the President had
+time to see Mr. Strong and Tom. When
+they were finally ushered into his working-room,
+they found there, already interviewing Lincoln,
+the hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed Secretary of
+State, William H. Seward of New York, scholar,
+statesman, and gentleman, and a short, grizzled
+man, the worthy inheritor of a great tradition.
+He was Charles Francis Adams of Boston, son
+and grandson of two Presidents of the United
+States. He had been appointed Minister to
+England, just then the most important foreign
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+appointment in the world. What England was
+to do or not do might spell victory or defeat for
+the Union. Mr. Adams had come to receive his
+final instructions for his all-important work.
+And this is what happened.</p>
+
+<p>Shabby and uncouth, Lincoln faced his two
+well-dressed visitors, nodding casually to the
+two New Yorkers as they entered at what
+should have been a great moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to thank you for my appointment,"
+said Adams, "and to ask you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right," replied Lincoln, "thank
+Seward. He's the man that put you in." He
+stretched out his legs and arms, and sighed a
+deep sigh of relief. "By the way, Governor,"
+he added, turning to Seward, "I've this morning
+decided that Chicago post-office appointment.
+Well, good-by."</p>
+
+<p>And that was all the instruction the Minister
+to Great Britain had from the President of the
+United States. Even in those supreme days, the
+rush of office-seekers, the struggle for the spoils,
+the mad looting of the public offices for partisan
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+purposes, was monopolizing the time and absorbing
+the mind of our greatest President.
+There is a story that one man who asked him
+to appoint him Minister to England, after taking
+an hour of his time, ended the interview by asking
+him for a pair of old boots. Civil Service
+Reform has since gone far to stop this scandal
+and sin, but much of it still remains. Today you
+can fight for the best interests of our beloved
+country by fighting the spoils system in city,
+state, and nation.</p>
+
+<p>Adams, amazed, followed Secretary Seward
+out of the little room. Then Lincoln turned to
+the father and son.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had more time to look at him now. He
+saw a tall man with a thin, muscular, big nose,
+with heavy eyebrows above deep-set eyes and
+below a square, bulging forehead, and with a
+mass of black hair. The face was dark and sallow.
+The firm lips relaxed as he looked down
+upon the boy. A beautiful smile overflowed
+them. A beautiful friendliness shone from the
+deep-set eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So this is another Tom Strong," he said.
+"Howdy, Tommy?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy smiled back, for the welcoming smile
+was irresistible. He put his little hand into
+Lincoln's great paw, hardened and roughened
+by a youth of strenuous toil. The President
+squeezed his hand. Tom was happy.</p>
+
+<p>"You're to go to Russia, Strong," Mr.
+Lincoln said to the father. "England and
+France threaten to combine against us. You
+must get Russia to hold them back. We'll have
+a regular Minister there, but I'm going to depend
+upon you. See Governor Seward. He'll
+tell you all about it. Will you take Mrs. Strong
+with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I s'posed you would. And how about
+Tom here?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom's heart beat quick. What was coming
+now?</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Strong must decide that. I suppose
+he had better keep on with his school in New
+York."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why not let him come to school in Washington?"
+asked Lincoln. "In the school of the
+world? You see," he added, while that irresistible
+smile again softened the firm outlines of his
+big man's mouth, "you see I've taken a sort
+of fancy to your boy Tom. S'pose you give him
+to me while you're away. There are things he
+can do for his country."</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps only a whim, but the whims
+of a President count. A month later, Mr. and
+Mrs. Strong started for St. Petersburg and Tom
+reported at the White House. He was welcomed
+by John Hay, a delightful young man of
+twenty-three, one of the President's two private
+secretaries. The welcome lacked warmth.</p>
+
+<p>"You're to sleep in a room in the attic," said
+Hay, "and I believe you're to eat with Mr.
+Nicolay and me. I haven't an idea what you're
+to do and between you and me and the bedpost
+I don't believe the Ancient has an idea either.
+Perhaps there won't be anything. Wait a while
+and see."</p>
+
+<p>The Ancient&mdash;this was a nickname his secretaries
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+had given him&mdash;had a very distinct idea,
+which he had not seen fit to tell his zealous
+young secretary. Tom found the waiting not
+unpleasant. He had a good many unimportant
+things to do. "Tad" Lincoln, though younger,
+was a good playmate. The White House staff
+was kind to him. Even Hay found it difficult
+not to like him. Then there was the sensation
+of being at the center of things, big things. He
+saw men whose names were household words.
+Half a dozen times he lunched with the President's
+family, a plain meal with plain folks.
+Even the dinners at the White House, except
+the state dinners, were frugal and plain. Lincoln
+drank little or no wine. He never used
+tobacco. This was something of a miracle in
+the case of a man from the West, for in those
+days, particularly in the unconventional West,
+practically every man both smoked and chewed
+tobacco. The filthy spittoon was everywhere
+conspicuous. We fiercely resented the tales told
+our English cousins, first by Mrs. Trollope and
+then by Charles Dickens, about our tobacco-chewing,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+but the resentment was so fierce because
+the tales were so true. Those were dirty
+days. In 1860 there were few bathrooms except
+in our largest cities. Those that existed were
+mostly new. In 1789, when the present Government
+of the United States came into being, in
+New York City, there was not one bathroom
+in the whole town.</p>
+
+<p>At these family luncheons, Tom was apt to
+become conscious that Lincoln's eyes were bent
+beneath their shaggy eyebrows full upon him.
+There was nothing unkind in the glance, but
+the boy felt it go straight through him. He
+wondered what it all meant. Why was he not
+given more work to do? Had he been weighed
+and found wanting? He waited in suspense a
+good many months.</p>
+
+<p>The early months of waiting were not merry
+months. In July, 1861, the first battle of Bull
+Run had been fought and had been lost. Our
+troops ran nearly thirty miles. Telegram after
+telegram brought news of disgrace and defeat
+to the White House. In the afternoon Lincoln
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+went to see Gen. Winfield S. Scott, then commander-in-chief
+of our armies. The fat old
+general was taking his afternoon nap. Awakened
+with difficulty, he gurgled that everything
+would come out well. Then he fell asleep again.
+Before six o'clock it was known that everything
+had turned out most badly. Washington itself
+was threatened by the Confederate pursuit.
+Lincoln had no sleep that night. The gray dawn
+found him at his desk, still receiving dispatches,
+still giving orders. When he left the desk,
+Washington was safe.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the beginning of the battle of Bull
+Run, when the Confederates came near running
+away but did not do so because the Union troops
+ran first, that "Stonewall" Jackson got his famous
+nickname. The brigade of another Southern
+soldier, Gen. Bernard Bee, was wavering and
+falling back. Its commander, trying to hearten
+his men, called out to them: "Look! there's
+Jackson standing like a stone wall!" The men
+looked, rallied, and went on fighting. It may
+have been that one thing of Jackson's example
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+that turned the tide at Bull Run, gave the battle
+to the South, and prolonged the war by at
+least two years. Stonewall Jackson's soldiers
+were called foot-cavalry, because under his inspiring
+leadership they made marches which
+would have been a credit to mounted men. It
+was his specialty to be where it was impossible
+for him to be, by all the ordinary rules of war.
+He was a thunderbolt in attack, a stone wall in
+defense.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In November of that sad year of 1861, the
+President made another noteworthy call upon
+the then commander-in-chief, Gen. George B.
+McClellan. President and Secretary of State,
+escorted by young Hay and younger Tom, called
+upon the General at the latter's house, in the
+evening. They were told he was out, but would
+return soon, so they waited. McClellan did return
+and was told of his patient visitors. He
+walked by the open door of the room where they
+were seated and went upstairs. Half an hour
+later Lincoln sent a servant to tell him again
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+that they were there. Word came back that
+General McClellan had gone to bed. John
+Hay's diary justly speaks of "this unparalleled
+insolence of epaulettes." As the three men and
+the boy walked back to the White House, Hay
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"It was an insolent rebuff. Something should
+be done about it."</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln's almost godlike patience, however,
+had not been worn out.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better," the great man answered, "at
+this time not to be making a point of etiquette
+and personal dignity."</p>
+
+<p>The President, however, stopped calling upon
+the pompous General. After that experience,
+he always sent word to McClellan to call upon
+him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>One day, at the close of a family luncheon,
+the President said to Tom: "Come upstairs
+with me."</p>
+
+<p>In the little private office, Lincoln took off
+his coat and waistcoat with a sigh of relief and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+lounged into his chair. He bade Tom take a
+chair nearby. Then he looked at the boy for a
+moment, while his wonderful smile overflowed
+his strong lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been studying you a bit, Tom. I think
+you'll do. Now I'll tell you what I want you to
+do."</p>
+
+<p>The smile died quite away.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure you can keep still when you
+ought to keep still? Balaam's ass isn't the only
+ass that ever talked. Most asses talk&mdash;and always
+at the wrong time."</p>
+
+<p>"The last thing Father told me," Tom
+answered, "was never to say anything to
+anybody 'less I was sure you'd want me to
+say it."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father is a wise man, my boy. Pray
+God he does what I hope he will in
+Russia."</p>
+
+<p>The serious face grew still more serious. The
+long figure slouching in the chair straightened
+and stiffened. The sloping shoulders seemed to
+broaden, as if to bear steadfastly a weight that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+would have crushed most men. The dark eyes
+gleamed with a solemn hope. Tom longed to
+ask what his father was to try to do, but he
+was not silly enough to put his thought into
+words. Another good-by counsel his father had
+given him was never to ask the President a
+question, unless he had to do so. There was
+silence for a moment. Then Lincoln spoke
+again:</p>
+
+<p>"You're to carry dispatches for me, Tom.
+This may take you into the enemy's country
+sometimes. If you were captured and were a
+civilian, it might go hard with you. So I've had
+you commissioned as a second lieutenant. If
+you should slip into a fight occasionally I
+wouldn't blame you much. Mr. Stanton, the
+Secretary of War, kicked about it. He said he
+didn't believe in giving commissions to babies.
+I told him you could almost speak plain and
+could go 'round without a nurse. Finally he
+gave in. I haven't much influence with this
+Administration"&mdash;here Tom looked puzzled
+until the President smiled over his own jest&mdash;"but
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+I did get you the commission. Here
+it is."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He laid the precious parchment on the desk,
+put on his spectacles, took up his quill pen, and
+wrote at the foot of it</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_069.jpg" width="200" height="72" alt="Autograph A. Lincoln" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The boy's heart thrilled and throbbed. He
+had never dreamed of such an opportunity and
+such an honor. He was an officer of the Union.
+He was to carry dispatches for the President of
+the United States. His hand shook a little as
+he took the commission, reverently.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been detailed for special service, Tom.
+Stanton wanted to know whether your special
+service was to be to play with my boy, Tad.
+Stanton was pretty mad; that's a fact. Well,
+well, you must do your work so well that he'll
+get over the blow. You would have thought I
+was asking him for a brigadier's commission for
+a girl. Well, well. Being a war messenger is
+only one of your duties, son. You're to be my
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+scout. Keep your ears and eyes both open,
+Tom, and your mouth shut. Ever hear the
+story of what Jonah said to the whale when he
+got out of him? The whale said to Jonah:
+'You've given me a terrible stomach-ache.' And
+Jonah said: 'That's what you got because you
+didn't have sense enough to keep your mouth
+shut.' But remember, Tom, to go scouting in
+the right way. What I want is the truth. It's
+a hard thing for a President to get. I don't
+want tittle-tattle, evil gossip, idle talk. When
+I was in Congress, there was a fine old fellow
+in the House from Florida. I remember he
+said once that the Florida wolf was 'a mean
+critter that'd go snoopin' 'round twenty miles a
+night ruther than not do a mischief.' Don't be
+a wolf, Tom,&mdash;but don't be a lamb either, with
+the wool pulled over your eyes and ears. Here's
+your first job. This envelope"&mdash;Lincoln took
+from the desk a sealed envelope, not addressed,
+and handed it to the boy&mdash;"this envelope is for
+the commander of the 'Cumberland,' in Hampton
+Roads. This War Department pass will
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+carry you anywhere. When Stanton signed it,
+he asked me whether he was to spend a whole
+day signing things for you to play with. Mrs.
+Lincoln has had a uniform made for you, on the
+sly. I rather think you'll find it in your room,
+Tom. You'd better start tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Mayn't I start this afternoon, Mr. President?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good for you. Of course you may. I'll say
+good-by to the folks for you. God bless you,
+son."</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln waved a kindly farewell as Tom, with
+drumbeats in his young heart, gave a fair imitation
+of an officer's salute&mdash;and strode out of the
+room with what he meant to be a manly step.
+Once outside, the step changed to a run. He
+flew along the halls and up the stairs to the
+attic. He burst into his room. On his narrow
+bed lay his new uniform. Mrs. Lincoln, kindly
+housewife that she was, had done her part in
+the little conspiracy for the benefit of the boy
+who was Tad Lincoln's beloved playmate. She
+had herself smuggled an old suit of Tom's to a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+tailor, who had made from its measure the
+resplendent new blue uniform that now greeted
+Tom's enraptured eyes.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, Lieutenant Tom Strong left
+the White House for Hampton Roads. A swift
+dispatch boat carried him there. He reached
+the flagship on a lovely, peaceful, spring day,
+and delivered his dispatches. The boat that had
+taken him there was to take him back the next
+morning. He was glad to have a night on a
+warship. It was a new experience. And his
+father had told him that experience was the best
+teacher in the world. The beautiful lines of the
+frigate were a joy to see. Her spick and span
+cleanliness, the trim and trig sailors and marines,
+the rows of polished cannon that thrust
+their grim mouths out of the portholes, these
+things delighted him. He was standing on the
+quarter-deck with Lieutenant Morris, almost
+wishing he could exchange his brand-new lieutenancy
+in the army for one in the navy, when
+from the Norfolk navy yard a rocket flared up
+into the air.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is that, sir?" asked Tom. "Is it a
+signal to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy it is," Morris answered, "but it isn't
+meant to be. That's a rebel rocket. You know
+we lost the navy-yard early in the war and we
+haven't got it back&mdash;yet. That rocket went up
+from there. The Secesh are up to some deviltry.
+They've been signaling a good bit of late.
+I wish they'd come out and give us a chance at
+them. Hampton Roads is dull as ditchwater,
+with not a thing happening."</p>
+
+<p>The gallant lieutenant yawned prodigiously.
+He little knew what terrible things were to happen
+on the morrow. That rocket meant that the
+rebel ram, the "Merrimac," the first iron-clad
+vessel that ever went into action, was to sail
+down Hampton Roads, where nothing ever
+happened, the next morning and was to make
+many things happen. The Confederates had
+converted the old Union frigate, the "Merrimac,"
+into a new, strange, and monstrous
+thing. They had placed a battery of cannon of
+a size never before mounted on shipboard upon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+her deck, close to the water-line; they had built
+over the battery a framework of stout timbers,
+covered with armor rolled from rails, and they
+had put a cast-iron bow upon this marine
+marvel. A wooden ship was a mere toy to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning came&mdash;it was March 8,
+1862&mdash;and the "Merrimac" came. As she
+emerged from distance and mist, our scout-boats
+came racing to the "Cumberland" with
+news of the danger that was fast nearing her.
+The news was a tonic to officers and to men.
+Here at last was something to fight. Here at
+last was something to do. They were all weary
+of having the flagship lie, week after week,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As idle as a painted ship<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon a painted ocean."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The men sprang to quarters with a joyful cheer.
+The officers were at their posts. The gun-crews
+waited impatiently for the order to fire. And
+Tom, again upon the quarter-deck, thrilled with
+the thrill of all about him, was glad to know that
+the dispatch boat would not sail until that afternoon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+and that he could see the fight. Everyone
+around him was sure of victory. The foe was
+soon to be sunk. The Stars-and-Bars, now flying
+so impudently at her stern, was to be hung
+up as a trophy in the ward-room of the "Cumberland."
+It never was.</p>
+
+<p>The ram steered straight for the flagship.
+She did not fire a shot, though the flagship's
+cannon roared. A tongue of fire blazed from
+every porthole of the starboard side, towards
+which she came, silently and swiftly. Behind
+every tongue of fire there rushed a cannon-ball.
+Many a ball hit the "Merrimac." A wooden
+ship would have been blown to bits by the concentrated
+fury of the cannonade. Alas! the
+cannon-balls glanced from her armored sides
+"like peas from a pop-gun." They rattled like
+hail upon her and did her no more hurt than
+hail-stones would have done. She came on like
+an irresistible Fate. There had been shouts of
+savage joy below decks when the first order to
+fire had echoed through them. A burst of wild
+cheering from the gun-crews had almost
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+drowned the first thunder of the guns. There
+were no shouts or cheers now. Sharp orders
+pierced the clangor of artillery.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand by to board!"</p>
+
+<p>The marines formed quickly at the starboard
+bow of the "Cumberland." Then at last the
+guns of the "Merrimac" spoke. She was close
+upon her prey now. The sound of her first volley
+was the voice of doom. Her great cannon
+sent masses of iron through and through the
+pitiful wooden walls that had dared to stand up
+against walls of iron. The shrieks of wounded
+men, of men screaming their mangled lives
+away, rolled up to the quarter-deck. A messenger
+dashed up there.</p>
+
+<p>"Half the gun-crew officers are dead. Send
+us others!"</p>
+
+<p>"Go below," said Lieutenant Morris, turning
+to two young midshipmen who stood near Tom,
+"keep the guns manned."</p>
+
+<p>The two middies bounded below and Tom
+bounded down with them. There was no hope
+of victory now, but the fight must be fought to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+a finish. If the cannon could still be served, a
+lucky shot might strike the foe in a vital part,
+might disable her engines, might carry away her
+steering-gear, might&mdash;there was a long chapter
+of possible accidents to the "Merrimac" that
+might still save the "Cumberland" from what
+seemed to be her sure destruction. As the
+three boys raced down to the gun-deck, they
+saw a fearful scene. Dead and wounded men
+lay everywhere. The sawdust that in those
+days used to be strewn about, before entering
+action, in order to soak up the blood of the men
+who fell and keep the decks from growing slippery
+with it, had soaked up all it could, but there
+were thin red trickles flowing along the deck.
+Two or three of the cannon had been dismounted.
+Crushed masses that had been human
+flesh lay beneath them. A dying officer half
+raised himself to give one last command and fell
+back dead before he could speak. The men were
+standing to their task as American sailors are
+wont to do, but like all men they needed leaders.
+Three leaders came. The two middies and Tom
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+took command of these officerless cannon. The
+other two boys knew their work and did it.
+Tom knew that it was his business to keep his
+cannon at work and he did it. He repeated,
+mechanically:</p>
+
+<p>"Load! Fire! Load! Fire!"</p>
+
+<p>His men responded to the command. The
+cannon roared once, twice. Then there came a
+sickening shock. The rebel ram drove its iron
+prow home through the side of the "Cumberland."
+The good ship reeled far over under the
+deadly blow, righted herself, but began to sink.
+Her race was run. The black bulk of the "Merrimac"
+was just opposite the porthole of the
+gun Tom was handling. There was a last order.
+With the lips of their muzzles wet with the engulfing
+sea, the cannon of the "Cumberland"
+roared their last defiance of death. Down went
+the ship. The sea about her was black with
+wreckage and with struggling men. Boats
+from other ships and from the shore darted
+among them, picking them up. The dispatch
+boat that had brought Tom down was busy with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+that good work. The "Merrimac" could have
+sunk her without effort, but of course the Confederates
+never dreamed of making the effort.
+Americans do not fire at drowning men. When
+Tom jumped into the water, as the ship sank
+beneath him, he swam to a shattered spar and
+clutched it. But other men who could not swim
+clutched at it too. It threatened to sink with
+their added weight and carry them down with
+it. So the boy, thoroughly at home in the water,
+let go, turned upon his back, floated with his
+nose just above the surface, and waited for the
+help that was at hand. A boat-hook caught his
+trousers at the waist-band. He was pulled up
+to the deck of the dispatch boat. It was not
+quite the way in which he had expected to board
+her. From her bridge, with the deck below him
+crowded with the rescued sailors of the "Cumberland,"
+he saw the second sad act of that
+day's tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The "Merrimac" had backed away, after that
+terrible thrust of her iron ram, until she was
+free from the ship she had destroyed. Then she
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+laid her course for the "Congress," invincible
+yesterday, today helplessly weak in the face of
+this new terror of the seas. The "Congress"
+fought to the last gasp, but that last gasp came
+all too soon. Raked fore and aft by her adversary's
+guns, unable to fire a single effective shot
+in reply, she ran upon a shoal while trying to
+escape from being rammed and lay there, no
+longer a fighting machine, but a mere target for
+her foe. Her captain could not hope to save
+his ship. The only thing he could do was to
+save the lives of such of his crew as were still
+alive. And there was but one way to do that.
+The "Congress" surrendered. The Stars-and-Stripes
+fluttered down from her masthead. In
+place of the flag of the free, the Stars-and-Bars,
+symbol of slavery, flew above the surrendered
+ship. The "Cumberland," going down with her
+flag, had had the better fate of the two.</p>
+
+<p>The "Merrimac," justly satisfied with her
+day's work and with the toll she had taken of
+the Union squadron, steamed proudly back to
+Norfolk, to repair the slight damages she had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+suffered and to make ready to complete her
+conquest on the morrow. Three Union ships
+still lay in Hampton Roads, great frigates, the
+finest of their kind then afloat, perfectly appointed,
+fully manned,&mdash;and as useless as though
+they had been the toy-boats of a child. The
+"Minnesota," now the flagship, signaled Captain
+Lawrence's stirring slogan: "Don't give up
+the ship!" It might have been called a bit of
+useless bravery, but no bravery is useless. At
+least the officers and men of the three doomed
+ships would fight for the flag until they died. It
+was just possible that one of the three might
+so maneuver that she would strike the foe
+amidships and sink with her to a glorious
+death.</p>
+
+<p>That night the wild anxiety at Hampton
+Roads was more than echoed at New York and
+Washington. The wires had told the terrible
+tale of the "Merrimac." It was thought she
+could go straight to New York, sink all the
+shipping there, command the city and levy
+tribute upon it. Lincoln's Secretary of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+Navy, Gideon Welles of Connecticut, wrote in
+his diary that night: "The most frightened man
+on that gloomy day was the Secretary of War.
+He was at times almost frantic.... He ran
+from room to room, sat down and jumped up
+after writing a few words, swung his arms,
+and scolded and raved." Hay records that
+"Stanton was fearfully stampeded. He said
+they would capture our fleet, take Fort Monroe,
+be in Washington before night."</p>
+
+<p>Without consulting the Secretary of the
+Navy, Stanton had some fifty canal-boats loaded
+with stone and sent them to be sunk on Kettle
+Bottom Shoals, in the Potomac, to keep the
+"Merrimac" from reaching Washington. The
+canal-boats reached the Shoals, but the order to
+sink them was countermanded by cooler heads.
+They were left in a long row, tied up to the
+river bank.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The three doomed ships at Hampton Roads
+soon knew that at nine o'clock of that fateful
+night there had steamed in from the ocean a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Union iron-clad. Her coming, however, brought
+scant comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"What is she like?" asked the first captain
+to hear the news.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"Like? She's like a cheese-box on a raft."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_083.jpg" width="600" height="359" alt="THE BATTLE OF THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">THE BATTLE OF THE &quot;MONITOR&quot; AND THE &quot;MERRIMAC&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">It was not a bad description. She was the
+"Monitor," an unknown boat of an unknown
+type that day, and on the morrow the most famous
+fighting craft that ever sailed the seas.
+She was born of the brain of a Swedish-American,
+Capt. John Ericsson, whose statue
+stands in Battery Park, the southern tip of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+metropolis, looking down to the ocean he saved
+for freedom's cause.</p>
+
+<p>Lieut. A. L. Worden, commanding the
+"Monitor," was soon in consultation with the
+other commanders. They scarcely tried to disguise
+their belief that he had merely brought
+another predestined victim. His ship was tiny,
+compared with the "Merrimac." She was not
+built to ram, as was her terrible antagonist.
+Her guns were of a greater caliber, to be sure,
+than any wooden ship mounted, but there were
+but two of them and they could be brought to
+bear only by revolving the "Monitor's" turret,&mdash;a
+newfangled device in everyday use now, but
+then unknown and consequently despised. Men
+either fear or despise the unknown. They are
+usually wrong in doing either. The council of
+captains agreed upon a plan for the next day's
+fight. The plan was based upon the theory that
+the "Monitor" would be speedily sunk. Nevertheless,
+she was to face the foe first of all.</p>
+
+<p>Again the next morning came and again there
+came the rebel ram. Decked out in flags as if
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+for a festival, proudly certain of victory, the
+"Merrimac" steamed down Hampton Roads.
+The cheese-box on a raft steamed out to meet
+her. It was David confronting Goliath. Goliath
+had fourteen guns and David had two. The
+iron-clads came nearer and the most famous sea-duel
+ever fought began. Tom saw it all from
+the bridge of the "Minnesota." Both vessels
+fired and fired again, without result. Their
+armor defied even the big guns they carried.
+Then the "Merrimac" tried to bring her deadly
+ram into play. The "Monitor" dodged into
+shoal water, hoping her foe would follow her
+and run aground. The "Merrimac" did not
+fall into the trap. On the contrary, she left her
+adversary and made a headlong course for the
+helpless "Minnesota." On board the latter,
+drums beat to quarters, shrill whistles gave
+orders, and the great ship moved forward to
+what seemed certain destruction. But the
+"Monitor" slipped away from the shoals and
+made after the "Merrimac," firing her guns as
+rapidly as her creaking turret could turn. The
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+"Merrimac" faced about, bound this time to
+make short work of this wretched little gnat that
+was seeking to sting her. This time the two
+came to close grips. Each tried to ram the other
+down. Each struck the other, but struck a
+glancing blow. They lay almost alongside and
+pounded each other with their giant guns. A
+missile from the "Monitor" came through a
+porthole of the "Merrimac," breaking a cannon
+and dealing death and destruction within her
+iron sides. She turned and ran for safety to the
+shelter of the Confederate batteries at Norfolk.
+The "Monitor" lay almost unharmed upon the
+gentle waves of Hampton Roads, the ungainly
+master of the seas. The "Merrimac" never
+dared again to try conclusions with her stout
+little rival. She stayed at her moorings until
+she was blown up there just before the Union
+forces captured Norfolk. The Union blockade
+was never broken. The "Monitor" survived
+the fight only to founder later in "the graveyard
+of ships," off Cape Hatteras.</p>
+
+<p>The wires had told the story of the famous
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+fight before Tom reached Washington, but he
+was the first eye-witness of it to reach there and
+he had to tell the tale many and many a time.
+His first auditors were Lincoln and Secretary
+Welles. The dispatch boat that carried him
+back put him on board the President's boat,
+south of Kettle Bottom Shoals, on the Potomac,
+in obedience to orders signaled to it. When he
+had finished his story, there was silence for a
+moment. The boy saw Lincoln's lips move, perhaps
+in prayer, perhaps in thanksgiving. Then
+the grave face relaxed and the pathetic eyes
+twinkled with humor. The President laid his
+hand upon the Secretary's arm and pointed to a
+long line of stone-laden canal-boats that bordered
+the bank.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Stanton's navy," said Lincoln.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Goes West&mdash;Wilkes Booth Hunts Him&mdash;Dr.
+Hans Rolf Saves Him&mdash;He Delivers
+Dispatches to General Grant</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb2">At the end of the next month, April, 1862,
+Admiral Farragut gallantly forced open the
+closed mouth of the Mississippi. He took his
+wooden ships into action against forts and iron-clad
+gunboats and captured New Orleans.
+Within fifteen months thereafter, the North was
+in practical control of the whole Mississippi.
+By July, 1863, the Confederacy had been split
+into two parts, east and west of the "Father of
+Waters." That was the poetic Indian name of
+the Mississippi. Farragut's fleet began the driving
+of the wedge. Grant's army drove it home.
+When the driving home had just begun, Tom,
+to his intense delight, was sent West with dispatches
+for Grant. He left on an hour's notice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 518px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_089.jpg" width="518" height="690" alt="ADMIRAL FARRAGUT" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">ADMIRAL FARRAGUT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">During that hour, a colored servant employed
+in the White House, whose heart was blacker
+than his sooty skin, had left the mansion, had
+sought a tumble-down tenement in the slums,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+and had found there a vulture of a man, very
+white as to face, very black as to the masses of
+hair that fell to his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Dat dar boy Strong, he's dun sure goin',"
+said the darkey, "wid papers fur dat General
+Grant out West."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coz I listened to de door, when dey-uns wuz
+a-talkin'."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll have to go West by Baltimore," mused
+the white man. "The next train leaves in half
+an hour. I can make it. Here, Reub, here's
+your pay."</p>
+
+<p>He took a five-dollar gold piece from his
+pocket. The negro clutched at it. Then what
+was left of his conscience stirred within him.
+He said, pleadingly, hesitatingly:</p>
+
+<p>"Massa, you knows I'se doin' dis coz old
+Massa told me to. You ain't a-goin' to hurt dat
+boy Strong, is you? He's a nice boy. Eberybody
+lubs him up dar."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it to you, confound you!" snarled
+the man, "whether I hurt him or not? What's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+a boy's life to winning the war? You keep on
+doing what old Massa told you to do, or I'll cut
+your black heart out."</p>
+
+<p>With a savage gesture, he thrust the trembling
+negro out of the dingy room. With
+savage haste, he packed his scanty belongings.
+With a pistol in his hip pocket, with a bowie-knife
+slung over his left breast beneath his waistcoat,
+with a vial of chloroform in his valise,
+Wilkes Booth left Washington on the trail of
+Tom Strong.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Hunter and hunted were in the same car.
+Tom little dreamed that a few seats behind him
+sat a deadly foe, who would stick at nothing to
+get the precious papers he carried. Washington
+swarmed with Confederate spies. The face
+of everybody at the White House was well
+known to every spy. The hunter did not have
+to guess where the hunted sat.</p>
+
+<p>General Grant had begun his career of victory
+in the West. It was all-important to the Confederacy
+to know where his next blow was to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+be aimed. The papers in the scout's possession
+would tell that great secret. Wilkes Booth
+meant to have those papers soon. As the train
+bumped over the rough iron rails, towards Baltimore,
+Booth went to the forward end of the car
+for a glass of water and as he walked back along
+the aisle with a slow, lounging step, he stopped
+where Tom sat and held out his hand, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Mr. Strong? I'm Mr.
+Barnard. I have had the pleasure of seeing you
+about the White House sometimes, when I have
+been calling on our great President. Lincoln
+will crush these accursed rebels soon!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a trifle overdone, a trifle theatrical.
+Wilkes Booth could never help being theatrical.
+His greeting was one of the few times Tom had
+ever been called "Mister." He felt flattered
+and took the proffered hand willingly, but he
+searched his memory in vain for any real recollection
+of the striking face of the man who spoke
+to him. There was some vague stirring of
+memory about it, but certainly this had no relation
+to that happy life at the White House.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+Something evil was connected with it. Puzzled,
+he wondered. He had seen Booth under arms at
+John Brown's scaffold, but he did not remember
+that.</p>
+
+<p>The alleged Mr. Barnard slipped into the seat
+beside him and began to talk. He talked well.
+Little by little, suspicion fell asleep in Tom's
+mind as his companion told of adventures on sea
+and land. Booth was trying to seem to talk
+with very great frankness, in order to lure Tom
+into a similar frankness about himself. He
+larded all his talk with protestations of fervent
+loyalty to the Union. Tom bethought himself
+of a favorite quotation his father often used
+from Shakespeare's great play of "Hamlet."
+The conscience-stricken queen says to Hamlet,
+her son:</p>
+
+<p>"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."</p>
+
+<p>Wilkes Booth was protesting too much. The
+drowsy suspicion in Tom's mind stirred again.
+But he was but a boy and Booth was a man,
+skilled in all the craft of the stage. Once more
+his easy, brilliant talk lulled caution to sleep.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+Tom, questioned so skillfully that he did not
+know he was being drawn out, little by little
+told the story of his short life. But the story
+ended with his saying he was going to Harrisburg
+"on business." He was still enough on his
+guard not to admit he was going further than
+Harrisburg.</p>
+
+<p>"You're pretty young to be on the way to the
+State Capitol on business," said the skillful
+actor, hoping to hear more details in answer to
+the half-implied sneer. But just then Tom remembered
+what his father had advised: "Never
+say anything to anybody, unless you are sure
+the President would wish you to say it." He
+shut up like a clam. Booth could get nothing
+more out of him. But he meant to get those
+dispatches out of him. They were either in the
+boy's pocket or his valise, probably in his
+pocket. When he fell asleep, the spy's time
+would come. So the spy waited.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness came. Two smoky oil-lamps gave
+such light as they could. The train rumbled
+on in the night. There were no sleeping cars
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+then. People slept in their seats, if they slept
+at all. Booth's tones grew soothing, almost
+tender. They served as a lullaby. Tom slept.
+The spy beside him drew a long, triumphant
+breath. His time had come.</p>
+
+<p>Some time before, he had shifted his traveling-bag
+to this seat. Now he drew from it,
+gently, quietly, the little bottle of chloroform
+and a small sponge, which he saturated with the
+stupefying drug. Then he slipped his arm under
+the sleeping boy's head, drew him a little closer
+to himself, and glanced through the dusky car.
+Nearly everybody was asleep. Those who were
+not were trying to go to sleep. No one was
+watching. Booth pressed the sponge to Tom's
+nostrils. Tom stirred uneasily. "Sh-sh, Tom,"
+purred the actor, "go to sleep; all's well." The
+drug soon did its work. The boy was dead to the
+world for awhile. Only a shock could rouse him.</p>
+
+<p>The shock came. Booth's long, sensitive,
+skilled fingers&mdash;the fingers of a musician&mdash;ransacked
+his coat and waistcoat pockets swiftly,
+finding nothing. But beneath the waistcoat
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+their tell-tale touches had detected the longed-for
+papers. The waistcoat was deftly unbuttoned&mdash;it
+could have been stripped off without
+arousing the unconscious boy&mdash;and a triumphant
+thrill shot through Booth's black heart as
+he drew from an inner pocket the long, official
+envelope that he knew must hold what he had
+stealthily sought. He was just about to slip it
+into his own pocket and then to leave his stupefied
+victim to sleep off the drug while he himself
+sought safety at the next station, when one of
+those little things which have big results occurred.
+The sturdy man who was snoring in the
+seat behind this one happened to be a surgeon.
+He was returning from Washington, whither he
+had gone to operate on a dear friend, a wounded
+officer. Chloroform had of course been used,
+but the patient had died under the knife. It
+had been a terrible experience for the operator.
+It had made his sleep uneasy. A mere whiff
+from the sponge Booth had used reached the
+surgeon's sensitive nostril. It revived the
+poignant memories of the last few hours. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+awoke with a start that brought him to his feet.
+And there, just in front of him, he saw by the
+dim light a boy sunk in stupefied slumber and
+a man glancing guiltily back as he tried to thrust
+a stiff and crackling paper into his pocket. The
+sponge had fallen to the floor, but its fumes, far-spreading
+now, told to the practiced surgeon a
+story of foul play. He grabbed the man by
+the shoulder and awoke most of the travelers,
+but not Tom, with a stentorian shout: "What
+are you doing, you scoundrel?"</p>
+
+<p>The scoundrel leaped to his feet, throwing off
+the doctor's hand, and sprang into the aisle,
+clutching the long envelope in his left hand,
+while his right held a revolver. He rushed for
+the door, pursued by half a dozen men, headed
+by the doctor. Close pressed, he whirled about
+and leveled his pistol at his unarmed pursuers.
+They fell back a pace. He whirled again, stumbled
+over a bag in the aisle, fell, sprang to his
+feet once more. A brakeman opened the door.
+He was hurrying to see what this clamor meant.
+Wilkes Booth fired at him pointblank. The
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+bullet missed, but it made the brakeman give
+way. Booth rushed by him, gained the platform
+and leaped from the slow train into the
+sheltering night.</p>
+
+<p>The shock that waked Tom was the sound of
+the shot. Weak, dizzy, and sick, he knew only
+that some terrible thing was happening. Instinctively,
+his hand sought that inner pocket,
+only to find it empty. Then, indeed, he was
+wide awake. The horror of his loss burned
+through his brain. He shouted: "Stop him!
+Stop thief!" and collapsed again into his seat.</p>
+
+<p>He was in fact a very sick boy. The dose of
+chloroform that had been given him would have
+been an overdose for a man. Notwithstanding
+his awakening, he might have relapsed into
+sleep and death, had not the skillful surgeon
+been there to devote himself to him. An antidote
+was forced down his throat. Willing volunteers,
+for of course the whole car was now
+awake in a hurly-burly of question and answer,
+rubbed life back into him. When he was a bit
+better, he was kept walking up and down the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+aisle, while two strong men held him up and
+his head swayed helplessly from side to side.
+But the final cure came when the surgeon who
+had kept catlike watch upon him saw that he
+could now begin to understand things.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is something of yours," he whispered
+into the lad's half-unconscious ear. "That scoundrel
+stole it from you. When he fell, he must
+have dropped it on the floor. I found it there
+after he had jumped off the platform."</p>
+
+<p>Tom's hand closed over the fateful envelope.
+His trembling fingers ran along its edges. It
+had not been opened. He had not betrayed his
+trust. A profound thankfulness and joy stirred
+within him. Within an hour he was practically
+himself again. Then he poured out his heart
+in thanks to the sturdy surgeon who had saved
+not only his life, but his honor. He asked his
+name and started at his reply:</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Hans Rolf, of York, Pennsylvania."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Hans Rolf," repeated Tom, "but perhaps
+you are the grandson of the Hans Rolf I've
+heard about all my life. My father is always
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+telling me of things Hans Rolf did for my
+grandfather and great-grandfather."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is <i>your</i> name?" queried the doctor,
+surprised as may be imagined that this unknown
+boy should know him so well.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Strong."</p>
+
+<p>"By the Powers," shouted the hearty doctor,
+seizing the boy's hand and wringing it as his
+grandfather used to wring the hand of the Tom
+Strongs he knew, "By the Powers, next to my
+own name there's none I know so well as yours.
+My grandfather never wearied of talking about
+the two Tom Strongs, father and son. The last
+day he lived, he told me how your great-grandfather
+saved his life."</p>
+
+<p>"And you know he saved great-grandfather's,
+too," answered Tom, "and now you have saved
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>He looked shyly at his preserver. He was
+still weak with the after-effects of the drug that
+had been given him. The Hans Rolf he saw
+was a bit blurred by the unshed tears through
+which he saw him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said the surgeon, "whatever
+I've done is just in the day's work. But you
+must stop at York and rest. I can't let my
+patient travel just yet, you know. And this may
+be your last chance to see me at home. I go
+into the army next month."</p>
+
+<p>However, Tom was not to be persuaded to
+stop. Duty called him Westward and to the
+West he went, as fast as the slow trains of those
+days could carry him. But when Hans Rolf and
+he parted, a few hours after they had met, they
+were friends for life.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">It took Tom two days to get from Harrisburg
+to Cairo, the southernmost town in Illinois. It
+lies at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio
+rivers. The latter pours a mass of beautiful blue
+water&mdash;the early French explorers named the
+Ohio "the beautiful river"&mdash;into the muddy
+flood of the Mississippi. For miles below Cairo
+the blue and yellow streams seem to flow side
+by side. Then the yellow swallows the blue and
+the mighty Mississippi rolls its murky way to
+the Gulf of Mexico. A gunboat took the young
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+messenger from Cairo to General Grant's headquarters.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_102.jpg" width="600" height="244" alt="MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">A Western gunboat was an odd thing. James
+B. Eads, an eminent engineer, who after the war
+built the St. Louis bridge and the New Orleans
+jetties, which keep the mouth of the Mississippi
+open, had launched a flotilla of gunboats for
+the government within four months of the time
+when the trees which went to their making were
+growing in the forests. On a flat-boat of the
+ordinary Western-river type, Mr. Eads put a
+long cabin, framed of stout timbers, cut portholes
+in the sides, front and rear of it, mounted
+cannon inside it, covered it with rails outside
+(later armor-plate was used), and behold, a gunboat.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+The one which sped swiftly with Tom
+down the Mississippi and waddled slowly with
+him up the Tennessee, against the current of the
+Spring freshets, finally landed him at Grant's
+headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>Tom approached the tent over which headquarters'
+flag was flying with a beating heart.
+It beat against the long envelope that lay in the
+inner pocket of his waistcoat. He was about to
+finish his task and he was about to see the one
+successful soldier of the Union, up to that time.
+The Northern armies had not done well in the
+East&mdash;the defeat had been disgraceful and the
+panic sickening with the raw troops at Bull Run,
+Virginia, and little had been gained elsewhere&mdash;but
+in the West Grant was hammering out success.
+All eyes turned to him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Upon the top of a low knoll, half a dozen
+packing-boxes were grouped in front of the
+tent. Two or three officers, most of them spick
+and span, sat upon each box except one. Upon
+that one there lounged a man, thick-set,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+bearded, his faded blue trousers thrust into the
+tops of dusty boots, his blue flannel shirt open
+at the throat, his worn blue coat carrying on each
+shoulder the single star of a brigadier-general.</p>
+
+<p>It was General Grant, Hiram Ulysses Grant,
+now known as U. S. Grant. When the Confederate
+commander of Fort Donelson had asked
+him for terms of surrender, he had answered
+practically in two words: "unconditional surrender."
+The curt phrase caught the public
+fancy, and gave his initials a new meaning. He
+was long known as "Unconditional Surrender"
+Grant.</p>
+
+<p>Born in Ohio, he had been educated at West
+Point, had fought well in our unjust war against
+Mexico, had resigned in the piping times of
+peace that followed, had been a commercial
+failure, and was running an insignificant business
+as a farmer in Galena, Illinois, an obscure
+and unimportant citizen of that unimportant
+town, when the Civil War began. Eight
+years afterwards, he became President of the
+United States and served as such for eight
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+years, doing his dogged best, but far less successful
+as a statesman than he had been as a
+soldier. He was a patriot and a good man. In
+the last years of his life, ruined financially by a
+wicked partner and tortured by the cancer that
+finally killed him, he wrote his famous memoirs,
+which netted his family a fortune after the
+grave had closed upon this great American. He
+ran a race with Death to write his life. And
+he won the grim race.</p>
+
+<p>The young second-lieutenant saluted and explained
+his mission. The long envelope, deeply
+dented with the mark of Wilkes Booth's dirty
+thumb and finger, had reached its destination at
+last. Grant took it, opened it, read it without
+even a slight change of expression, though it
+contained not only orders for the future, but
+Lincoln's warm-hearted thanks for the past and
+the news of his own promotion to be major-general.
+Not only Tom, but every member of
+his staff was watching him. The saturnine
+face told no one anything. The little he said at
+the moment was said to Tom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The President tells me he would like to have
+you given a glimpse of the front. Have you had
+any experience?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"When were you commissioned?"</p>
+
+<p>"A week ago, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Are all the Eastern boys of your age in the
+army?"</p>
+
+<p>"They would like to be, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Grant, with a kindly smile, "perhaps
+a little experience at the front may make
+up for the years you lack. Send him to General
+Mitchell, Captain," he added, turning to a spruce
+aide who rose from his packing-box seat to
+acknowledge the command.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray come with me, Mr. Strong," said the
+captain.</p>
+
+<p>Tom saluted, turned, and followed his guide.
+A backward glance showed him the general, his
+eyes now bent sternly upon Lincoln's letter, his
+staff eyeing him, a group of quiet, silent figures.
+And that was all that Tom saw, at that time,
+of the greatest general of our Civil War.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inside the Confederate Lines&mdash;"Sairey"
+Warns Tom&mdash;Old Man Tomblin's "Settlemint"&mdash;Stealing
+a Locomotive&mdash;Wilkes
+Booth Gives the Alarm&mdash;A Wild Dash for
+the Union Lines.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Three days afterwards, Tom found himself
+"on special service," on the staff of
+Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing
+towards Huntsville, Alabama. They occupied
+that delightfully sleepy old town, the center of
+a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but
+Tom was not then with the column. Five days
+before, with Mitchell's permission, he had volunteered
+for a gallant foray into the enemy's
+country. He had taken prompt advantage of
+Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if he
+wanted to do so. He was to have his fill of
+fighting now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who
+left camp before dawn on April 7, under the
+command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a
+man, who had persuaded General Mitchell to let
+him try to slip across the lines with a handful
+of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order
+to steal a locomotive and rush it back to the
+Union front, burning all the railroad bridges it
+passed. The railroads to be crippled were those
+which ran from the South to Chattanooga,
+Tennessee, and from the East through Chattanooga
+and Huntsville to Memphis. A few
+miles from camp, Andrews gave his men their
+orders. They were to separate and singly or in
+groups of two or three were to make their way
+to the station of Big Shanty, Georgia, where
+they were to meet on the morning of Saturday,
+April 12. Andrews took Tom with him. For
+two days they hid in the wooded hills by day
+and traveled by night, guided by a compass and
+by the stars. Then their scanty supply of food
+was exhausted and they had to take to the open.
+Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellow
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+with the oil of the butternut, the chief dye-stuff
+the South then had, their belts with
+"C.S.A."&mdash;"Confederate States of America"&mdash;upon
+them, their Confederate rifles (part of
+the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray
+slouched hats made them look like the
+Confederate scouts they had to pretend
+to be.</p>
+
+<p>Danger lurked about them and detection
+meant death. They did their best to talk in the
+soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts
+in the hills and asked for food, but the drawl
+was hard for a Northern tongue to master and
+more than one bent old woman or shy and
+smiling girl started with suspicion at the strange
+accents of these "furriners." The men of the
+hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On
+the fourth day they reached a log-hut or rather
+a home made of two log-huts, with a floored
+and roofed space between them, a sort of open-air
+room where all the household life went on
+when good weather permitted. An old, old
+woman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+a rag quilt, her toothless gums busy with holding
+her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sat her
+granddaughter, busy too with her spinning
+wheel. The two women with their home as a
+background made a pleasing and a peaceful
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy," said Andrews.</p>
+
+<p>The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched
+upon the old woman's lap. She took her pipe
+from her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy," said she.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are
+not quick of speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk?"
+asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Sairey," called the old dame, "you git sum
+milk."</p>
+
+<p>Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, trying
+to hide her bare feet with her short skirt
+and not succeeding, and walked back of the
+house to the "spring-house," a square cupboard
+built over a neighboring spring. It was dark
+and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill-folk
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+knew. While she was away, her grandmother
+began to talk. The man and boy would
+much rather she had kept still. For she peered
+at them suspiciously, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I
+hearn thar wuz a right smart heap o' Yankee
+sojers not fur off'n hereabouts."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Sairey fortunately returned.
+She brought in her brown hand an old glass
+goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brim
+with a foaming mixture that looked like delicious
+milk. Alas! Tom, who loathed buttermilk,
+was now to learn that in the hills "milk"
+meant "buttermilk." He should have asked for
+"sweet milk." Sairey handed him the goblet
+with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's
+hand touched hers. He lifted it eagerly to his
+thirsty lips, took a long draught, and sputtered
+and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking
+and the girl had gone a hundred yards to get
+him what she thought he wanted. He was a
+boy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed
+the nauseous stuff to the last drop, and made his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+best bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old
+woman said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Where wuz you born, bub?"</p>
+
+<p>"New&mdash;New&mdash;&mdash;" stammered Tom. His
+tongue did not lend itself readily to a lie, even
+in his country's cause. When he was still too
+young to understand what the words meant, his
+mother had told him: "A lie soils a boy's
+mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that
+big truth into his small mind. Now, taken by
+surprise, the habit of his young life asserted
+itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been
+born in New York was on his unsoiled lips,
+when Andrews finished the sentence for him.</p>
+
+<p>"New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old
+beldam.</p>
+
+<p>"He was raised up No'th," Andrews explained,
+"but soon as this yer onpleasantness
+began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns."</p>
+
+<p>Andrews had overdone his dialect.</p>
+
+<p>"Sairey," commanded the old woman, "put
+up the flag."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where
+she had taken refuge behind her grandmother's
+chair, "what's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>"Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag."</p>
+
+<p>From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands
+in a warning gesture, and then, before she entered
+one of the log-houses, she pointed to a cart-track
+that wound up the hill before the hut.
+She came out with a Confederate flag, made of
+part of an old red petticoat with white stripes
+sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long
+sapling. She put the staff into a rude socket in
+front of the platform. As she passed Tom in
+order to do this, she whispered to him: "You-uns
+run!"</p>
+
+<p>"What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar?" her
+grandmother asked in anger.</p>
+
+<p>"I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old
+woman's, sharpened by fear, had caught the
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. "You-uns
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+haz bin right down good to us. Thanky,
+ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' wait a minute," the old woman answered.
+"I'll give you somethin' fer yer to eat
+as ye mosey 'long."</p>
+
+<p>She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into
+the dark log-room. Sairey wrung her hand and
+whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track."
+Instantly the grandmother appeared on the
+threshold, her old eyes flashing, a double-barreled
+shot-gun in her shaking hands. She
+tried to cover both man and boy, as she
+screamed at them:</p>
+
+<p>"You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees!
+My man'll know what to do with you-uns."</p>
+
+<p>Their guns were at her feet. There was no
+way to get them, even if they would have used
+them against a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Run!" shouted Andrews and bounded towards
+the cart-track.</p>
+
+<p>Tom sprang after him, but not in time to
+escape a few birdshot which the old woman's
+gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+them redoubled his speed. The second barrel
+sent its load far astray. They had run just in
+time, for from another hilltop behind the hut
+a dozen armed men came plunging down to the
+house, shouting after the scared fugitives. The
+raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon
+signal for their coming. Sairey's father and several
+other men had taken to the nearby hills to
+avoid being impressed into the Confederate
+army, but they adored the Confederacy, up to
+the point of fighting for it, and they would have
+rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old
+woman's eyes and ears had pierced the thin disguise
+of the raiders. So she had forced her
+granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid
+to disobey her fierce old grandmother but loath
+to see the boy she had liked at first sight captured,
+had warned him to flee. Man and boy
+were out of gunshot, but still in sight, when
+their pursuers reached the house, yelled with
+joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the
+cart-track like hounds hot upon the scent. As
+Tom and Andrews panted to the hilltop, they
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+saw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart-track.
+At the summit, it branched into half a
+dozen lanes which wound through a pine forest.
+Lanes and woodlands were covered with pineneedles,
+the deposit of years, which rose elastic
+under their flying feet and left no marks by
+which they could be tracked. And beyond the
+forest was a vast laurel-brake in which a regiment
+could have hidden, screened from discovery
+save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter
+and safety. Once they heard the far-off voices
+of their pursuers, but only once. Ere many
+hours they had the added security of the night.</p>
+
+<p>When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny
+brook that flowed at the roots of the laurel-bushes,
+Tom found that his wound, forgotten in
+the fierce excitement of the flight, had begun to
+pain him. His left shoulder grew stiff. When
+Andrews examined it, all it needed was a little
+care. Three or four birdshot had gone through
+clothing and skin, but they lay close beneath the
+skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smears of red
+blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. They
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+were picked out with the point of a knife. The
+cool water of the brook washed away the blood
+and stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a
+bit of his own shirt, soaked it in the brook, and
+bandaged the shoulder in quite a good first-aid-to-the-injured
+way. Tom and he were none the
+worse, except for the loss of their guns. And
+that was the less serious because both knives
+and pistols were still in their belts.</p>
+
+<p>They slept that night in the laurel-brake, forgetting
+their hunger in the soundness of their
+sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled to
+hear a human voice. But it was the voice of a
+gentle girl. It kept calling aloud "Coo, boss,
+coo, boss," while every now and then it said in
+lower tones: "Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's
+suthin' to eat." At first they thought it was a
+trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred by
+hunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and
+found it was Sairey who was calling them.
+When she saw them, she ran towards them,
+while the cows she had collected from their pasture
+stared with dull amazement.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her
+hands in anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Reassured as to this, she produced the cold
+cornbread and bacon she had taken from
+the spring-house when she left home that
+morning for her daily task of gathering the
+family cows. Man and boy bolted down the
+food.</p>
+
+<p>"You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl
+replied, peering slyly out of her big sunbonnet
+and digging her brown toes into the earth, "but
+I dun it, kase&mdash;kase&mdash;I jes' had to. Kin you
+get away today?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll try."</p>
+
+<p>"Whar be you goin'?"</p>
+
+<p>Should they tell her where they were going?
+It was a risk, but they took it. They were glad
+they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help
+them on their way, but could be of real aid.
+Once in her life she had been at Big Shanty.
+She told them of a short cut through the hills,
+by which they would pass only one "settle<i>mint</i>,"
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+as the infrequent clearings in the hills
+were called.</p>
+
+<p>"When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin's
+settle<i>mint</i>," said Sairey, "I 'low you-uns better
+stand at the fence corner and holler. Old Man
+Tomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when
+furriners don't do no hollerin'. But when he
+comes out, you-uns tell him Old Man Gernt's
+Sairey told you he'd take care of you-uns.
+'N he will. 'N you kin tell Bud Tomblin&mdash;no,
+you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by."</p>
+
+<p>The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up
+to Andrews and smiled as she shook hands. She
+looked down at Tom&mdash;she was half a head taller
+than he&mdash;and smiled again as she shook hands.
+Then suddenly she stooped and kissed the
+startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane
+by which she had come, leaving the placid cows
+and the thankful man and boy behind her. With
+a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare,
+brown feet, she vanished from their sight.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to her directions, they found Old Man
+Tomblin's settle<i>mint</i> without difficulty. They
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+duly stood at the corner of the sagging rail fence
+and there duly "hollered." Old Man Tomblin
+and Bud Tomblin came out of the cabin, each
+with a gun, and were proceeding to study the
+"furriners" before letting them come in, when
+Andrews repeated what Old Man Gernt's Sairey
+had told them to say. There was an instant
+welcome. Bud Tomblin was even more anxious
+than his father to do anything Sairey Gernt
+wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had
+been scouting near General Mitchell's line of
+march and had lost their guns and nearly lost
+themselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was
+accepted without demur. Old Mrs. Tomblin,
+decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill-folk,
+whose hard living conditions make women
+old at forty and venerable at fifty, cackled a
+welcome to them from the corner of the fireplace
+where she sat "dipping" snuff. "Lidy"
+Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped and hindered
+by the rest of a brood of children, took
+care of their comfort. They feasted on the best
+the humble household had to offer. They slept
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+soundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr.
+and Mrs. Tomblin and Lidy, slept in the same
+room. In the morning they were given a bountiful
+breakfast and were bidden good-by as old
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to deceive good people like the
+Tomblins," said Tom, when they were out of
+earshot.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes the truth is too precious to be
+told," laughed Andrews.</p>
+
+<p>But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as
+he tramped along. He made up his mind to
+fight for his country, the next time he had a
+chance, in some other way. Telling a lie and
+living a lie were hateful to him.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning found them at Big Shanty,
+a tiny Georgia village, which the war had made
+a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed
+day, Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty-two
+men who had started with Andrews,
+eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The
+train for Chattanooga stopped there for breakfast
+on those infrequent days when it did not
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+arrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It
+was what is called a "mixed" train, both freight
+and passenger, with many freight cars following
+the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby
+passenger cars. On this particular morning it
+surprised everybody, including its own train-crew,
+by being on time. Passengers and crew
+swarmed in to breakfast. The train was deserted.
+The time for the great adventure had
+come.</p>
+
+<p>Before the train was seized, one thing must
+be done. The telegraph wire between Big
+Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this
+were left intact, their flight, sure to be discovered
+as soon as the train-crew finished their brief
+breakfast, would end at the next station, put on
+guard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest
+and most agile of the party, the task of cutting
+the wire had been assigned. He was already at
+the spot selected for the attempt, a clump of
+trees a hundred yards from the station, where
+the wire was screened from sight by the foliage.
+As soon as the train came in, Tom started to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+climb the telegraph-pole. He had just started
+when he heard a most unwelcome sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, thar! What's you doin'?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head and saw a Confederate
+sentry close beside him. He recognized him as
+a man with whom he had been chatting around
+a camp-fire early that morning. His name was
+Bill Coombs. Tom's ready wit stood by him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you.
+Somethin's wrong with the wire. The Cunnel's
+sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and
+watched him without a thought of his doing
+anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top
+of the rickety pole, cut the one wire it carried,
+fastened the ends to the pole so that from the
+ground nobody could tell it was cut, and
+climbed down. Bill urged him to stay and talk
+awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentries
+mustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon
+ran towards the station. He had to run to catch
+the train. The instant Andrews saw him returning,
+he sprang into the cab of the locomotive.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_124.jpg" width="600" height="337" alt="The locomotive Tom helped to steal" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">The Locomotive Tom Helped to Steal</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of his men had already uncoupled the first
+three freight cars from the rest of the train. All
+the men jumped into the cab or the tender or
+swarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews
+jerked the throttle wide open. The engine
+jumped forward, the tender and the three cars
+bounding after it. The crowd upon the platform
+gaped after the retreating train, without the
+slightest idea of what was happening under their
+very noses. A boy came running like an antelope
+from the end of the platform. He jumped
+for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched
+by a half-dozen hands and drawn aboard. But
+as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reason
+to remember call out:</p>
+
+<p>"They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong,
+a Yankee! Stop 'em! Shoot 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>Livid with rage, his long black hair streaming
+in the wind as he ran after them, Wilkes Booth
+fired his pistol at them, while the motley crowd
+his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley
+after the train. Nobody was hurt then, but the
+danger to everybody had just begun.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was instant pursuit. The train-crew,
+startled by the sound of the departing train,
+came running from the station. They actually
+started to run along the track after the flying
+locomotive. They jerked a hand-car off a siding
+and chased the fugitives with that. At a station
+not far off, they found a locomotive lying with
+steam up. They seized that and thundered
+ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more
+even terms. The hunters reached Kingston,
+Georgia, within four minutes after the hunted
+had left. The latter had had to make frequent
+stops, to cut the wires, to take on fuel, to bundle
+into the freight cars ties that could be used to
+start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear
+up an occasional rail. This last expedient delayed
+their pursuers but little. When a missing
+rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore
+up a rail behind them, slipped it into the vacant
+place, and rushed ahead again.</p>
+
+<p>Andrews was running the captured train on
+its regular time schedule, so he could not exceed
+a certain speed. From Kingston, however,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+where the only other train of the day met this
+one, he expected a free road and plenty of time
+to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet
+the regular train at Kingston, but alas! it carried
+on its engine a red flag. That meant that
+a second section of the same train was coming
+behind it. There was nothing to do but to wait
+for this second section. The railroad was single-track,
+so trains could pass only where there was
+a siding. But in every moment of waiting there
+lurked the danger of detection. Southerners,
+soldiers, and civilians, crowded about the locomotive
+as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston
+sidetrack, puffing away precious steam and precious
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man.
+"I cum hyar to meet up with Cunnel Tompkins.
+Whar's he'n the rest of 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were ordered to drop everything at Big
+Shanty," explained Andrews, "except these
+three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on
+General Beauregard's staff and am taking the
+stuff to him at Corinth. Jove, there's the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+whistle of the second section. I'm glad to
+hear it."</p>
+
+<p>He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he
+had bundled most of his men into the freight
+cars. The cars were battered old things without
+any locks. If a carelessly curious hand were
+to slide back one of the doors and reveal within,
+not powder, but armed men, all their lives would
+pay the forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with
+engineer, fireman, and Tom, who had been
+helping the fireman feed wood into the maw
+of the furnace on every mile of the run. His
+young back ached with the strain of the unaccustomed
+toil. His young neck felt the touch
+of the noose that threatened them all.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch
+for us as soon as the other train pulls in," said
+Andrews. "We mustn't keep General Beauregard
+waiting for this powder a minute longer
+than we can help. He needs it to blow the Yankees
+to smithereens."</p>
+
+<p>So Tom ran ahead, stood by the switch as
+the second section came in, and promptly threw
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+the switch as it passed. But his train did not
+move and a brakeman jumped off the rear platform
+of the caboose of the second section, as it
+slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a
+fool, pushed him out of the way and reset the
+switch.</p>
+
+<p>"You plum fool," shouted the brakeman,
+after much stronger expressions, "didn't ye see
+the flag fur section three?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it,
+but it was too true that the engine of section
+two also bore the red flag that meant that section
+three was coming behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a long wait, again the sense
+of danger closing in upon them, again the
+thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity
+of playing their parts with laughter and good-natured
+chaff amid the foes who thought them
+friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves
+away. At last the third section came whistling
+and lumbering in. Thank fortune, it bore no red
+flag. This time Tom threw the switch unchecked
+and then jumped on the puffing engine
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+as she reached the main-track and sped onwards.</p>
+
+<p>"Free, by Jove!" said Andrews, with a deep
+breath of deep relief. "Now we can burn
+Johnny Reb's bridges for him!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Four minutes later, while section three of the
+train that had so long delayed them was still at
+Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed into
+the station. Its occupants, shouting a story of
+explanation that put Kingston into a frenzy,
+ran from it to an engine that lay upon a second
+sidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They
+had reached Kingston so speedily by using their
+last pint of water and their last stick of wood.
+They saved precious minutes by changing
+engines.</p>
+
+<p>Five seconds after their arrival, the station-agent
+had been at the telegraph-key, frantically
+pounding out the call of a station beyond Andrews's
+fleeing train. There was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the
+station. Of course that had been done by the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+fugitives just out of sight of Kingston. "Wire
+cut! I kain't git no message through."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take the message!" answered the
+Confederate commander, from the cab of the
+locomotive that was already swaying with her
+speed, as she darted ahead.</p>
+
+<p>They came near delivering the message within
+four miles of Kingston. Andrews's men, with a
+most comforting sense of safety had stopped
+and were pulling up a rail, when they heard the
+whistle of their avenging pursuer.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called.
+"They're closer'n I like to have 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates
+came closer still. Around the next curve, quite
+hidden from sight until close upon it, the fugitives
+had put a rail across the track. It delayed
+the pursuit not one second. Whether the cowcatcher
+of the engine thrust it aside or broke it
+or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody
+knew then in the wild excitement of the
+chase and nobody knows now. The one thing
+certain is that there was no delay. Very likely
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+the rail broke. Rails of those days were of iron,
+not steel, and throughout the South they were
+in such condition that at the close of the Civil
+War one of the chief Southern railroads was said
+to consist of "a right-of-way and two streaks
+of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly
+and sped on.</p>
+
+<p>On the Union train, Tom had crept back to
+the rear car along the rolling, jumping carroofs,
+with orders to set it on fire and stand
+ready to cut it off. The men inside arranged a
+pile of ties, thrust fat pine kindling among them,
+and touched the mass with a match. It burst
+into flame as they scuttled to the roof and
+passed to the car ahead. A long covered
+wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway
+across it, Andrews stopped, dropped the
+flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very
+few minutes the bridge would have been a burning
+mass, but the few minutes were not to be
+had. The Confederate locomotive was now
+close upon them. It dashed upon the bridge,
+drove the burning car across the bridge before
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and
+again whistled triumphantly as it took up the
+fierce chase. The two remaining cars were detached,
+one by one, but in vain. The game
+was up.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly,
+as he looked back over the tender, now almost
+empty of wood, to the smokestack that was
+belching sooty vapor within a mile of them.
+"By this time, they've got a telegram ahead of
+us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods.
+We must take to the woods. Don't try to keep
+together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star.
+Make the Union lines if you can. We've done
+our best."</p>
+
+<p>The engine checked its mad pace, slowed,
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he
+sprang from the engine and disappeared in the
+forest that there bordered the track. "We'll
+meet again."</p>
+
+<p>Seven of them did meet him again. It was
+upon a Confederate scaffold, where he and they
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+were hung. The other six of the fourteen who
+were captured were exchanged, a few months
+later. Three others reached the Union lines
+within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom
+Strong?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom up a Tree&mdash;Did the Confederate Officer
+See Him?&mdash;A Fugitive Slave Guides Him&mdash;Buying
+a Boat in the Dark&mdash;Adrift in the
+Enemy's Country.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>At first, Tom was up a tree. When he
+jumped from the abandoned locomotive,
+his mind was working as quickly as his body.
+He reasoned that the Confederates would expect
+them all to run as fast and as far away as
+they could; that they would run after them;
+that they would very probably catch him, utterly
+tired out as he was, so tired that even fear
+could not lend wings to his leaden feet; that the
+pursuit, however, would not last long, because
+the Confederates would wish to reach a station
+soon, in order both to report their success and
+to send out a general alarm and so start a general
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+search for the fugitives; and that he would
+best hide as near at hand as might be. In other
+words, he thought, quite correctly, that the best
+thing to do is exactly what your enemy does
+not expect you to do. He picked out a big oak
+tree quite close to the track, its top a mass of
+thick-set leaves such as a Southern April brings
+to a Southern oak. He climbed it, nestled into
+a sheltered crotch high above the ground, and
+waited. He did not have to wait long. He
+could still hear the noise of his comrades plunging
+through the woods when the Confederate
+engine drew up beneath his feet. Before it
+stopped, the armed men who clustered thick
+upon locomotive and tender were on the ground
+and running into the woods. A gallant figure
+in Confederate gray led them. He heard the
+rush of them, then a shot or two, exultant yells,
+and ere long the tramp of returning feet. They
+came back in half a dozen groups, bringing with
+them three of his comrades in flight, less fortunate
+than he, at least less fortunate up to that
+time. Andrews was one of the prisoners. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+had slipped and fallen, had strained a sinew, and
+had lain helpless until his pursuers reached him.
+Tom, peering cautiously through his leafy
+shelter, saw that his late leader was limping and
+was held upright by a kindly Confederate, who
+had passed his arm about him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't fur," said his captor, cheerily,
+"hyar's the injine."</p>
+
+<p>"The Yank's goin' fur," sneered a soldier of
+another kind, "he's goin' to Kingdom Cum,
+blast him!" He lifted his fist to strike the helpless
+man, but the young officer in command
+caught the upraised arm.</p>
+
+<p>"None of that," he said, sternly. "Americans
+don't treat prisoners that way. You're
+under arrest. Put down your gun and climb
+into the tender. Do it now and do it quick."
+Sulkily the brute obeyed. "Lift him in," went
+on the officer to the man who was supporting
+Andrews. This was gently done. The other
+two captives climbed in. So did the Confederates.
+Their officer turned to them.</p>
+
+<p>"You've done your duty well," he said.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+"You've been chasing brave men. They've
+done their duty well too.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'For such a gallant feat of arms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was never seen before.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Tom started with surprise. The young officer
+was quoting from Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient
+Rome." The boy had stood beside his mother's
+knee when she read him the "Lays" and had
+often since read them himself.</p>
+
+<p>That start of surprise had almost been Tom's
+undoing. He had rustled the leaves about him.
+A tiny shower of pale green things fell to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain, there's somebody up that tree,"
+said a soldier, pointing straight at the point
+where Tom sat. "I heard him rustle."</p>
+
+<p>The captain looked up. The boy always
+thought the officer saw him and spared him,
+partly because of his youth&mdash;he knew the fate
+the prisoners faced&mdash;and partly because of his
+admiration for "the gallant feat of arms." Be
+that as it may, he certainly took no step just
+then to make another prisoner. Instead he
+laughed and answered:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's a 'possum. We haven't time for a
+coon-hunt just now. Get ahead. We'll send an
+alarm from the next station and so bag all the
+Yankees."</p>
+
+<p>The engine, pushing the recaptured one before
+it, started and disappeared around the end
+of the short curve upon which Andrews had
+made his final stop. For the moment at least,
+Tom was safe. But he knew the hue-and-cry
+would sweep the country. Everybody would be
+on the lookout for stray Yankees. And as
+everybody would think the estrays were all
+going North, Tom decided to go South. He slid
+down the tree, looked at his watch, studied the
+sunlight to learn the points of the compass, drew
+his belt tighter to master the hunger that now
+assailed him, and so began his southward tramp,
+a boy, alone, in the enemy's country.</p>
+
+<p>That part of Georgia is a beautiful country
+and Tom loved beauty, but it did not appeal to
+him that afternoon. He was hungry; he was
+tired; the excitement that had upheld him
+through the hours of flight on the captured
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+engine was over. He plodded through a little
+belt of forest and found himself in a broad valley,
+with a ribbon of water flowing through it.
+He stumbled across plowed fields to the little
+river. A dusty road, with few marks of travel,
+meandered beside the stream. He was evidently
+near no main highway. Not far away a
+planter's home, with a stately portico, gleamed
+in the sunlight through its screen of trees. In
+the distance lay a little village. There was food
+in both places and he must have food. To which
+should he go? It was decided for him that he
+was to go to neither. As he slipped down the
+river bank, to quench his burning thirst and to
+wash his dusty face and hands, he almost
+stepped upon a negro who lay full length at the
+foot of the bank, hidden behind a tree that had
+been uprooted by the last flood and left stranded
+there. The boy was scared by the unexpected
+meeting, but not half as much as the
+negro.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Massa," said the negro, on his knees
+with outstretched hands, "don' tell on me,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+Massa. I'll be your slabe, Massa. Jes' take me
+with you. Please don't tell on me. You kin
+make a lot o' money sellin' me, Massa. Please
+lemme go wid you."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name?" asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Morris, Massa."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"From dat house, Massa." He pointed to
+the big house nearby.</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, Morris (reassured when he
+found Tom was a Northern soldier and like himself
+a fugitive) told his story. He had been
+born on this plantation. Reared as a house-servant,
+he could read a little. He had learned
+from the newspapers his master took that a
+Northern army was not far away. He made up
+his mind to try for freedom. His master kept
+dogs to track runaways, but no dog can track
+a scent in running water. It was not probable
+his flight would be discovered until after nightfall.
+So he had stolen to his hiding-place in the
+afternoon, intending to wade down the tiny
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+stream as soon as darkness came. Two miles
+below, the stream merged itself into a larger
+one. There he hoped to steal a boat, hide by
+day and paddle by night until he reached the
+Tennessee. "Dat ribber's plum full o' Massa
+Lincum's gunboats," he assured Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you going to live on the journey?"
+asked the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"I spec' dey's hen-roosts about," quoth Morris
+with a chuckle, "and I'se got a-plenty to eat
+to start wid. Dis darkey don' reckon to starve
+none."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me something to eat, quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Morris willingly produced cornpone and
+bacon from a sack beside him. Tom wanted to
+eat it all, but he knew these precious supplies
+must be kept as long as possible, so he did not
+eat more than half of them. The two agreed
+to keep together in their flight for freedom. As
+soon as it was dark, they began their wading.
+The two miles seemed an endless distance. The
+noises of the night kept their senses on the
+jump. Once a distant bloodhound's bay scared
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+Morris so much that his white teeth clattered
+like castanets. Once the "too-whit-too" of a
+nearby owl sent Tom into an ecstasy of terror.
+He fairly clung to Morris, who, just ahead of
+him, was guiding his steps through the shallow
+water. When he found he had been scared by
+an owl, he was so ashamed that he forced himself
+to be braver thereafter. At last they
+reached their first goal, the larger river. Here
+Morris's knowledge of the ground made him
+the temporary commander of the expedition.
+He knew of a little house nearby, the home of
+a "poor white," who earned part of his precarious
+livelihood by fishing. Morris knew just
+where he kept his boat. There was no light in
+the little house and no sound from it as they
+crept stealthily along the bank to the tree where
+the boat was tied. Tom drew his knife to cut
+the rope.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Massa," whispered Morris. "Not dat-a-way.
+Ef it's cut, dey'll know it's bin tuck and
+dey'll s'picion us. Lemme untie it. Den dey'll
+t'ink it's cum loose and floated away. 'N dey'll
+     <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+not hurry after it. Dey'll t'ink dey kin fin' it in
+some cove any time tomorrer."</p>
+
+<p>Morris was right. It did not take him long
+to untie the clumsy knot. Three oars and some
+fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat.
+They got into it, pushed off, and floated down
+the current without a sound. Morris steered
+with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot,
+they rowed as fast as the darkness, intensified
+by the shadows of the overhanging trees, permitted.</p>
+
+<p>Just before they had pushed off, Tom had
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"What is this boat worth, Morris?"</p>
+
+<p>"Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one
+jest like it, dis lastest week."</p>
+
+<p>Tom's conscience had told him that even
+though a fugitive for his life in the enemy's
+country he ought not to take the "poor
+white's" boat without paying for it. He unbuttoned
+an inside pocket in his shirt and drew out
+a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces.
+There were twenty of them, each wrapped in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+tissue-paper and the whole then bound together
+in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so
+that there would be no sound of clinking gold
+as he walked. He figured that the three oars
+and the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth
+more than the boat was, so he took out two
+coins and put them in a battered old pan that
+lay beside the stump to which the boat was tied.
+There the "cracker"&mdash;another name for the
+"poor white"&mdash;would be sure to see them in the
+morning. As a matter of fact he did. And they
+were worth so much more than his vanished
+property that he was inclined to think an angel,
+rather than a thief, had passed that way. Tom's
+conscientiousness spoiled Morris's plan of having
+the owner think the boat had floated away,
+but the "cracker" was glad to clutch the gold
+and start no hue-and-cry. He was afraid that if
+he recovered his boat, he would have to give up
+the gold. It was much cheaper to make
+another. So he kept still.</p>
+
+<p>And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they
+paddled slowly down the stream until the first
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+signs of dawn sent them into hiding. They hid
+the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth
+of a tiny creek and they themselves crept a few
+yards into the forest, ate very much less than
+they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's
+scanty store of food, and went to sleep. They
+slept until&mdash;but that is another story.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Towser Finds the Fugitives&mdash;Towser Brings
+Uncle Moses&mdash;Mr. Izzard and His Yankee
+Overseer, Jake Johnson&mdash;Tom is Pulled
+Down the Chimney&mdash;How Uncle Moses
+Choked the Overseer&mdash;The Flight of the
+Four.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>They slept until late in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Then Morris woke up with a yell. A dog's
+cold nose was thrusting itself against his cheek.
+He thought his master's bloodhounds were upon
+him and that the whipping-post was the least he
+had to fear. As Tom, startled from sound sleep
+by the negro's scream of terror, sprang to his
+feet, he saw Morris crouching upon the ground,
+babbling "Sabe me, good Lord, sabe old Morris!"
+The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel,
+a very distant cousin of the bloodhound the
+scared darkey imagined him to be, was looking
+with a grieved surprise at the cowering man.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+He was a most good-natured beast, accustomed
+to few caresses and many kicks, and he had
+never before seen a man who was afraid of him.
+As he turned to Tom, he saw a boy who wasn't
+afraid of him. Tom, who had always been loved
+by dogs and children, smiled at the big yellow
+mongrel, said "Come here, old fellow," and in
+an instant had the great hound licking his hand
+and looking up to him with the brown-yellow
+eyes full of a dog's faith and a dog's fidelity.
+These are great qualities. A cynic once said:
+"The more I see of men the more I like dogs."
+That cynic probably got from men what he gave
+to them. But still it is true that the unfaltering
+faith of a dog and a child, once their confidence
+has been won, is a rare and a precious thing.
+Tom patted his new friend's head. The big tail
+wagged with joy. The hound looked reproachfully
+at Morris, as much as to say: "See how
+you misunderstood me; I want to be friends: but
+here"&mdash;he turned and looked at the boy who
+was smiling at him&mdash;"here is my best friend."</p>
+
+<p>He stayed with them an hour, contented and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+happy, humbly grateful for a tiny piece of meat
+they gave him. Then, as dark drew near, he
+became uneasy. Two or three times he started
+as if to leave them, turned to see whether they
+were following him, looked beseechingly at
+them, barked gently, put his big paw on Tom's
+arm and pulled at him. Evidently he wanted
+them to come with him, but this they did not
+dare to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef we lets him go, he'll bring his folkses
+here," Morris whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we must tie him up," Tom reluctantly
+assented. "I hate to treat him that
+way, for he's a good dog. But if we leave him
+tied and push off in the boat, he'll howl after a
+while and his master will find him. Take a bit
+of fishing-line and tie him."</p>
+
+<p>Morris turned towards the hidden boat, but
+the hound, as if aware of what they had said,
+suddenly started for his hidden home and vanished
+into the underbrush before Tom could
+catch hold of him. When Tom called, he
+stopped once and looked back, but he did not
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+come back. He shouldered his way into the
+bushes and trotted off, with that amusing air
+of being in a hurry to keep a most important
+appointment which all dogs sometimes show.
+And as he started, Morris appeared again, with
+a shrill whisper: "De boat's dun sunk hisself."</p>
+
+<p>Tom ran to the bank of the creek. The news
+was too true. The boat had sunk. The rotten
+caulking had dropped from one of the rotten
+seams. The bow, tied to a tree in the canebrake,
+was high in air. The stern was under
+five feet of water. The oars had floated away.
+The fishing-pole was afloat, held to the old craft
+by the hook-and-line, which had caught in the
+sunken seat. What were they to do? They felt
+as a Western trapper used to feel, when he had
+lost his horse and saw himself compelled to
+make his perilous way on foot through a country
+swarming with savage foes. What to do?</p>
+
+<p>"We must raise the boat, Morris, get her on
+shore, turn her over, caulk her with something,
+make some paddles somehow and get off."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They did, by great effort and with much more
+noise than they liked to make, drag the crazy
+old craft upon the bank of the creek. They
+turned her bottom-side up. The negro plucked
+down a long, waving mass of Spanish moss from
+a cypress that grew in the swampy soil. Children
+in the South call this Spanish moss "old
+men's gray beards." Each long drift of it looks
+as if it might have grown on the chin of an aged
+giant. They were pressing it into the gaping
+seam with feverish haste, listening the while for
+any sign of that dreaded coming of the big
+hound's "folkses." The short twilight of Southern
+skies ended. A deep curtain of darkness fell
+upon them. And through it they heard the
+nearby patter of the dog's paws and the
+shuffling footfalls of a man. And they saw the
+gleam of a lantern.</p>
+
+<p>"We'se diskivered, Massa Tom," old Morris
+whispered, "we'se diskivered."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, he slipped over the bank into the
+creek and lay in much his attitude when Tom
+had first "diskivered" him, except that the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+water covered all of him except mouth and nose
+and eyes. Tom bent down to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," he said, "keep still. There's only
+one man coming. The dog's all right. I'll meet
+the man. You stay here."</p>
+
+<p>Then he stepped into a circle of light cast by
+the lantern upon a mass of underbrush and
+said, with a cheerful confidence he did not
+feel:</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, neighbor?"</p>
+
+<p>The big yellow dog was fawning at his feet
+in a second. A quavering old voice came from
+behind the light of the lantern.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Massa," it said. "Is I intrudin' on
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>An old, old negro shambled up to him, the
+lantern in one hand, a ragged hat in another.
+He bowed his crown of white kinky hair respectfully
+before the white boy. There was no
+enemy to be feared here. The boy's heart
+bounded with relief and he laughed as he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"No, Uncle, you're not intruding. I'm glad to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+see you. I'm sure you'll help us. Come here,
+Morris."</p>
+
+<p>Morris scrambled up the bank, the wettest
+man in the world. His eyeballs shone as he
+neared them. They shone still more as he stood
+before the old negro, held out his hand, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Unk' Moses, I'se po'erful glad to meet up
+wid you."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Moses almost dropped his rude lantern
+in his surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ef it ain't Massa Pinckney's Morris!
+Howdy, Morris? How cum so as you-uns is
+here, a-hidin'? I know'd de way dat ar Towser
+wuz a-actin' when he dun cum home dat dere
+wuz sum-un in de bush out hyar, but I neber
+s'picioned t'wuz you, Morris. Is you dun run
+away?"</p>
+
+<p>The situation was soon explained. Uncle
+Moses had already become familiar with it.
+Hunted men, both white and black, were no
+novelty to him by that time. He had helped
+many of them on their scared way. Too old to
+work, he lived alone in a little cabin on the outskirts
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+of his owner's plantation. He tilled a tiny
+plot of vegetables when "de rumatiz" permitted
+and with these and some rations from
+"de big house" he eked out a scanty living.
+This owner's self-respect had not prevented his
+working Moses through all a long life, with no
+payment except food and lodging, and behind
+these always the shadow of the whip. But the
+slave's self-respect required him to work for the
+hand that fed him, so long as failing strength
+permitted. All he could do now was to scare
+crows from the cornfield, but that he could do
+well, for his one suit of the ragged remains of
+what had been several other people's clothes
+made him a perfect scarecrow. Besides his
+vegetables, he had some chickens, a sacred possession.
+"Old Unk' Mose" was known and respected
+through all the countryside. No
+chicken-thief ever came to his cabin. The kind
+old patriarch was reaping the reward of a kind
+long life. He dwelt in peace.</p>
+
+<p>He took Tom and Morris to the lonely cabin
+and treated them there with a royal hospitality.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+Despite his protests, Tom was obliged to take
+the one bed. Unk' Mose and Morris slept upon
+the floor. First, they had a mighty dinner.
+Two of Moses's fattest chickens and everything
+Moses had in the way of other food filled their
+starved stomachs. Then to sleep. The last
+thing Tom heard that night was the swish of
+Towser's mighty tail upon the earthen floor as
+the dog lay beside his cot. The last thing of
+which he was conscious was Towser's gently
+licking the hand that hung down from the cot.</p>
+
+<p>The next day they toiled with such feeble help
+as Moses could give them upon their leaky boat.
+They put it in fair shape and then, with a rusty
+ax which was one of Unk' Mose's most precious
+possessions, they fashioned a couple of
+rough oars. Then they spent a day trying to
+persuade Moses to seek freedom with them. It
+was in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'se too old, Massa Tom," said Uncle Moses.
+"Dey wuz timeses when I dun thought all de
+days and dun prayed all de nights dat freedum'd
+cum along or dat I cud go to freedum. It's too
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+late nowadays. Unk' Mose mus' jes' sot hyar,
+a-waitin'. P'raps, ef I keeps a-helpin' udder
+folkses to find deir freedum, p'raps sum day,
+'fore I'se troo' a-waitin', de angel ob de Lawd'll
+cum a-walkin' up to my do' and he'll be a-holdin'
+by de han' ob a great big udder angel 'n de
+udder angel he'll dun smile at me and say:
+'Unk' Moses, I'se Freedum 'n I'se cum to you.'
+Den I'll say: 'Thank de good Lawd,' and I'll be
+so happy I guess I'll jes' die 'n go to de great
+White Throne, whar ebberybody's free."</p>
+
+<p>Late that afternoon when they had had to
+give up the hope of taking Uncle Mose with
+them, they were making a bundle of the food
+he had given them. It was a big bundle. He
+would have slaughtered his last chicken for
+them, had they permitted it. Suddenly there
+came the sound of a long, shrill whistle. Uncle
+Moses, tying up the bundle on his knees, forgot
+"de rumatiz" and almost sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Lawd-a-massy, dat's de oberseer! He's dun
+callin' de hands to de quarters." The quarters
+were the slave-quarters which always clustered
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+at a respectful distance in the rear of a planter's
+home. "Dat ar oberseer mebbe'll cum hyar.
+You folkses mus' hide."</p>
+
+<p>The whistle had sounded dangerously near.
+As they looked out of the one door that gave
+light to the slave's cabin, they saw three horsemen
+trotting towards it, two white men and a
+negro. They were Moses's master, the dreaded
+overseer, and a groom. It was impossible to run
+across the small cleared space about the cabin
+and seek the woods without being seen. But
+where could they hide in a one-roomed hut?</p>
+
+<p>"De chimbley, quick, de chimbley," gasped
+Uncle Mose.</p>
+
+<p>A big chimney, full of the soot of many years
+of wood-fires on the broad hearth below, filled
+half one side of the room. Tom and Morris
+rushed to it, climbed up the rough stone sides,
+found a precarious footing just above the fireplace,
+and waited. Fortunately the fire upon
+which the food for the journey had been cooked
+had almost died down. A little smoke floated
+up the wide opening. The smoke and the soot
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+tickled the boy's nostrils until it seemed to him
+that he must sneeze. A sneeze might mean
+death. With a mighty effort he kept still for
+what seemed to him an hour. It was really
+about five minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Izzard, owner of Uncle Moses and of
+some hundreds of other black men, Jake Johnson,
+his overseer, a renegade Yankee, with a
+face that told of the cruel soul within him,
+trotted up to the door, the black groom a few
+yards behind them. Uncle Moses had thrust the
+bundle of food far back under the bed. He
+stood respectfully in his doorway, bowing to the
+ground. Towser cowered beside him. Towser
+had felt more than once the sting of the long
+whip Jake Johnson carried. He feared and he
+hated the overseer.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Massa Izzard." said Moses.
+"Howdy, Mista Johnsing. Will you-uns light
+down 'n cum in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied.
+He was a tall, pale, well-born, well-bred, well-educated
+man, as kind a man as ever held his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was
+justified in doing so by the laws of both God
+and man as the German emperor was that he
+ruled a subject people by divine right. "No,
+we won't light down. We just came to say
+howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you
+want anything, come up to the big house and
+ask for it."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the
+old negro as he stammered a few words of
+thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's
+Morris, Mose?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen
+hide nor har ob Morris. Has dat fool nigger
+runned away?"</p>
+
+<p>Johnson looked at him sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"If I thought you knew already he had run
+away," said he, "I'd"&mdash;he cracked his whip in
+the air to show what he would have done.</p>
+
+<p>Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard
+told Johnson to stop frightening "the best
+darkey on the place" and they rode away.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+Mose dropped upon his one chair and was just
+about to give fervent thanks for the escape from
+detection, when Johnson, who had turned a
+short distance away and had galloped back,
+flung himself off his horse at the door and strode
+into the dusky hut.</p>
+
+<p>"I b'lieve you know something about that
+Morris," he roared at the shrinking old negro.
+"You looked guilty. Tell me what you know
+or I'll thrash you within an inch of your black
+life." He cracked his dreaded whip again.</p>
+
+<p>"I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista Johnsing,"
+Moses pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved
+too much for the overtried nostrils of Tom. He
+sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held
+back. His "at-choo! at-choo!" sounded down
+the chimney like a chorus of bassoons. Johnson
+was across the room in a bound. He knelt
+upon the hearth, groped up the chimney, caught
+the boy by the ankle and pulled him down. The
+soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer
+was sure he had caught the fleeing Morris.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">At that terrible moment, when Johnson's
+throat was swelling for a yell of triumph that
+would surely have brought Mr. Izzard back to
+the hut, Uncle Moses cast the traditions of a life
+of servile fear of the white man behind him.
+Never had he dreamed of laying a finger on one
+of his owner's race, even in those long-ago days
+when stout thews and muscles made him fit to
+fight. Now, in trembling old age, the truth of
+the poet's saying,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="p2">put spirit for a second into his old heart. He
+knew the danger that lay in that yell. He meant
+to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was
+still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching
+Tom's ankle, the boy still sprawling on the
+hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery
+and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old
+body hurled itself upon the overseer's broad
+back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's
+windpipe and choked him into a second's silence.
+That second was enough. Tom sprang to his
+feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and good
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+old Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that
+beckoned to him, sunk his teeth in Johnson's
+shoulder and tore him down from the back
+while Tom struck his strongest just below the
+overseer's chin and knocked him out for the time
+being. Before he came to, he had been lashed
+hand-and-foot into a long bundle, had been effectually
+gagged with his own whip, had been
+blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the
+bed, from under which the food had been hurriedly
+withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had
+neither been seen nor heard. Tom called up the
+chimney to him to come down.</p>
+
+<p>"I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice.
+It had never occurred to Morris to slip down
+and help in the fight he heard going on below.
+His one thought had been to escape himself.
+So he had climbed still higher up the chimney
+and in his frantic haste he had so wedged himself
+into it that it took Tom an hour to pull him
+down. It was a battered, bruised, and bleeding
+negro who finally appeared. That was a very
+long hour. Mr. Izzard might return in search
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+of his overseer at any moment. The overseer
+himself must be conscious by this time. His
+ears must have told him much. Tom whispered
+to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His
+anxious gesture toward the bed beneath which
+Johnson lay frightened both negroes into scared
+silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's
+ears had told him nothing. Towser's teeth had
+drawn so much blood&mdash;the mighty hound had
+been pried off his foe with difficulty&mdash;that the
+man lay in a faint until the four fugitives had
+fled. For there were four fugitives now.
+Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face
+the coming wrath. The rest of Moses's chickens
+were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered.
+When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until
+she had a scant two inches of free-board above
+the water, was slipping down the river again.
+Uncle Moses was no longer "a-waitin' fer freedum."
+He was going in search of the freedom
+he had so long craved. He and his fellows had
+two clear days in which to get away without
+pursuit, for Johnson lay in his dark prison beneath
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+the bed for fortyeight hours before he
+was found. One of the ropes used to bind him
+had caught upon an old nail in the wall. He
+was too weak to tear it away and so could not
+even roll himself to the outer air. On the second
+day of his unexplained absence, Mr. Izzard
+had sent all the negroes in search of him and
+had offered a reward for his finding. The discovery
+of his horse in a distant part of the plantation
+had concentrated the search there. The
+darkies who finally got the reward did not rejoice
+much in it, for in finding the overseer, they
+knew they were finding a cruel taskmaster and
+his cruel whip. But the story of his discomfiture
+by three negroes, for he had never known
+that Tom's sooty face was really white, soon
+spread through the countryside. He became a
+neighborhood joke and in his wrath at being
+made a butt he resigned as Mr. Izzard's overseer.
+Leaving this place deprived him of his
+immunity from conscription. He was promptly
+seized by the nearest Confederate officer and
+impressed into the army. The Izzard negroes
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+had the infinite joy of seeing their hated ex-overseer
+marched off under guard to a Confederate
+camp, to serve as a private soldier.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was destined to see Jake Johnson again.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Two nights they rowed down the river, almost
+without a word, afraid to speak lest someone
+in the infrequent houses and still more infrequent
+villages along the banks should hear
+them. Wise old Towser knew enough not to
+bark when men about him kept so still. He lay
+always where with nose or paw or tail he could
+touch Tom. The latter was the commander of
+the expedition and Towser felt it and became
+his abject slave accordingly. At the close of the
+second night they had reached the Tennessee
+River. By day they camped upon shore in some
+hidden place, first craftily secreting the boat
+amid rushes and reeds. From their second
+hiding-place, they saw about noon a Confederate
+gunboat, a small stern-wheel steamboat,
+with cotton-bales at her bow and stern screening
+her two guns. Though she was making
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+all possible speed up the current, she moved
+but slowly. Her decks were thick with excited
+men. A babble of voices reached the fugitives,
+peering at her behind a mass of bushes. The
+few words that could be made out told them
+nothing. The sight of her, however, warned
+them that a new danger might await them on
+the traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their
+hearts would have beat higher, had they known
+that General Mitchell had pushed south from
+Huntsville and that Union forces were then encamped
+in strength upon the river, not many
+miles below where they were cowering. The
+Confederate gunboat had been steaming upstream
+to escape capture.</p>
+
+<p>When darkness came, they embarked again
+upon what proved to be the last chapter in the
+history of the old flat-boat. The next morning,
+caught in an eddy at the mouth of a small, swift
+tributary of the Tennessee, she whirled about,
+the Spanish moss dropped out of her rotten
+seams, she filled and sank. She dropped so
+swiftly beneath them that before they realized
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+their danger they were all floundering in water
+over their heads. Tom could swim like a fish.
+That is one of the first things a boy should learn
+to do. To his delight, he found Uncle Moses
+was also surprisingly at home in the water, considering
+his years. Towser accepted the situation
+as something he did not understand, but
+which was doubtless entirely all right, as his
+lord and master, Tom, was in the water too.
+Morris, however, could not swim a stroke and
+saw only certain death before him. He gave a
+yell of terror as he went under. That yell came
+near costing them dear. As he rose to the surface,
+Tom on one side and Uncle Mose on the
+other, acting under Tom's instructions, edged a
+shoulder under him, and started to swim to
+shore with him. Again he yelled. This time
+Moses lost patience.</p>
+
+<p>"Shet up, you fool nigger. You sho'ly needs
+to be 'mersed."</p>
+
+<p>With this whispered menace, he reached up
+one hand and ducked Morris's head quite under
+water. That stopped all further sound from
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+him. And by this time their feet had touched
+bottom. They waded ashore, with Towser wagging
+a triumphant tail, shaking himself and
+sending showers of spray over them. There
+they stood, wet as water-rats, with nothing in
+the world except the dripping clothes they wore.
+And there was no hiding-place near. For half
+a mile on either side of them a cleared field lay
+open to the day and the day was upon them.
+They had tempted Fate by rowing on too long
+after the first signs of dawn. Fate had turned
+the trump upon them. The sun rolled up above
+the eastern horizon at their back. It showed
+them, not half a mile away, a plantation house.
+It showed them a swarm of field-hands coming
+to the day's toil. It showed them a mounted
+overseer, only a few hundred feet away, riding
+up to the flat range of the field from a ravine
+that had hidden him. He had heard Morris's
+yells. He saw the three and rode furiously at
+them, calling out:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you niggers doin' here?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom stepped forward to meet him. His two
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+companions were useless in an emergency like
+this. They cowered back and were dumb.
+Towser strode ahead beside Tom and barked.
+The overseer pulled up short. He saw he was
+dealing with a white man, or rather with a white
+boy. The circumstances were suspicious. Who
+were these three dripping ragamuffins? But
+since one of them was white, the man's tone
+changed and he modified his question.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are ye? And what are ye doin' here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am on my way to Vicksburg," Tom answered,
+"by the river. My boat sunk just off
+shore here and we swam ashore. Can you give
+me another boat?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mout 'n I moutn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I am carrying dispatches," said Tom,
+sternly. "You will delay me at your peril. I
+shall take one of those boats, whether you consent
+or not."</p>
+
+<p>With this he pointed at the most encouraging
+thing the sunrise had shown him. This was a
+line of three boats fastened to a wooden landing-place
+by the river.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I b'lieve you're a Yankee," said the horseman,
+"and these are runaway niggers. You and
+they must come up to the big house with me.
+If you're all right, we'll send you on your way.
+If you're not, well, we know what to do with
+Yanks and runaway niggers! March!"</p>
+
+<p>He slipped his hand behind him, as if to draw
+a pistol. Tom was already making the same
+gesture. Neither of them had a pistol. Tom's
+had gone to the bottom. It was pure bluff on
+both sides. And in a moment, seeing this and
+being Americans, both laughed. But none the
+less the overseer demanded that they should go
+to the big house. Tom, protesting, but apparently
+half-yielding, edged along until he was
+near the landing-platform. Then, shouting
+"Come on, boys!" he ran to it, the frightened
+negroes following at his heels and Towser running
+ahead. He hustled them into the boat at
+the eastern end of the pier, jumped in himself,
+jerked the rope off the wooden peg that insecurely
+held it, and pushed off. The overseer,
+angrily protesting, stood a moment watching his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+prey escape and then galloped like mad for the
+big house, shouting "Yanks! spies!! thieves!!!
+Yanks!!!!" He was met halfway by half a
+dozen men in Confederate gray, roused by his
+yells. They were officers who had spent the
+night at the hospitable house, had breakfasted
+at daybreak, and were just about to mount for
+their day's march when the overseer gave the
+alarm. It was lucky for the fugitives that officers
+do not carry anything bigger than pistols.
+A fusillade of revolver-bullets all fell short of the
+fleeing mark. Tom and Morris were pulling an
+oar apiece&mdash;they had found but two in the boat&mdash;with
+a desperate energy. But it was unlucky
+for the fugitives that they had not thought to
+steal or to scuttle the other two boats. This
+was Tom's fault, for he was captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll know better next time," said Tom to
+himself ruefully, as he saw three men spring
+into each boat for the pursuit. "I'll know better
+next time&mdash;if there ever is a next time."</p>
+
+<p>It did not seem likely that there would be a
+next time. One of the pursuing boats fell behind,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+to be sure. In it, too, there were but two
+oars and the men who plied them could not
+match the black man and the white boy who
+rowed for freedom's sake and life's sake. But
+in the other boat, two strong men each pulled
+two oars, while the third man crouched in the
+bow, pistol in hand, calling out steering instructions.
+This boat gained upon them, bit by bit.
+The fugitives could hear the lookout call "Port,
+hard-a-port!" and could almost see the extra
+weight thrown into the sweep of the starboard
+oars to send the boat's head the right way.
+Once the man at the bow took a chance on a
+long shot. His bullet fell harmlessly two hundred
+feet astern of Towser who stood in the
+stern of the fleeing boat, barking savagely.
+Thrice they turned a sharp bend and were out
+of sight of their enemy for a moment, but each
+time there was a shorter interval before the
+enemy shot into sight behind them. A fourth
+point lay just ahead. Tom looked back over his
+shoulder and measured the distance with his
+eye.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We can just make that next point," he
+panted. "Soon as we do, we'll land and run.
+It's our only chance."</p>
+
+<p>"I kain't run," said Uncle Moses, "but you'se
+right, Massa Tom. Dey'll catch us ef we keep
+a-rowin'."</p>
+
+<p>They had almost reached the bend. Another
+strong pull would have sent them around it.
+But the pursuers had now so gained upon them
+that the lookout chanced another shot. By
+chance or by skill, it was a very good shot. The
+bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade.
+The blade dropped off as Tom was putting
+every ounce of his failing strength into a prodigious
+pull. The handle, released from all
+pressure, flew through the air and Tom rolled
+over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a
+shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent
+to their work with a fierce vigor, feeling the victory
+won. Morris gave one last pull with his
+one oar and it sent the boat around the bend.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"And dere," as Uncle Moses with widespread
+arms used to tell the tale thereafter, "and dere
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+wuz Massa Lincum's gunboats, a-crowdin' ob de
+ribber&mdash;'n de Stars-'n-Stripeses, dey jest kivered
+de sky!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_176.jpg" width="600" height="642" alt="TOWSER" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">TOWSER</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">And so Unk' Mose and Morris came to their
+freedom and Tom came to his own. Towser
+became Tom's own. Uncle Moses insisted upon
+this and Towser highly approved of it. The
+giant hound worshiped the boy. Morris was
+speedily put to work driving a four-mule team
+for the commissary department of General
+Mitchell's force. He was accustomed to having
+food and lodging doled out to him, so it seemed
+quite natural to be given sleeping quarters
+(usually under the canvas cover of the wagon
+he drove) and rations, but it took him some
+months to recover from the shock of actually
+being paid wages for his work. When this too
+became natural, he felt that he was really free.
+Uncle Moses was too old for that sort of thing.
+He was bewildered by the rough and teeming
+life of an army-camp. He clung to Tom, was as
+devoted to him as Towser was, and much more
+helpless than the dog was. Towser made
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+friends and important friends at once. It happened
+that food was rather short at headquarters
+the day after the fugitives found safety.
+Tom, waiting for a chance to go North, had been
+asked to share the tent of a staff-officer and to
+eat at headquarters' mess. An hour before dinner,
+one of his hosts was bewailing the scanty
+fare they were to have when Towser sidled
+around the corner of the tent with a fat chicken
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+in his mouth and laid it with respectful devotion
+at his master's feet. There was a shout of applause
+and a roar from the assembled officers of
+"Good dog, good dog, Towser, do it again!"
+Whereupon, after some majestic wags of his
+mighty tail, he disappeared for a few minutes
+and did do it again. When the second chicken
+was laid at Tom's feet, Towser's position was
+assured. He was named an orderly by acclamation
+and was given a collar made of an old army
+belt, with the magic letters "U. S. A." upon it,
+a collar which he wore proudly through his
+happy life.</p>
+
+<p>Tom, who felt quite rich when his arrears of
+pay were handed him, decided to give himself a
+treat by making Uncle Moses happy. That is
+the best kind of treat man or boy can give himself.
+Make somebody else happy and you will
+be happy yourself. Try it and see. So, when
+he finally started back for Cairo and Washington
+he took both Uncle Moses and Towser with
+him. Neither of them had ever been on a railroad
+train before. Equally bewildered and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+equally happy, they sped by steam across the
+thousand miles between Cairo and Washington.
+In those days dogs could travel with their masters,
+without being banished to the baggage-car.
+As the three neared the latter city, the great
+dome of the Capitol sprang into sight. Tom
+eagerly pointed it out.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, Uncle Mose, look, Towser, there's
+the Capitol."</p>
+
+<p>"Dat's Freedum's home," murmured Unk'
+Mose.</p>
+
+<p>And Towser, stirred by the others' emotion,
+barked joyfully. He felt at home, too, because
+he was with Tom.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life&mdash;Newspaper
+Abuse of Lincoln&mdash;The Emancipation Proclamation&mdash;Lincoln
+in His Night-shirt&mdash;James
+Russell Lowell&mdash;"Barbara Frietchie"&mdash;Mr.
+Strong Comes Home&mdash;The
+Russian Fleet Comes to New York&mdash;A
+Backwoods Jupiter.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Tom neared the White House with a beating
+heart. He had done what Lincoln had
+bade him do. The dispatches had been carried
+safely and had been put into General Grant's
+hands. But he had taken a rather large
+advantage of the President's smiling suggestion
+that he might occasionally slip into a
+fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteered
+to go with Andrews on the railroad
+raid, which was to take a week, and he
+had been away for many weeks, during which
+he had been carried on the army-rolls as "missing."
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+Would the President think of him as a
+truant, who had run away and stayed away from
+duty? John Hay's welcome of him was frigid.
+The boy's heart went down into his boots. But
+it sprang up into his mouth when he was
+ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted with
+the winning smile he knew so well and to be
+congratulated both on his bravery in going with
+Andrews and on his good fortune in finally getting
+back to the Union lines.</p>
+
+<p>The President was not alone when Tom
+entered the room. There sat beside the desk a
+middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes
+red with weeping, her rusty black dress spotted
+with recent tears. Her thin hands were nervously
+twisting the petition someone had prepared
+for her to present to the President. She
+looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he
+turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk
+with her which Tom's entrance had interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything
+for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+woman. "He said&mdash;he said it was time to make
+an example and that my boy Jim ought to be
+shot and would be shot at&mdash;at&mdash;sunrise tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>The sentence ended in a wail and the woman
+crumpled up into a heap and slid down to the
+floor at the President's feet. She had gained
+one moment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the
+only son of his mother and she a widow," had
+overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried
+before a court-martial of elderly officers
+who were tired of hearing the frivolous excuses
+of careless boys for not coming back promptly
+to the front, had been found guilty of desertion,
+and had been sentenced to be shot in a week.
+Six days the mother had haunted the crowded
+anteroom of the stern Secretary of War, bent
+beneath the burden of her woe. Admitted at
+last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life
+had been ruthlessly refused.</p>
+
+<p>"The life of the nation is at stake, madam,"
+Stanton had growled at her. "We must keep
+the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+to that of our country? It is unfortunate," the
+grim Secretary's tones grew softer at the sight
+of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunate
+that the life happens to be that of your boy, but
+an example is needed and an example there shall
+be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise.
+Good-day."</p>
+
+<p>He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing
+mother was ushered out and the next person on
+the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards
+she was with Lincoln. There was no six days'
+wait at the White House for the mother of a
+Union soldier.</p>
+
+<p>When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom
+sprang to help her, but the President was
+quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her
+like a child and laid her upon a sofa. He
+touched a bell and sent word to Mrs. Lincoln
+asking her to come to him. When she did so,
+she took charge of Mrs. Jenkins and speedily
+revived her. But it was the President, not his
+wife, who completed the cure and saved the
+weeping woman's reason from wreck and her
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+life from long anguish. He pointed to the petition
+which had fallen from her nerveless fingers
+to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand me that paper, Tom."</p>
+
+<p>He put on his spectacles and started to read
+it. The glasses grew misty with the tears in his
+eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna
+handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and
+wrote beneath it in bold letters: "This man is
+pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held
+the petition close to the sofa so that the first
+thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as she came back to consciousness
+in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins's
+pardon. It was that blessed news which
+made her herself again. She broke into a torrent
+of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, ma'am," said the President, "I
+don't believe the way to keep the fighting ranks
+full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's
+been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb:
+'Never drown a boy baby.' I guess that means
+that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to give
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+him a chance not to make another. You tell
+Jim from me to do better after this. Tom, you
+take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and
+show him that little line of mine. He won't like
+it very much. Usually he has his own way, but
+sometimes I have mine and this happens to be
+one of those times. Glad you came to see me,
+Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of things you can
+do to an American boy that are better than
+shooting him. Here's a little note you can read
+later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a bit.
+Good-by&mdash;and God bless you."</p>
+
+<p>Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her
+happiness, to the War Department, where the
+formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins
+back to the front, resolute to pay his country
+for the life the President had given him. Only
+when the order had been entered did the mother
+remember the envelope clutched in her hand
+which the President had given her. It contained
+no words, unless it be true that "money talks."
+It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had
+spent her last cent on her journey to Washington
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+and her six days' stay there. Abraham
+Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and
+happiness. When once again she had occasion
+to weep over her son, a year later, her tears
+were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins
+died a hero's death at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
+on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide of the
+Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great
+Confederate commander, saw the surge of his
+splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks
+of the Union line, in the heart of the North.
+The bullet that killed Jim Jenkins tore through
+the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always
+wore over his heart. And Lincoln found time
+in that great hour of the country's salvation to
+turn aside from the myriad duties of every day
+long enough to write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter
+about her dead son's gift of his life to his
+country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and
+of a wondrous consolation, which was buried
+with the soldier's mother not long afterwards,
+when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier
+son.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a
+typical one. Everybody hated to come in contact
+with the surly Secretary. One day, when
+Private Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came
+into the offices with a letter in his hand and a
+cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants
+me to take some people to see Stanton," he said.
+"I would rather make the tour of a smallpox
+hospital."</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln always shrank from studying the records
+of court-martials, but he often had to do
+so, that justice or injustice might be tempered
+by mercy. He caught at every chance of showing
+mercy. A man had been sentenced to be
+shot for cowardice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I won't approve that," said the President.
+"'He who fights and runs away, may live
+to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is
+a coward, it would frighten him too terribly to
+shoot him."</p>
+
+<p>The next case was that of a deserter. After
+sentence, he had escaped and had reached
+Mexico.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln
+commented. "We can't catch him, you see.
+We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in
+Indiana, 'as they run.'"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>At this time the fortunes of war were not
+favoring the North. There were days of doubt,
+days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse
+of the President sounded from many Northern
+newspapers. Its keynote was struck by Horace
+Greeley, the editor of the New York <i>Tribune</i>
+and the foremost man in a group of great editors
+such as the country has never seen since.
+They were Horace Greeley of the <i>Tribune</i>,
+Henry J. Raymond of the <i>New York Times</i>, and
+Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.) <i>Republican</i>.
+Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan";
+Raymond demanded that he be "superseded"
+as President; and Greeley, in a letter
+that was published in England and that greatly
+harmed the Union cause, said Lincoln ruled
+"a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."</p>
+
+<p>In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+were household words and names by which to
+conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln
+pierced his heart, but his gentle patience never
+gave way. He bore with their well-meant but
+unjust criticism as he bore with so much else
+in those dark days, careless of hurt to himself,
+if he could but serve his country and do his duty
+as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one
+great duty and this he did. On September 22,
+1862, he signed his famous Emancipation Proclamation,
+which with its sequence the Thirteenth
+Amendment to the Constitution of the
+United States ended forever slavery wherever
+the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days
+of that great September, even a boy could feel
+in the tense atmosphere of the White House
+that some great event was impending. Nobody
+knew upon just what the master mind was
+brooding, but the whole world was to know it
+soon. It was not until Lincoln had written with
+his own hand in the solitude of his own room
+the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves
+that he called together his Cabinet, not to advise
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+him about it, but to hear from him what
+he had resolved to do. The messenger who
+summoned the Cabinet officials to that historic
+session was none other than Uncle Moses. Tom
+of course had long since told the story of his
+flight for freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted
+attack at the very nick of time upon the
+overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of
+the old negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring
+Moses to see him and Moses emerged from that
+interview the proudest darkey in the world, for
+he was made a messenger and general utility
+man at the White House. Part of his duty was
+to keep in order the room where the Cabinet
+met and to summon its members when a meeting
+of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly
+but majestically from the White House to the
+different Departments, bearing a message from
+the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a
+very different person from the Unk' Mose who
+had cared for Tom and Morris in the Alabama
+canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man.
+On these little journeys, Tad Lincoln often<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+went with him, his small white hand clutching
+one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although
+Moses knew nothing of it at the time,
+the day he bore the summons to the meeting at
+which the Proclamation that freed his race was
+read was the great day of his life. It is well for
+any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a
+great event in the world's history.</p>
+
+<p>"I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation,"
+Uncle Moses used to say with ever-deepening
+pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old
+age, he came to think he really had carried the
+Proclamation to the Cabinet, instead of simply
+summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which
+the Proclamation was first read. Memory plays
+queer tricks with the old. So Unk' Mose's tale
+lost nothing in the telling, year after year.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a
+small party at the residence of Salmon P. Chase,
+Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was
+there. He wrote that evening in his diary:
+"They all seemed to feel a sort of new and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's
+Proclamation had freed them as well as
+the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called
+themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy
+the novel accusation of appropriating that horrible
+name." The Proclamation made it respectable
+to be an Abolitionist. Every great
+reform is disreputable until it succeeds.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The Proclamation seemed to have freed the
+President too. When a man has made a New
+Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in
+bondage&mdash;emancipation was to take place wherever
+the Stars-and-Stripes flew on January 1,
+1863&mdash;such a man must have a wonderful glow
+of reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew
+gentler. Always with a keen eye for humorous
+absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the
+President's office. Lincoln was stretched out at
+full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long
+legs on the sill of the open window. He was
+holding a seven-foot telescope to his eyes, its
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+other end resting upon his toes. He was looking
+at two steamboats puffing hard up the
+Potomac. What news did they bring? As the
+boy knocked, the President, without turning his
+head, called out: "Come in, Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>Tom opened the door and as he did so John
+Hay pushed excitedly by him, a telegram in his
+hand, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. President, what do you think Smith of
+Illinois has done? He is behaving very badly."</p>
+
+<p>"Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of
+meanness, but I'm too busy to quarrel with him.
+Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll
+never hear of it."</p>
+
+<p>He knew how to disregard little men and their
+little deeds.</p>
+
+<p>That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and
+Hay had asked him to spend the evening, after
+the household had gone to bed, in their office.
+Crackers and cheese and a jug of milk were the
+refreshments and John Hay's talk was the delight
+of the little gathering. Midnight had just
+struck when the door opened quietly and the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+President slipped into the room. Never had
+Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he
+had on was a short nightshirt and carpet-slippers.
+He was smiling as he entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the
+'Biglow Papers.' That fellow Lowell knows
+how to put things. Just hear this. He puts
+these Yankee words into Jeff Davis's mouth:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Consists in triumphantly gettin' away!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And here," continued the President, utterly unaware
+of the oddity of his garb, "and here is a
+good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the
+'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear
+this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'An' why should we kick up a muss<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">About the Pres'dent's proclamation?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ef we don't like emancipation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The right to be a cussed fool<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is safe from all devices human.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's common (ez a gin'l rule)<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To every critter born o' woman.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly
+unconscious," says Hay's diary, "that he, with
+his short shirt hanging about his long legs and
+setting out behind like the tail feathers of an
+enormous ostrich, was infinitely funnier than
+anything in the book he was laughing at."</p>
+
+<p>"That fellow Lowell" was James Russell
+Lowell, an American critic, poet, and essayist,
+later our Minister to England.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>One day Tom had a welcome letter from his
+father, saying he was on his way home and
+would be in Washington almost as soon as his
+letter was. The letter was written from St.
+Petersburg and had upon its envelope Russian
+stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp
+before. He showed the envelope as a curiosity
+to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's
+eager request gave it to him. Tom happened
+to lunch with the Lincoln family that day. Tad
+produced his new possession at the table, crying
+to his mother:</p>
+
+<p>"See what Tommy has given me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs.
+Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>"My father," the boy answered. "He sent
+me good news. He's coming home right away."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father sent me good news, too," said
+Mr. Lincoln from the head of the table.</p>
+
+<p>"What was that?" interjected the first lady
+of the land.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall know soon, my dear." Then the
+beautiful smile came to the President's firm lips
+and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said
+to Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans
+could give to a fellow-citizen was to decree that
+he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That
+can be said of your father now. He has deserved
+well of the Republic. Before long, the
+world will know what he has done. Until then,"
+he turned as he spoke to his wife, "until then
+we'd better not talk about it."</p>
+
+<p>This talk was in early June of 1863. By September
+the whole world, or at least all the governments
+of the world, did know what Mr.
+Strong had done after Lincoln sent him abroad.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+The whole world saw the symbol of his work,
+without in many cases knowing what the symbol
+signified. That symbol was the famous visit
+of the Russian fleet to New York City in September
+of 1863.</p>
+
+<p>The governing classes of both England and
+France were in favor of the South during our
+Civil War. The English and French Empires
+were jealous of the growth of the Republic and
+wished to see it torn asunder. France hoped to
+establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France,
+if the Confederacy won. England needed
+Southern cotton and could not get it unless our
+blockade of Southern ports was broken. The
+people of both France and England had little to
+say as to what their governments would do.
+Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side
+and the mass of Englishmen were also on our
+side, but the latter were helpless in the grip of
+their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their
+belief, however, splendidly. In the height of
+what was called "the cotton famine," when the
+Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+fleecy staple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives
+were facing actual starvation, a tiny group
+of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas
+Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout
+Lancashire on behalf of the Northern cause.
+There was to be a great meeting at Manchester,
+in the heart of the stricken district. The cost
+of hall, lights, advertising, etc., was considerable.
+Someone suggested charging an admission
+fee. It was objected that the unemployed
+poor could not afford to pay anything. Finally
+it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with
+placards saying that anyone who chose could
+give something towards the cost of the meeting.
+When it was over, the baskets were found to
+hold over four bushels of pennies and ha'pennies.
+The starving poor of Lancashire had
+given them, not out of their abundance, but out
+of their grinding want.</p>
+
+<p>This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.</p>
+
+<p>The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon
+the Little," as the great French poet and novelist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+Victor Hugo, called him, asked England
+to have the English fleet join the French fleet
+in breaking our blockade and in making Slavery
+triumph. England hesitated before the proposed
+crime, but finally said it was inclined to
+follow the Napoleonic lead, if Russia would do
+likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote
+what is called a holographic letter, that is, a letter
+entirely in his own handwriting, to the then
+Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his
+fleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>Russia was then a despotism, with one despot.
+It was not only a European and an Asiatic
+Power, but an American Power as well, for it
+did not sell Alaska to the United States until
+1867. Despotism does not like to see Liberty
+flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty
+is a contagious thing. Might not the
+American example infect Alaska, spread through
+Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne
+at St. Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the
+work of our Minister to Russia and of our extra-official<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+representative there, the Hon. Thomas
+Strong, Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian
+Czar wrote the French Emperor that the
+Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed
+attack upon the Northern navy, but that
+on the contrary it was about to sail for New
+York in order that its commander might place
+it at the disposal of the President of the United
+States in case any Franco-English squadron appeared
+with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of the traditional
+friendship between America and Russia. It explains
+why New York and Washington went
+mad in those September days of 1863 in welcoming
+the Russian fleet and the Russian officers.
+It explains why Lincoln told Tom that
+his father had "deserved well of the Republic."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was at about this time that John Hay once
+asked Tom:</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of the Tycoon by this
+time, my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were names
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+his rather irreverent secretaries had given Lincoln.
+Nevertheless they both reverenced and
+loved him. Their nicknames for him were born
+of affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite
+know how to put into fitting words all he felt
+about his chief. But John Hay, who was never
+much interested in the opinion on anything of
+anybody but himself, went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods
+Jupiter. He sits here and wields both the
+machinery of government and the bolts of war.
+A backwoods Jupiter!"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Goes to Vicksburg&mdash;Morgan's Raid&mdash;Gen.
+Basil W. Duke Captures Tom&mdash;Gettysburg&mdash;Gen.
+Robert E. Lee Gives Tom
+His Breakfast&mdash;In Libby Prison&mdash;Lincoln's
+Speech at Gettysburg.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Late in June of 1863 Tom again left General
+Grant's headquarters. These were then in
+the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The
+long siege of that town, held by a considerable
+Confederate force under General Pemberton,
+was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at
+the death, but that could not be. He had been
+sent with dispatches to Grant and this time
+there had been no suggestion by the President
+that he might fight a bit if he felt like it. So he
+was now again on his way to Washington. He
+was a long time getting there, nearly a year; and
+this was the way of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant
+and daring Confederate cavalry commander, got
+his troops across the Cumberland River at
+Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats
+and canoes lashed together. None but he and
+his second in command knew whither the proposed
+raid was to lead. People about their
+starting-point thought Morgan was merely
+reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills
+Creek went along uninvited, because he wished
+to buy some salt at a "salt-lick" a few miles
+north of Burkesville and within the Union lines.
+He expected to go and come back safely with
+Morgan's men. After he had been through a
+few marches and more fights and saw no chance
+of ever getting home, he plaintively said: "I
+swar ef I wouldn't give all the salt in Kaintucky
+to stand once more safe and sound on the banks
+of Calfkills Creek."</p>
+
+<p>Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had
+not reckoned upon John H. Morgan, general
+C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward
+from Cairo. No one dreamed that Morgan
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+would dare do what he did do. The Confederate
+cavalry rode northward across Kentucky,
+with one or two skirmishes per day to keep it
+busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for the
+South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati.
+It threw southern Indiana and Ohio into
+a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but
+damage such as the laws of civilized warfare
+permit. Morgan's gallant men were Americans.
+No woman or child was harmed; no man not
+under arms was killed. Military stores were
+seized or destroyed, food and supplies were
+taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn
+up, and a clean sweep was made of all the
+horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry
+was in sad need of new horses. The Union officer
+who led the pursuit of Morgan said, in his
+official report: "His system of horse-stealing
+was perfect." But so far as war can be a Christian
+thing Morgan made it so.</p>
+
+<p>Now the railroad which suffered most from
+the Confederate raid was the one upon which
+Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+taken came to a sudden stop at a way-station in
+Ohio, where a red flag was furiously waved.</p>
+
+<p>"Morgan's torn up the track just ahead,"
+shouted the man who held the flag.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more could be learned there and
+then. Of course the raiders had cut the wires.
+By and by fugitives began to straggle in from
+the eastward, farmers who had fled from their
+farms driving their horses before them, villagers
+who feared the sack and ruin that really
+came to no one, women and children on foot,
+on horseback, in carts, in wagons, in buggies.
+Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell,
+but nobody really knew anything. Tom questioned
+each newcomer. Piecing together what
+they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept
+northward; that the track had been destroyed
+for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that the
+quickest way for him to get to Washington was
+to walk across the short gap and get a train or
+an engine on the other side. He could find no
+one who would go with him, even as a guide,
+but well-meant directions were showered upon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten
+warnings to one direction. The railroad, however,
+was his best guide-post. He started eastward,
+riding a horse he had bought from one of
+the fugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen
+hands high, but the price Tom paid for him
+was a good deal higher than the horse.</p>
+
+<p>All went well at first. He soon reached the
+place where the Confederates had wrecked the
+railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every
+little bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails
+and ties had been torn up, the ties massed together
+and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the
+burning ties and twisted by the heat into sinuous
+snakes of iron. Occasionally a hot rail had
+been twisted about a tree until it became a mere
+set of loops, never to serve again the purpose
+for which it had been made. The telegraph
+poles had been chopped down and the wires
+were tangled into a broken and useless web.
+In some places the rails had entirely disappeared.
+Doubtless these had been thrown into
+the little streams which the burned bridges had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as if
+some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake
+had co-operated in its destruction. It
+would be many a day before a train could again
+run upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a
+railroad was almost as perfect as his system of
+horse-stealing.</p>
+
+<p>A country-road wandered along beside where
+the railroad had been, so Tom's progress was
+easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke,
+but the little streams were shallow and could be
+forded without difficulty, for June had been
+rainless and hot that year. The few houses the
+boy passed were shut-up and deserted. The
+fear of Morgan had swept the countryside bare
+of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the
+unnatural solitude of a region normally full of
+human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to
+see a human being. He had now left the gap
+in the railroad well behind, but he was still in
+an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as
+dusk came, he rejoiced to see the gleam of a
+candle in a farmhouse not far ahead. He was so
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+sure Morgan's whole command was by this time
+far to the northward that he galloped gayly up
+to the house&mdash;and, perforce, presented to the
+Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the
+entire raid.</p>
+
+<p>The gleam had come from a back window.
+The whole front of the house was closed, but
+that is common in rustic places and Tom was
+sure he would find the family in the kitchen,
+with both food and news to give him. Instead
+he found just outside the kitchen, as he and
+the big bay turned the corner, a group of dismounted
+cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A
+mounted officer was beside them. Two
+mounted men, one carrying a guidon, was
+nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to
+turn and run, and bent close to his saddle to
+escape the bullets he expected. But one of the
+men was already clutching the left rein. The
+horse reared and plunged and kicked. The
+rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from
+the saddle and landed on his hands and knees before
+the group. It was rather an abject position
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+in which to be captured. The Southerners
+roared with good-humored laughter as they
+picked him up. Even the officer smiled at the
+boy's plight.</p>
+
+<p>Before the men, on a table outside the
+kitchen door, lay a half-dozen appetizing apple
+pies, evidently of that day's baking. The
+farmer's wife, before she fled, had put them
+there with the hope that they might propitiate
+the raiders, if they came, and so might save
+the house from destruction. She did not know
+that Morgan's men did not make war that way.
+Those of them who had come there suspected
+a trap in this open offer of the pies.</p>
+
+<p>"They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, when they were hesitating
+between hunger and fear, Tom butted in upon
+them and was seized.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a
+second soldier when the little scurry of the capture
+was over. This met instant approval and
+Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+to the table when the officer spoke, with
+a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend
+as well as the commander of his rude soldiery.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a
+pie."</p>
+
+<p>He bit with strong white teeth through the
+savory morsel and detected no foreign taint.
+The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of
+them down Tom's hungry throat. Then the
+officer spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that
+uniform somewhere, didn't you? You're too
+young to wear it by right. Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He was a man of medium height, spare but
+splendidly built, with his face bronzed by long
+campaigning in the open air, regular features,
+piercing black eyes that twinkled, but could
+shoot fire, waving black hair above a beautiful
+brow, dazzling white teeth&mdash;altogether a vivid
+man. His mustache and imperial were black.
+He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln was
+plain, yet there was between the two, the one
+the son of a Southern aristocrat, the other the
+son of a Southern poor white, an elusive resemblance.
+It may have been the innate nobleness
+and kindliness of both men. It may have
+been the Kentucky blood which was their common
+portion. At any rate, the resemblance was
+there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_210.jpg" width="600" height="382" alt="GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES" title="" />
+  <span class="font07a">From &quot;Famous Adventures of the Civil War.&quot; The Century Co.</span><br />
+  <span class="caption font08">GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tom took one glance at the chief of his captors
+and then saluted with real respect as he
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant,
+U. S. A."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it.
+We don't make war on boys. If you had been,
+as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I
+would have turned you loose at once. Now I
+must take you with us."</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with
+Tom, disarmed but unbound, in the middle of
+it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards
+ahead of it the officer rode with a free bridle
+rein, chatting with an aide beside him. He rode
+like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the
+finest soldiers he had ever seen. And so he was.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+He was Gen. Basil W. Duke, brother-in-law,
+second in command, and historian of General
+Morgan. He was a soldier and a gentleman,
+if ever God made one.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost constant
+fighting, much of it with home-guards and
+militia who feared Morgan too much to fight
+him hard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers
+who fought as good Americans should, Morgan
+crossed the Ohio again into the comparative
+safety of West Virginia. He took across with
+him his few prisoners, including Tom. Then,
+finding that the mass of his brigade had been
+cut off from crossing, the Confederate general
+detached a dozen men to take the prisoners
+south while he himself with most of the troopers
+with him recrossed to where danger beckoned.
+On July 26, 1862, at Salineville, Ohio, not far
+from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered,
+he surrendered with the 364 men
+who were all that were left of his gallant band.
+Our government made the mistake of treating
+him and his officers not as captured soldiers but
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+as arrested bandits. They were sent to the Ohio
+State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a daring
+escape not long afterwards. He made his
+way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile,
+Tom had been taken to captivity on that same
+soil. He was in Libby Prison, at the Confederate
+Capital, Richmond, Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>His journey thither had been long and hard
+and uneventful, except for the gradual loss of
+the few things he had with him. His pistol
+and his money had been taken when he was
+first captured. Now, as he was turned over to
+one Confederate command after another, bit by
+bit his belongings disappeared. His boots went
+early in the journey. His cap was plucked from
+his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by
+a Confederate spy, who meant to use it in getting
+inside the Union lines. When he was finally
+turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief
+Confederate army, commanded by Gen. Robert
+E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and
+had nothing to wear except an old Confederate
+gray shirt and the ragged remains of what had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+once been a pair of Confederate gray trousers,
+held about his waist by a string. He was
+hungry and tired and unbelievably dirty. The
+one good meal he had had on his long march
+had been given him at Frederick, Maryland, by
+a delightful old lady whom Tom always believed
+to be Barbara Frietchie.</p>
+
+<p>It was August now. On July 4, Grant had
+taken Vicksburg and Meade had defeated Lee
+at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy
+had begun to dawn. None the less Robert E.
+Lee's tattered legions, forced back from the
+great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn
+defense of Richmond, trusted, worshiped, and
+loved their great general.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Meade, the Union commander, by excess of
+caution, had let Lee escape after Gettysburg.
+He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln
+was deeply grieved.</p>
+
+<p>"We had them within our grasp," he said,
+throwing out his long arms. "We had only to
+stretch forth our hands and they were ours.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+And nothing I could say or do could make our
+army move."</p>
+
+<p>Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of
+New York, a gallant fighter, one of the corps
+commanders who had tried to spur the too-prudent
+Meade into attacking, came to the
+White House.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly
+asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Because nobody stopped him."</p>
+
+<p>And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been
+stopped, the war would have ended nearly two
+years before it did end. It is a wonderful proof
+of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that
+though he repeated: "Our army held the war
+in the hollow of their hand and they would not
+close it," he added at once: "Still, I am very,
+very grateful to Meade for the great service he
+did at Gettysburg."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Lee was a son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee,
+the daring cavalry commander of the Revolution
+and the author of the immortal phrase about
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+Washington: "First in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his countrymen." Robert
+E. Lee had had an honorable career at West
+Point and in the war with Mexico and was Lieutenant-Colonel
+of Engineers in the United
+States army when the war between the States
+began. He loved his country and her flag, but
+he had been bred in the belief that his loyalty
+was due first to Virginia rather than to the
+Union. When the Old Dominion, after first
+refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut.-Col. Lee,
+U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great
+efforts were made to keep him on the Union
+side. It is said he was offered the chief command
+of our army. Sadly he did his duty as he
+saw it. He put aside the offers made him, resigned
+his commission, and left Arlington for
+Richmond.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union soldiers,
+crowns a hill on the Virginia side of the
+Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its
+feet. The valley of the Potomac spreads before
+it. From the portico of the old-fashioned house,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+a portico upheld by many columns, one can look
+towards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but
+hid from sight by clustering hills. The house
+was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke
+Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was
+his aide at Yorktown in 1783, and grandson of
+Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in
+1858, directed in his will that his slaves should
+be freed in five years. Lee, his son-in-law and
+executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and
+gave them passes through the Confederate lines.
+He had already given freedom to his own slaves.
+Long before the war, he wrote from Fort
+Brown, Texas, to his wife: "In this enlightened
+age there are few, I believe, but will
+acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a
+moral and political evil in any country....
+I think it is a greater evil to the white than the
+black race."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_218.jpg" width="550" height="700" alt="Arlington" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08"><span class="smcap">Arlington</span></span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">Copyright by Underwood &amp; Underwood. New York.</span><br />
+  </span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four
+Virginians. He ranks with George Washington,
+George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No
+praise could be greater. When "the Lost
+Cause," as the Southerners fondly call their
+great fight for what they believed to be right,
+reeled down to decisive defeat, the general
+whom they had worshiped in war proved himself
+a great patriot in peace. His last years were
+passed as President of Washington and Lee
+University in Virginia. Long before his death,
+his name was honored by every fair-minded
+man on the Northern as well as the Southern
+side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the
+noblest eulogies of him was voiced upon the
+centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, at Washington
+and Lee University, by Charles Francis
+Adams. The best blood of Massachusetts honored
+the best blood of Virginia. Our country
+was then again one country and all of it was
+free.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Tom Strong was standing with a group of
+other prisoners, all Northern officers, under
+guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at
+Lee's headquarters. These were upon a little
+knoll, from which the eye ranged over the long
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush
+that gave such shelter as they could to the
+ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions of the
+Confederacy. It was early in the morning.
+Scanty breakfasts were cooking over a thousand
+fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters,
+there came an odor of bubbling coffee that made
+the prisoners' hunger the harder to bear. The
+whole camp was strangely silent.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Then, in the distance, there was a storm of
+cheering. It gained in sound and shrillness.
+The soldiers poured out of their tents by the
+thousand. Those who had hats waved them;
+those who had not waved their arms; and every
+throat joined in the famous "rebel yell."
+Through the shouting thousands rode a half-dozen
+superbly mounted horsemen, at their
+head a gallant figure, with close-cropped white
+beard, whiskers, and mustache, seated upon a
+superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the
+famous Traveler.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 595px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_222.jpg" width="595" height="407" alt="GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the
+Confederacy. Even his iron self-control almost
+broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which
+he was hailed by the survivors of the gallant
+gray army he had launched in vain against the
+bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush
+almost as red as that of youth crept across his
+pale cheeks and a mist crept into his eyes. His
+charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll
+where the Union prisoners were huddled together.
+As his glance swept over them, he
+noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy
+who stood in the front line. Many a boy as
+young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks
+Lee led. Many an old man bent under the
+weight of his gun in those ranks. The Confederacy,
+by this time almost bled white, was said
+to have "robbed the cradle and the grave" to
+keep its armies at fighting strength. The North,
+with many more millions of people, had not been
+driven to do this. Tom was one of the few
+boys in the armies of the Union.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked
+Traveler before the group.</p>
+
+<p>"Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Your rank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Second-lieutenant, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you captured?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan."</p>
+
+<p>Tom was faint with hunger as he was put
+through this little catechism. As he made the
+last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner,
+Col. Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught
+and held him. Lee misunderstood the movement.
+His lip curled with disgust as he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;a boy&mdash;drunk?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose
+and a half-dozen others answered for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not drunk, but hungry, General."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian
+replied, "but at least you shall be hungry no
+longer. My staff and I will postpone our breakfast
+until you have eaten. Pompey!" An old
+negro came out of the cook-tent. He had been
+one of George Washington Parke Custis's
+slaves. When freed, he had refused to leave
+"Marse Robert," whose cook he had become.
+He wore the remains of a Confederate uniform.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+"Pompey, give these gentlemen our breakfast.
+We will wait."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;Marse Robert, I'se dun got real
+coffee dis mornin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Our involuntary guests," said Lee with a
+gentle smile as he turned to the prisoners, "will,
+I hope, enjoy the real coffee."</p>
+
+<p>And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread
+and bacon that came with it were nectar and
+ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only
+fleck upon the feast was when one of them, in
+his hurry to be served, spoke rudely to old
+Pompey. The negro turned away without a
+word, but his feelings were deeply hurt. When
+the Union officer hurled after him a word of
+foul abuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand
+upon his ragged uniform, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah,
+but you must 'speck de unicorn."</p>
+
+<p>After that the "unicorn" and the fine old
+negro who wore it were both amply respected.
+When everything in sight had been eaten, the
+prisoners were ordered to fall in line. Their
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+guards stood in front of the little column, beside
+it, behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"Forward, march!"</p>
+
+<p>They marched southward for a few miles,
+tramped through the swarming, somber streets
+of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its
+doors closed behind them with a clang. Captivity
+in the open had been hard enough to bear.
+This new kind of captivity, within doors, with
+barred windows, was to be harder yet. Tom
+was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln
+made his wonderful Gettysburg speech.</p>
+
+<p>The battlefield of Gettysburg was made
+sacred by the men who died there for Freedom's
+sake and also by the men who died there
+for the sake of what they honestly thought were
+the rights of the Slave States. Congress made
+the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to
+be dedicated to its great memories on November
+19, 1863. The morning before a special train
+left Washington for Gettysburg. It carried
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+President Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward,
+two other members of the Cabinet, the two private
+secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished
+Pennsylvanian, Wayne MacVeagh,
+later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our
+Minister to Italy, and others of lesser note.
+Among those latter was the Hon. Thomas
+Strong, who had been made one of the party by
+Lincoln's kind thoughtfulness. It was he who
+afterwards told his son the story of Lincoln's
+Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the moment,
+but long since recognized as one of the
+masterpieces of English literature.</p>
+
+<p>The little town of Gettysburg was in a ferment
+that November night, when the President's
+train arrived. It was full of people and
+bands and whisky. Crowds strolled through
+the streets, serenading statesmen and calling for
+speeches with an American crowd's insatiable
+appetite for talky-talk. "MacVeagh," says
+Hay, "made a most beautiful and touching
+speech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian
+made a most disgusting and drunken
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+speech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of
+his party of course had no share in all this brawling
+merriment. He and Seward had talked
+briefly to shouting thousands early in the
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>On the way up from Washington, the President
+had sat in a sad abstraction. He took little
+part in the talk that buzzed about him. Once,
+when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming
+about the way the Southern magnates were misleading
+the Southern masses, Lincoln said with
+a weary smile one of those sayings of his which
+will never be forgotten. "You can fool part of
+the people all the time; you can fool all the
+people part of the time; but you can't fool all
+the people all the time." Then he became silent
+again. He did not know what he was to say
+on the morrow. The chief oration was to be
+by Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a trained
+orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase.
+He had been Governor of Massachusetts, Minister
+to England, Secretary of State, United
+States Senator. He was handsome, distinguished,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+graceful. The ungainly President felt
+that he and his words would be but a foil to
+Everett and his sonorous sentences, sentences
+that were sure to come rolling in like "the
+surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett had
+graduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log-cabin.
+Both must face on the morrow the same
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>The President searched his pockets and found
+the stub of a pencil. From the aisle of the car,
+he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper,
+thrown there by Seward, who had just opened
+a package of books in the opposite seat. He
+penciled a few words, bent his head upon his
+great knotted hand in thought, then penciled a
+few more. Then he struck out some words and
+added others, read his completed task and did
+not find it good. He shook his head, stuffed the
+brown wrapping paper into his pocket, and took
+up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven the next morning, from an open-air
+platform on the battlefield, Everett held the vast
+audience through two hours of fervent speech,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bitterness
+against the men he called "the Southern
+rebels." His speech was literature and his
+voice was music. As the thunder of his peroration
+ended a thunderstorm of applause began.
+When it, too, died away, there shambled to the
+front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed
+man, contrasting sharply and in every way disadvantageously
+with Everett of the silver
+tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too.
+He tried to pitch his voice to reach all that vast
+audience and his first words came in a squeaking
+falsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lincoln
+stopped speaking. There were a few seconds
+of painful silence. Then he came to his
+own. With a voice enriched by a passionate
+sincerity, he began again and finished his Gettysburg
+speech. Here it is:</p>
+
+<p>"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers
+brought forth on this Continent a new nation,
+conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition
+that all men are created equal. Now we
+are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so
+dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a
+great battlefield of that war. We have come to
+dedicate a portion of it as a final resting-place
+for those who here gave their lives that that
+nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
+proper that we should do this. But in a larger
+sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
+we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men,
+living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated
+it far above our poor power to add or
+to detract. The world will little note nor long
+remember what we say here, but it can never
+forget what they did here. It is for us, the living,
+rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
+work which they who fought here have
+thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
+to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
+before us&mdash;that from these honored dead we
+take increased devotion to that cause for which
+they here gave the last full measure of devotion&mdash;that
+we here highly resolve that these
+dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+under God, shall have a new birth of freedom;
+and that government of the people, by the people,
+for the people shall not perish from the
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>The President ceased to speak. There was no
+thunderstorm of applause such as had followed
+Everett's studied sentences and polished periods.
+There was no applause at all. One long stir of
+emotion throbbed through the silent throng, but
+did not break the silence. Then the multitude
+dispersed, talking of what Everett had said,
+thinking of what Lincoln had said. Most of the
+notables on the platform thought the President's
+speech a failure. Time has shown that it was
+one of the greatest things even he ever did.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written
+in her short story "The Perfect Tribute"
+the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy
+who would know what manner of man our
+Abraham Lincoln was should read "The Perfect
+Tribute." One of the characters in the
+story, a dying Confederate officer, says to Lincoln
+without knowing to whom he was speaking:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+"The speech so went home to the hearts
+of all those thousands of people that when it
+ended it was as if the whole audience held its
+breath&mdash;there was not a hand lifted to applaud.
+One might as well applaud the Lord's prayer&mdash;it
+would be sacrilege. And they all felt it&mdash;down
+to the lowest. There was a long minute
+of reverent silence, no sound from all that great
+throng&mdash;it seems to me, an enemy, that it was
+the most perfect tribute that has ever been paid
+by any people to any orator."</p>
+
+<p>The Gettysburg speech was not for the moment.
+It is for all time.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom is Hungry&mdash;He Learns to "Spoon" by
+Squads&mdash;The Bullet at the Window&mdash;Working
+on the Tunnel&mdash;"Rat Hell"&mdash;The
+Risk of the Roll-call&mdash;What Happened
+to Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy&mdash;Tom
+in Libby Prison&mdash;Hans Rolf Attends
+Him&mdash;Hans Refuses to Escape&mdash;The Flight
+Through the Tunnel&mdash;Free, but How to
+Stay So?</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="pmb2">When the war between the States began,
+Libby &amp; Son were a thriving firm of merchants
+in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse,
+which fronted on Carey Street and extended
+back over land that sloped down to
+another street, which occupied all the space between
+the southern wall of the warehouse and
+the canal that here bordered the James River.
+The building was full before the war of that
+rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray praises in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+"The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands
+of the Old Dominion can no longer produce.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_235.jpg" width="600" height="468" alt="LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to
+eat. The whole South was hungry. When Confederate
+soldiers were starving, Confederate
+prisoners could not expect to fatten. Nor was
+this the only evil thing. The prison was indescribably
+unclean. The cellar and the lower
+floor, upon which no prisoners were allowed
+except in the dining-room in the middle of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats
+which climbed upstairs at night and nipped
+mouthfuls of human flesh when they could.
+There was no furniture. The prisoners slept on
+the floor, so crowded together that they had to
+lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all.
+They had divided themselves into squads and
+had chosen commanders. Tom found himself
+assigned to Squad Number Four. The first
+night, when he had at last sunk into uncomfortable
+sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened
+by the sharp command of the captain of
+his group:</p>
+
+<p>"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to
+spoon! One, two, spoon!"</p>
+
+<p>The squad flopped over, from one weary
+bruised side to another. It seemed to the worn-out
+boy that he had just "spooned," when again
+he waked to hear the queer command and again
+he flopped. This was a sample of many nights.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Tom had one of the
+narrow escapes of his life. He was leaning
+against one of the barred windows, looking at
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+the broad valley of the James, when he was suddenly
+seized violently by the arm and jerked to
+one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip
+that had been laid upon it and his knees, sticking
+through his torn trousers, had been barked
+against the floor, as he was dragged back, but
+he turned to the man who had laid hold of him,
+not with anger, but with thankfulness. For, at
+the second he had been seized a bullet had
+whizzed through the window just where his
+head had been. If he had not been jerked away,
+the Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended
+then and there.</p>
+
+<p>If Tom was not angry, the man was. He
+glared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You little fool, don't you know better than
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>When the boy heard himself called a fool, he
+did become angry, but after all this big person
+had saved his life, even if he did call him names.
+So he swallowed his wrath&mdash;which is an excellent
+thing to do with wrath&mdash;and answered
+quite meekly:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look
+out of the windows?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't anybody told you that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool."
+Tom smiled and nodded in acceptance of the
+implied apology. "The sentries outside have
+orders to fire whenever they see anybody at a
+window. Last week two men were killed that
+way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when
+I saw you looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but
+it's better to be hurt than to be killed. Shake."</p>
+
+<p>The boy wrung the big man's hand and
+thanked him for his timely aid. They strolled
+together up and down the big room now deserted
+by most of its occupants, who had begun
+below their patient wait for dinner. The man
+was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking.
+And he needed an intelligent boy in his business.
+Just then Colonel Rose's business was to
+escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel
+did not think so. Yet it had been often tried
+and had always failed. When several hundred
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+intelligent Americans are shut up, through no
+fault of their own, in a most unpleasant prison,
+with nothing to do, they are quite certain to
+find something to do by planning an escape and
+by trying to make the plan a reality. One trouble
+about the former plans at Libby had been
+that the whole mass of prisoners had known
+about them. There must always be leaders in
+such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had
+taken the crowd into their confidence. Now
+there were Confederate spies in the crowd, sham
+prisoners. The former plots had always been
+found out. Once or twice they had been allowed
+to ripen and the first fugitives had found their
+first free breath their last, for they had stumbled
+into a trap and had been instantly shot
+down upon the threshold of freedom. More
+often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited
+away without warning and probably shot, while
+their scared followers had been left to despair.
+Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts.
+He planned along new lines. He decided
+upon absolute secrecy, except for the men
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+who were actually to do the work. This work
+involved a good deal of burrowing into holes
+that must be particularly narrow at first and
+never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get
+into a hole where a stout man could not go.
+Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men
+could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human
+mole. He had picked Tom Strong for the job.
+Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy
+of the plan and asked his aid. Tom's shining
+eyes threatened to tell how important the talk
+was.</p>
+
+<p>"Act as though you were uninterested, my
+boy," Colonel Rose warned him. "Keep your
+eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."</p>
+
+<p>So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at
+all his natural appearance. He studied the
+floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it.
+He yawned so prodigiously as to attract the
+attention he was trying to escape. An amateur
+actor is apt to overact his part. And all the
+time he was listening with a passionate interest
+to Colonel Rose's story of the way to freedom.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+Of course he was glad to try to help make the
+hope a fact.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">That night the work began. The kitchen
+dining-hall was deserted from 10 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> to 4 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>,
+so it was selected as the field of operation. Below
+the kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No
+opening could be made into that without instant
+detection. On the same floor with the kitchen
+and just east of it was the hospital. That room
+must be avoided too. Below the hospital was
+an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and
+all full of squealing rats. It was called "Rat
+Hell." Outside of it was a small sewer that
+led to a larger one which passed under the canal
+and emptied its contents into the James River.
+These sewers were to be the highway to freedom.
+The first step must be to get from the
+kitchen to Rat Hell. To do this it was necessary
+to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed
+"S," like this:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_241.jpg" width="60" height="48" alt="Reverse S" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="p1">The upper end of the secret passage was to
+open into the kitchen fireplace, the lower into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the
+secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had
+just one tool, an old knife. One of them owned
+a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress
+and sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new
+use now. It was spread upon the kitchen hearth
+in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was
+pulled down upon it. Then the mortar between
+a dozen bricks at the back of the fireplace was
+cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out
+of place. This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton,
+Colonel Rose's chief assistant. He carefully
+replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of
+soot over them. He and Rose crept upstairs,
+carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them, and
+slept through what was left of the night. The
+next day was an anxious time for them. When
+they went down to the kitchen, where a couple
+of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to
+them that the marks of their toil by night were
+too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their
+nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody
+saw what had been done. That night, as soon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton
+again removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn
+stone behind the fireplace. Fortunately
+the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were
+pried out of the loosened mortar.</p>
+
+<p>Now came Tom's chance to serve the good
+cause. He was a proud boy, a few nights later,
+when he was permitted to go down to the
+kitchen with the Colonel and the Major, in order
+that he might creep into the hole they had made
+and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air.
+He laid upon his stomach in the upper part of
+the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as
+vigorously as it could be plied without making
+a tell-tale noise. When he had widened the passage,
+one of the men took his place in it and
+drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose
+in his eagerness got into the opening before
+the lower part of it had been sufficiently
+enlarged and stuck there. It was only by
+a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom finally
+dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping
+for breath. Finally, after many nights,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen
+from about a box of food sent a prisoner,
+had been made into a rope ladder. It was hung
+from the edge of the hole. The three crept cautiously
+down to Rat Hell. This haven did
+not seem much like heaven. With squeals of
+wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the
+intruders fled up their ladder. They were no
+match for a myriad rats. Moreover they feared
+lest the noise would bring into the basement the
+sentry whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk
+outside. So they fled, taking their rope-ladder
+with them, and again, as ever, they replaced
+the bricks and painted them with the
+friendly soot.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The next night, armed this time with sticks
+of wood, they fought it out with the rats and
+made them understand their masters had come
+to stay. Fortunately the fight was short. It
+was noisy and the sentry came. But when he
+opened the door from the street and looked into
+the darkness of the basement, the Union officers
+were safely hid under the straw and only a few
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the
+tunnel to the sewer could be begun. Colonel
+Rose had long since decided, by forbidden,
+stealthy glances from an upper window, just
+where it was to be. The measurement made
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+above was now made below, the straw against
+the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old
+knife, or what was left of it after its battle with
+brick and stone, was put to the easier task of
+digging dirt.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 474px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_245.jpg" width="474" height="700" alt="FIGHTING THE RATS" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08 smcap">FIGHTING THE RATS</span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">From &quot;Famous Adventures of the Civil War.&quot;<br />
+  The Century Co.</span>
+  </span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before
+the tunnel was five feet long, the air in it became
+so foul that candles went out in it. So
+would the lives of the diggers have gone out if
+they had stayed in it long. Five of the fifteen
+now went down each night, so that everybody
+had two nights' rest out of three. But the progress
+made was pitifully slow. Man after man
+was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous
+pit, almost at his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton
+had been brought out and was being
+fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom,
+the boy whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had thought of that obvious plan.
+Like most great inventions it was simple&mdash;when
+seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at
+the end of the tunnel fanning air into it with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+their hats. But even so, many a candle went
+out and many a digger was pulled out, black in
+the face and almost dead.</p>
+
+<p>The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to
+reach the sewer. It sloped too far down. It
+got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton
+was caught in it by the rush of water and
+almost drowned. So much work had to be done
+over again. Then came a crushing blow. When
+the small sewer was finally reached, it proved
+to be too small for a man to pass through it.
+But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by
+bit taken off. When this had been done to
+within a few feet of the main sewer, two men
+were detailed to cut their way through. The
+next night was set as the time for the escape.
+None of the thirteen slept while the two were
+cutting away the final obstacle. The thirteen
+did not sleep the next night either, for it was
+36 hours before the two came back with their
+heartbreaking news. They had found the last
+few feet of the sewer-lining made of seasoned
+oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+poor old knife that had served them so long and
+so well, could not even scratch the toughened
+oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had
+ended in failure.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new
+problem. There were two roll-calls every day,
+at 9 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> and 4 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> How were the two absent
+men to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in
+one long line and everybody was counted. If
+the count were two short, there would be swift
+search for the missing. And the beginning of
+the tunnel was hidden only by a few bundles of
+straw. This was before they knew the tunnel
+was useless, but had they known it they would
+have been scarcely less anxious, for its discovery
+would have made all future attempts to
+escape more dangerous and more doubtful.
+However, the roll-call problem was safely
+solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper
+end of the line and two of them, as soon as they
+had answered to their own names, dropped back,
+crouched down, crept behind the backs of many
+men to the other end of the line, slipped into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+place, and there answered for the missing men,
+without detection. In the afternoon, they came
+very near being caught. Some of the other
+prisoners thought this was being done just for
+fun, to confuse the Confederate clerk who called
+the roll, and thought they would take a hand in
+the fun too. There was so much dodging and
+double answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored
+little clerk, lost his temper and ordered
+the captives to stand in squads of ten to be
+counted. By this time he had called the roll
+half a dozen times, with results varying from
+minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his
+order, an order obedience to which would have
+certainly told the tale of two absentees, he went
+on to explain why he gave it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho';
+there's eight or ten of you-uns yere that ain't
+yere."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">This remarkable statement brought a shout
+of laughter from the Confederate guards. The
+prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself
+caught the contagion and also began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_250.jpg" width="600" height="185" alt="SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL" title="" />
+  <span class="caption">
+  <span class="font07a">From &quot;Famous Adventures of the Civil War.&quot; The Century Co.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span class="font08"><span class="smcap">SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL</span></span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span class="font07a">1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4. Chickamauga room (upper);
+    5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6. Dining-room; 7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg
+    room (upper); 9. Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11. East or "Rat Hell" cellar; 12.
+    South side Canal street, ten feet lower than Carey street; 13. North side Carey street, ground sloping
+    toward Canal; 14. Open lot; 15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17. Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James
+    River Towing Co.; 20. Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.<br /></span><br />
+  </span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">The dreaded order was laughed out of court
+and forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The two men crept upstairs early the next
+morning. The first night daylight had caught
+them at work, so they had not dared to return,
+but had stayed and had worked through the
+36 hours. They brought back the handle of
+the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and
+the depressing news of failure. But men who
+are fit for freedom do not cease to strive for it.
+If one road to it is blocked, they seek another.
+That very day, when the fifteen had gathered
+together and the two had told their tale, a pallor
+of despair crept over some of the faces, but
+it was dispelled by the flush of hope when
+Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south, we'll
+go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the
+vacant lot. We'll begin tonight."</p>
+
+<p>"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from
+the yard we'd have to come out on the street.
+There's a gas-lamp there&mdash;and a sentry."</p>
+
+<p>"We can put out the lamp and if need be the
+sentry," Colonel Rose answered, "when we get
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+to them. The thing now is to get there. We
+have fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my
+figures are correct. That's a job of a good many
+nights. This night will see the job begun."</p>
+
+<p>It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate
+had put in their way and with a big wooden
+spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with
+earth, was pulled out, emptied, and returned for
+a fresh load. A fortnight afterwards the officer
+who was digging that night made a mistake in
+levels and came too near the surface, which
+broke above him. Dismayed, he backed out and
+reported the blunder. The hole was in plain
+sight. Discovery was certain if it were not
+hidden. The story was but half told when
+Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the
+dirt and won't show. Stuff it into the hole so
+it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole.
+There he smeared some more dirt on the dirty
+blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care,
+and wriggled back. That morning at sunrise,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+when they peeked down from their prison windows
+into the eastern lot, even their straining
+eyes could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that
+showed. No casual glance would detect it. Of
+that they were sure.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Every few days new prisoners were thrust
+into Libby. Whenever this happened it was the
+custom that on the first evening they should
+tell whatever news they could of the outside
+world and of their own capture to the whole
+prison community. One morning the keeper
+of Libby receipted for another captured Yankee
+and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in the
+grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially,
+rather too cordially, to the greetings he
+received. It soon became understood that he
+was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee.
+Now neither side was overproud of the guerillas
+who infested the borderland, who sometimes
+called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates,
+and who did more stealing than fighting.
+So a rather cold shoulder was turned to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+the new captive, though the community's judgment
+upon him was deferred until after he
+should have been heard that evening. He
+seemed to try to warm the cold shoulder by a
+certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts
+at too familiar conversation. He began to talk
+to Colonel Rose, who soon shook him off, and
+to sundry other persons, among whom was
+Tom. The boy was not mature enough in the
+ways of the world to get rid of him. Johnson
+spent some hours with him and bored him to
+distraction. There was a mean uneasiness about
+him that repelled Tom. His face, an undeniably
+Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory,
+from time to time, but the boy could not place
+him and finally decided that this was merely a
+fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself
+was an unpleasant fact. He peered about
+and sidled about in a way that might be due
+only to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like
+it. He disliked Johnson more and more as the
+newcomer kept returning to him and growing
+more confidential. His talk was on various
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+natural enough themes, but it kept veering back
+to the chances of escape.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean to stay in this hole long,"
+Johnson whispered. "Pretty mean-spirited in
+all these fellows to just hang around here, without
+even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye
+say 'bout our trying it on, son?"</p>
+
+<p>The familiar address increased the boy's dislike
+of the man, but he was too young to realize
+that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He
+was old enough, however, to know how to keep
+his mouth shut about the pending plan for an
+escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out
+of him, but in the many half-confidential talks
+the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him, perhaps
+he had revealed something after all. Perhaps,
+however, the newcomer got such information
+as he did from other men in the secret.
+Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the
+plan of escape.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting
+men to tell his story,&mdash;a simple tale of
+Northern birth, of a Southern home, of belief
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+in the Union, of raising a guerilla company to
+fight for it, of capture in a raid on a Confederate
+supply-depot,&mdash;the unpleasant memory
+which had been troubling Tom came back and
+hammered at his head until suddenly, as if a
+flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw
+himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle
+Mose's slave-cabin, with this man's hand clutching
+his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside
+Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He
+was overseer on a plantation in Alabama. He
+'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."</p>
+
+<p>Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's
+eye fixed upon him. He had seen Tom whisper
+to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat
+down. Rose walked across the circle and sat
+beside him. He had snapped his fingers as he
+walked and half a dozen men had answered the
+signal and were now close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do before you turned
+guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that that's any of your darned
+business," said Johnson.</p>
+
+<p>"Answer me."</p>
+
+<p>The stronger man dominated the weaker.
+The spy sulkily said:</p>
+
+<p>"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."</p>
+
+<p>"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Ever do anything else in the South?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such
+questions?"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"Major Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, sir," answered the Major.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before
+the war?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"How long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven years."</p>
+
+<p>"Who kept the general store there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know him?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Rather. We were chums. He and I left
+Jonesboro' together to join the army."</p>
+
+<p>"Is this man he?"</p>
+
+<p>Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his
+feet, cowering, covering his face with his hands.
+Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's
+hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than
+he's General Grant."</p>
+
+<p>By this time the whole prison community was
+crowded about Colonel Rose. The latter called
+again:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Strong."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know this man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson
+on the Izzard plantation.</p>
+
+<p>There was an ominous low growl from the
+audience. Yankee overseers of Southern plantations
+were not exactly popular in that crowd
+of Northern officers. And evidently this particular
+overseer had been lying. But Colonel
+Rose lifted his hand and said:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Silence. No violence. What we do will be
+done decently and in order." After this impressive
+speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you
+would, would you?" and choked Johnson with
+every pound of strength he could put into the
+process. He had just seen him slip a bit of
+paper into his mouth and he meant to know
+what that paper was. It was plucked out of the
+spy's throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the
+spy's pencil had written:</p>
+
+<p>"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows
+about it. Think Colonel Rose heads it."</p>
+
+<p>It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report
+in his new business of being a spy. It put an
+end to all business on his part forever. Gagged
+and tied, he was pushed across the big room,
+while Tom watched uncomprehendingly, wondering
+what was to be done with the writhing
+man. Suddenly he understood, for he saw it
+done. Johnson was pushed into a window.
+Two kneeling men held his legs and another,
+standing beside him but screened by the wall,
+pushed him in front of the window. The Confederate
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+sentry below obeyed his orders. There
+was no challenge, no warning. He aimed and
+fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws
+of the prison by looking out of the window.
+What had been Jake Johnson, Yankee, negro-overseer,
+Confederate conscript, volunteer spy,
+fell in a dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag
+and bonds were quickly removed, so there was
+nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause
+of the man's death when they came to remove
+the body. They had unwittingly executed their
+own spy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was right that the man should die, but the
+shock of seeing him done to death was too much
+for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship
+of the long captivity during which he had
+been carried from Ohio to Virginia and worn
+out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the
+toil of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake
+Johnson did and for a few moments seemed as
+dead as the man was. He was taken to the hospital-room,
+but the hospital in Libby was usually
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+only the anteroom of the graveyard at Libby.
+One of the scarcest things in the Confederacy,
+the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The
+armies in the field needed far more doctors than
+there were in the whole South, at the outbreak
+of the war. Medical schools were quickly
+created, but the demand for doctors so far outran
+the supply that by this time ignorant country
+lads were being rushed through the schools,
+with reckless haste, so that they were graduated
+when they knew but little more than when they
+began. A so-called surgeon was handling his
+scalpel six months after he had been handling a
+plow. Some of them barely knew how to read
+and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals
+should be manned by the poorest of the
+poor among the graduates of these wretched
+schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is
+for Tom, gave him, however, care that was both
+skilful and tender.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours after the righteous execution of
+Jake Johnson there had been thrust into Libby
+a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeight
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+hours before. Among them towered a
+jovial, bearded giant, an army surgeon, Major
+Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with
+talk of what had happened there that day. The
+new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson and of
+Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had
+given his parole not to try to escape and had
+been allowed to station himself beside Tom's
+bed. Through that night and through the next
+day, he fought Tom's battle for him, doing all
+that man could do. When the boy struggled out
+of his delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming
+upon him, his first thought was that he was
+still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad
+car. His right hand plucked feebly at his
+left side, where he had then carried the dispatches
+Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and
+understood the movement.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's
+all right. Go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything
+was all right and that he was home in New
+York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. A
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+gracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who
+gave her days to caring for her country's
+enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's
+eyes gleamed with a mistaken belief.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled
+back and sank gently into a profound sleep, from
+which he awoke to life and health. Again a
+Hans Rolf had saved a Tom Strong's life.</p>
+
+<p>Night after night passed, one night of work
+by each man followed by two of such rest as
+lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed.
+On the seventeenth night of the new tunnel
+work, Colonel Rose was digging away in it. It
+was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered
+and went out. The foul air closed in upon him.
+Hats were fanning to and fro, back in Rat
+Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not
+reach him. He felt himself suffocating. With
+one last effort he thrust his strong fists upward
+and broke through the surface. Soon revived
+by the rush of fresh air into the tunnel, he
+dragged himself out and found himself in the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+yard that had been their aim. The tunnel had
+reached its goal. He climbed out and studied
+the situation. A high fence screened the yard
+from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door
+screened it from the street. At three <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>, February
+6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to prison.</p>
+
+<p>That morning he told his news. Most of the
+men wanted to try for freedom the next night,
+but there was much to do to erase all traces of
+their work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith
+discovered after their flight, it could be
+used later by other fugitives. With a rare unselfishness,
+they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile
+each of the fifteen had been authorized to
+tell one other man, so that thirty in all could
+make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt
+that this was the limit. A general prison-delivery
+would, he believed, result in a general recapture.
+Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep.
+a whisper of it spread through the prison.</p>
+
+<p>When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he
+had been at once taken into the inner councils
+of the tunnel group. He had not expressed as
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+much joy in the plan as Tom had expected. The
+reason of this was now revealed. He declined
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and
+Tom, "I gave my parole not to try to escape
+when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in
+order to be allowed to take care of him. I
+made up my mind not to ask to be relieved from
+it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected
+some plan to escape was on hand. And
+they seem to have forgotten all about it, for they
+haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in
+honor not to go. Don't bother, Tom." The
+boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans
+Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans
+Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't bother. 'Twon't
+be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I
+can save some lives here by staying. Don't
+bother. It's all right. I rather like this boarding-house."</p>
+
+<p>The giant's great laugh rang out. The
+heartiness of it amazed the weary men scattered
+about the room. It brought smiles to lips that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+had not smiled for many a day. Laughter that
+comes from a clean heart does good to all who
+hear it.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was
+an officer and a gentleman. Honor forbade it.
+Sadly, Tom left him.</p>
+
+<p>On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when
+the chosen thirty had crawled down the inverted
+"S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col.
+H. C. Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly
+offered to stay behind, so that he could
+replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced
+them. But before he could get upstairs,
+some hundreds of men had come down. The
+secret was a secret no longer. There was a
+fierce struggle to get to the fireplace, a struggle
+all the fiercer because it had to be made in grim
+silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet
+away, on the other side of the wall, in the hospital.
+The bricks were taken out again. In all,
+one hundred and nine Union officers got through
+the hole. Then, warned by approaching daylight,
+the less fortunate in the fight for freedom
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+put back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs,
+resolved to try their luck the next night, if the
+tunnel were not before that discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had wormed his way through the inverted
+"S" among the first fifteen. On the
+rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap
+upon the floor of Rat Hell. The huge rodents
+swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He
+almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he
+sprang to his feet, threw off his tormentors,
+and ran across the room to the opening of the
+tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more
+ragged and his face and hands were bleeding
+from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this.
+Was he not on his way to freedom? On his way,
+yes; but the way was a long one. He might
+never reach the end. When he had pushed and
+pulled himself through the tunnel; when he had
+come out into the yard and gone through the
+shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in
+the canal street was at the further end of his
+beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and
+turned in the opposite direction,&mdash;when all this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+had happened, he was out of prison, to be sure,
+but he was in the heart of the enemy's country,
+with all the risks of recapture or of death still to
+be run.</p>
+
+<p>The men had all been cautioned to stroll away
+in a leisurely fashion, on no account to run or
+even to walk fast, and not to try to get away
+in groups of more than two or three. It was
+hard to walk slowly to the next corner. The
+boy made himself do so, however. Half a block
+ahead of him on the side street, he saw a couple
+of men walking with a somewhat faster stride.
+He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate
+patrol turned the corner of Carey Street. He
+heard the two men challenged and he heard the
+little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief
+moment of freedom had passed. He stepped to
+one side of the wooden sidewalk and crawled
+under it. There was just space enough for him
+to lie at full length. Hurrying feet, the feet of
+men hunting other men, trampled an inch above
+his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it
+must be heard. The patrol reached the street
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+along the canal and peered into the darkness
+there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering
+gas-lamp. Fortunately, nobody came out of the
+shed just then. The sentry happened to be coming
+towards it and the men inside were waiting
+for him to turn. The patrol had no thought of
+a general jail-delivery. It turned back with its
+two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head
+to Carey Street, and took its captives to the
+prison. The boy crawled out from under the
+sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of
+them, reached the corner. He ran down to
+them and warned them of the Carey Street
+patrol. The three men turned with him and
+walked along the canal. It was just after midnight.
+Not a soul was stirring. Not a light
+showed. As they walked unquestioned, their
+spirits rose. How fine to be free.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Hides in a River Bank&mdash;Eats Raw Fish&mdash;Jim
+Grayson Aids Him&mdash;Down the James
+River on a Tree&mdash;Passing the Patrol Boats&mdash;Cannonaded&mdash;The
+End of the Voyage.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Tom had made up his mind how he would
+try to reach the Union lines. As he had
+escaped before from the locomotive-foray by
+pushing boldly into the enemy's country, so
+he would do now. He would try his luck in
+following the James River to the sea, for off
+the river's mouth he knew there lay a squadron
+of Northern ships, blockading Hampton
+Roads. The "Merrimac's" attempt of March,
+1862, had never been repeated. Our flag was
+still there, in these February days of 1864, and
+Tom knew it. He had resolved to seek it there.</p>
+
+<p>He explained his plan to his three comrades.
+They would steal a boat, row or drift down the
+James by night, hide and sleep by day, forage
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+for food upon the rich plantations, many of
+them the historic homes of Virginia, that bordered
+the broad river, and finally float to freedom
+where our war-ships lay. But the three
+men would have nothing to do with it. By land
+the Union lines were much nearer. They meant
+to stick to the land. They asked the boy to go
+with them, but he stuck to his plan. So, with
+hearty handshakes and a whispered "good
+luck!" he left them, went over a canal-bridge,
+and found himself upon the bank of the river.
+He was again alone.</p>
+
+<p>Of his three temporary companions, one
+finally reached our lines, one was shot within a
+few hundred yards of his goal, and one was recaptured.
+Of the 109 who escaped from Libby,
+48 were caught and thrust back into prison.</p>
+
+<p>Tom walked along the river bank, prying in
+the welcome darkness for a boat. It would not
+have been difficult to steal it, if he could have
+found it. But at this point the James is wide and
+shallow and full of miniature rapids. It was
+utterly bare of boats. The boy's search could
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+not be carried on after dawn. He spent that
+day hidden in a clump of willows by the waterside.
+The excitement of the night had kept
+him up. Now the reaction from it left him limp
+and miserable and hungry as he never remembered
+being hungry before. It was hard work
+to "grin and bear it," but at least he tried to
+grin and he reminded himself a thousand times
+through that long, long day that he was much
+better off than if he were still a prisoner in
+Libby.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">That night he followed the bank until he was
+below the city, still without finding a boat.
+There had been plenty of boats along this part
+of the river the morning before, but as soon as
+the escape from Libby had been discovered, all
+boats had been seized by the military authorities,
+to prevent their being used by the fugitives.
+They had been taken to a point below the town.
+As Tom wormed himself cautiously near this
+point, very cautiously, for he heard voices upon
+the bank above his head, and also the crackle
+of a camp-fire, he saw in the gray dawn a flotilla
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+of boats just below him. At first sight, his heart
+leaped into his mouth with joy. At the second
+sight, it sank down into his boots. For above
+the boats he saw a big Confederate camp and
+beyond them he saw a half-dozen small craft,
+negroes at the oars and armed men at bow and
+stern, patrolling the river. Hope left him. He
+crawled into a hiding-place in the bank. He was
+so hungry that he cried. But not for long.
+Stout hearts do not yield to such weakness long.
+If he could not escape in a boat fashioned by
+man's hands, why not in one fashioned by God?
+The early spring freshets of the James were
+making the river higher every hour. He saw in
+cautious peeps from the hole where he had hidden
+great trees from far-off forests, uprooted
+there by the high water, come plunging down
+mid-channel like battering rams. He noted that
+the patrol-boats gave these dangerous monsters
+a wide berth. If a trunk of a tree were to ram
+them or if the far-flung branches were to strike
+them, their next patrol would be at the bottom
+of the river. On a sandbank not a hundred
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+yards from the boy's lair a big oak had stranded.
+It lay quite still now, but it evidently would not
+do so for many hours, for the rising water
+lapped higher and higher against it. Tom
+made up his mind that that tree should be his
+boat&mdash;if only it were still there when it was dark
+enough for him to swim out to it. Through the
+daylight hours he watched it with lynx eyes,
+fearing lest it were swept along towards the sea
+before he could shelter himself in it. And
+through these daylight hours he grew ever more
+faint with hunger, until he told himself that he
+must have food, at any risk, at any cost. Without
+the strength it would give, he felt he could
+not possibly swim even the hundred yards that
+lay between him and the now tossing tree.
+There is truth in the line:</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+"Fate cannot harm me; I have dined today."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="p1">It is too much to do to face Fate on an empty
+stomach. Napoleon said that an army traveled
+on its belly. Men must have food if they are to
+march and fight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A Confederate soldier sauntered along the
+shore and stopped just in front of the boy's
+hiding-place. He had a rude fish-pole. Either
+he knew how to fish, or the James River fish
+were very hungry. A string of a dozen hung
+from his shoulder. The sight of them was too
+much for Tom to stand. A raw fish seemed to
+him the most toothsome morsel in the world.
+He knew he was courting certain capture, but
+he was starving. He would pretend to be a
+Confederate himself. He spoke to the soldier,
+not out of the fullness of his heart, but out of
+the emptiness of his stomach.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm hungry," he said, "give a fellow a fish,
+will you?"</p>
+
+<p>The soldier turned with a start. He was a
+tall, gaunt man, an East Tennessee mountaineer,
+who had started to join the Union army
+when a Confederate conscript-officer seized him
+and sent him South, under guard, to serve the
+cause he had meant to fight against. East Tennessee
+was, as a rule, loyal to the Union. The
+men from there who were found in the Confederate
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+army were like the poor peons who are
+supposed to "volunteer" in the Mexican army.
+"I send you fifty volunteers," wrote a Mexican
+mayor to a Mexican general, "please return me
+the ropes." Jim Grayson had not been tied up
+with a rope, but he had had a bayonet behind
+him, when he was put into the Confederate
+ranks. He was a man of intelligence and of
+rather more education than most of his fellow
+mountaineers. Many of them could not even
+read and write. Grayson had learned both at a
+"deestrik skule" and had actually had a year,
+a precious year, at a "high skule." The last
+thing he had read before starting to fish that
+morning had been the printed handbills that
+had been flung broadcast by the Confederate
+authorities, announcing the escape of 108 men
+and one boy from Libby Prison and offering rewards
+for their recapture. And the first thing
+he thought as he saw Tom in his hole in the
+bank was that he was probably the boy of the
+handbills. He meant to give the fellow a fish,
+of course, but if he found the fellow was that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+boy he also meant to do what he could to help
+him go where he himself wanted to go, to the
+Union lines.</p>
+
+<p>"Sholy, I'll give you a fish," he said. "You
+can have all you want. I'll light a fire and cook
+some for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't wait," gasped Tom, wolf-hunger in
+his gleaming eyes. "I'm starving."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to reach out for the fish and collapsed
+in utter weakness. With food at last within his
+grasp, he was too far gone to take it. Jim
+Grayson had been very hungry more than once
+in his thirty years of hard life. He saw that
+Tom was telling the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," he whispered, for he had caught
+sight of some fellow soldiers on the bank, not a
+hundred feet away. "Hush, sumbuddy's comin'.
+You mus' take little pieces first. I'll cut one
+up for you."</p>
+
+<p>He was drawing out his knife from a deep
+pocket when the soldiers stopped on the bank
+above their heads and shouted down, asking him
+to give them some fish too.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sholy," laughed Jim. "Here's some for
+you-uns."</p>
+
+<p>He tossed half a dozen up to them and then
+sat down at the mouth of the hole that sheltered
+Tom, thinking to hide him in case the
+others came down the bank. His back was towards
+the boy. What was left of his catch hung
+within two inches of Tom's nose. That was
+Tom's chance. He tore off a couple of little fish
+and tore them to bits with his teeth. His first
+sensation was one of deathly sickness; his next
+one of returning strength. Grayson twitched
+the remaining fish into his lap. He knew the
+boy had already had too much food, for a first
+meal. Meanwhile he was chatting cheerily with
+his fellow soldiers, who fortunately did not come
+down the bank and soon moved off, leaving Jim
+and Tom alone. Now was the time for explanations.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afeard," said Jim, with a kindly
+smile. "I 'low you be Tom Strong, bean't you?
+I guess you was in Libby day afore yisterday.
+I ain't goin' to give you up. I'm Union, I be,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+ef I do wear Secesh gray. How kin I help
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>The sense of safety, safety at least for the
+moment, was too much for Tom. He could not
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar, thar," Jim went on, "it's all right.
+Jes' tell me what I can do. I'll bring you eatins
+soon ez night comes, but what'll you do then?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom told him what he hoped to do then. It
+was a wild scheme to float down nearly two hundred
+miles of river through a hostile country,
+but yet it offered a chance of success. And if
+there was a chance of success for the boy, why
+not for the man?</p>
+
+<p>"Ef so be's ez you'se sot on it," Jim said, at
+the end of the talk, "I vum I'll run the resk
+with you. You ain't no ways fit to start off
+alone. Ef you have to hist that thar tree into
+the James River, you cudn't a-do it. I kin. 'N
+ef you wuz all alonst, you mout fall off'n be
+drownded. We-uns'll go together. 'N then I'll
+hev a chanst to fight fer the old Union."</p>
+
+<p>Tom was only too glad of the promised company.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+It was arranged that Jim was to come to
+him as soon as possible after nightfall, with
+whatever provisions he could lay his hands
+upon, and that then they were to get away on
+the queer craft Providence seemed to have prepared
+for them, provided only that Providence
+did not send the big tree swirling southward to
+the sea before they could reach it. The river
+was now considerably higher. It was tugging
+hard at its prey. Sometimes the tree shook with
+the impact of the rushing waves as if it had decided
+to let go the sandbank forthwith. If it
+did go before nightfall, they must try to find
+another. There were always others in sight,
+but they were far away in mid-channel, floating
+swiftly seaward. How could one of these be
+reached, if their fellow on the sandbank joined
+them? There was nothing to be done, however,
+except to wait. Tom's waiting was solaced by
+the eating of the rest of the fish. Man and boy
+agreed that the man must loiter there no longer.
+Making a fire would delay him beyond roll-call.
+So Jim went and Tom again ate raw fish, trying
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+to do so slowly, but not making a great success
+of that. He felt as if he could eat a whale.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness came only a few minutes before Jim
+Grayson did. He brought with him a bundle of
+food, upon part of which Tom forthwith supped.
+He also brought his gun. "I'm a deserter now,
+you see," he explained to the boy, "and I'll be
+shot ef so be I'm caught. But ef I be caught,
+I'll shoot some o' they-uns fust."</p>
+
+<p>They could dimly see the outlines of the big
+tree, now tossing in the waves that broke above
+the submerged sandbank, as if it were struggling
+to be free. They swam out to it, Jim strongly,
+Tom weakly. They reached it none too soon.
+Ten minutes later it would have started of its
+own accord. Jim's task in "histing" it was
+easy. They were afloat at once. The top of the
+tree, a mass of bare branches, for the tiny tender
+leaves of the early Southern spring had been
+swept away by the water, formed the bow of
+their craft. They both perched far back, leaning
+against the tangled roots. Jim gave a final push
+with one dangling foot and they were off. That
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+was all Tom knew for some time. He had fallen
+asleep as soon as he had snuggled securely into
+his place. He did not know it when they swept
+through the cordon of patrol-boats below, which
+hastened to give room to the vast battering ram.
+He did not even know that Jim's arm held him
+in place as the tree lurched and wobbled on its
+downward road. A few hours afterwards, he
+awoke, refreshed and hopeful, a new man, or
+rather a new boy. The night was clear. The
+outlines of both shores were visible. A young
+moon added its feeble light to the brilliant radiance
+of the stars.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we?" whispered Tom. He knew
+the human voice carries a great distance over
+water and while there seemed to be no one who
+could overhear, he would run no unnecessary
+risk.</p>
+
+<p>"I never sailed no river before," Jim cheerily
+answered, "'n I dun know nothin' 'bout the
+Jeems River, but I 'low we've come 'bout a thousand
+mile. 'N it's nigh sun-up. How'll we-uns
+git to sho' 'n hide?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If we did that," said Tom, "we'd have to
+give up our ship. Don't let us do that. Let's
+say what Captain Lawrence said: 'Don't give
+up the ship!' We'll call her the 'Liberty' and
+sail her down to Hampton Roads. We can hide
+in the branches or the roots if we meet anybody
+on the river. Everybody will give us a wide
+berth. We have some food, thanks to you.
+Forty-eight hours more will see us through."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Captain," Jim Grayson replied.
+"You're the commander."</p>
+
+<p>Up to that time, the Confederate private had
+been in command of the expedition, but now
+that the Union officer was himself again, he took
+charge of everything, much to Jim's content and
+also, we must admit, much to Tom's content.</p>
+
+<p>The good ship "Liberty," Tom Strong, captain,
+Jim Grayson, mate, made a prosperous
+voyage. Its crew was thoroughly scared three
+or four times by the sight of Confederate craft,
+small and large. When a gunboat selected it as
+a floating target and plumped half-a-dozen cannon
+balls around it, the crew thought the end
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+had come. But nobody on the gunboat saw the
+two people cowering amid the branches of the
+tree. The gunners were untrained. Their aim
+was poor. And powder and cannon-balls were
+not so abundant in the Confederacy that the
+practice-firing could continue long. Early on
+the third morning of the voyage, they were in
+Hampton Roads, borne by the ebbing tide towards
+the Union squadron that lay under the
+guns of Fortress Monroe. As the sun rose
+above the horizon, our flag sprang to the mastheads
+of the ships. Tom felt like echoing Uncle
+Mose's triumphant phrase: "De Stars 'n de
+Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky."</p>
+
+<p>The "Liberty" would have gone straight out
+to sea, so far as any control by its crew was concerned.
+It did go out to sea, indeed, but not
+until after Tom and Jim had been taken from
+it by a boat from the Admiral's ship. Jim had
+fired off his gun to attract attention, as the
+"Liberty" neared the squadron, and then he
+and Tom had both stood up on the teetering
+trunk of their tree and shouted and waved their
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+shirts, which they had taken off for that purpose,
+as they had nothing else to wave, until
+help came. The "Liberty" had brought them
+to liberty. They said good-by to her almost
+with regret. But their joy was deep when they
+stood on the deck of the flagship, under the flag
+of the free.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Towser Welcomes Tom to the White House&mdash;Lincoln
+Re-elected President&mdash;Grant Commander-in-Chief&mdash;Sherman
+Marches from Atlanta to the Sea&mdash;Tom on Grant's Staff&mdash;Five
+Forks&mdash;Fall of Richmond&mdash;Hans
+Rolf Freed&mdash;Bob Saves Tom from Capture&mdash;Tom
+Takes a Battery into Action&mdash;Lee
+Surrenders&mdash;Tom Strong, Brevet-Captain
+U. S. A.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The warmest welcome Tom had at the
+White House was given him by Towser.
+The next warmest was given him by Uncle
+Moses and the next by Lincoln. The staff was
+glad to see him back, but many of them were
+jealous of the President's evident liking for him
+and would not have sorrowed overmuch if he
+had not come back at all. The patient President
+found time, amid all his myriad cares, to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+listen to Tom's story and to make Secretary
+Stanton give a captain's commission to Jim
+Grayson, who was sent to his own mountains to
+gather recruits for the Union army. For
+Towser, time existed only to be spent in welcoming
+his young master home. He clung close
+to him, with slobbering jaws and thumping tail,
+through the first day, and the first night he
+managed to escape from Uncle Mose's care in
+the basement and to find Tom's attic room.
+Thenceforth, as long as Tom stayed at the
+White House, Towser stretched his yellow
+bulk across the threshold of his door every
+night and slept there the sleep of the utterly
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>There were no utterly happy men under the
+White House roof. Lincoln's presidential term
+was drawing to a close. He was renominated
+by the Republicans, but his re-election at times
+seemed impossible. The Democrats had put
+forward Gen. George B. McClellan, once chief
+commander of the Union forces, but a pitiful
+failure as an aggressive general. A discontented
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+wing of the Republicans had nominated Gen.
+John C. Fremont. Fremont had not fulfilled the
+promise of his youth. At the beginning of the
+war, he had been put in command at St. Louis,
+had proved to be incompetent, and had been retired.
+He was still strong in the hearts of many
+people, but Lincoln feared the success, not of
+Fremont, but of McClellan. John Hay once
+said to the President:</p>
+
+<p>"Fremont might be dangerous if he had more
+ability and energy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was the reply, "he is like Jim Jett's
+brother. Jim used to say that his brother was
+the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the
+infinite mercy of Providence he was also the
+greatest fool."</p>
+
+<p>Family sayings, when they are not loving, are
+apt to be bitter. One of the Vanderbilts said
+of a connection of his by marriage that he was
+"more kinds of a fool to the square inch than
+anybody else in the world."</p>
+
+<p>McClellan, who seemed practically certain of
+success in August, 1864, was badly beaten in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+November, when the battle of parties was
+fought out at the polls. Fremont had retired
+from the contest early in the campaign. At the
+first Cabinet meeting after the election, November
+11, 1864, the President took a paper out of
+his desk and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen, do you remember last summer
+I asked you all to sign your names to the back
+of a paper, of which I did not show you the
+inside? This is it. Now, Mr. Hay, see if you
+can get this open without tearing it."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">Its cover was so thoroughly pasted up that it
+had to be cut open. This done, Lincoln read it
+aloud. Here it is:</p>
+
+<div class="block2">
+
+<p class="right">"Executive Mansion,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+Washington, August 23, 1864.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"This morning, as for some days past, it seems
+exceedingly probable that this Administration
+will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty
+to so co-operate with the President elect as to
+save the Union between the election and the inauguration;
+as he will have secured his election
+on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="right pmb1"><span class="smcap">A. Lincoln</span>."&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In that memorandum is the sign-manual of a
+great soul. Lincoln, believing his own defeat
+was written in the stars, thought, not of himself,
+but of how he, defeated, could best save the
+cause of the Union from defeat. A small man
+thinks first of himself. A big man thinks first
+of his duty.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Life was happy at the White House now.
+The President had been re-elected and it was
+clear that long before his second term was over,
+he would have won a victorious peace. The
+South was still fighting with all the energy
+brave men can show for a cause in the righteousness
+of which they believe, but after all the
+energy was that of despair. Grant was now in
+supreme command of the Union forces, East and
+West. He had been commissioned Lieutenant-General
+and put in command March 17, 1864.
+In commemoration of this event, the turning
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+point in the great struggle, Lincoln had had a
+photograph of himself taken. But two copies of
+it were printed. One Lincoln kept himself. One
+he gave Grant. Here is the one given Grant.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 513px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_291.jpg" width="513" height="690" alt="ABRAHAM LINCOLN" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">ABRAHAM LINCOLN</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The new Lieutenant-General was hammering
+away at Richmond. The Mississippi, now under
+Union control, cut the Confederacy in two. All
+the chief Southern seaports, except Savannah
+and Charleston, had been captured. And in this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+same month of November, 1864, Gen. William
+Tecumseh Sherman, who ranked only second to
+Grant in the United States army, cut loose from
+Atlanta, Georgia, captured two months before
+and began his famous march to the sea, with
+Savannah as his destination. He illustrated his
+own well-known saying: "War is hell." If it
+was hell in Sherman's time, what word can
+describe the horror of it in our day? He swept
+with sword and fire a belt of fertile country,
+sixty miles wide, from Atlanta to the sea. He
+found it smiling and rich; he left it a bare and
+blackened waste. He had destroyed the granary
+of the Confederacy and before the next month
+ended he had made his country a Christmas
+present of the remaining chief Southern seaport,
+Savannah. He wrote to Lincoln: "I beg to present
+to you as a Christmas gift the city of
+Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy
+guns and plenty of ammunition and also twenty-five
+thousand bales of cotton." Cotton was
+worth a dollar a pound in those days.</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1865 Sherman swung northward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+from Savannah, forced the surrender of Charleston,
+South Carolina, and joined Union forces
+advancing from the North at Goldsboro', North
+Carolina, March 23. Six days later Grant began
+the final campaign against the Confederacy.
+Six days before, Lincoln had said to the boy:</p>
+
+<p>"Tom, would you like to see some more
+fighting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. President; very much."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you needn't tell anybody, but I guess
+there'll be some to see before long near Richmond.
+I've had you ordered from special service
+at the White House to special service with
+the Lieutenant-General. Here's the order and
+here's a letter to General Grant. I wouldn't
+wonder if he put you on his staff."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I thank you, Mr. Lincoln?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"The best way to thank anybody is to do well
+the work he gives you to do. Good-by, my son,
+and good luck."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 457px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_294.jpg" width="457" height="700" alt="Gen. W. T. Sherman" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08 smcap">Gen. W. T. Sherman</span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">St. Gaudens' Statue, New York</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">With a pressure of Lincoln's huge hand Tom
+was sped on his rejoicing way. Two days later
+he was at Grant's headquarters, at City Point,
+Virginia, near Fortress Monroe. He saluted
+and handed the General Lincoln's letter. The
+soldier sat, a silent sphinx, for a moment. Then
+he looked up at Tom with a quizzical but not
+unkindly smile, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you learned anything since you
+brought me dispatches at Fort Donelson and
+Vicksburg?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so, General."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes the President sends me people
+for political reasons. I suppose he has to. But
+I don't take them if I know it. Have you any
+political influence behind you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, sir." Tom laughed at the
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You laugh well. You and Horace Porter
+ought to get on together. He laughs well, too.
+You can serve on my staff.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, General."</p>
+
+<p>Tom saluted and walked away, to find Horace
+Porter, whom he found to be a very nice fellow
+indeed. One of the first things the nice fellow
+did for him was to get him a good horse. There
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+was no lack of horses at headquarters. The difficulty
+was not to find one, but to choose the
+best of many good ones. Tom, who had a good
+eye for a horse, found one that exactly suited
+him except as to color. He was of a mottled
+gray. The boy did not much care for such a
+color, but he knew it had its advantages. It
+does not advertise its presence. Where a black,
+a white or a bay horse would stand out and
+make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a mottled
+gray might well elude their view. And the
+horse, apart from this, was just what he wanted.
+He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he walked
+fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment
+in a horse. The average horse walks, as
+a rule, slower than the average man. In an
+hour, he covers a quarter-of-a-mile less ground.
+One question remained to be settled.</p>
+
+<p>"Can he jump?" asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Jump, is it?" answered the soldier-groom.
+"Shure, the cow that jumped over the moon
+couldn't lift a leg to him."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"You bet your life he can jump," said Horace
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+Porter. "General Grant has ridden him twice
+and I saw him put Bob over a fence or two."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_298.jpg" width="600" height="375" alt="BOB" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">BOB</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Not long afterwards Tom did bet his life on
+Bob's jumping. He was named Bob before the
+United States took him. He had been captured
+the month before and had come across the lines
+with his name embroidered by some woman's
+hand on his saddle-blanket and with his late
+owner's blood upon his saddle. He was a tall,
+leggy animal who showed a trace of Arabian
+blood and who needed to be gentled a bit to get
+his best work out of him. His mouth was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+appreciative of sugar and his eyes were appreciative
+of kindness.</p>
+
+<p>Both dogs and horses talk with their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I like my new master," was what Bob's eyes
+said to Tom.</p>
+
+<p>It was through a chance suggestion of Colonel
+Porter that the boy saw most of what he did see
+of the final fight for freedom. Porter had presented
+Tom to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who
+was then at City Point, receiving Grant's final
+instructions for the twelve-day campaign that
+ended in the fall of Richmond and the surrender
+of Lee's brave army. Sheridan was a stocky,
+red-faced young Irishman, a graduate of West
+Point, and a born leader of men, especially of
+cavalrymen. He liked the clear-eyed lad who
+stood respectfully before him. He had done too
+much in his own youth to think Tom was useless
+because he was so young. Porter saw that
+the boy had made a good impression. He ventured
+a suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you take young Strong with you,
+General?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sheridan turned sharply to Tom, asking:</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ride?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, sir. I've ridden ever since I can
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's not so very long a time. But
+I'll take your word for it. Would you like to go
+with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like it better than anything else in the
+world, General."</p>
+
+<p>Tom had rejoiced in the idea of being with
+Grant, but he knew that the commander-in-chief
+must stay behind his lines and that his
+staff could catch but glimpses of the fighting,
+when they were sent forward with orders,
+whereas with Sheridan he might be in the very
+thick of the fighting itself. His ready answer
+and the joy that beamed in his eyes pleased the
+fighting Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I borrow him of General Grant?"
+Sheridan asked Porter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll answer for that," Porter replied. "The
+General told me to put Strong to whatever work
+I could find for him to do."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come ahead," said Sheridan. "You'll see
+some beautiful fighting!"</p>
+
+<p>Sheridan loved fighting, but he made no pretense
+of never being afraid. He thought a general
+should be close to the front, to keep his
+soldiers' spirits high.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you never afraid?" Charles A. Dana,
+then Assistant Secretary of War, once asked
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"If I was, I should not be ashamed of it. If I
+should follow my natural impulse, I should run
+away always at the beginning of the danger.
+The men who say they are never afraid in a battle
+do not tell the truth."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="pmb2">March 29, 1865, the twelve-day campaign began.
+The cavalry swung out towards Five
+Forks, where Lee's right wing lay behind deep
+entrenchments. April 1, Sheridan attacked in
+force. Americans fought Americans with stubborn
+bravery on both sides. The issue was long
+in doubt. Sheridan and his staff were close to
+the firing-line, so that Tom had but a few hundred
+yards to gallop under fire when his general
+said to him:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 444px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_302.jpg" width="444" height="700" alt="Statue of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08 smcap">Statue of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan</span><br />
+  <span class="font08">Sheridan Square, Washington, D. C.</span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">Copyright by Underwood &amp; Underwood, New York.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">"Tell General Griffin to charge and keep
+charging."</p>
+
+<p>Griffin's order to his troops was so quickly
+given that it seemed an echo of the order Tom
+brought him. It was the boy's business to return
+forthwith and report upon his mission, but
+he simply couldn't do it. There were the Confederate
+lines manned with hungry soldiers in
+the remnants of their gray uniforms, the Stars-and-Bars
+flying above them. And there were
+battalions of blue-clad cavalry, men and horses
+in prime condition, straining to start like hounds
+upon a leash. Griffin's order was the electric
+spark that fired the battery. The men shouted
+with joy as they spurred their horses into a mad
+gallop. The shout was answered by the shrill
+"rebel yell" from the dauntless foe in the
+trenches. The charging column shook the
+ground. In its foremost files rode Second-lieutenant
+Tom Strong, forgetful of everything
+else in the world but the joy of battle. Musketry
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+and artillery tore bloody lanes in the close-packed
+column. Men and horses fell in heaps
+upon the blood-stained ground. But the column
+went on. At dusk of that April day it poured
+over the parapets so bravely held. Even then
+the fight was not over. There was still stout
+resistance. The two armies were a mass of
+struggling men, shooting, stabbing, striking.
+The battle had become a series of duels man to
+man. Tom, pistol in hand, rode at a big Kentuckian,
+but the gray-clad giant dodged the bullet,
+caught his own unloaded musket by the
+muzzle, and dealt the boy a blow with its butt
+that knocked him off his horse and left him
+senseless on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later, when he came to his
+senses, he felt as if he were a boy annexed to a
+shoulder twice as big as all the rest of his body.
+It was on his shoulder that the blow of the
+clubbed musket had gone home. The fall from
+his horse had stunned him. Bob was standing
+over him, as Black Auster stood over Herminius,
+nuzzling at the outstretched hand of this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+silent, motionless thing that had been his
+master. They had been together for less than
+a week, but a day is often long enough for a
+horse to find out that his master is his friend.
+Tom had been more careful of his horse's comfort
+than of his own. Now the good gray had
+stood by him and over him, perhaps saving him
+from being trampled to death in that fierce last
+act of the Drama of Five Forks. Bob whinnied
+with joy as Tom's eyes slowly opened again.
+He thrust his muzzle down along the boy's
+cheek and the boy caught hold of the flowing
+mane with his right hand and pulled himself
+upon his feet again. His left arm hung useless
+by his side. One glance told him the battle was
+won. The duels were over. The Confederates
+were in full retreat. A stream of prisoners was
+already flowing by him. He mounted and followed
+it to Sheridan's headquarters. There the
+skillful fingers of a surgeon found that no bones
+were broken. The swollen shoulder was dressed
+and bandaged. The healthy blood that filled
+Tom's veins did much to make a speedy cure.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+So did the joy of victory. Sheridan had done
+what Grant had given him to do. He had
+driven back Lee's right flank and cut the railroad
+by which Lee must escape from Richmond,
+if escape he could.</p>
+
+<p>Richmond was doomed. The next morning,
+Sunday, April 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis, President
+of the Confederate States of America, sat
+in his pew in St. Paul's Church, Richmond. The
+solemn service began. Soon there was a stir at
+the door, a rustle, a turning of heads away from
+the chancel, where the gray-haired rector stood.
+Swiftly a messenger came up the aisle. Davis
+rose from his knees to receive the message. The
+service stopped. Every eye was bent upon the
+leader of the Lost Cause. He put on his spectacles,
+opened the missive, and read it amid a
+breathless silence. It told him that the Cause
+was lost indeed. It was from Lee, who wrote:
+"My lines are broken in three places. Richmond
+must be evacuated this evening." There
+was no sign of feeling upon Jefferson Davis's
+impassive face, as he read the fateful dispatch.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+Without a word, without a sign, he left the
+church with the wife whose utter devotion had
+helped him bear the burden of those terrible
+years, during which proud hope gradually gave
+way to sickening fear. Davis was not of those
+weak men who despair. There was still a little
+hope in his heart, despite the tremendous blow
+Lee's letter had dealt him. He walked down
+the aisle with head as high as though he were
+marching to assured victory. But through the
+congregation there ran the whisper "Richmond
+is to be evacuated." A panic-stricken mob
+poured out of the church with faltering steps
+behind Jefferson Davis's firm, proud ones.
+Early that afternoon the Confederate Government
+fled. Early the next morning, Monday,
+April 3, 1865, Gen. Godfrey Weitzel marched
+his negro troops into the Confederate capital.
+The flag of the free floated from the dome of
+the Statehouse, which almost from the earliest
+days of the war had sheltered what was now
+indeed the Lost Cause. It was raised there by
+Lieut. Johnston L. De Peyster, a youth of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+eighteen, who had carried it wrapped around the
+pommel of his saddle for some days, hoping for
+the chance that now came to him. The second
+Union flag that was raised that day in Richmond
+was over Libby. The prison gates gave up their
+prey. The prisoners poured out, some too weak
+to do more than smile, others in a frenzy of
+joy. Major Hans Rolf, reduced by hunger to a
+long lath of a man, had lost none of his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, boys," he shouted, "three times three
+for the old flag!"</p>
+
+<p>The cheers rang out in a feeble chorus and
+then there rang out Han's contagious laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha!" he roared. "We're free, boys,
+we're free."</p>
+
+<p>By that Sunday night, the fate of Petersburg
+was sealed. Grant had ordered an assault in
+force at six o'clock Monday morning, but the
+Confederates abandoned their works in the gray
+dawn and our troops met little resistance in taking
+over the town. "General Meade and I,"
+says General Grant in his "Personal Memoirs,"
+"entered Petersburg on the morning of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+third and took a position under cover of a house
+which protected us from the enemy's musketry
+which was flying thick and fast there. As we
+would occasionally look around the corner, we
+could see ... the Appomattox bottom ...
+packed with the Confederate army.... I had
+not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a
+mass of defeated and fleeing men and I hoped
+to capture them soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us follow up Lee," Meade suggested.
+He was a better follower than a fighter. He had
+followed Lee before, from Gettysburg to Richmond,
+without ever attacking him.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," Grant replied, "we will
+cut off his retreat by occupying the Danville railroad
+and capture him. He must get to his food
+to keep his troops alive. We will get between
+him and his food."</p>
+
+<p>With constant fighting this was done. By
+Wednesday, April 5, the Union lines were drawn
+about the Confederate army. Sheridan, hampered
+by Meade's slowness, was urgent that
+Grant should come to the front. He sent message
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+after message to that effect to Grant on
+Wednesday. A scout in gray uniform was entrusted
+with the second message. He was made
+up to look like a Confederate scout, but he was
+Tom Strong. He had put on his disguise at
+Sheridan's headquarters. As he stood at attention
+to receive his orders, Sheridan laughed and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"You make a good 'Johnny Reb.' Do you
+chew tobacco?"</p>
+
+<p>Surprised at the question, Tom said he didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you may have to begin the habit today.
+You're to take this message to General Grant.
+If you're caught, chew it&mdash;and swallow it quick."</p>
+
+<p>He handed the boy a bit of tinfoil. It looked
+like a small package of chewing-tobacco, but it
+contained a piece of tissue-paper upon which
+Sheridan's message was written.</p>
+
+<p>The ride from the left flank to the center was
+not without danger. Tom, duly provided with
+the password, could go by any Union forces
+without difficulty, but the country swarmed
+with Confederates, some of them deserters,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+many of them straggling detachments cut off
+from the main army and seeking to rejoin it, all
+of them more than ready to capture a Union
+soldier and his horse.</p>
+
+<p>The boy climbed a little clumsily into the saddle.
+His left shoulder still felt like a big balloon
+stuffed full of pain. But there was nothing
+clumsy in his seat, as Bob shot off like an arrow
+at the touch of Tom's heel on his flank. It was
+a beautiful, bright April morning, too beautiful
+a day for men to be killing each other. Evidently,
+however, it did not seem so to the commander
+of a company of Confederate cavalry,
+who had laid an ambush into which Tom gayly
+galloped. He heard a sharp order to halt. He
+saw men ride across the road in front of him.
+He whirled about, only to see the road behind
+him blocked. He was fairly trapped. But there
+was one chance of escaping from the trap and
+Tom took it. His would-be captors had come
+from the left of the road, its northern side, for
+he was traveling east. On the south was a high
+rail-fence, laid in the usual zigzags, one of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+few which had not fed the camp-fires of Northern
+Virginia. It was a good five feet high; it was
+only a few feet away; Bob was standing still
+for a second in slippery mud. It was not at all
+the kind of place to select for a jump, but the
+Confederates had selected the place, not Tom.
+He remembered Colonel Porter's saying "You
+can bet your life Bob can jump," and he bet his
+life on Porter's being right. He put Bob at
+the fence. The gallant gray, as if he sensed his
+master's danger, took one bound toward the
+rails, gathered himself together into a tense
+mass of muscle, and rose into the air like a bird.
+As he flew over the top-rail, carbines cracked behind
+him, but as he leaped southward across the
+countryside, a ringing cheer followed him too.
+The brave Southerners rejoiced in the brave feat
+that took their captive into freedom. Their jaded
+horses could not follow. There was no pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>It took Tom some hours to double back towards
+Grant's headquarters. He met long lines
+of Union cavalry, infantry, and artillery pressing
+forward to strengthen Sheridan's forces. They
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+were going west and they choked every road
+and lane and path by which the boy sought to go
+east. They had begun their march at three
+o'clock that morning. They had had no breakfast.
+They carried no food. Their wagon-trains
+were miles in the rear. It was their fourth day
+of continuous fighting. They had a right to be
+tired, but they were not tired. They had a right
+to be hungry, but they were not hungry. When
+the air was full of victory, what did an empty
+stomach matter? Cheering and singing, they
+swept along. The end of four years' fighting
+was in sight. The hunted foe was trying to
+slink away to safety, as many a fox, with hounds
+and huntsmen closing in upon him, had tried to
+do on these Virginian fields. Never were huntsmen
+more anxious to be "in at the death" than
+were those joyous Union soldiers on that memorable
+April day.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly night when the boy reached
+headquarters, saluted the commander-in-chief,
+said "A message from General Sheridan," and
+handed over the little tinfoil package.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You can go back with me," said Grant.
+"That horse of yours is Bob, isn't it?" Grant
+never forgot a horse he had once ridden.</p>
+
+<p>Within an hour the General and his staff, with
+a small cavalry escort, started for Sheridan's
+headquarters. By ten that night the two were
+together. Sheridan was almost crying over the
+orders Meade had given him. By midnight
+Sheridan was happy. "I explained to Meade,"
+say the "Personal Memoirs," "that we did not
+want to follow the enemy; we wanted to get
+ahead of him; and that his orders would allow
+the enemy to escape.... Meade changed his
+orders at once."</p>
+
+<p>That change of orders incidentally put Tom
+Strong the next day into the hottest fight of his
+life. This was the battle of Sailor's Creek, almost
+forgotten since amid the mightier happenings
+of that wonderful April week, but never
+forgotten by Tom Strong. Our forces had attacked
+Lee's retreating legions, retreating toward
+the provision trains that were their only
+hope of food. The fight was fierce. We had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+attacked with both infantry and cavalry, but our
+gallant fellow-countrymen held their lines unbroken.
+Then with a thunder of wheels our
+field artillery came into action. The Confederate
+guns were shelling the hillside up which the
+plunging horses drew our cannon. There were
+six horses in each team, an artilleryman riding
+each near horse and holding the off horse of
+the pair by a bridle. Tom had come up with
+orders and was standing by General Wright as
+the guns bounded up the hillside. Bob stood
+behind his master, whinnying a bit with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>General Wright snapped his watch shut impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"They're ten minutes late," he complained.
+"We're beaten if we don't get 'em into action
+instantly. Good Heavens! there goes our first
+gun to destruction!"</p>
+
+<p>A Confederate shell had struck and burst
+close to the leaders. A fragment of it swept the
+foremost rider from his seat and from life. The
+two horses he had handled reared, plunged,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+jumped to one side. The six horses were huddled
+into a frightened heap. The two other soldiers
+could do nothing with the leaders out of
+control. The gun stopped short. And behind it
+stopped all of one of the two lines of advancing
+artillery.</p>
+
+<p>"Take that gun into action!"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Tom heard the General's brief command and
+ran toward the huddled horses. He sprang into
+the saddle, seized both bridles, and drove on.
+As he did so, another Confederate shell burst
+beside the off horse. Its fragments spared the
+foremost rider this time, but they dealt death
+to one of his two comrades. The man in control
+of the wheelers threw his right arm out and
+toppled over into the road, dead before the
+heavy cannon-wheel crashed and crushed over
+him. The leaders, so skillfully handled that
+their very fear made them run more madly into
+danger, tore ahead, keeping the other four
+horses galloping behind them, until the gun was
+in position. It roared the news of its coming
+with a well-aimed shot into the midst of the
+enemy's forces.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_318.jpg" width="600" height="373" alt="Tom Takes a Battery Into Action" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">Tom Takes a Battery Into Action</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">Its fellows fell into line and
+followed suit. The infantry and cavalry attacked
+with renewed spirit. Sullenly and savagely,
+fighting until darkness forbade more
+fighting, Lee's troops withdrew towards the
+west, with the Union forces pounding away at
+them. They left a mass of dead upon the battlefield,
+lives finely lost for the Lost Cause, and
+they also left as prisoners six general officers
+and seven thousand men. More than a third of
+all the prisoners taken in the battles before the
+final surrender were taken at the battle of
+Sailor's Creek. Tom had stuck to his new arm
+of the service through the three hours of fighting.
+The guns had been continually advanced
+as the Southerners retreated. They had been
+continually under fire. Nearly half the gunners
+had been killed or wounded. When the fight
+was over, Tom remembered for the first time his
+own wounded shoulder. He had never thought
+of it from the moment when he had sprung upon
+the artillery horse. Now it began to throb with
+a renewed and a deeper pain, as if resenting his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+ignoring of it so long, but the new pain also
+vanished when he rejoined General Wright and
+heard him say:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Strong, you helped to save the day.
+I shall recommend you for promotion for distinguished
+bravery under fire."</p>
+
+<p>The boy saluted, his heart too full to speak.
+As he rode away upon Bob, some of the joy
+in his heart must have got into Bob's heels, for
+Bob pirouetted up the main street of the little
+town of Farmville, late that night, as though he
+were prouder than ever of his master.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">Farmville was now headquarters. Grant was
+there, in a bare hotel, not long before a Confederate
+hospital. It was from the Farmville hotel
+that he wrote to Lee a historic note. It ran
+thus:</p>
+
+<div class="block2">
+<p class="right">
+"Headquarters Armies of the U. S.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+5 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, April 7, 1865.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="left">
+"General R. E. Lee,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Commanding C. S. A.:<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The results of the last week must convince
+you of the hopelessness of further resistance on
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in
+this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it
+as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility
+of any further effusion of blood by asking
+of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate
+States army known as the Army of
+Northern Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">U. S. Grant&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>,<br />
+Lieut.-General."&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p1">Under a flag of truce, this note reached General
+Lee that evening, so near together were the
+headquarters of the contending armies in those
+last days. His letter in reply, asking what terms
+of surrender were offered, reached Grant the
+next morning while he was talking on the steps
+of the Farmville hotel to a Confederate Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' tho't I'd repo't to you, General," said
+the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"You see I own this hyar hotel you're
+a-occupyin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, we shall move out soon. We are
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+moving around a good deal, nowadays. Why
+aren't you with your regiment?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, General, I am my regiment."</p>
+
+<p>"How's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"All the men wuz raised 'round hyar. A few
+days ago they jes' begun nachally droppin' out.
+They all dun dropped out, General, so I jes'
+tho't there wan't any use being a cunnel without
+no troops and I dun dropped out too. Here
+I be? What you goin' to do with me, General?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to leave you here to take care of
+your property. Don't go back to your army and
+nobody'll bother you."</p>
+
+<p>That was a sample of the way in which the
+beaten army was melting away. Not even the
+magic of Lee's great name could hold it together
+now. But the men who did not drop out fought
+with heroism to the bitter end.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Saturday, April 8, 1865,
+Sheridan captured some more of Lee's provision
+trains at Appomattox Station and on Sunday,
+April 9, Lee's whole army attacked there,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+still seeking to cut its way out of its encircling
+foes. Its brave effort was in vain. Held in a
+vice, it threw up its hands. A white flag flew
+above the Confederate lines.</p>
+
+<p>Grant had spent Saturday night struggling
+with a sick headache, his feet in hot water and
+mustard, his wrists and the back of his neck covered
+with mustard-plasters. On Sunday morning,
+still sick and suffering, he was jogging along
+on horseback towards the front, when a Confederate
+officer was brought before him. He carried
+a note from Lee offering to surrender.
+"When the officer reached me," writes Grant,
+"I was still suffering with the sick headache;
+but the instant I saw the contents of the note,
+I was cured." The ending of the war ended
+Grant's headache.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The two commanders met at Appomattox
+Court House, a sleepy Virginian village, five
+miles from the railroad and endless miles from
+the great world. It lies in a happy valley, not
+wrapped in happiness that April day, for Sheridan's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+forces held the crest at the south and Lee's
+were deployed along the hilltop to the north. A
+two-hour armistice had been granted. If that
+did not bring the end desired, that end was to
+be fought out with all the horrors of warfare
+amid the peaceful houses that had straggled together
+to make the peaceful little town.</p>
+
+<p>At the northern end of the village street, surrounded
+by an apple orchard, stood a two-story
+brick house with a white wooden piazza in front
+of it. It was the home of Wilmer McLean, a
+Virginia farmer upon whose farm part of the
+battle of Bull Run had been fought at the outbreak
+of the war. Foreseeing that other battles
+might be fought there&mdash;as the second battle of
+Bull Run, in 1862, was&mdash;he had sold his property
+there and had moved by a strange chance
+to the very village and the very house in which
+the final scene of the great tragedy of this war
+between brothers was to be played. Here Lee
+awaited Grant.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The Union general had gone to Sheridan's
+headquarters before riding up to the McLean
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+house. Sheridan and his staff had gone on with
+him. Least important of the little group of
+Union officers who followed Grant into the
+presence of Lee was Tom Strong, but the boy's
+heart beat as high as that of any man there.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_326.jpg" width="600" height="450" alt="THE McLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">The McLeanN House, Appomattox Courthouse</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2 pmb2">It was in the orchard about the house that
+the myth of "the apple-tree of Appomattox"
+was born. Millions of men and women have
+believed that Lee surrendered to Grant under an
+apple tree at Appomattox. That apple tree is
+   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+as famous in mistaken history as is that other
+mythical tree, the cherry tree which George
+Washington did not cut down with his little
+hatchet. Washington could not tell a lie, it is
+true, but he never chopped down a cherry tree
+and then said to his angry, questioning father:
+"Father, I cannot tell a lie; I cut it down with
+my little hatchet." That fairy story came from
+the imagination of one Parson Weems, who did
+not resemble our first President in the latter's
+inability to tell lies. Perhaps the myth of the
+apple tree will never die, as the myth of the
+cherry tree has never died. In 1880, when
+Grant's mistaken friends tried to nominate him
+for a third Presidential term, other candidates
+had been urged because this one, it was said,
+could carry Ohio, that one Maine, and so on.
+Then Roscoe Conkling of New York strode
+upon the stage to nominate Grant and declaimed
+to a hushed audience of twenty thousand men:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And if you ask what State <i>he</i> comes from,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Our sole reply shall be:</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">He</span> comes from Appomattox</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And the famous apple tree!"</span><br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">The twenty thousand were swept off their feet
+by the magic of that myth. Grant was almost
+nominated&mdash;but not quite.</p>
+
+<p>The historic interview began in the room to
+the left of the front door in the McLean house.
+Two very different figures confronted each
+other. Grant had not expected the meeting to
+take place so soon and had left the farmhouse
+where he had spent the night before in rough
+garb. He writes: "I was without a sword, as
+I usually was when on horseback in the field,
+and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the
+shoulder-straps of my rank to indicate to the
+army who I was.... General Lee was
+dressed in a full uniform, which was entirely
+new, and was wearing a sword of considerable
+value, very likely the sword which had been presented
+by the State of Virginia.... In my
+rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private
+with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must
+have contrasted very strangely with a man so
+handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+form. But this was not a matter that I
+thought of until afterwards."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Lee requested that the terms to be given his
+army should be written out. Grant asked General
+Parker of his staff, a full-blooded American
+Indian, for writing materials. He had prepared
+nothing beforehand, but he knew just what he
+wanted to say and he wrote without hesitation
+terms such as only a great and magnanimous
+nation could offer its conquered citizens. After
+providing for the giving of paroles (that is, an
+agreement not to take up arms again unless the
+paroled prisoner is later exchanged for a prisoner
+of the other side) and for the surrender of
+arms, artillery, and public property, he added:
+"This will not embrace the sidearms of the officers
+nor their private horses or baggage. This
+done, each officer and man will be allowed to
+return to their homes, not to be disturbed by
+United States authority so long as they observe
+their paroles and the laws in force where they
+reside." There are some mistakes in grammar
+in these words, but there are no mistakes in
+magnanimity. When Lee, having put on his
+glasses, had read the first sentence quoted
+above, he said with feeling:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 454px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_330.jpg" width="454" height="700" alt="Lee Surrenders to Grant" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">Lee Surrenders to Grant</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">"This will have a happy effect upon my
+army."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He went on to say that many of the privates
+in the Confederate cavalry and artillery owned
+their own horses; could they retain them?
+Grant did not change the written terms, but he
+said his officers would be instructed to let every
+Confederate private who claimed to own a horse
+or mule take the animal home with him. "It
+was doubtful," writes Grant, "whether they
+would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves
+and their families through the next winter
+without the aid of the horses they were then
+riding." Again Lee remarked that this would
+have a happy effect. He then wrote and signed
+an acceptance of the proposed terms of surrender.
+The war was over. The first act of
+peace was our issuing 25,000 rations to the army
+we had captured. For some days it had lived
+on parched corn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 531px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_333.jpg" width="531" height="690" alt="GEN. U. S. GRANT" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">GEN. U. S. GRANT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The news of the surrender flashed along the
+waiting lines like wildfire and the Union forces
+began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor
+of the victory. "I at once sent word," says
+Grant, "to have it stopped. The Confederates
+were now our prisoners and we did not want to
+exult over their downfall." This was the spirit
+of a great man and of a great nation. It was
+not the soldiers who fought the war who kept
+its rancors alive after peace had come, It was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+the politicians, who tore open the old wounds
+and kept the country bleeding for a dozen years
+after the Lost Cause was lost.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 1865,
+Grant and Lee again met between the lines and
+sitting on horseback talked for half an hour.
+Then Grant began his journey to Washington.
+His staff, including Tom, went with him. When
+they reached their goal, Second-Lieutenant
+Strong found he was that no longer. For General
+Wright had done what he had told Tom
+he meant to do. The recommendation had been
+heeded. Lincoln himself handed the boy his
+new commission as a brevet-captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I was glad to sign that, Tom," the President
+told him, "and even Stanton didn't kick this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know how glad I am to get it,
+Mr. President," was the reply. "Now I'm a
+boy-captain, as my great-grandfather was before
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not much on pedigrees and ancestry and
+genealogical trees, my boy," answered Lincoln.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+"Out West we think more of trees that grow
+out of the ground than we do of trees that grow
+on parchment. But you're right to be proud of
+an ancestry of service to your country. When
+family pride is based on money or land or social
+standing, it is one of the most foolish things
+God Almighty ever laughed at, but when it is
+based on service, real service, to your country,
+to your fellowmen, to the world, why, then,
+Tom, it's one of the biggest and best things in
+God's kingdom. But remember this, son,"&mdash;Lincoln's
+eyes flashed in their deep sockets&mdash;"if
+a boy has an ancestor who has done big
+things, the way to be proud of him is to do big
+things yourself. Living on the glory of what
+somebody else has done before you is a mighty
+poor kind of living. I never knew but one man
+that was perfect and I'd never have known he
+was if he hadn't told me so. Nobody else ever
+found it out. But if we can't be perfect, we can
+grow less imperfect by trying every day to serve
+our fellowmen. Remember that, Tom."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>On the evening of Good Friday, April 14,
+1865, Laura Keene, an English actress of
+great repute in America, was to play <i>Our American
+Cousin</i> at Ford's Theater, the chief place of
+amusement for war-time Washington.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, Assistant-Secretary-of-War
+Dana was notified by wire that Jacob Thompson
+of Mississippi, once Secretary of the Interior
+under our poor old wavering President,
+Buchanan, afterwards a leading Secessionist,
+would take a steamship for England that
+evening at Portland, Maine.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do?" Dana asked Stanton.</p>
+
+<p>"Arrest him! No, wait; better go over and
+see the President."</p>
+
+<p>So Dana went to the White House. Office-hours
+were over. He found Lincoln washing his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Halloo, Dana!" was Lincoln's greeting.
+"What's up?"</p>
+
+<p>The telegram was read aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"What does Stanton say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says to arrest him, but that I should
+refer the question to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, I rather think not. When you
+have got an elephant by the hind legs and he's
+trying to run away; it's best to let him run."</p>
+
+<p>Dana reported this to Stanton.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stuff!" said Stanton.</p>
+
+<p>But Thompson was not arrested, so that the
+last recorded act of Lincoln as President was
+one of mercy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In the upper stage-box, to the right of the
+audience, that evening, sat Abraham Lincoln,
+President of the United States, Mrs. Lincoln, a
+friend, Miss Harris, and an officer, Major Henry
+R. Rathbone. The cares of State seemed to
+have slipped for the moment from Lincoln's
+shoulders. He had bowed smilingly from the
+box in response to the cheers of the packed audience
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+in the body of the house. He had followed
+intently the action of the amusing play, constantly
+smiling, often applauding. The eyes of
+the little party of four were bent upon the stage,
+about ten o'clock, when the door of the box was
+jerked violently open behind them. As they
+turned at the noise, Death stalked in upon
+them.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Five minutes before, Tom Strong had been
+idly strolling along Tenth Street and had paused
+at the theater door to read the play-bills posted
+there. A small group of belated play-goers was
+at the ticket-booth. A man shoved roughly
+through them. A woman's "Oh!" of surprise
+and protest drew Tom's attention to the man.
+He had seen him but thrice before, yet the man's
+face was engraved upon his memory. Once, at
+Charlestown, Virginia, Wilkes Booth had stood
+in the ranks of the militia, eagerly awaiting the
+execution of John Brown. Once, upon a railroad
+train north of Baltimore, Wilkes Booth had
+drugged the boy and left him, as the scoundrel
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+thought, to die. Once, upon a railroad platform
+at Kingston, Alabama, Wilkes Booth had recognized
+him and had again sought his death.
+Whose death did he seek to compass now?
+What was the Confederate spy doing here?
+Tom had scarcely glimpsed the hawk-like features,
+the pallid face, the flowing black hair of
+his foe, when Booth disappeared from his sight
+in the crowded lobby of the theater.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Tom pursued him. But he was delayed
+by the little group through whom Booth
+had elbowed his rough way. And when he
+reached the ticket-window, he found no money
+in his pocket with which to buy admittance. He
+had put on civilian clothes that evening and had
+left his scanty store of currency in his uniform.
+The wary ticket-seller, used to all sorts of
+dodges by people who wanted to get in without
+paying, laughed at his story and refused to give
+him a ticket on trust. Tom's claim that he was
+an officer caused especial amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't go down, bub," said the ticket-seller.
+"Try to think up a better lie next time.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+And clear out now. Don't block up the passageway."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>must</i> get in," said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"You shan't," snarled the man, sure that he
+was being imposed upon.</p>
+
+<p>The doorkeeper, attracted by the little row,
+had come towards the ticket-window. He
+swung his right arm with a threatening gesture.
+As Tom started towards him he struck the
+threatened blow, but his clenched fist hit nothing.
+The boy had ducked under his arm and
+had fled into the theater. The doorkeeper pursued
+him. But Tom was now making his way
+like a weasel through the crowd. He had
+caught sight of Wilkes Booth nearly at the top
+of the right-hand staircase that led to the aisle
+from which the upper right-hand box was
+reached. Without any actual premonition of
+the coming tragedy which was to echo around
+the world upon the morrow, he still felt that
+Booth had in mind some evil deed and that it
+was his duty to prevent him. As he struggled
+toward the foot of the stairway, Booth saw
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+him, recognized him and smiled at him, a smile
+of triumphant hideous evil. Tom yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"Spy! Confederate spy! Stop him! Let
+me follow!"</p>
+
+<p>Upon the startled crowd there fell a sudden
+stillness. Nobody laid hand upon Booth, but
+everybody made way for the frantic boy who
+rushed up the stairway as the scoundrel he
+chased ran down the corridor. He clutched the
+newel post at the head of the stairway just as
+Booth flung open the door of the box. Tom
+ran towards him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The door of the box was violently jerked
+open. Wilkes Booth sprang across the
+threshold. He put his pistol close to the head
+of the unarmed man he meant to murder. He
+fired. The greatest American sank forward
+into his wife's arms. High above her shrieks
+rose the actor's trained voice. He leaped upon
+the balustrade of the box, shouted "<i>Sic semper
+tyrannis!</i>" and jumped down to the stage. He
+was booted and spurred for his escape. His
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+horse was held for him near the stage-door.
+One of his spurs caught upon the curtain of the
+box, so that he stumbled and fell heavily. But
+he had played his part upon that stage many a
+time before. He knew every nook and cranny
+of the mysterious labyrinth behind the footlights.
+He rose to his feet, disregarding a
+twisted ankle, and rushed to safety&mdash;for a few
+hours. He reached his horse and galloped into
+the calm night of God, profaned forever by this
+hideous crime of a besotted fanatic.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The martyred President was taken to a neighboring
+house, No. 453 Tenth Street. In a back
+hall bedroom, upon the first floor, that that was
+still Abraham Lincoln, but was soon to cease
+to be so, was laid upon a narrow bed. Tom had
+helped to carry him there. Wife and son, John
+Hay, Secretary-of-War Stanton, and a few
+others crowded into the tiny room. Doctors
+worked feverishly over the dying man. Their
+skill was in vain. The slow and regular breathing
+grew fainter. The automatic moaning
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+ceased. A look of unspeakable peace came to
+the face the world now knows so well. In a
+solemn hush, at twenty-two minutes after seven
+in the morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865, the
+great soul of Abraham Lincoln went back to
+the God Who had given him to America and to
+the world. A moment later Stanton spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Now he belongs to the ages."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Hunts Wilkes Booth</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">The End of the
+Murderer</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Andrew Johnson, President of
+the United States</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tom and Towser Go
+Home.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The assassination of Lincoln was not the
+only crime that stained that memorable
+night. Secretary-of-State Seward was stabbed
+in his sick-bed by one of Booth's co-conspirators.
+Attempts were made upon the lives of other
+Cabinet ministers. Many arbitrary arrests had
+been made during the war by Secretary Stanton.
+It had been said that whenever Stanton's little
+bell rang, somebody went to prison. That little
+bell had little rest this Saturday. Wholesale
+arrests were made of suspected Southern sympathizers
+who might have known something of
+the hideous conspiracy of murder. Stanton put
+all the grim energy of him into the pursuit of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+the leading criminals. He was said never to
+forget anything. One of the things he had not
+forgotten was that Tom Strong knew Wilkes
+Booth by sight. He sent him from Lincoln's
+bedside, hours before Lincoln died, to join a
+troop of cavalry that was to pursue Booth. The
+road by which the murderer had left Washington
+was known. Hard upon his heels rode the
+avengers of crime. Wherever there was a light
+in one of the few houses along the lonely road,
+often where there was no light, the occupants
+were seized, questioned, sometimes sent to
+Washington under guard, sometimes released
+and sternly bidden to say nothing of the midnight
+ride. Piecing together scraps of information
+gathered here and there, studying every
+crossroad for possible hoof-marks of flight, the
+silent commander of the cavalrymen at last convinced
+himself that he was on the trail of the
+quarry. The troops broke into full gallop. A
+few minutes before dawn they reached a small
+village on the bank of the Potomac, where the
+fires of a smithy gleamed. They pulled up short
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+as the startled blacksmith came out of his sooty
+shed.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" demanded the
+captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been&mdash;I've been&mdash;putting on a horseshoe,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>"For what kind of a looking man?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said his name was Barnard."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, sir," said Tom from his
+saddle, "but Barnard was the name Wilkes
+Booth once gave me for his own." At the beginning
+of the ride, Tom had described Booth's
+appearance to the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Was the man pale? Did he have long black
+hair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Long black hair," answered the blacksmith,
+"but his cheeks were red. He seemed excited.
+While I was replacing the shoe his horse had
+cast, he kept drinking brandy from a bottle he
+carried. He never gave me none of it," the
+man added with an injured air.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. He said I'd hear great news later
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+today, that the Southerners had won their
+greatest victory. I asked him where and he
+swore at me and told me to shut up. But he
+gave me a silver dollar. Perhaps it's bad.
+Is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith pulled out of his grimy pocket
+a dollar and showed it to the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who that man was?" was the
+stern command.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, o' course I don't. I s'pose he was
+Mr. Barnard."</p>
+
+<p>"He was Judas. He has murdered Abraham
+Lincoln. And he has given you one of the forty
+pieces of silver."</p>
+
+<p>With wild-eyed horror, the smith started
+back. He flung the accursed dollar far into the
+Potomac.</p>
+
+<p>"God's curse go with it," he cried. "Captain,
+the man went straight down the river road.
+He gave his horse a cut with his whip 'n he
+yelled 'Carry me back to ole Virginny!' and
+he went off lickety-split. He ain't half-an-hour
+ahead of you."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No need to command full speed now. Every
+man was riding hard. Every horse was putting
+his last ounce of strength into his stride. Within
+an hour, the hounds saw the slinking fox they
+chased. Booth, abandoning his exhausted steed,
+took refuge in a tumble-down barn. A cordon
+was thrown about it and he was called on to
+surrender. The reply was a shot. Tom heard
+the whiz of the bullet as it tore by him. The
+cavalry pumped lead into the barn. Once,
+twice, thrice they fired. At the first volley, the
+trapped murderer had again fired. There was no
+answer to the second and third. With reloaded
+carbines, the troopers charged, burst open the
+barred door, and rushed into the rickety shed.
+A man lay on the earthen floor, breath and
+blood struggling together in his gaping mouth.
+As they gathered about him, the Captain
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know this man, Captain Strong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wilkes Booth, sir."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sound of his own name half recalled
+Booth to life. He looked up at the boy who
+stood beside him and recognized him. Ferocious
+hate filled the glazing eyes. Then Wilkes
+Booth went to his eternal doom, hating to the
+end.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he dead?" said the Captain, turning to a
+major of the medical service, who had galloped
+beside Tom on that fierce ride of the avengers.
+A big, bearded man knelt beside the body of
+Wilkes Booth, put his finger where the pulse
+had been and laid his hand where the heart had
+once beat.</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead," answered Major Hans Rolf.</p>
+
+<p>His body was thrust somewhere into the earth
+he had disgraced or else was flung, weighted
+with stones, into the river, all the flood tides of
+which could not wash away the black guilt of
+him. No man knows where the body of Wilkes
+Booth was buried.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"The king is dead! Long live the king!"</p>
+
+<p>When Tom rode sadly up Pennsylvania Avenue,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+with a crape-laden flag at half-mast over
+the Capitol, glad for the stern justice that had
+been dealt out to the murderer he loathed, but
+bowed down with grief for the murdered President
+he had loved, Abraham Lincoln was no
+longer President of the United States. In his
+stead, our uncrowned king was Andrew Johnson,
+of Tennessee, a Southern Unionist who had
+been elected Vice President when the people
+chose Lincoln a second time for their ruler.
+Johnson had been born to grinding poverty in a
+rough community where "skule-l'arnin'" was
+not to be had. He was a grown man, earning a
+scanty livelihood as a village tailor, when his
+wife taught him to read and write. He worked
+his hard way up in life, became a man of
+prominence in his village, in his county, in his
+State, until he was chosen for Lincoln's running-mate
+as a representative Southern Unionist. He
+was of course a man of native force, but he
+sometimes drowned his mind in liquor. That
+fatal habit pulled him down. He was a failure
+as a President, though thereafter he served his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+State and his country well as a United States
+Senator from Tennessee.</p>
+
+<p>The White House was changed under its new
+ruler. John Hay, full of cheer and wit, was
+abroad as a secretary of legation. Nicolay, his
+superior officer, was a consul in Europe. The
+Lincoln family had gone West through a sorrowing
+country, bearing the body of the martyr-President
+to its burial-place in Springfield,
+Illinois. For a while some familiar faces were
+left. At first, the same Cabinet ministers served
+the new President. For some time, Uncle Moses
+had to learn no new names as he carried about
+the summons to the Cabinet meetings. But the
+visitors to the White House had changed mightily.
+Rough men from Tennessee and the other
+Border States, some of them diamonds in the
+rough, swarmed there. Lincoln had never used
+tobacco. The new-comers both smoked and
+chewed. Clouds of smoke filled the lower story
+and giant spittoons lined the corridors and invaded
+the public rooms. Gradually the Republican
+leaders ceased to wait upon the President.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Among the people who left the White House
+soon after Lincoln left it was Tom Strong. On
+a bright May morning he walked across the
+portico, where Towser was eagerly awaiting
+him and where Uncle Moses followed him.
+Unk' Mose lifted his withered black hands and
+called down blessings on the boy who had been
+his angel of freedom and had led him out of
+bondage.</p>
+
+<p>"De good Lawd bress you, Mas'r Tom. And
+de good Lawd bress dat dar wufless ol' houn'
+dawg Towser, too. 'Kase Towser, he lubs you,
+Mas'r Tom,&mdash;and so duz I," Uncle Moses shyly
+added.</p>
+
+<p>The venerable old negro and the white boy
+shook hands in a long farewell upon the steps
+of the White House. Then Tom turned away
+from the historic roof that had so long sheltered
+him and walked to the railroad station, to take
+the train for New York. Towser trotted stiffly
+by his side, trying at every step to lick his master's
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Strong studied hard at home and then
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+went to Yale, as his father had done before him.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">Towser could not go with him. The laws of
+Yale forbade it. That is one of the chief disadvantages
+of being a dog. Soon after Tom
+went to New Haven, Towser went to heaven.
+At least, let us hope he did. He deserved to do
+so. One of the human things about Martin
+Luther, the stern founder of Protestantism in
+Germany in the Sixteenth Century, was that he
+once said to a tiny girl, weeping over the death
+of her tiny dog: "Do not cry, little maid; for
+you will find your dog in heaven and he will
+have a golden tail."</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb3">THE END</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 380px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_353.jpg" width="380" height="308" alt="TOWSER" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2 pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="block1">
+
+<p class="center font20">BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font15">THE DOGS OF BOYTOWN</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Walter A. Dyer</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Author of "Pierrot, Dog of Belgium," etc.</i><br />
+
+<i>Illustrated. $1.50 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09"><i>New York Sun</i>: "It takes the cake&mdash;in this case, of course,
+a dog biscuit.... It is the most unusual book of its kind....
+Dyer enters a new field for boys ... all boys will
+want to know about Dogs&mdash;their ways and habits, their histories
+and origins.... Threaded through this wonderful
+textbook on dogs is the story of adventures of two boys ...
+shows the reader where to find out about everything from
+bench shows and the care of puppies to fleas...."</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font15">THE FIVE BABBITTS AT BONNYACRES</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Walter A. Dyer</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Illustrated, by J. O. Chapin. $1.50 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">A back-to-the-farm story for young folks based on actual
+experience. The farm problems and results are such as could
+actually occur on thousands of American farms.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font15">MAGIC PICTURES OF THE LONG AGO</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Anna Curtis Chandler</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>With some forty illustrations. $1.30 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">Each recounts the youth and something of the later life of
+some striking character in art, history, or literature, and is
+made very vivid by reproductions of famous pictures, etc.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font15">BLUE HERON COVE</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Fannie Lee McKinney</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Author of "Nora-Square-Accounts."</i></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Illustrated. $1.35 net</i><br /></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">Tells how Blue Heron Island and its seafaring folks
+change "a little German countess in white satin" into "a
+real, authentic American girl."</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font15">THE GUN BOOK</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Thomas H. McKee</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Profusely illustrated. $1.60 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">A book about guns for boys of all ages. The history is
+accurate; boys will remember the anecdotes; and the technical
+parts are sensibly adapted to show "just how it works."</span></p>
+
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:2.0em">COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.9em">FOR BOYS <i>By CHARLES P. BURTON</i></span></p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="p2 center font13"><b>THE BOYS OF BOB'S HILL</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">George A. Williams</span>. 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p>A lively story of a party of boys in a small New England
+town.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"A first-rate juvenile ... a real story for the live human boy&mdash;any
+boy will read it eagerly to the end ... quite thrilling adventures."&mdash;<i>Chicago
+Record-Herald</i>.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE BOB'S CAVE BOYS</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Victor Perard</span>. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="font08 pmb2">"It would be hard to find anything better in the literature of New
+England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, human boys, full of fun,
+into trouble and out again, but frank, honest, and clean."&mdash;<i>The Congregationalist.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE BOB'S HILL BRAVES</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">H. S. DeLay</span>. 12mo. $1.35 net.</span></p>
+
+<p>The "Bob's Hill" band spend a vacation in Illinois, where
+they play at being Indians, hear thrilling tales of real Indians,
+and learn much frontier history. A history of especial interest
+to "Boy Scouts."</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"Merry youngsters. Capital. Thrilling tales of the red men and
+explorers. These healthy red-blooded, New England boys."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia
+Press.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE BOY SCOUTS OF BOB'S HILL</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Gordon Grant</span>. 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The "Bob's Hill" band organizes a Boy Scouts band and
+have many adventures. Mr. Burton brings in tales told around
+a camp-fire of La Salle, Joliet, the Louisiana Purchase, and
+the Northwestern Reservation.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>CAMP BOB'S HILL</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Gordon Grant</span>. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">A tale of Boy Scouts on their summer vacation.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE RAVEN PATROL OF BOB'S HILL</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Gordon Grant</span>. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The account of a camping trip of the Raven Patrol of the
+Boy Scouts to the Massachusetts coast, with much real boy
+fun and wholesome adventure.</p>
+
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+<p class="center font20">BY ALICE CALHOUN HAINES</p>
+
+<p class="center font15"><i>For Young Folks from 9 to 16 Years old.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>PARTNERS FOR FAIR</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">With illustrations by <span class="smcap">Faith Avery</span>. $1.35 net</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">A story full of action, not untinged by pathos, of a boy
+and his faithful dog and their wanderings after the poor-house
+burns down. They have interesting experiences with a
+traveling circus; the boy is thrown from a moving train, and
+has a lively time with the Mexican Insurrectos, from whom he
+is rescued by our troops.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Francis Day</span>. 300 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p>A family story of city life. Lightened by humor and an
+airship.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="font08">"Among the very best of books for young folks. Appeals especially
+to girls."&mdash;<i>Wisconsin List for Township Libraries.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="font08">"Promises to be perennially popular. A family of happy, healthy,
+inventive, bright children make the best of restricted conditions and
+prove themselves masters of circumstances."&mdash;<i>Christian Register.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"Sparkles with cleverness and humor."&mdash;<i>Brooklyn Eagle.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>COCK-A-DOODLE HILL</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+A sequel to the above. Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Francis Day</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="center font08">296 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p>"Cockle-a-doodle Hill" is where the Dudley Graham family
+went to live when they left New York, and here Ernie started
+her chicken-farm, with one solitary fowl, "Hennerietta." The
+pictures of country scenes and the adventures and experiences
+of this household of young people are very life-like.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"No better book for young people than 'The Luck of the Dudley
+Grahams' was offered last year. 'Cock-a-Doodle Hill' is another of
+similar qualities."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Press.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+<p class="center font20">By ALFRED BISHOP MASON</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="p2 center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, WASHINGTON'S SCOUT</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">A story of adventure. The principal characters, a boy and
+a trapper, are in the Revolutionary army from the defeat at
+Brooklyn to the victory at Yorktown.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, BOY-CAPTAIN</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Tom Strong and a sturdy old trapper take part in such
+stirring events following the Revolution as the Indian raid
+with Crawford and a flat-boat voyage from Pittsburgh to
+New Orleans, etc.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, JUNIOR</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The story of the son of Tom Strong in the young United
+States. Tom sees the duel between Alexander Hamilton and
+Aaron Burr; is in Washington during the presidency of Jefferson;
+is on board of the "Clermont" on its first trip, and
+serves in the United States Navy during the War of 1812.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, THIRD</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Tom Strong, Junior's son helps his father build the first railroad
+in the United States and then goes with Kit Carson on
+the Lewis and Clarke Expedition.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Serving under President Lincoln, the fourth Tom Strong becomes
+an actor in the most stirring events of the Civil War.</p>
+
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="center font14">STANDARD CYCLOPÆDIAS FOR YOUNG OR OLD</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font16">CHAMPLIN'S</p>
+
+<p class="center font20"><span class="smcap">Young Folks' Cyclopædias</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font12">By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN</p>
+
+<p class="center font07"><i>Late Associate Editor of the American Cyclopædia</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Bound in substantial red buckram. Each volume complete
+in itself and sold separately. 12mo, $3.00 per volume, net.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>COMMON THINGS</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">New, Enlarged Edition, 850 pp. Profusely Illustrated</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"A book which will be of permanent value to any boy or girl to
+whom it may be given, and which fills a place in the juvenile library,
+never, so far as I know, supplied before."&mdash;<i>Susan Coolidge.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>PERSONS AND PLACES</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">New, Up-to-Date Edition, 985 pp. Over 375 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"We know copies of the work to which their young owners turn
+instantly for information upon every theme about which they have
+questions to ask. More than this, we know that some of these copies
+are read daily, as well as consulted; that their owners turn the leaves
+as they might those of a fairy book, reading intently articles of which
+they had not thought before seeing them, and treating the book simply
+as one capable of furnishing the rarest entertainment in exhaustless
+quantities.&mdash;<i>N. Y. Evening Post.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>LITERATURE AND ART</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">604 pp. 270 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"Few poems, plays, novels, pictures, statues, or fictitious characters
+that children&mdash;or most of their parents&mdash;of our day are likely to inquire
+about will be missed here. Mr. Champlin's judgment seems unusually
+sound."&mdash;<i>The Nation.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>GAMES AND SPORTS</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">John D. Champlin</span> and <span class="smcap">Arthur Bostwick</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Revised Edition, 784 pp. 900 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"Should form a part of every juvenile library, whether public or
+private."&mdash;<i>The Independent.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>NATURAL HISTORY</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">John D. Champlin</span>, assisted by <span class="smcap">Frederick A. Lucas</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">725 pp. Over 800 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"Here, in compact and attractive form, is valuable and reliable information
+on every phase of natural history, on every item of interest
+to the student. Invaluable to the teacher and school, and should be on
+every teacher's desk for ready reference, and the children should be
+taught to go to this volume for information useful and interesting."&mdash;<i>Journal
+of Education.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font16">
+HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</p>
+<p class="center font10 pmb1">
+PUBLISHERS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44132 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #44132 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44132)
diff --git a/old/44132-8.txt b/old/44132-8.txt
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+Project Gutenberg's Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason
+
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+Title: Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout
+
+Author: Alfred Bishop Mason
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2013 [EBook #44132]
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+
+                 STORIES OF ADVENTURE IN THE
+
+                     YOUNG UNITED STATES
+
+                  _By ALFRED BISHOP MASON_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                     WASHINGTON'S SCOUT
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                         BOY-CAPTAIN
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                           JUNIOR
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                            THIRD
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+                   Publishers      New York
+
+
+
+
+        [Illustration: ST. GAUDENS' STATUE OF LINCOLN]
+
+
+
+
+                          TOM STRONG,
+                        LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+             _A STORY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE
+                 TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS_
+
+
+                               By
+
+                      ALFRED BISHOP MASON
+
+    Author of "Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom Strong,
+            Boy-Captain," Tom Strong, Junior," and
+                      "Tom Strong, Third"
+
+
+                          ILLUSTRATED
+
+                         [Illustration]
+
+                           NEW YORK
+                    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+                             1919
+
+
+
+
+                       COPYRIGHT, 1919
+                             BY
+                   HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+
+                 The Quinn & Boden Company
+                     BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+                 RAHWAY         NEW JERSEY
+
+
+
+
+                  DEDICATED BY PERMISSION
+
+                             TO
+
+                     THEODORE ROOSEVELT
+
+                   INSPIRER OF PATRIOTISM,
+                      A GREAT AMERICAN
+
+
+
+
+                          OYSTER BAY
+                       LONG ISLAND, N.Y.
+
+                                                 August 31st, 1917.
+
+  Dear Mr. Mason:
+
+  All right, I shall break
+  my rule and have you dedicate that book to
+  me. Thank you!
+
+                              Faithfully yours,
+
+[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt signature]
+
+  Mr. Alfred B. Mason,
+  University Club,
+  New York City.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Many of the persons and personages who appear
+upon the pages of this book have already
+lived, some in history and some in the pages of
+"Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom
+Strong, Boy-Captain," "Tom Strong, Junior,"
+or "Tom Strong, Third." Those who wish to
+know the full story of the four Tom Strongs,
+great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son,
+should read those books, too.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                         CHAPTER I
+                                                             PAGE
+
+  TOM RIDES IN WESTERN MARYLAND--HALTED BY ARMED
+  MEN--JOHN BROWN--THE ATTACK UPON HARPER'S FERRY--THE
+  FIGHT--JOHN BROWN'S SOUL GOES MARCHING ON                     3
+
+
+                         CHAPTER II
+
+  OUR WAR WITH MEXICO--KIT CARSON AND HIS LAWYER, ABE
+  LINCOLN--TOM GOES TO LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION--S. F. B.
+  MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE TELEGRAPH--TOM BACK IN
+  WASHINGTON                                                   22
+
+
+                         CHAPTER III
+
+  CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS--MR. STRONG GOES TO RUSSIA--TOM
+  GOES TO LIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE--BULL RUN--"STONEWALL"
+  JACKSON--GEO. B. MCCLELLAN--TOM STRONG, SECOND-LIEUTENANT,
+  U. S. A.--THE BATTLE OF THE "MERRIMAC" AND THE "MONITOR"     40
+
+
+                         CHAPTER IV
+
+  TOM GOES WEST--WILKES BOOTH HUNTS HIM--DR. HANS ROLF
+  SAVES HIM--HE DELIVERS DESPATCHES TO GENERAL GRANT           71
+
+
+                         CHAPTER V
+
+  INSIDE THE CONFEDERATE LINES--"SAIREY" WARNS TOM--OLD MAN
+  TOMBLIN'S "SETTLEMINT"--STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE--WILKES
+  BOOTH GIVES THE ALARM--A WILD DASH FOR THE UNION LINES       90
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VI
+
+  TOM UP A TREE--DID THE CONFEDERATE OFFICER SEE HIM?--THE
+  FUGITIVE SLAVE GUIDES HIM--BUYING A BOAT IN THE
+  DARK--ADRIFT IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY                         117
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VII
+
+  TOWSER FINDS THE FUGITIVES--TOWSER BRINGS UNCLE
+  MOSES--MR. IZZARD AND HIS YANKEE OVERSEER, JAKE
+  JOHNSON--TOM IS PULLED DOWN THE CHIMNEY--HOW UNCLE
+  MOSES CHOKED THE OVERSEER--THE FLIGHT OF THE FOUR           129
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VIII
+
+  LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF
+  LINCOLN--THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS
+  NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA
+  FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE RUSSIAN FLEET
+  COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER                      160
+
+
+                         CHAPTER IX
+
+  TOM GOES TO VICKSBURG--MORGAN'S RAID--GEN. BASIL W. DUKE
+  CAPTURES TOM--GETTYSBURG--GEN. ROBERT E. LEE GIVES TOM
+  HIS BREAKFAST--IN LIBBY PRISON--LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT
+  GETTYSBURG                                                  182
+
+
+                         CHAPTER X
+
+  TOM IS HUNGRY--HE LEARNS TO "SPOON" BY SQUADS--THE BULLET
+  AT THE WINDOW--WORKING ON THE TUNNEL--"RAT HELL"--THE
+  RISK OF THE ROLL-CALL--WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE JOHNSON,
+  CONFEDERATE SPY--TOM IN LIBBY PRISON--HANS ROLF ATTENDS
+  HIM--HANS REFUSES TO ESCAPE--THE FLIGHT THROUGH THE
+  TUNNEL--FREE, BUT HOW TO STAY SO?                           213
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XI
+
+  TOM HIDES IN A RIVER BANK--EATS RAW FISH--JIM GRAYSON
+  AIDS HIM--DOWN THE JAMES RIVER ON A TREE--PASSING THE
+  PATROL BOATS--CANNONADED--THE END OF THE VOYAGE             249
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XII
+
+  TOWSER WELCOMES TOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE--LINCOLN
+  RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT--GRANT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--SHERMAN
+  MARCHES FROM ATLANTA TO THE SEA--TOM ON GRANT'S
+  STAFF--FIVE FORKS--FALL OF RICHMOND--HANS ROLF FREED--BOB
+  SAVES TOM FROM CAPTURE--TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO
+  ACTION--LEE SURRENDERS--TOM STRONG, BREVET-CAPTAIN,
+  U. S. A.                                                    265
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XIII
+
+  THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN                        307
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XIV
+
+  TOM HUNTS WILKES BOOTH--THE END OF THE MURDERER--ANDREW
+  JOHNSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES--TOM AND TOWSER
+  GO HOME                                                     315
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN                                  _Frontispiece_
+    St. Gaudens Statue, Lincoln Park, Chicago
+                                                          PAGE
+
+  JOHN BROWN                                                   10
+
+  THE ATTACK UPON THE ENGINE HOUSE                             17
+
+  BATTLE OF THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC"                   66
+
+  ADMIRAL FARRAGUT                                             72
+
+  MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS                                   85
+
+  THE LOCOMOTIVE TOM HELPED TO STEAL                          106
+
+  TOWSER                                                      157
+
+  GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES                               191
+
+  ARLINGTON                                                   198
+
+  GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER                              201
+
+  LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR                                  214
+
+  FIGHTING THE RATS                                           224
+
+  LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL                                 229
+
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1864                                     269
+
+  GEN. W. T. SHERMAN                                          272
+    St. Gaudens Statue, Central Park Plaza, New York
+
+  BOB                                                         275
+
+  GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN                                     278
+    Sheridan Square Statue, Washington, D. C.
+
+  TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO ACTION                             292
+
+  THE MCLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE                     299
+
+  LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT                                     302
+
+  GEN. U. S. GRANT                                            304
+
+
+                         MAP
+
+  EASTERN HALF OF UNITED STATES                                 2
+
+
+
+
+                      TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE EASTERN UNITED STATES
+               (Showing places mentioned in this book)]
+
+
+
+
+                      TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+     TOM RIDES IN WESTERN MARYLAND--HALTED BY ARMED MEN--JOHN BROWN--THE
+     ATTACK UPON HARPER'S FERRY--THE FIGHT--JOHN BROWN'S SOUL GOES
+     MARCHING ON.
+
+
+On a beautiful October afternoon, a man and a boy were riding along a
+country road in Western Maryland. To their left lay the Potomac, its
+waters gleaming and sparkling beneath the rays of the setting sun. To
+their right, low hills, wooded to the top, bounded the view. They had
+left the little town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, an hour before; had
+crossed to the Maryland shore of the Potomac; and now were looking for
+some country inn or friendly farmhouse where they and their horses could
+be cared for overnight.
+
+The man was Mr. Thomas Strong, once Tom Strong, third, and the boy was
+his son, another Tom Strong, the fourth to bear that name. Like the
+three before him he was brown and strong, resolute and eager, with a
+smile that told of a nature of sunshine and cheer. They were looking for
+land. Mr. Strong had inherited much land in New York City. The growth of
+that great town had given him a comfortable fortune. He had decided to
+buy a farm somewhere and a friend had told him that Western Maryland was
+almost a paradise. So it was, but this Eden had its serpent. Slavery was
+there. It was a mild and patriarchal kind of slavery, but it had left
+its black mark upon the countryside. Across the nearby Mason and Dixon's
+line, Pennsylvania was full of little farms, tilled by their owners, and
+of little towns, which reflected the wealth of the neighboring farmers.
+Western Maryland was largely owned by absentee landlords. Its towns were
+tiny villages. Its farms were few and far between. The free State was
+briskly alive; the slave State was sleepily dead.
+
+The two riders were splendidly mounted, the father on a big bay
+stallion, Billy-boy, and the son on a black Morgan mare, Jennie.
+Billy-boy was a descendant of the Billy-boy General Washington had given
+to the first Tom Strong, many years before. Jennie was a descendant of
+the Jennie Tom Strong, third, had ridden across the plains of the great
+West with John C. Fremont, "the Pathfinder," first Republican candidate
+for President of the United States.
+
+"We haven't seen a house for miles, Father," said the boy.
+
+"And we were never out of sight of a house when we were riding through
+Pennsylvania. There's always a reason for such things. Do you know the
+reason?"
+
+"No, sir. What is it?"
+
+"The sin of slavery. I don't believe I shall buy land in Maryland. I
+thought I might plant a colony of happy people here and help to make
+Maryland free, in the course of years, but I'm beginning to think the
+right kind of white people won't come where the only work is done by
+slaves. We must find soon a place to sleep. Perhaps there'll be a house
+around that next turn in the road. Billy-boy whinnies as though there
+were other horses near."
+
+Billy-boy's sharp nose had not deceived him. There were other horses
+near. Just around the turn of the road there were three horses. Three
+armed men were upon them. Father and son at the same moment saw and
+heard them.
+
+"You stop! Who be you?"
+
+The sharp command was backed by uplifted pistols. The Strongs reined in
+their horses, with indignant surprise. Who were these three farmers who
+seemed to be playing bandits upon the peaceful highroad? The boy glanced
+at his father and tried to imitate his father's cool demeanor. He felt
+the shock of surprise, but his heart beat joyously with the thought:
+"This is an adventure!" All his young life he had longed for adventures.
+He had deeply enjoyed the novel experience of the week's ride with the
+father he loved, but he had not hoped for a thrill like this.
+
+Mr. Strong eyed the three horsemen, who seemed both awkward and uneasy.
+"What does this mean?" he asked.
+
+"Now, thar ain't goin' to be no harm done you nor done bub, thar,
+neither," the leader of the highwaymen answered, with a note almost of
+pleading in his voice. "Don't you be oneasy. But you'll have to come
+with us----"
+
+"And spend Sunday with us----" broke in another man.
+
+"Shet up, Bill. I'll do all the talkin' that's needed."
+
+"That's what you do best," the other man grumbled.
+
+"Well, Tom," said Mr. Strong, turning with a smile to his son, "we seem
+to have found that place to spend the night." He faced his captors.
+"This is a queer performance of yours. You don't look like highwaymen,
+though you act like them. Do you mean to steal our horses?" he added,
+sharply.
+
+"We ain't no hoss thieves," replied the leader. "You've got to come with
+us, but you needn't be no way oneasy. You, Bill, ride ahead!"
+
+Bill turned his horse and rode ahead, Mr. Strong and Tom riding behind
+him, the other two men behind them. It was a silent ride, but not a long
+one. Within a mile, they reached a rude clearing that held a couple of
+log huts. The sun had set; the short twilight was over. Firelight
+gleamed in the larger of the huts. The prisoners were taken to it. A man
+who was lounging outside the door had a whispered talk with the three
+horsemen. Then he turned rather sheepishly; said: "Come in, mister; come
+in, bub;" opened the door, called within: "Prisoners, Captin' Smith,"
+and stepped aside as father and son entered.
+
+There were a dozen men in the big room, farmers all, apparently. They
+were all on their feet, eyeing keenly the unexpected prisoners. Their
+eyes turned to a tall man, who stepped forward and held out his hand,
+saying:
+
+"Sorry the boys had to take you in, but you and your hosses are safe and
+we won't keep you long. The day of the Lord is at hand."
+
+There was a grim murmur of approval from the other men. The Lord's day,
+as Sunday is sometimes called, was at hand, for it was then the evening
+of Saturday, October 15, 1859. But that was not what the speaker meant.
+He was not what his followers called him, Captain Smith. He was John
+Brown, of North Elba, New York, of Kansas ("bleeding Kansas" it was
+called then, when slaveholders from Missouri and freedom-lovers under
+John Brown had turned it into a battlefield), and he was soon to be John
+Brown of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, first martyr in the cause of Freedom
+on Virginian soil. To him "the day of the Lord" was the day when he was
+to attack slavery in its birthplace, the Old Dominion, and that attack
+had been set by him for Sunday, October 16. His plan was to seize
+Harper's Ferry, where there was a United States arsenal, arm the slaves
+he thought would come to his standard from all Virginia, and so compass
+the fall of the Slave Power. A wild plan, an impossible plan, the plan
+of an almost crazy fanatic, and a splendid dream, a dream for the sake
+of which he was glad to give his heroic life.
+
+He had rented this Maryland farm in July, giving his name as Smith and
+saying he expected to breed horses. By twos and threes his followers had
+joined him in this solitary spot, until now there were twenty-one of
+them. The few folk scattered through the countryside had begun to be
+suspicious of this strange gathering of men. All sorts of wild stories
+circulated, though none was as wild as the truth. The men themselves
+were tense under the strain of the long wait. They feared discovery and
+attack. For the three days before "the day of the Lord" they had
+patrolled the one road, looking out for soldiers or for spies. Tom and
+his father had been their sole captives.
+
+John Brown was one of Nature's noblemen and among his friends in
+Massachusetts and New York were some of the foremost men of their time,
+so he had learned to know a real man when he met one. He soon found
+out that Mr. Strong was a real man. He told him of his plans, and urged
+him to join in the projected foray on Harper's Ferry. But when Mr.
+Strong refused and tried to show him how mad his project was, the fires
+of the fanatic blazed within him.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BROWN]
+
+"Did not Joshua bring down the walls of Jericho with a ram's horn?" he
+shouted. "And with twenty armed men cannot I pull down the walls of the
+citadel of Slavery? Are you a true man or not? Will you join me or not?
+Answer me yes or no."
+
+"No," was the response, quiet but firm.
+
+"You shall join me; you and your boy," thundered the crusader, hammering
+the table with his mighty fist. "Here, Jim, put these people under guard
+and keep them until we start."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tom and his father were well-treated, but they were kept under guard
+until the next night and were then taken along by John Brown's "army,"
+which trudged off into the darkness afoot, while Billy-boy and Jennie
+and the other horses in the corral whinnied uneasily, sensing, as
+animals do, the stir of a departure which is to leave them behind. In
+the center of the little column the two captives marched the five miles
+to Harper's Ferry and started across the bridge that led to that tiny
+town.
+
+A brave man, one Patrick Hoggins, was night-watchman of the bridge. He
+heard the trampling of many feet upon the plank-flooring. He hurried
+towards the strange sound.
+
+"Halt!" shouted somebody in the column.
+
+"Now I didn't know what 'halt' mint then," Patrick testified afterwards,
+"anny more than a hog knows about a holiday."
+
+But he had seen armed men and he turned to run and give an alarm. A
+bullet was swifter than he, but not swifter than his voice. He fell, but
+his shouts had alarmed the town. There were two or three watchmen at the
+arsenal. They came forward, only to be made prisoners. The few citizens
+who had been aroused could do nothing. The "army" seized the arsenal
+without difficulty.
+
+Five miles from Harper's Ferry lived Col. Lewis W. Washington,
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, great-grand-nephew of another
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, George Washington. At midnight,
+Colonel Washington was awakened by a blow upon his bedroom door. It
+swung open and the light of a burning torch showed the astonished
+Southerner four armed men, one of them a negro, who bade him rise and
+dress. They were a patrol sent out by Brown. Their leader, Stevens,
+asked:
+
+"Haven't you a pistol Lafayette gave George Washington and a sword
+Frederick the Great sent him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Downstairs."
+
+His four captors tramped downstairs with him. Pistol and sword were
+found.
+
+"I'll take the pistol," said Stevens. "You hand the sword to this
+negro."
+
+John Brown wore this sword during the fighting that followed. It is now
+in the possession of the State of New York. While its being sent George
+Washington by Frederick the Great is doubtful--the story runs that the
+Prussian king sent with it a message "From the oldest general to the
+best general"--its being surrendered by Lewis Washington to the negro is
+true.
+
+Lewis was then on the staff of the Governor of Virginia, and had
+acquired in this way his title of Colonel. He was put into his own
+carriage. His slaves, few in number, were bundled into a four-horse
+farm-wagon. They were told to come and fight for their freedom. Too
+scared to resist, they came as they were bidden to do, but they did no
+fighting. At Harper's Ferry they and their fellow-slaves, seized at a
+neighboring plantation, escaped back to slavery at the first possible
+moment. Not a single negro voluntarily joined John Brown. He had
+expected a widespread slave insurrection. There was nothing of the sort.
+By Monday morning he knew he had failed, failed utterly.
+
+Before Monday's sun set, Harper's Ferry was full of soldiers, United
+States regulars and State militia. Brown, his men and his white
+captives, eleven of the latter, were shut up in the fire-engine house of
+the armory. The militia refused to charge the engine-house, saying that
+this might cost the captives their lives. Many of them were drunk; all
+of them were undisciplined; their commander did not know how to command.
+The situation changed with the arrival of the United States Marines led
+by Lieut.-Col. Robert E. Lee, afterwards the famous chief of the army of
+the Confederate States.
+
+By this time Tom was beginning to think he had had enough adventure. He
+had enjoyed that silent tramp through the darkness beside his father. He
+had enjoyed it the more because they were both prisoners-of-war. Being a
+prisoner was an amazingly thrilling thing. He was sorry when brave
+Patrick Hoggins was shot and glad to know the wound was slight, but
+sharing in the skirmish, even in the humble capacity of a captive, had
+excited the boy immensely. Now that there was almost constant firing
+back and forth, when two or three wounded men were lying on the floor,
+and when his father and he and Colonel Washington were perforce risking
+their lives in the engine-house, with nothing to gain and everything to
+lose, and when scanty sleep and little food had tired out even his stout
+little body, Tom felt quite ready to go home and have his adored mother
+"mother" him. His father saw the homesickness in his eyes.
+
+"Steady, my son," said Mr. Strong. "This won't last long. No stray
+bullet is apt to reach this corner, where Captain Brown has put us. The
+only other danger is when the regulars rush in here, but unless they
+mistake us for the raiders, there'll be no harm done then. Steady." He
+looked through a bullet-hole in the boarded-up window and added: "Here
+comes a flag of truce. Listen."
+
+The scattering fire died away. The hush was broken by a commanding
+voice, demanding surrender.
+
+"There will be no surrender," quoth grim John Brown.
+
+At dawn of Tuesday, two files of United States Marines, using a long
+ladder as a battering ram, attacked the door. It broke at the second
+blow. The marines poured in, shooting and striking. The battle was over.
+John Brown, wounded and beaten to the floor, lay there among his men.
+The captives were free. Their captors had changed places with them.
+
+[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE]
+
+Colonel Washington took Mr. Strong and Tom home with him, for a rest
+after the strain of the captivity. He was much interested when he found
+out that Tom's great-grandfather had visited General Washington at Mount
+Vernon and Tom was intensely interested in seeing the home and home life
+of a rich Southern planter. The Colonel asked his guests to stay until
+after the trial of their recent jailer. They did so and Mr. Strong,
+after some hesitation, decided to take Tom to the trial and afterwards
+to the final scene of all. He wrote to his wife: "Life is rich, my dear,
+in proportion to the number of our experiences and their depth.
+Ordinarily, I would not dream of taking Tom to see a criminal hung. But
+John Brown is no ordinary criminal. He is wrong, but he is heroic. He
+faces his fate--for of course they will hang him--like a Roman. I think
+it will do Tom good to see a hero die."
+
+Whether or no his father was right, Tom was given these experiences. He
+sat beside his father and Colonel Washington at the trial. He heard them
+testify. He noted the angry stir of the mob in the court-room when Mr.
+Strong made no secret of his admiration for the great criminal.
+
+Robert E. Lee, who captured Brown, said: "I am glad we did not have to
+kill him, for I believe he is an honest, conscientious old man."
+Virginia, Lee's State, thought she did have to kill this invader of her
+soil and disturber of her slaves.
+
+November 2, John Brown was sentenced to be hung December 2. The next day
+he added this postscript to a letter he had already written to his wife
+and children:
+
+     "P.S. Yesterday Nov. 2d I was sentenced to be hanged on Decem 2d
+     next. Do not grieve on my account. I am still quite cheerful. God
+     bless you all."
+
+Northern friends offered to try to help him to break jail. He put aside
+the offer with the calm statement: "I am fully persuaded that I am worth
+inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."
+
+December 2, John Brown started on his last journey. He sat upon his
+coffin in a wagon and as the two horses paced slowly from jail to
+gallows, he looked far afield, over river and valley and hill, and said:
+"This _is_ a beautiful country." He was sure he was upon the threshold
+of a far more beautiful country. The gallows were guarded by a militia
+company from Richmond, Virginia. In its ranks, rifle on shoulder, stood
+Wilkes Booth, a dark and sinister figure, who was to win eternal infamy
+by assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Beside the militia was a trim lot of
+cadets, the fine boys of the Virginia Military Institute. With them was
+their professor, Thomas J. Jackson, "Stonewall" Jackson, one of the
+heroic figures upon the Southern side of our Civil War.
+
+When the end came, Stonewall Jackson's lips moved with a prayer for John
+Brown's soul; Colonel Washington's and Mr. Strong's eyes were wet; and
+Tom Strong sobbed aloud. Albany fired a hundred guns in John Brown's
+honor as he hung from the gallows. In 1859 United States troops captured
+him that he might die. In 1899 United States troops fired a volley of
+honor over his grave in North Elba that the memory of him might live.
+Victor Hugo called him "an apostle and a hero." Emerson dubbed him
+"saint." Oswald Garrison Villard closes his fine biography of John Brown
+with these words: "Wherever there is battling against injustice and
+oppression, the Charlestown gallows that became a cross will help men to
+live and die."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     OUR WAR WITH MEXICO--KIT CARSON AND HIS LAWYER, ABE LINCOLN--TOM
+     GOES TO LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION--S. F. B. MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE
+     TELEGRAPH--TOM BACK IN WASHINGTON.
+
+
+In 1846, Mr. Strong, long enough out of Yale to have begun business and
+to have married, had heard his country's call and had helped her fight
+her unjust war with Mexico. General Grant, who saw his first fighting in
+this war and who fought well, says of it in his Memoirs that it was "one
+of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
+
+Much more important things were happening here then than the Mexican
+War. In 1846 Elias Howe invented the sewing-machine. In 1847 Robert Hoe
+invented the rotary printing press. Great inventions like these are the
+real milestones of the path of progress.
+
+Mr. Strong served as a private in the ranks throughout the war. He
+refused a commission offered him for gallantry in action because he knew
+he did not know enough then to command men. It is a rare man who knows
+that he does not know. His regiment was mustered out of service at the
+end of the war in New Orleans. The young soldier decided to go home by
+way of St. Louis because of his memories of that old town in the days
+when he had followed Fremont. He went again to the Planters' Hotel and
+there by lucky accident he met again the famous frontiersman Kit Carson.
+Carson was away from the plains he loved because of a lawsuit. A sharp
+speculator was trying to take away from him some land he had bought
+years ago near the town, which the growth of the town had now made quite
+valuable. Carson was heartily glad to see his "Tom-boy" once more. He
+insisted upon his staying several days, took him to court to hear the
+trial, and introduced him to his lawyer, a tall, gaunt, slab-sided,
+slouching, plain person from the neighboring State of Illinois.
+Everybody who knew him called him "Abe." His last name was Lincoln.
+
+"I'd heard so much of Abe Lincoln," said Carson, "that when this
+speculator who's trying to do me hired all the big lawyers in St. Louis,
+I just went over to Springfield, Illinois, to get Abe. When I saw him I
+rather hesitated about hiring such a looking skeesicks, but when I came
+to talk with him, he did the hesitating. I asked him what he'd charge
+for defending a land-suit in St. Louis. He told me. I sez: 'All right.
+You're hired. You're my lawyer.'
+
+"'Wait a bit,' sez he.
+
+"'What for?' sez I. 'I'll pay what you said.'
+
+"'That ain't all,' sez he. 'Before I take your money, Kit, I've got to
+know your side of the case is the right side.'
+
+"'What difference does that make to a lawyer?' sez I.
+
+"'It makes a heap o' difference to this lawyer,' sez he. 'You've got to
+prove your case to me before I'll try to prove it to the court. If you
+ain't in the right, Abe Lincoln won't be your lawyer.'
+
+"Darned if he didn't make me prove I was in the right, too, before he'd
+touch my money. No wonder they call him 'Honest Abe.'"
+
+It took Lincoln a couple of days to win Kit Carson's suit. During those
+two days young Strong saw much of him and came to admire the sterling
+qualities of the man. Lincoln, too, liked this young college-bred fellow
+from the East, unaffected, well-mannered, friendly, and gay. There was
+the beginning of a friendship between the Westerner and the Easterner.
+Thereafter they wrote each other occasionally. When Lincoln served his
+one brief term in Congress, Mr. Strong spent a week with him in
+Washington and asked him (but in vain) to visit him in New York.
+
+So, when this new giant came out of the West and Illinois gave her
+greatest son to the country, as its President, Mr. Strong went to
+Washington to see him inaugurated and took with him his boy Tom, as his
+father had taken him in 1829 to Andrew Jackson's inauguration.
+
+Washington was still a great shabby village, not much more attractive
+March 4, 1861, than it was March 4, 1829. The crowds at the two
+inaugurations were much alike. In both cases the favorite son of the
+West had won at the polls. In both cases the West swamped Washington.
+But in 1829 there was jubilant victory in the air. In 1861 there was
+somber anxiety. Seven Southern States had "seceded" and had formed
+another government. Other States were upon the brink of secession. Was
+the great democratic experiment of the world about to end in failure?
+Would there be civil war? What was this unknown man out of the West
+going to do? Could he do anything?
+
+Mr. Strong and Tom, with a few thousand other people, went to the
+reception at the White House on the afternoon of March fourth. President
+Lincoln was laboriously shaking hands with everybody in the long line.
+Almost every one of them seemed to be asking him for something. He was
+weary long before Tom and his father reached him, but his face
+brightened as he saw them. A boy always meant a great deal to Abraham
+Lincoln. "There _may_ be so much in a boy," he used to say. He greeted
+the two warmly.
+
+"Howdy, Strong? Glad to see you. This your boy? Howdy, sonny?"
+
+Tom did not enjoy being called "sonny" much more than he had enjoyed
+being called "bub," but he was glad to have this big man with a woman's
+smile call him anything. He wrung the President's offered hand,
+stammered something shyly, and was passing on with his father, when
+Lincoln said:
+
+"Hold on a minute, Strong. You haven't asked me for anything."
+
+"I've nothing to ask for, Mr. President. I'm not here to beg for an
+office."
+
+"Good gracious! You're the only man in Washington of that kind, I
+believe. Come to see me tomorrow morning, will you?"
+
+"Most gladly, sir."
+
+The impatient man behind them pushed them on. They heard him begin to
+plead: "Say, Abe, you know I carried Mattoon for you; I'd like to be
+Minister to England."
+
+Boys and girls always appealed to the President's heart. When there were
+talks of vital import in his office, little Tad Lincoln often sat upon
+his father's knee. At a White House reception, Charles A. Dana once put
+his little girl in a corner, whence she saw the show. The father tells
+the story. When the reception was over, he said to Lincoln: "'I have a
+little girl here who wants to shake hands with you.' He went over to her
+and took her up and kissed her and talked to her. She will never forget
+it if she lives to be a thousand years old."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning Tom followed his father into a room on the second floor
+of the White House. Lincoln sat at a flat-topped desk, piled high with
+papers. He was in his shirt-sleeves, with shabby black trousers, coarse
+stockings, and worn slippers. He stretched out his long legs, swung his
+long arms behind his head, and came straight to the point.
+
+"Strong, I'm going to need you. Your country is going to need you. I
+want you to go straight home and fix up your business affairs so you can
+come whenever I call you. Will you do it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+President and citizen rose and shook hands upon it. The citizen was
+about to go when Tom, with his heart in his mouth, but with a fine
+resolve in his heart, suddenly said:
+
+"Oh, Father! Oh, Mr. President----"
+
+Then he stopped short, too shy to speak, but Lincoln stooped down to
+him, patted his young head and said with infinite kindness in his tone:
+
+"What is it, Tom? Tell me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. President, I'm only a boy, but can't I do something for my
+country, right now? Can't I stay here? Father will let me, won't you,
+Father?"
+
+Mr. Strong shook his head. The boy's face fell. It brightened again when
+Lincoln told him:
+
+"When I send for your father, I'll send for you, Tom."
+
+With that promise ringing in his ears, Tom went home to New York City.
+Home was a fine brick house at the northeast corner of Washington Place
+and Greene Street. The house was a twin brother of those that still
+stand on the north side of Washington Square. Tom had been born in it.
+Not long after his birth, his parents had given a notable dinner in it
+to a notable man. Tom had been present at the dinner, and he remembered
+nothing about it. As he was at the table but a few minutes, in the arms
+of his nurse, and less than a year old, it is not surprising that he did
+not remember it. His proud young mother had exhibited him to a group of
+money magnates, gathered at Mr. Strong's shining mahogany table for
+dinner, at the fashionable hour of three P.M., to see another young
+thing, almost as young as Tom. This other young thing was the
+telegraph, just invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, at the University of the
+City of New York, which then filled half of the eastern boundary of
+Washington Square.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Tom waited in the old brick house and played in Washington Square,
+history was making itself. Pope Walker, first Secretary of War of the
+Confederate States, sitting in his office at the Alabama Statehouse at
+Montgomery, the first Confederate capital, said: "It is time to sprinkle
+some blood in the face of the people." So he telegraphed the fateful
+order to fire on Fort Sumter, held by United States troops in Charleston
+harbor. Sumter fell. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Virginia, the
+famous Old Dominion, "the Mother of Presidents"--Washington, Jefferson,
+Madison, and Monroe were Virginians--seceded. The war between the States
+began.
+
+Mr. Strong found in his mail one day this letter:
+
+                                           "The Executive Mansion,
+                                           Washington, April 17, 1861.
+
+      Sir:
+
+      The President bids me say that he would like to have you come to
+      Washington at once and bring your son Tom with you.
+
+                                            Respectfully,
+
+                                                             JOHN HAY,
+                                         Assistant Private Secretary."
+
+Tom and his father started at once, as the President bade them. At
+Jersey City, they found the train they had expected to take had been
+pre-empted by the Sixth Massachusetts, a crack militia regiment of the
+Old Bay State, which was hurrying to Washington in the hope of getting
+there before the rebels did. The cars were crammed with soldiers. A
+sentry stood at every door. No civilian need apply for passage. However,
+a civilian with a letter from Lincoln's secretary bidding him also hurry
+to Washington was in a class by himself. With the help of an officer,
+the father and son ran the blockade of bayonets and started southward,
+the only civilians upon the train. It was packed to suffocation with
+soldiers. Mr. Strong sat with the regimental officers, but he let Tom
+roam at will from car to car. How the boy enjoyed it. The shining
+gun-barrels fascinated him. He joined a group of merry men, who hailed
+him with a shout:
+
+"Here's the youngest recruit of all."
+
+"Are you really going to shoot rebels?" asked Tom.
+
+"If we must," said Jack Saltonstall, breaking the silence the question
+brought, "but I hope it won't come to that."
+
+"The war will be over in three months," Gordon Abbott prophesied.
+
+"Pooh, it will never begin,--and I'm sorry for that," said Jim Casey,
+"I'd like to have some real fighting."
+
+Within about three hours, Jim Casey was to see fighting and was to die
+for his country. The beginning of bloodshed in our Civil War was in the
+streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, just eighty-six years to a day
+from the beginning of bloodshed in our Revolution on Lexington Common.
+Massachusetts and British blood in 1775; Massachusetts and Maryland
+blood in 1861.
+
+When the long train stopped at the wooden car-shed which was then the
+Baltimore station, the regiment left the cars, fell into line and
+started to march the mile or so of cobblestone streets to the other
+station where the train for Washington awaited it. The line of march was
+through as bad a slum as an American city could then show. Grog-shops
+swarmed in it and about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of Baltimore.
+They were known locally as "plug-uglies." Like the New York "Bowery
+boys" of that time, they affected a sort of uniform, black dress
+trousers thrust into boot-tops and red flannel shirts. Far too poor to
+own slaves themselves, they had gathered here to fight the slave-owners'
+battles, to keep the Massachusetts troops from "polluting the soil of
+Maryland," as their leaders put it, really to keep them from saving
+Washington.
+
+A roar of jeers and taunts and insults hailed the head of the marching
+column. Tom was startled by it. He turned to his father. The two were
+walking side by side, in the center of the column, between two companies
+of the militia. He found his father had already turned to him.
+
+"Keep close to me, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
+
+The storm of words that beat upon them increased. At the next corner,
+stones took the place of words. The mob surged alongside the soldiers,
+swearing, stoning, striking, finally stabbing and shooting. The Sixth
+Massachusetts showed admirable self-restraint, which the "plug-uglies"
+thought was cowardice. They pressed closer. With a mighty rush, five
+thousand rioters broke the line of the thousand troops. The latter were
+forced into small groups, many of them without an officer. Each group
+had to act for itself. Tom and his father found themselves part of a
+tiny force of about twenty men, beset upon every side by desperadoes now
+mad with liquor and with the lust of killing. Jack Saltonstall took
+command by common consent. Calmly he faced hundreds of rioters.
+
+"Forward, march!"
+
+As he uttered the words, he pitched forward, shot through the chest. A
+giant "plug-ugly" bellowed with triumph over his successful shot, yelled
+"kill 'em all!" and led the mob upon them. But Mr. Strong had snatched
+Saltonstall's gun as it fell from his nerveless hands, had leveled and
+aimed it, and had shouted "fire!" to willing ears. A score of guns rang
+out. The mob-leader whirled about and dropped. Half-a-dozen other
+"plug-uglies" lay about him. This section of the mob broke and ran. Some
+of them fired as they ran, and Jim Casey's life went out of him.
+
+"Take this gun, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
+
+The boy took it, reloading it as he marched, while his sturdy father
+lifted the wounded Saltonstall from the stony street and staggered
+forward with the body in his arms. Casey and two other men were dead.
+Their bodies had to be left to the fury of the mob. Saltonstall lived
+to fight to the end. As the survivors of the twenty pressed forward, the
+mob behind followed them up. Bullets whizzed unpleasantly near. Twice,
+at Mr. Strong's command, the men faced about and fired a volley. In both
+these volleys, Tom's gun played its part. He had hunted before, but
+never such big game as men. The joy of battle possessed him. Since it
+was apparently a case of "kill or be killed," he shot to kill. Whether
+he did kill, he never knew. The two volleys checked two threatening
+rushes of the rioters and enabled Mr. Strong to bring what was left of
+the gallant little band safely to the railroad station. An hour later
+the Sixth Massachusetts was in Washington. During that hour Tom had been
+violently sick upon the train. He was new to this trade of man-killing.
+
+At Washington, once vacant spaces were soon filled with camps. Soldiers
+poured in on every train. Orderlies were galloping about. Artillery
+surrounded the Capitol. And from its dome Tom saw a Confederate flag,
+the Stars-and-Bars, flying defiantly in nearby Alexandria.
+
+Those were dark days. There were Confederate forces within a few miles
+of the White House. Sumter surrendered April 15th. Virginia seceded on
+the 17th. Harper's Ferry fell into Southern hands on the 18th. The Sixth
+Massachusetts had fought its way through Baltimore on the 19th. Robert
+E. Lee resigned his commission in our army on the 20th and left
+Arlington for Richmond, taking with him a long train of army and navy
+officers whose loyal support, now lost forever, had seemed a national
+necessity. Lincoln spent many an hour in his private office, searching
+with a telescope the reaches of the Potomac, over which the troop-laden
+transports were expected. Once, when he thought he was alone, John Hay
+heard him call out "with irrepressible anguish": "Why don't they come?
+Why don't they come?" In public he gave no sign of the anxiety that was
+eating up his heart. He had the nerve to jest about it. The Sixth
+Massachusetts, the Seventh New York, and a Rhode Island detachment had
+all hurried to save Washington from the capture that threatened. When
+the Massachusetts men won the race and marched proudly by the White
+House, Lincoln said to some of their officers: "I begin to believe there
+is no North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is another.
+You are the only real thing." They were very real, those men of
+Massachusetts, and they were the vanguard of the real army that was to
+be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+     CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS--MR. STRONG GOES TO RUSSIA--TOM GOES TO LIVE
+     IN THE WHITE HOUSE--BULL RUN--"STONEWALL" JACKSON--GEO. B.
+     MCCLELLAN--TOM STRONG, SECOND LIEUTENANT, U. S. A.--THE BATTLE OF
+     THE "MERRIMAC" AND THE "MONITOR."
+
+
+A few days passed before the President had time to see Mr. Strong and
+Tom. When they were finally ushered into his working-room, they found
+there, already interviewing Lincoln, the hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed
+Secretary of State, William H. Seward of New York, scholar, statesman,
+and gentleman, and a short, grizzled man, the worthy inheritor of a
+great tradition. He was Charles Francis Adams of Boston, son and
+grandson of two Presidents of the United States. He had been appointed
+Minister to England, just then the most important foreign appointment
+in the world. What England was to do or not do might spell victory or
+defeat for the Union. Mr. Adams had come to receive his final
+instructions for his all-important work. And this is what happened.
+
+Shabby and uncouth, Lincoln faced his two well-dressed visitors, nodding
+casually to the two New Yorkers as they entered at what should have been
+a great moment.
+
+"I came to thank you for my appointment," said Adams, "and to ask
+you----"
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied Lincoln, "thank Seward. He's the man
+that put you in." He stretched out his legs and arms, and sighed a deep
+sigh of relief. "By the way, Governor," he added, turning to Seward,
+"I've this morning decided that Chicago post-office appointment. Well,
+good-by."
+
+And that was all the instruction the Minister to Great Britain had from
+the President of the United States. Even in those supreme days, the rush
+of office-seekers, the struggle for the spoils, the mad looting of the
+public offices for partisan purposes, was monopolizing the time and
+absorbing the mind of our greatest President. There is a story that one
+man who asked him to appoint him Minister to England, after taking an
+hour of his time, ended the interview by asking him for a pair of old
+boots. Civil Service Reform has since gone far to stop this scandal and
+sin, but much of it still remains. Today you can fight for the best
+interests of our beloved country by fighting the spoils system in city,
+state, and nation.
+
+Adams, amazed, followed Secretary Seward out of the little room. Then
+Lincoln turned to the father and son.
+
+Tom had more time to look at him now. He saw a tall man with a thin,
+muscular, big nose, with heavy eyebrows above deep-set eyes and below a
+square, bulging forehead, and with a mass of black hair. The face was
+dark and sallow. The firm lips relaxed as he looked down upon the boy. A
+beautiful smile overflowed them. A beautiful friendliness shone from the
+deep-set eyes.
+
+"So this is another Tom Strong," he said. "Howdy, Tommy?"
+
+The boy smiled back, for the welcoming smile was irresistible. He put
+his little hand into Lincoln's great paw, hardened and roughened by a
+youth of strenuous toil. The President squeezed his hand. Tom was happy.
+
+"You're to go to Russia, Strong," Mr. Lincoln said to the father.
+"England and France threaten to combine against us. You must get Russia
+to hold them back. We'll have a regular Minister there, but I'm going to
+depend upon you. See Governor Seward. He'll tell you all about it. Will
+you take Mrs. Strong with you?"
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"Well, I s'posed you would. And how about Tom here?"
+
+Tom's heart beat quick. What was coming now?
+
+"Mrs. Strong must decide that. I suppose he had better keep on with his
+school in New York."
+
+"Why not let him come to school in Washington?" asked Lincoln. "In the
+school of the world? You see," he added, while that irresistible smile
+again softened the firm outlines of his big man's mouth, "you see I've
+taken a sort of fancy to your boy Tom. S'pose you give him to me while
+you're away. There are things he can do for his country."
+
+It was perhaps only a whim, but the whims of a President count. A month
+later, Mr. and Mrs. Strong started for St. Petersburg and Tom reported
+at the White House. He was welcomed by John Hay, a delightful young man
+of twenty-three, one of the President's two private secretaries. The
+welcome lacked warmth.
+
+"You're to sleep in a room in the attic," said Hay, "and I believe
+you're to eat with Mr. Nicolay and me. I haven't an idea what you're to
+do and between you and me and the bedpost I don't believe the Ancient
+has an idea either. Perhaps there won't be anything. Wait a while and
+see."
+
+The Ancient--this was a nickname his secretaries had given him--had a
+very distinct idea, which he had not seen fit to tell his zealous young
+secretary. Tom found the waiting not unpleasant. He had a good many
+unimportant things to do. "Tad" Lincoln, though younger, was a good
+playmate. The White House staff was kind to him. Even Hay found it
+difficult not to like him. Then there was the sensation of being at the
+center of things, big things. He saw men whose names were household
+words. Half a dozen times he lunched with the President's family, a
+plain meal with plain folks. Even the dinners at the White House, except
+the state dinners, were frugal and plain. Lincoln drank little or no
+wine. He never used tobacco. This was something of a miracle in the case
+of a man from the West, for in those days, particularly in the
+unconventional West, practically every man both smoked and chewed
+tobacco. The filthy spittoon was everywhere conspicuous. We fiercely
+resented the tales told our English cousins, first by Mrs. Trollope and
+then by Charles Dickens, about our tobacco-chewing, but the resentment
+was so fierce because the tales were so true. Those were dirty days. In
+1860 there were few bathrooms except in our largest cities. Those that
+existed were mostly new. In 1789, when the present Government of the
+United States came into being, in New York City, there was not one
+bathroom in the whole town.
+
+At these family luncheons, Tom was apt to become conscious that
+Lincoln's eyes were bent beneath their shaggy eyebrows full upon him.
+There was nothing unkind in the glance, but the boy felt it go straight
+through him. He wondered what it all meant. Why was he not given more
+work to do? Had he been weighed and found wanting? He waited in suspense
+a good many months.
+
+The early months of waiting were not merry months. In July, 1861, the
+first battle of Bull Run had been fought and had been lost. Our troops
+ran nearly thirty miles. Telegram after telegram brought news of
+disgrace and defeat to the White House. In the afternoon Lincoln went
+to see Gen. Winfield S. Scott, then commander-in-chief of our armies.
+The fat old general was taking his afternoon nap. Awakened with
+difficulty, he gurgled that everything would come out well. Then he fell
+asleep again. Before six o'clock it was known that everything had turned
+out most badly. Washington itself was threatened by the Confederate
+pursuit. Lincoln had no sleep that night. The gray dawn found him at his
+desk, still receiving dispatches, still giving orders. When he left the
+desk, Washington was safe.
+
+It was at the beginning of the battle of Bull Run, when the Confederates
+came near running away but did not do so because the Union troops ran
+first, that "Stonewall" Jackson got his famous nickname. The brigade of
+another Southern soldier, Gen. Bernard Bee, was wavering and falling
+back. Its commander, trying to hearten his men, called out to them:
+"Look! there's Jackson standing like a stone wall!" The men looked,
+rallied, and went on fighting. It may have been that one thing of
+Jackson's example that turned the tide at Bull Run, gave the battle to
+the South, and prolonged the war by at least two years. Stonewall
+Jackson's soldiers were called foot-cavalry, because under his inspiring
+leadership they made marches which would have been a credit to mounted
+men. It was his specialty to be where it was impossible for him to be,
+by all the ordinary rules of war. He was a thunderbolt in attack, a
+stone wall in defense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In November of that sad year of 1861, the President made another
+noteworthy call upon the then commander-in-chief, Gen. George B.
+McClellan. President and Secretary of State, escorted by young Hay and
+younger Tom, called upon the General at the latter's house, in the
+evening. They were told he was out, but would return soon, so they
+waited. McClellan did return and was told of his patient visitors. He
+walked by the open door of the room where they were seated and went
+upstairs. Half an hour later Lincoln sent a servant to tell him again
+that they were there. Word came back that General McClellan had gone to
+bed. John Hay's diary justly speaks of "this unparalleled insolence of
+epaulettes." As the three men and the boy walked back to the White
+House, Hay said:
+
+"It was an insolent rebuff. Something should be done about it."
+
+Lincoln's almost godlike patience, however, had not been worn out.
+
+"It is better," the great man answered, "at this time not to be making a
+point of etiquette and personal dignity."
+
+The President, however, stopped calling upon the pompous General. After
+that experience, he always sent word to McClellan to call upon him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, at the close of a family luncheon, the President said to Tom:
+"Come upstairs with me."
+
+In the little private office, Lincoln took off his coat and waistcoat
+with a sigh of relief and lounged into his chair. He bade Tom take a
+chair nearby. Then he looked at the boy for a moment, while his
+wonderful smile overflowed his strong lips.
+
+"I've been studying you a bit, Tom. I think you'll do. Now I'll tell you
+what I want you to do."
+
+The smile died quite away.
+
+"Are you sure you can keep still when you ought to keep still? Balaam's
+ass isn't the only ass that ever talked. Most asses talk--and always at
+the wrong time."
+
+"The last thing Father told me," Tom answered, "was never to say
+anything to anybody 'less I was sure you'd want me to say it."
+
+"Your father is a wise man, my boy. Pray God he does what I hope he will
+in Russia."
+
+The serious face grew still more serious. The long figure slouching in
+the chair straightened and stiffened. The sloping shoulders seemed to
+broaden, as if to bear steadfastly a weight that would have crushed
+most men. The dark eyes gleamed with a solemn hope. Tom longed to ask
+what his father was to try to do, but he was not silly enough to put his
+thought into words. Another good-by counsel his father had given him was
+never to ask the President a question, unless he had to do so. There was
+silence for a moment. Then Lincoln spoke again:
+
+"You're to carry dispatches for me, Tom. This may take you into the
+enemy's country sometimes. If you were captured and were a civilian, it
+might go hard with you. So I've had you commissioned as a second
+lieutenant. If you should slip into a fight occasionally I wouldn't
+blame you much. Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, kicked about it. He
+said he didn't believe in giving commissions to babies. I told him you
+could almost speak plain and could go 'round without a nurse. Finally he
+gave in. I haven't much influence with this Administration"--here Tom
+looked puzzled until the President smiled over his own jest--"but I did
+get you the commission. Here it is."
+
+He laid the precious parchment on the desk, put on his spectacles, took
+up his quill pen, and wrote at the foot of it
+
+[Illustration: Autograph, A. Lincoln]
+
+The boy's heart thrilled and throbbed. He had never dreamed of such an
+opportunity and such an honor. He was an officer of the Union. He was to
+carry dispatches for the President of the United States. His hand shook
+a little as he took the commission, reverently.
+
+"You've been detailed for special service, Tom. Stanton wanted to know
+whether your special service was to be to play with my boy, Tad. Stanton
+was pretty mad; that's a fact. Well, well, you must do your work so well
+that he'll get over the blow. You would have thought I was asking him
+for a brigadier's commission for a girl. Well, well. Being a war
+messenger is only one of your duties, son. You're to be my scout. Keep
+your ears and eyes both open, Tom, and your mouth shut. Ever hear the
+story of what Jonah said to the whale when he got out of him? The whale
+said to Jonah: 'You've given me a terrible stomach-ache.' And Jonah
+said: 'That's what you got because you didn't have sense enough to keep
+your mouth shut.' But remember, Tom, to go scouting in the right way.
+What I want is the truth. It's a hard thing for a President to get. I
+don't want tittle-tattle, evil gossip, idle talk. When I was in
+Congress, there was a fine old fellow in the House from Florida. I
+remember he said once that the Florida wolf was 'a mean critter that'd
+go snoopin' 'round twenty miles a night ruther than not do a mischief.'
+Don't be a wolf, Tom,--but don't be a lamb either, with the wool pulled
+over your eyes and ears. Here's your first job. This envelope"--Lincoln
+took from the desk a sealed envelope, not addressed, and handed it to
+the boy--"this envelope is for the commander of the 'Cumberland,' in
+Hampton Roads. This War Department pass will carry you anywhere. When
+Stanton signed it, he asked me whether he was to spend a whole day
+signing things for you to play with. Mrs. Lincoln has had a uniform made
+for you, on the sly. I rather think you'll find it in your room, Tom.
+You'd better start tomorrow."
+
+"Mayn't I start this afternoon, Mr. President?"
+
+"Good for you. Of course you may. I'll say good-by to the folks for you.
+God bless you, son."
+
+Lincoln waved a kindly farewell as Tom, with drumbeats in his young
+heart, gave a fair imitation of an officer's salute--and strode out of
+the room with what he meant to be a manly step. Once outside, the step
+changed to a run. He flew along the halls and up the stairs to the
+attic. He burst into his room. On his narrow bed lay his new uniform.
+Mrs. Lincoln, kindly housewife that she was, had done her part in the
+little conspiracy for the benefit of the boy who was Tad Lincoln's
+beloved playmate. She had herself smuggled an old suit of Tom's to a
+tailor, who had made from its measure the resplendent new blue uniform
+that now greeted Tom's enraptured eyes.
+
+That afternoon, Lieutenant Tom Strong left the White House for Hampton
+Roads. A swift dispatch boat carried him there. He reached the flagship
+on a lovely, peaceful, spring day, and delivered his dispatches. The
+boat that had taken him there was to take him back the next morning. He
+was glad to have a night on a warship. It was a new experience. And his
+father had told him that experience was the best teacher in the world.
+The beautiful lines of the frigate were a joy to see. Her spick and span
+cleanliness, the trim and trig sailors and marines, the rows of polished
+cannon that thrust their grim mouths out of the portholes, these things
+delighted him. He was standing on the quarter-deck with Lieutenant
+Morris, almost wishing he could exchange his brand-new lieutenancy in
+the army for one in the navy, when from the Norfolk navy yard a rocket
+flared up into the air.
+
+"What is that, sir?" asked Tom. "Is it a signal to you?"
+
+"I fancy it is," Morris answered, "but it isn't meant to be. That's a
+rebel rocket. You know we lost the navy-yard early in the war and we
+haven't got it back--yet. That rocket went up from there. The Secesh are
+up to some deviltry. They've been signaling a good bit of late. I wish
+they'd come out and give us a chance at them. Hampton Roads is dull as
+ditchwater, with not a thing happening."
+
+The gallant lieutenant yawned prodigiously. He little knew what terrible
+things were to happen on the morrow. That rocket meant that the rebel
+ram, the "Merrimac," the first iron-clad vessel that ever went into
+action, was to sail down Hampton Roads, where nothing ever happened, the
+next morning and was to make many things happen. The Confederates had
+converted the old Union frigate, the "Merrimac," into a new, strange,
+and monstrous thing. They had placed a battery of cannon of a size never
+before mounted on shipboard upon her deck, close to the water-line;
+they had built over the battery a framework of stout timbers, covered
+with armor rolled from rails, and they had put a cast-iron bow upon this
+marine marvel. A wooden ship was a mere toy to her.
+
+The next morning came--it was March 8, 1862--and the "Merrimac" came. As
+she emerged from distance and mist, our scout-boats came racing to the
+"Cumberland" with news of the danger that was fast nearing her. The news
+was a tonic to officers and to men. Here at last was something to fight.
+Here at last was something to do. They were all weary of having the
+flagship lie, week after week,
+
+    "As idle as a painted ship
+    Upon a painted ocean."
+
+The men sprang to quarters with a joyful cheer. The officers were at
+their posts. The gun-crews waited impatiently for the order to fire. And
+Tom, again upon the quarter-deck, thrilled with the thrill of all about
+him, was glad to know that the dispatch boat would not sail until that
+afternoon and that he could see the fight. Everyone around him was sure
+of victory. The foe was soon to be sunk. The Stars-and-Bars, now flying
+so impudently at her stern, was to be hung up as a trophy in the
+ward-room of the "Cumberland." It never was.
+
+The ram steered straight for the flagship. She did not fire a shot,
+though the flagship's cannon roared. A tongue of fire blazed from every
+porthole of the starboard side, towards which she came, silently and
+swiftly. Behind every tongue of fire there rushed a cannon-ball. Many a
+ball hit the "Merrimac." A wooden ship would have been blown to bits by
+the concentrated fury of the cannonade. Alas! the cannon-balls glanced
+from her armored sides "like peas from a pop-gun." They rattled like
+hail upon her and did her no more hurt than hail-stones would have done.
+She came on like an irresistible Fate. There had been shouts of savage
+joy below decks when the first order to fire had echoed through them. A
+burst of wild cheering from the gun-crews had almost drowned the first
+thunder of the guns. There were no shouts or cheers now. Sharp orders
+pierced the clangor of artillery.
+
+"Stand by to board!"
+
+The marines formed quickly at the starboard bow of the "Cumberland."
+Then at last the guns of the "Merrimac" spoke. She was close upon her
+prey now. The sound of her first volley was the voice of doom. Her great
+cannon sent masses of iron through and through the pitiful wooden walls
+that had dared to stand up against walls of iron. The shrieks of wounded
+men, of men screaming their mangled lives away, rolled up to the
+quarter-deck. A messenger dashed up there.
+
+"Half the gun-crew officers are dead. Send us others!"
+
+"Go below," said Lieutenant Morris, turning to two young midshipmen who
+stood near Tom, "keep the guns manned."
+
+The two middies bounded below and Tom bounded down with them. There was
+no hope of victory now, but the fight must be fought to a finish. If
+the cannon could still be served, a lucky shot might strike the foe in a
+vital part, might disable her engines, might carry away her
+steering-gear, might--there was a long chapter of possible accidents to
+the "Merrimac" that might still save the "Cumberland" from what seemed
+to be her sure destruction. As the three boys raced down to the
+gun-deck, they saw a fearful scene. Dead and wounded men lay everywhere.
+The sawdust that in those days used to be strewn about, before entering
+action, in order to soak up the blood of the men who fell and keep the
+decks from growing slippery with it, had soaked up all it could, but
+there were thin red trickles flowing along the deck. Two or three of the
+cannon had been dismounted. Crushed masses that had been human flesh lay
+beneath them. A dying officer half raised himself to give one last
+command and fell back dead before he could speak. The men were standing
+to their task as American sailors are wont to do, but like all men they
+needed leaders. Three leaders came. The two middies and Tom took
+command of these officerless cannon. The other two boys knew their work
+and did it. Tom knew that it was his business to keep his cannon at work
+and he did it. He repeated, mechanically:
+
+"Load! Fire! Load! Fire!"
+
+His men responded to the command. The cannon roared once, twice. Then
+there came a sickening shock. The rebel ram drove its iron prow home
+through the side of the "Cumberland." The good ship reeled far over
+under the deadly blow, righted herself, but began to sink. Her race was
+run. The black bulk of the "Merrimac" was just opposite the porthole of
+the gun Tom was handling. There was a last order. With the lips of their
+muzzles wet with the engulfing sea, the cannon of the "Cumberland"
+roared their last defiance of death. Down went the ship. The sea about
+her was black with wreckage and with struggling men. Boats from other
+ships and from the shore darted among them, picking them up. The
+dispatch boat that had brought Tom down was busy with that good work.
+The "Merrimac" could have sunk her without effort, but of course the
+Confederates never dreamed of making the effort. Americans do not fire
+at drowning men. When Tom jumped into the water, as the ship sank
+beneath him, he swam to a shattered spar and clutched it. But other men
+who could not swim clutched at it too. It threatened to sink with their
+added weight and carry them down with it. So the boy, thoroughly at home
+in the water, let go, turned upon his back, floated with his nose just
+above the surface, and waited for the help that was at hand. A boat-hook
+caught his trousers at the waist-band. He was pulled up to the deck of
+the dispatch boat. It was not quite the way in which he had expected to
+board her. From her bridge, with the deck below him crowded with the
+rescued sailors of the "Cumberland," he saw the second sad act of that
+day's tragedy.
+
+The "Merrimac" had backed away, after that terrible thrust of her iron
+ram, until she was free from the ship she had destroyed. Then she laid
+her course for the "Congress," invincible yesterday, today helplessly
+weak in the face of this new terror of the seas. The "Congress" fought
+to the last gasp, but that last gasp came all too soon. Raked fore and
+aft by her adversary's guns, unable to fire a single effective shot in
+reply, she ran upon a shoal while trying to escape from being rammed and
+lay there, no longer a fighting machine, but a mere target for her foe.
+Her captain could not hope to save his ship. The only thing he could do
+was to save the lives of such of his crew as were still alive. And there
+was but one way to do that. The "Congress" surrendered. The
+Stars-and-Stripes fluttered down from her masthead. In place of the flag
+of the free, the Stars-and-Bars, symbol of slavery, flew above the
+surrendered ship. The "Cumberland," going down with her flag, had had
+the better fate of the two.
+
+The "Merrimac," justly satisfied with her day's work and with the toll
+she had taken of the Union squadron, steamed proudly back to Norfolk, to
+repair the slight damages she had suffered and to make ready to
+complete her conquest on the morrow. Three Union ships still lay in
+Hampton Roads, great frigates, the finest of their kind then afloat,
+perfectly appointed, fully manned,--and as useless as though they had
+been the toy-boats of a child. The "Minnesota," now the flagship,
+signaled Captain Lawrence's stirring slogan: "Don't give up the ship!"
+It might have been called a bit of useless bravery, but no bravery is
+useless. At least the officers and men of the three doomed ships would
+fight for the flag until they died. It was just possible that one of the
+three might so maneuver that she would strike the foe amidships and sink
+with her to a glorious death.
+
+That night the wild anxiety at Hampton Roads was more than echoed at New
+York and Washington. The wires had told the terrible tale of the
+"Merrimac." It was thought she could go straight to New York, sink all
+the shipping there, command the city and levy tribute upon it. Lincoln's
+Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles of Connecticut, wrote in his diary
+that night: "The most frightened man on that gloomy day was the
+Secretary of War. He was at times almost frantic.... He ran from room to
+room, sat down and jumped up after writing a few words, swung his arms,
+and scolded and raved." Hay records that "Stanton was fearfully
+stampeded. He said they would capture our fleet, take Fort Monroe, be in
+Washington before night."
+
+Without consulting the Secretary of the Navy, Stanton had some fifty
+canal-boats loaded with stone and sent them to be sunk on Kettle Bottom
+Shoals, in the Potomac, to keep the "Merrimac" from reaching Washington.
+The canal-boats reached the Shoals, but the order to sink them was
+countermanded by cooler heads. They were left in a long row, tied up to
+the river bank.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three doomed ships at Hampton Roads soon knew that at nine o'clock
+of that fateful night there had steamed in from the ocean a Union
+iron-clad. Her coming, however, brought scant comfort.
+
+"What is she like?" asked the first captain to hear the news.
+
+"Like? She's like a cheese-box on a raft."
+
+[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC"]
+
+It was not a bad description. She was the "Monitor," an unknown boat of
+an unknown type that day, and on the morrow the most famous fighting
+craft that ever sailed the seas. She was born of the brain of a
+Swedish-American, Capt. John Ericsson, whose statue stands in Battery
+Park, the southern tip of the metropolis, looking down to the ocean he
+saved for freedom's cause.
+
+Lieut. A. L. Worden, commanding the "Monitor," was soon in consultation
+with the other commanders. They scarcely tried to disguise their belief
+that he had merely brought another predestined victim. His ship was
+tiny, compared with the "Merrimac." She was not built to ram, as was her
+terrible antagonist. Her guns were of a greater caliber, to be sure,
+than any wooden ship mounted, but there were but two of them and they
+could be brought to bear only by revolving the "Monitor's" turret,--a
+newfangled device in everyday use now, but then unknown and consequently
+despised. Men either fear or despise the unknown. They are usually wrong
+in doing either. The council of captains agreed upon a plan for the next
+day's fight. The plan was based upon the theory that the "Monitor" would
+be speedily sunk. Nevertheless, she was to face the foe first of all.
+
+Again the next morning came and again there came the rebel ram. Decked
+out in flags as if for a festival, proudly certain of victory, the
+"Merrimac" steamed down Hampton Roads. The cheese-box on a raft steamed
+out to meet her. It was David confronting Goliath. Goliath had fourteen
+guns and David had two. The iron-clads came nearer and the most famous
+sea-duel ever fought began. Tom saw it all from the bridge of the
+"Minnesota." Both vessels fired and fired again, without result. Their
+armor defied even the big guns they carried. Then the "Merrimac" tried
+to bring her deadly ram into play. The "Monitor" dodged into shoal
+water, hoping her foe would follow her and run aground. The "Merrimac"
+did not fall into the trap. On the contrary, she left her adversary and
+made a headlong course for the helpless "Minnesota." On board the
+latter, drums beat to quarters, shrill whistles gave orders, and the
+great ship moved forward to what seemed certain destruction. But the
+"Monitor" slipped away from the shoals and made after the "Merrimac,"
+firing her guns as rapidly as her creaking turret could turn. The
+"Merrimac" faced about, bound this time to make short work of this
+wretched little gnat that was seeking to sting her. This time the two
+came to close grips. Each tried to ram the other down. Each struck the
+other, but struck a glancing blow. They lay almost alongside and pounded
+each other with their giant guns. A missile from the "Monitor" came
+through a porthole of the "Merrimac," breaking a cannon and dealing
+death and destruction within her iron sides. She turned and ran for
+safety to the shelter of the Confederate batteries at Norfolk. The
+"Monitor" lay almost unharmed upon the gentle waves of Hampton Roads,
+the ungainly master of the seas. The "Merrimac" never dared again to try
+conclusions with her stout little rival. She stayed at her moorings
+until she was blown up there just before the Union forces captured
+Norfolk. The Union blockade was never broken. The "Monitor" survived the
+fight only to founder later in "the graveyard of ships," off Cape
+Hatteras.
+
+The wires had told the story of the famous fight before Tom reached
+Washington, but he was the first eye-witness of it to reach there and he
+had to tell the tale many and many a time. His first auditors were
+Lincoln and Secretary Welles. The dispatch boat that carried him back
+put him on board the President's boat, south of Kettle Bottom Shoals, on
+the Potomac, in obedience to orders signaled to it. When he had finished
+his story, there was silence for a moment. The boy saw Lincoln's lips
+move, perhaps in prayer, perhaps in thanksgiving. Then the grave face
+relaxed and the pathetic eyes twinkled with humor. The President laid
+his hand upon the Secretary's arm and pointed to a long line of
+stone-laden canal-boats that bordered the bank.
+
+"There's Stanton's navy," said Lincoln.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+     TOM GOES WEST--WILKES BOOTH HUNTS HIM--DR. HANS ROLF SAVES HIM--HE
+     DELIVERS DISPATCHES TO GENERAL GRANT.
+
+
+At the end of the next month, April, 1862, Admiral Farragut gallantly
+forced open the closed mouth of the Mississippi. He took his wooden
+ships into action against forts and iron-clad gunboats and captured New
+Orleans. Within fifteen months thereafter, the North was in practical
+control of the whole Mississippi. By July, 1863, the Confederacy had
+been split into two parts, east and west of the "Father of Waters." That
+was the poetic Indian name of the Mississippi. Farragut's fleet began
+the driving of the wedge. Grant's army drove it home. When the driving
+home had just begun, Tom, to his intense delight, was sent West with
+dispatches for Grant. He left on an hour's notice.
+
+[Illustration: ADMIRAL FARRAGUT]
+
+During that hour, a colored servant employed in the White House, whose
+heart was blacker than his sooty skin, had left the mansion, had sought
+a tumble-down tenement in the slums, and had found there a vulture of a
+man, very white as to face, very black as to the masses of hair that
+fell to his shoulders.
+
+"Dat dar boy Strong, he's dun sure goin'," said the darkey, "wid papers
+fur dat General Grant out West."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Coz I listened to de door, when dey-uns wuz a-talkin'."
+
+"He'll have to go West by Baltimore," mused the white man. "The next
+train leaves in half an hour. I can make it. Here, Reub, here's your
+pay."
+
+He took a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket. The negro clutched at
+it. Then what was left of his conscience stirred within him. He said,
+pleadingly, hesitatingly:
+
+"Massa, you knows I'se doin' dis coz old Massa told me to. You ain't
+a-goin' to hurt dat boy Strong, is you? He's a nice boy. Eberybody lubs
+him up dar."
+
+"What is it to you, confound you!" snarled the man, "whether I hurt him
+or not? What's a boy's life to winning the war? You keep on doing what
+old Massa told you to do, or I'll cut your black heart out."
+
+With a savage gesture, he thrust the trembling negro out of the dingy
+room. With savage haste, he packed his scanty belongings. With a pistol
+in his hip pocket, with a bowie-knife slung over his left breast beneath
+his waistcoat, with a vial of chloroform in his valise, Wilkes Booth
+left Washington on the trail of Tom Strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hunter and hunted were in the same car. Tom little dreamed that a few
+seats behind him sat a deadly foe, who would stick at nothing to get the
+precious papers he carried. Washington swarmed with Confederate spies.
+The face of everybody at the White House was well known to every spy.
+The hunter did not have to guess where the hunted sat.
+
+General Grant had begun his career of victory in the West. It was
+all-important to the Confederacy to know where his next blow was to be
+aimed. The papers in the scout's possession would tell that great
+secret. Wilkes Booth meant to have those papers soon. As the train
+bumped over the rough iron rails, towards Baltimore, Booth went to the
+forward end of the car for a glass of water and as he walked back along
+the aisle with a slow, lounging step, he stopped where Tom sat and held
+out his hand, saying:
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Strong? I'm Mr. Barnard. I have had the pleasure of
+seeing you about the White House sometimes, when I have been calling on
+our great President. Lincoln will crush these accursed rebels soon!"
+
+It was a trifle overdone, a trifle theatrical. Wilkes Booth could never
+help being theatrical. His greeting was one of the few times Tom had
+ever been called "Mister." He felt flattered and took the proffered hand
+willingly, but he searched his memory in vain for any real recollection
+of the striking face of the man who spoke to him. There was some vague
+stirring of memory about it, but certainly this had no relation to that
+happy life at the White House. Something evil was connected with it.
+Puzzled, he wondered. He had seen Booth under arms at John Brown's
+scaffold, but he did not remember that.
+
+The alleged Mr. Barnard slipped into the seat beside him and began to
+talk. He talked well. Little by little, suspicion fell asleep in Tom's
+mind as his companion told of adventures on sea and land. Booth was
+trying to seem to talk with very great frankness, in order to lure Tom
+into a similar frankness about himself. He larded all his talk with
+protestations of fervent loyalty to the Union. Tom bethought himself of
+a favorite quotation his father often used from Shakespeare's great play
+of "Hamlet." The conscience-stricken queen says to Hamlet, her son:
+
+"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
+
+Wilkes Booth was protesting too much. The drowsy suspicion in Tom's mind
+stirred again. But he was but a boy and Booth was a man, skilled in all
+the craft of the stage. Once more his easy, brilliant talk lulled
+caution to sleep. Tom, questioned so skillfully that he did not know he
+was being drawn out, little by little told the story of his short life.
+But the story ended with his saying he was going to Harrisburg "on
+business." He was still enough on his guard not to admit he was going
+further than Harrisburg.
+
+"You're pretty young to be on the way to the State Capitol on business,"
+said the skillful actor, hoping to hear more details in answer to the
+half-implied sneer. But just then Tom remembered what his father had
+advised: "Never say anything to anybody, unless you are sure the
+President would wish you to say it." He shut up like a clam. Booth could
+get nothing more out of him. But he meant to get those dispatches out of
+him. They were either in the boy's pocket or his valise, probably in his
+pocket. When he fell asleep, the spy's time would come. So the spy
+waited.
+
+Darkness came. Two smoky oil-lamps gave such light as they could. The
+train rumbled on in the night. There were no sleeping cars then. People
+slept in their seats, if they slept at all. Booth's tones grew soothing,
+almost tender. They served as a lullaby. Tom slept. The spy beside him
+drew a long, triumphant breath. His time had come.
+
+Some time before, he had shifted his traveling-bag to this seat. Now he
+drew from it, gently, quietly, the little bottle of chloroform and a
+small sponge, which he saturated with the stupefying drug. Then he
+slipped his arm under the sleeping boy's head, drew him a little closer
+to himself, and glanced through the dusky car. Nearly everybody was
+asleep. Those who were not were trying to go to sleep. No one was
+watching. Booth pressed the sponge to Tom's nostrils. Tom stirred
+uneasily. "Sh-sh, Tom," purred the actor, "go to sleep; all's well." The
+drug soon did its work. The boy was dead to the world for awhile. Only a
+shock could rouse him.
+
+The shock came. Booth's long, sensitive, skilled fingers--the fingers of
+a musician--ransacked his coat and waistcoat pockets swiftly, finding
+nothing. But beneath the waistcoat their tell-tale touches had detected
+the longed-for papers. The waistcoat was deftly unbuttoned--it could
+have been stripped off without arousing the unconscious boy--and a
+triumphant thrill shot through Booth's black heart as he drew from an
+inner pocket the long, official envelope that he knew must hold what he
+had stealthily sought. He was just about to slip it into his own pocket
+and then to leave his stupefied victim to sleep off the drug while he
+himself sought safety at the next station, when one of those little
+things which have big results occurred. The sturdy man who was snoring
+in the seat behind this one happened to be a surgeon. He was returning
+from Washington, whither he had gone to operate on a dear friend, a
+wounded officer. Chloroform had of course been used, but the patient had
+died under the knife. It had been a terrible experience for the
+operator. It had made his sleep uneasy. A mere whiff from the sponge
+Booth had used reached the surgeon's sensitive nostril. It revived the
+poignant memories of the last few hours. He awoke with a start that
+brought him to his feet. And there, just in front of him, he saw by the
+dim light a boy sunk in stupefied slumber and a man glancing guiltily
+back as he tried to thrust a stiff and crackling paper into his pocket.
+The sponge had fallen to the floor, but its fumes, far-spreading now,
+told to the practiced surgeon a story of foul play. He grabbed the man
+by the shoulder and awoke most of the travelers, but not Tom, with a
+stentorian shout: "What are you doing, you scoundrel?"
+
+The scoundrel leaped to his feet, throwing off the doctor's hand, and
+sprang into the aisle, clutching the long envelope in his left hand,
+while his right held a revolver. He rushed for the door, pursued by half
+a dozen men, headed by the doctor. Close pressed, he whirled about and
+leveled his pistol at his unarmed pursuers. They fell back a pace. He
+whirled again, stumbled over a bag in the aisle, fell, sprang to his
+feet once more. A brakeman opened the door. He was hurrying to see what
+this clamor meant. Wilkes Booth fired at him pointblank. The bullet
+missed, but it made the brakeman give way. Booth rushed by him, gained
+the platform and leaped from the slow train into the sheltering night.
+
+The shock that waked Tom was the sound of the shot. Weak, dizzy, and
+sick, he knew only that some terrible thing was happening.
+Instinctively, his hand sought that inner pocket, only to find it empty.
+Then, indeed, he was wide awake. The horror of his loss burned through
+his brain. He shouted: "Stop him! Stop thief!" and collapsed again into
+his seat.
+
+He was in fact a very sick boy. The dose of chloroform that had been
+given him would have been an overdose for a man. Notwithstanding his
+awakening, he might have relapsed into sleep and death, had not the
+skillful surgeon been there to devote himself to him. An antidote was
+forced down his throat. Willing volunteers, for of course the whole car
+was now awake in a hurly-burly of question and answer, rubbed life back
+into him. When he was a bit better, he was kept walking up and down the
+aisle, while two strong men held him up and his head swayed helplessly
+from side to side. But the final cure came when the surgeon who had kept
+catlike watch upon him saw that he could now begin to understand things.
+
+"Here is something of yours," he whispered into the lad's
+half-unconscious ear. "That scoundrel stole it from you. When he fell,
+he must have dropped it on the floor. I found it there after he had
+jumped off the platform."
+
+Tom's hand closed over the fateful envelope. His trembling fingers ran
+along its edges. It had not been opened. He had not betrayed his trust.
+A profound thankfulness and joy stirred within him. Within an hour he
+was practically himself again. Then he poured out his heart in thanks to
+the sturdy surgeon who had saved not only his life, but his honor. He
+asked his name and started at his reply:
+
+"Dr. Hans Rolf, of York, Pennsylvania."
+
+"Dr. Hans Rolf," repeated Tom, "but perhaps you are the grandson of the
+Hans Rolf I've heard about all my life. My father is always telling me
+of things Hans Rolf did for my grandfather and great-grandfather."
+
+"And what is _your_ name?" queried the doctor, surprised as may be
+imagined that this unknown boy should know him so well.
+
+"Tom Strong."
+
+"By the Powers," shouted the hearty doctor, seizing the boy's hand and
+wringing it as his grandfather used to wring the hand of the Tom Strongs
+he knew, "By the Powers, next to my own name there's none I know so well
+as yours. My grandfather never wearied of talking about the two Tom
+Strongs, father and son. The last day he lived, he told me how your
+great-grandfather saved his life."
+
+"And you know he saved great-grandfather's, too," answered Tom, "and now
+you have saved mine."
+
+He looked shyly at his preserver. He was still weak with the
+after-effects of the drug that had been given him. The Hans Rolf he saw
+was a bit blurred by the unshed tears through which he saw him.
+
+"Nonsense," said the surgeon, "whatever I've done is just in the day's
+work. But you must stop at York and rest. I can't let my patient travel
+just yet, you know. And this may be your last chance to see me at home.
+I go into the army next month."
+
+However, Tom was not to be persuaded to stop. Duty called him Westward
+and to the West he went, as fast as the slow trains of those days could
+carry him. But when Hans Rolf and he parted, a few hours after they had
+met, they were friends for life.
+
+It took Tom two days to get from Harrisburg to Cairo, the southernmost
+town in Illinois. It lies at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio
+rivers. The latter pours a mass of beautiful blue water--the early
+French explorers named the Ohio "the beautiful river"--into the muddy
+flood of the Mississippi. For miles below Cairo the blue and yellow
+streams seem to flow side by side. Then the yellow swallows the blue and
+the mighty Mississippi rolls its murky way to the Gulf of Mexico. A
+gunboat took the young messenger from Cairo to General Grant's
+headquarters.
+
+[Illustration: MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS]
+
+A Western gunboat was an odd thing. James B. Eads, an eminent engineer,
+who after the war built the St. Louis bridge and the New Orleans
+jetties, which keep the mouth of the Mississippi open, had launched a
+flotilla of gunboats for the government within four months of the time
+when the trees which went to their making were growing in the forests.
+On a flat-boat of the ordinary Western-river type, Mr. Eads put a long
+cabin, framed of stout timbers, cut portholes in the sides, front and
+rear of it, mounted cannon inside it, covered it with rails outside
+(later armor-plate was used), and behold, a gunboat. The one which sped
+swiftly with Tom down the Mississippi and waddled slowly with him up the
+Tennessee, against the current of the Spring freshets, finally landed
+him at Grant's headquarters.
+
+Tom approached the tent over which headquarters' flag was flying with a
+beating heart. It beat against the long envelope that lay in the inner
+pocket of his waistcoat. He was about to finish his task and he was
+about to see the one successful soldier of the Union, up to that time.
+The Northern armies had not done well in the East--the defeat had been
+disgraceful and the panic sickening with the raw troops at Bull Run,
+Virginia, and little had been gained elsewhere--but in the West Grant
+was hammering out success. All eyes turned to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon the top of a low knoll, half a dozen packing-boxes were grouped in
+front of the tent. Two or three officers, most of them spick and span,
+sat upon each box except one. Upon that one there lounged a man,
+thick-set, bearded, his faded blue trousers thrust into the tops of
+dusty boots, his blue flannel shirt open at the throat, his worn blue
+coat carrying on each shoulder the single star of a brigadier-general.
+
+It was General Grant, Hiram Ulysses Grant, now known as U. S. Grant.
+When the Confederate commander of Fort Donelson had asked him for terms
+of surrender, he had answered practically in two words: "unconditional
+surrender." The curt phrase caught the public fancy, and gave his
+initials a new meaning. He was long known as "Unconditional Surrender"
+Grant.
+
+Born in Ohio, he had been educated at West Point, had fought well in our
+unjust war against Mexico, had resigned in the piping times of peace
+that followed, had been a commercial failure, and was running an
+insignificant business as a farmer in Galena, Illinois, an obscure and
+unimportant citizen of that unimportant town, when the Civil War began.
+Eight years afterwards, he became President of the United States and
+served as such for eight years, doing his dogged best, but far less
+successful as a statesman than he had been as a soldier. He was a
+patriot and a good man. In the last years of his life, ruined
+financially by a wicked partner and tortured by the cancer that finally
+killed him, he wrote his famous memoirs, which netted his family a
+fortune after the grave had closed upon this great American. He ran a
+race with Death to write his life. And he won the grim race.
+
+The young second-lieutenant saluted and explained his mission. The long
+envelope, deeply dented with the mark of Wilkes Booth's dirty thumb and
+finger, had reached its destination at last. Grant took it, opened it,
+read it without even a slight change of expression, though it contained
+not only orders for the future, but Lincoln's warm-hearted thanks for
+the past and the news of his own promotion to be major-general. Not only
+Tom, but every member of his staff was watching him. The saturnine face
+told no one anything. The little he said at the moment was said to Tom.
+
+"The President tells me he would like to have you given a glimpse of the
+front. Have you had any experience?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"When were you commissioned?"
+
+"A week ago, sir."
+
+"Are all the Eastern boys of your age in the army?"
+
+"They would like to be, sir."
+
+"Well," said Grant, with a kindly smile, "perhaps a little experience at
+the front may make up for the years you lack. Send him to General
+Mitchell, Captain," he added, turning to a spruce aide who rose from his
+packing-box seat to acknowledge the command.
+
+"Pray come with me, Mr. Strong," said the captain.
+
+Tom saluted, turned, and followed his guide. A backward glance showed
+him the general, his eyes now bent sternly upon Lincoln's letter, his
+staff eyeing him, a group of quiet, silent figures. And that was all
+that Tom saw, at that time, of the greatest general of our Civil War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+     INSIDE THE CONFEDERATE LINES--"SAIREY" WARNS TOM--OLD MAN TOMBLIN'S
+     "SETTLEMINT"--STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE--WILKES BOOTH GIVES THE
+     ALARM--A WILD DASH FOR THE UNION LINES.
+
+
+Three days afterwards, Tom found himself "on special service," on the
+staff of Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing towards
+Huntsville, Alabama. They occupied that delightfully sleepy old town,
+the center of a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but Tom was
+not then with the column. Five days before, with Mitchell's permission,
+he had volunteered for a gallant foray into the enemy's country. He had
+taken prompt advantage of Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if he
+wanted to do so. He was to have his fill of fighting now.
+
+Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who left camp before dawn on April
+7, under the command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a man, who had
+persuaded General Mitchell to let him try to slip across the lines with
+a handful of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order to steal a
+locomotive and rush it back to the Union front, burning all the railroad
+bridges it passed. The railroads to be crippled were those which ran
+from the South to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and from the East through
+Chattanooga and Huntsville to Memphis. A few miles from camp, Andrews
+gave his men their orders. They were to separate and singly or in groups
+of two or three were to make their way to the station of Big Shanty,
+Georgia, where they were to meet on the morning of Saturday, April 12.
+Andrews took Tom with him. For two days they hid in the wooded hills by
+day and traveled by night, guided by a compass and by the stars. Then
+their scanty supply of food was exhausted and they had to take to the
+open. Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellow with the oil of the
+butternut, the chief dye-stuff the South then had, their belts with
+"C.S.A."--"Confederate States of America"--upon them, their Confederate
+rifles (part of the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray slouched
+hats made them look like the Confederate scouts they had to pretend to
+be.
+
+Danger lurked about them and detection meant death. They did their best
+to talk in the soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts in the
+hills and asked for food, but the drawl was hard for a Northern tongue
+to master and more than one bent old woman or shy and smiling girl
+started with suspicion at the strange accents of these "furriners." The
+men of the hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On the fourth
+day they reached a log-hut or rather a home made of two log-huts, with a
+floored and roofed space between them, a sort of open-air room where all
+the household life went on when good weather permitted. An old, old
+woman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy with a rag quilt, her
+toothless gums busy with holding her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sat
+her granddaughter, busy too with her spinning wheel. The two women with
+their home as a background made a pleasing and a peaceful picture.
+
+"Howdy," said Andrews.
+
+The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched upon the old woman's lap. She
+took her pipe from her mouth.
+
+"Howdy," said she.
+
+The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are not quick of speech.
+
+"Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk?" asked Tom.
+
+"Sairey," called the old dame, "you git sum milk."
+
+Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, trying to hide her bare feet
+with her short skirt and not succeeding, and walked back of the house to
+the "spring-house," a square cupboard built over a neighboring spring.
+It was dark and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill-folk knew.
+While she was away, her grandmother began to talk. The man and boy would
+much rather she had kept still. For she peered at them suspiciously, and
+said:
+
+"How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I hearn thar wuz a right smart
+heap o' Yankee sojers not fur off'n hereabouts."
+
+At this moment Sairey fortunately returned. She brought in her brown
+hand an old glass goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brim
+with a foaming mixture that looked like delicious milk. Alas! Tom, who
+loathed buttermilk, was now to learn that in the hills "milk" meant
+"buttermilk." He should have asked for "sweet milk." Sairey handed him
+the goblet with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's hand touched
+hers. He lifted it eagerly to his thirsty lips, took a long draught, and
+sputtered and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking and the girl had
+gone a hundred yards to get him what she thought he wanted. He was a
+boy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed the nauseous stuff to the last
+drop, and made his best bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old woman
+said to him:
+
+"Where wuz you born, bub?"
+
+"New--New----" stammered Tom. His tongue did not lend itself readily to
+a lie, even in his country's cause. When he was still too young to
+understand what the words meant, his mother had told him: "A lie soils a
+boy's mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that big truth into his
+small mind. Now, taken by surprise, the habit of his young life asserted
+itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been born in New York was on
+his unsoiled lips, when Andrews finished the sentence for him.
+
+"New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly.
+
+"He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old beldam.
+
+"He was raised up No'th," Andrews explained, "but soon as this yer
+onpleasantness began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns."
+
+Andrews had overdone his dialect.
+
+"Sairey," commanded the old woman, "put up the flag."
+
+"Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where she had taken refuge behind her
+grandmother's chair, "what's the use?"
+
+"Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag."
+
+From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands in a warning gesture, and
+then, before she entered one of the log-houses, she pointed to a
+cart-track that wound up the hill before the hut. She came out with a
+Confederate flag, made of part of an old red petticoat with white
+stripes sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long sapling. She put the
+staff into a rude socket in front of the platform. As she passed Tom in
+order to do this, she whispered to him: "You-uns run!"
+
+"What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar?" her grandmother asked in anger.
+
+"I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah replied.
+
+But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old woman's, sharpened by fear, had
+caught the words.
+
+"We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. "You-uns haz bin right down good to
+us. Thanky, ma'am."
+
+"Jes' wait a minute," the old woman answered. "I'll give you somethin'
+fer yer to eat as ye mosey 'long."
+
+She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into the dark log-room. Sairey
+wrung her hand and whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track." Instantly
+the grandmother appeared on the threshold, her old eyes flashing, a
+double-barreled shot-gun in her shaking hands. She tried to cover both
+man and boy, as she screamed at them:
+
+"You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees! My man'll know what to do with
+you-uns."
+
+Their guns were at her feet. There was no way to get them, even if they
+would have used them against a woman.
+
+"Run!" shouted Andrews and bounded towards the cart-track.
+
+Tom sprang after him, but not in time to escape a few birdshot which the
+old woman's gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting of them
+redoubled his speed. The second barrel sent its load far astray. They
+had run just in time, for from another hilltop behind the hut a dozen
+armed men came plunging down to the house, shouting after the scared
+fugitives. The raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon signal for
+their coming. Sairey's father and several other men had taken to the
+nearby hills to avoid being impressed into the Confederate army, but
+they adored the Confederacy, up to the point of fighting for it, and
+they would have rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old woman's
+eyes and ears had pierced the thin disguise of the raiders. So she had
+forced her granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid to disobey
+her fierce old grandmother but loath to see the boy she had liked at
+first sight captured, had warned him to flee. Man and boy were out of
+gunshot, but still in sight, when their pursuers reached the house,
+yelled with joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the cart-track
+like hounds hot upon the scent. As Tom and Andrews panted to the
+hilltop, they saw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart-track. At
+the summit, it branched into half a dozen lanes which wound through a
+pine forest. Lanes and woodlands were covered with pineneedles, the
+deposit of years, which rose elastic under their flying feet and left no
+marks by which they could be tracked. And beyond the forest was a vast
+laurel-brake in which a regiment could have hidden, screened from
+discovery save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter and safety. Once
+they heard the far-off voices of their pursuers, but only once. Ere many
+hours they had the added security of the night.
+
+When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny brook that flowed at the
+roots of the laurel-bushes, Tom found that his wound, forgotten in the
+fierce excitement of the flight, had begun to pain him. His left
+shoulder grew stiff. When Andrews examined it, all it needed was a
+little care. Three or four birdshot had gone through clothing and skin,
+but they lay close beneath the skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smears
+of red blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. They were picked out with
+the point of a knife. The cool water of the brook washed away the blood
+and stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a bit of his own shirt,
+soaked it in the brook, and bandaged the shoulder in quite a good
+first-aid-to-the-injured way. Tom and he were none the worse, except for
+the loss of their guns. And that was the less serious because both
+knives and pistols were still in their belts.
+
+They slept that night in the laurel-brake, forgetting their hunger in
+the soundness of their sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled to
+hear a human voice. But it was the voice of a gentle girl. It kept
+calling aloud "Coo, boss, coo, boss," while every now and then it said
+in lower tones: "Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's suthin' to eat." At first
+they thought it was a trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred by
+hunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and found it was Sairey who
+was calling them. When she saw them, she ran towards them, while the
+cows she had collected from their pasture stared with dull amazement.
+
+"Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her hands in anxiety.
+
+Reassured as to this, she produced the cold cornbread and bacon she had
+taken from the spring-house when she left home that morning for her
+daily task of gathering the family cows. Man and boy bolted down the
+food.
+
+"You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom.
+
+"Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl replied, peering slyly out
+of her big sunbonnet and digging her brown toes into the earth, "but I
+dun it, kase--kase--I jes' had to. Kin you get away today?"
+
+"We'll try."
+
+"Whar be you goin'?"
+
+Should they tell her where they were going? It was a risk, but they took
+it. They were glad they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help them
+on their way, but could be of real aid. Once in her life she had been at
+Big Shanty. She told them of a short cut through the hills, by which
+they would pass only one "settle_mint_," as the infrequent clearings in
+the hills were called.
+
+"When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_," said Sairey, "I
+'low you-uns better stand at the fence corner and holler. Old Man
+Tomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when furriners don't do no
+hollerin'. But when he comes out, you-uns tell him Old Man Gernt's
+Sairey told you he'd take care of you-uns. 'N he will. 'N you kin tell
+Bud Tomblin--no, you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by."
+
+The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up to Andrews and smiled as
+she shook hands. She looked down at Tom--she was half a head taller than
+he--and smiled again as she shook hands. Then suddenly she stooped and
+kissed the startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane by which she
+had come, leaving the placid cows and the thankful man and boy behind
+her. With a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare, brown
+feet, she vanished from their sight.
+
+Thanks to her directions, they found Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_
+without difficulty. They duly stood at the corner of the sagging rail
+fence and there duly "hollered." Old Man Tomblin and Bud Tomblin came
+out of the cabin, each with a gun, and were proceeding to study the
+"furriners" before letting them come in, when Andrews repeated what Old
+Man Gernt's Sairey had told them to say. There was an instant welcome.
+Bud Tomblin was even more anxious than his father to do anything Sairey
+Gernt wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had been scouting near
+General Mitchell's line of march and had lost their guns and nearly lost
+themselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was accepted without demur. Old
+Mrs. Tomblin, decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill-folk,
+whose hard living conditions make women old at forty and venerable at
+fifty, cackled a welcome to them from the corner of the fireplace where
+she sat "dipping" snuff. "Lidy" Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped and
+hindered by the rest of a brood of children, took care of their comfort.
+They feasted on the best the humble household had to offer. They slept
+soundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr. and Mrs. Tomblin and
+Lidy, slept in the same room. In the morning they were given a bountiful
+breakfast and were bidden good-by as old friends.
+
+"I hate to deceive good people like the Tomblins," said Tom, when they
+were out of earshot.
+
+"Sometimes the truth is too precious to be told," laughed Andrews.
+
+But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as he tramped along. He made up
+his mind to fight for his country, the next time he had a chance, in
+some other way. Telling a lie and living a lie were hateful to him.
+
+The next morning found them at Big Shanty, a tiny Georgia village, which
+the war had made a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed day,
+Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty-two men who had started with
+Andrews, eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The train for
+Chattanooga stopped there for breakfast on those infrequent days when it
+did not arrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It was what is
+called a "mixed" train, both freight and passenger, with many freight
+cars following the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby passenger
+cars. On this particular morning it surprised everybody, including its
+own train-crew, by being on time. Passengers and crew swarmed in to
+breakfast. The train was deserted. The time for the great adventure had
+come.
+
+Before the train was seized, one thing must be done. The telegraph wire
+between Big Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this were left
+intact, their flight, sure to be discovered as soon as the train-crew
+finished their brief breakfast, would end at the next station, put on
+guard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest and most agile of the
+party, the task of cutting the wire had been assigned. He was already at
+the spot selected for the attempt, a clump of trees a hundred yards from
+the station, where the wire was screened from sight by the foliage. As
+soon as the train came in, Tom started to climb the telegraph-pole. He
+had just started when he heard a most unwelcome sound.
+
+"Hey, thar! What's you doin'?"
+
+He turned his head and saw a Confederate sentry close beside him. He
+recognized him as a man with whom he had been chatting around a
+camp-fire early that morning. His name was Bill Coombs. Tom's ready wit
+stood by him.
+
+"Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you. Somethin's wrong with the wire.
+The Cunnel's sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?"
+
+The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and watched him without a thought
+of his doing anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top of the rickety
+pole, cut the one wire it carried, fastened the ends to the pole so that
+from the ground nobody could tell it was cut, and climbed down. Bill
+urged him to stay and talk awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentries
+mustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon ran towards the
+station. He had to run to catch the train. The instant Andrews saw him
+returning, he sprang into the cab of the locomotive.
+
+[Illustration: THE LOCOMOTIVE TOM HELPED TO STEAL]
+
+One of his men had already uncoupled the first three freight cars from
+the rest of the train. All the men jumped into the cab or the tender or
+swarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews jerked the throttle wide
+open. The engine jumped forward, the tender and the three cars bounding
+after it. The crowd upon the platform gaped after the retreating train,
+without the slightest idea of what was happening under their very noses.
+A boy came running like an antelope from the end of the platform. He
+jumped for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched by a half-dozen
+hands and drawn aboard. But as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reason
+to remember call out:
+
+"They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong, a Yankee! Stop 'em! Shoot
+'em!"
+
+Livid with rage, his long black hair streaming in the wind as he ran
+after them, Wilkes Booth fired his pistol at them, while the motley
+crowd his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley after the train.
+Nobody was hurt then, but the danger to everybody had just begun.
+
+There was instant pursuit. The train-crew, startled by the sound of the
+departing train, came running from the station. They actually started to
+run along the track after the flying locomotive. They jerked a hand-car
+off a siding and chased the fugitives with that. At a station not far
+off, they found a locomotive lying with steam up. They seized that and
+thundered ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more even terms. The
+hunters reached Kingston, Georgia, within four minutes after the hunted
+had left. The latter had had to make frequent stops, to cut the wires,
+to take on fuel, to bundle into the freight cars ties that could be used
+to start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear up an occasional
+rail. This last expedient delayed their pursuers but little. When a
+missing rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore up a rail
+behind them, slipped it into the vacant place, and rushed ahead again.
+
+Andrews was running the captured train on its regular time schedule, so
+he could not exceed a certain speed. From Kingston, however, where the
+only other train of the day met this one, he expected a free road and
+plenty of time to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet the regular
+train at Kingston, but alas! it carried on its engine a red flag. That
+meant that a second section of the same train was coming behind it.
+There was nothing to do but to wait for this second section. The
+railroad was single-track, so trains could pass only where there was a
+siding. But in every moment of waiting there lurked the danger of
+detection. Southerners, soldiers, and civilians, crowded about the
+locomotive as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston sidetrack,
+puffing away precious steam and precious time.
+
+"Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man. "I cum hyar to meet up with
+Cunnel Tompkins. Whar's he'n the rest of 'em?"
+
+"We were ordered to drop everything at Big Shanty," explained Andrews,
+"except these three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on General
+Beauregard's staff and am taking the stuff to him at Corinth. Jove,
+there's the whistle of the second section. I'm glad to hear it."
+
+He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he had bundled most of his men
+into the freight cars. The cars were battered old things without any
+locks. If a carelessly curious hand were to slide back one of the doors
+and reveal within, not powder, but armed men, all their lives would pay
+the forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with engineer, fireman, and Tom, who
+had been helping the fireman feed wood into the maw of the furnace on
+every mile of the run. His young back ached with the strain of the
+unaccustomed toil. His young neck felt the touch of the noose that
+threatened them all.
+
+"Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch for us as soon as the other
+train pulls in," said Andrews. "We mustn't keep General Beauregard
+waiting for this powder a minute longer than we can help. He needs it to
+blow the Yankees to smithereens."
+
+So Tom ran ahead, stood by the switch as the second section came in, and
+promptly threw the switch as it passed. But his train did not move and
+a brakeman jumped off the rear platform of the caboose of the second
+section, as it slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a fool, pushed
+him out of the way and reset the switch.
+
+"You plum fool," shouted the brakeman, after much stronger expressions,
+"didn't ye see the flag fur section three?"
+
+Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it, but it was too true that the
+engine of section two also bore the red flag that meant that section
+three was coming behind it.
+
+Again there was a long wait, again the sense of danger closing in upon
+them, again the thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity of
+playing their parts with laughter and good-natured chaff amid the foes
+who thought them friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves away. At
+last the third section came whistling and lumbering in. Thank fortune,
+it bore no red flag. This time Tom threw the switch unchecked and then
+jumped on the puffing engine as she reached the main-track and sped
+onwards.
+
+"Free, by Jove!" said Andrews, with a deep breath of deep relief. "Now
+we can burn Johnny Reb's bridges for him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Four minutes later, while section three of the train that had so long
+delayed them was still at Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed into
+the station. Its occupants, shouting a story of explanation that put
+Kingston into a frenzy, ran from it to an engine that lay upon a second
+sidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They had reached Kingston so
+speedily by using their last pint of water and their last stick of wood.
+They saved precious minutes by changing engines.
+
+Five seconds after their arrival, the station-agent had been at the
+telegraph-key, frantically pounding out the call of a station beyond
+Andrews's fleeing train. There was no reply.
+
+"Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the station. Of course that had
+been done by the fugitives just out of sight of Kingston. "Wire cut! I
+kain't git no message through."
+
+"We'll take the message!" answered the Confederate commander, from the
+cab of the locomotive that was already swaying with her speed, as she
+darted ahead.
+
+They came near delivering the message within four miles of Kingston.
+Andrews's men, with a most comforting sense of safety had stopped and
+were pulling up a rail, when they heard the whistle of their avenging
+pursuer.
+
+"Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called. "They're closer'n I like to
+have 'em."
+
+Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates came closer still. Around
+the next curve, quite hidden from sight until close upon it, the
+fugitives had put a rail across the track. It delayed the pursuit not
+one second. Whether the cowcatcher of the engine thrust it aside or
+broke it or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody knew then in
+the wild excitement of the chase and nobody knows now. The one thing
+certain is that there was no delay. Very likely the rail broke. Rails
+of those days were of iron, not steel, and throughout the South they
+were in such condition that at the close of the Civil War one of the
+chief Southern railroads was said to consist of "a right-of-way and two
+streaks of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly and sped on.
+
+On the Union train, Tom had crept back to the rear car along the
+rolling, jumping carroofs, with orders to set it on fire and stand ready
+to cut it off. The men inside arranged a pile of ties, thrust fat pine
+kindling among them, and touched the mass with a match. It burst into
+flame as they scuttled to the roof and passed to the car ahead. A long
+covered wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway across it, Andrews
+stopped, dropped the flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very few
+minutes the bridge would have been a burning mass, but the few minutes
+were not to be had. The Confederate locomotive was now close upon them.
+It dashed upon the bridge, drove the burning car across the bridge
+before it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and again whistled
+triumphantly as it took up the fierce chase. The two remaining cars were
+detached, one by one, but in vain. The game was up.
+
+"Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly, as he looked back over the
+tender, now almost empty of wood, to the smokestack that was belching
+sooty vapor within a mile of them. "By this time, they've got a telegram
+ahead of us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods. We must take to
+the woods. Don't try to keep together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star.
+Make the Union lines if you can. We've done our best."
+
+The engine checked its mad pace, slowed, stopped.
+
+"Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he sprang from the engine and
+disappeared in the forest that there bordered the track. "We'll meet
+again."
+
+Seven of them did meet him again. It was upon a Confederate scaffold,
+where he and they were hung. The other six of the fourteen who were
+captured were exchanged, a few months later. Three others reached the
+Union lines within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom Strong?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     TOM UP A TREE--DID THE CONFEDERATE OFFICER SEE HIM?--A FUGITIVE
+     SLAVE GUIDES HIM--BUYING A BOAT IN THE DARK--ADRIFT IN THE ENEMY'S
+     COUNTRY.
+
+
+At first, Tom was up a tree. When he jumped from the abandoned
+locomotive, his mind was working as quickly as his body. He reasoned
+that the Confederates would expect them all to run as fast and as far
+away as they could; that they would run after them; that they would very
+probably catch him, utterly tired out as he was, so tired that even fear
+could not lend wings to his leaden feet; that the pursuit, however,
+would not last long, because the Confederates would wish to reach a
+station soon, in order both to report their success and to send out a
+general alarm and so start a general search for the fugitives; and that
+he would best hide as near at hand as might be. In other words, he
+thought, quite correctly, that the best thing to do is exactly what your
+enemy does not expect you to do. He picked out a big oak tree quite
+close to the track, its top a mass of thick-set leaves such as a
+Southern April brings to a Southern oak. He climbed it, nestled into a
+sheltered crotch high above the ground, and waited. He did not have to
+wait long. He could still hear the noise of his comrades plunging
+through the woods when the Confederate engine drew up beneath his feet.
+Before it stopped, the armed men who clustered thick upon locomotive and
+tender were on the ground and running into the woods. A gallant figure
+in Confederate gray led them. He heard the rush of them, then a shot or
+two, exultant yells, and ere long the tramp of returning feet. They came
+back in half a dozen groups, bringing with them three of his comrades in
+flight, less fortunate than he, at least less fortunate up to that time.
+Andrews was one of the prisoners. He had slipped and fallen, had
+strained a sinew, and had lain helpless until his pursuers reached him.
+Tom, peering cautiously through his leafy shelter, saw that his late
+leader was limping and was held upright by a kindly Confederate, who had
+passed his arm about him.
+
+"'Tain't fur," said his captor, cheerily, "hyar's the injine."
+
+"The Yank's goin' fur," sneered a soldier of another kind, "he's goin'
+to Kingdom Cum, blast him!" He lifted his fist to strike the helpless
+man, but the young officer in command caught the upraised arm.
+
+"None of that," he said, sternly. "Americans don't treat prisoners that
+way. You're under arrest. Put down your gun and climb into the tender.
+Do it now and do it quick." Sulkily the brute obeyed. "Lift him in,"
+went on the officer to the man who was supporting Andrews. This was
+gently done. The other two captives climbed in. So did the Confederates.
+Their officer turned to them.
+
+"You've done your duty well," he said. "You've been chasing brave men.
+They've done their duty well too.
+
+    "'For such a gallant feat of arms
+    Was never seen before.'"
+
+Tom started with surprise. The young officer was quoting from Macaulay's
+"Lays of Ancient Rome." The boy had stood beside his mother's knee when
+she read him the "Lays" and had often since read them himself.
+
+That start of surprise had almost been Tom's undoing. He had rustled the
+leaves about him. A tiny shower of pale green things fell to the ground.
+
+"Captain, there's somebody up that tree," said a soldier, pointing
+straight at the point where Tom sat. "I heard him rustle."
+
+The captain looked up. The boy always thought the officer saw him and
+spared him, partly because of his youth--he knew the fate the prisoners
+faced--and partly because of his admiration for "the gallant feat of
+arms." Be that as it may, he certainly took no step just then to make
+another prisoner. Instead he laughed and answered:
+
+"That's a 'possum. We haven't time for a coon-hunt just now. Get ahead.
+We'll send an alarm from the next station and so bag all the Yankees."
+
+The engine, pushing the recaptured one before it, started and
+disappeared around the end of the short curve upon which Andrews had
+made his final stop. For the moment at least, Tom was safe. But he knew
+the hue-and-cry would sweep the country. Everybody would be on the
+lookout for stray Yankees. And as everybody would think the estrays
+were all going North, Tom decided to go South. He slid down the
+tree, looked at his watch, studied the sunlight to learn the points of
+the compass, drew his belt tighter to master the hunger that now
+assailed him, and so began his southward tramp, a boy, alone, in the
+enemy's country.
+
+That part of Georgia is a beautiful country and Tom loved beauty, but it
+did not appeal to him that afternoon. He was hungry; he was tired; the
+excitement that had upheld him through the hours of flight on the
+captured engine was over. He plodded through a little belt of forest
+and found himself in a broad valley, with a ribbon of water flowing
+through it. He stumbled across plowed fields to the little river. A
+dusty road, with few marks of travel, meandered beside the stream. He
+was evidently near no main highway. Not far away a planter's home, with
+a stately portico, gleamed in the sunlight through its screen of trees.
+In the distance lay a little village. There was food in both places and
+he must have food. To which should he go? It was decided for him that he
+was to go to neither. As he slipped down the river bank, to quench his
+burning thirst and to wash his dusty face and hands, he almost stepped
+upon a negro who lay full length at the foot of the bank, hidden behind
+a tree that had been uprooted by the last flood and left stranded there.
+The boy was scared by the unexpected meeting, but not half as much as
+the negro.
+
+"Oh, Massa," said the negro, on his knees with outstretched hands, "don'
+tell on me, Massa. I'll be your slabe, Massa. Jes' take me with you.
+Please don't tell on me. You kin make a lot o' money sellin' me, Massa.
+Please lemme go wid you."
+
+"What is your name?" asked Tom.
+
+"Morris, Massa."
+
+"Where did you come from?"
+
+"From dat house, Massa." He pointed to the big house nearby.
+
+"And what are you doing here?"
+
+Little by little, Morris (reassured when he found Tom was a Northern
+soldier and like himself a fugitive) told his story. He had been born on
+this plantation. Reared as a house-servant, he could read a little. He
+had learned from the newspapers his master took that a Northern army was
+not far away. He made up his mind to try for freedom. His master kept
+dogs to track runaways, but no dog can track a scent in running water.
+It was not probable his flight would be discovered until after
+nightfall. So he had stolen to his hiding-place in the afternoon,
+intending to wade down the tiny stream as soon as darkness came. Two
+miles below, the stream merged itself into a larger one. There he hoped
+to steal a boat, hide by day and paddle by night until he reached the
+Tennessee. "Dat ribber's plum full o' Massa Lincum's gunboats," he
+assured Tom.
+
+"How are you going to live on the journey?" asked the boy.
+
+"I spec' dey's hen-roosts about," quoth Morris with a chuckle, "and I'se
+got a-plenty to eat to start wid. Dis darkey don' reckon to starve
+none."
+
+"Give me something to eat, quick!"
+
+Morris willingly produced cornpone and bacon from a sack beside him. Tom
+wanted to eat it all, but he knew these precious supplies must be kept
+as long as possible, so he did not eat more than half of them. The two
+agreed to keep together in their flight for freedom. As soon as it was
+dark, they began their wading. The two miles seemed an endless distance.
+The noises of the night kept their senses on the jump. Once a distant
+bloodhound's bay scared Morris so much that his white teeth clattered
+like castanets. Once the "too-whit-too" of a nearby owl sent Tom into an
+ecstasy of terror. He fairly clung to Morris, who, just ahead of him,
+was guiding his steps through the shallow water. When he found he had
+been scared by an owl, he was so ashamed that he forced himself to be
+braver thereafter. At last they reached their first goal, the larger
+river. Here Morris's knowledge of the ground made him the temporary
+commander of the expedition. He knew of a little house nearby, the home
+of a "poor white," who earned part of his precarious livelihood by
+fishing. Morris knew just where he kept his boat. There was no light in
+the little house and no sound from it as they crept stealthily along the
+bank to the tree where the boat was tied. Tom drew his knife to cut the
+rope.
+
+"No, Massa," whispered Morris. "Not dat-a-way. Ef it's cut, dey'll know
+it's bin tuck and dey'll s'picion us. Lemme untie it. Den dey'll t'ink
+it's cum loose and floated away. 'N dey'll not hurry after it. Dey'll
+t'ink dey kin fin' it in some cove any time tomorrer."
+
+Morris was right. It did not take him long to untie the clumsy knot.
+Three oars and some fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat. They
+got into it, pushed off, and floated down the current without a sound.
+Morris steered with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot, they rowed
+as fast as the darkness, intensified by the shadows of the overhanging
+trees, permitted.
+
+Just before they had pushed off, Tom had asked:
+
+"What is this boat worth, Morris?"
+
+"Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one jest like it, dis lastest
+week."
+
+Tom's conscience had told him that even though a fugitive for his life
+in the enemy's country he ought not to take the "poor white's" boat
+without paying for it. He unbuttoned an inside pocket in his shirt and
+drew out a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces. There were twenty
+of them, each wrapped in tissue-paper and the whole then bound together
+in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so that there would be no
+sound of clinking gold as he walked. He figured that the three oars and
+the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth more than the boat was, so
+he took out two coins and put them in a battered old pan that lay beside
+the stump to which the boat was tied. There the "cracker"--another name
+for the "poor white"--would be sure to see them in the morning. As a
+matter of fact he did. And they were worth so much more than his
+vanished property that he was inclined to think an angel, rather than a
+thief, had passed that way. Tom's conscientiousness spoiled Morris's
+plan of having the owner think the boat had floated away, but the
+"cracker" was glad to clutch the gold and start no hue-and-cry. He was
+afraid that if he recovered his boat, he would have to give up the gold.
+It was much cheaper to make another. So he kept still.
+
+And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they paddled slowly down
+the stream until the first signs of dawn sent them into hiding. They
+hid the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth of a tiny creek
+and they themselves crept a few yards into the forest, ate very much
+less than they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's scanty store
+of food, and went to sleep. They slept until--but that is another
+story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+     TOWSER FINDS THE FUGITIVES--TOWSER BRINGS UNCLE MOSES--MR. IZZARD
+     AND HIS YANKEE OVERSEER, JAKE JOHNSON--TOM IS PULLED DOWN THE
+     CHIMNEY--HOW UNCLE MOSES CHOKED THE OVERSEER--THE FLIGHT OF THE
+     FOUR.
+
+
+They slept until late in the afternoon.
+
+Then Morris woke up with a yell. A dog's cold nose was thrusting itself
+against his cheek. He thought his master's bloodhounds were upon him and
+that the whipping-post was the least he had to fear. As Tom, startled
+from sound sleep by the negro's scream of terror, sprang to his feet, he
+saw Morris crouching upon the ground, babbling "Sabe me, good Lord, sabe
+old Morris!" The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel, a very distant
+cousin of the bloodhound the scared darkey imagined him to be, was
+looking with a grieved surprise at the cowering man. He was a most
+good-natured beast, accustomed to few caresses and many kicks, and he
+had never before seen a man who was afraid of him. As he turned to Tom,
+he saw a boy who wasn't afraid of him. Tom, who had always been loved by
+dogs and children, smiled at the big yellow mongrel, said "Come here,
+old fellow," and in an instant had the great hound licking his hand and
+looking up to him with the brown-yellow eyes full of a dog's faith and a
+dog's fidelity. These are great qualities. A cynic once said: "The more
+I see of men the more I like dogs." That cynic probably got from men
+what he gave to them. But still it is true that the unfaltering faith of
+a dog and a child, once their confidence has been won, is a rare and a
+precious thing. Tom patted his new friend's head. The big tail wagged
+with joy. The hound looked reproachfully at Morris, as much as to say:
+"See how you misunderstood me; I want to be friends: but here"--he
+turned and looked at the boy who was smiling at him--"here is my best
+friend."
+
+He stayed with them an hour, contented and happy, humbly grateful for a
+tiny piece of meat they gave him. Then, as dark drew near, he became
+uneasy. Two or three times he started as if to leave them, turned to see
+whether they were following him, looked beseechingly at them, barked
+gently, put his big paw on Tom's arm and pulled at him. Evidently he
+wanted them to come with him, but this they did not dare to do.
+
+"Ef we lets him go, he'll bring his folkses here," Morris whispered.
+
+"I suppose we must tie him up," Tom reluctantly assented. "I hate to
+treat him that way, for he's a good dog. But if we leave him tied and
+push off in the boat, he'll howl after a while and his master will find
+him. Take a bit of fishing-line and tie him."
+
+Morris turned towards the hidden boat, but the hound, as if aware of
+what they had said, suddenly started for his hidden home and vanished
+into the underbrush before Tom could catch hold of him. When Tom called,
+he stopped once and looked back, but he did not come back. He
+shouldered his way into the bushes and trotted off, with that amusing
+air of being in a hurry to keep a most important appointment which all
+dogs sometimes show. And as he started, Morris appeared again, with a
+shrill whisper: "De boat's dun sunk hisself."
+
+Tom ran to the bank of the creek. The news was too true. The boat had
+sunk. The rotten caulking had dropped from one of the rotten seams. The
+bow, tied to a tree in the canebrake, was high in air. The stern was
+under five feet of water. The oars had floated away. The fishing-pole
+was afloat, held to the old craft by the hook-and-line, which had caught
+in the sunken seat. What were they to do? They felt as a Western trapper
+used to feel, when he had lost his horse and saw himself compelled to
+make his perilous way on foot through a country swarming with savage
+foes. What to do?
+
+"We must raise the boat, Morris, get her on shore, turn her over, caulk
+her with something, make some paddles somehow and get off."
+
+They did, by great effort and with much more noise than they liked to
+make, drag the crazy old craft upon the bank of the creek. They turned
+her bottom-side up. The negro plucked down a long, waving mass of
+Spanish moss from a cypress that grew in the swampy soil. Children in
+the South call this Spanish moss "old men's gray beards." Each long
+drift of it looks as if it might have grown on the chin of an aged
+giant. They were pressing it into the gaping seam with feverish haste,
+listening the while for any sign of that dreaded coming of the big
+hound's "folkses." The short twilight of Southern skies ended. A deep
+curtain of darkness fell upon them. And through it they heard the nearby
+patter of the dog's paws and the shuffling footfalls of a man. And they
+saw the gleam of a lantern.
+
+"We'se diskivered, Massa Tom," old Morris whispered, "we'se diskivered."
+
+As he spoke, he slipped over the bank into the creek and lay in much his
+attitude when Tom had first "diskivered" him, except that the water
+covered all of him except mouth and nose and eyes. Tom bent down to him.
+
+"Hush," he said, "keep still. There's only one man coming. The dog's all
+right. I'll meet the man. You stay here."
+
+Then he stepped into a circle of light cast by the lantern upon a mass
+of underbrush and said, with a cheerful confidence he did not feel:
+
+"Howdy, neighbor?"
+
+The big yellow dog was fawning at his feet in a second. A quavering old
+voice came from behind the light of the lantern.
+
+"Howdy, Massa," it said. "Is I intrudin' on you?"
+
+An old, old negro shambled up to him, the lantern in one hand, a ragged
+hat in another. He bowed his crown of white kinky hair respectfully
+before the white boy. There was no enemy to be feared here. The boy's
+heart bounded with relief and he laughed as he answered:
+
+"No, Uncle, you're not intruding. I'm glad to see you. I'm sure you'll
+help us. Come here, Morris."
+
+Morris scrambled up the bank, the wettest man in the world. His eyeballs
+shone as he neared them. They shone still more as he stood before the
+old negro, held out his hand, and said:
+
+"Unk' Moses, I'se po'erful glad to meet up wid you."
+
+Uncle Moses almost dropped his rude lantern in his surprise.
+
+"Well, ef it ain't Massa Pinckney's Morris! Howdy, Morris? How cum so as
+you-uns is here, a-hidin'? I know'd de way dat ar Towser wuz a-actin'
+when he dun cum home dat dere wuz sum-un in de bush out hyar, but I
+neber s'picioned t'wuz you, Morris. Is you dun run away?"
+
+The situation was soon explained. Uncle Moses had already become
+familiar with it. Hunted men, both white and black, were no novelty to
+him by that time. He had helped many of them on their scared way. Too
+old to work, he lived alone in a little cabin on the outskirts of his
+owner's plantation. He tilled a tiny plot of vegetables when "de
+rumatiz" permitted and with these and some rations from "de big house"
+he eked out a scanty living. This owner's self-respect had not prevented
+his working Moses through all a long life, with no payment except food
+and lodging, and behind these always the shadow of the whip. But the
+slave's self-respect required him to work for the hand that fed him, so
+long as failing strength permitted. All he could do now was to scare
+crows from the cornfield, but that he could do well, for his one suit of
+the ragged remains of what had been several other people's clothes made
+him a perfect scarecrow. Besides his vegetables, he had some chickens, a
+sacred possession. "Old Unk' Mose" was known and respected through all
+the countryside. No chicken-thief ever came to his cabin. The kind old
+patriarch was reaping the reward of a kind long life. He dwelt in peace.
+
+He took Tom and Morris to the lonely cabin and treated them there with a
+royal hospitality. Despite his protests, Tom was obliged to take the
+one bed. Unk' Mose and Morris slept upon the floor. First, they had a
+mighty dinner. Two of Moses's fattest chickens and everything Moses had
+in the way of other food filled their starved stomachs. Then to sleep.
+The last thing Tom heard that night was the swish of Towser's mighty
+tail upon the earthen floor as the dog lay beside his cot. The last
+thing of which he was conscious was Towser's gently licking the hand
+that hung down from the cot.
+
+The next day they toiled with such feeble help as Moses could give them
+upon their leaky boat. They put it in fair shape and then, with a rusty
+ax which was one of Unk' Mose's most precious possessions, they
+fashioned a couple of rough oars. Then they spent a day trying to
+persuade Moses to seek freedom with them. It was in vain.
+
+"I'se too old, Massa Tom," said Uncle Moses. "Dey wuz timeses when I dun
+thought all de days and dun prayed all de nights dat freedum'd cum along
+or dat I cud go to freedum. It's too late nowadays. Unk' Mose mus' jes'
+sot hyar, a-waitin'. P'raps, ef I keeps a-helpin' udder folkses to find
+deir freedum, p'raps sum day, 'fore I'se troo' a-waitin', de angel ob de
+Lawd'll cum a-walkin' up to my do' and he'll be a-holdin' by de han' ob
+a great big udder angel 'n de udder angel he'll dun smile at me and say:
+'Unk' Moses, I'se Freedum 'n I'se cum to you.' Den I'll say: 'Thank de
+good Lawd,' and I'll be so happy I guess I'll jes' die 'n go to de great
+White Throne, whar ebberybody's free."
+
+Late that afternoon when they had had to give up the hope of taking
+Uncle Mose with them, they were making a bundle of the food he had given
+them. It was a big bundle. He would have slaughtered his last chicken
+for them, had they permitted it. Suddenly there came the sound of a
+long, shrill whistle. Uncle Moses, tying up the bundle on his knees,
+forgot "de rumatiz" and almost sprang to his feet.
+
+"Lawd-a-massy, dat's de oberseer! He's dun callin' de hands to de
+quarters." The quarters were the slave-quarters which always clustered
+at a respectful distance in the rear of a planter's home. "Dat ar
+oberseer mebbe'll cum hyar. You folkses mus' hide."
+
+The whistle had sounded dangerously near. As they looked out of the one
+door that gave light to the slave's cabin, they saw three horsemen
+trotting towards it, two white men and a negro. They were Moses's
+master, the dreaded overseer, and a groom. It was impossible to run
+across the small cleared space about the cabin and seek the woods
+without being seen. But where could they hide in a one-roomed hut?
+
+"De chimbley, quick, de chimbley," gasped Uncle Mose.
+
+A big chimney, full of the soot of many years of wood-fires on the broad
+hearth below, filled half one side of the room. Tom and Morris rushed to
+it, climbed up the rough stone sides, found a precarious footing just
+above the fireplace, and waited. Fortunately the fire upon which the
+food for the journey had been cooked had almost died down. A little
+smoke floated up the wide opening. The smoke and the soot tickled the
+boy's nostrils until it seemed to him that he must sneeze. A sneeze
+might mean death. With a mighty effort he kept still for what seemed to
+him an hour. It was really about five minutes.
+
+Mr. Izzard, owner of Uncle Moses and of some hundreds of other black
+men, Jake Johnson, his overseer, a renegade Yankee, with a face that
+told of the cruel soul within him, trotted up to the door, the black
+groom a few yards behind them. Uncle Moses had thrust the bundle of food
+far back under the bed. He stood respectfully in his doorway, bowing to
+the ground. Towser cowered beside him. Towser had felt more than once
+the sting of the long whip Jake Johnson carried. He feared and he hated
+the overseer.
+
+"Howdy, Massa Izzard?" said Moses. "Howdy, Mista Johnsing? Will you-uns
+light down 'n cum in?"
+
+"Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied. He was a tall, pale,
+well-born, well-bred, well-educated man, as kind a man as ever held his
+fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was justified in doing so by
+the laws of both God and man as the German emperor was that he ruled a
+subject people by divine right. "No, we won't light down. We just came
+to say howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you want anything, come
+up to the big house and ask for it."
+
+He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the old negro as he stammered a
+few words of thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked:
+
+"Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's Morris, Mose?"
+
+"No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen hide nor har ob Morris. Has
+dat fool nigger runned away?"
+
+Johnson looked at him sharply.
+
+"If I thought you knew already he had run away," said he, "I'd"--he
+cracked his whip in the air to show what he would have done.
+
+Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard told Johnson to stop
+frightening "the best darkey on the place" and they rode away. Mose
+dropped upon his one chair and was just about to give fervent thanks for
+the escape from detection, when Johnson, who had turned a short distance
+away and had galloped back, flung himself off his horse at the door and
+strode into the dusky hut.
+
+"I b'lieve you know something about that Morris," he roared at the
+shrinking old negro. "You looked guilty. Tell me what you know or I'll
+thrash you within an inch of your black life." He cracked his dreaded
+whip again.
+
+"I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista Johnsing," Moses pleaded.
+
+Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved too much for the overtried
+nostrils of Tom. He sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held back.
+His "at-choo! at-choo!" sounded down the chimney like a chorus of
+bassoons. Johnson was across the room in a bound. He knelt upon the
+hearth, groped up the chimney, caught the boy by the ankle and pulled
+him down. The soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer was sure he had
+caught the fleeing Morris.
+
+At that terrible moment, when Johnson's throat was swelling for a yell
+of triumph that would surely have brought Mr. Izzard back to the hut,
+Uncle Moses cast the traditions of a life of servile fear of the white
+man behind him. Never had he dreamed of laying a finger on one of his
+owner's race, even in those long-ago days when stout thews and muscles
+made him fit to fight. Now, in trembling old age, the truth of the
+poet's saying,
+
+    "Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,"
+
+put spirit for a second into his old heart. He knew the danger that lay
+in that yell. He meant to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was
+still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching Tom's ankle, the boy
+still sprawling on the hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery
+and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old body hurled itself upon
+the overseer's broad back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's
+windpipe and choked him into a second's silence. That second was enough.
+Tom sprang to his feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and good
+old Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that beckoned to him, sunk his
+teeth in Johnson's shoulder and tore him down from the back while Tom
+struck his strongest just below the overseer's chin and knocked him out
+for the time being. Before he came to, he had been lashed hand-and-foot
+into a long bundle, had been effectually gagged with his own whip, had
+been blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the bed, from under which
+the food had been hurriedly withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had neither been
+seen nor heard. Tom called up the chimney to him to come down.
+
+"I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice. It had never occurred to
+Morris to slip down and help in the fight he heard going on below. His
+one thought had been to escape himself. So he had climbed still higher
+up the chimney and in his frantic haste he had so wedged himself into it
+that it took Tom an hour to pull him down. It was a battered, bruised,
+and bleeding negro who finally appeared. That was a very long hour. Mr.
+Izzard might return in search of his overseer at any moment. The
+overseer himself must be conscious by this time. His ears must have told
+him much. Tom whispered to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His anxious
+gesture toward the bed beneath which Johnson lay frightened both negroes
+into scared silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's ears had told
+him nothing. Towser's teeth had drawn so much blood--the mighty hound
+had been pried off his foe with difficulty--that the man lay in a faint
+until the four fugitives had fled. For there were four fugitives now.
+Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face the coming wrath. The rest
+of Moses's chickens were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered.
+When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until she had a scant two
+inches of free-board above the water, was slipping down the river again.
+Uncle Moses was no longer "a-waitin' fer freedum." He was going in
+search of the freedom he had so long craved. He and his fellows had two
+clear days in which to get away without pursuit, for Johnson lay in his
+dark prison beneath the bed for fortyeight hours before he was found.
+One of the ropes used to bind him had caught upon an old nail in the
+wall. He was too weak to tear it away and so could not even roll himself
+to the outer air. On the second day of his unexplained absence, Mr.
+Izzard had sent all the negroes in search of him and had offered a
+reward for his finding. The discovery of his horse in a distant part of
+the plantation had concentrated the search there. The darkies who
+finally got the reward did not rejoice much in it, for in finding the
+overseer, they knew they were finding a cruel taskmaster and his cruel
+whip. But the story of his discomfiture by three negroes, for he had
+never known that Tom's sooty face was really white, soon spread through
+the countryside. He became a neighborhood joke and in his wrath at being
+made a butt he resigned as Mr. Izzard's overseer. Leaving this place
+deprived him of his immunity from conscription. He was promptly seized
+by the nearest Confederate officer and impressed into the army. The
+Izzard negroes had the infinite joy of seeing their hated ex-overseer
+marched off under guard to a Confederate camp, to serve as a private
+soldier.
+
+Tom was destined to see Jake Johnson again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two nights they rowed down the river, almost without a word, afraid to
+speak lest someone in the infrequent houses and still more infrequent
+villages along the banks should hear them. Wise old Towser knew enough
+not to bark when men about him kept so still. He lay always where with
+nose or paw or tail he could touch Tom. The latter was the commander of
+the expedition and Towser felt it and became his abject slave
+accordingly. At the close of the second night they had reached the
+Tennessee River. By day they camped upon shore in some hidden place,
+first craftily secreting the boat amid rushes and reeds. From their
+second hiding-place, they saw about noon a Confederate gunboat, a small
+stern-wheel steamboat, with cotton-bales at her bow and stern screening
+her two guns. Though she was making all possible speed up the current,
+she moved but slowly. Her decks were thick with excited men. A babble of
+voices reached the fugitives, peering at her behind a mass of bushes.
+The few words that could be made out told them nothing. The sight of
+her, however, warned them that a new danger might await them on the
+traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their hearts would have beat higher,
+had they known that General Mitchell had pushed south from Huntsville
+and that Union forces were then encamped in strength upon the river, not
+many miles below where they were cowering. The Confederate gunboat had
+been steaming upstream to escape capture.
+
+When darkness came, they embarked again upon what proved to be the last
+chapter in the history of the old flat-boat. The next morning, caught in
+an eddy at the mouth of a small, swift tributary of the Tennessee, she
+whirled about, the Spanish moss dropped out of her rotten seams, she
+filled and sank. She dropped so swiftly beneath them that before they
+realized their danger they were all floundering in water over their
+heads. Tom could swim like a fish. That is one of the first things a boy
+should learn to do. To his delight, he found Uncle Moses was also
+surprisingly at home in the water, considering his years. Towser
+accepted the situation as something he did not understand, but which was
+doubtless entirely all right, as his lord and master, Tom, was in the
+water too. Morris, however, could not swim a stroke and saw only certain
+death before him. He gave a yell of terror as he went under. That yell
+came near costing them dear. As he rose to the surface, Tom on one side
+and Uncle Mose on the other, acting under Tom's instructions, edged a
+shoulder under him, and started to swim to shore with him. Again he
+yelled. This time Moses lost patience.
+
+"Shet up, you fool nigger. You sho'ly needs to be 'mersed."
+
+With this whispered menace, he reached up one hand and ducked Morris's
+head quite under water. That stopped all further sound from him. And by
+this time their feet had touched bottom. They waded ashore, with Towser
+wagging a triumphant tail, shaking himself and sending showers of spray
+over them. There they stood, wet as water-rats, with nothing in the
+world except the dripping clothes they wore. And there was no
+hiding-place near. For half a mile on either side of them a cleared
+field lay open to the day and the day was upon them. They had tempted
+Fate by rowing on too long after the first signs of dawn. Fate had
+turned the trump upon them. The sun rolled up above the eastern horizon
+at their back. It showed them, not half a mile away, a plantation house.
+It showed them a swarm of field-hands coming to the day's toil. It
+showed them a mounted overseer, only a few hundred feet away, riding up
+to the flat range of the field from a ravine that had hidden him. He had
+heard Morris's yells. He saw the three and rode furiously at them,
+calling out:
+
+"What are you niggers doin' here?"
+
+Tom stepped forward to meet him. His two companions were useless in an
+emergency like this. They cowered back and were dumb. Towser strode
+ahead beside Tom and barked. The overseer pulled up short. He saw he was
+dealing with a white man, or rather with a white boy. The circumstances
+were suspicious. Who were these three dripping ragamuffins? But since
+one of them was white, the man's tone changed and he modified his
+question.
+
+"Who are ye? And what are ye doin' here?"
+
+"I am on my way to Vicksburg," Tom answered, "by the river. My boat sunk
+just off shore here and we swam ashore. Can you give me another boat?"
+
+"I mout 'n I moutn't."
+
+"I am carrying dispatches," said Tom, sternly. "You will delay me at
+your peril. I shall take one of those boats, whether you consent or
+not."
+
+With this he pointed at the most encouraging thing the sunrise had shown
+him. This was a line of three boats fastened to a wooden landing-place
+by the river.
+
+"I b'lieve you're a Yankee," said the horseman, "and these are runaway
+niggers. You and they must come up to the big house with me. If you're
+all right, we'll send you on your way. If you're not, well, we know what
+to do with Yanks and runaway niggers! March!"
+
+He slipped his hand behind him, as if to draw a pistol. Tom was already
+making the same gesture. Neither of them had a pistol. Tom's had gone to
+the bottom. It was pure bluff on both sides. And in a moment, seeing
+this and being Americans, both laughed. But none the less the overseer
+demanded that they should go to the big house. Tom, protesting, but
+apparently half-yielding, edged along until he was near the
+landing-platform. Then, shouting "Come on, boys!" he ran to it, the
+frightened negroes following at his heels and Towser running ahead. He
+hustled them into the boat at the eastern end of the pier, jumped in
+himself, jerked the rope off the wooden peg that insecurely held it, and
+pushed off. The overseer, angrily protesting, stood a moment watching
+his prey escape and then galloped like mad for the big house, shouting
+"Yanks! spies!! thieves!!! Yanks!!!!" He was met halfway by half a dozen
+men in Confederate gray, roused by his yells. They were officers who had
+spent the night at the hospitable house, had breakfasted at daybreak,
+and were just about to mount for their day's march when the overseer
+gave the alarm. It was lucky for the fugitives that officers do not
+carry anything bigger than pistols. A fusillade of revolver-bullets all
+fell short of the fleeing mark. Tom and Morris were pulling an oar
+apiece--they had found but two in the boat--with a desperate energy. But
+it was unlucky for the fugitives that they had not thought to steal or
+to scuttle the other two boats. This was Tom's fault, for he was
+captain.
+
+"I'll know better next time," said Tom to himself ruefully, as he saw
+three men spring into each boat for the pursuit. "I'll know better next
+time--if there ever is a next time."
+
+It did not seem likely that there would be a next time. One of the
+pursuing boats fell behind, to be sure. In it, too, there were but two
+oars and the men who plied them could not match the black man and the
+white boy who rowed for freedom's sake and life's sake. But in the other
+boat, two strong men each pulled two oars, while the third man crouched
+in the bow, pistol in hand, calling out steering instructions. This boat
+gained upon them, bit by bit. The fugitives could hear the lookout call
+"Port, hard-a-port!" and could almost see the extra weight thrown into
+the sweep of the starboard oars to send the boat's head the right way.
+Once the man at the bow took a chance on a long shot. His bullet fell
+harmlessly two hundred feet astern of Towser who stood in the stern of
+the fleeing boat, barking savagely. Thrice they turned a sharp bend and
+were out of sight of their enemy for a moment, but each time there was a
+shorter interval before the enemy shot into sight behind them. A fourth
+point lay just ahead. Tom looked back over his shoulder and measured the
+distance with his eye.
+
+"We can just make that next point," he panted. "Soon as we do, we'll
+land and run. It's our only chance."
+
+"I kain't run," said Uncle Moses, "but you'se right, Massa Tom. Dey'll
+catch us ef we keep a-rowin'."
+
+They had almost reached the bend. Another strong pull would have sent
+them around it. But the pursuers had now so gained upon them that the
+lookout chanced another shot. By chance or by skill, it was a very good
+shot. The bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade. The blade
+dropped off as Tom was putting every ounce of his failing strength into
+a prodigious pull. The handle, released from all pressure, flew through
+the air and Tom rolled over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a
+shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent to their work with a
+fierce vigor, feeling the victory won. Morris gave one last pull with
+his one oar and it sent the boat around the bend.
+
+"And dere," as Uncle Moses with widespread arms used to tell the tale
+thereafter, "and dere wuz Massa Lincum's gunboats, a-crowdin' ob de
+ribber--'n de Stars-'n-Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky!"
+
+[Illustration: TOWSER]
+
+And so Unk' Mose and Morris came to their freedom and Tom came to his
+own. Towser became Tom's own. Uncle Moses insisted upon this and Towser
+highly approved of it. The giant hound worshiped the boy. Morris was
+speedily put to work driving a four-mule team for the commissary
+department of General Mitchell's force. He was accustomed to having food
+and lodging doled out to him, so it seemed quite natural to be given
+sleeping quarters (usually under the canvas cover of the wagon he drove)
+and rations, but it took him some months to recover from the shock of
+actually being paid wages for his work. When this too became natural, he
+felt that he was really free. Uncle Moses was too old for that sort of
+thing. He was bewildered by the rough and teeming life of an army-camp.
+He clung to Tom, was as devoted to him as Towser was, and much more
+helpless than the dog was. Towser made friends and important friends at
+once. It happened that food was rather short at headquarters the day
+after the fugitives found safety. Tom, waiting for a chance to go North,
+had been asked to share the tent of a staff-officer and to eat at
+headquarters' mess. An hour before dinner, one of his hosts was
+bewailing the scanty fare they were to have when Towser sidled around
+the corner of the tent with a fat chicken in his mouth and laid it with
+respectful devotion at his master's feet. There was a shout of applause
+and a roar from the assembled officers of "Good dog, good dog, Towser,
+do it again!" Whereupon, after some majestic wags of his mighty tail, he
+disappeared for a few minutes and did do it again. When the second
+chicken was laid at Tom's feet, Towser's position was assured. He was
+named an orderly by acclamation and was given a collar made of an old
+army belt, with the magic letters "U. S. A." upon it, a collar which he
+wore proudly through his happy life.
+
+Tom, who felt quite rich when his arrears of pay were handed him,
+decided to give himself a treat by making Uncle Moses happy. That is the
+best kind of treat man or boy can give himself. Make somebody else happy
+and you will be happy yourself. Try it and see. So, when he finally
+started back for Cairo and Washington he took both Uncle Moses and
+Towser with him. Neither of them had ever been on a railroad train
+before. Equally bewildered and equally happy, they sped by steam across
+the thousand miles between Cairo and Washington. In those days dogs
+could travel with their masters, without being banished to the
+baggage-car. As the three neared the latter city, the great dome of the
+Capitol sprang into sight. Tom eagerly pointed it out.
+
+"Look, Uncle Mose, look, Towser, there's the Capitol."
+
+"Dat's Freedum's home," murmured Unk' Mose.
+
+And Towser, stirred by the others' emotion, barked joyfully. He felt at
+home, too, because he was with Tom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF LINCOLN--THE
+     EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES
+     RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE
+     RUSSIAN FLEET COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER.
+
+
+Tom neared the White House with a beating heart. He had done what
+Lincoln had bade him do. The dispatches had been carried safely and had
+been put into General Grant's hands. But he had taken a rather large
+advantage of the President's smiling suggestion that he might
+occasionally slip into a fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteered
+to go with Andrews on the railroad raid, which was to take a week, and
+he had been away for many weeks, during which he had been carried on the
+army-rolls as "missing." Would the President think of him as a truant,
+who had run away and stayed away from duty? John Hay's welcome of him
+was frigid. The boy's heart went down into his boots. But it sprang up
+into his mouth when he was ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted
+with the winning smile he knew so well and to be congratulated both on
+his bravery in going with Andrews and on his good fortune in finally
+getting back to the Union lines.
+
+The President was not alone when Tom entered the room. There sat beside
+the desk a middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes red with weeping,
+her rusty black dress spotted with recent tears. Her thin hands were
+nervously twisting the petition someone had prepared for her to present
+to the President. She looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he
+turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk with her which Tom's
+entrance had interrupted.
+
+"So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" he
+asked.
+
+"No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the woman. "He said--he said it
+was time to make an example and that my boy Jim ought to be shot and
+would be shot at--at--sunrise tomorrow."
+
+The sentence ended in a wail and the woman crumpled up into a heap and
+slid down to the floor at the President's feet. She had gained one
+moment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the only son of his mother and she a
+widow," had overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried before a
+court-martial of elderly officers who were tired of hearing the
+frivolous excuses of careless boys for not coming back promptly to the
+front, had been found guilty of desertion, and had been sentenced to be
+shot in a week. Six days the mother had haunted the crowded anteroom of
+the stern Secretary of War, bent beneath the burden of her woe. Admitted
+at last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life had been ruthlessly
+refused.
+
+"The life of the nation is at stake, madam," Stanton had growled at her.
+"We must keep the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life to that
+of our country? It is unfortunate," the grim Secretary's tones grew
+softer at the sight of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunate
+that the life happens to be that of your boy, but an example is needed
+and an example there shall be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise.
+Good-day."
+
+He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing mother was ushered out and
+the next person on the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards she was
+with Lincoln. There was no six days' wait at the White House for the
+mother of a Union soldier.
+
+When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom sprang to help her, but the
+President was quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her like a
+child and laid her upon a sofa. He touched a bell and sent word to Mrs.
+Lincoln asking her to come to him. When she did so, she took charge of
+Mrs. Jenkins and speedily revived her. But it was the President, not his
+wife, who completed the cure and saved the weeping woman's reason from
+wreck and her life from long anguish. He pointed to the petition which
+had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor.
+
+"Hand me that paper, Tom."
+
+He put on his spectacles and started to read it. The glasses grew misty
+with the tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna
+handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and wrote beneath it in bold
+letters: "This man is pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held the
+petition close to the sofa so that the first thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as
+she came back to consciousness in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins's
+pardon. It was that blessed news which made her herself again. She broke
+into a torrent of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved aside.
+
+"You see, ma'am," said the President, "I don't believe the way to keep
+the fighting ranks full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's
+been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb: 'Never drown a boy
+baby.' I guess that means that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to
+give him a chance not to make another. You tell Jim from me to do
+better after this. Tom, you take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and
+show him that little line of mine. He won't like it very much. Usually
+he has his own way, but sometimes I have mine and this happens to be one
+of those times. Glad you came to see me, Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of
+things you can do to an American boy that are better than shooting him.
+Here's a little note you can read later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a
+bit. Good-by--and God bless you."
+
+Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her happiness, to the War
+Department, where the formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins
+back to the front, resolute to pay his country for the life the
+President had given him. Only when the order had been entered did the
+mother remember the envelope clutched in her hand which the President
+had given her. It contained no words, unless it be true that "money
+talks." It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had spent her last
+cent on her journey to Washington and her six days' stay there. Abraham
+Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and happiness. When once
+again she had occasion to weep over her son, a year later, her tears
+were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins died a hero's death at
+Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide of
+the Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate commander,
+saw the surge of his splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks of
+the Union line, in the heart of the North. The bullet that killed Jim
+Jenkins tore through the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always wore over
+his heart. And Lincoln found time in that great hour of the country's
+salvation to turn aside from the myriad duties of every day long enough
+to write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter about her dead son's gift of his
+life to his country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and of a wondrous
+consolation, which was buried with the soldier's mother not long
+afterwards, when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier son.
+
+Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a typical one. Everybody
+hated to come in contact with the surly Secretary. One day, when Private
+Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came into the offices with a letter in
+his hand and a cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants me to take
+some people to see Stanton," he said. "I would rather make the tour of a
+smallpox hospital."
+
+Lincoln always shrank from studying the records of court-martials, but
+he often had to do so, that justice or injustice might be tempered by
+mercy. He caught at every chance of showing mercy. A man had been
+sentenced to be shot for cowardice.
+
+"Oh, I won't approve that," said the President. "'He who fights and runs
+away, may live to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is a
+coward, it would frighten him too terribly to shoot him."
+
+The next case was that of a deserter. After sentence, he had escaped and
+had reached Mexico.
+
+"I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln commented. "We can't catch
+him, you see. We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana,
+'as they run.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this time the fortunes of war were not favoring the North. There were
+days of doubt, days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse of the
+President sounded from many Northern newspapers. Its keynote was struck
+by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_ and the foremost
+man in a group of great editors such as the country has never seen
+since. They were Horace Greeley of the _Tribune_, Henry J. Raymond of
+the _New York Times_, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.)
+_Republican_. Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan"; Raymond
+demanded that he be "superseded" as President; and Greeley, in a letter
+that was published in England and that greatly harmed the Union cause,
+said Lincoln ruled "a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."
+
+In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three were household words and names
+by which to conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln pierced his
+heart, but his gentle patience never gave way. He bore with their
+well-meant but unjust criticism as he bore with so much else in those
+dark days, careless of hurt to himself, if he could but serve his
+country and do his duty as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one
+great duty and this he did. On September 22, 1862, he signed his famous
+Emancipation Proclamation, which with its sequence the Thirteenth
+Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ended forever slavery
+wherever the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days of that great
+September, even a boy could feel in the tense atmosphere of the White
+House that some great event was impending. Nobody knew upon just what
+the master mind was brooding, but the whole world was to know it soon.
+It was not until Lincoln had written with his own hand in the solitude
+of his own room the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves that he
+called together his Cabinet, not to advise him about it, but to hear
+from him what he had resolved to do. The messenger who summoned the
+Cabinet officials to that historic session was none other than Uncle
+Moses. Tom of course had long since told the story of his flight for
+freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted attack at the very nick of
+time upon the overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of the old
+negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring Moses to see him and Moses emerged
+from that interview the proudest darkey in the world, for he was made a
+messenger and general utility man at the White House. Part of his duty
+was to keep in order the room where the Cabinet met and to summon its
+members when a meeting of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly but
+majestically from the White House to the different Departments, bearing
+a message from the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a very
+different person from the Unk' Mose who had cared for Tom and Morris in
+the Alabama canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man. On these little
+journeys, Tad Lincoln often went with him, his small white hand
+clutching one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although Moses knew
+nothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting at
+which the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day of
+his life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a
+great event in the world's history.
+
+"I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say with
+ever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, he
+came to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet,
+instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which the
+Proclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. So
+Unk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residence
+of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. He
+wrote that evening in his diary: "They all seemed to feel a sort of new
+and exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's Proclamation
+had freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called
+themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of
+appropriating that horrible name." The Proclamation made it respectable
+to be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until it
+succeeds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man has
+made a New Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in
+bondage--emancipation was to take place wherever the Stars-and-Stripes
+flew on January 1, 1863--such a man must have a wonderful glow of
+reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keen
+eye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.
+
+Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's office. Lincoln
+was stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long
+legs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foot
+telescope to his eyes, its other end resting upon his toes. He was
+looking at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news did
+they bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head,
+called out: "Come in, Tommy."
+
+Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, a
+telegram in his hand, saying:
+
+"Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He is
+behaving very badly."
+
+"Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busy
+to quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll
+never hear of it."
+
+He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds.
+
+That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and Hay had asked him to spend the
+evening, after the household had gone to bed, in their office. Crackers
+and cheese and a jug of milk were the refreshments and John Hay's talk
+was the delight of the little gathering. Midnight had just struck when
+the door opened quietly and the President slipped into the room. Never
+had Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he had on was a short
+nightshirt and carpet-slippers. He was smiling as he entered.
+
+"Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the 'Biglow Papers.' That fellow
+Lowell knows how to put things. Just hear this. He puts these Yankee
+words into Jeff Davis's mouth:
+
+    "'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over
+    Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done
+    Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day
+    Consists in triumphantly gettin' away!'
+
+And here," continued the President, utterly unaware of the oddity of his
+garb, "and here is a good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the
+'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear this:
+
+    "'An' why should we kick up a muss
+        About the Pres'dent's proclamation?
+    It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us
+        Ef we don't like emancipation.
+    The right to be a cussed fool
+        Is safe from all devices human.
+    It's common (ez a gin'l rule)
+        To every critter born o' woman.'"
+
+Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly unconscious," says Hay's
+diary, "that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs and
+setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was
+infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at."
+
+"That fellow Lowell" was James Russell Lowell, an American critic, poet,
+and essayist, later our Minister to England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day Tom had a welcome letter from his father, saying he was on his
+way home and would be in Washington almost as soon as his letter was.
+The letter was written from St. Petersburg and had upon its envelope
+Russian stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp before. He showed the
+envelope as a curiosity to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's
+eager request gave it to him. Tom happened to lunch with the Lincoln
+family that day. Tad produced his new possession at the table, crying to
+his mother:
+
+"See what Tommy has given me."
+
+"Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs. Lincoln.
+
+"My father," the boy answered. "He sent me good news. He's coming home
+right away."
+
+"Your father sent me good news, too," said Mr. Lincoln from the head of
+the table.
+
+"What was that?" interjected the first lady of the land.
+
+"You shall know soon, my dear." Then the beautiful smile came to the
+President's firm lips and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said
+to Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans could give to a fellow-citizen
+was to decree that he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That can be
+said of your father now. He has deserved well of the Republic. Before
+long, the world will know what he has done. Until then," he turned as he
+spoke to his wife, "until then we'd better not talk about it."
+
+This talk was in early June of 1863. By September the whole world, or at
+least all the governments of the world, did know what Mr. Strong had
+done after Lincoln sent him abroad. The whole world saw the symbol of
+his work, without in many cases knowing what the symbol signified. That
+symbol was the famous visit of the Russian fleet to New York City in
+September of 1863.
+
+The governing classes of both England and France were in favor of the
+South during our Civil War. The English and French Empires were jealous
+of the growth of the Republic and wished to see it torn asunder. France
+hoped to establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France, if the
+Confederacy won. England needed Southern cotton and could not get it
+unless our blockade of Southern ports was broken. The people of both
+France and England had little to say as to what their governments would
+do. Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side and the mass of
+Englishmen were also on our side, but the latter were helpless in the
+grip of their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their belief,
+however, splendidly. In the height of what was called "the cotton
+famine," when the Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the fleecy
+staple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives were facing actual
+starvation, a tiny group of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas
+Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout Lancashire on behalf of the
+Northern cause. There was to be a great meeting at Manchester, in the
+heart of the stricken district. The cost of hall, lights, advertising,
+etc., was considerable. Someone suggested charging an admission fee. It
+was objected that the unemployed poor could not afford to pay anything.
+Finally it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with placards saying
+that anyone who chose could give something towards the cost of the
+meeting. When it was over, the baskets were found to hold over four
+bushels of pennies and ha'pennies. The starving poor of Lancashire had
+given them, not out of their abundance, but out of their grinding want.
+
+This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.
+
+The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon the Little," as the great
+French poet and novelist, Victor Hugo, called him, asked England to
+have the English fleet join the French fleet in breaking our blockade
+and in making Slavery triumph. England hesitated before the proposed
+crime, but finally said it was inclined to follow the Napoleonic lead,
+if Russia would do likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote what is
+called a holographic letter, that is, a letter entirely in his own
+handwriting, to the then Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his
+fleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.
+
+Russia was then a despotism, with one despot. It was not only a European
+and an Asiatic Power, but an American Power as well, for it did not sell
+Alaska to the United States until 1867. Despotism does not like to see
+Liberty flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty is a
+contagious thing. Might not the American example infect Alaska, spread
+through Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne at St.
+Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the work of our Minister to Russia
+and of our extra-official representative there, the Hon. Thomas Strong,
+Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian Czar wrote the French Emperor
+that the Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed attack upon
+the Northern navy, but that on the contrary it was about to sail for New
+York in order that its commander might place it at the disposal of the
+President of the United States in case any Franco-English squadron
+appeared with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.
+
+This was the beginning of the traditional friendship between America and
+Russia. It explains why New York and Washington went mad in those
+September days of 1863 in welcoming the Russian fleet and the Russian
+officers. It explains why Lincoln told Tom that his father had "deserved
+well of the Republic."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at about this time that John Hay once asked Tom:
+
+"What do you think of the Tycoon by this time, my boy?"
+
+"Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were names his rather irreverent secretaries
+had given Lincoln. Nevertheless they both reverenced and loved him.
+Their nicknames for him were born of affection.
+
+"Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite know how to put into fitting
+words all he felt about his chief. But John Hay, who was never much
+interested in the opinion on anything of anybody but himself, went on:
+
+"I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods Jupiter. He sits here
+and wields both the machinery of government and the bolts of war. A
+backwoods Jupiter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+     TOM GOES TO VICKSBURG--MORGAN'S RAID--GEN. BASIL W. DUKE CAPTURES
+     TOM--GETTYSBURG--GEN. ROBERT E. LEE GIVES TOM HIS BREAKFAST--IN
+     LIBBY PRISON--LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG.
+
+
+Late in June of 1863 Tom again left General Grant's headquarters. These
+were then in the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The long siege of
+that town, held by a considerable Confederate force under General
+Pemberton, was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at the death, but
+that could not be. He had been sent with dispatches to Grant and this
+time there had been no suggestion by the President that he might fight a
+bit if he felt like it. So he was now again on his way to Washington. He
+was a long time getting there, nearly a year; and this was the way of
+it.
+
+July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant and daring Confederate
+cavalry commander, got his troops across the Cumberland River at
+Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats and canoes lashed
+together. None but he and his second in command knew whither the
+proposed raid was to lead. People about their starting-point thought
+Morgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creek
+went along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a
+"salt-lick" a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines.
+He expected to go and come back safely with Morgan's men. After he had
+been through a few marches and more fights and saw no chance of ever
+getting home, he plaintively said: "I swar ef I wouldn't give all the
+salt in Kaintucky to stand once more safe and sound on the banks of
+Calfkills Creek."
+
+Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had not reckoned upon John H.
+Morgan, general C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward from
+Cairo. No one dreamed that Morgan would dare do what he did do. The
+Confederate cavalry rode northward across Kentucky, with one or two
+skirmishes per day to keep it busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for
+the South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati. It threw southern
+Indiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damage
+such as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men were
+Americans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms was
+killed. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies were
+taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn up, and a clean sweep
+was made of all the horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry was in
+sad need of new horses. The Union officer who led the pursuit of Morgan
+said, in his official report: "His system of horse-stealing was
+perfect." But so far as war can be a Christian thing Morgan made it so.
+
+Now the railroad which suffered most from the Confederate raid was the
+one upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had taken came
+to a sudden stop at a way-station in Ohio, where a red flag was
+furiously waved.
+
+"Morgan's torn up the track just ahead," shouted the man who held the
+flag.
+
+Nothing more could be learned there and then. Of course the raiders had
+cut the wires. By and by fugitives began to straggle in from the
+eastward, farmers who had fled from their farms driving their horses
+before them, villagers who feared the sack and ruin that really came to
+no one, women and children on foot, on horseback, in carts, in wagons,
+in buggies. Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell, but nobody
+really knew anything. Tom questioned each newcomer. Piecing together
+what they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that the
+track had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that
+the quickest way for him to get to Washington was to walk across the
+short gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could find
+no one who would go with him, even as a guide, but well-meant directions
+were showered upon him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten warnings
+to one direction. The railroad, however, was his best guide-post. He
+started eastward, riding a horse he had bought from one of the
+fugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen hands high, but the
+price Tom paid for him was a good deal higher than the horse.
+
+All went well at first. He soon reached the place where the Confederates
+had wrecked the railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every little
+bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails and ties had been torn up, the
+ties massed together and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the burning
+ties and twisted by the heat into sinuous snakes of iron. Occasionally a
+hot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set of
+loops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. The
+telegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into a
+broken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirely
+disappeared. Doubtless these had been thrown into the little streams
+which the burned bridges had spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as
+if some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake had co-operated in
+its destruction. It would be many a day before a train could again run
+upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a railroad was almost as perfect as
+his system of horse-stealing.
+
+A country-road wandered along beside where the railroad had been, so
+Tom's progress was easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke, but the
+little streams were shallow and could be forded without difficulty, for
+June had been rainless and hot that year. The few houses the boy passed
+were shut-up and deserted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countryside
+bare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of a
+region normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to
+see a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind,
+but he was still in an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as dusk came,
+he rejoiced to see the gleam of a candle in a farmhouse not far ahead.
+He was so sure Morgan's whole command was by this time far to the
+northward that he galloped gayly up to the house--and, perforce,
+presented to the Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the entire
+raid.
+
+The gleam had come from a back window. The whole front of the house was
+closed, but that is common in rustic places and Tom was sure he would
+find the family in the kitchen, with both food and news to give him.
+Instead he found just outside the kitchen, as he and the big bay turned
+the corner, a group of dismounted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A
+mounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon,
+was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bent
+close to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of the
+men was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared and plunged
+and kicked. The rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from the
+saddle and landed on his hands and knees before the group. It was rather
+an abject position in which to be captured. The Southerners roared with
+good-humored laughter as they picked him up. Even the officer smiled at
+the boy's plight.
+
+Before the men, on a table outside the kitchen door, lay a half-dozen
+appetizing apple pies, evidently of that day's baking. The farmer's
+wife, before she fled, had put them there with the hope that they might
+propitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house from
+destruction. She did not know that Morgan's men did not make war that
+way. Those of them who had come there suspected a trap in this open
+offer of the pies.
+
+"They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.
+
+At that moment, when they were hesitating between hunger and fear, Tom
+butted in upon them and was seized.
+
+"Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a second soldier when the
+little scurry of the capture was over. This met instant approval and
+Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward to the table when the
+officer spoke, with a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend as
+well as the commander of his rude soldiery.
+
+"I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a pie."
+
+He bit with strong white teeth through the savory morsel and detected no
+foreign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of them down
+Tom's hungry throat. Then the officer spoke to him.
+
+"Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that uniform somewhere, didn't
+you? You're too young to wear it by right. Who are you?"
+
+He was a man of medium height, spare but splendidly built, with his face
+bronzed by long campaigning in the open air, regular features, piercing
+black eyes that twinkled, but could shoot fire, waving black hair above
+a beautiful brow, dazzling white teeth--altogether a vivid man. His
+mustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln
+was plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southern
+aristocrat, the other the son of a Southern poor white, an elusive
+resemblance. It may have been the innate nobleness and kindliness of
+both men. It may have been the Kentucky blood which was their common
+portion. At any rate, the resemblance was there.
+
+[Illustration: From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
+               GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES]
+
+Tom took one glance at the chief of his captors and then saluted with
+real respect as he replied:
+
+"I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant, U. S. A."
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it. We don't make war on boys. If
+you had been, as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I would have
+turned you loose at once. Now I must take you with us."
+
+Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with Tom, disarmed but unbound,
+in the middle of it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards ahead of
+it the officer rode with a free bridle rein, chatting with an aide
+beside him. He rode like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the finest
+soldiers he had ever seen. And so he was. He was Gen. Basil W. Duke,
+brother-in-law, second in command, and historian of General Morgan. He
+was a soldier and a gentleman, if ever God made one.
+
+A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost constant fighting, much of it
+with home-guards and militia who feared Morgan too much to fight him
+hard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers who fought as good Americans
+should, Morgan crossed the Ohio again into the comparative safety of
+West Virginia. He took across with him his few prisoners, including Tom.
+Then, finding that the mass of his brigade had been cut off from
+crossing, the Confederate general detached a dozen men to take the
+prisoners south while he himself with most of the troopers with him
+recrossed to where danger beckoned. On July 26, 1862, at Salineville,
+Ohio, not far from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered, he
+surrendered with the 364 men who were all that were left of his gallant
+band. Our government made the mistake of treating him and his officers
+not as captured soldiers but as arrested bandits. They were sent to the
+Ohio State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a daring escape not long
+afterwards. He made his way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile, Tom
+had been taken to captivity on that same soil. He was in Libby Prison,
+at the Confederate Capital, Richmond, Virginia.
+
+His journey thither had been long and hard and uneventful, except for
+the gradual loss of the few things he had with him. His pistol and his
+money had been taken when he was first captured. Now, as he was turned
+over to one Confederate command after another, bit by bit his belongings
+disappeared. His boots went early in the journey. His cap was plucked
+from his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by a Confederate spy, who
+meant to use it in getting inside the Union lines. When he was finally
+turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief Confederate army,
+commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and had
+nothing to wear except an old Confederate gray shirt and the ragged
+remains of what had once been a pair of Confederate gray trousers, held
+about his waist by a string. He was hungry and tired and unbelievably
+dirty. The one good meal he had had on his long march had been given him
+at Frederick, Maryland, by a delightful old lady whom Tom always
+believed to be Barbara Frietchie.
+
+It was August now. On July 4, Grant had taken Vicksburg and Meade had
+defeated Lee at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy had begun to
+dawn. None the less Robert E. Lee's tattered legions, forced back from
+the great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn defense of Richmond,
+trusted, worshiped, and loved their great general.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meade, the Union commander, by excess of caution, had let Lee escape
+after Gettysburg. He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln was
+deeply grieved.
+
+"We had them within our grasp," he said, throwing out his long arms. "We
+had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours. And nothing I
+could say or do could make our army move."
+
+Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of New York, a gallant fighter,
+one of the corps commanders who had tried to spur the too-prudent Meade
+into attacking, came to the White House.
+
+"Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly asked him.
+
+"Because nobody stopped him."
+
+And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been stopped, the war would
+have ended nearly two years before it did end. It is a wonderful proof
+of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that though he repeated: "Our
+army held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not close
+it," he added at once: "Still, I am very, very grateful to Meade for the
+great service he did at Gettysburg."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lee was a son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, the daring cavalry commander
+of the Revolution and the author of the immortal phrase about
+Washington: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
+his countrymen." Robert E. Lee had had an honorable career at West Point
+and in the war with Mexico and was Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers in
+the United States army when the war between the States began. He loved
+his country and her flag, but he had been bred in the belief that his
+loyalty was due first to Virginia rather than to the Union. When the Old
+Dominion, after first refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut.-Col.
+Lee, U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great efforts were made to
+keep him on the Union side. It is said he was offered the chief command
+of our army. Sadly he did his duty as he saw it. He put aside the offers
+made him, resigned his commission, and left Arlington for Richmond.
+
+Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union soldiers, crowns a hill on the
+Virginia side of the Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its feet.
+The valley of the Potomac spreads before it. From the portico of the
+old-fashioned house, a portico upheld by many columns, one can look
+towards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but hid from sight by
+clustering hills. The house was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke
+Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was his aide at Yorktown in
+1783, and grandson of Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in 1858,
+directed in his will that his slaves should be freed in five years. Lee,
+his son-in-law and executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and gave
+them passes through the Confederate lines. He had already given freedom
+to his own slaves. Long before the war, he wrote from Fort Brown, Texas,
+to his wife: "In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but will
+acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political
+evil in any country.... I think it is a greater evil to the white than
+the black race."
+
+[Illustration: ARLINGTON
+               Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. New York.]
+
+Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four Virginians. He ranks with
+George Washington, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No praise could
+be greater. When "the Lost Cause," as the Southerners fondly call their
+great fight for what they believed to be right, reeled down to decisive
+defeat, the general whom they had worshiped in war proved himself a
+great patriot in peace. His last years were passed as President of
+Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Long before his death, his
+name was honored by every fair-minded man on the Northern as well as the
+Southern side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the noblest eulogies of
+him was voiced upon the centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, at
+Washington and Lee University, by Charles Francis Adams. The best blood
+of Massachusetts honored the best blood of Virginia. Our country was
+then again one country and all of it was free.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tom Strong was standing with a group of other prisoners, all Northern
+officers, under guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at Lee's
+headquarters. These were upon a little knoll, from which the eye ranged
+over the long lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush that gave
+such shelter as they could to the ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions
+of the Confederacy. It was early in the morning. Scanty breakfasts were
+cooking over a thousand fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters, there
+came an odor of bubbling coffee that made the prisoners' hunger the
+harder to bear. The whole camp was strangely silent.
+
+Then, in the distance, there was a storm of cheering. It gained in sound
+and shrillness. The soldiers poured out of their tents by the thousand.
+Those who had hats waved them; those who had not waved their arms; and
+every throat joined in the famous "rebel yell." Through the shouting
+thousands rode a half-dozen superbly mounted horsemen, at their head a
+gallant figure, with close-cropped white beard, whiskers, and mustache,
+seated upon a superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the famous
+Traveler.
+
+[Illustration: GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER]
+
+It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the Confederacy. Even his iron
+self-control almost broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which he
+was hailed by the survivors of the gallant gray army he had launched in
+vain against the bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush almost as
+red as that of youth crept across his pale cheeks and a mist crept into
+his eyes. His charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll where the
+Union prisoners were huddled together. As his glance swept over them,
+he noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy who stood in the
+front line. Many a boy as young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks
+Lee led. Many an old man bent under the weight of his gun in those
+ranks. The Confederacy, by this time almost bled white, was said to
+have "robbed the cradle and the grave" to keep its armies at fighting
+strength. The North, with many more millions of people, had not been
+driven to do this. Tom was one of the few boys in the armies of the
+Union.
+
+"Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked Traveler before the group.
+
+"Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy.
+
+"Your rank?"
+
+"Second-lieutenant, sir."
+
+"Where were you captured?"
+
+"In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan."
+
+Tom was faint with hunger as he was put through this little catechism.
+As he made the last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner, Col.
+Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught and held him. Lee misunderstood
+the movement. His lip curled with disgust as he said:
+
+"Are you--a boy--drunk?"
+
+Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose and a half-dozen others
+answered for him.
+
+"Not drunk, but hungry, General."
+
+"I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian replied, "but at least you
+shall be hungry no longer. My staff and I will postpone our breakfast
+until you have eaten. Pompey!" An old negro came out of the cook-tent.
+He had been one of George Washington Parke Custis's slaves. When freed,
+he had refused to leave "Marse Robert," whose cook he had become. He
+wore the remains of a Confederate uniform. "Pompey, give these
+gentlemen our breakfast. We will wait."
+
+"But--but--Marse Robert, I'se dun got real coffee dis mornin'."
+
+"Our involuntary guests," said Lee with a gentle smile as he turned to
+the prisoners, "will, I hope, enjoy the real coffee."
+
+And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread and bacon that came with it
+were nectar and ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only fleck upon
+the feast was when one of them, in his hurry to be served, spoke rudely
+to old Pompey. The negro turned away without a word, but his feelings
+were deeply hurt. When the Union officer hurled after him a word of foul
+abuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand upon his ragged uniform, and
+said:
+
+"I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah, but you must 'speck de
+unicorn."
+
+After that the "unicorn" and the fine old negro who wore it were both
+amply respected. When everything in sight had been eaten, the prisoners
+were ordered to fall in line. Their guards stood in front of the little
+column, beside it, behind it.
+
+"Forward, march!"
+
+They marched southward for a few miles, tramped through the swarming,
+somber streets of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its doors closed
+behind them with a clang. Captivity in the open had been hard enough to
+bear. This new kind of captivity, within doors, with barred windows, was
+to be harder yet. Tom was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln made his wonderful
+Gettysburg speech.
+
+The battlefield of Gettysburg was made sacred by the men who died there
+for Freedom's sake and also by the men who died there for the sake of
+what they honestly thought were the rights of the Slave States. Congress
+made the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to be dedicated to its
+great memories on November 19, 1863. The morning before a special train
+left Washington for Gettysburg. It carried President Lincoln, Secretary
+of State Seward, two other members of the Cabinet, the two private
+secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished Pennsylvanian, Wayne
+MacVeagh, later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our Minister to
+Italy, and others of lesser note. Among those latter was the Hon. Thomas
+Strong, who had been made one of the party by Lincoln's kind
+thoughtfulness. It was he who afterwards told his son the story of
+Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the moment, but long
+since recognized as one of the masterpieces of English literature.
+
+The little town of Gettysburg was in a ferment that November night, when
+the President's train arrived. It was full of people and bands and
+whisky. Crowds strolled through the streets, serenading statesmen and
+calling for speeches with an American crowd's insatiable appetite for
+talky-talk. "MacVeagh," says Hay, "made a most beautiful and touching
+speech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian made a most
+disgusting and drunken speech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of his
+party of course had no share in all this brawling merriment. He and
+Seward had talked briefly to shouting thousands early in the evening.
+
+On the way up from Washington, the President had sat in a sad
+abstraction. He took little part in the talk that buzzed about him.
+Once, when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming about the way the Southern
+magnates were misleading the Southern masses, Lincoln said with a weary
+smile one of those sayings of his which will never be forgotten. "You
+can fool part of the people all the time; you can fool all the people
+part of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Then
+he became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on the
+morrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts,
+a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. He had been
+Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to England, Secretary of State,
+United States Senator. He was handsome, distinguished, graceful. The
+ungainly President felt that he and his words would be but a foil to
+Everett and his sonorous sentences, sentences that were sure to come
+rolling in like "the surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett had
+graduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log-cabin. Both must face on the
+morrow the same audience.
+
+The President searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil. From
+the aisle of the car, he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper,
+thrown there by Seward, who had just opened a package of books in the
+opposite seat. He penciled a few words, bent his head upon his great
+knotted hand in thought, then penciled a few more. Then he struck out
+some words and added others, read his completed task and did not find it
+good. He shook his head, stuffed the brown wrapping paper into his
+pocket, and took up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh.
+
+At eleven the next morning, from an open-air platform on the
+battlefield, Everett held the vast audience through two hours of fervent
+speech, fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bitterness against
+the men he called "the Southern rebels." His speech was literature and
+his voice was music. As the thunder of his peroration ended a
+thunderstorm of applause began. When it, too, died away, there shambled
+to the front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed man, contrasting
+sharply and in every way disadvantageously with Everett of the silver
+tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too. He tried to pitch his voice
+to reach all that vast audience and his first words came in a squeaking
+falsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lincoln stopped speaking.
+There were a few seconds of painful silence. Then he came to his own.
+With a voice enriched by a passionate sincerity, he began again and
+finished his Gettysburg speech. Here it is:
+
+"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this
+Continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
+proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
+great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so
+conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
+battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a
+final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation
+might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
+But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
+cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
+struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
+to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say
+here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
+living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
+who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to
+be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these
+honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
+here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve
+that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under
+God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the
+people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
+
+The President ceased to speak. There was no thunderstorm of applause
+such as had followed Everett's studied sentences and polished periods.
+There was no applause at all. One long stir of emotion throbbed through
+the silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitude
+dispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of what Lincoln
+had said. Most of the notables on the platform thought the President's
+speech a failure. Time has shown that it was one of the greatest things
+even he ever did.
+
+Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written in her short story "The Perfect
+Tribute" the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy who would know
+what manner of man our Abraham Lincoln was should read "The Perfect
+Tribute." One of the characters in the story, a dying Confederate
+officer, says to Lincoln without knowing to whom he was speaking: "The
+speech so went home to the hearts of all those thousands of people that
+when it ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath--there was
+not a hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud the Lord's
+prayer--it would be sacrilege. And they all felt it--down to the lowest.
+There was a long minute of reverent silence, no sound from all that
+great throng--it seems to me, an enemy, that it was the most perfect
+tribute that has ever been paid by any people to any orator."
+
+The Gettysburg speech was not for the moment. It is for all time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     TOM IS HUNGRY--HE LEARNS TO "SPOON" BY SQUADS--THE BULLET AT THE
+     WINDOW--WORKING ON THE TUNNEL--"RAT HELL"--THE RISK OF THE
+     ROLL-CALL--WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE JOHNSON, CONFEDERATE SPY--TOM IN
+     LIBBY PRISON--HANS ROLF ATTENDS HIM--HANS REFUSES TO ESCAPE--THE
+     FLIGHT THROUGH THE TUNNEL--FREE, BUT HOW TO STAY SO?
+
+
+When the war between the States began, Libby & Son were a thriving firm
+of merchants in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse, which fronted on
+Carey Street and extended back over land that sloped down to another
+street, which occupied all the space between the southern wall of the
+warehouse and the canal that here bordered the James River. The building
+was full before the war of that rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray
+praises in "The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands of the Old
+Dominion can no longer produce.
+
+[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR]
+
+The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to eat. The whole South was
+hungry. When Confederate soldiers were starving, Confederate prisoners
+could not expect to fatten. Nor was this the only evil thing. The prison
+was indescribably unclean. The cellar and the lower floor, upon which no
+prisoners were allowed except in the dining-room in the middle of the
+floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats which climbed upstairs at
+night and nipped mouthfuls of human flesh when they could. There was no
+furniture. The prisoners slept on the floor, so crowded together that
+they had to lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all. They had
+divided themselves into squads and had chosen commanders. Tom found
+himself assigned to Squad Number Four. The first night, when he had at
+last sunk into uncomfortable sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened
+by the sharp command of the captain of his group:
+
+"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to spoon! One, two, spoon!"
+
+The squad flopped over, from one weary bruised side to another. It
+seemed to the worn-out boy that he had just "spooned," when again he
+waked to hear the queer command and again he flopped. This was a sample
+of many nights.
+
+On the following morning Tom had one of the narrow escapes of his life.
+He was leaning against one of the barred windows, looking at the broad
+valley of the James, when he was suddenly seized violently by the arm
+and jerked to one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip that had
+been laid upon it and his knees, sticking through his torn trousers, had
+been barked against the floor, as he was dragged back, but he turned to
+the man who had laid hold of him, not with anger, but with thankfulness.
+For, at the second he had been seized a bullet had whizzed through the
+window just where his head had been. If he had not been jerked away, the
+Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended then and there.
+
+If Tom was not angry, the man was. He glared at him.
+
+"You little fool, don't you know better than that?"
+
+When the boy heard himself called a fool, he did become angry, but after
+all this big person had saved his life, even if he did call him names.
+So he swallowed his wrath--which is an excellent thing to do with
+wrath--and answered quite meekly:
+
+"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look out of the windows?"
+
+"Hasn't anybody told you that?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool." Tom smiled and nodded in
+acceptance of the implied apology. "The sentries outside have orders to
+fire whenever they see anybody at a window. Last week two men were
+killed that way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when I saw you
+looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but it's better to be hurt than to be
+killed. Shake."
+
+The boy wrung the big man's hand and thanked him for his timely aid.
+They strolled together up and down the big room now deserted by most of
+its occupants, who had begun below their patient wait for dinner. The
+man was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an
+intelligent boy in his business. Just then Colonel Rose's business was
+to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet
+it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundred
+intelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a
+most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to
+find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the
+plan a reality. One trouble about the former plans at Libby had been
+that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. There must always
+be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the
+crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the
+crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once
+or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had
+found their first free breath their last, for they had stumbled into a
+trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom.
+More often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without
+warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to
+despair. Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts. He
+planned along new lines. He decided upon absolute secrecy, except for
+the men who were actually to do the work. This work involved a good
+deal of burrowing into holes that must be particularly narrow at first
+and never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get into a hole where a
+stout man could not go. Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men
+could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human mole. He had picked Tom Strong
+for the job. Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy of the plan
+and asked his aid. Tom's shining eyes threatened to tell how important
+the talk was.
+
+"Act as though you were uninterested, my boy," Colonel Rose warned him.
+"Keep your eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."
+
+So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at all his natural appearance.
+He studied the floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it. He
+yawned so prodigiously as to attract the attention he was trying to
+escape. An amateur actor is apt to overact his part. And all the time he
+was listening with a passionate interest to Colonel Rose's story of the
+way to freedom. Of course he was glad to try to help make the hope a
+fact.
+
+That night the work began. The kitchen dining-hall was deserted from 10
+P.M. to 4 A.M., so it was selected as the field of operation. Below the
+kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No opening could be made into that
+without instant detection. On the same floor with the kitchen and just
+east of it was the hospital. That room must be avoided too. Below the
+hospital was an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and all full
+of squealing rats. It was called "Rat Hell." Outside of it was a small
+sewer that led to a larger one which passed under the canal and emptied
+its contents into the James River. These sewers were to be the highway
+to freedom. The first step must be to get from the kitchen to Rat Hell.
+To do this it was necessary to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed
+"S," like this:
+
+[Illustration: Reverse S]
+
+The upper end of the secret passage was to open into the kitchen
+fireplace, the lower into Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the
+secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had just one tool, an old knife.
+One of them owned a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress and
+sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new use now. It was spread upon the
+kitchen hearth in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was pulled
+down upon it. Then the mortar between a dozen bricks at the back of the
+fireplace was cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out of place.
+This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton, Colonel Rose's chief assistant.
+He carefully replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of soot over them.
+He and Rose crept upstairs, carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them,
+and slept through what was left of the night. The next day was an
+anxious time for them. When they went down to the kitchen, where a
+couple of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to them that the marks of
+their toil by night were too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their
+nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody saw what had been done. That
+night, as soon as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton again
+removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn stone behind the fireplace.
+Fortunately the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were pried out of
+the loosened mortar.
+
+Now came Tom's chance to serve the good cause. He was a proud boy, a few
+nights later, when he was permitted to go down to the kitchen with the
+Colonel and the Major, in order that he might creep into the hole they
+had made and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air. He laid upon his
+stomach in the upper part of the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as
+vigorously as it could be plied without making a tell-tale noise. When
+he had widened the passage, one of the men took his place in it and
+drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose in his eagerness got into the
+opening before the lower part of it had been sufficiently enlarged and
+stuck there. It was only by a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom
+finally dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping for breath.
+Finally, after many nights, Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen
+from about a box of food sent a prisoner, had been made into a rope
+ladder. It was hung from the edge of the hole. The three crept
+cautiously down to Rat Hell. This haven did not seem much like heaven.
+With squeals of wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the intruders
+fled up their ladder. They were no match for a myriad rats. Moreover
+they feared lest the noise would bring into the basement the sentry
+whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk outside. So they fled,
+taking their rope-ladder with them, and again, as ever, they replaced
+the bricks and painted them with the friendly soot.
+
+The next night, armed this time with sticks of wood, they fought it out
+with the rats and made them understand their masters had come to stay.
+Fortunately the fight was short. It was noisy and the sentry came. But
+when he opened the door from the street and looked into the darkness of
+the basement, the Union officers were safely hid under the straw and
+only a few of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the tunnel to
+the sewer could be begun. Colonel Rose had long since decided, by
+forbidden, stealthy glances from an upper window, just where it was to
+be. The measurement made above was now made below, the straw against
+the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old knife, or what was left of
+it after its battle with brick and stone, was put to the easier task of
+digging dirt.
+
+[Illustration: FIGHTING THE RATS
+
+From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War."
+
+The Century Co.]
+
+Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before the tunnel was five feet
+long, the air in it became so foul that candles went out in it. So would
+the lives of the diggers have gone out if they had stayed in it long.
+Five of the fifteen now went down each night, so that everybody had two
+nights' rest out of three. But the progress made was pitifully slow. Man
+after man was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous pit, almost at
+his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton had been brought out and was being
+fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom, the boy whispered:
+
+"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"
+
+Nobody had thought of that obvious plan. Like most great inventions it
+was simple--when seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at the end
+of the tunnel fanning air into it with their hats. But even so, many a
+candle went out and many a digger was pulled out, black in the face and
+almost dead.
+
+The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to reach the sewer. It sloped
+too far down. It got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton was
+caught in it by the rush of water and almost drowned. So much work had
+to be done over again. Then came a crushing blow. When the small sewer
+was finally reached, it proved to be too small for a man to pass through
+it. But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by bit taken off. When
+this had been done to within a few feet of the main sewer, two men were
+detailed to cut their way through. The next night was set as the time
+for the escape. None of the thirteen slept while the two were cutting
+away the final obstacle. The thirteen did not sleep the next night
+either, for it was 36 hours before the two came back with their
+heartbreaking news. They had found the last few feet of the sewer-lining
+made of seasoned oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The poor
+old knife that had served them so long and so well, could not even
+scratch the toughened oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had ended
+in failure.
+
+Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new problem. There were two
+roll-calls every day, at 9 A.M. and 4 P.M. How were the two absent men
+to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in one long line and everybody
+was counted. If the count were two short, there would be swift search
+for the missing. And the beginning of the tunnel was hidden only by a
+few bundles of straw. This was before they knew the tunnel was useless,
+but had they known it they would have been scarcely less anxious, for
+its discovery would have made all future attempts to escape more
+dangerous and more doubtful. However, the roll-call problem was safely
+solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper end of the line and two of
+them, as soon as they had answered to their own names, dropped back,
+crouched down, crept behind the backs of many men to the other end of
+the line, slipped into place, and there answered for the missing men,
+without detection. In the afternoon, they came very near being caught.
+Some of the other prisoners thought this was being done just for fun, to
+confuse the Confederate clerk who called the roll, and thought they
+would take a hand in the fun too. There was so much dodging and double
+answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored little clerk, lost his
+temper and ordered the captives to stand in squads of ten to be counted.
+By this time he had called the roll half a dozen times, with results
+varying from minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his order, an order
+obedience to which would have certainly told the tale of two absentees,
+he went on to explain why he gave it.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho'; there's eight or ten of you-uns
+yere that ain't yere."
+
+This remarkable statement brought a shout of laughter from the
+Confederate guards. The prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself
+caught the contagion and also began to laugh.
+
+[Illustration: From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
+
+     SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL
+
+     1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4.
+     Chickamauga room (upper); 5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6.
+     Dining-room; 7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg
+     room (upper); 9. Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11.
+     East or "Rat Hell" cellar; 12. South side Canal street, ten feet
+     lower than Carey street; 13. North side Carey street, ground
+     sloping toward Canal; 14. Open lot; 15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17.
+     Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James River Towing Co.; 20.
+     Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.]
+
+The dreaded order was laughed out of court and forgotten.
+
+The two men crept upstairs early the next morning. The first night
+daylight had caught them at work, so they had not dared to return, but
+had stayed and had worked through the 36 hours. They brought back the
+handle of the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and the depressing
+news of failure. But men who are fit for freedom do not cease to strive
+for it. If one road to it is blocked, they seek another. That very day,
+when the fifteen had gathered together and the two had told their tale,
+a pallor of despair crept over some of the faces, but it was dispelled
+by the flush of hope when Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south,
+we'll go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the vacant lot. We'll
+begin tonight."
+
+"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from the yard we'd have to come
+out on the street. There's a gas-lamp there--and a sentry."
+
+"We can put out the lamp and if need be the sentry," Colonel Rose
+answered, "when we get to them. The thing now is to get there. We have
+fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my figures are correct. That's a
+job of a good many nights. This night will see the job begun."
+
+It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate had put in their way and with
+a big wooden spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with earth, was
+pulled out, emptied, and returned for a fresh load. A fortnight
+afterwards the officer who was digging that night made a mistake in
+levels and came too near the surface, which broke above him. Dismayed,
+he backed out and reported the blunder. The hole was in plain sight.
+Discovery was certain if it were not hidden. The story was but half told
+when Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.
+
+"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the dirt and won't show. Stuff
+it into the hole so it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"
+
+Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole. There he smeared some more
+dirt on the dirty blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care, and
+wriggled back. That morning at sunrise, when they peeked down from
+their prison windows into the eastern lot, even their straining eyes
+could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that showed. No casual glance
+would detect it. Of that they were sure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every few days new prisoners were thrust into Libby. Whenever this
+happened it was the custom that on the first evening they should tell
+whatever news they could of the outside world and of their own capture
+to the whole prison community. One morning the keeper of Libby receipted
+for another captured Yankee and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in
+the grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially, rather too
+cordially, to the greetings he received. It soon became understood that
+he was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee. Now neither side was
+overproud of the guerillas who infested the borderland, who sometimes
+called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates, and who did more
+stealing than fighting. So a rather cold shoulder was turned to the new
+captive, though the community's judgment upon him was deferred until
+after he should have been heard that evening. He seemed to try to warm
+the cold shoulder by a certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts
+at too familiar conversation. He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon
+shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy
+was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him.
+Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There
+was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an
+undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time,
+but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely
+a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant
+fact. He peered about and sidled about in a way that might be due only
+to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like it. He disliked Johnson more
+and more as the newcomer kept returning to him and growing more
+confidential. His talk was on various natural enough themes, but it
+kept veering back to the chances of escape.
+
+"I don't mean to stay in this hole long," Johnson whispered. "Pretty
+mean-spirited in all these fellows to just hang around here, without
+even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye say 'bout our trying it on,
+son?"
+
+The familiar address increased the boy's dislike of the man, but he was
+too young to realize that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He was old
+enough, however, to know how to keep his mouth shut about the pending
+plan for an escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out of him, but in
+the many half-confidential talks the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him,
+perhaps he had revealed something after all. Perhaps, however, the
+newcomer got such information as he did from other men in the secret.
+Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the plan of escape.
+
+That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting men to tell his
+story,--a simple tale of Northern birth, of a Southern home, of belief
+in the Union, of raising a guerilla company to fight for it, of capture
+in a raid on a Confederate supply-depot,--the unpleasant memory which
+had been troubling Tom came back and hammered at his head until
+suddenly, as if a flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw
+himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle Mose's slave-cabin, with this
+man's hand clutching his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside
+Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:
+
+"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He was overseer on a plantation in
+Alabama. He 'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."
+
+Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's eye fixed upon him. He had
+seen Tom whisper to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat down.
+Rose walked across the circle and sat beside him. He had snapped his
+fingers as he walked and half a dozen men had answered the signal and
+were now close at hand.
+
+"What did you do before you turned guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.
+
+"I don't know that that's any of your darned business," said Johnson.
+
+"Answer me."
+
+The stronger man dominated the weaker. The spy sulkily said:
+
+"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."
+
+"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ever do anything else in the South?"
+
+"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such questions?"
+
+The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:
+
+"Major Hamilton."
+
+"Here, sir," answered the Major.
+
+"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before the war?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Seven years."
+
+"Who kept the general store there?"
+
+"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."
+
+"Did you know him?"
+
+"Rather. We were chums. He and I left Jonesboro' together to join the
+army."
+
+"Is this man he?"
+
+Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his feet, cowering, covering
+his face with his hands. Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's
+hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.
+
+"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than he's General Grant."
+
+By this time the whole prison community was crowded about Colonel Rose.
+The latter called again:
+
+"Mr. Strong."
+
+"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.
+
+"Do you know this man?"
+
+"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson on the Izzard plantation.
+
+There was an ominous low growl from the audience. Yankee overseers of
+Southern plantations were not exactly popular in that crowd of Northern
+officers. And evidently this particular overseer had been lying. But
+Colonel Rose lifted his hand and said:
+
+"Silence. No violence. What we do will be done decently and in order."
+After this impressive speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you would, would
+you?" and choked Johnson with every pound of strength he could put into
+the process. He had just seen him slip a bit of paper into his mouth and
+he meant to know what that paper was. It was plucked out of the spy's
+throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the spy's pencil had written:
+
+"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows about it. Think Colonel Rose
+heads it."
+
+It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report in his new business of
+being a spy. It put an end to all business on his part forever. Gagged
+and tied, he was pushed across the big room, while Tom watched
+uncomprehendingly, wondering what was to be done with the writhing man.
+Suddenly he understood, for he saw it done. Johnson was pushed into a
+window. Two kneeling men held his legs and another, standing beside him
+but screened by the wall, pushed him in front of the window. The
+Confederate sentry below obeyed his orders. There was no challenge, no
+warning. He aimed and fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws of
+the prison by looking out of the window. What had been Jake Johnson,
+Yankee, negro-overseer, Confederate conscript, volunteer spy, fell in a
+dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag and bonds were quickly removed, so
+there was nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause of the man's
+death when they came to remove the body. They had unwittingly executed
+their own spy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was right that the man should die, but the shock of seeing him done
+to death was too much for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship of
+the long captivity during which he had been carried from Ohio to
+Virginia and worn out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the toil
+of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake Johnson did and for a few
+moments seemed as dead as the man was. He was taken to the
+hospital-room, but the hospital in Libby was usually only the anteroom
+of the graveyard at Libby. One of the scarcest things in the
+Confederacy, the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The armies in the
+field needed far more doctors than there were in the whole South, at the
+outbreak of the war. Medical schools were quickly created, but the
+demand for doctors so far outran the supply that by this time ignorant
+country lads were being rushed through the schools, with reckless haste,
+so that they were graduated when they knew but little more than when
+they began. A so-called surgeon was handling his scalpel six months
+after he had been handling a plow. Some of them barely knew how to read
+and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals should be manned
+by the poorest of the poor among the graduates of these wretched
+schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is for Tom, gave him,
+however, care that was both skilful and tender.
+
+A few hours after the righteous execution of Jake Johnson there had been
+thrust into Libby a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeight
+hours before. Among them towered a jovial, bearded giant, an army
+surgeon, Major Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with talk of what
+had happened there that day. The new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson
+and of Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had given his parole not to
+try to escape and had been allowed to station himself beside Tom's bed.
+Through that night and through the next day, he fought Tom's battle for
+him, doing all that man could do. When the boy struggled out of his
+delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming upon him, his first thought
+was that he was still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad
+car. His right hand plucked feebly at his left side, where he had then
+carried the dispatches Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and understood the
+movement.
+
+"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's all right. Go to sleep."
+
+And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything was all right and
+that he was home in New York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. A
+gracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who gave her days to caring for
+her country's enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's eyes
+gleamed with a mistaken belief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled back and sank gently into a profound
+sleep, from which he awoke to life and health. Again a Hans Rolf had
+saved a Tom Strong's life.
+
+Night after night passed, one night of work by each man followed by two
+of such rest as lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed. On the
+seventeenth night of the new tunnel work, Colonel Rose was digging away
+in it. It was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered and went out.
+The foul air closed in upon him. Hats were fanning to and fro, back in
+Rat Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not reach him. He felt
+himself suffocating. With one last effort he thrust his strong fists
+upward and broke through the surface. Soon revived by the rush of fresh
+air into the tunnel, he dragged himself out and found himself in the
+yard that had been their aim. The tunnel had reached its goal. He
+climbed out and studied the situation. A high fence screened the yard
+from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door screened it from the
+street. At three A.M., February 6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to
+prison.
+
+That morning he told his news. Most of the men wanted to try for freedom
+the next night, but there was much to do to erase all traces of their
+work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith discovered after their
+flight, it could be used later by other fugitives. With a rare
+unselfishness, they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile each of the
+fifteen had been authorized to tell one other man, so that thirty in all
+could make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt that this was the
+limit. A general prison-delivery would, he believed, result in a general
+recapture. Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep a whisper of
+it spread through the prison.
+
+When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he had been at once taken into the
+inner councils of the tunnel group. He had not expressed as much joy in
+the plan as Tom had expected. The reason of this was now revealed. He
+declined to go.
+
+"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and Tom, "I gave my parole not
+to try to escape when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in order to be
+allowed to take care of him. I made up my mind not to ask to be relieved
+from it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected some plan to
+escape was on hand. And they seem to have forgotten all about it, for
+they haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in honor not to go.
+Don't bother, Tom." The boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans
+Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't
+bother. 'Twon't be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I can save
+some lives here by staying. Don't bother. It's all right. I rather like
+this boarding-house."
+
+The giant's great laugh rang out. The heartiness of it amazed the weary
+men scattered about the room. It brought smiles to lips that had not
+smiled for many a day. Laughter that comes from a clean heart does good
+to all who hear it.
+
+It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was an officer and a gentleman.
+Honor forbade it. Sadly, Tom left him.
+
+On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when the chosen thirty had crawled
+down the inverted "S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col. H. C.
+Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly offered to stay behind,
+so that he could replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced
+them. But before he could get upstairs, some hundreds of men had come
+down. The secret was a secret no longer. There was a fierce struggle to
+get to the fireplace, a struggle all the fiercer because it had to be
+made in grim silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet away, on the
+other side of the wall, in the hospital. The bricks were taken out
+again. In all, one hundred and nine Union officers got through the hole.
+Then, warned by approaching daylight, the less fortunate in the fight
+for freedom put back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs, resolved
+to try their luck the next night, if the tunnel were not before that
+discovered.
+
+Tom had wormed his way through the inverted "S" among the first fifteen.
+On the rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap upon the floor of
+Rat Hell. The huge rodents swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He
+almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he sprang to his feet, threw
+off his tormentors, and ran across the room to the opening of the
+tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more ragged and his face and hands
+were bleeding from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this. Was he
+not on his way to freedom? On his way, yes; but the way was a long one.
+He might never reach the end. When he had pushed and pulled himself
+through the tunnel; when he had come out into the yard and gone through
+the shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in the canal street was at
+the further end of his beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and
+turned in the opposite direction,--when all this had happened, he was
+out of prison, to be sure, but he was in the heart of the enemy's
+country, with all the risks of recapture or of death still to be run.
+
+The men had all been cautioned to stroll away in a leisurely fashion, on
+no account to run or even to walk fast, and not to try to get away in
+groups of more than two or three. It was hard to walk slowly to the next
+corner. The boy made himself do so, however. Half a block ahead of him
+on the side street, he saw a couple of men walking with a somewhat
+faster stride. He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate patrol
+turned the corner of Carey Street. He heard the two men challenged and
+he heard the little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief moment of
+freedom had passed. He stepped to one side of the wooden sidewalk and
+crawled under it. There was just space enough for him to lie at full
+length. Hurrying feet, the feet of men hunting other men, trampled an
+inch above his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it must be heard.
+The patrol reached the street along the canal and peered into the
+darkness there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering gas-lamp.
+Fortunately, nobody came out of the shed just then. The sentry happened
+to be coming towards it and the men inside were waiting for him to turn.
+The patrol had no thought of a general jail-delivery. It turned back
+with its two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head to Carey Street,
+and took its captives to the prison. The boy crawled out from under the
+sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of them, reached the
+corner. He ran down to them and warned them of the Carey Street patrol.
+The three men turned with him and walked along the canal. It was just
+after midnight. Not a soul was stirring. Not a light showed. As they
+walked unquestioned, their spirits rose. How fine to be free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+     TOM HIDES IN A RIVER BANK--EATS RAW FISH--JIM GRAYSON AIDS
+     HIM--DOWN THE JAMES RIVER ON A TREE--PASSING THE PATROL
+     BOATS--CANNONADED--THE END OF THE VOYAGE.
+
+
+Tom had made up his mind how he would try to reach the Union lines. As
+he had escaped before from the locomotive-foray by pushing boldly into
+the enemy's country, so he would do now. He would try his luck in
+following the James River to the sea, for off the river's mouth he knew
+there lay a squadron of Northern ships, blockading Hampton Roads. The
+"Merrimac's" attempt of March, 1862, had never been repeated. Our flag
+was still there, in these February days of 1864, and Tom knew it. He had
+resolved to seek it there.
+
+He explained his plan to his three comrades. They would steal a boat,
+row or drift down the James by night, hide and sleep by day, forage for
+food upon the rich plantations, many of them the historic homes of
+Virginia, that bordered the broad river, and finally float to freedom
+where our war-ships lay. But the three men would have nothing to do with
+it. By land the Union lines were much nearer. They meant to stick to the
+land. They asked the boy to go with them, but he stuck to his plan. So,
+with hearty handshakes and a whispered "good luck!" he left them, went
+over a canal-bridge, and found himself upon the bank of the river. He
+was again alone.
+
+Of his three temporary companions, one finally reached our lines, one
+was shot within a few hundred yards of his goal, and one was recaptured.
+Of the 109 who escaped from Libby, 48 were caught and thrust back into
+prison.
+
+Tom walked along the river bank, prying in the welcome darkness for a
+boat. It would not have been difficult to steal it, if he could have
+found it. But at this point the James is wide and shallow and full of
+miniature rapids. It was utterly bare of boats. The boy's search could
+not be carried on after dawn. He spent that day hidden in a clump of
+willows by the waterside. The excitement of the night had kept him up.
+Now the reaction from it left him limp and miserable and hungry as he
+never remembered being hungry before. It was hard work to "grin and bear
+it," but at least he tried to grin and he reminded himself a thousand
+times through that long, long day that he was much better off than if he
+were still a prisoner in Libby.
+
+That night he followed the bank until he was below the city, still
+without finding a boat. There had been plenty of boats along this part
+of the river the morning before, but as soon as the escape from Libby
+had been discovered, all boats had been seized by the military
+authorities, to prevent their being used by the fugitives. They had been
+taken to a point below the town. As Tom wormed himself cautiously near
+this point, very cautiously, for he heard voices upon the bank above his
+head, and also the crackle of a camp-fire, he saw in the gray dawn a
+flotilla of boats just below him. At first sight, his heart leaped into
+his mouth with joy. At the second sight, it sank down into his boots.
+For above the boats he saw a big Confederate camp and beyond them he saw
+a half-dozen small craft, negroes at the oars and armed men at bow and
+stern, patrolling the river. Hope left him. He crawled into a
+hiding-place in the bank. He was so hungry that he cried. But not for
+long. Stout hearts do not yield to such weakness long. If he could not
+escape in a boat fashioned by man's hands, why not in one fashioned by
+God? The early spring freshets of the James were making the river higher
+every hour. He saw in cautious peeps from the hole where he had hidden
+great trees from far-off forests, uprooted there by the high water, come
+plunging down mid-channel like battering rams. He noted that the
+patrol-boats gave these dangerous monsters a wide berth. If a trunk of a
+tree were to ram them or if the far-flung branches were to strike them,
+their next patrol would be at the bottom of the river. On a sandbank not
+a hundred yards from the boy's lair a big oak had stranded. It lay
+quite still now, but it evidently would not do so for many hours, for
+the rising water lapped higher and higher against it. Tom made up his
+mind that that tree should be his boat--if only it were still there when
+it was dark enough for him to swim out to it. Through the daylight hours
+he watched it with lynx eyes, fearing lest it were swept along towards
+the sea before he could shelter himself in it. And through these
+daylight hours he grew ever more faint with hunger, until he told
+himself that he must have food, at any risk, at any cost. Without the
+strength it would give, he felt he could not possibly swim even the
+hundred yards that lay between him and the now tossing tree. There is
+truth in the line:
+
+    "Fate cannot harm me; I have dined today."
+
+It is too much to do to face Fate on an empty stomach. Napoleon said
+that an army traveled on its belly. Men must have food if they are to
+march and fight.
+
+A Confederate soldier sauntered along the shore and stopped just in
+front of the boy's hiding-place. He had a rude fish-pole. Either he knew
+how to fish, or the James River fish were very hungry. A string of a
+dozen hung from his shoulder. The sight of them was too much for Tom to
+stand. A raw fish seemed to him the most toothsome morsel in the world.
+He knew he was courting certain capture, but he was starving. He would
+pretend to be a Confederate himself. He spoke to the soldier, not out of
+the fullness of his heart, but out of the emptiness of his stomach.
+
+"I'm hungry," he said, "give a fellow a fish, will you?"
+
+The soldier turned with a start. He was a tall, gaunt man, an East
+Tennessee mountaineer, who had started to join the Union army when a
+Confederate conscript-officer seized him and sent him South, under
+guard, to serve the cause he had meant to fight against. East Tennessee
+was, as a rule, loyal to the Union. The men from there who were found in
+the Confederate army were like the poor peons who are supposed to
+"volunteer" in the Mexican army. "I send you fifty volunteers," wrote a
+Mexican mayor to a Mexican general, "please return me the ropes." Jim
+Grayson had not been tied up with a rope, but he had had a bayonet
+behind him, when he was put into the Confederate ranks. He was a man of
+intelligence and of rather more education than most of his fellow
+mountaineers. Many of them could not even read and write. Grayson had
+learned both at a "deestrik skule" and had actually had a year, a
+precious year, at a "high skule." The last thing he had read before
+starting to fish that morning had been the printed handbills that had
+been flung broadcast by the Confederate authorities, announcing the
+escape of 108 men and one boy from Libby Prison and offering rewards for
+their recapture. And the first thing he thought as he saw Tom in his
+hole in the bank was that he was probably the boy of the handbills. He
+meant to give the fellow a fish, of course, but if he found the fellow
+was that boy he also meant to do what he could to help him go where he
+himself wanted to go, to the Union lines.
+
+"Sholy, I'll give you a fish," he said. "You can have all you want. I'll
+light a fire and cook some for you."
+
+"I can't wait," gasped Tom, wolf-hunger in his gleaming eyes. "I'm
+starving."
+
+He tried to reach out for the fish and collapsed in utter weakness. With
+food at last within his grasp, he was too far gone to take it. Jim
+Grayson had been very hungry more than once in his thirty years of hard
+life. He saw that Tom was telling the truth.
+
+"Hush," he whispered, for he had caught sight of some fellow soldiers on
+the bank, not a hundred feet away. "Hush, sumbuddy's comin'. You mus'
+take little pieces first. I'll cut one up for you."
+
+He was drawing out his knife from a deep pocket when the soldiers
+stopped on the bank above their heads and shouted down, asking him to
+give them some fish too.
+
+"Sholy," laughed Jim. "Here's some for you-uns."
+
+He tossed half a dozen up to them and then sat down at the mouth of the
+hole that sheltered Tom, thinking to hide him in case the others came
+down the bank. His back was towards the boy. What was left of his catch
+hung within two inches of Tom's nose. That was Tom's chance. He tore off
+a couple of little fish and tore them to bits with his teeth. His first
+sensation was one of deathly sickness; his next one of returning
+strength. Grayson twitched the remaining fish into his lap. He knew the
+boy had already had too much food, for a first meal. Meanwhile he was
+chatting cheerily with his fellow soldiers, who fortunately did not come
+down the bank and soon moved off, leaving Jim and Tom alone. Now was the
+time for explanations.
+
+"Don't be afeard," said Jim, with a kindly smile. "I 'low you be Tom
+Strong, bean't you? I guess you was in Libby day afore yisterday. I
+ain't goin' to give you up. I'm Union, I be, ef I do wear Secesh gray.
+How kin I help you?"
+
+The sense of safety, safety at least for the moment, was too much for
+Tom. He could not speak.
+
+"Thar, thar," Jim went on, "it's all right. Jes' tell me what I can do.
+I'll bring you eatins soon ez night comes, but what'll you do then?"
+
+Tom told him what he hoped to do then. It was a wild scheme to float
+down nearly two hundred miles of river through a hostile country, but
+yet it offered a chance of success. And if there was a chance of success
+for the boy, why not for the man?
+
+"Ef so be's ez you'se sot on it," Jim said, at the end of the talk, "I
+vum I'll run the resk with you. You ain't no ways fit to start off
+alone. Ef you have to hist that thar tree into the James River, you
+cudn't a-do it. I kin. 'N ef you wuz all alonst, you mout fall off'n be
+drownded. We-uns'll go together. 'N then I'll hev a chanst to fight fer
+the old Union."
+
+Tom was only too glad of the promised company. It was arranged that Jim
+was to come to him as soon as possible after nightfall, with whatever
+provisions he could lay his hands upon, and that then they were to get
+away on the queer craft Providence seemed to have prepared for them,
+provided only that Providence did not send the big tree swirling
+southward to the sea before they could reach it. The river was now
+considerably higher. It was tugging hard at its prey. Sometimes the tree
+shook with the impact of the rushing waves as if it had decided to let
+go the sandbank forthwith. If it did go before nightfall, they must try
+to find another. There were always others in sight, but they were far
+away in mid-channel, floating swiftly seaward. How could one of these be
+reached, if their fellow on the sandbank joined them? There was nothing
+to be done, however, except to wait. Tom's waiting was solaced by the
+eating of the rest of the fish. Man and boy agreed that the man must
+loiter there no longer. Making a fire would delay him beyond roll-call.
+So Jim went and Tom again ate raw fish, trying to do so slowly, but not
+making a great success of that. He felt as if he could eat a whale.
+
+Darkness came only a few minutes before Jim Grayson did. He brought with
+him a bundle of food, upon part of which Tom forthwith supped. He also
+brought his gun. "I'm a deserter now, you see," he explained to the boy,
+"and I'll be shot ef so be I'm caught. But ef I be caught, I'll shoot
+some o' they-uns fust."
+
+They could dimly see the outlines of the big tree, now tossing in the
+waves that broke above the submerged sandbank, as if it were struggling
+to be free. They swam out to it, Jim strongly, Tom weakly. They reached
+it none too soon. Ten minutes later it would have started of its own
+accord. Jim's task in "histing" it was easy. They were afloat at once.
+The top of the tree, a mass of bare branches, for the tiny tender leaves
+of the early Southern spring had been swept away by the water, formed
+the bow of their craft. They both perched far back, leaning against the
+tangled roots. Jim gave a final push with one dangling foot and they
+were off. That was all Tom knew for some time. He had fallen asleep as
+soon as he had snuggled securely into his place. He did not know it when
+they swept through the cordon of patrol-boats below, which hastened to
+give room to the vast battering ram. He did not even know that Jim's arm
+held him in place as the tree lurched and wobbled on its downward road.
+A few hours afterwards, he awoke, refreshed and hopeful, a new man, or
+rather a new boy. The night was clear. The outlines of both shores were
+visible. A young moon added its feeble light to the brilliant radiance
+of the stars.
+
+"Where are we?" whispered Tom. He knew the human voice carries a great
+distance over water and while there seemed to be no one who could
+overhear, he would run no unnecessary risk.
+
+"I never sailed no river before," Jim cheerily answered, "'n I dun know
+nothin' 'bout the Jeems River, but I 'low we've come 'bout a thousand
+mile. 'N it's nigh sun-up. How'll we-uns git to sho' 'n hide?"
+
+"If we did that," said Tom, "we'd have to give up our ship. Don't let us
+do that. Let's say what Captain Lawrence said: 'Don't give up the ship!'
+We'll call her the 'Liberty' and sail her down to Hampton Roads. We can
+hide in the branches or the roots if we meet anybody on the river.
+Everybody will give us a wide berth. We have some food, thanks to you.
+Forty-eight hours more will see us through."
+
+"All right, Captain," Jim Grayson replied. "You're the commander."
+
+Up to that time, the Confederate private had been in command of the
+expedition, but now that the Union officer was himself again, he took
+charge of everything, much to Jim's content and also, we must admit,
+much to Tom's content.
+
+The good ship "Liberty," Tom Strong, captain, Jim Grayson, mate, made a
+prosperous voyage. Its crew was thoroughly scared three or four times by
+the sight of Confederate craft, small and large. When a gunboat selected
+it as a floating target and plumped half-a-dozen cannon balls around it,
+the crew thought the end had come. But nobody on the gunboat saw the
+two people cowering amid the branches of the tree. The gunners were
+untrained. Their aim was poor. And powder and cannon-balls were not so
+abundant in the Confederacy that the practice-firing could continue
+long. Early on the third morning of the voyage, they were in Hampton
+Roads, borne by the ebbing tide towards the Union squadron that lay
+under the guns of Fortress Monroe. As the sun rose above the horizon,
+our flag sprang to the mastheads of the ships. Tom felt like echoing
+Uncle Mose's triumphant phrase: "De Stars 'n de Stripeses, dey jest
+kivered de sky."
+
+The "Liberty" would have gone straight out to sea, so far as any control
+by its crew was concerned. It did go out to sea, indeed, but not until
+after Tom and Jim had been taken from it by a boat from the Admiral's
+ship. Jim had fired off his gun to attract attention, as the "Liberty"
+neared the squadron, and then he and Tom had both stood up on the
+teetering trunk of their tree and shouted and waved their shirts, which
+they had taken off for that purpose, as they had nothing else to wave,
+until help came. The "Liberty" had brought them to liberty. They said
+good-by to her almost with regret. But their joy was deep when they
+stood on the deck of the flagship, under the flag of the free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+     TOWSER WELCOMES TOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE--LINCOLN RE-ELECTED
+     PRESIDENT--GRANT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--SHERMAN MARCHES FROM ATLANTA
+     TO THE SEA--TOM ON GRANT'S STAFF--FIVE FORKS--FALL OF
+     RICHMOND--HANS ROLF FREED--BOB SAVES TOM FROM CAPTURE--TOM TAKES A
+     BATTERY INTO ACTION--LEE SURRENDERS--TOM STRONG, BREVET-CAPTAIN U.
+     S. A.
+
+
+The warmest welcome Tom had at the White House was given him by Towser.
+The next warmest was given him by Uncle Moses and the next by Lincoln.
+The staff was glad to see him back, but many of them were jealous of the
+President's evident liking for him and would not have sorrowed overmuch
+if he had not come back at all. The patient President found time, amid
+all his myriad cares, to listen to Tom's story and to make Secretary
+Stanton give a captain's commission to Jim Grayson, who was sent to his
+own mountains to gather recruits for the Union army. For Towser, time
+existed only to be spent in welcoming his young master home. He clung
+close to him, with slobbering jaws and thumping tail, through the first
+day, and the first night he managed to escape from Uncle Mose's care in
+the basement and to find Tom's attic room. Thenceforth, as long as Tom
+stayed at the White House, Towser stretched his yellow bulk across the
+threshold of his door every night and slept there the sleep of the
+utterly happy.
+
+There were no utterly happy men under the White House roof. Lincoln's
+presidential term was drawing to a close. He was renominated by the
+Republicans, but his re-election at times seemed impossible. The
+Democrats had put forward Gen. George B. McClellan, once chief commander
+of the Union forces, but a pitiful failure as an aggressive general. A
+discontented wing of the Republicans had nominated Gen. John C.
+Fremont. Fremont had not fulfilled the promise of his youth. At the
+beginning of the war, he had been put in command at St. Louis, had
+proved to be incompetent, and had been retired. He was still strong in
+the hearts of many people, but Lincoln feared the success, not of
+Fremont, but of McClellan. John Hay once said to the President:
+
+"Fremont might be dangerous if he had more ability and energy."
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "he is like Jim Jett's brother. Jim used to say
+that his brother was the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the
+infinite mercy of Providence he was also the greatest fool."
+
+Family sayings, when they are not loving, are apt to be bitter. One of
+the Vanderbilts said of a connection of his by marriage that he was
+"more kinds of a fool to the square inch than anybody else in the
+world."
+
+McClellan, who seemed practically certain of success in August, 1864,
+was badly beaten in November, when the battle of parties was fought out
+at the polls. Fremont had retired from the contest early in the
+campaign. At the first Cabinet meeting after the election, November 11,
+1864, the President took a paper out of his desk and said:
+
+"Gentlemen, do you remember last summer I asked you all to sign your
+names to the back of a paper, of which I did not show you the inside?
+This is it. Now, Mr. Hay, see if you can get this open without tearing
+it."
+
+Its cover was so thoroughly pasted up that it had to be cut open. This
+done, Lincoln read it aloud. Here it is:
+
+                                           "Executive Mansion,
+                                           Washington, August 23, 1864.
+
+     "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable
+     that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my
+     duty to so co-operate with the President elect as to save the Union
+     between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured
+     his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
+     afterwards.
+
+                                                          A. LINCOLN."
+
+In that memorandum is the sign-manual of a great soul. Lincoln,
+believing his own defeat was written in the stars, thought, not of
+himself, but of how he, defeated, could best save the cause of the Union
+from defeat. A small man thinks first of himself. A big man thinks first
+of his duty.
+
+Life was happy at the White House now. The President had been re-elected
+and it was clear that long before his second term was over, he would
+have won a victorious peace. The South was still fighting with all the
+energy brave men can show for a cause in the righteousness of which they
+believe, but after all the energy was that of despair. Grant was now in
+supreme command of the Union forces, East and West. He had been
+commissioned Lieutenant-General and put in command March 17, 1864. In
+commemoration of this event, the turning point in the great struggle,
+Lincoln had had a photograph of himself taken. But two copies of it were
+printed. One Lincoln kept himself. One he gave Grant. Here is the one
+given Grant.
+
+[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
+
+The new Lieutenant-General was hammering away at Richmond. The
+Mississippi, now under Union control, cut the Confederacy in two. All
+the chief Southern seaports, except Savannah and Charleston, had been
+captured. And in this same month of November, 1864, Gen. William
+Tecumseh Sherman, who ranked only second to Grant in the United States
+army, cut loose from Atlanta, Georgia, captured two months before and
+began his famous march to the sea, with Savannah as his destination. He
+illustrated his own well-known saying: "War is hell." If it was hell in
+Sherman's time, what word can describe the horror of it in our day? He
+swept with sword and fire a belt of fertile country, sixty miles wide,
+from Atlanta to the sea. He found it smiling and rich; he left it a bare
+and blackened waste. He had destroyed the granary of the Confederacy and
+before the next month ended he had made his country a Christmas present
+of the remaining chief Southern seaport, Savannah. He wrote to Lincoln:
+"I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with
+one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also
+twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Cotton was worth a dollar a pound
+in those days.
+
+Early in 1865 Sherman swung northward from Savannah, forced the
+surrender of Charleston, South Carolina, and joined Union forces
+advancing from the North at Goldsboro', North Carolina, March 23. Six
+days later Grant began the final campaign against the Confederacy. Six
+days before, Lincoln had said to the boy:
+
+"Tom, would you like to see some more fighting?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. President; very much."
+
+"Well, you needn't tell anybody, but I guess there'll be some to see
+before long near Richmond. I've had you ordered from special service at
+the White House to special service with the Lieutenant-General. Here's
+the order and here's a letter to General Grant. I wouldn't wonder if he
+put you on his staff."
+
+"How can I thank you, Mr. Lincoln?"
+
+"The best way to thank anybody is to do well the work he gives you to
+do. Good-by, my son, and good luck."
+
+[Illustration: GEN. W. T. SHERMAN
+               St. Gaudens' Statue, New York]
+
+With a pressure of Lincoln's huge hand Tom was sped on his rejoicing
+way. Two days later he was at Grant's headquarters, at City Point,
+Virginia, near Fortress Monroe. He saluted and handed the General
+Lincoln's letter. The soldier sat, a silent sphinx, for a moment. Then
+he looked up at Tom with a quizzical but not unkindly smile, and said:
+
+"Have you learned anything since you brought me dispatches at Fort
+Donelson and Vicksburg?"
+
+"I hope so, General."
+
+"Sometimes the President sends me people for political reasons. I
+suppose he has to. But I don't take them if I know it. Have you any
+political influence behind you?"
+
+"Not a bit, sir." Tom laughed at the thought.
+
+"You laugh well. You and Horace Porter ought to get on together. He
+laughs well, too. You can serve on my staff.
+
+"I thank you, General."
+
+Tom saluted and walked away, to find Horace Porter, whom he found to be
+a very nice fellow indeed. One of the first things the nice fellow did
+for him was to get him a good horse. There was no lack of horses at
+headquarters. The difficulty was not to find one, but to choose the best
+of many good ones. Tom, who had a good eye for a horse, found one that
+exactly suited him except as to color. He was of a mottled gray. The boy
+did not much care for such a color, but he knew it had its advantages.
+It does not advertise its presence. Where a black, a white or a bay
+horse would stand out and make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a
+mottled gray might well elude their view. And the horse, apart from
+this, was just what he wanted. He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he
+walked fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment in a horse. The
+average horse walks, as a rule, slower than the average man. In an hour,
+he covers a quarter-of-a-mile less ground. One question remained to be
+settled.
+
+"Can he jump?" asked Tom.
+
+"Jump, is it?" answered the soldier-groom. "Shure, the cow that jumped
+over the moon couldn't lift a leg to him."
+
+"You bet your life he can jump," said Horace Porter. "General Grant has
+ridden him twice and I saw him put Bob over a fence or two."
+
+[Illustration: BOB]
+
+Not long afterwards Tom did bet his life on Bob's jumping. He was named
+Bob before the United States took him. He had been captured the month
+before and had come across the lines with his name embroidered by some
+woman's hand on his saddle-blanket and with his late owner's blood upon
+his saddle. He was a tall, leggy animal who showed a trace of Arabian
+blood and who needed to be gentled a bit to get his best work out of
+him. His mouth was appreciative of sugar and his eyes were appreciative
+of kindness.
+
+Both dogs and horses talk with their eyes.
+
+"I like my new master," was what Bob's eyes said to Tom.
+
+It was through a chance suggestion of Colonel Porter that the boy saw
+most of what he did see of the final fight for freedom. Porter had
+presented Tom to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who was then at City Point,
+receiving Grant's final instructions for the twelve-day campaign that
+ended in the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's brave army.
+Sheridan was a stocky, red-faced young Irishman, a graduate of West
+Point, and a born leader of men, especially of cavalrymen. He liked the
+clear-eyed lad who stood respectfully before him. He had done too much
+in his own youth to think Tom was useless because he was so young.
+Porter saw that the boy had made a good impression. He ventured a
+suggestion.
+
+"Why don't you take young Strong with you, General?"
+
+Sheridan turned sharply to Tom, asking:
+
+"Can you ride?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. I've ridden ever since I can remember."
+
+"Well, that's not so very long a time. But I'll take your word for it.
+Would you like to go with me?"
+
+"I'd like it better than anything else in the world, General."
+
+Tom had rejoiced in the idea of being with Grant, but he knew that the
+commander-in-chief must stay behind his lines and that his staff could
+catch but glimpses of the fighting, when they were sent forward with
+orders, whereas with Sheridan he might be in the very thick of the
+fighting itself. His ready answer and the joy that beamed in his eyes
+pleased the fighting Irishman.
+
+"Can I borrow him of General Grant?" Sheridan asked Porter.
+
+"I'll answer for that," Porter replied. "The General told me to put
+Strong to whatever work I could find for him to do."
+
+"Come ahead," said Sheridan. "You'll see some beautiful fighting!"
+
+Sheridan loved fighting, but he made no pretense of never being afraid.
+He thought a general should be close to the front, to keep his soldiers'
+spirits high.
+
+"Are you never afraid?" Charles A. Dana, then Assistant Secretary of
+War, once asked him.
+
+"If I was, I should not be ashamed of it. If I should follow my natural
+impulse, I should run away always at the beginning of the danger. The
+men who say they are never afraid in a battle do not tell the truth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+March 29, 1865, the twelve-day campaign began. The cavalry swung out
+towards Five Forks, where Lee's right wing lay behind deep
+entrenchments. April 1, Sheridan attacked in force. Americans fought
+Americans with stubborn bravery on both sides. The issue was long in
+doubt. Sheridan and his staff were close to the firing-line, so that Tom
+had but a few hundred yards to gallop under fire when his general said
+to him:
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN
+               Sheridan Square, Washington, D. C.
+               Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York.]
+
+"Tell General Griffin to charge and keep charging."
+
+Griffin's order to his troops was so quickly given that it seemed an
+echo of the order Tom brought him. It was the boy's business to return
+forthwith and report upon his mission, but he simply couldn't do it.
+There were the Confederate lines manned with hungry soldiers in the
+remnants of their gray uniforms, the Stars-and-Bars flying above them.
+And there were battalions of blue-clad cavalry, men and horses in prime
+condition, straining to start like hounds upon a leash. Griffin's order
+was the electric spark that fired the battery. The men shouted with joy
+as they spurred their horses into a mad gallop. The shout was answered
+by the shrill "rebel yell" from the dauntless foe in the trenches. The
+charging column shook the ground. In its foremost files rode
+Second-lieutenant Tom Strong, forgetful of everything else in the world
+but the joy of battle. Musketry and artillery tore bloody lanes in the
+close-packed column. Men and horses fell in heaps upon the blood-stained
+ground. But the column went on. At dusk of that April day it poured over
+the parapets so bravely held. Even then the fight was not over. There
+was still stout resistance. The two armies were a mass of struggling
+men, shooting, stabbing, striking. The battle had become a series of
+duels man to man. Tom, pistol in hand, rode at a big Kentuckian, but the
+gray-clad giant dodged the bullet, caught his own unloaded musket by the
+muzzle, and dealt the boy a blow with its butt that knocked him off his
+horse and left him senseless on the ground.
+
+A few minutes later, when he came to his senses, he felt as if he were a
+boy annexed to a shoulder twice as big as all the rest of his body. It
+was on his shoulder that the blow of the clubbed musket had gone home.
+The fall from his horse had stunned him. Bob was standing over him, as
+Black Auster stood over Herminius, nuzzling at the outstretched hand of
+this silent, motionless thing that had been his master. They had been
+together for less than a week, but a day is often long enough for a
+horse to find out that his master is his friend. Tom had been more
+careful of his horse's comfort than of his own. Now the good gray had
+stood by him and over him, perhaps saving him from being trampled to
+death in that fierce last act of the Drama of Five Forks. Bob whinnied
+with joy as Tom's eyes slowly opened again. He thrust his muzzle down
+along the boy's cheek and the boy caught hold of the flowing mane with
+his right hand and pulled himself upon his feet again. His left arm hung
+useless by his side. One glance told him the battle was won. The duels
+were over. The Confederates were in full retreat. A stream of prisoners
+was already flowing by him. He mounted and followed it to Sheridan's
+headquarters. There the skillful fingers of a surgeon found that no
+bones were broken. The swollen shoulder was dressed and bandaged. The
+healthy blood that filled Tom's veins did much to make a speedy cure.
+So did the joy of victory. Sheridan had done what Grant had given him to
+do. He had driven back Lee's right flank and cut the railroad by which
+Lee must escape from Richmond, if escape he could.
+
+Richmond was doomed. The next morning, Sunday, April 2, 1865, Jefferson
+Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, sat in his pew in
+St. Paul's Church, Richmond. The solemn service began. Soon there was a
+stir at the door, a rustle, a turning of heads away from the chancel,
+where the gray-haired rector stood. Swiftly a messenger came up the
+aisle. Davis rose from his knees to receive the message. The service
+stopped. Every eye was bent upon the leader of the Lost Cause. He put on
+his spectacles, opened the missive, and read it amid a breathless
+silence. It told him that the Cause was lost indeed. It was from Lee,
+who wrote: "My lines are broken in three places. Richmond must be
+evacuated this evening." There was no sign of feeling upon Jefferson
+Davis's impassive face, as he read the fateful dispatch. Without a
+word, without a sign, he left the church with the wife whose utter
+devotion had helped him bear the burden of those terrible years, during
+which proud hope gradually gave way to sickening fear. Davis was not of
+those weak men who despair. There was still a little hope in his heart,
+despite the tremendous blow Lee's letter had dealt him. He walked down
+the aisle with head as high as though he were marching to assured
+victory. But through the congregation there ran the whisper "Richmond is
+to be evacuated." A panic-stricken mob poured out of the church with
+faltering steps behind Jefferson Davis's firm, proud ones. Early that
+afternoon the Confederate Government fled. Early the next morning,
+Monday, April 3, 1865, Gen. Godfrey Weitzel marched his negro troops
+into the Confederate capital. The flag of the free floated from the dome
+of the Statehouse, which almost from the earliest days of the war had
+sheltered what was now indeed the Lost Cause. It was raised there by
+Lieut. Johnston L. De Peyster, a youth of eighteen, who had carried it
+wrapped around the pommel of his saddle for some days, hoping for the
+chance that now came to him. The second Union flag that was raised that
+day in Richmond was over Libby. The prison gates gave up their prey. The
+prisoners poured out, some too weak to do more than smile, others in a
+frenzy of joy. Major Hans Rolf, reduced by hunger to a long lath of a
+man, had lost none of his spirit.
+
+"Now, boys," he shouted, "three times three for the old flag!"
+
+The cheers rang out in a feeble chorus and then there rang out Han's
+contagious laughter.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he roared. "We're free, boys, we're free."
+
+By that Sunday night, the fate of Petersburg was sealed.
+Grant had ordered an assault in force at six o'clock Monday morning, but
+the Confederates abandoned their works in the gray dawn and our troops
+met little resistance in taking over the town. "General Meade and I,"
+says General Grant in his "Personal Memoirs," "entered Petersburg
+on the morning of the third and took a position under cover of a house
+which protected us from the enemy's musketry which was flying thick and
+fast there. As we would occasionally look around the corner, we could
+see ... the Appomattox bottom ... packed with the Confederate army.... I
+had not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a mass of defeated and
+fleeing men and I hoped to capture them soon."
+
+"Let us follow up Lee," Meade suggested. He was a better follower than a
+fighter. He had followed Lee before, from Gettysburg to Richmond,
+without ever attacking him.
+
+"On the contrary," Grant replied, "we will cut off his retreat by
+occupying the Danville railroad and capture him. He must get to his food
+to keep his troops alive. We will get between him and his food."
+
+With constant fighting this was done. By Wednesday, April 5, the Union
+lines were drawn about the Confederate army. Sheridan, hampered by
+Meade's slowness, was urgent that Grant should come to the front. He
+sent message after message to that effect to Grant on Wednesday. A
+scout in gray uniform was entrusted with the second message. He was made
+up to look like a Confederate scout, but he was Tom Strong. He had put
+on his disguise at Sheridan's headquarters. As he stood at attention to
+receive his orders, Sheridan laughed and said:
+
+"You make a good 'Johnny Reb.' Do you chew tobacco?"
+
+Surprised at the question, Tom said he didn't.
+
+"Well, you may have to begin the habit today. You're to take this
+message to General Grant. If you're caught, chew it--and swallow it
+quick."
+
+He handed the boy a bit of tinfoil. It looked like a small package of
+chewing-tobacco, but it contained a piece of tissue-paper upon which
+Sheridan's message was written.
+
+The ride from the left flank to the center was not without danger. Tom,
+duly provided with the password, could go by any Union forces without
+difficulty, but the country swarmed with Confederates, some of them
+deserters, many of them straggling detachments cut off from the main
+army and seeking to rejoin it, all of them more than ready to capture a
+Union soldier and his horse.
+
+The boy climbed a little clumsily into the saddle. His left shoulder
+still felt like a big balloon stuffed full of pain. But there was
+nothing clumsy in his seat, as Bob shot off like an arrow at the touch
+of Tom's heel on his flank. It was a beautiful, bright April morning,
+too beautiful a day for men to be killing each other. Evidently,
+however, it did not seem so to the commander of a company of Confederate
+cavalry, who had laid an ambush into which Tom gayly galloped. He heard
+a sharp order to halt. He saw men ride across the road in front of him.
+He whirled about, only to see the road behind him blocked. He was fairly
+trapped. But there was one chance of escaping from the trap and Tom took
+it. His would-be captors had come from the left of the road, its
+northern side, for he was traveling east. On the south was a high
+rail-fence, laid in the usual zigzags, one of the few which had not fed
+the camp-fires of Northern Virginia. It was a good five feet high; it
+was only a few feet away; Bob was standing still for a second in
+slippery mud. It was not at all the kind of place to select for a jump,
+but the Confederates had selected the place, not Tom. He remembered
+Colonel Porter's saying "You can bet your life Bob can jump," and he bet
+his life on Porter's being right. He put Bob at the fence. The gallant
+gray, as if he sensed his master's danger, took one bound toward the
+rails, gathered himself together into a tense mass of muscle, and rose
+into the air like a bird. As he flew over the top-rail, carbines cracked
+behind him, but as he leaped southward across the countryside, a ringing
+cheer followed him too. The brave Southerners rejoiced in the brave feat
+that took their captive into freedom. Their jaded horses could not
+follow. There was no pursuit.
+
+It took Tom some hours to double back towards Grant's headquarters. He
+met long lines of Union cavalry, infantry, and artillery pressing
+forward to strengthen Sheridan's forces. They were going west and they
+choked every road and lane and path by which the boy sought to go east.
+They had begun their march at three o'clock that morning. They had had
+no breakfast. They carried no food. Their wagon-trains were miles in the
+rear. It was their fourth day of continuous fighting. They had a right
+to be tired, but they were not tired. They had a right to be hungry, but
+they were not hungry. When the air was full of victory, what did an
+empty stomach matter? Cheering and singing, they swept along. The end of
+four years' fighting was in sight. The hunted foe was trying to slink
+away to safety, as many a fox, with hounds and huntsmen closing in upon
+him, had tried to do on these Virginian fields. Never were huntsmen more
+anxious to be "in at the death" than were those joyous Union soldiers on
+that memorable April day.
+
+It was nearly night when the boy reached headquarters, saluted the
+commander-in-chief, said "A message from General Sheridan," and handed
+over the little tinfoil package.
+
+"You can go back with me," said Grant. "That horse of yours is Bob,
+isn't it?" Grant never forgot a horse he had once ridden.
+
+Within an hour the General and his staff, with a small cavalry escort,
+started for Sheridan's headquarters. By ten that night the two were
+together. Sheridan was almost crying over the orders Meade had given
+him. By midnight Sheridan was happy. "I explained to Meade," say the
+"Personal Memoirs," "that we did not want to follow the enemy; we wanted
+to get ahead of him; and that his orders would allow the enemy to
+escape.... Meade changed his orders at once."
+
+That change of orders incidentally put Tom Strong the next day into the
+hottest fight of his life. This was the battle of Sailor's Creek, almost
+forgotten since amid the mightier happenings of that wonderful April
+week, but never forgotten by Tom Strong. Our forces had attacked Lee's
+retreating legions, retreating toward the provision trains that were
+their only hope of food. The fight was fierce. We had attacked with
+both infantry and cavalry, but our gallant fellow-countrymen held their
+lines unbroken. Then with a thunder of wheels our field artillery came
+into action. The Confederate guns were shelling the hillside up which
+the plunging horses drew our cannon. There were six horses in each team,
+an artilleryman riding each near horse and holding the off horse of the
+pair by a bridle. Tom had come up with orders and was standing by
+General Wright as the guns bounded up the hillside. Bob stood behind his
+master, whinnying a bit with excitement.
+
+General Wright snapped his watch shut impatiently.
+
+"They're ten minutes late," he complained. "We're beaten if we don't get
+'em into action instantly. Good Heavens! there goes our first gun to
+destruction!"
+
+A Confederate shell had struck and burst close to the leaders. A
+fragment of it swept the foremost rider from his seat and from life. The
+two horses he had handled reared, plunged, jumped to one side. The six
+horses were huddled into a frightened heap. The two other soldiers could
+do nothing with the leaders out of control. The gun stopped short. And
+behind it stopped all of one of the two lines of advancing artillery.
+
+"Take that gun into action!"
+
+Tom heard the General's brief command and ran toward the huddled horses.
+He sprang into the saddle, seized both bridles, and drove on. As he did
+so, another Confederate shell burst beside the off horse. Its fragments
+spared the foremost rider this time, but they dealt death to one of his
+two comrades. The man in control of the wheelers threw his right arm out
+and toppled over into the road, dead before the heavy cannon-wheel
+crashed and crushed over him. The leaders, so skillfully handled that
+their very fear made them run more madly into danger, tore ahead,
+keeping the other four horses galloping behind them, until the gun was
+in position. It roared the news of its coming with a well-aimed shot
+into the midst of the enemy's forces.
+
+[Illustration: TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO ACTION]
+
+Its fellows fell into line and followed suit. The infantry and cavalry
+attacked with renewed spirit. Sullenly and savagely, fighting until
+darkness forbade more fighting, Lee's troops withdrew towards the west,
+with the Union forces pounding away at them. They left a mass of dead
+upon the battlefield, lives finely lost for the Lost Cause, and they
+also left as prisoners six general officers and seven thousand men. More
+than a third of all the prisoners taken in the battles before the final
+surrender were taken at the battle of Sailor's Creek. Tom had stuck to
+his new arm of the service through the three hours of fighting. The guns
+had been continually advanced as the Southerners retreated. They had
+been continually under fire. Nearly half the gunners had been killed or
+wounded. When the fight was over, Tom remembered for the first time his
+own wounded shoulder. He had never thought of it from the moment when he
+had sprung upon the artillery horse. Now it began to throb with a
+renewed and a deeper pain, as if resenting his ignoring of it so long,
+but the new pain also vanished when he rejoined General Wright and heard
+him say:
+
+"Mr. Strong, you helped to save the day. I shall recommend you for
+promotion for distinguished bravery under fire."
+
+The boy saluted, his heart too full to speak. As he rode away upon Bob,
+some of the joy in his heart must have got into Bob's heels, for Bob
+pirouetted up the main street of the little town of Farmville, late that
+night, as though he were prouder than ever of his master.
+
+Farmville was now headquarters. Grant was there, in a bare hotel, not
+long before a Confederate hospital. It was from the Farmville hotel that
+he wrote to Lee a historic note. It ran thus:
+
+                                     "Headquarters Armies of the U. S.
+                                             5 P.M., April 7, 1865.
+
+     "General R. E. Lee,
+       Commanding C. S. A.:
+
+     The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness
+     of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia
+     in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to
+     shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of
+     blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the
+     Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
+
+                                                     U. S. GRANT,
+                                                     Lieut.-General."
+
+Under a flag of truce, this note reached General Lee that evening, so
+near together were the headquarters of the contending armies in those
+last days. His letter in reply, asking what terms of surrender were
+offered, reached Grant the next morning while he was talking on the
+steps of the Farmville hotel to a Confederate Colonel.
+
+"Jes' tho't I'd repo't to you, General," said the Colonel.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You see I own this hyar hotel you're a-occupyin'."
+
+"Well, sir, we shall move out soon. We are moving around a good deal,
+nowadays. Why aren't you with your regiment?"
+
+"Well, you see, General, I am my regiment."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"All the men wuz raised 'round hyar. A few days ago they jes' begun
+nachally droppin' out. They all dun dropped out, General, so I jes'
+tho't there wan't any use being a cunnel without no troops and I dun
+dropped out too. Here I be? What you goin' to do with me, General?"
+
+"I'm going to leave you here to take care of your property. Don't go
+back to your army and nobody'll bother you."
+
+That was a sample of the way in which the beaten army was melting away.
+Not even the magic of Lee's great name could hold it together now. But
+the men who did not drop out fought with heroism to the bitter end.
+
+The next day, Saturday, April 8, 1865, Sheridan captured some more of
+Lee's provision trains at Appomattox Station and on Sunday, April 9,
+Lee's whole army attacked there, still seeking to cut its way out of
+its encircling foes. Its brave effort was in vain. Held in a vice, it
+threw up its hands. A white flag flew above the Confederate lines.
+
+Grant had spent Saturday night struggling with a sick headache, his feet
+in hot water and mustard, his wrists and the back of his neck covered
+with mustard-plasters. On Sunday morning, still sick and suffering, he
+was jogging along on horseback towards the front, when a Confederate
+officer was brought before him. He carried a note from Lee offering to
+surrender. "When the officer reached me," writes Grant, "I was still
+suffering with the sick headache; but the instant I saw the contents of
+the note, I was cured." The ending of the war ended Grant's headache.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two commanders met at Appomattox Court House, a sleepy Virginian
+village, five miles from the railroad and endless miles from the great
+world. It lies in a happy valley, not wrapped in happiness that April
+day, for Sheridan's forces held the crest at the south and Lee's were
+deployed along the hilltop to the north. A two-hour armistice had been
+granted. If that did not bring the end desired, that end was to be
+fought out with all the horrors of warfare amid the peaceful houses that
+had straggled together to make the peaceful little town.
+
+At the northern end of the village street, surrounded by an apple
+orchard, stood a two-story brick house with a white wooden piazza in
+front of it. It was the home of Wilmer McLean, a Virginia farmer upon
+whose farm part of the battle of Bull Run had been fought at the
+outbreak of the war. Foreseeing that other battles might be fought
+there--as the second battle of Bull Run, in 1862, was--he had sold his
+property there and had moved by a strange chance to the very village and
+the very house in which the final scene of the great tragedy of this war
+between brothers was to be played. Here Lee awaited Grant.
+
+The Union general had gone to Sheridan's headquarters before riding up
+to the McLean house. Sheridan and his staff had gone on with him. Least
+important of the little group of Union officers who followed Grant into
+the presence of Lee was Tom Strong, but the boy's heart beat as high as
+that of any man there.
+
+[Illustration: THE McLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE]
+
+It was in the orchard about the house that the myth of "the apple-tree
+of Appomattox" was born. Millions of men and women have believed that
+Lee surrendered to Grant under an apple tree at Appomattox. That apple
+tree is as famous in mistaken history as is that other mythical tree,
+the cherry tree which George Washington did not cut down with his little
+hatchet. Washington could not tell a lie, it is true, but he never
+chopped down a cherry tree and then said to his angry, questioning
+father: "Father, I cannot tell a lie; I cut it down with my little
+hatchet." That fairy story came from the imagination of one Parson
+Weems, who did not resemble our first President in the latter's
+inability to tell lies. Perhaps the myth of the apple tree will never
+die, as the myth of the cherry tree has never died. In 1880, when
+Grant's mistaken friends tried to nominate him for a third Presidential
+term, other candidates had been urged because this one, it was said,
+could carry Ohio, that one Maine, and so on. Then Roscoe Conkling of New
+York strode upon the stage to nominate Grant and declaimed to a hushed
+audience of twenty thousand men:
+
+    "And if you ask what State he comes from,
+    Our sole reply shall be:
+    HE comes from Appomattox
+    And the famous apple tree!"
+
+The twenty thousand were swept off their feet by the magic of that myth.
+Grant was almost nominated--but not quite.
+
+The historic interview began in the room to the left of the front door
+in the McLean house. Two very different figures confronted each other.
+Grant had not expected the meeting to take place so soon and had left
+the farmhouse where he had spent the night before in rough garb. He
+writes: "I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback in
+the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the
+shoulder-straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was.... General
+Lee was dressed in a full uniform, which was entirely new, and was
+wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had
+been presented by the State of Virginia.... In my rough traveling suit,
+the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must
+have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six
+feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I
+thought of until afterwards."
+
+Lee requested that the terms to be given his army should be written out.
+Grant asked General Parker of his staff, a full-blooded American Indian,
+for writing materials. He had prepared nothing beforehand, but he knew
+just what he wanted to say and he wrote without hesitation terms such as
+only a great and magnanimous nation could offer its conquered citizens.
+After providing for the giving of paroles (that is, an agreement not to
+take up arms again unless the paroled prisoner is later exchanged for a
+prisoner of the other side) and for the surrender of arms, artillery,
+and public property, he added: "This will not embrace the sidearms of
+the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each
+officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be
+disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their
+paroles and the laws in force where they reside." There are some
+mistakes in grammar in these words, but there are no mistakes in
+magnanimity. When Lee, having put on his glasses, had read the first
+sentence quoted above, he said with feeling:
+
+[Illustration: LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT]
+
+"This will have a happy effect upon my army."
+
+He went on to say that many of the privates in the Confederate cavalry
+and artillery owned their own horses; could they retain them? Grant did
+not change the written terms, but he said his officers would be
+instructed to let every Confederate private who claimed to own a horse
+or mule take the animal home with him. "It was doubtful," writes Grant,
+"whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and
+their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses
+they were then riding." Again Lee remarked that this would have a happy
+effect. He then wrote and signed an acceptance of the proposed terms of
+surrender. The war was over. The first act of peace was our issuing
+25,000 rations to the army we had captured. For some days it had lived
+on parched corn.
+
+[Illustration: GEN. U. S. GRANT]
+
+The news of the surrender flashed along the waiting lines like wildfire
+and the Union forces began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of
+the victory. "I at once sent word," says Grant, "to have it stopped. The
+Confederates were now our prisoners and we did not want to exult over
+their downfall." This was the spirit of a great man and of a great
+nation. It was not the soldiers who fought the war who kept its rancors
+alive after peace had come, It was the politicians, who tore open the
+old wounds and kept the country bleeding for a dozen years after the
+Lost Cause was lost.
+
+On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 1865, Grant and Lee again met
+between the lines and sitting on horseback talked for half an hour. Then
+Grant began his journey to Washington. His staff, including Tom, went
+with him. When they reached their goal, Second-Lieutenant Strong found
+he was that no longer. For General Wright had done what he had told Tom
+he meant to do. The recommendation had been heeded. Lincoln himself
+handed the boy his new commission as a brevet-captain.
+
+"I was glad to sign that, Tom," the President told him, "and even
+Stanton didn't kick this time."
+
+"You don't know how glad I am to get it, Mr. President," was the reply.
+"Now I'm a boy-captain, as my great-grandfather was before me."
+
+"I'm not much on pedigrees and ancestry and genealogical trees, my boy,"
+answered Lincoln. "Out West we think more of trees that grow out of the
+ground than we do of trees that grow on parchment. But you're right to
+be proud of an ancestry of service to your country. When family pride is
+based on money or land or social standing, it is one of the most foolish
+things God Almighty ever laughed at, but when it is based on service,
+real service, to your country, to your fellowmen, to the world, why,
+then, Tom, it's one of the biggest and best things in God's kingdom. But
+remember this, son,"--Lincoln's eyes flashed in their deep sockets--"if
+a boy has an ancestor who has done big things, the way to be proud of
+him is to do big things yourself. Living on the glory of what somebody
+else has done before you is a mighty poor kind of living. I never knew
+but one man that was perfect and I'd never have known he was if he
+hadn't told me so. Nobody else ever found it out. But if we can't be
+perfect, we can grow less imperfect by trying every day to serve our
+fellowmen. Remember that, Tom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+
+On the evening of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Laura Keene, an English
+actress of great repute in America, was to play _Our American Cousin_ at
+Ford's Theater, the chief place of amusement for war-time Washington.
+
+That afternoon, Assistant-Secretary-of-War Dana was notified by wire
+that Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, once Secretary of the Interior under
+our poor old wavering President, Buchanan, afterwards a leading
+Secessionist, would take a steamship for England that evening at
+Portland, Maine.
+
+"What shall I do?" Dana asked Stanton.
+
+"Arrest him! No, wait; better go over and see the President."
+
+So Dana went to the White House. Office-hours were over. He found
+Lincoln washing his hands.
+
+"Halloo, Dana!" was Lincoln's greeting. "What's up?"
+
+The telegram was read aloud.
+
+"What does Stanton say?"
+
+"He says to arrest him, but that I should refer the question to you."
+
+"Well, no, I rather think not. When you have got an elephant by the hind
+legs and he's trying to run away; it's best to let him run."
+
+Dana reported this to Stanton.
+
+"Oh, stuff!" said Stanton.
+
+But Thompson was not arrested, so that the last recorded act of Lincoln
+as President was one of mercy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the upper stage-box, to the right of the audience, that evening, sat
+Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, Mrs. Lincoln, a friend,
+Miss Harris, and an officer, Major Henry R. Rathbone. The cares of State
+seemed to have slipped for the moment from Lincoln's shoulders. He had
+bowed smilingly from the box in response to the cheers of the packed
+audience in the body of the house. He had followed intently the action
+of the amusing play, constantly smiling, often applauding. The eyes of
+the little party of four were bent upon the stage, about ten o'clock,
+when the door of the box was jerked violently open behind them. As they
+turned at the noise, Death stalked in upon them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five minutes before, Tom Strong had been idly strolling along Tenth
+Street and had paused at the theater door to read the play-bills posted
+there. A small group of belated play-goers was at the ticket-booth. A
+man shoved roughly through them. A woman's "Oh!" of surprise and protest
+drew Tom's attention to the man. He had seen him but thrice before, yet
+the man's face was engraved upon his memory. Once, at Charlestown,
+Virginia, Wilkes Booth had stood in the ranks of the militia, eagerly
+awaiting the execution of John Brown. Once, upon a railroad train north
+of Baltimore, Wilkes Booth had drugged the boy and left him, as the
+scoundrel thought, to die. Once, upon a railroad platform at Kingston,
+Alabama, Wilkes Booth had recognized him and had again sought his death.
+Whose death did he seek to compass now? What was the Confederate spy
+doing here? Tom had scarcely glimpsed the hawk-like features, the pallid
+face, the flowing black hair of his foe, when Booth disappeared from his
+sight in the crowded lobby of the theater.
+
+Instantly Tom pursued him. But he was delayed by the little group
+through whom Booth had elbowed his rough way. And when he reached the
+ticket-window, he found no money in his pocket with which to buy
+admittance. He had put on civilian clothes that evening and had left his
+scanty store of currency in his uniform. The wary ticket-seller, used to
+all sorts of dodges by people who wanted to get in without paying,
+laughed at his story and refused to give him a ticket on trust. Tom's
+claim that he was an officer caused especial amusement.
+
+"That won't go down, bub," said the ticket-seller. "Try to think up a
+better lie next time. And clear out now. Don't block up the
+passageway."
+
+"I _must_ get in," said Tom.
+
+"You shan't," snarled the man, sure that he was being imposed upon.
+
+The doorkeeper, attracted by the little row, had come towards the
+ticket-window. He swung his right arm with a threatening gesture. As Tom
+started towards him he struck the threatened blow, but his clenched fist
+hit nothing. The boy had ducked under his arm and had fled into the
+theater. The doorkeeper pursued him. But Tom was now making his way like
+a weasel through the crowd. He had caught sight of Wilkes Booth nearly
+at the top of the right-hand staircase that led to the aisle from which
+the upper right-hand box was reached. Without any actual premonition of
+the coming tragedy which was to echo around the world upon the morrow,
+he still felt that Booth had in mind some evil deed and that it was his
+duty to prevent him. As he struggled toward the foot of the stairway,
+Booth saw him, recognized him and smiled at him, a smile of triumphant
+hideous evil. Tom yelled:
+
+"Spy! Confederate spy! Stop him! Let me follow!"
+
+Upon the startled crowd there fell a sudden stillness. Nobody laid hand
+upon Booth, but everybody made way for the frantic boy who rushed up the
+stairway as the scoundrel he chased ran down the corridor. He clutched
+the newel post at the head of the stairway just as Booth flung open the
+door of the box. Tom ran towards him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door of the box was violently jerked open. Wilkes Booth sprang
+across the threshold. He put his pistol close to the head of the unarmed
+man he meant to murder. He fired. The greatest American sank forward
+into his wife's arms. High above her shrieks rose the actor's trained
+voice. He leaped upon the balustrade of the box, shouted "_Sic semper
+tyrannis!_" and jumped down to the stage. He was booted and spurred for
+his escape. His horse was held for him near the stage-door. One of his
+spurs caught upon the curtain of the box, so that he stumbled and fell
+heavily. But he had played his part upon that stage many a time before.
+He knew every nook and cranny of the mysterious labyrinth behind the
+footlights. He rose to his feet, disregarding a twisted ankle, and
+rushed to safety--for a few hours. He reached his horse and galloped
+into the calm night of God, profaned forever by this hideous crime of a
+besotted fanatic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The martyred President was taken to a neighboring house, No. 453 Tenth
+Street. In a back hall bedroom, upon the first floor, that that was
+still Abraham Lincoln, but was soon to cease to be so, was laid upon a
+narrow bed. Tom had helped to carry him there. Wife and son, John Hay,
+Secretary-of-War Stanton, and a few others crowded into the tiny room.
+Doctors worked feverishly over the dying man. Their skill was in vain.
+The slow and regular breathing grew fainter. The automatic moaning
+ceased. A look of unspeakable peace came to the face the world now knows
+so well. In a solemn hush, at twenty-two minutes after seven in the
+morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865, the great soul of Abraham Lincoln
+went back to the God Who had given him to America and to the world. A
+moment later Stanton spoke:
+
+"Now he belongs to the ages."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+     TOM HUNTS WILKES BOOTH--THE END OF THE MURDERER--ANDREW JOHNSON,
+     PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES--TOM AND TOWSER GO HOME.
+
+
+The assassination of Lincoln was not the only crime that stained that
+memorable night. Secretary-of-State Seward was stabbed in his sick-bed
+by one of Booth's co-conspirators. Attempts were made upon the lives of
+other Cabinet ministers. Many arbitrary arrests had been made during the
+war by Secretary Stanton. It had been said that whenever Stanton's
+little bell rang, somebody went to prison. That little bell had little
+rest this Saturday. Wholesale arrests were made of suspected Southern
+sympathizers who might have known something of the hideous conspiracy of
+murder. Stanton put all the grim energy of him into the pursuit of the
+leading criminals. He was said never to forget anything. One of the
+things he had not forgotten was that Tom Strong knew Wilkes Booth by
+sight. He sent him from Lincoln's bedside, hours before Lincoln died, to
+join a troop of cavalry that was to pursue Booth. The road by which the
+murderer had left Washington was known. Hard upon his heels rode the
+avengers of crime. Wherever there was a light in one of the few houses
+along the lonely road, often where there was no light, the occupants
+were seized, questioned, sometimes sent to Washington under guard,
+sometimes released and sternly bidden to say nothing of the midnight
+ride. Piecing together scraps of information gathered here and there,
+studying every crossroad for possible hoof-marks of flight, the silent
+commander of the cavalrymen at last convinced himself that he was on the
+trail of the quarry. The troops broke into full gallop. A few minutes
+before dawn they reached a small village on the bank of the Potomac,
+where the fires of a smithy gleamed. They pulled up short as the
+startled blacksmith came out of his sooty shed.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded the captain.
+
+"I've been--I've been--putting on a horseshoe, sir."
+
+"For what kind of a looking man?"
+
+"He said his name was Barnard."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Tom from his saddle, "but Barnard was the
+name Wilkes Booth once gave me for his own." At the beginning of the
+ride, Tom had described Booth's appearance to the captain.
+
+"Was the man pale? Did he have long black hair?"
+
+"Long black hair," answered the blacksmith, "but his cheeks were red. He
+seemed excited. While I was replacing the shoe his horse had cast, he
+kept drinking brandy from a bottle he carried. He never gave me none of
+it," the man added with an injured air.
+
+"Did he say anything?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He said I'd hear great news later today, that the
+Southerners had won their greatest victory. I asked him where and he
+swore at me and told me to shut up. But he gave me a silver dollar.
+Perhaps it's bad. Is it?"
+
+The blacksmith pulled out of his grimy pocket a dollar and showed it to
+the captain.
+
+"Do you know who that man was?" was the stern command.
+
+"No, sir, o' course I don't. I s'pose he was Mr. Barnard."
+
+"He was Judas. He has murdered Abraham Lincoln. And he has given you one
+of the forty pieces of silver."
+
+With wild-eyed horror, the smith started back. He flung the accursed
+dollar far into the Potomac.
+
+"God's curse go with it," he cried. "Captain, the man went straight down
+the river road. He gave his horse a cut with his whip 'n he yelled
+'Carry me back to ole Virginny!' and he went off lickety-split. He ain't
+half-an-hour ahead of you."
+
+No need to command full speed now. Every man was riding hard. Every
+horse was putting his last ounce of strength into his stride. Within an
+hour, the hounds saw the slinking fox they chased. Booth, abandoning his
+exhausted steed, took refuge in a tumble-down barn. A cordon was thrown
+about it and he was called on to surrender. The reply was a shot. Tom
+heard the whiz of the bullet as it tore by him. The cavalry pumped lead
+into the barn. Once, twice, thrice they fired. At the first volley, the
+trapped murderer had again fired. There was no answer to the second and
+third. With reloaded carbines, the troopers charged, burst open the
+barred door, and rushed into the rickety shed. A man lay on the earthen
+floor, breath and blood struggling together in his gaping mouth. As they
+gathered about him, the Captain asked:
+
+"Do you know this man, Captain Strong?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Wilkes Booth, sir."
+
+The sound of his own name half recalled Booth to life. He looked up at
+the boy who stood beside him and recognized him. Ferocious hate filled
+the glazing eyes. Then Wilkes Booth went to his eternal doom, hating to
+the end.
+
+"Is he dead?" said the Captain, turning to a major of the medical
+service, who had galloped beside Tom on that fierce ride of the
+avengers. A big, bearded man knelt beside the body of Wilkes Booth, put
+his finger where the pulse had been and laid his hand where the heart
+had once beat.
+
+"He is dead," answered Major Hans Rolf.
+
+His body was thrust somewhere into the earth he had disgraced or else
+was flung, weighted with stones, into the river, all the flood tides of
+which could not wash away the black guilt of him. No man knows where the
+body of Wilkes Booth was buried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The king is dead! Long live the king!"
+
+When Tom rode sadly up Pennsylvania Avenue, with a crape-laden flag at
+half-mast over the Capitol, glad for the stern justice that had been
+dealt out to the murderer he loathed, but bowed down with grief for the
+murdered President he had loved, Abraham Lincoln was no longer President
+of the United States. In his stead, our uncrowned king was Andrew
+Johnson, of Tennessee, a Southern Unionist who had been elected Vice
+President when the people chose Lincoln a second time for their ruler.
+Johnson had been born to grinding poverty in a rough community where
+"skule-l'arnin'" was not to be had. He was a grown man, earning a scanty
+livelihood as a village tailor, when his wife taught him to read and
+write. He worked his hard way up in life, became a man of prominence in
+his village, in his county, in his State, until he was chosen for
+Lincoln's running-mate as a representative Southern Unionist. He was of
+course a man of native force, but he sometimes drowned his mind in
+liquor. That fatal habit pulled him down. He was a failure as a
+President, though thereafter he served his State and his country well
+as a United States Senator from Tennessee.
+
+The White House was changed under its new ruler. John Hay, full of cheer
+and wit, was abroad as a secretary of legation. Nicolay, his superior
+officer, was a consul in Europe. The Lincoln family had gone West
+through a sorrowing country, bearing the body of the martyr-President to
+its burial-place in Springfield, Illinois. For a while some familiar
+faces were left. At first, the same Cabinet ministers served the new
+President. For some time, Uncle Moses had to learn no new names as he
+carried about the summons to the Cabinet meetings. But the visitors to
+the White House had changed mightily. Rough men from Tennessee and the
+other Border States, some of them diamonds in the rough, swarmed there.
+Lincoln had never used tobacco. The new-comers both smoked and chewed.
+Clouds of smoke filled the lower story and giant spittoons lined the
+corridors and invaded the public rooms. Gradually the Republican leaders
+ceased to wait upon the President.
+
+Among the people who left the White House soon after Lincoln left it was
+Tom Strong. On a bright May morning he walked across the portico, where
+Towser was eagerly awaiting him and where Uncle Moses followed him. Unk'
+Mose lifted his withered black hands and called down blessings on the
+boy who had been his angel of freedom and had led him out of bondage.
+
+"De good Lawd bress you, Mas'r Tom. And de good Lawd bress dat dar
+wufless ol' houn' dawg Towser, too. 'Kase Towser, he lubs you, Mas'r
+Tom,--and so duz I," Uncle Moses shyly added.
+
+The venerable old negro and the white boy shook hands in a long farewell
+upon the steps of the White House. Then Tom turned away from the
+historic roof that had so long sheltered him and walked to the railroad
+station, to take the train for New York. Towser trotted stiffly by his
+side, trying at every step to lick his master's hand.
+
+Tom Strong studied hard at home and then went to Yale, as his father
+had done before him.
+
+Towser could not go with him. The laws of Yale forbade it. That is one
+of the chief disadvantages of being a dog. Soon after Tom went to New
+Haven, Towser went to heaven. At least, let us hope he did. He deserved
+to do so. One of the human things about Martin Luther, the stern founder
+of Protestantism in Germany in the Sixteenth Century, was that he once
+said to a tiny girl, weeping over the death of her tiny dog: "Do not
+cry, little maid; for you will find your dog in heaven and he will have
+a golden tail."
+
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+[Illustration: TOWSER
+               "MAY HE REST IN PEACE"]
+
+
+
+
+                       BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS
+
+
+                        THE DOGS OF BOYTOWN
+
+                         By WALTER A. DYER
+
+             _Author of "Pierrot, Dog of Belgium," etc._
+                      _Illustrated. $1.50 net_
+
+  _New York Sun_: "It takes the cake--in this case, of course, a dog
+  biscuit.... It is the most unusual book of its kind.... Dyer enters a
+  new field for boys ... all boys will want to know about Dogs--their ways
+  and habits, their histories and origins.... Threaded through this
+  wonderful textbook on dogs is the story of adventures of two boys ...
+  shows the reader where to find out about everything from bench shows and
+  the care of puppies to fleas...."
+
+
+                 THE FIVE BABBITTS AT BONNYACRES
+
+                         By WALTER A. DYER
+
+            _Illustrated, by J. O. Chapin. $1.50 net_
+
+  A back-to-the-farm story for young folks based on actual experience. The
+  farm problems and results are such as could actually occur on thousands
+  of American farms.
+
+
+                  MAGIC PICTURES OF THE LONG AGO
+
+                      By ANNA CURTIS CHANDLER
+
+            _With some forty illustrations. $1.30 net_
+
+  Each recounts the youth and something of the later life of some striking
+  character in art, history, or literature, and is made very vivid by
+  reproductions of famous pictures, etc.
+
+
+                           BLUE HERON COVE
+
+                       By FANNIE LEE MCKINNEY
+
+                 _Author of "Nora-Square-Accounts."_
+
+                      _Illustrated. $1.35 net_
+
+  Tells how Blue Heron Island and its seafaring folks change "a little
+  German countess in white satin" into "a real, authentic American girl."
+
+
+                             THE GUN BOOK
+
+                          By THOMAS H. MCKEE
+
+                  _Profusely illustrated. $1.60 net_
+
+  A book about guns for boys of all ages. The history is accurate; boys
+  will remember the anecdotes; and the technical parts are sensibly
+  adapted to show "just how it works."
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                  COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE
+
+                  FOR BOYS     By CHARLES P. BURTON
+
+
+                        THE BOYS OF BOB'S HILL
+
+         Illustrated by GEORGE A. WILLIAMS. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+   A lively story of a party of boys in a small New England town.
+
+     "A first-rate juvenile ... a real story for the live human boy--any
+     boy will read it eagerly to the end ... quite thrilling
+     adventures."--_Chicago Record-Herald_.
+
+
+                          THE BOB'S CAVE BOYS
+
+               Illustrated by VICTOR PERARD. $1.35 net.
+
+     "It would be hard to find anything better in the literature of New
+     England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, human boys, full of fun,
+     into trouble and out again, but frank, honest, and clean."--_The
+     Congregationalist._
+
+
+                         THE BOB'S HILL BRAVES
+
+             Illustrated by H. S. DELAY. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  The "Bob's Hill" band spend a vacation in Illinois, where they play at
+  being Indians, hear thrilling tales of real Indians, and learn much
+  frontier history. A history of especial interest to "Boy Scouts."
+
+     "Merry youngsters. Capital. Thrilling tales of the red men and
+     explorers. These healthy red-blooded, New England
+     boys."--_Philadelphia Press._
+
+
+                      THE BOY SCOUTS OF BOB'S HILL
+
+             Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  The "Bob's Hill" band organizes a Boy Scouts band and have many
+  adventures. Mr. Burton brings in tales told around a camp-fire of La
+  Salle, Joliet, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Northwestern
+  Reservation.
+
+
+                            CAMP BOB'S HILL
+
+                Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. $1.35 net.
+
+  A tale of Boy Scouts on their summer vacation.
+
+
+                    THE RAVEN PATROL OF BOB'S HILL
+
+                Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. $1.35 net.
+
+  The account of a camping trip of the Raven Patrol of the Boy Scouts to
+  the Massachusetts coast, with much real boy fun and wholesome
+  adventure.
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                        BY ALICE CALHOUN HAINES
+
+               _For Young Folks from 9 to 16 Years old._
+
+
+                           PARTNERS FOR FAIR
+
+             With illustrations by FAITH AVERY. $1.35 net
+
+  A story full of action, not untinged by pathos, of a boy and his
+  faithful dog and their wanderings after the poor-house burns down.
+  They have interesting experiences with a traveling circus; the boy is
+  thrown from a moving train, and has a lively time with the Mexican
+  Insurrectos, from whom he is rescued by our troops.
+
+
+                    THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS
+
+         Illustrated by FRANCIS DAY. 300 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  A family story of city life. Lightened by humor and an airship.
+
+     "Among the very best of books for young folks. Appeals especially
+     to girls."--_Wisconsin List for Township Libraries._
+
+     "Promises to be perennially popular. A family of happy, healthy,
+     inventive, bright children make the best of restricted conditions
+     and prove themselves masters of circumstances."--_Christian
+     Register._
+
+     "Sparkles with cleverness and humor."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+
+                          COCK-A-DOODLE HILL
+
+          A sequel to the above. Illustrated by FRANCIS DAY.
+
+                       296 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  "Cockle-a-doodle Hill" is where the Dudley Graham family went to live
+  when they left New York, and here Ernie started her chicken-farm, with
+  one solitary fowl, "Hennerietta." The pictures of country scenes and
+  the adventures and experiences of this household of young people are
+  very life-like.
+
+     "No better book for young people than 'The Luck of the Dudley
+     Grahams' was offered last year. 'Cock-a-Doodle Hill' is another of
+     similar qualities."--_Philadelphia Press._
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                        By ALFRED BISHOP MASON
+
+
+                   TOM STRONG, WASHINGTON'S SCOUT
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  A story of adventure. The principal characters, a boy and a trapper,
+  are in the Revolutionary army from the defeat at Brooklyn to the
+  victory at Yorktown.
+
+
+                       TOM STRONG, BOY-CAPTAIN
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Tom Strong and a sturdy old trapper take part in such stirring events
+  following the Revolution as the Indian raid with Crawford and a
+  flat-boat voyage from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, etc.
+
+
+                          TOM STRONG, JUNIOR
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  The story of the son of Tom Strong in the young United States. Tom
+  sees the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr; is in
+  Washington during the presidency of Jefferson; is on board of the
+  "Clermont" on its first trip, and serves in the United States Navy
+  during the War of 1812.
+
+
+                           TOM STRONG, THIRD
+
+                        Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Tom Strong, Junior's son helps his father build the first railroad
+  in the United States and then goes with Kit Carson on the Lewis and
+  Clarke Expedition.
+
+
+                     TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+                        Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Serving under President Lincoln, the fourth Tom Strong becomes an
+  actor in the most stirring events of the Civil War.
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+               _STANDARD CYCLOPÆDIAS FOR YOUNG OR OLD_
+
+
+                              CHAMPLIN'S
+
+                      Young Folks' Cyclopædias
+
+                        By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN
+
+        _Late Associate Editor of the American Cyclopædia_
+
+  Bound in substantial red buckram. Each volume complete in itself
+  and sold separately. 12mo, $3.00 per volume, net.
+
+
+                            COMMON THINGS
+
+       New, Enlarged Edition, 850 pp. Profusely Illustrated
+     "A book which will be of permanent value to any boy or girl to whom
+     it may be given, and which fills a place in the juvenile library,
+     never, so far as I know, supplied before."--_Susan Coolidge._
+
+
+                         PERSONS AND PLACES
+
+      New, Up-to-Date Edition, 985 pp. Over 375 Illustrations
+
+     "We know copies of the work to which their young owners turn
+     instantly for information upon every theme about which they have
+     questions to ask. More than this, we know that some of these copies
+     are read daily, as well as consulted; that their owners turn the
+     leaves as they might those of a fairy book, reading intently
+     articles of which they had not thought before seeing them, and
+     treating the book simply as one capable of furnishing the rarest
+     entertainment in exhaustless quantities.--_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+
+                         LITERATURE AND ART
+
+                     604 pp. 270 Illustrations
+
+     "Few poems, plays, novels, pictures, statues, or fictitious
+     characters that children--or most of their parents--of our day are
+     likely to inquire about will be missed here. Mr. Champlin's
+     judgment seems unusually sound."--_The Nation._
+
+
+                         GAMES AND SPORTS
+
+              By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN and ARTHUR BOSTWICK
+
+             Revised Edition, 784 pp. 900 Illustrations
+
+     "Should form a part of every juvenile library, whether public or
+     private."--_The Independent._
+
+
+                          NATURAL HISTORY
+
+        By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN, assisted by FREDERICK A. LUCAS
+
+                 725 pp. Over 800 Illustrations
+
+     "Here, in compact and attractive form, is valuable and reliable
+     information on every phase of natural history, on every item of
+     interest to the student. Invaluable to the teacher and school, and
+     should be on every teacher's desk for ready reference, and the
+     children should be taught to go to this volume for information
+     useful and interesting."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason.
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout
+
+Author: Alfred Bishop Mason
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2013 [EBook #44132]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<table border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" summary="table of contents">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="360" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Stories of Adventure in The<br />
+      Young United States</span></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><i>By ALFRED BISHOP MASON</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Washington's Scout</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Boy-Captain</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Junior</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em"><span class="smcap">Tom Strong,<br />
+      Third</span></span><br />
+      <span class="font08"><i>Illustrated, $1.30 net</i></span><br />
+      <br />
+      <br />
+      <span style="font-size:1.2em">HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</span><br />
+      <span class="font09">Publishers&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;New York</span><br />
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p class="p3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 457px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_003.jpg" width="457" height="700" alt="St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln</span>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h1>TOM STRONG,<br />
+LINCOLN'S SCOUT</h1>
+
+<p class="p2 center font12 pmb3">A STORY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE<br />
+TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS</p>
+
+<p class="center font09 pmb1">By</p>
+
+<p class="center font14">ALFRED BISHOP MASON</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb3 pmb2">Author of "Tom Stron, Washington's Scout," Tom Strong,<br />
+Boy-Captain," "Tom Strong, Junior," and<br />
+"Tom Strong, Third"</p>
+
+<p class="center font11 pmb3">Illustrated</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
+  <img src="images/liber.jpg" width="75" height="100" alt="logo -- decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<p class="center font11">NEW YORK</p>
+<p class="center font12">HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</p>
+<p class="center font11 pmb3">1919</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center pmb3 pmb3"><span class="font08">
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1919<br />
+BY<br />
+HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</span><br /></p>
+
+<p class="center font07 pmb3">The Quinn &amp; Boden Company<br />
+BOOK MANUFACTURERS<br />
+RAHWAY&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW JERSEY</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font08 pmb1">DEDICATED BY PERMISSION</p>
+
+<p class="center font08 pmb1">TO</p>
+
+<p class="center font13 pmb1">THEODORE ROOSEVELT</p>
+
+<p class="center font11 pmb3">INSPIRER OF PATRIOTISM,<br />
+A GREAT AMERICAN</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="block1">
+<p class="center font08 pmb1">
+<tt>OYSTER BAY,<br />
+LONG ISLAND, N. Y.</tt></p>
+<p class="i50 font11 pmb3"><tt>August 31st, 1917.</tt></p>
+
+<p class="font11 pmb1"><tt>Dear Mr. Mason:</tt></p>
+
+<p class="i5 font11 pmb1"><tt>All right, I shall break my rule
+and have you dedicate that book to me. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Thank you<i>!</i></tt></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" summary="Signature">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="50%" /> <col width="50%" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">
+      <div class="figcenter" style="width: 270px;">
+      <img src="images/illo_007_sign.jpg" width="270" height="32" alt="Signature T. Roosevelt" title="" />
+      </div>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p class="left font11 pmb1"><tt>Mr. Alfred B. Mason,<br />
+University Club,<br />
+New York City.</tt></p>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD">FOREWORD</a></h2>
+
+
+<p class="pmb2">Many of the persons and personages who appear
+upon the pages of this book have already
+lived, some in history and some in the pages of
+"Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom
+Strong, Boy-Captain," "Tom Strong, Junior,"
+or "Tom Strong, Third." Those who wish to
+know the full story of the four Tom Strongs,
+great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son,
+should read those books, too.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="1" summary="table of contents1">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="410" /> <col width="60" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right" valign="top"><span style="font-size:.6em">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER I</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Rides in Western Maryland&mdash;Halted
+      by Armed Men&mdash;John Brown&mdash;The Attack
+      upon Harper's Ferry&mdash;The Fight&mdash;John
+      Brown's Soul Goes Marching On</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="font10">CHAPTER II</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Our War with Mexico&mdash;Kit Carson and His
+      Lawyer, Abe Lincoln&mdash;Tom Goes to Lincoln's
+      Inauguration&mdash;S. F. B. Morse, Inventor
+      of the Telegraph&mdash;Tom Back in
+      Washington</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="font10">CHAPTER III</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2 font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Charles Francis Adams&mdash;Mr. Strong Goes
+      to Russia&mdash;Tom Goes to Live in the
+      White House&mdash;Bull Run&mdash;&quot;Stonewall&quot;
+      Jackson&mdash;Geo. B. McClellan&mdash;Tom
+      Strong, Second-Lieutenant, U. S. A.&mdash;The
+      Battle of the &quot;Merrimac&quot; and the
+      &quot;Monitor&quot;</span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER IV</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Goes West&mdash;Wilkes Booth Hunts Him&mdash;Dr.
+      Hans Rolf Saves Him&mdash;He Delivers
+      Despatches to General Grant</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER V</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Inside the Confederate Lines&mdash;"Sairey"
+      Warns Tom&mdash;Old Man Tomblin's "Settlemint"&mdash;Stealing
+      a Locomotive&mdash;Wilkes
+      Booth Gives the Alarm&mdash;A
+      Wild Dash for the Union Lines</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER VI</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom up a Tree&mdash;Did the Confederate Officer
+      See Him?&mdash;The Fugitive Slave
+      Guides Him&mdash;Buying a Boat in the Dark&mdash;Adrift
+      in the Enemy's Country</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER VII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Towser Finds the Fugitives&mdash;Towser Brings
+      Uncle Moses&mdash;Mr. Izzard and His Yankee
+      Overseer, Jake Johnson&mdash;Tom Is
+      Pulled Down the Chimney&mdash;How Uncle
+      Moses Choked the Overseer&mdash;The
+      Flight of the Four</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER VIII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life&mdash;Newspaper
+      Abuse of Lincoln&mdash;The Emancipation
+      Proclamation&mdash;Lincoln in His
+      Night-shirt&mdash;James Russell Lowell&mdash;"Barbara
+      Frietchie"&mdash;Mr. Strong Comes
+      Home&mdash;The Russian Fleet Comes to
+      New York&mdash;A Backwoods Jupiter</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER IX</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Goes to Vicksburg&mdash;Morgan's Raid&mdash;Gen.
+      Basil W. Duke Captures Tom&mdash;Gettysburg&mdash;Gen.
+      Robert E. Lee Gives
+      Tom His Breakfast&mdash;In Libby Prison&mdash;Lincoln's
+      Speech at Gettysburg</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span>
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER X</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Is Hungry&mdash;He Learns to "Spoon" by
+      Squads&mdash;The Bullet at the Window&mdash;Working
+      on the Tunnel&mdash;"Rat Hell"&mdash;The
+      Risk of the Roll-call&mdash;What Happened
+      to Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy&mdash;Tom
+      in Libby Prison&mdash;Hans Rolf
+      Attends Him&mdash;Hans Refuses to Escape&mdash;The
+      Flight Through the Tunnel&mdash;Free,
+      but How to Stay So?</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XI</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Hides in a River Bank&mdash;Eats Raw Fish&mdash;Jim
+      Grayson Aids Him&mdash;Down the
+      James River on a Tree&mdash;Passing the Patrol
+      Boats&mdash;Cannonaded&mdash;The End of
+      the Voyage</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Towser Welcomes Tom to the White House&mdash;Lincoln
+      Re-elected President&mdash;Grant
+      Commander-in-Chief&mdash;Sherman Marches
+      from Atlanta to the Sea&mdash;Tom on
+      Grant's Staff&mdash;Five Forks&mdash;Fall of
+      Richmond&mdash;Hans Rolf Freed&mdash;Bob Saves
+      Tom from Capture&mdash;Tom Takes a Battery
+      into Action&mdash;Lee Surrenders&mdash;Tom
+      Strong, Brevet-Captain, U. S. A.</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XIII</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span style="font-size:1.0em">CHAPTER XIV</span></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left"><div class="p_m2"><span class="font09">
+      <span class="smcap">Tom Hunts Wilkes Booth&mdash;The End of the
+      Murderer&mdash;Andrew Johnson, President
+      of the United States&mdash;Tom and Towser
+      Go Home</span></span></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</a></h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="1" summary="list of illustrations">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="80" /> <col width="320" /> <col width="110" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right" valign="top"><span style="font-size:.6em">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Abraham Lincoln</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><i>Frontispiece</i></span></td>
+  </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+        <td align="left">
+          <span class="font08">St. Gaudens Statue, Lincoln Park, Chicago</span></td>
+        <td align="right"><span class="font08">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">John Brown</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">The Attack upon the Engine House</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Battle of the &quot;Monitor&quot; and the &quot;Merrimac&quot;</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Admiral Farragut</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Mississippi River Gunboats</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">The Locomotive Tom Helped to Steal</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Towser</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">General Duke Samples the Pies</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Arlington</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. Robert E. Lee on Traveler</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Libby Prison after the War</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_214">214</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Fighting the Rats</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Libby Prison and the Tunnel</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Abraham Lincoln in 1864</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. W. T. Sherman</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+        <td align="left">
+          <span class="font08">St. Gaudens Statue, Central Park Plaza, New York</span></td>
+        <td align="right"><span class="font08">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Bob</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. Philip H. Sheridan</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+        <td align="left">
+          <span class="font08">Sheridan Square Statue, Washington, D. C.</span></td>
+        <td align="right"><span class="font08">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Tom Takes a Battery into Action</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">The McLean House, Appomattox Courthouse</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Lee Surrenders to Grant</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_302">302</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Gen. U. S. Grant</span>
+        </span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td colspan="3">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2><a name="MAP" id="MAP">MAP</a></h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="1" summary="list of illustrations">
+  <colgroup>
+    <col width="80" /> <col width="320" /> <col width="110" />
+  </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="left" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right" valign="top"><span style="font-size:.6em">&nbsp;</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+      <span class="font09"><span class="smcap">Eastern Half of United States</span></span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="font09"><a href="#Page_2">2</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font20 pmb3"><b>TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT</b></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 506px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_017.jpg" width="506" height="700" alt="Map of the Eastern United States" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">THE EASTERN UNITED STATES<br />
+  (Showing places mentioned in this book)</span>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font20 pmb3"><b>TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT</b></p>
+
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Rides in Western Maryland&mdash;Halted by
+Armed Men&mdash;John Brown&mdash;The Attack
+upon Harper's Ferry&mdash;The Fight&mdash;John
+Brown's Soul Goes Marching On.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>On a beautiful October afternoon, a man and
+a boy were riding along a country road
+in Western Maryland. To their left lay the
+Potomac, its waters gleaming and sparkling
+beneath the rays of the setting sun. To their
+right, low hills, wooded to the top, bounded the
+view. They had left the little town of Harper's
+Ferry, Virginia, an hour before; had crossed to
+the Maryland shore of the Potomac; and now
+were looking for some country inn or friendly
+farmhouse where they and their horses could be
+cared for overnight.</p>
+
+<p>The man was Mr. Thomas Strong, once Tom
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+Strong, third, and the boy was his son, another
+Tom Strong, the fourth to bear that name. Like
+the three before him he was brown and strong,
+resolute and eager, with a smile that told of a
+nature of sunshine and cheer. They were looking
+for land. Mr. Strong had inherited much
+land in New York City. The growth of that
+great town had given him a comfortable fortune.
+He had decided to buy a farm somewhere
+and a friend had told him that Western Maryland
+was almost a paradise. So it was, but this
+Eden had its serpent. Slavery was there. It
+was a mild and patriarchal kind of slavery, but
+it had left its black mark upon the countryside.
+Across the nearby Mason and Dixon's line,
+Pennsylvania was full of little farms, tilled by
+their owners, and of little towns, which reflected
+the wealth of the neighboring farmers. Western
+Maryland was largely owned by absentee
+landlords. Its towns were tiny villages. Its
+farms were few and far between. The free State
+was briskly alive; the slave State was sleepily
+dead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The two riders were splendidly mounted, the
+father on a big bay stallion, Billy-boy, and the
+son on a black Morgan mare, Jennie. Billy-boy
+was a descendant of the Billy-boy General
+Washington had given to the first Tom Strong,
+many years before. Jennie was a descendant
+of the Jennie Tom Strong, third, had ridden
+across the plains of the great West with John
+C. Fremont, "the Pathfinder," first Republican
+candidate for President of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't seen a house for miles, Father,"
+said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"And we were never out of sight of a house
+when we were riding through Pennsylvania.
+There's always a reason for such things. Do
+you know the reason?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The sin of slavery. I don't believe I shall
+buy land in Maryland. I thought I might plant
+a colony of happy people here and help to make
+Maryland free, in the course of years, but I'm
+beginning to think the right kind of white people
+won't come where the only work is done by
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+slaves. We must find soon a place to sleep.
+Perhaps there'll be a house around that next
+turn in the road. Billy-boy whinnies as though
+there were other horses near."</p>
+
+<p>Billy-boy's sharp nose had not deceived him.
+There were other horses near. Just around the
+turn of the road there were three horses. Three
+armed men were upon them. Father and son
+at the same moment saw and heard them.</p>
+
+<p>"You stop! Who be you?"</p>
+
+<p>The sharp command was backed by uplifted
+pistols. The Strongs reined in their horses,
+with indignant surprise. Who were these three
+farmers who seemed to be playing bandits upon
+the peaceful highroad? The boy glanced at his
+father and tried to imitate his father's cool demeanor.
+He felt the shock of surprise, but his
+heart beat joyously with the thought: "This is
+an adventure!" All his young life he had
+longed for adventures. He had deeply enjoyed
+the novel experience of the week's ride with the
+father he loved, but he had not hoped for a
+thrill like this.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong eyed the three horsemen, who
+seemed both awkward and uneasy. "What
+does this mean?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, thar ain't goin' to be no harm done
+you nor done bub, thar, neither," the leader of
+the highwaymen answered, with a note almost
+of pleading in his voice. "Don't you be oneasy.
+But you'll have to come with us&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And spend Sunday with us&mdash;&mdash;" broke in
+another man.</p>
+
+<p>"Shet up, Bill. I'll do all the talkin' that's
+needed."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what you do best," the other man
+grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Tom," said Mr. Strong, turning with
+a smile to his son, "we seem to have found that
+place to spend the night." He faced his captors.
+"This is a queer performance of yours. You
+don't look like highwaymen, though you act like
+them. Do you mean to steal our horses?" he
+added, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't no hoss thieves," replied the
+leader. "You've got to come with us, but you
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+needn't be no way oneasy. You, Bill, ride
+ahead!"</p>
+
+<p>Bill turned his horse and rode ahead, Mr.
+Strong and Tom riding behind him, the other
+two men behind them. It was a silent ride, but
+not a long one. Within a mile, they reached a
+rude clearing that held a couple of log huts.
+The sun had set; the short twilight was over.
+Firelight gleamed in the larger of the huts. The
+prisoners were taken to it. A man who was
+lounging outside the door had a whispered talk
+with the three horsemen. Then he turned
+rather sheepishly; said: "Come in, mister;
+come in, bub;" opened the door, called within:
+"Prisoners, Captin' Smith," and stepped aside
+as father and son entered.</p>
+
+<p>There were a dozen men in the big room,
+farmers all, apparently. They were all on their
+feet, eyeing keenly the unexpected prisoners.
+Their eyes turned to a tall man, who stepped
+forward and held out his hand, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry the boys had to take you in, but
+you and your hosses are safe and we won't
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+keep you long. The day of the Lord is at
+hand."</p>
+
+<p>There was a grim murmur of approval from
+the other men. The Lord's day, as Sunday is
+sometimes called, was at hand, for it was then
+the evening of Saturday, October 15, 1859. But
+that was not what the speaker meant. He was
+not what his followers called him, Captain
+Smith. He was John Brown, of North Elba,
+New York, of Kansas ("bleeding Kansas" it
+was called then, when slaveholders from Missouri
+and freedom-lovers under John Brown had
+turned it into a battlefield), and he was soon to
+be John Brown of Harper's Ferry, Virginia,
+first martyr in the cause of Freedom on Virginian
+soil. To him "the day of the Lord" was
+the day when he was to attack slavery in its
+birthplace, the Old Dominion, and that attack
+had been set by him for Sunday, October 16.
+His plan was to seize Harper's Ferry, where
+there was a United States arsenal, arm the
+slaves he thought would come to his standard
+from all Virginia, and so compass the fall of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+the Slave Power. A wild plan, an impossible
+plan, the plan of an almost crazy fanatic, and a
+splendid dream, a dream for the sake of which
+he was glad to give his heroic life.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He had rented this Maryland farm in July,
+giving his name as Smith and saying he expected
+to breed horses. By twos and threes his followers
+had joined him in this solitary spot, until
+now there were twenty-one of them. The few
+folk scattered through the countryside had begun
+to be suspicious of this strange gathering of
+men. All sorts of wild stories circulated, though
+none was as wild as the truth. The men themselves
+were tense under the strain of the long
+wait. They feared discovery and attack. For
+the three days before "the day of the Lord"
+they had patrolled the one road, looking out
+for soldiers or for spies. Tom and his father had
+been their sole captives.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 582px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_026.jpg" width="582" height="700" alt="Portrait of John Brown" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">John Brown</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John Brown was one of Nature's noblemen
+and among his friends in Massachusetts and
+New York were some of the foremost men of
+their time, so he had learned to know a real man
+when he met one. He soon found out that Mr.
+Strong was a real man. He told him of his
+plans, and urged him to join in the projected
+foray on Harper's Ferry. But when Mr. Strong
+refused and tried to show him how mad his
+project was, the fires of the fanatic blazed within
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Did not Joshua bring down the walls of
+Jericho with a ram's horn?" he shouted. "And
+with twenty armed men cannot I pull down the
+walls of the citadel of Slavery? Are you a true
+man or not? Will you join me or not? Answer
+me yes or no."</p>
+
+<p>"No," was the response, quiet but firm.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall join me; you and your boy,"
+thundered the crusader, hammering the table
+with his mighty fist. "Here, Jim, put these
+people under guard and keep them until we
+start."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Tom and his father were well-treated, but they
+were kept under guard until the next night
+and were then taken along by John Brown's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+"army," which trudged off into the darkness
+afoot, while Billy-boy and Jennie and the other
+horses in the corral whinnied uneasily, sensing,
+as animals do, the stir of a departure which is to
+leave them behind. In the center of the little
+column the two captives marched the five miles
+to Harper's Ferry and started across the bridge
+that led to that tiny town.</p>
+
+<p>A brave man, one Patrick Hoggins, was night-watchman
+of the bridge. He heard the trampling
+of many feet upon the plank-flooring. He
+hurried towards the strange sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt!" shouted somebody in the column.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I didn't know what 'halt' mint then,"
+Patrick testified afterwards, "anny more than a
+hog knows about a holiday."</p>
+
+<p>But he had seen armed men and he turned
+to run and give an alarm. A bullet was swifter
+than he, but not swifter than his voice. He
+fell, but his shouts had alarmed the town.
+There were two or three watchmen at the
+arsenal. They came forward, only to be made
+prisoners. The few citizens who had been
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+aroused could do nothing. The "army" seized
+the arsenal without difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Five miles from Harper's Ferry lived Col.
+Lewis W. Washington, gentleman-farmer and
+slave-owner, great-grand-nephew of another
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, George
+Washington. At midnight, Colonel Washington
+was awakened by a blow upon his bedroom
+door. It swung open and the light of a burning
+torch showed the astonished Southerner four
+armed men, one of them a negro, who bade him
+rise and dress. They were a patrol sent out by
+Brown. Their leader, Stevens, asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you a pistol Lafayette gave George
+Washington and a sword Frederick the Great
+sent him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>His four captors tramped downstairs with
+him. Pistol and sword were found.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take the pistol," said Stevens. "You
+hand the sword to this negro."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John Brown wore this sword during the fighting
+that followed. It is now in the possession
+of the State of New York. While its being sent
+George Washington by Frederick the Great is
+doubtful&mdash;the story runs that the Prussian king
+sent with it a message "From the oldest general
+to the best general"&mdash;its being surrendered
+by Lewis Washington to the negro is true.</p>
+
+<p>Lewis was then on the staff of the Governor
+of Virginia, and had acquired in this way his
+title of Colonel. He was put into his own carriage.
+His slaves, few in number, were bundled
+into a four-horse farm-wagon. They were told
+to come and fight for their freedom. Too scared
+to resist, they came as they were bidden to do,
+but they did no fighting. At Harper's Ferry
+they and their fellow-slaves, seized at a neighboring
+plantation, escaped back to slavery at the
+first possible moment. Not a single negro voluntarily
+joined John Brown. He had expected
+a widespread slave insurrection. There was
+nothing of the sort. By Monday morning he
+knew he had failed, failed utterly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before Monday's sun set, Harper's Ferry was
+full of soldiers, United States regulars and State
+militia. Brown, his men and his white captives,
+eleven of the latter, were shut up in the fire-engine
+house of the armory. The militia refused
+to charge the engine-house, saying that this
+might cost the captives their lives. Many of
+them were drunk; all of them were undisciplined;
+their commander did not know how to
+command. The situation changed with the arrival
+of the United States Marines led by
+Lieut.-Col. Robert E. Lee, afterwards the famous
+chief of the army of the Confederate
+States.</p>
+
+<p>By this time Tom was beginning to think he
+had had enough adventure. He had enjoyed
+that silent tramp through the darkness beside
+his father. He had enjoyed it the more because
+they were both prisoners-of-war. Being a prisoner
+was an amazingly thrilling thing. He was
+sorry when brave Patrick Hoggins was shot and
+glad to know the wound was slight, but sharing
+in the skirmish, even in the humble capacity of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+a captive, had excited the boy immensely. Now
+that there was almost constant firing back and
+forth, when two or three wounded men were
+lying on the floor, and when his father and he
+and Colonel Washington were perforce risking
+their lives in the engine-house, with nothing to
+gain and everything to lose, and when scanty
+sleep and little food had tired out even his stout
+little body, Tom felt quite ready to go home and
+have his adored mother "mother" him. His
+father saw the homesickness in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady, my son," said Mr. Strong. "This
+won't last long. No stray bullet is apt to reach
+this corner, where Captain Brown has put us.
+The only other danger is when the regulars rush
+in here, but unless they mistake us for the
+raiders, there'll be no harm done then. Steady."
+He looked through a bullet-hole in the boarded-up
+window and added: "Here comes a flag of
+truce. Listen."</p>
+
+<p>The scattering fire died away. The hush was
+broken by a commanding voice, demanding surrender.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There will be no surrender," quoth grim
+John Brown.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">At dawn of Tuesday, two files of United
+States Marines, using a long ladder as a battering
+ram, attacked the door. It broke at the
+second blow. The marines poured in, shooting
+and striking. The battle was over. John Brown,
+wounded and beaten to the floor, lay there
+among his men. The captives were free. Their
+captors had changed places with them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_034.jpg" width="600" height="398" alt="THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Colonel Washington took Mr. Strong and
+Tom home with him, for a rest after the strain
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+of the captivity. He was much interested when
+he found out that Tom's great-grandfather had
+visited General Washington at Mount Vernon
+and Tom was intensely interested in seeing the
+home and home life of a rich Southern planter.
+The Colonel asked his guests to stay until after
+the trial of their recent jailer. They did so and
+Mr. Strong, after some hesitation, decided to
+take Tom to the trial and afterwards to the final
+scene of all. He wrote to his wife: "Life is
+rich, my dear, in proportion to the number of
+our experiences and their depth. Ordinarily, I
+would not dream of taking Tom to see a criminal
+hung. But John Brown is no ordinary criminal.
+He is wrong, but he is heroic. He faces his fate&mdash;for
+of course they will hang him&mdash;like a
+Roman. I think it will do Tom good to see a
+hero die."</p>
+
+<p>Whether or no his father was right, Tom was
+given these experiences. He sat beside his
+father and Colonel Washington at the trial. He
+heard them testify. He noted the angry stir of
+the mob in the court-room when Mr. Strong
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+made no secret of his admiration for the great
+criminal.</p>
+
+<p>Robert E. Lee, who captured Brown, said:
+"I am glad we did not have to kill him, for I
+believe he is an honest, conscientious old man."
+Virginia, Lee's State, thought she did have to
+kill this invader of her soil and disturber of her
+slaves.</p>
+
+<p>November 2, John Brown was sentenced to be
+hung December 2. The next day he added this
+postscript to a letter he had already written to
+his wife and children:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"P.S. Yesterday Nov. 2d I was sentenced to
+be hanged on Decem 2d next. Do not grieve on
+my account. I am still quite cheerful. God
+bless you all."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Northern friends offered to try to help him to
+break jail. He put aside the offer with the calm
+statement: "I am fully persuaded that I am
+worth inconceivably more to hang than for any
+other purpose."</p>
+
+<p>December 2, John Brown started on his last
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+journey. He sat upon his coffin in a wagon and
+as the two horses paced slowly from jail to gallows,
+he looked far afield, over river and valley
+and hill, and said: "This <i>is</i> a beautiful country."
+He was sure he was upon the threshold of a far
+more beautiful country. The gallows were
+guarded by a militia company from Richmond,
+Virginia. In its ranks, rifle on shoulder, stood
+Wilkes Booth, a dark and sinister figure, who
+was to win eternal infamy by assassinating
+Abraham Lincoln. Beside the militia was a trim
+lot of cadets, the fine boys of the Virginia Military
+Institute. With them was their professor,
+Thomas J. Jackson, "Stonewall" Jackson, one
+of the heroic figures upon the Southern side of
+our Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>When the end came, Stonewall Jackson's lips
+moved with a prayer for John Brown's soul;
+Colonel Washington's and Mr. Strong's eyes
+were wet; and Tom Strong sobbed aloud.
+Albany fired a hundred guns in John Brown's
+honor as he hung from the gallows. In 1859
+United States troops captured him that he
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+might die. In 1899 United States troops fired
+a volley of honor over his grave in North Elba
+that the memory of him might live. Victor
+Hugo called him "an apostle and a hero."
+Emerson dubbed him "saint." Oswald Garrison
+Villard closes his fine biography of John
+Brown with these words: "Wherever there is
+battling against injustice and oppression, the
+Charlestown gallows that became a cross will
+help men to live and die."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Our War with Mexico&mdash;Kit Carson and His
+Lawyer, Abe Lincoln&mdash;Tom Goes to Lincoln's
+Inauguration&mdash;S. F. B. Morse, Inventor
+of the Telegraph&mdash;Tom Back in
+Washington.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>In 1846, Mr. Strong, long enough out of Yale
+to have begun business and to have married,
+had heard his country's call and had helped her
+fight her unjust war with Mexico. General
+Grant, who saw his first fighting in this war and
+who fought well, says of it in his Memoirs that
+it was "one of the most unjust ever waged by
+a stronger against a weaker nation."</p>
+
+<p>Much more important things were happening
+here then than the Mexican War. In 1846
+Elias Howe invented the sewing-machine. In
+1847 Robert Hoe invented the rotary printing
+press. Great inventions like these are the real
+milestones of the path of progress.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong served as a private in the ranks
+throughout the war. He refused a commission
+offered him for gallantry in action because he
+knew he did not know enough then to command
+men. It is a rare man who knows that he does
+not know. His regiment was mustered out of
+service at the end of the war in New Orleans.
+The young soldier decided to go home by way
+of St. Louis because of his memories of that old
+town in the days when he had followed Fremont.
+He went again to the Planters' Hotel and there
+by lucky accident he met again the famous
+frontiersman Kit Carson. Carson was away
+from the plains he loved because of a lawsuit.
+A sharp speculator was trying to take away
+from him some land he had bought years ago
+near the town, which the growth of the town
+had now made quite valuable. Carson was
+heartily glad to see his "Tom-boy" once more.
+He insisted upon his staying several days, took
+him to court to hear the trial, and introduced
+him to his lawyer, a tall, gaunt, slab-sided,
+slouching, plain person from the neighboring
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+State of Illinois. Everybody who knew him
+called him "Abe." His last name was
+Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd heard so much of Abe Lincoln," said
+Carson, "that when this speculator who's trying
+to do me hired all the big lawyers in St. Louis,
+I just went over to Springfield, Illinois, to get
+Abe. When I saw him I rather hesitated about
+hiring such a looking skeesicks, but when I
+came to talk with him, he did the hesitating. I
+asked him what he'd charge for defending a
+land-suit in St. Louis. He told me. I sez: 'All
+right. You're hired. You're my lawyer.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wait a bit,' sez he.</p>
+
+<p>"'What for?' sez I. 'I'll pay what you said.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That ain't all,' sez he. 'Before I take your
+money, Kit, I've got to know your side of the
+case is the right side.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What difference does that make to a
+lawyer?' sez I.</p>
+
+<p>"'It makes a heap o' difference to this
+lawyer,' sez he. 'You've got to prove your case
+to me before I'll try to prove it to the court. If
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+you ain't in the right, Abe Lincoln won't be your
+lawyer.'</p>
+
+<p>"Darned if he didn't make me prove I was in
+the right, too, before he'd touch my money. No
+wonder they call him 'Honest Abe.'"</p>
+
+<p>It took Lincoln a couple of days to win Kit
+Carson's suit. During those two days young
+Strong saw much of him and came to admire
+the sterling qualities of the man. Lincoln, too,
+liked this young college-bred fellow from the
+East, unaffected, well-mannered, friendly, and
+gay. There was the beginning of a friendship
+between the Westerner and the Easterner.
+Thereafter they wrote each other occasionally.
+When Lincoln served his one brief term in
+Congress, Mr. Strong spent a week with him in
+Washington and asked him (but in vain) to visit
+him in New York.</p>
+
+<p>So, when this new giant came out of the
+West and Illinois gave her greatest son to the
+country, as its President, Mr. Strong went to
+Washington to see him inaugurated and took
+with him his boy Tom, as his father had taken
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+him in 1829 to Andrew Jackson's inauguration.</p>
+
+<p>Washington was still a great shabby village,
+not much more attractive March 4, 1861, than
+it was March 4, 1829. The crowds at the two
+inaugurations were much alike. In both cases
+the favorite son of the West had won at the
+polls. In both cases the West swamped Washington.
+But in 1829 there was jubilant victory
+in the air. In 1861 there was somber anxiety.
+Seven Southern States had "seceded" and had
+formed another government. Other States
+were upon the brink of secession. Was the
+great democratic experiment of the world about
+to end in failure? Would there be civil war?
+What was this unknown man out of the West
+going to do? Could he do anything?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong and Tom, with a few thousand
+other people, went to the reception at the White
+House on the afternoon of March fourth.
+President Lincoln was laboriously shaking
+hands with everybody in the long line. Almost
+every one of them seemed to be asking him for
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+something. He was weary long before Tom
+and his father reached him, but his face brightened
+as he saw them. A boy always meant a
+great deal to Abraham Lincoln. "There <i>may</i>
+be so much in a boy," he used to say. He
+greeted the two warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Strong? Glad to see you. This
+your boy? Howdy, sonny?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom did not enjoy being called "sonny"
+much more than he had enjoyed being called
+"bub," but he was glad to have this big man
+with a woman's smile call him anything. He
+wrung the President's offered hand, stammered
+something shyly, and was passing on with his
+father, when Lincoln said:</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on a minute, Strong. You haven't
+asked me for anything."</p>
+
+<p>"I've nothing to ask for, Mr. President. I'm
+not here to beg for an office."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious! You're the only man in
+Washington of that kind, I believe. Come to
+see me tomorrow morning, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most gladly, sir."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The impatient man behind them pushed them
+on. They heard him begin to plead: "Say, Abe,
+you know I carried Mattoon for you; I'd like to
+be Minister to England."</p>
+
+<p>Boys and girls always appealed to the President's
+heart. When there were talks of vital
+import in his office, little Tad Lincoln often sat
+upon his father's knee. At a White House reception,
+Charles A. Dana once put his little girl
+in a corner, whence she saw the show. The
+father tells the story. When the reception was
+over, he said to Lincoln: "'I have a little girl
+here who wants to shake hands with you.' He
+went over to her and took her up and kissed
+her and talked to her. She will never forget
+it if she lives to be a thousand years
+old."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next morning Tom followed his father
+into a room on the second floor of the White
+House. Lincoln sat at a flat-topped desk, piled
+high with papers. He was in his shirt-sleeves,
+with shabby black trousers, coarse stockings,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+and worn slippers. He stretched out his long
+legs, swung his long arms behind his head, and
+came straight to the point.</p>
+
+<p>"Strong, I'm going to need you. Your country
+is going to need you. I want you to go
+straight home and fix up your business affairs
+so you can come whenever I call you. Will you
+do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>President and citizen rose and shook hands
+upon it. The citizen was about to go when
+Tom, with his heart in his mouth, but with a
+fine resolve in his heart, suddenly said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Father! Oh, Mr. President&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then he stopped short, too shy to speak, but
+Lincoln stooped down to him, patted his young
+head and said with infinite kindness in his
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Tom? Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. President, I'm only a boy, but can't
+I do something for my country, right now?
+Can't I stay here? Father will let me, won't
+you, Father?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong shook his head. The boy's face
+fell. It brightened again when Lincoln told
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"When I send for your father, I'll send for
+you, Tom."</p>
+
+<p>With that promise ringing in his ears, Tom
+went home to New York City. Home was a
+fine brick house at the northeast corner of
+Washington Place and Greene Street. The
+house was a twin brother of those that still
+stand on the north side of Washington Square.
+Tom had been born in it. Not long after his
+birth, his parents had given a notable dinner in
+it to a notable man. Tom had been present at
+the dinner, and he remembered nothing about
+it. As he was at the table but a few minutes,
+in the arms of his nurse, and less than a year
+old, it is not surprising that he did not remember
+it. His proud young mother had exhibited him
+to a group of money magnates, gathered at Mr.
+Strong's shining mahogany table for dinner, at
+the fashionable hour of three <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, to see
+another young thing, almost as young as Tom.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+This other young thing was the telegraph, just
+invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, at the University
+of the City of New York, which then
+filled half of the eastern boundary of Washington
+Square.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>While Tom waited in the old brick house and
+played in Washington Square, history was making
+itself. Pope Walker, first Secretary of War
+of the Confederate States, sitting in his office at
+the Alabama Statehouse at Montgomery, the
+first Confederate capital, said: "It is time to
+sprinkle some blood in the face of the people."
+So he telegraphed the fateful order to fire on
+Fort Sumter, held by United States troops in
+Charleston harbor. Sumter fell. Lincoln called
+for 75,000 volunteers. Virginia, the famous Old
+Dominion, "the Mother of Presidents"&mdash;Washington,
+Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were
+Virginians&mdash;seceded. The war between the
+States began.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strong found in his mail one day this
+letter:</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="block2">
+
+<p class="right">"The Executive Mansion,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+Washington, April 17, 1861.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Sir:</p>
+
+<p>The President bids me say that he would like
+to have you come to Washington at once and
+bring your son Tom with you.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Respectfully,</p>
+
+<p class="right pmb2"><span class="smcap">John Hay</span>,<br />
+Assistant Private Secretary."<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Tom and his father started at once, as the
+President bade them. At Jersey City, they
+found the train they had expected to take had
+been pre-empted by the Sixth Massachusetts, a
+crack militia regiment of the Old Bay State,
+which was hurrying to Washington in the hope
+of getting there before the rebels did. The
+cars were crammed with soldiers. A sentry
+stood at every door. No civilian need apply for
+passage. However, a civilian with a letter
+from Lincoln's secretary bidding him also hurry
+to Washington was in a class by himself. With
+the help of an officer, the father and son ran the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+blockade of bayonets and started southward, the
+only civilians upon the train. It was packed to
+suffocation with soldiers. Mr. Strong sat with
+the regimental officers, but he let Tom roam at
+will from car to car. How the boy enjoyed it.
+The shining gun-barrels fascinated him. He
+joined a group of merry men, who hailed him
+with a shout:</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the youngest recruit of all."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really going to shoot rebels?"
+asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"If we must," said Jack Saltonstall, breaking
+the silence the question brought, "but I hope it
+won't come to that."</p>
+
+<p>"The war will be over in three months,"
+Gordon Abbott prophesied.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh, it will never begin,&mdash;and I'm sorry for
+that," said Jim Casey, "I'd like to have some
+real fighting."</p>
+
+<p>Within about three hours, Jim Casey was to
+see fighting and was to die for his country. The
+beginning of bloodshed in our Civil War was in
+the streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, just
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+eighty-six years to a day from the beginning of
+bloodshed in our Revolution on Lexington Common.
+Massachusetts and British blood in 1775;
+Massachusetts and Maryland blood in 1861.</p>
+
+<p>When the long train stopped at the wooden
+car-shed which was then the Baltimore station,
+the regiment left the cars, fell into line and
+started to march the mile or so of cobblestone
+streets to the other station where the train for
+Washington awaited it. The line of march was
+through as bad a slum as an American city
+could then show. Grog-shops swarmed in it and
+about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of
+Baltimore. They were known locally as "plug-uglies."
+Like the New York "Bowery boys"
+of that time, they affected a sort of uniform,
+black dress trousers thrust into boot-tops and
+red flannel shirts. Far too poor to own slaves
+themselves, they had gathered here to fight the
+slave-owners' battles, to keep the Massachusetts
+troops from "polluting the soil of Maryland," as
+their leaders put it, really to keep them from
+saving Washington.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A roar of jeers and taunts and insults hailed
+the head of the marching column. Tom was
+startled by it. He turned to his father. The
+two were walking side by side, in the center of
+the column, between two companies of the
+militia. He found his father had already turned
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep close to me, Tom," said Mr. Strong.</p>
+
+<p>The storm of words that beat upon them increased.
+At the next corner, stones took the
+place of words. The mob surged alongside the
+soldiers, swearing, stoning, striking, finally stabbing
+and shooting. The Sixth Massachusetts
+showed admirable self-restraint, which the
+"plug-uglies" thought was cowardice. They
+pressed closer. With a mighty rush, five thousand
+rioters broke the line of the thousand
+troops. The latter were forced into small
+groups, many of them without an officer. Each
+group had to act for itself. Tom and his father
+found themselves part of a tiny force of about
+twenty men, beset upon every side by desperadoes
+now mad with liquor and with the lust
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+of killing. Jack Saltonstall took command by
+common consent. Calmly he faced hundreds of
+rioters.</p>
+
+<p>"Forward, march!"</p>
+
+<p>As he uttered the words, he pitched forward,
+shot through the chest. A giant "plug-ugly"
+bellowed with triumph over his successful shot,
+yelled "kill 'em all!" and led the mob upon
+them. But Mr. Strong had snatched Saltonstall's
+gun as it fell from his nerveless hands,
+had leveled and aimed it, and had shouted
+"fire!" to willing ears. A score of guns rang
+out. The mob-leader whirled about and
+dropped. Half-a-dozen other "plug-uglies" lay
+about him. This section of the mob broke and
+ran. Some of them fired as they ran, and Jim
+Casey's life went out of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this gun, Tom," said Mr. Strong.</p>
+
+<p>The boy took it, reloading it as he marched,
+while his sturdy father lifted the wounded
+Saltonstall from the stony street and staggered
+forward with the body in his arms. Casey and
+two other men were dead. Their bodies had to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+be left to the fury of the mob. Saltonstall lived
+to fight to the end. As the survivors of the
+twenty pressed forward, the mob behind followed
+them up. Bullets whizzed unpleasantly
+near. Twice, at Mr. Strong's command, the
+men faced about and fired a volley. In both
+these volleys, Tom's gun played its part. He
+had hunted before, but never such big game as
+men. The joy of battle possessed him. Since
+it was apparently a case of "kill or be killed,"
+he shot to kill. Whether he did kill, he never
+knew. The two volleys checked two threatening
+rushes of the rioters and enabled Mr. Strong
+to bring what was left of the gallant little band
+safely to the railroad station. An hour later the
+Sixth Massachusetts was in Washington. During
+that hour Tom had been violently sick upon
+the train. He was new to this trade of man-killing.</p>
+
+<p>At Washington, once vacant spaces were soon
+filled with camps. Soldiers poured in on every
+train. Orderlies were galloping about. Artillery
+surrounded the Capitol. And from its
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+dome Tom saw a Confederate flag, the Stars-and-Bars,
+flying defiantly in nearby Alexandria.</p>
+
+<p>Those were dark days. There were Confederate
+forces within a few miles of the White
+House. Sumter surrendered April 15th. Virginia
+seceded on the 17th. Harper's Ferry fell
+into Southern hands on the 18th. The Sixth
+Massachusetts had fought its way through Baltimore
+on the 19th. Robert E. Lee resigned his
+commission in our army on the 20th and left
+Arlington for Richmond, taking with him a long
+train of army and navy officers whose loyal support,
+now lost forever, had seemed a national
+necessity. Lincoln spent many an hour in his
+private office, searching with a telescope the
+reaches of the Potomac, over which the troop-laden
+transports were expected. Once, when he
+thought he was alone, John Hay heard him call
+out "with irrepressible anguish": "Why don't
+they come? Why don't they come?" In public
+he gave no sign of the anxiety that was eating
+up his heart. He had the nerve to jest
+about it. The Sixth Massachusetts, the Seventh
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+New York, and a Rhode Island detachment had
+all hurried to save Washington from the capture
+that threatened. When the Massachusetts men
+won the race and marched proudly by the White
+House, Lincoln said to some of their officers:
+"I begin to believe there is no North. The Seventh
+Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is
+another. You are the only real thing." They
+were very real, those men of Massachusetts, and
+they were the vanguard of the real army that
+was to be.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Charles Francis Adams&mdash;Mr. Strong Goes to
+Russia&mdash;Tom Goes to Live in the White
+House&mdash;Bull Run&mdash;"Stonewall" Jackson&mdash;Geo.
+B. McClellan&mdash;Tom Strong, Second
+Lieutenant, U. S. A.&mdash;The Battle of the
+"Merrimac" and the "Monitor."</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A few days passed before the President had
+time to see Mr. Strong and Tom. When
+they were finally ushered into his working-room,
+they found there, already interviewing Lincoln,
+the hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed Secretary of
+State, William H. Seward of New York, scholar,
+statesman, and gentleman, and a short, grizzled
+man, the worthy inheritor of a great tradition.
+He was Charles Francis Adams of Boston, son
+and grandson of two Presidents of the United
+States. He had been appointed Minister to
+England, just then the most important foreign
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+appointment in the world. What England was
+to do or not do might spell victory or defeat for
+the Union. Mr. Adams had come to receive his
+final instructions for his all-important work.
+And this is what happened.</p>
+
+<p>Shabby and uncouth, Lincoln faced his two
+well-dressed visitors, nodding casually to the
+two New Yorkers as they entered at what
+should have been a great moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to thank you for my appointment,"
+said Adams, "and to ask you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right," replied Lincoln, "thank
+Seward. He's the man that put you in." He
+stretched out his legs and arms, and sighed a
+deep sigh of relief. "By the way, Governor,"
+he added, turning to Seward, "I've this morning
+decided that Chicago post-office appointment.
+Well, good-by."</p>
+
+<p>And that was all the instruction the Minister
+to Great Britain had from the President of the
+United States. Even in those supreme days, the
+rush of office-seekers, the struggle for the spoils,
+the mad looting of the public offices for partisan
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+purposes, was monopolizing the time and absorbing
+the mind of our greatest President.
+There is a story that one man who asked him
+to appoint him Minister to England, after taking
+an hour of his time, ended the interview by asking
+him for a pair of old boots. Civil Service
+Reform has since gone far to stop this scandal
+and sin, but much of it still remains. Today you
+can fight for the best interests of our beloved
+country by fighting the spoils system in city,
+state, and nation.</p>
+
+<p>Adams, amazed, followed Secretary Seward
+out of the little room. Then Lincoln turned to
+the father and son.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had more time to look at him now. He
+saw a tall man with a thin, muscular, big nose,
+with heavy eyebrows above deep-set eyes and
+below a square, bulging forehead, and with a
+mass of black hair. The face was dark and sallow.
+The firm lips relaxed as he looked down
+upon the boy. A beautiful smile overflowed
+them. A beautiful friendliness shone from the
+deep-set eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So this is another Tom Strong," he said.
+"Howdy, Tommy?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy smiled back, for the welcoming smile
+was irresistible. He put his little hand into
+Lincoln's great paw, hardened and roughened
+by a youth of strenuous toil. The President
+squeezed his hand. Tom was happy.</p>
+
+<p>"You're to go to Russia, Strong," Mr.
+Lincoln said to the father. "England and
+France threaten to combine against us. You
+must get Russia to hold them back. We'll have
+a regular Minister there, but I'm going to depend
+upon you. See Governor Seward. He'll
+tell you all about it. Will you take Mrs. Strong
+with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I s'posed you would. And how about
+Tom here?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom's heart beat quick. What was coming
+now?</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Strong must decide that. I suppose
+he had better keep on with his school in New
+York."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why not let him come to school in Washington?"
+asked Lincoln. "In the school of the
+world? You see," he added, while that irresistible
+smile again softened the firm outlines of his
+big man's mouth, "you see I've taken a sort
+of fancy to your boy Tom. S'pose you give him
+to me while you're away. There are things he
+can do for his country."</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps only a whim, but the whims
+of a President count. A month later, Mr. and
+Mrs. Strong started for St. Petersburg and Tom
+reported at the White House. He was welcomed
+by John Hay, a delightful young man of
+twenty-three, one of the President's two private
+secretaries. The welcome lacked warmth.</p>
+
+<p>"You're to sleep in a room in the attic," said
+Hay, "and I believe you're to eat with Mr.
+Nicolay and me. I haven't an idea what you're
+to do and between you and me and the bedpost
+I don't believe the Ancient has an idea either.
+Perhaps there won't be anything. Wait a while
+and see."</p>
+
+<p>The Ancient&mdash;this was a nickname his secretaries
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+had given him&mdash;had a very distinct idea,
+which he had not seen fit to tell his zealous
+young secretary. Tom found the waiting not
+unpleasant. He had a good many unimportant
+things to do. "Tad" Lincoln, though younger,
+was a good playmate. The White House staff
+was kind to him. Even Hay found it difficult
+not to like him. Then there was the sensation
+of being at the center of things, big things. He
+saw men whose names were household words.
+Half a dozen times he lunched with the President's
+family, a plain meal with plain folks.
+Even the dinners at the White House, except
+the state dinners, were frugal and plain. Lincoln
+drank little or no wine. He never used
+tobacco. This was something of a miracle in
+the case of a man from the West, for in those
+days, particularly in the unconventional West,
+practically every man both smoked and chewed
+tobacco. The filthy spittoon was everywhere
+conspicuous. We fiercely resented the tales told
+our English cousins, first by Mrs. Trollope and
+then by Charles Dickens, about our tobacco-chewing,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+but the resentment was so fierce because
+the tales were so true. Those were dirty
+days. In 1860 there were few bathrooms except
+in our largest cities. Those that existed were
+mostly new. In 1789, when the present Government
+of the United States came into being, in
+New York City, there was not one bathroom
+in the whole town.</p>
+
+<p>At these family luncheons, Tom was apt to
+become conscious that Lincoln's eyes were bent
+beneath their shaggy eyebrows full upon him.
+There was nothing unkind in the glance, but
+the boy felt it go straight through him. He
+wondered what it all meant. Why was he not
+given more work to do? Had he been weighed
+and found wanting? He waited in suspense a
+good many months.</p>
+
+<p>The early months of waiting were not merry
+months. In July, 1861, the first battle of Bull
+Run had been fought and had been lost. Our
+troops ran nearly thirty miles. Telegram after
+telegram brought news of disgrace and defeat
+to the White House. In the afternoon Lincoln
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+went to see Gen. Winfield S. Scott, then commander-in-chief
+of our armies. The fat old
+general was taking his afternoon nap. Awakened
+with difficulty, he gurgled that everything
+would come out well. Then he fell asleep again.
+Before six o'clock it was known that everything
+had turned out most badly. Washington itself
+was threatened by the Confederate pursuit.
+Lincoln had no sleep that night. The gray dawn
+found him at his desk, still receiving dispatches,
+still giving orders. When he left the desk,
+Washington was safe.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the beginning of the battle of Bull
+Run, when the Confederates came near running
+away but did not do so because the Union troops
+ran first, that "Stonewall" Jackson got his famous
+nickname. The brigade of another Southern
+soldier, Gen. Bernard Bee, was wavering and
+falling back. Its commander, trying to hearten
+his men, called out to them: "Look! there's
+Jackson standing like a stone wall!" The men
+looked, rallied, and went on fighting. It may
+have been that one thing of Jackson's example
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+that turned the tide at Bull Run, gave the battle
+to the South, and prolonged the war by at
+least two years. Stonewall Jackson's soldiers
+were called foot-cavalry, because under his inspiring
+leadership they made marches which
+would have been a credit to mounted men. It
+was his specialty to be where it was impossible
+for him to be, by all the ordinary rules of war.
+He was a thunderbolt in attack, a stone wall in
+defense.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In November of that sad year of 1861, the
+President made another noteworthy call upon
+the then commander-in-chief, Gen. George B.
+McClellan. President and Secretary of State,
+escorted by young Hay and younger Tom, called
+upon the General at the latter's house, in the
+evening. They were told he was out, but would
+return soon, so they waited. McClellan did return
+and was told of his patient visitors. He
+walked by the open door of the room where they
+were seated and went upstairs. Half an hour
+later Lincoln sent a servant to tell him again
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+that they were there. Word came back that
+General McClellan had gone to bed. John
+Hay's diary justly speaks of "this unparalleled
+insolence of epaulettes." As the three men and
+the boy walked back to the White House, Hay
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"It was an insolent rebuff. Something should
+be done about it."</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln's almost godlike patience, however,
+had not been worn out.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better," the great man answered, "at
+this time not to be making a point of etiquette
+and personal dignity."</p>
+
+<p>The President, however, stopped calling upon
+the pompous General. After that experience,
+he always sent word to McClellan to call upon
+him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>One day, at the close of a family luncheon,
+the President said to Tom: "Come upstairs
+with me."</p>
+
+<p>In the little private office, Lincoln took off
+his coat and waistcoat with a sigh of relief and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+lounged into his chair. He bade Tom take a
+chair nearby. Then he looked at the boy for a
+moment, while his wonderful smile overflowed
+his strong lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been studying you a bit, Tom. I think
+you'll do. Now I'll tell you what I want you to
+do."</p>
+
+<p>The smile died quite away.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure you can keep still when you
+ought to keep still? Balaam's ass isn't the only
+ass that ever talked. Most asses talk&mdash;and always
+at the wrong time."</p>
+
+<p>"The last thing Father told me," Tom
+answered, "was never to say anything to
+anybody 'less I was sure you'd want me to
+say it."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father is a wise man, my boy. Pray
+God he does what I hope he will in
+Russia."</p>
+
+<p>The serious face grew still more serious. The
+long figure slouching in the chair straightened
+and stiffened. The sloping shoulders seemed to
+broaden, as if to bear steadfastly a weight that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+would have crushed most men. The dark eyes
+gleamed with a solemn hope. Tom longed to
+ask what his father was to try to do, but he
+was not silly enough to put his thought into
+words. Another good-by counsel his father had
+given him was never to ask the President a
+question, unless he had to do so. There was
+silence for a moment. Then Lincoln spoke
+again:</p>
+
+<p>"You're to carry dispatches for me, Tom.
+This may take you into the enemy's country
+sometimes. If you were captured and were a
+civilian, it might go hard with you. So I've had
+you commissioned as a second lieutenant. If
+you should slip into a fight occasionally I
+wouldn't blame you much. Mr. Stanton, the
+Secretary of War, kicked about it. He said he
+didn't believe in giving commissions to babies.
+I told him you could almost speak plain and
+could go 'round without a nurse. Finally he
+gave in. I haven't much influence with this
+Administration"&mdash;here Tom looked puzzled
+until the President smiled over his own jest&mdash;"but
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+I did get you the commission. Here
+it is."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He laid the precious parchment on the desk,
+put on his spectacles, took up his quill pen, and
+wrote at the foot of it</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_069.jpg" width="200" height="72" alt="Autograph A. Lincoln" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The boy's heart thrilled and throbbed. He
+had never dreamed of such an opportunity and
+such an honor. He was an officer of the Union.
+He was to carry dispatches for the President of
+the United States. His hand shook a little as
+he took the commission, reverently.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been detailed for special service, Tom.
+Stanton wanted to know whether your special
+service was to be to play with my boy, Tad.
+Stanton was pretty mad; that's a fact. Well,
+well, you must do your work so well that he'll
+get over the blow. You would have thought I
+was asking him for a brigadier's commission for
+a girl. Well, well. Being a war messenger is
+only one of your duties, son. You're to be my
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+scout. Keep your ears and eyes both open,
+Tom, and your mouth shut. Ever hear the
+story of what Jonah said to the whale when he
+got out of him? The whale said to Jonah:
+'You've given me a terrible stomach-ache.' And
+Jonah said: 'That's what you got because you
+didn't have sense enough to keep your mouth
+shut.' But remember, Tom, to go scouting in
+the right way. What I want is the truth. It's
+a hard thing for a President to get. I don't
+want tittle-tattle, evil gossip, idle talk. When
+I was in Congress, there was a fine old fellow
+in the House from Florida. I remember he
+said once that the Florida wolf was 'a mean
+critter that'd go snoopin' 'round twenty miles a
+night ruther than not do a mischief.' Don't be
+a wolf, Tom,&mdash;but don't be a lamb either, with
+the wool pulled over your eyes and ears. Here's
+your first job. This envelope"&mdash;Lincoln took
+from the desk a sealed envelope, not addressed,
+and handed it to the boy&mdash;"this envelope is for
+the commander of the 'Cumberland,' in Hampton
+Roads. This War Department pass will
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+carry you anywhere. When Stanton signed it,
+he asked me whether he was to spend a whole
+day signing things for you to play with. Mrs.
+Lincoln has had a uniform made for you, on the
+sly. I rather think you'll find it in your room,
+Tom. You'd better start tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Mayn't I start this afternoon, Mr. President?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good for you. Of course you may. I'll say
+good-by to the folks for you. God bless you,
+son."</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln waved a kindly farewell as Tom, with
+drumbeats in his young heart, gave a fair imitation
+of an officer's salute&mdash;and strode out of the
+room with what he meant to be a manly step.
+Once outside, the step changed to a run. He
+flew along the halls and up the stairs to the
+attic. He burst into his room. On his narrow
+bed lay his new uniform. Mrs. Lincoln, kindly
+housewife that she was, had done her part in
+the little conspiracy for the benefit of the boy
+who was Tad Lincoln's beloved playmate. She
+had herself smuggled an old suit of Tom's to a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+tailor, who had made from its measure the
+resplendent new blue uniform that now greeted
+Tom's enraptured eyes.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, Lieutenant Tom Strong left
+the White House for Hampton Roads. A swift
+dispatch boat carried him there. He reached
+the flagship on a lovely, peaceful, spring day,
+and delivered his dispatches. The boat that had
+taken him there was to take him back the next
+morning. He was glad to have a night on a
+warship. It was a new experience. And his
+father had told him that experience was the best
+teacher in the world. The beautiful lines of the
+frigate were a joy to see. Her spick and span
+cleanliness, the trim and trig sailors and marines,
+the rows of polished cannon that thrust
+their grim mouths out of the portholes, these
+things delighted him. He was standing on the
+quarter-deck with Lieutenant Morris, almost
+wishing he could exchange his brand-new lieutenancy
+in the army for one in the navy, when
+from the Norfolk navy yard a rocket flared up
+into the air.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is that, sir?" asked Tom. "Is it a
+signal to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy it is," Morris answered, "but it isn't
+meant to be. That's a rebel rocket. You know
+we lost the navy-yard early in the war and we
+haven't got it back&mdash;yet. That rocket went up
+from there. The Secesh are up to some deviltry.
+They've been signaling a good bit of late.
+I wish they'd come out and give us a chance at
+them. Hampton Roads is dull as ditchwater,
+with not a thing happening."</p>
+
+<p>The gallant lieutenant yawned prodigiously.
+He little knew what terrible things were to happen
+on the morrow. That rocket meant that the
+rebel ram, the "Merrimac," the first iron-clad
+vessel that ever went into action, was to sail
+down Hampton Roads, where nothing ever
+happened, the next morning and was to make
+many things happen. The Confederates had
+converted the old Union frigate, the "Merrimac,"
+into a new, strange, and monstrous
+thing. They had placed a battery of cannon of
+a size never before mounted on shipboard upon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+her deck, close to the water-line; they had built
+over the battery a framework of stout timbers,
+covered with armor rolled from rails, and they
+had put a cast-iron bow upon this marine
+marvel. A wooden ship was a mere toy to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning came&mdash;it was March 8,
+1862&mdash;and the "Merrimac" came. As she
+emerged from distance and mist, our scout-boats
+came racing to the "Cumberland" with
+news of the danger that was fast nearing her.
+The news was a tonic to officers and to men.
+Here at last was something to fight. Here at
+last was something to do. They were all weary
+of having the flagship lie, week after week,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As idle as a painted ship<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon a painted ocean."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The men sprang to quarters with a joyful cheer.
+The officers were at their posts. The gun-crews
+waited impatiently for the order to fire. And
+Tom, again upon the quarter-deck, thrilled with
+the thrill of all about him, was glad to know that
+the dispatch boat would not sail until that afternoon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+and that he could see the fight. Everyone
+around him was sure of victory. The foe was
+soon to be sunk. The Stars-and-Bars, now flying
+so impudently at her stern, was to be hung
+up as a trophy in the ward-room of the "Cumberland."
+It never was.</p>
+
+<p>The ram steered straight for the flagship.
+She did not fire a shot, though the flagship's
+cannon roared. A tongue of fire blazed from
+every porthole of the starboard side, towards
+which she came, silently and swiftly. Behind
+every tongue of fire there rushed a cannon-ball.
+Many a ball hit the "Merrimac." A wooden
+ship would have been blown to bits by the concentrated
+fury of the cannonade. Alas! the
+cannon-balls glanced from her armored sides
+"like peas from a pop-gun." They rattled like
+hail upon her and did her no more hurt than
+hail-stones would have done. She came on like
+an irresistible Fate. There had been shouts of
+savage joy below decks when the first order to
+fire had echoed through them. A burst of wild
+cheering from the gun-crews had almost
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+drowned the first thunder of the guns. There
+were no shouts or cheers now. Sharp orders
+pierced the clangor of artillery.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand by to board!"</p>
+
+<p>The marines formed quickly at the starboard
+bow of the "Cumberland." Then at last the
+guns of the "Merrimac" spoke. She was close
+upon her prey now. The sound of her first volley
+was the voice of doom. Her great cannon
+sent masses of iron through and through the
+pitiful wooden walls that had dared to stand up
+against walls of iron. The shrieks of wounded
+men, of men screaming their mangled lives
+away, rolled up to the quarter-deck. A messenger
+dashed up there.</p>
+
+<p>"Half the gun-crew officers are dead. Send
+us others!"</p>
+
+<p>"Go below," said Lieutenant Morris, turning
+to two young midshipmen who stood near Tom,
+"keep the guns manned."</p>
+
+<p>The two middies bounded below and Tom
+bounded down with them. There was no hope
+of victory now, but the fight must be fought to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+a finish. If the cannon could still be served, a
+lucky shot might strike the foe in a vital part,
+might disable her engines, might carry away her
+steering-gear, might&mdash;there was a long chapter
+of possible accidents to the "Merrimac" that
+might still save the "Cumberland" from what
+seemed to be her sure destruction. As the
+three boys raced down to the gun-deck, they
+saw a fearful scene. Dead and wounded men
+lay everywhere. The sawdust that in those
+days used to be strewn about, before entering
+action, in order to soak up the blood of the men
+who fell and keep the decks from growing slippery
+with it, had soaked up all it could, but there
+were thin red trickles flowing along the deck.
+Two or three of the cannon had been dismounted.
+Crushed masses that had been human
+flesh lay beneath them. A dying officer half
+raised himself to give one last command and fell
+back dead before he could speak. The men were
+standing to their task as American sailors are
+wont to do, but like all men they needed leaders.
+Three leaders came. The two middies and Tom
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+took command of these officerless cannon. The
+other two boys knew their work and did it.
+Tom knew that it was his business to keep his
+cannon at work and he did it. He repeated,
+mechanically:</p>
+
+<p>"Load! Fire! Load! Fire!"</p>
+
+<p>His men responded to the command. The
+cannon roared once, twice. Then there came a
+sickening shock. The rebel ram drove its iron
+prow home through the side of the "Cumberland."
+The good ship reeled far over under the
+deadly blow, righted herself, but began to sink.
+Her race was run. The black bulk of the "Merrimac"
+was just opposite the porthole of the
+gun Tom was handling. There was a last order.
+With the lips of their muzzles wet with the engulfing
+sea, the cannon of the "Cumberland"
+roared their last defiance of death. Down went
+the ship. The sea about her was black with
+wreckage and with struggling men. Boats
+from other ships and from the shore darted
+among them, picking them up. The dispatch
+boat that had brought Tom down was busy with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+that good work. The "Merrimac" could have
+sunk her without effort, but of course the Confederates
+never dreamed of making the effort.
+Americans do not fire at drowning men. When
+Tom jumped into the water, as the ship sank
+beneath him, he swam to a shattered spar and
+clutched it. But other men who could not swim
+clutched at it too. It threatened to sink with
+their added weight and carry them down with
+it. So the boy, thoroughly at home in the water,
+let go, turned upon his back, floated with his
+nose just above the surface, and waited for the
+help that was at hand. A boat-hook caught his
+trousers at the waist-band. He was pulled up
+to the deck of the dispatch boat. It was not
+quite the way in which he had expected to board
+her. From her bridge, with the deck below him
+crowded with the rescued sailors of the "Cumberland,"
+he saw the second sad act of that
+day's tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The "Merrimac" had backed away, after that
+terrible thrust of her iron ram, until she was
+free from the ship she had destroyed. Then she
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+laid her course for the "Congress," invincible
+yesterday, today helplessly weak in the face of
+this new terror of the seas. The "Congress"
+fought to the last gasp, but that last gasp came
+all too soon. Raked fore and aft by her adversary's
+guns, unable to fire a single effective shot
+in reply, she ran upon a shoal while trying to
+escape from being rammed and lay there, no
+longer a fighting machine, but a mere target for
+her foe. Her captain could not hope to save
+his ship. The only thing he could do was to
+save the lives of such of his crew as were still
+alive. And there was but one way to do that.
+The "Congress" surrendered. The Stars-and-Stripes
+fluttered down from her masthead. In
+place of the flag of the free, the Stars-and-Bars,
+symbol of slavery, flew above the surrendered
+ship. The "Cumberland," going down with her
+flag, had had the better fate of the two.</p>
+
+<p>The "Merrimac," justly satisfied with her
+day's work and with the toll she had taken of
+the Union squadron, steamed proudly back to
+Norfolk, to repair the slight damages she had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+suffered and to make ready to complete her
+conquest on the morrow. Three Union ships
+still lay in Hampton Roads, great frigates, the
+finest of their kind then afloat, perfectly appointed,
+fully manned,&mdash;and as useless as though
+they had been the toy-boats of a child. The
+"Minnesota," now the flagship, signaled Captain
+Lawrence's stirring slogan: "Don't give up
+the ship!" It might have been called a bit of
+useless bravery, but no bravery is useless. At
+least the officers and men of the three doomed
+ships would fight for the flag until they died. It
+was just possible that one of the three might
+so maneuver that she would strike the foe
+amidships and sink with her to a glorious
+death.</p>
+
+<p>That night the wild anxiety at Hampton
+Roads was more than echoed at New York and
+Washington. The wires had told the terrible
+tale of the "Merrimac." It was thought she
+could go straight to New York, sink all the
+shipping there, command the city and levy
+tribute upon it. Lincoln's Secretary of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+Navy, Gideon Welles of Connecticut, wrote in
+his diary that night: "The most frightened man
+on that gloomy day was the Secretary of War.
+He was at times almost frantic.... He ran
+from room to room, sat down and jumped up
+after writing a few words, swung his arms,
+and scolded and raved." Hay records that
+"Stanton was fearfully stampeded. He said
+they would capture our fleet, take Fort Monroe,
+be in Washington before night."</p>
+
+<p>Without consulting the Secretary of the
+Navy, Stanton had some fifty canal-boats loaded
+with stone and sent them to be sunk on Kettle
+Bottom Shoals, in the Potomac, to keep the
+"Merrimac" from reaching Washington. The
+canal-boats reached the Shoals, but the order to
+sink them was countermanded by cooler heads.
+They were left in a long row, tied up to the
+river bank.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The three doomed ships at Hampton Roads
+soon knew that at nine o'clock of that fateful
+night there had steamed in from the ocean a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Union iron-clad. Her coming, however, brought
+scant comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"What is she like?" asked the first captain
+to hear the news.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"Like? She's like a cheese-box on a raft."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_083.jpg" width="600" height="359" alt="THE BATTLE OF THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">THE BATTLE OF THE &quot;MONITOR&quot; AND THE &quot;MERRIMAC&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">It was not a bad description. She was the
+"Monitor," an unknown boat of an unknown
+type that day, and on the morrow the most famous
+fighting craft that ever sailed the seas.
+She was born of the brain of a Swedish-American,
+Capt. John Ericsson, whose statue
+stands in Battery Park, the southern tip of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+metropolis, looking down to the ocean he saved
+for freedom's cause.</p>
+
+<p>Lieut. A. L. Worden, commanding the
+"Monitor," was soon in consultation with the
+other commanders. They scarcely tried to disguise
+their belief that he had merely brought
+another predestined victim. His ship was tiny,
+compared with the "Merrimac." She was not
+built to ram, as was her terrible antagonist.
+Her guns were of a greater caliber, to be sure,
+than any wooden ship mounted, but there were
+but two of them and they could be brought to
+bear only by revolving the "Monitor's" turret,&mdash;a
+newfangled device in everyday use now, but
+then unknown and consequently despised. Men
+either fear or despise the unknown. They are
+usually wrong in doing either. The council of
+captains agreed upon a plan for the next day's
+fight. The plan was based upon the theory that
+the "Monitor" would be speedily sunk. Nevertheless,
+she was to face the foe first of all.</p>
+
+<p>Again the next morning came and again there
+came the rebel ram. Decked out in flags as if
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+for a festival, proudly certain of victory, the
+"Merrimac" steamed down Hampton Roads.
+The cheese-box on a raft steamed out to meet
+her. It was David confronting Goliath. Goliath
+had fourteen guns and David had two. The
+iron-clads came nearer and the most famous sea-duel
+ever fought began. Tom saw it all from
+the bridge of the "Minnesota." Both vessels
+fired and fired again, without result. Their
+armor defied even the big guns they carried.
+Then the "Merrimac" tried to bring her deadly
+ram into play. The "Monitor" dodged into
+shoal water, hoping her foe would follow her
+and run aground. The "Merrimac" did not
+fall into the trap. On the contrary, she left her
+adversary and made a headlong course for the
+helpless "Minnesota." On board the latter,
+drums beat to quarters, shrill whistles gave
+orders, and the great ship moved forward to
+what seemed certain destruction. But the
+"Monitor" slipped away from the shoals and
+made after the "Merrimac," firing her guns as
+rapidly as her creaking turret could turn. The
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+"Merrimac" faced about, bound this time to
+make short work of this wretched little gnat that
+was seeking to sting her. This time the two
+came to close grips. Each tried to ram the other
+down. Each struck the other, but struck a
+glancing blow. They lay almost alongside and
+pounded each other with their giant guns. A
+missile from the "Monitor" came through a
+porthole of the "Merrimac," breaking a cannon
+and dealing death and destruction within her
+iron sides. She turned and ran for safety to the
+shelter of the Confederate batteries at Norfolk.
+The "Monitor" lay almost unharmed upon the
+gentle waves of Hampton Roads, the ungainly
+master of the seas. The "Merrimac" never
+dared again to try conclusions with her stout
+little rival. She stayed at her moorings until
+she was blown up there just before the Union
+forces captured Norfolk. The Union blockade
+was never broken. The "Monitor" survived
+the fight only to founder later in "the graveyard
+of ships," off Cape Hatteras.</p>
+
+<p>The wires had told the story of the famous
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+fight before Tom reached Washington, but he
+was the first eye-witness of it to reach there and
+he had to tell the tale many and many a time.
+His first auditors were Lincoln and Secretary
+Welles. The dispatch boat that carried him
+back put him on board the President's boat,
+south of Kettle Bottom Shoals, on the Potomac,
+in obedience to orders signaled to it. When he
+had finished his story, there was silence for a
+moment. The boy saw Lincoln's lips move, perhaps
+in prayer, perhaps in thanksgiving. Then
+the grave face relaxed and the pathetic eyes
+twinkled with humor. The President laid his
+hand upon the Secretary's arm and pointed to a
+long line of stone-laden canal-boats that bordered
+the bank.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Stanton's navy," said Lincoln.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Goes West&mdash;Wilkes Booth Hunts Him&mdash;Dr.
+Hans Rolf Saves Him&mdash;He Delivers
+Dispatches to General Grant</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb2">At the end of the next month, April, 1862,
+Admiral Farragut gallantly forced open the
+closed mouth of the Mississippi. He took his
+wooden ships into action against forts and iron-clad
+gunboats and captured New Orleans.
+Within fifteen months thereafter, the North was
+in practical control of the whole Mississippi.
+By July, 1863, the Confederacy had been split
+into two parts, east and west of the "Father of
+Waters." That was the poetic Indian name of
+the Mississippi. Farragut's fleet began the driving
+of the wedge. Grant's army drove it home.
+When the driving home had just begun, Tom,
+to his intense delight, was sent West with dispatches
+for Grant. He left on an hour's notice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 518px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_089.jpg" width="518" height="690" alt="ADMIRAL FARRAGUT" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">ADMIRAL FARRAGUT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">During that hour, a colored servant employed
+in the White House, whose heart was blacker
+than his sooty skin, had left the mansion, had
+sought a tumble-down tenement in the slums,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+and had found there a vulture of a man, very
+white as to face, very black as to the masses of
+hair that fell to his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Dat dar boy Strong, he's dun sure goin',"
+said the darkey, "wid papers fur dat General
+Grant out West."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coz I listened to de door, when dey-uns wuz
+a-talkin'."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll have to go West by Baltimore," mused
+the white man. "The next train leaves in half
+an hour. I can make it. Here, Reub, here's
+your pay."</p>
+
+<p>He took a five-dollar gold piece from his
+pocket. The negro clutched at it. Then what
+was left of his conscience stirred within him.
+He said, pleadingly, hesitatingly:</p>
+
+<p>"Massa, you knows I'se doin' dis coz old
+Massa told me to. You ain't a-goin' to hurt dat
+boy Strong, is you? He's a nice boy. Eberybody
+lubs him up dar."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it to you, confound you!" snarled
+the man, "whether I hurt him or not? What's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+a boy's life to winning the war? You keep on
+doing what old Massa told you to do, or I'll cut
+your black heart out."</p>
+
+<p>With a savage gesture, he thrust the trembling
+negro out of the dingy room. With
+savage haste, he packed his scanty belongings.
+With a pistol in his hip pocket, with a bowie-knife
+slung over his left breast beneath his waistcoat,
+with a vial of chloroform in his valise,
+Wilkes Booth left Washington on the trail of
+Tom Strong.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Hunter and hunted were in the same car.
+Tom little dreamed that a few seats behind him
+sat a deadly foe, who would stick at nothing to
+get the precious papers he carried. Washington
+swarmed with Confederate spies. The face
+of everybody at the White House was well
+known to every spy. The hunter did not have
+to guess where the hunted sat.</p>
+
+<p>General Grant had begun his career of victory
+in the West. It was all-important to the Confederacy
+to know where his next blow was to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+be aimed. The papers in the scout's possession
+would tell that great secret. Wilkes Booth
+meant to have those papers soon. As the train
+bumped over the rough iron rails, towards Baltimore,
+Booth went to the forward end of the car
+for a glass of water and as he walked back along
+the aisle with a slow, lounging step, he stopped
+where Tom sat and held out his hand, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Mr. Strong? I'm Mr.
+Barnard. I have had the pleasure of seeing you
+about the White House sometimes, when I have
+been calling on our great President. Lincoln
+will crush these accursed rebels soon!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a trifle overdone, a trifle theatrical.
+Wilkes Booth could never help being theatrical.
+His greeting was one of the few times Tom had
+ever been called "Mister." He felt flattered
+and took the proffered hand willingly, but he
+searched his memory in vain for any real recollection
+of the striking face of the man who spoke
+to him. There was some vague stirring of
+memory about it, but certainly this had no relation
+to that happy life at the White House.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+Something evil was connected with it. Puzzled,
+he wondered. He had seen Booth under arms at
+John Brown's scaffold, but he did not remember
+that.</p>
+
+<p>The alleged Mr. Barnard slipped into the seat
+beside him and began to talk. He talked well.
+Little by little, suspicion fell asleep in Tom's
+mind as his companion told of adventures on sea
+and land. Booth was trying to seem to talk
+with very great frankness, in order to lure Tom
+into a similar frankness about himself. He
+larded all his talk with protestations of fervent
+loyalty to the Union. Tom bethought himself
+of a favorite quotation his father often used
+from Shakespeare's great play of "Hamlet."
+The conscience-stricken queen says to Hamlet,
+her son:</p>
+
+<p>"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."</p>
+
+<p>Wilkes Booth was protesting too much. The
+drowsy suspicion in Tom's mind stirred again.
+But he was but a boy and Booth was a man,
+skilled in all the craft of the stage. Once more
+his easy, brilliant talk lulled caution to sleep.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+Tom, questioned so skillfully that he did not
+know he was being drawn out, little by little
+told the story of his short life. But the story
+ended with his saying he was going to Harrisburg
+"on business." He was still enough on his
+guard not to admit he was going further than
+Harrisburg.</p>
+
+<p>"You're pretty young to be on the way to the
+State Capitol on business," said the skillful
+actor, hoping to hear more details in answer to
+the half-implied sneer. But just then Tom remembered
+what his father had advised: "Never
+say anything to anybody, unless you are sure
+the President would wish you to say it." He
+shut up like a clam. Booth could get nothing
+more out of him. But he meant to get those
+dispatches out of him. They were either in the
+boy's pocket or his valise, probably in his
+pocket. When he fell asleep, the spy's time
+would come. So the spy waited.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness came. Two smoky oil-lamps gave
+such light as they could. The train rumbled
+on in the night. There were no sleeping cars
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+then. People slept in their seats, if they slept
+at all. Booth's tones grew soothing, almost
+tender. They served as a lullaby. Tom slept.
+The spy beside him drew a long, triumphant
+breath. His time had come.</p>
+
+<p>Some time before, he had shifted his traveling-bag
+to this seat. Now he drew from it,
+gently, quietly, the little bottle of chloroform
+and a small sponge, which he saturated with the
+stupefying drug. Then he slipped his arm under
+the sleeping boy's head, drew him a little closer
+to himself, and glanced through the dusky car.
+Nearly everybody was asleep. Those who were
+not were trying to go to sleep. No one was
+watching. Booth pressed the sponge to Tom's
+nostrils. Tom stirred uneasily. "Sh-sh, Tom,"
+purred the actor, "go to sleep; all's well." The
+drug soon did its work. The boy was dead to the
+world for awhile. Only a shock could rouse him.</p>
+
+<p>The shock came. Booth's long, sensitive,
+skilled fingers&mdash;the fingers of a musician&mdash;ransacked
+his coat and waistcoat pockets swiftly,
+finding nothing. But beneath the waistcoat
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+their tell-tale touches had detected the longed-for
+papers. The waistcoat was deftly unbuttoned&mdash;it
+could have been stripped off without
+arousing the unconscious boy&mdash;and a triumphant
+thrill shot through Booth's black heart as
+he drew from an inner pocket the long, official
+envelope that he knew must hold what he had
+stealthily sought. He was just about to slip it
+into his own pocket and then to leave his stupefied
+victim to sleep off the drug while he himself
+sought safety at the next station, when one of
+those little things which have big results occurred.
+The sturdy man who was snoring in the
+seat behind this one happened to be a surgeon.
+He was returning from Washington, whither he
+had gone to operate on a dear friend, a wounded
+officer. Chloroform had of course been used,
+but the patient had died under the knife. It
+had been a terrible experience for the operator.
+It had made his sleep uneasy. A mere whiff
+from the sponge Booth had used reached the
+surgeon's sensitive nostril. It revived the
+poignant memories of the last few hours. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+awoke with a start that brought him to his feet.
+And there, just in front of him, he saw by the
+dim light a boy sunk in stupefied slumber and
+a man glancing guiltily back as he tried to thrust
+a stiff and crackling paper into his pocket. The
+sponge had fallen to the floor, but its fumes, far-spreading
+now, told to the practiced surgeon a
+story of foul play. He grabbed the man by
+the shoulder and awoke most of the travelers,
+but not Tom, with a stentorian shout: "What
+are you doing, you scoundrel?"</p>
+
+<p>The scoundrel leaped to his feet, throwing off
+the doctor's hand, and sprang into the aisle,
+clutching the long envelope in his left hand,
+while his right held a revolver. He rushed for
+the door, pursued by half a dozen men, headed
+by the doctor. Close pressed, he whirled about
+and leveled his pistol at his unarmed pursuers.
+They fell back a pace. He whirled again, stumbled
+over a bag in the aisle, fell, sprang to his
+feet once more. A brakeman opened the door.
+He was hurrying to see what this clamor meant.
+Wilkes Booth fired at him pointblank. The
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+bullet missed, but it made the brakeman give
+way. Booth rushed by him, gained the platform
+and leaped from the slow train into the
+sheltering night.</p>
+
+<p>The shock that waked Tom was the sound of
+the shot. Weak, dizzy, and sick, he knew only
+that some terrible thing was happening. Instinctively,
+his hand sought that inner pocket,
+only to find it empty. Then, indeed, he was
+wide awake. The horror of his loss burned
+through his brain. He shouted: "Stop him!
+Stop thief!" and collapsed again into his seat.</p>
+
+<p>He was in fact a very sick boy. The dose of
+chloroform that had been given him would have
+been an overdose for a man. Notwithstanding
+his awakening, he might have relapsed into
+sleep and death, had not the skillful surgeon
+been there to devote himself to him. An antidote
+was forced down his throat. Willing volunteers,
+for of course the whole car was now
+awake in a hurly-burly of question and answer,
+rubbed life back into him. When he was a bit
+better, he was kept walking up and down the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+aisle, while two strong men held him up and
+his head swayed helplessly from side to side.
+But the final cure came when the surgeon who
+had kept catlike watch upon him saw that he
+could now begin to understand things.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is something of yours," he whispered
+into the lad's half-unconscious ear. "That scoundrel
+stole it from you. When he fell, he must
+have dropped it on the floor. I found it there
+after he had jumped off the platform."</p>
+
+<p>Tom's hand closed over the fateful envelope.
+His trembling fingers ran along its edges. It
+had not been opened. He had not betrayed his
+trust. A profound thankfulness and joy stirred
+within him. Within an hour he was practically
+himself again. Then he poured out his heart
+in thanks to the sturdy surgeon who had saved
+not only his life, but his honor. He asked his
+name and started at his reply:</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Hans Rolf, of York, Pennsylvania."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Hans Rolf," repeated Tom, "but perhaps
+you are the grandson of the Hans Rolf I've
+heard about all my life. My father is always
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+telling me of things Hans Rolf did for my
+grandfather and great-grandfather."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is <i>your</i> name?" queried the doctor,
+surprised as may be imagined that this unknown
+boy should know him so well.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Strong."</p>
+
+<p>"By the Powers," shouted the hearty doctor,
+seizing the boy's hand and wringing it as his
+grandfather used to wring the hand of the Tom
+Strongs he knew, "By the Powers, next to my
+own name there's none I know so well as yours.
+My grandfather never wearied of talking about
+the two Tom Strongs, father and son. The last
+day he lived, he told me how your great-grandfather
+saved his life."</p>
+
+<p>"And you know he saved great-grandfather's,
+too," answered Tom, "and now you have saved
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>He looked shyly at his preserver. He was
+still weak with the after-effects of the drug that
+had been given him. The Hans Rolf he saw
+was a bit blurred by the unshed tears through
+which he saw him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said the surgeon, "whatever
+I've done is just in the day's work. But you
+must stop at York and rest. I can't let my
+patient travel just yet, you know. And this may
+be your last chance to see me at home. I go
+into the army next month."</p>
+
+<p>However, Tom was not to be persuaded to
+stop. Duty called him Westward and to the
+West he went, as fast as the slow trains of those
+days could carry him. But when Hans Rolf and
+he parted, a few hours after they had met, they
+were friends for life.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">It took Tom two days to get from Harrisburg
+to Cairo, the southernmost town in Illinois. It
+lies at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio
+rivers. The latter pours a mass of beautiful blue
+water&mdash;the early French explorers named the
+Ohio "the beautiful river"&mdash;into the muddy
+flood of the Mississippi. For miles below Cairo
+the blue and yellow streams seem to flow side
+by side. Then the yellow swallows the blue and
+the mighty Mississippi rolls its murky way to
+the Gulf of Mexico. A gunboat took the young
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+messenger from Cairo to General Grant's headquarters.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_102.jpg" width="600" height="244" alt="MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">A Western gunboat was an odd thing. James
+B. Eads, an eminent engineer, who after the war
+built the St. Louis bridge and the New Orleans
+jetties, which keep the mouth of the Mississippi
+open, had launched a flotilla of gunboats for
+the government within four months of the time
+when the trees which went to their making were
+growing in the forests. On a flat-boat of the
+ordinary Western-river type, Mr. Eads put a
+long cabin, framed of stout timbers, cut portholes
+in the sides, front and rear of it, mounted
+cannon inside it, covered it with rails outside
+(later armor-plate was used), and behold, a gunboat.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+The one which sped swiftly with Tom
+down the Mississippi and waddled slowly with
+him up the Tennessee, against the current of the
+Spring freshets, finally landed him at Grant's
+headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>Tom approached the tent over which headquarters'
+flag was flying with a beating heart.
+It beat against the long envelope that lay in the
+inner pocket of his waistcoat. He was about to
+finish his task and he was about to see the one
+successful soldier of the Union, up to that time.
+The Northern armies had not done well in the
+East&mdash;the defeat had been disgraceful and the
+panic sickening with the raw troops at Bull Run,
+Virginia, and little had been gained elsewhere&mdash;but
+in the West Grant was hammering out success.
+All eyes turned to him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Upon the top of a low knoll, half a dozen
+packing-boxes were grouped in front of the
+tent. Two or three officers, most of them spick
+and span, sat upon each box except one. Upon
+that one there lounged a man, thick-set,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+bearded, his faded blue trousers thrust into the
+tops of dusty boots, his blue flannel shirt open
+at the throat, his worn blue coat carrying on each
+shoulder the single star of a brigadier-general.</p>
+
+<p>It was General Grant, Hiram Ulysses Grant,
+now known as U. S. Grant. When the Confederate
+commander of Fort Donelson had asked
+him for terms of surrender, he had answered
+practically in two words: "unconditional surrender."
+The curt phrase caught the public
+fancy, and gave his initials a new meaning. He
+was long known as "Unconditional Surrender"
+Grant.</p>
+
+<p>Born in Ohio, he had been educated at West
+Point, had fought well in our unjust war against
+Mexico, had resigned in the piping times of
+peace that followed, had been a commercial
+failure, and was running an insignificant business
+as a farmer in Galena, Illinois, an obscure
+and unimportant citizen of that unimportant
+town, when the Civil War began. Eight
+years afterwards, he became President of the
+United States and served as such for eight
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+years, doing his dogged best, but far less successful
+as a statesman than he had been as a
+soldier. He was a patriot and a good man. In
+the last years of his life, ruined financially by a
+wicked partner and tortured by the cancer that
+finally killed him, he wrote his famous memoirs,
+which netted his family a fortune after the
+grave had closed upon this great American. He
+ran a race with Death to write his life. And
+he won the grim race.</p>
+
+<p>The young second-lieutenant saluted and explained
+his mission. The long envelope, deeply
+dented with the mark of Wilkes Booth's dirty
+thumb and finger, had reached its destination at
+last. Grant took it, opened it, read it without
+even a slight change of expression, though it
+contained not only orders for the future, but
+Lincoln's warm-hearted thanks for the past and
+the news of his own promotion to be major-general.
+Not only Tom, but every member of
+his staff was watching him. The saturnine
+face told no one anything. The little he said at
+the moment was said to Tom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The President tells me he would like to have
+you given a glimpse of the front. Have you had
+any experience?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"When were you commissioned?"</p>
+
+<p>"A week ago, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Are all the Eastern boys of your age in the
+army?"</p>
+
+<p>"They would like to be, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Grant, with a kindly smile, "perhaps
+a little experience at the front may make
+up for the years you lack. Send him to General
+Mitchell, Captain," he added, turning to a spruce
+aide who rose from his packing-box seat to
+acknowledge the command.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray come with me, Mr. Strong," said the
+captain.</p>
+
+<p>Tom saluted, turned, and followed his guide.
+A backward glance showed him the general, his
+eyes now bent sternly upon Lincoln's letter, his
+staff eyeing him, a group of quiet, silent figures.
+And that was all that Tom saw, at that time,
+of the greatest general of our Civil War.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inside the Confederate Lines&mdash;"Sairey"
+Warns Tom&mdash;Old Man Tomblin's "Settlemint"&mdash;Stealing
+a Locomotive&mdash;Wilkes
+Booth Gives the Alarm&mdash;A Wild Dash for
+the Union Lines.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Three days afterwards, Tom found himself
+"on special service," on the staff of
+Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing
+towards Huntsville, Alabama. They occupied
+that delightfully sleepy old town, the center of
+a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but
+Tom was not then with the column. Five days
+before, with Mitchell's permission, he had volunteered
+for a gallant foray into the enemy's
+country. He had taken prompt advantage of
+Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if he
+wanted to do so. He was to have his fill of
+fighting now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who
+left camp before dawn on April 7, under the
+command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a
+man, who had persuaded General Mitchell to let
+him try to slip across the lines with a handful
+of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order
+to steal a locomotive and rush it back to the
+Union front, burning all the railroad bridges it
+passed. The railroads to be crippled were those
+which ran from the South to Chattanooga,
+Tennessee, and from the East through Chattanooga
+and Huntsville to Memphis. A few
+miles from camp, Andrews gave his men their
+orders. They were to separate and singly or in
+groups of two or three were to make their way
+to the station of Big Shanty, Georgia, where
+they were to meet on the morning of Saturday,
+April 12. Andrews took Tom with him. For
+two days they hid in the wooded hills by day
+and traveled by night, guided by a compass and
+by the stars. Then their scanty supply of food
+was exhausted and they had to take to the open.
+Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellow
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+with the oil of the butternut, the chief dye-stuff
+the South then had, their belts with
+"C.S.A."&mdash;"Confederate States of America"&mdash;upon
+them, their Confederate rifles (part of
+the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray
+slouched hats made them look like the
+Confederate scouts they had to pretend
+to be.</p>
+
+<p>Danger lurked about them and detection
+meant death. They did their best to talk in the
+soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts
+in the hills and asked for food, but the drawl
+was hard for a Northern tongue to master and
+more than one bent old woman or shy and
+smiling girl started with suspicion at the strange
+accents of these "furriners." The men of the
+hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On
+the fourth day they reached a log-hut or rather
+a home made of two log-huts, with a floored
+and roofed space between them, a sort of open-air
+room where all the household life went on
+when good weather permitted. An old, old
+woman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+a rag quilt, her toothless gums busy with holding
+her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sat her
+granddaughter, busy too with her spinning
+wheel. The two women with their home as a
+background made a pleasing and a peaceful
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy," said Andrews.</p>
+
+<p>The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched
+upon the old woman's lap. She took her pipe
+from her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy," said she.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are
+not quick of speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk?"
+asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Sairey," called the old dame, "you git sum
+milk."</p>
+
+<p>Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, trying
+to hide her bare feet with her short skirt
+and not succeeding, and walked back of the
+house to the "spring-house," a square cupboard
+built over a neighboring spring. It was dark
+and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill-folk
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+knew. While she was away, her grandmother
+began to talk. The man and boy would
+much rather she had kept still. For she peered
+at them suspiciously, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I
+hearn thar wuz a right smart heap o' Yankee
+sojers not fur off'n hereabouts."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Sairey fortunately returned.
+She brought in her brown hand an old glass
+goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brim
+with a foaming mixture that looked like delicious
+milk. Alas! Tom, who loathed buttermilk,
+was now to learn that in the hills "milk"
+meant "buttermilk." He should have asked for
+"sweet milk." Sairey handed him the goblet
+with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's
+hand touched hers. He lifted it eagerly to his
+thirsty lips, took a long draught, and sputtered
+and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking
+and the girl had gone a hundred yards to get
+him what she thought he wanted. He was a
+boy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed
+the nauseous stuff to the last drop, and made his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+best bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old
+woman said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Where wuz you born, bub?"</p>
+
+<p>"New&mdash;New&mdash;&mdash;" stammered Tom. His
+tongue did not lend itself readily to a lie, even
+in his country's cause. When he was still too
+young to understand what the words meant, his
+mother had told him: "A lie soils a boy's
+mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that
+big truth into his small mind. Now, taken by
+surprise, the habit of his young life asserted
+itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been
+born in New York was on his unsoiled lips,
+when Andrews finished the sentence for him.</p>
+
+<p>"New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old
+beldam.</p>
+
+<p>"He was raised up No'th," Andrews explained,
+"but soon as this yer onpleasantness
+began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns."</p>
+
+<p>Andrews had overdone his dialect.</p>
+
+<p>"Sairey," commanded the old woman, "put
+up the flag."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where
+she had taken refuge behind her grandmother's
+chair, "what's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>"Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag."</p>
+
+<p>From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands
+in a warning gesture, and then, before she entered
+one of the log-houses, she pointed to a cart-track
+that wound up the hill before the hut.
+She came out with a Confederate flag, made of
+part of an old red petticoat with white stripes
+sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long
+sapling. She put the staff into a rude socket in
+front of the platform. As she passed Tom in
+order to do this, she whispered to him: "You-uns
+run!"</p>
+
+<p>"What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar?" her
+grandmother asked in anger.</p>
+
+<p>"I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old
+woman's, sharpened by fear, had caught the
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. "You-uns
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+haz bin right down good to us. Thanky,
+ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' wait a minute," the old woman answered.
+"I'll give you somethin' fer yer to eat
+as ye mosey 'long."</p>
+
+<p>She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into
+the dark log-room. Sairey wrung her hand and
+whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track."
+Instantly the grandmother appeared on the
+threshold, her old eyes flashing, a double-barreled
+shot-gun in her shaking hands. She
+tried to cover both man and boy, as she
+screamed at them:</p>
+
+<p>"You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees!
+My man'll know what to do with you-uns."</p>
+
+<p>Their guns were at her feet. There was no
+way to get them, even if they would have used
+them against a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Run!" shouted Andrews and bounded towards
+the cart-track.</p>
+
+<p>Tom sprang after him, but not in time to
+escape a few birdshot which the old woman's
+gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+them redoubled his speed. The second barrel
+sent its load far astray. They had run just in
+time, for from another hilltop behind the hut
+a dozen armed men came plunging down to the
+house, shouting after the scared fugitives. The
+raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon
+signal for their coming. Sairey's father and several
+other men had taken to the nearby hills to
+avoid being impressed into the Confederate
+army, but they adored the Confederacy, up to
+the point of fighting for it, and they would have
+rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old
+woman's eyes and ears had pierced the thin disguise
+of the raiders. So she had forced her
+granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid
+to disobey her fierce old grandmother but loath
+to see the boy she had liked at first sight captured,
+had warned him to flee. Man and boy
+were out of gunshot, but still in sight, when
+their pursuers reached the house, yelled with
+joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the
+cart-track like hounds hot upon the scent. As
+Tom and Andrews panted to the hilltop, they
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+saw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart-track.
+At the summit, it branched into half a
+dozen lanes which wound through a pine forest.
+Lanes and woodlands were covered with pineneedles,
+the deposit of years, which rose elastic
+under their flying feet and left no marks by
+which they could be tracked. And beyond the
+forest was a vast laurel-brake in which a regiment
+could have hidden, screened from discovery
+save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter
+and safety. Once they heard the far-off voices
+of their pursuers, but only once. Ere many
+hours they had the added security of the night.</p>
+
+<p>When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny
+brook that flowed at the roots of the laurel-bushes,
+Tom found that his wound, forgotten in
+the fierce excitement of the flight, had begun to
+pain him. His left shoulder grew stiff. When
+Andrews examined it, all it needed was a little
+care. Three or four birdshot had gone through
+clothing and skin, but they lay close beneath the
+skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smears of red
+blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. They
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+were picked out with the point of a knife. The
+cool water of the brook washed away the blood
+and stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a
+bit of his own shirt, soaked it in the brook, and
+bandaged the shoulder in quite a good first-aid-to-the-injured
+way. Tom and he were none the
+worse, except for the loss of their guns. And
+that was the less serious because both knives
+and pistols were still in their belts.</p>
+
+<p>They slept that night in the laurel-brake, forgetting
+their hunger in the soundness of their
+sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled to
+hear a human voice. But it was the voice of a
+gentle girl. It kept calling aloud "Coo, boss,
+coo, boss," while every now and then it said in
+lower tones: "Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's
+suthin' to eat." At first they thought it was a
+trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred by
+hunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and
+found it was Sairey who was calling them.
+When she saw them, she ran towards them,
+while the cows she had collected from their pasture
+stared with dull amazement.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her
+hands in anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Reassured as to this, she produced the cold
+cornbread and bacon she had taken from
+the spring-house when she left home that
+morning for her daily task of gathering the
+family cows. Man and boy bolted down the
+food.</p>
+
+<p>"You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl
+replied, peering slyly out of her big sunbonnet
+and digging her brown toes into the earth, "but
+I dun it, kase&mdash;kase&mdash;I jes' had to. Kin you
+get away today?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll try."</p>
+
+<p>"Whar be you goin'?"</p>
+
+<p>Should they tell her where they were going?
+It was a risk, but they took it. They were glad
+they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help
+them on their way, but could be of real aid.
+Once in her life she had been at Big Shanty.
+She told them of a short cut through the hills,
+by which they would pass only one "settle<i>mint</i>,"
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+as the infrequent clearings in the hills
+were called.</p>
+
+<p>"When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin's
+settle<i>mint</i>," said Sairey, "I 'low you-uns better
+stand at the fence corner and holler. Old Man
+Tomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when
+furriners don't do no hollerin'. But when he
+comes out, you-uns tell him Old Man Gernt's
+Sairey told you he'd take care of you-uns.
+'N he will. 'N you kin tell Bud Tomblin&mdash;no,
+you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by."</p>
+
+<p>The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up
+to Andrews and smiled as she shook hands. She
+looked down at Tom&mdash;she was half a head taller
+than he&mdash;and smiled again as she shook hands.
+Then suddenly she stooped and kissed the
+startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane
+by which she had come, leaving the placid cows
+and the thankful man and boy behind her. With
+a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare,
+brown feet, she vanished from their sight.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to her directions, they found Old Man
+Tomblin's settle<i>mint</i> without difficulty. They
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+duly stood at the corner of the sagging rail fence
+and there duly "hollered." Old Man Tomblin
+and Bud Tomblin came out of the cabin, each
+with a gun, and were proceeding to study the
+"furriners" before letting them come in, when
+Andrews repeated what Old Man Gernt's Sairey
+had told them to say. There was an instant
+welcome. Bud Tomblin was even more anxious
+than his father to do anything Sairey Gernt
+wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had
+been scouting near General Mitchell's line of
+march and had lost their guns and nearly lost
+themselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was
+accepted without demur. Old Mrs. Tomblin,
+decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill-folk,
+whose hard living conditions make women
+old at forty and venerable at fifty, cackled a
+welcome to them from the corner of the fireplace
+where she sat "dipping" snuff. "Lidy"
+Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped and hindered
+by the rest of a brood of children, took
+care of their comfort. They feasted on the best
+the humble household had to offer. They slept
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+soundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr.
+and Mrs. Tomblin and Lidy, slept in the same
+room. In the morning they were given a bountiful
+breakfast and were bidden good-by as old
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to deceive good people like the
+Tomblins," said Tom, when they were out of
+earshot.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes the truth is too precious to be
+told," laughed Andrews.</p>
+
+<p>But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as
+he tramped along. He made up his mind to
+fight for his country, the next time he had a
+chance, in some other way. Telling a lie and
+living a lie were hateful to him.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning found them at Big Shanty,
+a tiny Georgia village, which the war had made
+a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed
+day, Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty-two
+men who had started with Andrews,
+eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The
+train for Chattanooga stopped there for breakfast
+on those infrequent days when it did not
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+arrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It
+was what is called a "mixed" train, both freight
+and passenger, with many freight cars following
+the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby
+passenger cars. On this particular morning it
+surprised everybody, including its own train-crew,
+by being on time. Passengers and crew
+swarmed in to breakfast. The train was deserted.
+The time for the great adventure had
+come.</p>
+
+<p>Before the train was seized, one thing must
+be done. The telegraph wire between Big
+Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this
+were left intact, their flight, sure to be discovered
+as soon as the train-crew finished their brief
+breakfast, would end at the next station, put on
+guard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest
+and most agile of the party, the task of cutting
+the wire had been assigned. He was already at
+the spot selected for the attempt, a clump of
+trees a hundred yards from the station, where
+the wire was screened from sight by the foliage.
+As soon as the train came in, Tom started to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+climb the telegraph-pole. He had just started
+when he heard a most unwelcome sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, thar! What's you doin'?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head and saw a Confederate
+sentry close beside him. He recognized him as
+a man with whom he had been chatting around
+a camp-fire early that morning. His name was
+Bill Coombs. Tom's ready wit stood by him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you.
+Somethin's wrong with the wire. The Cunnel's
+sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and
+watched him without a thought of his doing
+anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top
+of the rickety pole, cut the one wire it carried,
+fastened the ends to the pole so that from the
+ground nobody could tell it was cut, and
+climbed down. Bill urged him to stay and talk
+awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentries
+mustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon
+ran towards the station. He had to run to catch
+the train. The instant Andrews saw him returning,
+he sprang into the cab of the locomotive.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_124.jpg" width="600" height="337" alt="The locomotive Tom helped to steal" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">The Locomotive Tom Helped to Steal</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of his men had already uncoupled the first
+three freight cars from the rest of the train. All
+the men jumped into the cab or the tender or
+swarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews
+jerked the throttle wide open. The engine
+jumped forward, the tender and the three cars
+bounding after it. The crowd upon the platform
+gaped after the retreating train, without the
+slightest idea of what was happening under their
+very noses. A boy came running like an antelope
+from the end of the platform. He jumped
+for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched
+by a half-dozen hands and drawn aboard. But
+as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reason
+to remember call out:</p>
+
+<p>"They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong,
+a Yankee! Stop 'em! Shoot 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>Livid with rage, his long black hair streaming
+in the wind as he ran after them, Wilkes Booth
+fired his pistol at them, while the motley crowd
+his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley
+after the train. Nobody was hurt then, but the
+danger to everybody had just begun.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was instant pursuit. The train-crew,
+startled by the sound of the departing train,
+came running from the station. They actually
+started to run along the track after the flying
+locomotive. They jerked a hand-car off a siding
+and chased the fugitives with that. At a station
+not far off, they found a locomotive lying with
+steam up. They seized that and thundered
+ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more
+even terms. The hunters reached Kingston,
+Georgia, within four minutes after the hunted
+had left. The latter had had to make frequent
+stops, to cut the wires, to take on fuel, to bundle
+into the freight cars ties that could be used to
+start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear
+up an occasional rail. This last expedient delayed
+their pursuers but little. When a missing
+rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore
+up a rail behind them, slipped it into the vacant
+place, and rushed ahead again.</p>
+
+<p>Andrews was running the captured train on
+its regular time schedule, so he could not exceed
+a certain speed. From Kingston, however,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+where the only other train of the day met this
+one, he expected a free road and plenty of time
+to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet
+the regular train at Kingston, but alas! it carried
+on its engine a red flag. That meant that
+a second section of the same train was coming
+behind it. There was nothing to do but to wait
+for this second section. The railroad was single-track,
+so trains could pass only where there was
+a siding. But in every moment of waiting there
+lurked the danger of detection. Southerners,
+soldiers, and civilians, crowded about the locomotive
+as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston
+sidetrack, puffing away precious steam and precious
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man.
+"I cum hyar to meet up with Cunnel Tompkins.
+Whar's he'n the rest of 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were ordered to drop everything at Big
+Shanty," explained Andrews, "except these
+three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on
+General Beauregard's staff and am taking the
+stuff to him at Corinth. Jove, there's the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+whistle of the second section. I'm glad to
+hear it."</p>
+
+<p>He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he
+had bundled most of his men into the freight
+cars. The cars were battered old things without
+any locks. If a carelessly curious hand were
+to slide back one of the doors and reveal within,
+not powder, but armed men, all their lives would
+pay the forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with
+engineer, fireman, and Tom, who had been
+helping the fireman feed wood into the maw
+of the furnace on every mile of the run. His
+young back ached with the strain of the unaccustomed
+toil. His young neck felt the touch
+of the noose that threatened them all.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch
+for us as soon as the other train pulls in," said
+Andrews. "We mustn't keep General Beauregard
+waiting for this powder a minute longer
+than we can help. He needs it to blow the Yankees
+to smithereens."</p>
+
+<p>So Tom ran ahead, stood by the switch as
+the second section came in, and promptly threw
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+the switch as it passed. But his train did not
+move and a brakeman jumped off the rear platform
+of the caboose of the second section, as it
+slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a
+fool, pushed him out of the way and reset the
+switch.</p>
+
+<p>"You plum fool," shouted the brakeman,
+after much stronger expressions, "didn't ye see
+the flag fur section three?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it,
+but it was too true that the engine of section
+two also bore the red flag that meant that section
+three was coming behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a long wait, again the sense
+of danger closing in upon them, again the
+thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity
+of playing their parts with laughter and good-natured
+chaff amid the foes who thought them
+friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves
+away. At last the third section came whistling
+and lumbering in. Thank fortune, it bore no red
+flag. This time Tom threw the switch unchecked
+and then jumped on the puffing engine
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+as she reached the main-track and sped onwards.</p>
+
+<p>"Free, by Jove!" said Andrews, with a deep
+breath of deep relief. "Now we can burn
+Johnny Reb's bridges for him!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Four minutes later, while section three of the
+train that had so long delayed them was still at
+Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed into
+the station. Its occupants, shouting a story of
+explanation that put Kingston into a frenzy,
+ran from it to an engine that lay upon a second
+sidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They
+had reached Kingston so speedily by using their
+last pint of water and their last stick of wood.
+They saved precious minutes by changing
+engines.</p>
+
+<p>Five seconds after their arrival, the station-agent
+had been at the telegraph-key, frantically
+pounding out the call of a station beyond Andrews's
+fleeing train. There was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the
+station. Of course that had been done by the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+fugitives just out of sight of Kingston. "Wire
+cut! I kain't git no message through."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take the message!" answered the
+Confederate commander, from the cab of the
+locomotive that was already swaying with her
+speed, as she darted ahead.</p>
+
+<p>They came near delivering the message within
+four miles of Kingston. Andrews's men, with a
+most comforting sense of safety had stopped
+and were pulling up a rail, when they heard the
+whistle of their avenging pursuer.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called.
+"They're closer'n I like to have 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates
+came closer still. Around the next curve, quite
+hidden from sight until close upon it, the fugitives
+had put a rail across the track. It delayed
+the pursuit not one second. Whether the cowcatcher
+of the engine thrust it aside or broke it
+or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody
+knew then in the wild excitement of the
+chase and nobody knows now. The one thing
+certain is that there was no delay. Very likely
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+the rail broke. Rails of those days were of iron,
+not steel, and throughout the South they were
+in such condition that at the close of the Civil
+War one of the chief Southern railroads was said
+to consist of "a right-of-way and two streaks
+of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly
+and sped on.</p>
+
+<p>On the Union train, Tom had crept back to
+the rear car along the rolling, jumping carroofs,
+with orders to set it on fire and stand
+ready to cut it off. The men inside arranged a
+pile of ties, thrust fat pine kindling among them,
+and touched the mass with a match. It burst
+into flame as they scuttled to the roof and
+passed to the car ahead. A long covered
+wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway
+across it, Andrews stopped, dropped the
+flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very
+few minutes the bridge would have been a burning
+mass, but the few minutes were not to be
+had. The Confederate locomotive was now
+close upon them. It dashed upon the bridge,
+drove the burning car across the bridge before
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and
+again whistled triumphantly as it took up the
+fierce chase. The two remaining cars were detached,
+one by one, but in vain. The game
+was up.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly,
+as he looked back over the tender, now almost
+empty of wood, to the smokestack that was
+belching sooty vapor within a mile of them.
+"By this time, they've got a telegram ahead of
+us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods.
+We must take to the woods. Don't try to keep
+together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star.
+Make the Union lines if you can. We've done
+our best."</p>
+
+<p>The engine checked its mad pace, slowed,
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he
+sprang from the engine and disappeared in the
+forest that there bordered the track. "We'll
+meet again."</p>
+
+<p>Seven of them did meet him again. It was
+upon a Confederate scaffold, where he and they
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+were hung. The other six of the fourteen who
+were captured were exchanged, a few months
+later. Three others reached the Union lines
+within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom
+Strong?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom up a Tree&mdash;Did the Confederate Officer
+See Him?&mdash;A Fugitive Slave Guides Him&mdash;Buying
+a Boat in the Dark&mdash;Adrift in the
+Enemy's Country.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>At first, Tom was up a tree. When he
+jumped from the abandoned locomotive,
+his mind was working as quickly as his body.
+He reasoned that the Confederates would expect
+them all to run as fast and as far away as
+they could; that they would run after them;
+that they would very probably catch him, utterly
+tired out as he was, so tired that even fear
+could not lend wings to his leaden feet; that the
+pursuit, however, would not last long, because
+the Confederates would wish to reach a station
+soon, in order both to report their success and
+to send out a general alarm and so start a general
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+search for the fugitives; and that he would
+best hide as near at hand as might be. In other
+words, he thought, quite correctly, that the best
+thing to do is exactly what your enemy does
+not expect you to do. He picked out a big oak
+tree quite close to the track, its top a mass of
+thick-set leaves such as a Southern April brings
+to a Southern oak. He climbed it, nestled into
+a sheltered crotch high above the ground, and
+waited. He did not have to wait long. He
+could still hear the noise of his comrades plunging
+through the woods when the Confederate
+engine drew up beneath his feet. Before it
+stopped, the armed men who clustered thick
+upon locomotive and tender were on the ground
+and running into the woods. A gallant figure
+in Confederate gray led them. He heard the
+rush of them, then a shot or two, exultant yells,
+and ere long the tramp of returning feet. They
+came back in half a dozen groups, bringing with
+them three of his comrades in flight, less fortunate
+than he, at least less fortunate up to that
+time. Andrews was one of the prisoners. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+had slipped and fallen, had strained a sinew, and
+had lain helpless until his pursuers reached him.
+Tom, peering cautiously through his leafy
+shelter, saw that his late leader was limping and
+was held upright by a kindly Confederate, who
+had passed his arm about him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't fur," said his captor, cheerily,
+"hyar's the injine."</p>
+
+<p>"The Yank's goin' fur," sneered a soldier of
+another kind, "he's goin' to Kingdom Cum,
+blast him!" He lifted his fist to strike the helpless
+man, but the young officer in command
+caught the upraised arm.</p>
+
+<p>"None of that," he said, sternly. "Americans
+don't treat prisoners that way. You're
+under arrest. Put down your gun and climb
+into the tender. Do it now and do it quick."
+Sulkily the brute obeyed. "Lift him in," went
+on the officer to the man who was supporting
+Andrews. This was gently done. The other
+two captives climbed in. So did the Confederates.
+Their officer turned to them.</p>
+
+<p>"You've done your duty well," he said.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+"You've been chasing brave men. They've
+done their duty well too.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'For such a gallant feat of arms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was never seen before.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Tom started with surprise. The young officer
+was quoting from Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient
+Rome." The boy had stood beside his mother's
+knee when she read him the "Lays" and had
+often since read them himself.</p>
+
+<p>That start of surprise had almost been Tom's
+undoing. He had rustled the leaves about him.
+A tiny shower of pale green things fell to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain, there's somebody up that tree,"
+said a soldier, pointing straight at the point
+where Tom sat. "I heard him rustle."</p>
+
+<p>The captain looked up. The boy always
+thought the officer saw him and spared him,
+partly because of his youth&mdash;he knew the fate
+the prisoners faced&mdash;and partly because of his
+admiration for "the gallant feat of arms." Be
+that as it may, he certainly took no step just
+then to make another prisoner. Instead he
+laughed and answered:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's a 'possum. We haven't time for a
+coon-hunt just now. Get ahead. We'll send an
+alarm from the next station and so bag all the
+Yankees."</p>
+
+<p>The engine, pushing the recaptured one before
+it, started and disappeared around the end
+of the short curve upon which Andrews had
+made his final stop. For the moment at least,
+Tom was safe. But he knew the hue-and-cry
+would sweep the country. Everybody would be
+on the lookout for stray Yankees. And as
+everybody would think the estrays were all
+going North, Tom decided to go South. He slid
+down the tree, looked at his watch, studied the
+sunlight to learn the points of the compass, drew
+his belt tighter to master the hunger that now
+assailed him, and so began his southward tramp,
+a boy, alone, in the enemy's country.</p>
+
+<p>That part of Georgia is a beautiful country
+and Tom loved beauty, but it did not appeal to
+him that afternoon. He was hungry; he was
+tired; the excitement that had upheld him
+through the hours of flight on the captured
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+engine was over. He plodded through a little
+belt of forest and found himself in a broad valley,
+with a ribbon of water flowing through it.
+He stumbled across plowed fields to the little
+river. A dusty road, with few marks of travel,
+meandered beside the stream. He was evidently
+near no main highway. Not far away a
+planter's home, with a stately portico, gleamed
+in the sunlight through its screen of trees. In
+the distance lay a little village. There was food
+in both places and he must have food. To which
+should he go? It was decided for him that he
+was to go to neither. As he slipped down the
+river bank, to quench his burning thirst and to
+wash his dusty face and hands, he almost
+stepped upon a negro who lay full length at the
+foot of the bank, hidden behind a tree that had
+been uprooted by the last flood and left stranded
+there. The boy was scared by the unexpected
+meeting, but not half as much as the
+negro.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Massa," said the negro, on his knees
+with outstretched hands, "don' tell on me,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+Massa. I'll be your slabe, Massa. Jes' take me
+with you. Please don't tell on me. You kin
+make a lot o' money sellin' me, Massa. Please
+lemme go wid you."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name?" asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Morris, Massa."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"From dat house, Massa." He pointed to
+the big house nearby.</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, Morris (reassured when he
+found Tom was a Northern soldier and like himself
+a fugitive) told his story. He had been
+born on this plantation. Reared as a house-servant,
+he could read a little. He had learned
+from the newspapers his master took that a
+Northern army was not far away. He made up
+his mind to try for freedom. His master kept
+dogs to track runaways, but no dog can track
+a scent in running water. It was not probable
+his flight would be discovered until after nightfall.
+So he had stolen to his hiding-place in the
+afternoon, intending to wade down the tiny
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+stream as soon as darkness came. Two miles
+below, the stream merged itself into a larger
+one. There he hoped to steal a boat, hide by
+day and paddle by night until he reached the
+Tennessee. "Dat ribber's plum full o' Massa
+Lincum's gunboats," he assured Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you going to live on the journey?"
+asked the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"I spec' dey's hen-roosts about," quoth Morris
+with a chuckle, "and I'se got a-plenty to eat
+to start wid. Dis darkey don' reckon to starve
+none."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me something to eat, quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Morris willingly produced cornpone and
+bacon from a sack beside him. Tom wanted to
+eat it all, but he knew these precious supplies
+must be kept as long as possible, so he did not
+eat more than half of them. The two agreed
+to keep together in their flight for freedom. As
+soon as it was dark, they began their wading.
+The two miles seemed an endless distance. The
+noises of the night kept their senses on the
+jump. Once a distant bloodhound's bay scared
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+Morris so much that his white teeth clattered
+like castanets. Once the "too-whit-too" of a
+nearby owl sent Tom into an ecstasy of terror.
+He fairly clung to Morris, who, just ahead of
+him, was guiding his steps through the shallow
+water. When he found he had been scared by
+an owl, he was so ashamed that he forced himself
+to be braver thereafter. At last they
+reached their first goal, the larger river. Here
+Morris's knowledge of the ground made him
+the temporary commander of the expedition.
+He knew of a little house nearby, the home of
+a "poor white," who earned part of his precarious
+livelihood by fishing. Morris knew just
+where he kept his boat. There was no light in
+the little house and no sound from it as they
+crept stealthily along the bank to the tree where
+the boat was tied. Tom drew his knife to cut
+the rope.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Massa," whispered Morris. "Not dat-a-way.
+Ef it's cut, dey'll know it's bin tuck and
+dey'll s'picion us. Lemme untie it. Den dey'll
+t'ink it's cum loose and floated away. 'N dey'll
+     <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+not hurry after it. Dey'll t'ink dey kin fin' it in
+some cove any time tomorrer."</p>
+
+<p>Morris was right. It did not take him long
+to untie the clumsy knot. Three oars and some
+fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat.
+They got into it, pushed off, and floated down
+the current without a sound. Morris steered
+with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot,
+they rowed as fast as the darkness, intensified
+by the shadows of the overhanging trees, permitted.</p>
+
+<p>Just before they had pushed off, Tom had
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"What is this boat worth, Morris?"</p>
+
+<p>"Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one
+jest like it, dis lastest week."</p>
+
+<p>Tom's conscience had told him that even
+though a fugitive for his life in the enemy's
+country he ought not to take the "poor
+white's" boat without paying for it. He unbuttoned
+an inside pocket in his shirt and drew out
+a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces.
+There were twenty of them, each wrapped in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+tissue-paper and the whole then bound together
+in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so
+that there would be no sound of clinking gold
+as he walked. He figured that the three oars
+and the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth
+more than the boat was, so he took out two
+coins and put them in a battered old pan that
+lay beside the stump to which the boat was tied.
+There the "cracker"&mdash;another name for the
+"poor white"&mdash;would be sure to see them in the
+morning. As a matter of fact he did. And they
+were worth so much more than his vanished
+property that he was inclined to think an angel,
+rather than a thief, had passed that way. Tom's
+conscientiousness spoiled Morris's plan of having
+the owner think the boat had floated away,
+but the "cracker" was glad to clutch the gold
+and start no hue-and-cry. He was afraid that if
+he recovered his boat, he would have to give up
+the gold. It was much cheaper to make
+another. So he kept still.</p>
+
+<p>And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they
+paddled slowly down the stream until the first
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+signs of dawn sent them into hiding. They hid
+the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth
+of a tiny creek and they themselves crept a few
+yards into the forest, ate very much less than
+they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's
+scanty store of food, and went to sleep. They
+slept until&mdash;but that is another story.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Towser Finds the Fugitives&mdash;Towser Brings
+Uncle Moses&mdash;Mr. Izzard and His Yankee
+Overseer, Jake Johnson&mdash;Tom is Pulled
+Down the Chimney&mdash;How Uncle Moses
+Choked the Overseer&mdash;The Flight of the
+Four.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>They slept until late in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Then Morris woke up with a yell. A dog's
+cold nose was thrusting itself against his cheek.
+He thought his master's bloodhounds were upon
+him and that the whipping-post was the least he
+had to fear. As Tom, startled from sound sleep
+by the negro's scream of terror, sprang to his
+feet, he saw Morris crouching upon the ground,
+babbling "Sabe me, good Lord, sabe old Morris!"
+The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel,
+a very distant cousin of the bloodhound the
+scared darkey imagined him to be, was looking
+with a grieved surprise at the cowering man.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+He was a most good-natured beast, accustomed
+to few caresses and many kicks, and he had
+never before seen a man who was afraid of him.
+As he turned to Tom, he saw a boy who wasn't
+afraid of him. Tom, who had always been loved
+by dogs and children, smiled at the big yellow
+mongrel, said "Come here, old fellow," and in
+an instant had the great hound licking his hand
+and looking up to him with the brown-yellow
+eyes full of a dog's faith and a dog's fidelity.
+These are great qualities. A cynic once said:
+"The more I see of men the more I like dogs."
+That cynic probably got from men what he gave
+to them. But still it is true that the unfaltering
+faith of a dog and a child, once their confidence
+has been won, is a rare and a precious thing.
+Tom patted his new friend's head. The big tail
+wagged with joy. The hound looked reproachfully
+at Morris, as much as to say: "See how
+you misunderstood me; I want to be friends: but
+here"&mdash;he turned and looked at the boy who
+was smiling at him&mdash;"here is my best friend."</p>
+
+<p>He stayed with them an hour, contented and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+happy, humbly grateful for a tiny piece of meat
+they gave him. Then, as dark drew near, he
+became uneasy. Two or three times he started
+as if to leave them, turned to see whether they
+were following him, looked beseechingly at
+them, barked gently, put his big paw on Tom's
+arm and pulled at him. Evidently he wanted
+them to come with him, but this they did not
+dare to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef we lets him go, he'll bring his folkses
+here," Morris whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we must tie him up," Tom reluctantly
+assented. "I hate to treat him that
+way, for he's a good dog. But if we leave him
+tied and push off in the boat, he'll howl after a
+while and his master will find him. Take a bit
+of fishing-line and tie him."</p>
+
+<p>Morris turned towards the hidden boat, but
+the hound, as if aware of what they had said,
+suddenly started for his hidden home and vanished
+into the underbrush before Tom could
+catch hold of him. When Tom called, he
+stopped once and looked back, but he did not
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+come back. He shouldered his way into the
+bushes and trotted off, with that amusing air
+of being in a hurry to keep a most important
+appointment which all dogs sometimes show.
+And as he started, Morris appeared again, with
+a shrill whisper: "De boat's dun sunk hisself."</p>
+
+<p>Tom ran to the bank of the creek. The news
+was too true. The boat had sunk. The rotten
+caulking had dropped from one of the rotten
+seams. The bow, tied to a tree in the canebrake,
+was high in air. The stern was under
+five feet of water. The oars had floated away.
+The fishing-pole was afloat, held to the old craft
+by the hook-and-line, which had caught in the
+sunken seat. What were they to do? They felt
+as a Western trapper used to feel, when he had
+lost his horse and saw himself compelled to
+make his perilous way on foot through a country
+swarming with savage foes. What to do?</p>
+
+<p>"We must raise the boat, Morris, get her on
+shore, turn her over, caulk her with something,
+make some paddles somehow and get off."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They did, by great effort and with much more
+noise than they liked to make, drag the crazy
+old craft upon the bank of the creek. They
+turned her bottom-side up. The negro plucked
+down a long, waving mass of Spanish moss from
+a cypress that grew in the swampy soil. Children
+in the South call this Spanish moss "old
+men's gray beards." Each long drift of it looks
+as if it might have grown on the chin of an aged
+giant. They were pressing it into the gaping
+seam with feverish haste, listening the while for
+any sign of that dreaded coming of the big
+hound's "folkses." The short twilight of Southern
+skies ended. A deep curtain of darkness fell
+upon them. And through it they heard the
+nearby patter of the dog's paws and the
+shuffling footfalls of a man. And they saw the
+gleam of a lantern.</p>
+
+<p>"We'se diskivered, Massa Tom," old Morris
+whispered, "we'se diskivered."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, he slipped over the bank into the
+creek and lay in much his attitude when Tom
+had first "diskivered" him, except that the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+water covered all of him except mouth and nose
+and eyes. Tom bent down to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," he said, "keep still. There's only
+one man coming. The dog's all right. I'll meet
+the man. You stay here."</p>
+
+<p>Then he stepped into a circle of light cast by
+the lantern upon a mass of underbrush and
+said, with a cheerful confidence he did not
+feel:</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, neighbor?"</p>
+
+<p>The big yellow dog was fawning at his feet
+in a second. A quavering old voice came from
+behind the light of the lantern.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Massa," it said. "Is I intrudin' on
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>An old, old negro shambled up to him, the
+lantern in one hand, a ragged hat in another.
+He bowed his crown of white kinky hair respectfully
+before the white boy. There was no
+enemy to be feared here. The boy's heart
+bounded with relief and he laughed as he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"No, Uncle, you're not intruding. I'm glad to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+see you. I'm sure you'll help us. Come here,
+Morris."</p>
+
+<p>Morris scrambled up the bank, the wettest
+man in the world. His eyeballs shone as he
+neared them. They shone still more as he stood
+before the old negro, held out his hand, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Unk' Moses, I'se po'erful glad to meet up
+wid you."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Moses almost dropped his rude lantern
+in his surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ef it ain't Massa Pinckney's Morris!
+Howdy, Morris? How cum so as you-uns is
+here, a-hidin'? I know'd de way dat ar Towser
+wuz a-actin' when he dun cum home dat dere
+wuz sum-un in de bush out hyar, but I neber
+s'picioned t'wuz you, Morris. Is you dun run
+away?"</p>
+
+<p>The situation was soon explained. Uncle
+Moses had already become familiar with it.
+Hunted men, both white and black, were no
+novelty to him by that time. He had helped
+many of them on their scared way. Too old to
+work, he lived alone in a little cabin on the outskirts
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+of his owner's plantation. He tilled a tiny
+plot of vegetables when "de rumatiz" permitted
+and with these and some rations from
+"de big house" he eked out a scanty living.
+This owner's self-respect had not prevented his
+working Moses through all a long life, with no
+payment except food and lodging, and behind
+these always the shadow of the whip. But the
+slave's self-respect required him to work for the
+hand that fed him, so long as failing strength
+permitted. All he could do now was to scare
+crows from the cornfield, but that he could do
+well, for his one suit of the ragged remains of
+what had been several other people's clothes
+made him a perfect scarecrow. Besides his
+vegetables, he had some chickens, a sacred possession.
+"Old Unk' Mose" was known and respected
+through all the countryside. No
+chicken-thief ever came to his cabin. The kind
+old patriarch was reaping the reward of a kind
+long life. He dwelt in peace.</p>
+
+<p>He took Tom and Morris to the lonely cabin
+and treated them there with a royal hospitality.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+Despite his protests, Tom was obliged to take
+the one bed. Unk' Mose and Morris slept upon
+the floor. First, they had a mighty dinner.
+Two of Moses's fattest chickens and everything
+Moses had in the way of other food filled their
+starved stomachs. Then to sleep. The last
+thing Tom heard that night was the swish of
+Towser's mighty tail upon the earthen floor as
+the dog lay beside his cot. The last thing of
+which he was conscious was Towser's gently
+licking the hand that hung down from the cot.</p>
+
+<p>The next day they toiled with such feeble help
+as Moses could give them upon their leaky boat.
+They put it in fair shape and then, with a rusty
+ax which was one of Unk' Mose's most precious
+possessions, they fashioned a couple of
+rough oars. Then they spent a day trying to
+persuade Moses to seek freedom with them. It
+was in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'se too old, Massa Tom," said Uncle Moses.
+"Dey wuz timeses when I dun thought all de
+days and dun prayed all de nights dat freedum'd
+cum along or dat I cud go to freedum. It's too
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+late nowadays. Unk' Mose mus' jes' sot hyar,
+a-waitin'. P'raps, ef I keeps a-helpin' udder
+folkses to find deir freedum, p'raps sum day,
+'fore I'se troo' a-waitin', de angel ob de Lawd'll
+cum a-walkin' up to my do' and he'll be a-holdin'
+by de han' ob a great big udder angel 'n de
+udder angel he'll dun smile at me and say:
+'Unk' Moses, I'se Freedum 'n I'se cum to you.'
+Den I'll say: 'Thank de good Lawd,' and I'll be
+so happy I guess I'll jes' die 'n go to de great
+White Throne, whar ebberybody's free."</p>
+
+<p>Late that afternoon when they had had to
+give up the hope of taking Uncle Mose with
+them, they were making a bundle of the food
+he had given them. It was a big bundle. He
+would have slaughtered his last chicken for
+them, had they permitted it. Suddenly there
+came the sound of a long, shrill whistle. Uncle
+Moses, tying up the bundle on his knees, forgot
+"de rumatiz" and almost sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Lawd-a-massy, dat's de oberseer! He's dun
+callin' de hands to de quarters." The quarters
+were the slave-quarters which always clustered
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+at a respectful distance in the rear of a planter's
+home. "Dat ar oberseer mebbe'll cum hyar.
+You folkses mus' hide."</p>
+
+<p>The whistle had sounded dangerously near.
+As they looked out of the one door that gave
+light to the slave's cabin, they saw three horsemen
+trotting towards it, two white men and a
+negro. They were Moses's master, the dreaded
+overseer, and a groom. It was impossible to run
+across the small cleared space about the cabin
+and seek the woods without being seen. But
+where could they hide in a one-roomed hut?</p>
+
+<p>"De chimbley, quick, de chimbley," gasped
+Uncle Mose.</p>
+
+<p>A big chimney, full of the soot of many years
+of wood-fires on the broad hearth below, filled
+half one side of the room. Tom and Morris
+rushed to it, climbed up the rough stone sides,
+found a precarious footing just above the fireplace,
+and waited. Fortunately the fire upon
+which the food for the journey had been cooked
+had almost died down. A little smoke floated
+up the wide opening. The smoke and the soot
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+tickled the boy's nostrils until it seemed to him
+that he must sneeze. A sneeze might mean
+death. With a mighty effort he kept still for
+what seemed to him an hour. It was really
+about five minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Izzard, owner of Uncle Moses and of
+some hundreds of other black men, Jake Johnson,
+his overseer, a renegade Yankee, with a
+face that told of the cruel soul within him,
+trotted up to the door, the black groom a few
+yards behind them. Uncle Moses had thrust the
+bundle of food far back under the bed. He
+stood respectfully in his doorway, bowing to the
+ground. Towser cowered beside him. Towser
+had felt more than once the sting of the long
+whip Jake Johnson carried. He feared and he
+hated the overseer.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Massa Izzard." said Moses.
+"Howdy, Mista Johnsing. Will you-uns light
+down 'n cum in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied.
+He was a tall, pale, well-born, well-bred, well-educated
+man, as kind a man as ever held his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was
+justified in doing so by the laws of both God
+and man as the German emperor was that he
+ruled a subject people by divine right. "No,
+we won't light down. We just came to say
+howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you
+want anything, come up to the big house and
+ask for it."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the
+old negro as he stammered a few words of
+thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's
+Morris, Mose?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen
+hide nor har ob Morris. Has dat fool nigger
+runned away?"</p>
+
+<p>Johnson looked at him sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"If I thought you knew already he had run
+away," said he, "I'd"&mdash;he cracked his whip in
+the air to show what he would have done.</p>
+
+<p>Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard
+told Johnson to stop frightening "the best
+darkey on the place" and they rode away.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+Mose dropped upon his one chair and was just
+about to give fervent thanks for the escape from
+detection, when Johnson, who had turned a
+short distance away and had galloped back,
+flung himself off his horse at the door and strode
+into the dusky hut.</p>
+
+<p>"I b'lieve you know something about that
+Morris," he roared at the shrinking old negro.
+"You looked guilty. Tell me what you know
+or I'll thrash you within an inch of your black
+life." He cracked his dreaded whip again.</p>
+
+<p>"I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista Johnsing,"
+Moses pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved
+too much for the overtried nostrils of Tom. He
+sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held
+back. His "at-choo! at-choo!" sounded down
+the chimney like a chorus of bassoons. Johnson
+was across the room in a bound. He knelt
+upon the hearth, groped up the chimney, caught
+the boy by the ankle and pulled him down. The
+soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer
+was sure he had caught the fleeing Morris.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">At that terrible moment, when Johnson's
+throat was swelling for a yell of triumph that
+would surely have brought Mr. Izzard back to
+the hut, Uncle Moses cast the traditions of a life
+of servile fear of the white man behind him.
+Never had he dreamed of laying a finger on one
+of his owner's race, even in those long-ago days
+when stout thews and muscles made him fit to
+fight. Now, in trembling old age, the truth of
+the poet's saying,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="p2">put spirit for a second into his old heart. He
+knew the danger that lay in that yell. He meant
+to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was
+still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching
+Tom's ankle, the boy still sprawling on the
+hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery
+and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old
+body hurled itself upon the overseer's broad
+back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's
+windpipe and choked him into a second's silence.
+That second was enough. Tom sprang to his
+feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and good
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+old Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that
+beckoned to him, sunk his teeth in Johnson's
+shoulder and tore him down from the back
+while Tom struck his strongest just below the
+overseer's chin and knocked him out for the time
+being. Before he came to, he had been lashed
+hand-and-foot into a long bundle, had been effectually
+gagged with his own whip, had been
+blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the
+bed, from under which the food had been hurriedly
+withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had
+neither been seen nor heard. Tom called up the
+chimney to him to come down.</p>
+
+<p>"I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice.
+It had never occurred to Morris to slip down
+and help in the fight he heard going on below.
+His one thought had been to escape himself.
+So he had climbed still higher up the chimney
+and in his frantic haste he had so wedged himself
+into it that it took Tom an hour to pull him
+down. It was a battered, bruised, and bleeding
+negro who finally appeared. That was a very
+long hour. Mr. Izzard might return in search
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+of his overseer at any moment. The overseer
+himself must be conscious by this time. His
+ears must have told him much. Tom whispered
+to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His
+anxious gesture toward the bed beneath which
+Johnson lay frightened both negroes into scared
+silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's
+ears had told him nothing. Towser's teeth had
+drawn so much blood&mdash;the mighty hound had
+been pried off his foe with difficulty&mdash;that the
+man lay in a faint until the four fugitives had
+fled. For there were four fugitives now.
+Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face
+the coming wrath. The rest of Moses's chickens
+were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered.
+When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until
+she had a scant two inches of free-board above
+the water, was slipping down the river again.
+Uncle Moses was no longer "a-waitin' fer freedum."
+He was going in search of the freedom
+he had so long craved. He and his fellows had
+two clear days in which to get away without
+pursuit, for Johnson lay in his dark prison beneath
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+the bed for fortyeight hours before he
+was found. One of the ropes used to bind him
+had caught upon an old nail in the wall. He
+was too weak to tear it away and so could not
+even roll himself to the outer air. On the second
+day of his unexplained absence, Mr. Izzard
+had sent all the negroes in search of him and
+had offered a reward for his finding. The discovery
+of his horse in a distant part of the plantation
+had concentrated the search there. The
+darkies who finally got the reward did not rejoice
+much in it, for in finding the overseer, they
+knew they were finding a cruel taskmaster and
+his cruel whip. But the story of his discomfiture
+by three negroes, for he had never known
+that Tom's sooty face was really white, soon
+spread through the countryside. He became a
+neighborhood joke and in his wrath at being
+made a butt he resigned as Mr. Izzard's overseer.
+Leaving this place deprived him of his
+immunity from conscription. He was promptly
+seized by the nearest Confederate officer and
+impressed into the army. The Izzard negroes
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+had the infinite joy of seeing their hated ex-overseer
+marched off under guard to a Confederate
+camp, to serve as a private soldier.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was destined to see Jake Johnson again.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Two nights they rowed down the river, almost
+without a word, afraid to speak lest someone
+in the infrequent houses and still more infrequent
+villages along the banks should hear
+them. Wise old Towser knew enough not to
+bark when men about him kept so still. He lay
+always where with nose or paw or tail he could
+touch Tom. The latter was the commander of
+the expedition and Towser felt it and became
+his abject slave accordingly. At the close of the
+second night they had reached the Tennessee
+River. By day they camped upon shore in some
+hidden place, first craftily secreting the boat
+amid rushes and reeds. From their second
+hiding-place, they saw about noon a Confederate
+gunboat, a small stern-wheel steamboat,
+with cotton-bales at her bow and stern screening
+her two guns. Though she was making
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+all possible speed up the current, she moved
+but slowly. Her decks were thick with excited
+men. A babble of voices reached the fugitives,
+peering at her behind a mass of bushes. The
+few words that could be made out told them
+nothing. The sight of her, however, warned
+them that a new danger might await them on
+the traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their
+hearts would have beat higher, had they known
+that General Mitchell had pushed south from
+Huntsville and that Union forces were then encamped
+in strength upon the river, not many
+miles below where they were cowering. The
+Confederate gunboat had been steaming upstream
+to escape capture.</p>
+
+<p>When darkness came, they embarked again
+upon what proved to be the last chapter in the
+history of the old flat-boat. The next morning,
+caught in an eddy at the mouth of a small, swift
+tributary of the Tennessee, she whirled about,
+the Spanish moss dropped out of her rotten
+seams, she filled and sank. She dropped so
+swiftly beneath them that before they realized
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+their danger they were all floundering in water
+over their heads. Tom could swim like a fish.
+That is one of the first things a boy should learn
+to do. To his delight, he found Uncle Moses
+was also surprisingly at home in the water, considering
+his years. Towser accepted the situation
+as something he did not understand, but
+which was doubtless entirely all right, as his
+lord and master, Tom, was in the water too.
+Morris, however, could not swim a stroke and
+saw only certain death before him. He gave a
+yell of terror as he went under. That yell came
+near costing them dear. As he rose to the surface,
+Tom on one side and Uncle Mose on the
+other, acting under Tom's instructions, edged a
+shoulder under him, and started to swim to
+shore with him. Again he yelled. This time
+Moses lost patience.</p>
+
+<p>"Shet up, you fool nigger. You sho'ly needs
+to be 'mersed."</p>
+
+<p>With this whispered menace, he reached up
+one hand and ducked Morris's head quite under
+water. That stopped all further sound from
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+him. And by this time their feet had touched
+bottom. They waded ashore, with Towser wagging
+a triumphant tail, shaking himself and
+sending showers of spray over them. There
+they stood, wet as water-rats, with nothing in
+the world except the dripping clothes they wore.
+And there was no hiding-place near. For half
+a mile on either side of them a cleared field lay
+open to the day and the day was upon them.
+They had tempted Fate by rowing on too long
+after the first signs of dawn. Fate had turned
+the trump upon them. The sun rolled up above
+the eastern horizon at their back. It showed
+them, not half a mile away, a plantation house.
+It showed them a swarm of field-hands coming
+to the day's toil. It showed them a mounted
+overseer, only a few hundred feet away, riding
+up to the flat range of the field from a ravine
+that had hidden him. He had heard Morris's
+yells. He saw the three and rode furiously at
+them, calling out:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you niggers doin' here?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom stepped forward to meet him. His two
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+companions were useless in an emergency like
+this. They cowered back and were dumb.
+Towser strode ahead beside Tom and barked.
+The overseer pulled up short. He saw he was
+dealing with a white man, or rather with a white
+boy. The circumstances were suspicious. Who
+were these three dripping ragamuffins? But
+since one of them was white, the man's tone
+changed and he modified his question.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are ye? And what are ye doin' here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am on my way to Vicksburg," Tom answered,
+"by the river. My boat sunk just off
+shore here and we swam ashore. Can you give
+me another boat?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mout 'n I moutn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I am carrying dispatches," said Tom,
+sternly. "You will delay me at your peril. I
+shall take one of those boats, whether you consent
+or not."</p>
+
+<p>With this he pointed at the most encouraging
+thing the sunrise had shown him. This was a
+line of three boats fastened to a wooden landing-place
+by the river.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I b'lieve you're a Yankee," said the horseman,
+"and these are runaway niggers. You and
+they must come up to the big house with me.
+If you're all right, we'll send you on your way.
+If you're not, well, we know what to do with
+Yanks and runaway niggers! March!"</p>
+
+<p>He slipped his hand behind him, as if to draw
+a pistol. Tom was already making the same
+gesture. Neither of them had a pistol. Tom's
+had gone to the bottom. It was pure bluff on
+both sides. And in a moment, seeing this and
+being Americans, both laughed. But none the
+less the overseer demanded that they should go
+to the big house. Tom, protesting, but apparently
+half-yielding, edged along until he was
+near the landing-platform. Then, shouting
+"Come on, boys!" he ran to it, the frightened
+negroes following at his heels and Towser running
+ahead. He hustled them into the boat at
+the eastern end of the pier, jumped in himself,
+jerked the rope off the wooden peg that insecurely
+held it, and pushed off. The overseer,
+angrily protesting, stood a moment watching his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+prey escape and then galloped like mad for the
+big house, shouting "Yanks! spies!! thieves!!!
+Yanks!!!!" He was met halfway by half a
+dozen men in Confederate gray, roused by his
+yells. They were officers who had spent the
+night at the hospitable house, had breakfasted
+at daybreak, and were just about to mount for
+their day's march when the overseer gave the
+alarm. It was lucky for the fugitives that officers
+do not carry anything bigger than pistols.
+A fusillade of revolver-bullets all fell short of the
+fleeing mark. Tom and Morris were pulling an
+oar apiece&mdash;they had found but two in the boat&mdash;with
+a desperate energy. But it was unlucky
+for the fugitives that they had not thought to
+steal or to scuttle the other two boats. This
+was Tom's fault, for he was captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll know better next time," said Tom to
+himself ruefully, as he saw three men spring
+into each boat for the pursuit. "I'll know better
+next time&mdash;if there ever is a next time."</p>
+
+<p>It did not seem likely that there would be a
+next time. One of the pursuing boats fell behind,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+to be sure. In it, too, there were but two
+oars and the men who plied them could not
+match the black man and the white boy who
+rowed for freedom's sake and life's sake. But
+in the other boat, two strong men each pulled
+two oars, while the third man crouched in the
+bow, pistol in hand, calling out steering instructions.
+This boat gained upon them, bit by bit.
+The fugitives could hear the lookout call "Port,
+hard-a-port!" and could almost see the extra
+weight thrown into the sweep of the starboard
+oars to send the boat's head the right way.
+Once the man at the bow took a chance on a
+long shot. His bullet fell harmlessly two hundred
+feet astern of Towser who stood in the
+stern of the fleeing boat, barking savagely.
+Thrice they turned a sharp bend and were out
+of sight of their enemy for a moment, but each
+time there was a shorter interval before the
+enemy shot into sight behind them. A fourth
+point lay just ahead. Tom looked back over his
+shoulder and measured the distance with his
+eye.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We can just make that next point," he
+panted. "Soon as we do, we'll land and run.
+It's our only chance."</p>
+
+<p>"I kain't run," said Uncle Moses, "but you'se
+right, Massa Tom. Dey'll catch us ef we keep
+a-rowin'."</p>
+
+<p>They had almost reached the bend. Another
+strong pull would have sent them around it.
+But the pursuers had now so gained upon them
+that the lookout chanced another shot. By
+chance or by skill, it was a very good shot. The
+bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade.
+The blade dropped off as Tom was putting
+every ounce of his failing strength into a prodigious
+pull. The handle, released from all
+pressure, flew through the air and Tom rolled
+over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a
+shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent
+to their work with a fierce vigor, feeling the victory
+won. Morris gave one last pull with his
+one oar and it sent the boat around the bend.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"And dere," as Uncle Moses with widespread
+arms used to tell the tale thereafter, "and dere
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+wuz Massa Lincum's gunboats, a-crowdin' ob de
+ribber&mdash;'n de Stars-'n-Stripeses, dey jest kivered
+de sky!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_176.jpg" width="600" height="642" alt="TOWSER" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">TOWSER</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">And so Unk' Mose and Morris came to their
+freedom and Tom came to his own. Towser
+became Tom's own. Uncle Moses insisted upon
+this and Towser highly approved of it. The
+giant hound worshiped the boy. Morris was
+speedily put to work driving a four-mule team
+for the commissary department of General
+Mitchell's force. He was accustomed to having
+food and lodging doled out to him, so it seemed
+quite natural to be given sleeping quarters
+(usually under the canvas cover of the wagon
+he drove) and rations, but it took him some
+months to recover from the shock of actually
+being paid wages for his work. When this too
+became natural, he felt that he was really free.
+Uncle Moses was too old for that sort of thing.
+He was bewildered by the rough and teeming
+life of an army-camp. He clung to Tom, was as
+devoted to him as Towser was, and much more
+helpless than the dog was. Towser made
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+friends and important friends at once. It happened
+that food was rather short at headquarters
+the day after the fugitives found safety.
+Tom, waiting for a chance to go North, had been
+asked to share the tent of a staff-officer and to
+eat at headquarters' mess. An hour before dinner,
+one of his hosts was bewailing the scanty
+fare they were to have when Towser sidled
+around the corner of the tent with a fat chicken
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+in his mouth and laid it with respectful devotion
+at his master's feet. There was a shout of applause
+and a roar from the assembled officers of
+"Good dog, good dog, Towser, do it again!"
+Whereupon, after some majestic wags of his
+mighty tail, he disappeared for a few minutes
+and did do it again. When the second chicken
+was laid at Tom's feet, Towser's position was
+assured. He was named an orderly by acclamation
+and was given a collar made of an old army
+belt, with the magic letters "U. S. A." upon it,
+a collar which he wore proudly through his
+happy life.</p>
+
+<p>Tom, who felt quite rich when his arrears of
+pay were handed him, decided to give himself a
+treat by making Uncle Moses happy. That is
+the best kind of treat man or boy can give himself.
+Make somebody else happy and you will
+be happy yourself. Try it and see. So, when
+he finally started back for Cairo and Washington
+he took both Uncle Moses and Towser with
+him. Neither of them had ever been on a railroad
+train before. Equally bewildered and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+equally happy, they sped by steam across the
+thousand miles between Cairo and Washington.
+In those days dogs could travel with their masters,
+without being banished to the baggage-car.
+As the three neared the latter city, the great
+dome of the Capitol sprang into sight. Tom
+eagerly pointed it out.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, Uncle Mose, look, Towser, there's
+the Capitol."</p>
+
+<p>"Dat's Freedum's home," murmured Unk'
+Mose.</p>
+
+<p>And Towser, stirred by the others' emotion,
+barked joyfully. He felt at home, too, because
+he was with Tom.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life&mdash;Newspaper
+Abuse of Lincoln&mdash;The Emancipation Proclamation&mdash;Lincoln
+in His Night-shirt&mdash;James
+Russell Lowell&mdash;"Barbara Frietchie"&mdash;Mr.
+Strong Comes Home&mdash;The
+Russian Fleet Comes to New York&mdash;A
+Backwoods Jupiter.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Tom neared the White House with a beating
+heart. He had done what Lincoln had
+bade him do. The dispatches had been carried
+safely and had been put into General Grant's
+hands. But he had taken a rather large
+advantage of the President's smiling suggestion
+that he might occasionally slip into a
+fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteered
+to go with Andrews on the railroad
+raid, which was to take a week, and he
+had been away for many weeks, during which
+he had been carried on the army-rolls as "missing."
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+Would the President think of him as a
+truant, who had run away and stayed away from
+duty? John Hay's welcome of him was frigid.
+The boy's heart went down into his boots. But
+it sprang up into his mouth when he was
+ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted with
+the winning smile he knew so well and to be
+congratulated both on his bravery in going with
+Andrews and on his good fortune in finally getting
+back to the Union lines.</p>
+
+<p>The President was not alone when Tom
+entered the room. There sat beside the desk a
+middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes
+red with weeping, her rusty black dress spotted
+with recent tears. Her thin hands were nervously
+twisting the petition someone had prepared
+for her to present to the President. She
+looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he
+turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk
+with her which Tom's entrance had interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything
+for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+woman. "He said&mdash;he said it was time to make
+an example and that my boy Jim ought to be
+shot and would be shot at&mdash;at&mdash;sunrise tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>The sentence ended in a wail and the woman
+crumpled up into a heap and slid down to the
+floor at the President's feet. She had gained
+one moment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the
+only son of his mother and she a widow," had
+overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried
+before a court-martial of elderly officers
+who were tired of hearing the frivolous excuses
+of careless boys for not coming back promptly
+to the front, had been found guilty of desertion,
+and had been sentenced to be shot in a week.
+Six days the mother had haunted the crowded
+anteroom of the stern Secretary of War, bent
+beneath the burden of her woe. Admitted at
+last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life
+had been ruthlessly refused.</p>
+
+<p>"The life of the nation is at stake, madam,"
+Stanton had growled at her. "We must keep
+the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+to that of our country? It is unfortunate," the
+grim Secretary's tones grew softer at the sight
+of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunate
+that the life happens to be that of your boy, but
+an example is needed and an example there shall
+be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise.
+Good-day."</p>
+
+<p>He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing
+mother was ushered out and the next person on
+the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards
+she was with Lincoln. There was no six days'
+wait at the White House for the mother of a
+Union soldier.</p>
+
+<p>When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom
+sprang to help her, but the President was
+quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her
+like a child and laid her upon a sofa. He
+touched a bell and sent word to Mrs. Lincoln
+asking her to come to him. When she did so,
+she took charge of Mrs. Jenkins and speedily
+revived her. But it was the President, not his
+wife, who completed the cure and saved the
+weeping woman's reason from wreck and her
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+life from long anguish. He pointed to the petition
+which had fallen from her nerveless fingers
+to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand me that paper, Tom."</p>
+
+<p>He put on his spectacles and started to read
+it. The glasses grew misty with the tears in his
+eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna
+handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and
+wrote beneath it in bold letters: "This man is
+pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held
+the petition close to the sofa so that the first
+thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as she came back to consciousness
+in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins's
+pardon. It was that blessed news which
+made her herself again. She broke into a torrent
+of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, ma'am," said the President, "I
+don't believe the way to keep the fighting ranks
+full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's
+been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb:
+'Never drown a boy baby.' I guess that means
+that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to give
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+him a chance not to make another. You tell
+Jim from me to do better after this. Tom, you
+take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and
+show him that little line of mine. He won't like
+it very much. Usually he has his own way, but
+sometimes I have mine and this happens to be
+one of those times. Glad you came to see me,
+Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of things you can
+do to an American boy that are better than
+shooting him. Here's a little note you can read
+later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a bit.
+Good-by&mdash;and God bless you."</p>
+
+<p>Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her
+happiness, to the War Department, where the
+formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins
+back to the front, resolute to pay his country
+for the life the President had given him. Only
+when the order had been entered did the mother
+remember the envelope clutched in her hand
+which the President had given her. It contained
+no words, unless it be true that "money talks."
+It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had
+spent her last cent on her journey to Washington
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+and her six days' stay there. Abraham
+Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and
+happiness. When once again she had occasion
+to weep over her son, a year later, her tears
+were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins
+died a hero's death at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
+on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide of the
+Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great
+Confederate commander, saw the surge of his
+splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks
+of the Union line, in the heart of the North.
+The bullet that killed Jim Jenkins tore through
+the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always
+wore over his heart. And Lincoln found time
+in that great hour of the country's salvation to
+turn aside from the myriad duties of every day
+long enough to write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter
+about her dead son's gift of his life to his
+country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and
+of a wondrous consolation, which was buried
+with the soldier's mother not long afterwards,
+when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier
+son.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a
+typical one. Everybody hated to come in contact
+with the surly Secretary. One day, when
+Private Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came
+into the offices with a letter in his hand and a
+cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants
+me to take some people to see Stanton," he said.
+"I would rather make the tour of a smallpox
+hospital."</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln always shrank from studying the records
+of court-martials, but he often had to do
+so, that justice or injustice might be tempered
+by mercy. He caught at every chance of showing
+mercy. A man had been sentenced to be
+shot for cowardice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I won't approve that," said the President.
+"'He who fights and runs away, may live
+to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is
+a coward, it would frighten him too terribly to
+shoot him."</p>
+
+<p>The next case was that of a deserter. After
+sentence, he had escaped and had reached
+Mexico.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln
+commented. "We can't catch him, you see.
+We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in
+Indiana, 'as they run.'"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>At this time the fortunes of war were not
+favoring the North. There were days of doubt,
+days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse
+of the President sounded from many Northern
+newspapers. Its keynote was struck by Horace
+Greeley, the editor of the New York <i>Tribune</i>
+and the foremost man in a group of great editors
+such as the country has never seen since.
+They were Horace Greeley of the <i>Tribune</i>,
+Henry J. Raymond of the <i>New York Times</i>, and
+Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.) <i>Republican</i>.
+Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan";
+Raymond demanded that he be "superseded"
+as President; and Greeley, in a letter
+that was published in England and that greatly
+harmed the Union cause, said Lincoln ruled
+"a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."</p>
+
+<p>In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+were household words and names by which to
+conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln
+pierced his heart, but his gentle patience never
+gave way. He bore with their well-meant but
+unjust criticism as he bore with so much else
+in those dark days, careless of hurt to himself,
+if he could but serve his country and do his duty
+as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one
+great duty and this he did. On September 22,
+1862, he signed his famous Emancipation Proclamation,
+which with its sequence the Thirteenth
+Amendment to the Constitution of the
+United States ended forever slavery wherever
+the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days
+of that great September, even a boy could feel
+in the tense atmosphere of the White House
+that some great event was impending. Nobody
+knew upon just what the master mind was
+brooding, but the whole world was to know it
+soon. It was not until Lincoln had written with
+his own hand in the solitude of his own room
+the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves
+that he called together his Cabinet, not to advise
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+him about it, but to hear from him what
+he had resolved to do. The messenger who
+summoned the Cabinet officials to that historic
+session was none other than Uncle Moses. Tom
+of course had long since told the story of his
+flight for freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted
+attack at the very nick of time upon the
+overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of
+the old negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring
+Moses to see him and Moses emerged from that
+interview the proudest darkey in the world, for
+he was made a messenger and general utility
+man at the White House. Part of his duty was
+to keep in order the room where the Cabinet
+met and to summon its members when a meeting
+of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly
+but majestically from the White House to the
+different Departments, bearing a message from
+the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a
+very different person from the Unk' Mose who
+had cared for Tom and Morris in the Alabama
+canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man.
+On these little journeys, Tad Lincoln often<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+went with him, his small white hand clutching
+one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although
+Moses knew nothing of it at the time,
+the day he bore the summons to the meeting at
+which the Proclamation that freed his race was
+read was the great day of his life. It is well for
+any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a
+great event in the world's history.</p>
+
+<p>"I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation,"
+Uncle Moses used to say with ever-deepening
+pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old
+age, he came to think he really had carried the
+Proclamation to the Cabinet, instead of simply
+summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which
+the Proclamation was first read. Memory plays
+queer tricks with the old. So Unk' Mose's tale
+lost nothing in the telling, year after year.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a
+small party at the residence of Salmon P. Chase,
+Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was
+there. He wrote that evening in his diary:
+"They all seemed to feel a sort of new and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's
+Proclamation had freed them as well as
+the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called
+themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy
+the novel accusation of appropriating that horrible
+name." The Proclamation made it respectable
+to be an Abolitionist. Every great
+reform is disreputable until it succeeds.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The Proclamation seemed to have freed the
+President too. When a man has made a New
+Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in
+bondage&mdash;emancipation was to take place wherever
+the Stars-and-Stripes flew on January 1,
+1863&mdash;such a man must have a wonderful glow
+of reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew
+gentler. Always with a keen eye for humorous
+absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the
+President's office. Lincoln was stretched out at
+full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long
+legs on the sill of the open window. He was
+holding a seven-foot telescope to his eyes, its
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+other end resting upon his toes. He was looking
+at two steamboats puffing hard up the
+Potomac. What news did they bring? As the
+boy knocked, the President, without turning his
+head, called out: "Come in, Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>Tom opened the door and as he did so John
+Hay pushed excitedly by him, a telegram in his
+hand, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. President, what do you think Smith of
+Illinois has done? He is behaving very badly."</p>
+
+<p>"Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of
+meanness, but I'm too busy to quarrel with him.
+Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll
+never hear of it."</p>
+
+<p>He knew how to disregard little men and their
+little deeds.</p>
+
+<p>That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and
+Hay had asked him to spend the evening, after
+the household had gone to bed, in their office.
+Crackers and cheese and a jug of milk were the
+refreshments and John Hay's talk was the delight
+of the little gathering. Midnight had just
+struck when the door opened quietly and the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+President slipped into the room. Never had
+Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he
+had on was a short nightshirt and carpet-slippers.
+He was smiling as he entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the
+'Biglow Papers.' That fellow Lowell knows
+how to put things. Just hear this. He puts
+these Yankee words into Jeff Davis's mouth:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Consists in triumphantly gettin' away!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And here," continued the President, utterly unaware
+of the oddity of his garb, "and here is a
+good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the
+'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear
+this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'An' why should we kick up a muss<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">About the Pres'dent's proclamation?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ef we don't like emancipation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The right to be a cussed fool<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is safe from all devices human.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's common (ez a gin'l rule)<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To every critter born o' woman.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly
+unconscious," says Hay's diary, "that he, with
+his short shirt hanging about his long legs and
+setting out behind like the tail feathers of an
+enormous ostrich, was infinitely funnier than
+anything in the book he was laughing at."</p>
+
+<p>"That fellow Lowell" was James Russell
+Lowell, an American critic, poet, and essayist,
+later our Minister to England.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>One day Tom had a welcome letter from his
+father, saying he was on his way home and
+would be in Washington almost as soon as his
+letter was. The letter was written from St.
+Petersburg and had upon its envelope Russian
+stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp
+before. He showed the envelope as a curiosity
+to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's
+eager request gave it to him. Tom happened
+to lunch with the Lincoln family that day. Tad
+produced his new possession at the table, crying
+to his mother:</p>
+
+<p>"See what Tommy has given me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs.
+Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>"My father," the boy answered. "He sent
+me good news. He's coming home right away."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father sent me good news, too," said
+Mr. Lincoln from the head of the table.</p>
+
+<p>"What was that?" interjected the first lady
+of the land.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall know soon, my dear." Then the
+beautiful smile came to the President's firm lips
+and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said
+to Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans
+could give to a fellow-citizen was to decree that
+he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That
+can be said of your father now. He has deserved
+well of the Republic. Before long, the
+world will know what he has done. Until then,"
+he turned as he spoke to his wife, "until then
+we'd better not talk about it."</p>
+
+<p>This talk was in early June of 1863. By September
+the whole world, or at least all the governments
+of the world, did know what Mr.
+Strong had done after Lincoln sent him abroad.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+The whole world saw the symbol of his work,
+without in many cases knowing what the symbol
+signified. That symbol was the famous visit
+of the Russian fleet to New York City in September
+of 1863.</p>
+
+<p>The governing classes of both England and
+France were in favor of the South during our
+Civil War. The English and French Empires
+were jealous of the growth of the Republic and
+wished to see it torn asunder. France hoped to
+establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France,
+if the Confederacy won. England needed
+Southern cotton and could not get it unless our
+blockade of Southern ports was broken. The
+people of both France and England had little to
+say as to what their governments would do.
+Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side
+and the mass of Englishmen were also on our
+side, but the latter were helpless in the grip of
+their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their
+belief, however, splendidly. In the height of
+what was called "the cotton famine," when the
+Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+fleecy staple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives
+were facing actual starvation, a tiny group
+of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas
+Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout
+Lancashire on behalf of the Northern cause.
+There was to be a great meeting at Manchester,
+in the heart of the stricken district. The cost
+of hall, lights, advertising, etc., was considerable.
+Someone suggested charging an admission
+fee. It was objected that the unemployed
+poor could not afford to pay anything. Finally
+it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with
+placards saying that anyone who chose could
+give something towards the cost of the meeting.
+When it was over, the baskets were found to
+hold over four bushels of pennies and ha'pennies.
+The starving poor of Lancashire had
+given them, not out of their abundance, but out
+of their grinding want.</p>
+
+<p>This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.</p>
+
+<p>The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon
+the Little," as the great French poet and novelist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+Victor Hugo, called him, asked England
+to have the English fleet join the French fleet
+in breaking our blockade and in making Slavery
+triumph. England hesitated before the proposed
+crime, but finally said it was inclined to
+follow the Napoleonic lead, if Russia would do
+likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote
+what is called a holographic letter, that is, a letter
+entirely in his own handwriting, to the then
+Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his
+fleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>Russia was then a despotism, with one despot.
+It was not only a European and an Asiatic
+Power, but an American Power as well, for it
+did not sell Alaska to the United States until
+1867. Despotism does not like to see Liberty
+flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty
+is a contagious thing. Might not the
+American example infect Alaska, spread through
+Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne
+at St. Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the
+work of our Minister to Russia and of our extra-official<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+representative there, the Hon. Thomas
+Strong, Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian
+Czar wrote the French Emperor that the
+Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed
+attack upon the Northern navy, but that
+on the contrary it was about to sail for New
+York in order that its commander might place
+it at the disposal of the President of the United
+States in case any Franco-English squadron appeared
+with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of the traditional
+friendship between America and Russia. It explains
+why New York and Washington went
+mad in those September days of 1863 in welcoming
+the Russian fleet and the Russian officers.
+It explains why Lincoln told Tom that
+his father had "deserved well of the Republic."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was at about this time that John Hay once
+asked Tom:</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of the Tycoon by this
+time, my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were names
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+his rather irreverent secretaries had given Lincoln.
+Nevertheless they both reverenced and
+loved him. Their nicknames for him were born
+of affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite
+know how to put into fitting words all he felt
+about his chief. But John Hay, who was never
+much interested in the opinion on anything of
+anybody but himself, went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods
+Jupiter. He sits here and wields both the
+machinery of government and the bolts of war.
+A backwoods Jupiter!"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Goes to Vicksburg&mdash;Morgan's Raid&mdash;Gen.
+Basil W. Duke Captures Tom&mdash;Gettysburg&mdash;Gen.
+Robert E. Lee Gives Tom
+His Breakfast&mdash;In Libby Prison&mdash;Lincoln's
+Speech at Gettysburg.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Late in June of 1863 Tom again left General
+Grant's headquarters. These were then in
+the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The
+long siege of that town, held by a considerable
+Confederate force under General Pemberton,
+was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at
+the death, but that could not be. He had been
+sent with dispatches to Grant and this time
+there had been no suggestion by the President
+that he might fight a bit if he felt like it. So he
+was now again on his way to Washington. He
+was a long time getting there, nearly a year; and
+this was the way of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant
+and daring Confederate cavalry commander, got
+his troops across the Cumberland River at
+Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats
+and canoes lashed together. None but he and
+his second in command knew whither the proposed
+raid was to lead. People about their
+starting-point thought Morgan was merely
+reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills
+Creek went along uninvited, because he wished
+to buy some salt at a "salt-lick" a few miles
+north of Burkesville and within the Union lines.
+He expected to go and come back safely with
+Morgan's men. After he had been through a
+few marches and more fights and saw no chance
+of ever getting home, he plaintively said: "I
+swar ef I wouldn't give all the salt in Kaintucky
+to stand once more safe and sound on the banks
+of Calfkills Creek."</p>
+
+<p>Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had
+not reckoned upon John H. Morgan, general
+C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward
+from Cairo. No one dreamed that Morgan
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+would dare do what he did do. The Confederate
+cavalry rode northward across Kentucky,
+with one or two skirmishes per day to keep it
+busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for the
+South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati.
+It threw southern Indiana and Ohio into
+a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but
+damage such as the laws of civilized warfare
+permit. Morgan's gallant men were Americans.
+No woman or child was harmed; no man not
+under arms was killed. Military stores were
+seized or destroyed, food and supplies were
+taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn
+up, and a clean sweep was made of all the
+horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry
+was in sad need of new horses. The Union officer
+who led the pursuit of Morgan said, in his
+official report: "His system of horse-stealing
+was perfect." But so far as war can be a Christian
+thing Morgan made it so.</p>
+
+<p>Now the railroad which suffered most from
+the Confederate raid was the one upon which
+Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+taken came to a sudden stop at a way-station in
+Ohio, where a red flag was furiously waved.</p>
+
+<p>"Morgan's torn up the track just ahead,"
+shouted the man who held the flag.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more could be learned there and
+then. Of course the raiders had cut the wires.
+By and by fugitives began to straggle in from
+the eastward, farmers who had fled from their
+farms driving their horses before them, villagers
+who feared the sack and ruin that really
+came to no one, women and children on foot,
+on horseback, in carts, in wagons, in buggies.
+Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell,
+but nobody really knew anything. Tom questioned
+each newcomer. Piecing together what
+they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept
+northward; that the track had been destroyed
+for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that the
+quickest way for him to get to Washington was
+to walk across the short gap and get a train or
+an engine on the other side. He could find no
+one who would go with him, even as a guide,
+but well-meant directions were showered upon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten
+warnings to one direction. The railroad, however,
+was his best guide-post. He started eastward,
+riding a horse he had bought from one of
+the fugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen
+hands high, but the price Tom paid for him
+was a good deal higher than the horse.</p>
+
+<p>All went well at first. He soon reached the
+place where the Confederates had wrecked the
+railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every
+little bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails
+and ties had been torn up, the ties massed together
+and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the
+burning ties and twisted by the heat into sinuous
+snakes of iron. Occasionally a hot rail had
+been twisted about a tree until it became a mere
+set of loops, never to serve again the purpose
+for which it had been made. The telegraph
+poles had been chopped down and the wires
+were tangled into a broken and useless web.
+In some places the rails had entirely disappeared.
+Doubtless these had been thrown into
+the little streams which the burned bridges had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as if
+some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake
+had co-operated in its destruction. It
+would be many a day before a train could again
+run upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a
+railroad was almost as perfect as his system of
+horse-stealing.</p>
+
+<p>A country-road wandered along beside where
+the railroad had been, so Tom's progress was
+easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke,
+but the little streams were shallow and could be
+forded without difficulty, for June had been
+rainless and hot that year. The few houses the
+boy passed were shut-up and deserted. The
+fear of Morgan had swept the countryside bare
+of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the
+unnatural solitude of a region normally full of
+human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to
+see a human being. He had now left the gap
+in the railroad well behind, but he was still in
+an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as
+dusk came, he rejoiced to see the gleam of a
+candle in a farmhouse not far ahead. He was so
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+sure Morgan's whole command was by this time
+far to the northward that he galloped gayly up
+to the house&mdash;and, perforce, presented to the
+Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the
+entire raid.</p>
+
+<p>The gleam had come from a back window.
+The whole front of the house was closed, but
+that is common in rustic places and Tom was
+sure he would find the family in the kitchen,
+with both food and news to give him. Instead
+he found just outside the kitchen, as he and
+the big bay turned the corner, a group of dismounted
+cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A
+mounted officer was beside them. Two
+mounted men, one carrying a guidon, was
+nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to
+turn and run, and bent close to his saddle to
+escape the bullets he expected. But one of the
+men was already clutching the left rein. The
+horse reared and plunged and kicked. The
+rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from
+the saddle and landed on his hands and knees before
+the group. It was rather an abject position
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+in which to be captured. The Southerners
+roared with good-humored laughter as they
+picked him up. Even the officer smiled at the
+boy's plight.</p>
+
+<p>Before the men, on a table outside the
+kitchen door, lay a half-dozen appetizing apple
+pies, evidently of that day's baking. The
+farmer's wife, before she fled, had put them
+there with the hope that they might propitiate
+the raiders, if they came, and so might save
+the house from destruction. She did not know
+that Morgan's men did not make war that way.
+Those of them who had come there suspected
+a trap in this open offer of the pies.</p>
+
+<p>"They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, when they were hesitating
+between hunger and fear, Tom butted in upon
+them and was seized.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a
+second soldier when the little scurry of the capture
+was over. This met instant approval and
+Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+to the table when the officer spoke, with
+a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend
+as well as the commander of his rude soldiery.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a
+pie."</p>
+
+<p>He bit with strong white teeth through the
+savory morsel and detected no foreign taint.
+The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of
+them down Tom's hungry throat. Then the
+officer spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that
+uniform somewhere, didn't you? You're too
+young to wear it by right. Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He was a man of medium height, spare but
+splendidly built, with his face bronzed by long
+campaigning in the open air, regular features,
+piercing black eyes that twinkled, but could
+shoot fire, waving black hair above a beautiful
+brow, dazzling white teeth&mdash;altogether a vivid
+man. His mustache and imperial were black.
+He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln was
+plain, yet there was between the two, the one
+the son of a Southern aristocrat, the other the
+son of a Southern poor white, an elusive resemblance.
+It may have been the innate nobleness
+and kindliness of both men. It may have
+been the Kentucky blood which was their common
+portion. At any rate, the resemblance was
+there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_210.jpg" width="600" height="382" alt="GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES" title="" />
+  <span class="font07a">From &quot;Famous Adventures of the Civil War.&quot; The Century Co.</span><br />
+  <span class="caption font08">GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tom took one glance at the chief of his captors
+and then saluted with real respect as he
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant,
+U. S. A."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it.
+We don't make war on boys. If you had been,
+as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I
+would have turned you loose at once. Now I
+must take you with us."</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with
+Tom, disarmed but unbound, in the middle of
+it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards
+ahead of it the officer rode with a free bridle
+rein, chatting with an aide beside him. He rode
+like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the
+finest soldiers he had ever seen. And so he was.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+He was Gen. Basil W. Duke, brother-in-law,
+second in command, and historian of General
+Morgan. He was a soldier and a gentleman,
+if ever God made one.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost constant
+fighting, much of it with home-guards and
+militia who feared Morgan too much to fight
+him hard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers
+who fought as good Americans should, Morgan
+crossed the Ohio again into the comparative
+safety of West Virginia. He took across with
+him his few prisoners, including Tom. Then,
+finding that the mass of his brigade had been
+cut off from crossing, the Confederate general
+detached a dozen men to take the prisoners
+south while he himself with most of the troopers
+with him recrossed to where danger beckoned.
+On July 26, 1862, at Salineville, Ohio, not far
+from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered,
+he surrendered with the 364 men
+who were all that were left of his gallant band.
+Our government made the mistake of treating
+him and his officers not as captured soldiers but
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+as arrested bandits. They were sent to the Ohio
+State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a daring
+escape not long afterwards. He made his
+way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile,
+Tom had been taken to captivity on that same
+soil. He was in Libby Prison, at the Confederate
+Capital, Richmond, Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>His journey thither had been long and hard
+and uneventful, except for the gradual loss of
+the few things he had with him. His pistol
+and his money had been taken when he was
+first captured. Now, as he was turned over to
+one Confederate command after another, bit by
+bit his belongings disappeared. His boots went
+early in the journey. His cap was plucked from
+his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by
+a Confederate spy, who meant to use it in getting
+inside the Union lines. When he was finally
+turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief
+Confederate army, commanded by Gen. Robert
+E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and
+had nothing to wear except an old Confederate
+gray shirt and the ragged remains of what had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+once been a pair of Confederate gray trousers,
+held about his waist by a string. He was
+hungry and tired and unbelievably dirty. The
+one good meal he had had on his long march
+had been given him at Frederick, Maryland, by
+a delightful old lady whom Tom always believed
+to be Barbara Frietchie.</p>
+
+<p>It was August now. On July 4, Grant had
+taken Vicksburg and Meade had defeated Lee
+at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy
+had begun to dawn. None the less Robert E.
+Lee's tattered legions, forced back from the
+great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn
+defense of Richmond, trusted, worshiped, and
+loved their great general.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Meade, the Union commander, by excess of
+caution, had let Lee escape after Gettysburg.
+He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln
+was deeply grieved.</p>
+
+<p>"We had them within our grasp," he said,
+throwing out his long arms. "We had only to
+stretch forth our hands and they were ours.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+And nothing I could say or do could make our
+army move."</p>
+
+<p>Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of
+New York, a gallant fighter, one of the corps
+commanders who had tried to spur the too-prudent
+Meade into attacking, came to the
+White House.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly
+asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Because nobody stopped him."</p>
+
+<p>And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been
+stopped, the war would have ended nearly two
+years before it did end. It is a wonderful proof
+of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that
+though he repeated: "Our army held the war
+in the hollow of their hand and they would not
+close it," he added at once: "Still, I am very,
+very grateful to Meade for the great service he
+did at Gettysburg."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Lee was a son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee,
+the daring cavalry commander of the Revolution
+and the author of the immortal phrase about
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+Washington: "First in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his countrymen." Robert
+E. Lee had had an honorable career at West
+Point and in the war with Mexico and was Lieutenant-Colonel
+of Engineers in the United
+States army when the war between the States
+began. He loved his country and her flag, but
+he had been bred in the belief that his loyalty
+was due first to Virginia rather than to the
+Union. When the Old Dominion, after first
+refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut.-Col. Lee,
+U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great
+efforts were made to keep him on the Union
+side. It is said he was offered the chief command
+of our army. Sadly he did his duty as he
+saw it. He put aside the offers made him, resigned
+his commission, and left Arlington for
+Richmond.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union soldiers,
+crowns a hill on the Virginia side of the
+Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its
+feet. The valley of the Potomac spreads before
+it. From the portico of the old-fashioned house,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+a portico upheld by many columns, one can look
+towards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but
+hid from sight by clustering hills. The house
+was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke
+Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was
+his aide at Yorktown in 1783, and grandson of
+Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in
+1858, directed in his will that his slaves should
+be freed in five years. Lee, his son-in-law and
+executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and
+gave them passes through the Confederate lines.
+He had already given freedom to his own slaves.
+Long before the war, he wrote from Fort
+Brown, Texas, to his wife: "In this enlightened
+age there are few, I believe, but will
+acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a
+moral and political evil in any country....
+I think it is a greater evil to the white than the
+black race."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_218.jpg" width="550" height="700" alt="Arlington" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08"><span class="smcap">Arlington</span></span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">Copyright by Underwood &amp; Underwood. New York.</span><br />
+  </span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four
+Virginians. He ranks with George Washington,
+George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No
+praise could be greater. When "the Lost
+Cause," as the Southerners fondly call their
+great fight for what they believed to be right,
+reeled down to decisive defeat, the general
+whom they had worshiped in war proved himself
+a great patriot in peace. His last years were
+passed as President of Washington and Lee
+University in Virginia. Long before his death,
+his name was honored by every fair-minded
+man on the Northern as well as the Southern
+side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the
+noblest eulogies of him was voiced upon the
+centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, at Washington
+and Lee University, by Charles Francis
+Adams. The best blood of Massachusetts honored
+the best blood of Virginia. Our country
+was then again one country and all of it was
+free.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Tom Strong was standing with a group of
+other prisoners, all Northern officers, under
+guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at
+Lee's headquarters. These were upon a little
+knoll, from which the eye ranged over the long
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush
+that gave such shelter as they could to the
+ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions of the
+Confederacy. It was early in the morning.
+Scanty breakfasts were cooking over a thousand
+fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters,
+there came an odor of bubbling coffee that made
+the prisoners' hunger the harder to bear. The
+whole camp was strangely silent.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Then, in the distance, there was a storm of
+cheering. It gained in sound and shrillness.
+The soldiers poured out of their tents by the
+thousand. Those who had hats waved them;
+those who had not waved their arms; and every
+throat joined in the famous "rebel yell."
+Through the shouting thousands rode a half-dozen
+superbly mounted horsemen, at their
+head a gallant figure, with close-cropped white
+beard, whiskers, and mustache, seated upon a
+superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the
+famous Traveler.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 595px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_222.jpg" width="595" height="407" alt="GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the
+Confederacy. Even his iron self-control almost
+broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which
+he was hailed by the survivors of the gallant
+gray army he had launched in vain against the
+bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush
+almost as red as that of youth crept across his
+pale cheeks and a mist crept into his eyes. His
+charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll
+where the Union prisoners were huddled together.
+As his glance swept over them, he
+noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy
+who stood in the front line. Many a boy as
+young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks
+Lee led. Many an old man bent under the
+weight of his gun in those ranks. The Confederacy,
+by this time almost bled white, was said
+to have "robbed the cradle and the grave" to
+keep its armies at fighting strength. The North,
+with many more millions of people, had not been
+driven to do this. Tom was one of the few
+boys in the armies of the Union.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked
+Traveler before the group.</p>
+
+<p>"Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Your rank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Second-lieutenant, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you captured?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan."</p>
+
+<p>Tom was faint with hunger as he was put
+through this little catechism. As he made the
+last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner,
+Col. Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught
+and held him. Lee misunderstood the movement.
+His lip curled with disgust as he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;a boy&mdash;drunk?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose
+and a half-dozen others answered for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not drunk, but hungry, General."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian
+replied, "but at least you shall be hungry no
+longer. My staff and I will postpone our breakfast
+until you have eaten. Pompey!" An old
+negro came out of the cook-tent. He had been
+one of George Washington Parke Custis's
+slaves. When freed, he had refused to leave
+"Marse Robert," whose cook he had become.
+He wore the remains of a Confederate uniform.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+"Pompey, give these gentlemen our breakfast.
+We will wait."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;Marse Robert, I'se dun got real
+coffee dis mornin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Our involuntary guests," said Lee with a
+gentle smile as he turned to the prisoners, "will,
+I hope, enjoy the real coffee."</p>
+
+<p>And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread
+and bacon that came with it were nectar and
+ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only
+fleck upon the feast was when one of them, in
+his hurry to be served, spoke rudely to old
+Pompey. The negro turned away without a
+word, but his feelings were deeply hurt. When
+the Union officer hurled after him a word of
+foul abuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand
+upon his ragged uniform, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah,
+but you must 'speck de unicorn."</p>
+
+<p>After that the "unicorn" and the fine old
+negro who wore it were both amply respected.
+When everything in sight had been eaten, the
+prisoners were ordered to fall in line. Their
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+guards stood in front of the little column, beside
+it, behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"Forward, march!"</p>
+
+<p>They marched southward for a few miles,
+tramped through the swarming, somber streets
+of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its
+doors closed behind them with a clang. Captivity
+in the open had been hard enough to bear.
+This new kind of captivity, within doors, with
+barred windows, was to be harder yet. Tom
+was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln
+made his wonderful Gettysburg speech.</p>
+
+<p>The battlefield of Gettysburg was made
+sacred by the men who died there for Freedom's
+sake and also by the men who died there
+for the sake of what they honestly thought were
+the rights of the Slave States. Congress made
+the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to
+be dedicated to its great memories on November
+19, 1863. The morning before a special train
+left Washington for Gettysburg. It carried
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+President Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward,
+two other members of the Cabinet, the two private
+secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished
+Pennsylvanian, Wayne MacVeagh,
+later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our
+Minister to Italy, and others of lesser note.
+Among those latter was the Hon. Thomas
+Strong, who had been made one of the party by
+Lincoln's kind thoughtfulness. It was he who
+afterwards told his son the story of Lincoln's
+Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the moment,
+but long since recognized as one of the
+masterpieces of English literature.</p>
+
+<p>The little town of Gettysburg was in a ferment
+that November night, when the President's
+train arrived. It was full of people and
+bands and whisky. Crowds strolled through
+the streets, serenading statesmen and calling for
+speeches with an American crowd's insatiable
+appetite for talky-talk. "MacVeagh," says
+Hay, "made a most beautiful and touching
+speech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian
+made a most disgusting and drunken
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+speech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of
+his party of course had no share in all this brawling
+merriment. He and Seward had talked
+briefly to shouting thousands early in the
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>On the way up from Washington, the President
+had sat in a sad abstraction. He took little
+part in the talk that buzzed about him. Once,
+when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming
+about the way the Southern magnates were misleading
+the Southern masses, Lincoln said with
+a weary smile one of those sayings of his which
+will never be forgotten. "You can fool part of
+the people all the time; you can fool all the
+people part of the time; but you can't fool all
+the people all the time." Then he became silent
+again. He did not know what he was to say
+on the morrow. The chief oration was to be
+by Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a trained
+orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase.
+He had been Governor of Massachusetts, Minister
+to England, Secretary of State, United
+States Senator. He was handsome, distinguished,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+graceful. The ungainly President felt
+that he and his words would be but a foil to
+Everett and his sonorous sentences, sentences
+that were sure to come rolling in like "the
+surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett had
+graduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log-cabin.
+Both must face on the morrow the same
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>The President searched his pockets and found
+the stub of a pencil. From the aisle of the car,
+he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper,
+thrown there by Seward, who had just opened
+a package of books in the opposite seat. He
+penciled a few words, bent his head upon his
+great knotted hand in thought, then penciled a
+few more. Then he struck out some words and
+added others, read his completed task and did
+not find it good. He shook his head, stuffed the
+brown wrapping paper into his pocket, and took
+up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven the next morning, from an open-air
+platform on the battlefield, Everett held the vast
+audience through two hours of fervent speech,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bitterness
+against the men he called "the Southern
+rebels." His speech was literature and his
+voice was music. As the thunder of his peroration
+ended a thunderstorm of applause began.
+When it, too, died away, there shambled to the
+front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed
+man, contrasting sharply and in every way disadvantageously
+with Everett of the silver
+tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too.
+He tried to pitch his voice to reach all that vast
+audience and his first words came in a squeaking
+falsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lincoln
+stopped speaking. There were a few seconds
+of painful silence. Then he came to his
+own. With a voice enriched by a passionate
+sincerity, he began again and finished his Gettysburg
+speech. Here it is:</p>
+
+<p>"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers
+brought forth on this Continent a new nation,
+conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition
+that all men are created equal. Now we
+are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so
+dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a
+great battlefield of that war. We have come to
+dedicate a portion of it as a final resting-place
+for those who here gave their lives that that
+nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
+proper that we should do this. But in a larger
+sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
+we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men,
+living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated
+it far above our poor power to add or
+to detract. The world will little note nor long
+remember what we say here, but it can never
+forget what they did here. It is for us, the living,
+rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
+work which they who fought here have
+thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
+to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
+before us&mdash;that from these honored dead we
+take increased devotion to that cause for which
+they here gave the last full measure of devotion&mdash;that
+we here highly resolve that these
+dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+under God, shall have a new birth of freedom;
+and that government of the people, by the people,
+for the people shall not perish from the
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>The President ceased to speak. There was no
+thunderstorm of applause such as had followed
+Everett's studied sentences and polished periods.
+There was no applause at all. One long stir of
+emotion throbbed through the silent throng, but
+did not break the silence. Then the multitude
+dispersed, talking of what Everett had said,
+thinking of what Lincoln had said. Most of the
+notables on the platform thought the President's
+speech a failure. Time has shown that it was
+one of the greatest things even he ever did.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written
+in her short story "The Perfect Tribute"
+the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy
+who would know what manner of man our
+Abraham Lincoln was should read "The Perfect
+Tribute." One of the characters in the
+story, a dying Confederate officer, says to Lincoln
+without knowing to whom he was speaking:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+"The speech so went home to the hearts
+of all those thousands of people that when it
+ended it was as if the whole audience held its
+breath&mdash;there was not a hand lifted to applaud.
+One might as well applaud the Lord's prayer&mdash;it
+would be sacrilege. And they all felt it&mdash;down
+to the lowest. There was a long minute
+of reverent silence, no sound from all that great
+throng&mdash;it seems to me, an enemy, that it was
+the most perfect tribute that has ever been paid
+by any people to any orator."</p>
+
+<p>The Gettysburg speech was not for the moment.
+It is for all time.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom is Hungry&mdash;He Learns to "Spoon" by
+Squads&mdash;The Bullet at the Window&mdash;Working
+on the Tunnel&mdash;"Rat Hell"&mdash;The
+Risk of the Roll-call&mdash;What Happened
+to Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy&mdash;Tom
+in Libby Prison&mdash;Hans Rolf Attends
+Him&mdash;Hans Refuses to Escape&mdash;The Flight
+Through the Tunnel&mdash;Free, but How to
+Stay So?</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="pmb2">When the war between the States began,
+Libby &amp; Son were a thriving firm of merchants
+in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse,
+which fronted on Carey Street and extended
+back over land that sloped down to
+another street, which occupied all the space between
+the southern wall of the warehouse and
+the canal that here bordered the James River.
+The building was full before the war of that
+rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray praises in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+"The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands
+of the Old Dominion can no longer produce.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_235.jpg" width="600" height="468" alt="LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to
+eat. The whole South was hungry. When Confederate
+soldiers were starving, Confederate
+prisoners could not expect to fatten. Nor was
+this the only evil thing. The prison was indescribably
+unclean. The cellar and the lower
+floor, upon which no prisoners were allowed
+except in the dining-room in the middle of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats
+which climbed upstairs at night and nipped
+mouthfuls of human flesh when they could.
+There was no furniture. The prisoners slept on
+the floor, so crowded together that they had to
+lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all.
+They had divided themselves into squads and
+had chosen commanders. Tom found himself
+assigned to Squad Number Four. The first
+night, when he had at last sunk into uncomfortable
+sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened
+by the sharp command of the captain of
+his group:</p>
+
+<p>"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to
+spoon! One, two, spoon!"</p>
+
+<p>The squad flopped over, from one weary
+bruised side to another. It seemed to the worn-out
+boy that he had just "spooned," when again
+he waked to hear the queer command and again
+he flopped. This was a sample of many nights.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Tom had one of the
+narrow escapes of his life. He was leaning
+against one of the barred windows, looking at
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+the broad valley of the James, when he was suddenly
+seized violently by the arm and jerked to
+one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip
+that had been laid upon it and his knees, sticking
+through his torn trousers, had been barked
+against the floor, as he was dragged back, but
+he turned to the man who had laid hold of him,
+not with anger, but with thankfulness. For, at
+the second he had been seized a bullet had
+whizzed through the window just where his
+head had been. If he had not been jerked away,
+the Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended
+then and there.</p>
+
+<p>If Tom was not angry, the man was. He
+glared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You little fool, don't you know better than
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>When the boy heard himself called a fool, he
+did become angry, but after all this big person
+had saved his life, even if he did call him names.
+So he swallowed his wrath&mdash;which is an excellent
+thing to do with wrath&mdash;and answered
+quite meekly:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look
+out of the windows?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't anybody told you that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool."
+Tom smiled and nodded in acceptance of the
+implied apology. "The sentries outside have
+orders to fire whenever they see anybody at a
+window. Last week two men were killed that
+way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when
+I saw you looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but
+it's better to be hurt than to be killed. Shake."</p>
+
+<p>The boy wrung the big man's hand and
+thanked him for his timely aid. They strolled
+together up and down the big room now deserted
+by most of its occupants, who had begun
+below their patient wait for dinner. The man
+was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking.
+And he needed an intelligent boy in his business.
+Just then Colonel Rose's business was to
+escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel
+did not think so. Yet it had been often tried
+and had always failed. When several hundred
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+intelligent Americans are shut up, through no
+fault of their own, in a most unpleasant prison,
+with nothing to do, they are quite certain to
+find something to do by planning an escape and
+by trying to make the plan a reality. One trouble
+about the former plans at Libby had been
+that the whole mass of prisoners had known
+about them. There must always be leaders in
+such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had
+taken the crowd into their confidence. Now
+there were Confederate spies in the crowd, sham
+prisoners. The former plots had always been
+found out. Once or twice they had been allowed
+to ripen and the first fugitives had found their
+first free breath their last, for they had stumbled
+into a trap and had been instantly shot
+down upon the threshold of freedom. More
+often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited
+away without warning and probably shot, while
+their scared followers had been left to despair.
+Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts.
+He planned along new lines. He decided
+upon absolute secrecy, except for the men
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+who were actually to do the work. This work
+involved a good deal of burrowing into holes
+that must be particularly narrow at first and
+never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get
+into a hole where a stout man could not go.
+Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men
+could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human
+mole. He had picked Tom Strong for the job.
+Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy
+of the plan and asked his aid. Tom's shining
+eyes threatened to tell how important the talk
+was.</p>
+
+<p>"Act as though you were uninterested, my
+boy," Colonel Rose warned him. "Keep your
+eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."</p>
+
+<p>So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at
+all his natural appearance. He studied the
+floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it.
+He yawned so prodigiously as to attract the
+attention he was trying to escape. An amateur
+actor is apt to overact his part. And all the
+time he was listening with a passionate interest
+to Colonel Rose's story of the way to freedom.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+Of course he was glad to try to help make the
+hope a fact.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">That night the work began. The kitchen
+dining-hall was deserted from 10 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> to 4 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>,
+so it was selected as the field of operation. Below
+the kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No
+opening could be made into that without instant
+detection. On the same floor with the kitchen
+and just east of it was the hospital. That room
+must be avoided too. Below the hospital was
+an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and
+all full of squealing rats. It was called "Rat
+Hell." Outside of it was a small sewer that
+led to a larger one which passed under the canal
+and emptied its contents into the James River.
+These sewers were to be the highway to freedom.
+The first step must be to get from the
+kitchen to Rat Hell. To do this it was necessary
+to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed
+"S," like this:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_241.jpg" width="60" height="48" alt="Reverse S" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="p1">The upper end of the secret passage was to
+open into the kitchen fireplace, the lower into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the
+secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had
+just one tool, an old knife. One of them owned
+a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress
+and sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new
+use now. It was spread upon the kitchen hearth
+in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was
+pulled down upon it. Then the mortar between
+a dozen bricks at the back of the fireplace was
+cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out
+of place. This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton,
+Colonel Rose's chief assistant. He carefully
+replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of
+soot over them. He and Rose crept upstairs,
+carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them, and
+slept through what was left of the night. The
+next day was an anxious time for them. When
+they went down to the kitchen, where a couple
+of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to
+them that the marks of their toil by night were
+too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their
+nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody
+saw what had been done. That night, as soon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton
+again removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn
+stone behind the fireplace. Fortunately
+the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were
+pried out of the loosened mortar.</p>
+
+<p>Now came Tom's chance to serve the good
+cause. He was a proud boy, a few nights later,
+when he was permitted to go down to the
+kitchen with the Colonel and the Major, in order
+that he might creep into the hole they had made
+and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air.
+He laid upon his stomach in the upper part of
+the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as
+vigorously as it could be plied without making
+a tell-tale noise. When he had widened the passage,
+one of the men took his place in it and
+drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose
+in his eagerness got into the opening before
+the lower part of it had been sufficiently
+enlarged and stuck there. It was only by
+a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom finally
+dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping
+for breath. Finally, after many nights,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen
+from about a box of food sent a prisoner,
+had been made into a rope ladder. It was hung
+from the edge of the hole. The three crept cautiously
+down to Rat Hell. This haven did
+not seem much like heaven. With squeals of
+wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the
+intruders fled up their ladder. They were no
+match for a myriad rats. Moreover they feared
+lest the noise would bring into the basement the
+sentry whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk
+outside. So they fled, taking their rope-ladder
+with them, and again, as ever, they replaced
+the bricks and painted them with the
+friendly soot.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The next night, armed this time with sticks
+of wood, they fought it out with the rats and
+made them understand their masters had come
+to stay. Fortunately the fight was short. It
+was noisy and the sentry came. But when he
+opened the door from the street and looked into
+the darkness of the basement, the Union officers
+were safely hid under the straw and only a few
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the
+tunnel to the sewer could be begun. Colonel
+Rose had long since decided, by forbidden,
+stealthy glances from an upper window, just
+where it was to be. The measurement made
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+above was now made below, the straw against
+the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old
+knife, or what was left of it after its battle with
+brick and stone, was put to the easier task of
+digging dirt.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 474px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_245.jpg" width="474" height="700" alt="FIGHTING THE RATS" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08 smcap">FIGHTING THE RATS</span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">From &quot;Famous Adventures of the Civil War.&quot;<br />
+  The Century Co.</span>
+  </span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before
+the tunnel was five feet long, the air in it became
+so foul that candles went out in it. So
+would the lives of the diggers have gone out if
+they had stayed in it long. Five of the fifteen
+now went down each night, so that everybody
+had two nights' rest out of three. But the progress
+made was pitifully slow. Man after man
+was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous
+pit, almost at his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton
+had been brought out and was being
+fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom,
+the boy whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had thought of that obvious plan.
+Like most great inventions it was simple&mdash;when
+seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at
+the end of the tunnel fanning air into it with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+their hats. But even so, many a candle went
+out and many a digger was pulled out, black in
+the face and almost dead.</p>
+
+<p>The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to
+reach the sewer. It sloped too far down. It
+got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton
+was caught in it by the rush of water and
+almost drowned. So much work had to be done
+over again. Then came a crushing blow. When
+the small sewer was finally reached, it proved
+to be too small for a man to pass through it.
+But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by
+bit taken off. When this had been done to
+within a few feet of the main sewer, two men
+were detailed to cut their way through. The
+next night was set as the time for the escape.
+None of the thirteen slept while the two were
+cutting away the final obstacle. The thirteen
+did not sleep the next night either, for it was
+36 hours before the two came back with their
+heartbreaking news. They had found the last
+few feet of the sewer-lining made of seasoned
+oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+poor old knife that had served them so long and
+so well, could not even scratch the toughened
+oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had
+ended in failure.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new
+problem. There were two roll-calls every day,
+at 9 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> and 4 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> How were the two absent
+men to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in
+one long line and everybody was counted. If
+the count were two short, there would be swift
+search for the missing. And the beginning of
+the tunnel was hidden only by a few bundles of
+straw. This was before they knew the tunnel
+was useless, but had they known it they would
+have been scarcely less anxious, for its discovery
+would have made all future attempts to
+escape more dangerous and more doubtful.
+However, the roll-call problem was safely
+solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper
+end of the line and two of them, as soon as they
+had answered to their own names, dropped back,
+crouched down, crept behind the backs of many
+men to the other end of the line, slipped into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+place, and there answered for the missing men,
+without detection. In the afternoon, they came
+very near being caught. Some of the other
+prisoners thought this was being done just for
+fun, to confuse the Confederate clerk who called
+the roll, and thought they would take a hand in
+the fun too. There was so much dodging and
+double answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored
+little clerk, lost his temper and ordered
+the captives to stand in squads of ten to be
+counted. By this time he had called the roll
+half a dozen times, with results varying from
+minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his
+order, an order obedience to which would have
+certainly told the tale of two absentees, he went
+on to explain why he gave it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho';
+there's eight or ten of you-uns yere that ain't
+yere."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">This remarkable statement brought a shout
+of laughter from the Confederate guards. The
+prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself
+caught the contagion and also began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_250.jpg" width="600" height="185" alt="SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL" title="" />
+  <span class="caption">
+  <span class="font07a">From &quot;Famous Adventures of the Civil War.&quot; The Century Co.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span class="font08"><span class="smcap">SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL</span></span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span class="font07a">1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4. Chickamauga room (upper);
+    5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6. Dining-room; 7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg
+    room (upper); 9. Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11. East or "Rat Hell" cellar; 12.
+    South side Canal street, ten feet lower than Carey street; 13. North side Carey street, ground sloping
+    toward Canal; 14. Open lot; 15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17. Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James
+    River Towing Co.; 20. Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.<br /></span><br />
+  </span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">The dreaded order was laughed out of court
+and forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The two men crept upstairs early the next
+morning. The first night daylight had caught
+them at work, so they had not dared to return,
+but had stayed and had worked through the
+36 hours. They brought back the handle of
+the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and
+the depressing news of failure. But men who
+are fit for freedom do not cease to strive for it.
+If one road to it is blocked, they seek another.
+That very day, when the fifteen had gathered
+together and the two had told their tale, a pallor
+of despair crept over some of the faces, but
+it was dispelled by the flush of hope when
+Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south, we'll
+go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the
+vacant lot. We'll begin tonight."</p>
+
+<p>"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from
+the yard we'd have to come out on the street.
+There's a gas-lamp there&mdash;and a sentry."</p>
+
+<p>"We can put out the lamp and if need be the
+sentry," Colonel Rose answered, "when we get
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+to them. The thing now is to get there. We
+have fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my
+figures are correct. That's a job of a good many
+nights. This night will see the job begun."</p>
+
+<p>It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate
+had put in their way and with a big wooden
+spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with
+earth, was pulled out, emptied, and returned for
+a fresh load. A fortnight afterwards the officer
+who was digging that night made a mistake in
+levels and came too near the surface, which
+broke above him. Dismayed, he backed out and
+reported the blunder. The hole was in plain
+sight. Discovery was certain if it were not
+hidden. The story was but half told when
+Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the
+dirt and won't show. Stuff it into the hole so
+it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole.
+There he smeared some more dirt on the dirty
+blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care,
+and wriggled back. That morning at sunrise,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+when they peeked down from their prison windows
+into the eastern lot, even their straining
+eyes could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that
+showed. No casual glance would detect it. Of
+that they were sure.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Every few days new prisoners were thrust
+into Libby. Whenever this happened it was the
+custom that on the first evening they should
+tell whatever news they could of the outside
+world and of their own capture to the whole
+prison community. One morning the keeper
+of Libby receipted for another captured Yankee
+and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in the
+grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially,
+rather too cordially, to the greetings he
+received. It soon became understood that he
+was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee.
+Now neither side was overproud of the guerillas
+who infested the borderland, who sometimes
+called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates,
+and who did more stealing than fighting.
+So a rather cold shoulder was turned to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+the new captive, though the community's judgment
+upon him was deferred until after he
+should have been heard that evening. He
+seemed to try to warm the cold shoulder by a
+certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts
+at too familiar conversation. He began to talk
+to Colonel Rose, who soon shook him off, and
+to sundry other persons, among whom was
+Tom. The boy was not mature enough in the
+ways of the world to get rid of him. Johnson
+spent some hours with him and bored him to
+distraction. There was a mean uneasiness about
+him that repelled Tom. His face, an undeniably
+Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory,
+from time to time, but the boy could not place
+him and finally decided that this was merely a
+fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself
+was an unpleasant fact. He peered about
+and sidled about in a way that might be due
+only to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like
+it. He disliked Johnson more and more as the
+newcomer kept returning to him and growing
+more confidential. His talk was on various
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+natural enough themes, but it kept veering back
+to the chances of escape.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean to stay in this hole long,"
+Johnson whispered. "Pretty mean-spirited in
+all these fellows to just hang around here, without
+even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye
+say 'bout our trying it on, son?"</p>
+
+<p>The familiar address increased the boy's dislike
+of the man, but he was too young to realize
+that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He
+was old enough, however, to know how to keep
+his mouth shut about the pending plan for an
+escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out
+of him, but in the many half-confidential talks
+the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him, perhaps
+he had revealed something after all. Perhaps,
+however, the newcomer got such information
+as he did from other men in the secret.
+Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the
+plan of escape.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting
+men to tell his story,&mdash;a simple tale of
+Northern birth, of a Southern home, of belief
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+in the Union, of raising a guerilla company to
+fight for it, of capture in a raid on a Confederate
+supply-depot,&mdash;the unpleasant memory
+which had been troubling Tom came back and
+hammered at his head until suddenly, as if a
+flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw
+himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle
+Mose's slave-cabin, with this man's hand clutching
+his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside
+Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He
+was overseer on a plantation in Alabama. He
+'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."</p>
+
+<p>Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's
+eye fixed upon him. He had seen Tom whisper
+to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat
+down. Rose walked across the circle and sat
+beside him. He had snapped his fingers as he
+walked and half a dozen men had answered the
+signal and were now close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do before you turned
+guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that that's any of your darned
+business," said Johnson.</p>
+
+<p>"Answer me."</p>
+
+<p>The stronger man dominated the weaker.
+The spy sulkily said:</p>
+
+<p>"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."</p>
+
+<p>"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Ever do anything else in the South?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such
+questions?"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"Major Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, sir," answered the Major.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before
+the war?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"How long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven years."</p>
+
+<p>"Who kept the general store there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know him?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Rather. We were chums. He and I left
+Jonesboro' together to join the army."</p>
+
+<p>"Is this man he?"</p>
+
+<p>Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his
+feet, cowering, covering his face with his hands.
+Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's
+hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than
+he's General Grant."</p>
+
+<p>By this time the whole prison community was
+crowded about Colonel Rose. The latter called
+again:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Strong."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know this man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson
+on the Izzard plantation.</p>
+
+<p>There was an ominous low growl from the
+audience. Yankee overseers of Southern plantations
+were not exactly popular in that crowd
+of Northern officers. And evidently this particular
+overseer had been lying. But Colonel
+Rose lifted his hand and said:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Silence. No violence. What we do will be
+done decently and in order." After this impressive
+speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you
+would, would you?" and choked Johnson with
+every pound of strength he could put into the
+process. He had just seen him slip a bit of
+paper into his mouth and he meant to know
+what that paper was. It was plucked out of the
+spy's throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the
+spy's pencil had written:</p>
+
+<p>"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows
+about it. Think Colonel Rose heads it."</p>
+
+<p>It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report
+in his new business of being a spy. It put an
+end to all business on his part forever. Gagged
+and tied, he was pushed across the big room,
+while Tom watched uncomprehendingly, wondering
+what was to be done with the writhing
+man. Suddenly he understood, for he saw it
+done. Johnson was pushed into a window.
+Two kneeling men held his legs and another,
+standing beside him but screened by the wall,
+pushed him in front of the window. The Confederate
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+sentry below obeyed his orders. There
+was no challenge, no warning. He aimed and
+fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws
+of the prison by looking out of the window.
+What had been Jake Johnson, Yankee, negro-overseer,
+Confederate conscript, volunteer spy,
+fell in a dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag
+and bonds were quickly removed, so there was
+nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause
+of the man's death when they came to remove
+the body. They had unwittingly executed their
+own spy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was right that the man should die, but the
+shock of seeing him done to death was too much
+for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship
+of the long captivity during which he had
+been carried from Ohio to Virginia and worn
+out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the
+toil of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake
+Johnson did and for a few moments seemed as
+dead as the man was. He was taken to the hospital-room,
+but the hospital in Libby was usually
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+only the anteroom of the graveyard at Libby.
+One of the scarcest things in the Confederacy,
+the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The
+armies in the field needed far more doctors than
+there were in the whole South, at the outbreak
+of the war. Medical schools were quickly
+created, but the demand for doctors so far outran
+the supply that by this time ignorant country
+lads were being rushed through the schools,
+with reckless haste, so that they were graduated
+when they knew but little more than when they
+began. A so-called surgeon was handling his
+scalpel six months after he had been handling a
+plow. Some of them barely knew how to read
+and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals
+should be manned by the poorest of the
+poor among the graduates of these wretched
+schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is
+for Tom, gave him, however, care that was both
+skilful and tender.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours after the righteous execution of
+Jake Johnson there had been thrust into Libby
+a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeight
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+hours before. Among them towered a
+jovial, bearded giant, an army surgeon, Major
+Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with
+talk of what had happened there that day. The
+new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson and of
+Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had
+given his parole not to try to escape and had
+been allowed to station himself beside Tom's
+bed. Through that night and through the next
+day, he fought Tom's battle for him, doing all
+that man could do. When the boy struggled out
+of his delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming
+upon him, his first thought was that he was
+still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad
+car. His right hand plucked feebly at his
+left side, where he had then carried the dispatches
+Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and
+understood the movement.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's
+all right. Go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything
+was all right and that he was home in New
+York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. A
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+gracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who
+gave her days to caring for her country's
+enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's
+eyes gleamed with a mistaken belief.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled
+back and sank gently into a profound sleep, from
+which he awoke to life and health. Again a
+Hans Rolf had saved a Tom Strong's life.</p>
+
+<p>Night after night passed, one night of work
+by each man followed by two of such rest as
+lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed.
+On the seventeenth night of the new tunnel
+work, Colonel Rose was digging away in it. It
+was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered
+and went out. The foul air closed in upon him.
+Hats were fanning to and fro, back in Rat
+Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not
+reach him. He felt himself suffocating. With
+one last effort he thrust his strong fists upward
+and broke through the surface. Soon revived
+by the rush of fresh air into the tunnel, he
+dragged himself out and found himself in the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+yard that had been their aim. The tunnel had
+reached its goal. He climbed out and studied
+the situation. A high fence screened the yard
+from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door
+screened it from the street. At three <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>, February
+6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to prison.</p>
+
+<p>That morning he told his news. Most of the
+men wanted to try for freedom the next night,
+but there was much to do to erase all traces of
+their work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith
+discovered after their flight, it could be
+used later by other fugitives. With a rare unselfishness,
+they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile
+each of the fifteen had been authorized to
+tell one other man, so that thirty in all could
+make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt
+that this was the limit. A general prison-delivery
+would, he believed, result in a general recapture.
+Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep.
+a whisper of it spread through the prison.</p>
+
+<p>When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he
+had been at once taken into the inner councils
+of the tunnel group. He had not expressed as
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+much joy in the plan as Tom had expected. The
+reason of this was now revealed. He declined
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and
+Tom, "I gave my parole not to try to escape
+when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in
+order to be allowed to take care of him. I
+made up my mind not to ask to be relieved from
+it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected
+some plan to escape was on hand. And
+they seem to have forgotten all about it, for they
+haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in
+honor not to go. Don't bother, Tom." The
+boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans
+Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans
+Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't bother. 'Twon't
+be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I
+can save some lives here by staying. Don't
+bother. It's all right. I rather like this boarding-house."</p>
+
+<p>The giant's great laugh rang out. The
+heartiness of it amazed the weary men scattered
+about the room. It brought smiles to lips that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+had not smiled for many a day. Laughter that
+comes from a clean heart does good to all who
+hear it.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was
+an officer and a gentleman. Honor forbade it.
+Sadly, Tom left him.</p>
+
+<p>On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when
+the chosen thirty had crawled down the inverted
+"S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col.
+H. C. Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly
+offered to stay behind, so that he could
+replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced
+them. But before he could get upstairs,
+some hundreds of men had come down. The
+secret was a secret no longer. There was a
+fierce struggle to get to the fireplace, a struggle
+all the fiercer because it had to be made in grim
+silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet
+away, on the other side of the wall, in the hospital.
+The bricks were taken out again. In all,
+one hundred and nine Union officers got through
+the hole. Then, warned by approaching daylight,
+the less fortunate in the fight for freedom
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+put back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs,
+resolved to try their luck the next night, if the
+tunnel were not before that discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had wormed his way through the inverted
+"S" among the first fifteen. On the
+rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap
+upon the floor of Rat Hell. The huge rodents
+swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He
+almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he
+sprang to his feet, threw off his tormentors,
+and ran across the room to the opening of the
+tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more
+ragged and his face and hands were bleeding
+from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this.
+Was he not on his way to freedom? On his way,
+yes; but the way was a long one. He might
+never reach the end. When he had pushed and
+pulled himself through the tunnel; when he had
+come out into the yard and gone through the
+shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in
+the canal street was at the further end of his
+beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and
+turned in the opposite direction,&mdash;when all this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+had happened, he was out of prison, to be sure,
+but he was in the heart of the enemy's country,
+with all the risks of recapture or of death still to
+be run.</p>
+
+<p>The men had all been cautioned to stroll away
+in a leisurely fashion, on no account to run or
+even to walk fast, and not to try to get away
+in groups of more than two or three. It was
+hard to walk slowly to the next corner. The
+boy made himself do so, however. Half a block
+ahead of him on the side street, he saw a couple
+of men walking with a somewhat faster stride.
+He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate
+patrol turned the corner of Carey Street. He
+heard the two men challenged and he heard the
+little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief
+moment of freedom had passed. He stepped to
+one side of the wooden sidewalk and crawled
+under it. There was just space enough for him
+to lie at full length. Hurrying feet, the feet of
+men hunting other men, trampled an inch above
+his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it
+must be heard. The patrol reached the street
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+along the canal and peered into the darkness
+there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering
+gas-lamp. Fortunately, nobody came out of the
+shed just then. The sentry happened to be coming
+towards it and the men inside were waiting
+for him to turn. The patrol had no thought of
+a general jail-delivery. It turned back with its
+two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head
+to Carey Street, and took its captives to the
+prison. The boy crawled out from under the
+sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of
+them, reached the corner. He ran down to
+them and warned them of the Carey Street
+patrol. The three men turned with him and
+walked along the canal. It was just after midnight.
+Not a soul was stirring. Not a light
+showed. As they walked unquestioned, their
+spirits rose. How fine to be free.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Hides in a River Bank&mdash;Eats Raw Fish&mdash;Jim
+Grayson Aids Him&mdash;Down the James
+River on a Tree&mdash;Passing the Patrol Boats&mdash;Cannonaded&mdash;The
+End of the Voyage.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Tom had made up his mind how he would
+try to reach the Union lines. As he had
+escaped before from the locomotive-foray by
+pushing boldly into the enemy's country, so
+he would do now. He would try his luck in
+following the James River to the sea, for off
+the river's mouth he knew there lay a squadron
+of Northern ships, blockading Hampton
+Roads. The "Merrimac's" attempt of March,
+1862, had never been repeated. Our flag was
+still there, in these February days of 1864, and
+Tom knew it. He had resolved to seek it there.</p>
+
+<p>He explained his plan to his three comrades.
+They would steal a boat, row or drift down the
+James by night, hide and sleep by day, forage
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+for food upon the rich plantations, many of
+them the historic homes of Virginia, that bordered
+the broad river, and finally float to freedom
+where our war-ships lay. But the three
+men would have nothing to do with it. By land
+the Union lines were much nearer. They meant
+to stick to the land. They asked the boy to go
+with them, but he stuck to his plan. So, with
+hearty handshakes and a whispered "good
+luck!" he left them, went over a canal-bridge,
+and found himself upon the bank of the river.
+He was again alone.</p>
+
+<p>Of his three temporary companions, one
+finally reached our lines, one was shot within a
+few hundred yards of his goal, and one was recaptured.
+Of the 109 who escaped from Libby,
+48 were caught and thrust back into prison.</p>
+
+<p>Tom walked along the river bank, prying in
+the welcome darkness for a boat. It would not
+have been difficult to steal it, if he could have
+found it. But at this point the James is wide and
+shallow and full of miniature rapids. It was
+utterly bare of boats. The boy's search could
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+not be carried on after dawn. He spent that
+day hidden in a clump of willows by the waterside.
+The excitement of the night had kept
+him up. Now the reaction from it left him limp
+and miserable and hungry as he never remembered
+being hungry before. It was hard work
+to "grin and bear it," but at least he tried to
+grin and he reminded himself a thousand times
+through that long, long day that he was much
+better off than if he were still a prisoner in
+Libby.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">That night he followed the bank until he was
+below the city, still without finding a boat.
+There had been plenty of boats along this part
+of the river the morning before, but as soon as
+the escape from Libby had been discovered, all
+boats had been seized by the military authorities,
+to prevent their being used by the fugitives.
+They had been taken to a point below the town.
+As Tom wormed himself cautiously near this
+point, very cautiously, for he heard voices upon
+the bank above his head, and also the crackle
+of a camp-fire, he saw in the gray dawn a flotilla
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+of boats just below him. At first sight, his heart
+leaped into his mouth with joy. At the second
+sight, it sank down into his boots. For above
+the boats he saw a big Confederate camp and
+beyond them he saw a half-dozen small craft,
+negroes at the oars and armed men at bow and
+stern, patrolling the river. Hope left him. He
+crawled into a hiding-place in the bank. He was
+so hungry that he cried. But not for long.
+Stout hearts do not yield to such weakness long.
+If he could not escape in a boat fashioned by
+man's hands, why not in one fashioned by God?
+The early spring freshets of the James were
+making the river higher every hour. He saw in
+cautious peeps from the hole where he had hidden
+great trees from far-off forests, uprooted
+there by the high water, come plunging down
+mid-channel like battering rams. He noted that
+the patrol-boats gave these dangerous monsters
+a wide berth. If a trunk of a tree were to ram
+them or if the far-flung branches were to strike
+them, their next patrol would be at the bottom
+of the river. On a sandbank not a hundred
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+yards from the boy's lair a big oak had stranded.
+It lay quite still now, but it evidently would not
+do so for many hours, for the rising water
+lapped higher and higher against it. Tom
+made up his mind that that tree should be his
+boat&mdash;if only it were still there when it was dark
+enough for him to swim out to it. Through the
+daylight hours he watched it with lynx eyes,
+fearing lest it were swept along towards the sea
+before he could shelter himself in it. And
+through these daylight hours he grew ever more
+faint with hunger, until he told himself that he
+must have food, at any risk, at any cost. Without
+the strength it would give, he felt he could
+not possibly swim even the hundred yards that
+lay between him and the now tossing tree.
+There is truth in the line:</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+"Fate cannot harm me; I have dined today."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="p1">It is too much to do to face Fate on an empty
+stomach. Napoleon said that an army traveled
+on its belly. Men must have food if they are to
+march and fight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A Confederate soldier sauntered along the
+shore and stopped just in front of the boy's
+hiding-place. He had a rude fish-pole. Either
+he knew how to fish, or the James River fish
+were very hungry. A string of a dozen hung
+from his shoulder. The sight of them was too
+much for Tom to stand. A raw fish seemed to
+him the most toothsome morsel in the world.
+He knew he was courting certain capture, but
+he was starving. He would pretend to be a
+Confederate himself. He spoke to the soldier,
+not out of the fullness of his heart, but out of
+the emptiness of his stomach.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm hungry," he said, "give a fellow a fish,
+will you?"</p>
+
+<p>The soldier turned with a start. He was a
+tall, gaunt man, an East Tennessee mountaineer,
+who had started to join the Union army
+when a Confederate conscript-officer seized him
+and sent him South, under guard, to serve the
+cause he had meant to fight against. East Tennessee
+was, as a rule, loyal to the Union. The
+men from there who were found in the Confederate
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+army were like the poor peons who are
+supposed to "volunteer" in the Mexican army.
+"I send you fifty volunteers," wrote a Mexican
+mayor to a Mexican general, "please return me
+the ropes." Jim Grayson had not been tied up
+with a rope, but he had had a bayonet behind
+him, when he was put into the Confederate
+ranks. He was a man of intelligence and of
+rather more education than most of his fellow
+mountaineers. Many of them could not even
+read and write. Grayson had learned both at a
+"deestrik skule" and had actually had a year,
+a precious year, at a "high skule." The last
+thing he had read before starting to fish that
+morning had been the printed handbills that
+had been flung broadcast by the Confederate
+authorities, announcing the escape of 108 men
+and one boy from Libby Prison and offering rewards
+for their recapture. And the first thing
+he thought as he saw Tom in his hole in the
+bank was that he was probably the boy of the
+handbills. He meant to give the fellow a fish,
+of course, but if he found the fellow was that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+boy he also meant to do what he could to help
+him go where he himself wanted to go, to the
+Union lines.</p>
+
+<p>"Sholy, I'll give you a fish," he said. "You
+can have all you want. I'll light a fire and cook
+some for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't wait," gasped Tom, wolf-hunger in
+his gleaming eyes. "I'm starving."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to reach out for the fish and collapsed
+in utter weakness. With food at last within his
+grasp, he was too far gone to take it. Jim
+Grayson had been very hungry more than once
+in his thirty years of hard life. He saw that
+Tom was telling the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," he whispered, for he had caught
+sight of some fellow soldiers on the bank, not a
+hundred feet away. "Hush, sumbuddy's comin'.
+You mus' take little pieces first. I'll cut one
+up for you."</p>
+
+<p>He was drawing out his knife from a deep
+pocket when the soldiers stopped on the bank
+above their heads and shouted down, asking him
+to give them some fish too.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sholy," laughed Jim. "Here's some for
+you-uns."</p>
+
+<p>He tossed half a dozen up to them and then
+sat down at the mouth of the hole that sheltered
+Tom, thinking to hide him in case the
+others came down the bank. His back was towards
+the boy. What was left of his catch hung
+within two inches of Tom's nose. That was
+Tom's chance. He tore off a couple of little fish
+and tore them to bits with his teeth. His first
+sensation was one of deathly sickness; his next
+one of returning strength. Grayson twitched
+the remaining fish into his lap. He knew the
+boy had already had too much food, for a first
+meal. Meanwhile he was chatting cheerily with
+his fellow soldiers, who fortunately did not come
+down the bank and soon moved off, leaving Jim
+and Tom alone. Now was the time for explanations.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afeard," said Jim, with a kindly
+smile. "I 'low you be Tom Strong, bean't you?
+I guess you was in Libby day afore yisterday.
+I ain't goin' to give you up. I'm Union, I be,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+ef I do wear Secesh gray. How kin I help
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>The sense of safety, safety at least for the
+moment, was too much for Tom. He could not
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar, thar," Jim went on, "it's all right.
+Jes' tell me what I can do. I'll bring you eatins
+soon ez night comes, but what'll you do then?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom told him what he hoped to do then. It
+was a wild scheme to float down nearly two hundred
+miles of river through a hostile country,
+but yet it offered a chance of success. And if
+there was a chance of success for the boy, why
+not for the man?</p>
+
+<p>"Ef so be's ez you'se sot on it," Jim said, at
+the end of the talk, "I vum I'll run the resk
+with you. You ain't no ways fit to start off
+alone. Ef you have to hist that thar tree into
+the James River, you cudn't a-do it. I kin. 'N
+ef you wuz all alonst, you mout fall off'n be
+drownded. We-uns'll go together. 'N then I'll
+hev a chanst to fight fer the old Union."</p>
+
+<p>Tom was only too glad of the promised company.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+It was arranged that Jim was to come to
+him as soon as possible after nightfall, with
+whatever provisions he could lay his hands
+upon, and that then they were to get away on
+the queer craft Providence seemed to have prepared
+for them, provided only that Providence
+did not send the big tree swirling southward to
+the sea before they could reach it. The river
+was now considerably higher. It was tugging
+hard at its prey. Sometimes the tree shook with
+the impact of the rushing waves as if it had decided
+to let go the sandbank forthwith. If it
+did go before nightfall, they must try to find
+another. There were always others in sight,
+but they were far away in mid-channel, floating
+swiftly seaward. How could one of these be
+reached, if their fellow on the sandbank joined
+them? There was nothing to be done, however,
+except to wait. Tom's waiting was solaced by
+the eating of the rest of the fish. Man and boy
+agreed that the man must loiter there no longer.
+Making a fire would delay him beyond roll-call.
+So Jim went and Tom again ate raw fish, trying
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+to do so slowly, but not making a great success
+of that. He felt as if he could eat a whale.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness came only a few minutes before Jim
+Grayson did. He brought with him a bundle of
+food, upon part of which Tom forthwith supped.
+He also brought his gun. "I'm a deserter now,
+you see," he explained to the boy, "and I'll be
+shot ef so be I'm caught. But ef I be caught,
+I'll shoot some o' they-uns fust."</p>
+
+<p>They could dimly see the outlines of the big
+tree, now tossing in the waves that broke above
+the submerged sandbank, as if it were struggling
+to be free. They swam out to it, Jim strongly,
+Tom weakly. They reached it none too soon.
+Ten minutes later it would have started of its
+own accord. Jim's task in "histing" it was
+easy. They were afloat at once. The top of the
+tree, a mass of bare branches, for the tiny tender
+leaves of the early Southern spring had been
+swept away by the water, formed the bow of
+their craft. They both perched far back, leaning
+against the tangled roots. Jim gave a final push
+with one dangling foot and they were off. That
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+was all Tom knew for some time. He had fallen
+asleep as soon as he had snuggled securely into
+his place. He did not know it when they swept
+through the cordon of patrol-boats below, which
+hastened to give room to the vast battering ram.
+He did not even know that Jim's arm held him
+in place as the tree lurched and wobbled on its
+downward road. A few hours afterwards, he
+awoke, refreshed and hopeful, a new man, or
+rather a new boy. The night was clear. The
+outlines of both shores were visible. A young
+moon added its feeble light to the brilliant radiance
+of the stars.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we?" whispered Tom. He knew
+the human voice carries a great distance over
+water and while there seemed to be no one who
+could overhear, he would run no unnecessary
+risk.</p>
+
+<p>"I never sailed no river before," Jim cheerily
+answered, "'n I dun know nothin' 'bout the
+Jeems River, but I 'low we've come 'bout a thousand
+mile. 'N it's nigh sun-up. How'll we-uns
+git to sho' 'n hide?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If we did that," said Tom, "we'd have to
+give up our ship. Don't let us do that. Let's
+say what Captain Lawrence said: 'Don't give
+up the ship!' We'll call her the 'Liberty' and
+sail her down to Hampton Roads. We can hide
+in the branches or the roots if we meet anybody
+on the river. Everybody will give us a wide
+berth. We have some food, thanks to you.
+Forty-eight hours more will see us through."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Captain," Jim Grayson replied.
+"You're the commander."</p>
+
+<p>Up to that time, the Confederate private had
+been in command of the expedition, but now
+that the Union officer was himself again, he took
+charge of everything, much to Jim's content and
+also, we must admit, much to Tom's content.</p>
+
+<p>The good ship "Liberty," Tom Strong, captain,
+Jim Grayson, mate, made a prosperous
+voyage. Its crew was thoroughly scared three
+or four times by the sight of Confederate craft,
+small and large. When a gunboat selected it as
+a floating target and plumped half-a-dozen cannon
+balls around it, the crew thought the end
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+had come. But nobody on the gunboat saw the
+two people cowering amid the branches of the
+tree. The gunners were untrained. Their aim
+was poor. And powder and cannon-balls were
+not so abundant in the Confederacy that the
+practice-firing could continue long. Early on
+the third morning of the voyage, they were in
+Hampton Roads, borne by the ebbing tide towards
+the Union squadron that lay under the
+guns of Fortress Monroe. As the sun rose
+above the horizon, our flag sprang to the mastheads
+of the ships. Tom felt like echoing Uncle
+Mose's triumphant phrase: "De Stars 'n de
+Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky."</p>
+
+<p>The "Liberty" would have gone straight out
+to sea, so far as any control by its crew was concerned.
+It did go out to sea, indeed, but not
+until after Tom and Jim had been taken from
+it by a boat from the Admiral's ship. Jim had
+fired off his gun to attract attention, as the
+"Liberty" neared the squadron, and then he
+and Tom had both stood up on the teetering
+trunk of their tree and shouted and waved their
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+shirts, which they had taken off for that purpose,
+as they had nothing else to wave, until
+help came. The "Liberty" had brought them
+to liberty. They said good-by to her almost
+with regret. But their joy was deep when they
+stood on the deck of the flagship, under the flag
+of the free.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Towser Welcomes Tom to the White House&mdash;Lincoln
+Re-elected President&mdash;Grant Commander-in-Chief&mdash;Sherman
+Marches from Atlanta to the Sea&mdash;Tom on Grant's Staff&mdash;Five
+Forks&mdash;Fall of Richmond&mdash;Hans
+Rolf Freed&mdash;Bob Saves Tom from Capture&mdash;Tom
+Takes a Battery into Action&mdash;Lee
+Surrenders&mdash;Tom Strong, Brevet-Captain
+U. S. A.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The warmest welcome Tom had at the
+White House was given him by Towser.
+The next warmest was given him by Uncle
+Moses and the next by Lincoln. The staff was
+glad to see him back, but many of them were
+jealous of the President's evident liking for him
+and would not have sorrowed overmuch if he
+had not come back at all. The patient President
+found time, amid all his myriad cares, to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+listen to Tom's story and to make Secretary
+Stanton give a captain's commission to Jim
+Grayson, who was sent to his own mountains to
+gather recruits for the Union army. For
+Towser, time existed only to be spent in welcoming
+his young master home. He clung close
+to him, with slobbering jaws and thumping tail,
+through the first day, and the first night he
+managed to escape from Uncle Mose's care in
+the basement and to find Tom's attic room.
+Thenceforth, as long as Tom stayed at the
+White House, Towser stretched his yellow
+bulk across the threshold of his door every
+night and slept there the sleep of the utterly
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>There were no utterly happy men under the
+White House roof. Lincoln's presidential term
+was drawing to a close. He was renominated
+by the Republicans, but his re-election at times
+seemed impossible. The Democrats had put
+forward Gen. George B. McClellan, once chief
+commander of the Union forces, but a pitiful
+failure as an aggressive general. A discontented
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+wing of the Republicans had nominated Gen.
+John C. Fremont. Fremont had not fulfilled the
+promise of his youth. At the beginning of the
+war, he had been put in command at St. Louis,
+had proved to be incompetent, and had been retired.
+He was still strong in the hearts of many
+people, but Lincoln feared the success, not of
+Fremont, but of McClellan. John Hay once
+said to the President:</p>
+
+<p>"Fremont might be dangerous if he had more
+ability and energy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was the reply, "he is like Jim Jett's
+brother. Jim used to say that his brother was
+the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the
+infinite mercy of Providence he was also the
+greatest fool."</p>
+
+<p>Family sayings, when they are not loving, are
+apt to be bitter. One of the Vanderbilts said
+of a connection of his by marriage that he was
+"more kinds of a fool to the square inch than
+anybody else in the world."</p>
+
+<p>McClellan, who seemed practically certain of
+success in August, 1864, was badly beaten in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+November, when the battle of parties was
+fought out at the polls. Fremont had retired
+from the contest early in the campaign. At the
+first Cabinet meeting after the election, November
+11, 1864, the President took a paper out of
+his desk and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen, do you remember last summer
+I asked you all to sign your names to the back
+of a paper, of which I did not show you the
+inside? This is it. Now, Mr. Hay, see if you
+can get this open without tearing it."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">Its cover was so thoroughly pasted up that it
+had to be cut open. This done, Lincoln read it
+aloud. Here it is:</p>
+
+<div class="block2">
+
+<p class="right">"Executive Mansion,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+Washington, August 23, 1864.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"This morning, as for some days past, it seems
+exceedingly probable that this Administration
+will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty
+to so co-operate with the President elect as to
+save the Union between the election and the inauguration;
+as he will have secured his election
+on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="right pmb1"><span class="smcap">A. Lincoln</span>."&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In that memorandum is the sign-manual of a
+great soul. Lincoln, believing his own defeat
+was written in the stars, thought, not of himself,
+but of how he, defeated, could best save the
+cause of the Union from defeat. A small man
+thinks first of himself. A big man thinks first
+of his duty.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Life was happy at the White House now.
+The President had been re-elected and it was
+clear that long before his second term was over,
+he would have won a victorious peace. The
+South was still fighting with all the energy
+brave men can show for a cause in the righteousness
+of which they believe, but after all the
+energy was that of despair. Grant was now in
+supreme command of the Union forces, East and
+West. He had been commissioned Lieutenant-General
+and put in command March 17, 1864.
+In commemoration of this event, the turning
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+point in the great struggle, Lincoln had had a
+photograph of himself taken. But two copies of
+it were printed. One Lincoln kept himself. One
+he gave Grant. Here is the one given Grant.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 513px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_291.jpg" width="513" height="690" alt="ABRAHAM LINCOLN" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">ABRAHAM LINCOLN</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The new Lieutenant-General was hammering
+away at Richmond. The Mississippi, now under
+Union control, cut the Confederacy in two. All
+the chief Southern seaports, except Savannah
+and Charleston, had been captured. And in this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+same month of November, 1864, Gen. William
+Tecumseh Sherman, who ranked only second to
+Grant in the United States army, cut loose from
+Atlanta, Georgia, captured two months before
+and began his famous march to the sea, with
+Savannah as his destination. He illustrated his
+own well-known saying: "War is hell." If it
+was hell in Sherman's time, what word can
+describe the horror of it in our day? He swept
+with sword and fire a belt of fertile country,
+sixty miles wide, from Atlanta to the sea. He
+found it smiling and rich; he left it a bare and
+blackened waste. He had destroyed the granary
+of the Confederacy and before the next month
+ended he had made his country a Christmas
+present of the remaining chief Southern seaport,
+Savannah. He wrote to Lincoln: "I beg to present
+to you as a Christmas gift the city of
+Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy
+guns and plenty of ammunition and also twenty-five
+thousand bales of cotton." Cotton was
+worth a dollar a pound in those days.</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1865 Sherman swung northward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+from Savannah, forced the surrender of Charleston,
+South Carolina, and joined Union forces
+advancing from the North at Goldsboro', North
+Carolina, March 23. Six days later Grant began
+the final campaign against the Confederacy.
+Six days before, Lincoln had said to the boy:</p>
+
+<p>"Tom, would you like to see some more
+fighting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. President; very much."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you needn't tell anybody, but I guess
+there'll be some to see before long near Richmond.
+I've had you ordered from special service
+at the White House to special service with
+the Lieutenant-General. Here's the order and
+here's a letter to General Grant. I wouldn't
+wonder if he put you on his staff."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I thank you, Mr. Lincoln?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"The best way to thank anybody is to do well
+the work he gives you to do. Good-by, my son,
+and good luck."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 457px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_294.jpg" width="457" height="700" alt="Gen. W. T. Sherman" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08 smcap">Gen. W. T. Sherman</span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">St. Gaudens' Statue, New York</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">With a pressure of Lincoln's huge hand Tom
+was sped on his rejoicing way. Two days later
+he was at Grant's headquarters, at City Point,
+Virginia, near Fortress Monroe. He saluted
+and handed the General Lincoln's letter. The
+soldier sat, a silent sphinx, for a moment. Then
+he looked up at Tom with a quizzical but not
+unkindly smile, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you learned anything since you
+brought me dispatches at Fort Donelson and
+Vicksburg?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so, General."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes the President sends me people
+for political reasons. I suppose he has to. But
+I don't take them if I know it. Have you any
+political influence behind you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, sir." Tom laughed at the
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You laugh well. You and Horace Porter
+ought to get on together. He laughs well, too.
+You can serve on my staff.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, General."</p>
+
+<p>Tom saluted and walked away, to find Horace
+Porter, whom he found to be a very nice fellow
+indeed. One of the first things the nice fellow
+did for him was to get him a good horse. There
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+was no lack of horses at headquarters. The difficulty
+was not to find one, but to choose the
+best of many good ones. Tom, who had a good
+eye for a horse, found one that exactly suited
+him except as to color. He was of a mottled
+gray. The boy did not much care for such a
+color, but he knew it had its advantages. It
+does not advertise its presence. Where a black,
+a white or a bay horse would stand out and
+make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a mottled
+gray might well elude their view. And the
+horse, apart from this, was just what he wanted.
+He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he walked
+fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment
+in a horse. The average horse walks, as
+a rule, slower than the average man. In an
+hour, he covers a quarter-of-a-mile less ground.
+One question remained to be settled.</p>
+
+<p>"Can he jump?" asked Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Jump, is it?" answered the soldier-groom.
+"Shure, the cow that jumped over the moon
+couldn't lift a leg to him."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">"You bet your life he can jump," said Horace
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+Porter. "General Grant has ridden him twice
+and I saw him put Bob over a fence or two."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_298.jpg" width="600" height="375" alt="BOB" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">BOB</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Not long afterwards Tom did bet his life on
+Bob's jumping. He was named Bob before the
+United States took him. He had been captured
+the month before and had come across the lines
+with his name embroidered by some woman's
+hand on his saddle-blanket and with his late
+owner's blood upon his saddle. He was a tall,
+leggy animal who showed a trace of Arabian
+blood and who needed to be gentled a bit to get
+his best work out of him. His mouth was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+appreciative of sugar and his eyes were appreciative
+of kindness.</p>
+
+<p>Both dogs and horses talk with their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I like my new master," was what Bob's eyes
+said to Tom.</p>
+
+<p>It was through a chance suggestion of Colonel
+Porter that the boy saw most of what he did see
+of the final fight for freedom. Porter had presented
+Tom to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who
+was then at City Point, receiving Grant's final
+instructions for the twelve-day campaign that
+ended in the fall of Richmond and the surrender
+of Lee's brave army. Sheridan was a stocky,
+red-faced young Irishman, a graduate of West
+Point, and a born leader of men, especially of
+cavalrymen. He liked the clear-eyed lad who
+stood respectfully before him. He had done too
+much in his own youth to think Tom was useless
+because he was so young. Porter saw that
+the boy had made a good impression. He ventured
+a suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you take young Strong with you,
+General?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sheridan turned sharply to Tom, asking:</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ride?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, sir. I've ridden ever since I can
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's not so very long a time. But
+I'll take your word for it. Would you like to go
+with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like it better than anything else in the
+world, General."</p>
+
+<p>Tom had rejoiced in the idea of being with
+Grant, but he knew that the commander-in-chief
+must stay behind his lines and that his
+staff could catch but glimpses of the fighting,
+when they were sent forward with orders,
+whereas with Sheridan he might be in the very
+thick of the fighting itself. His ready answer
+and the joy that beamed in his eyes pleased the
+fighting Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I borrow him of General Grant?"
+Sheridan asked Porter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll answer for that," Porter replied. "The
+General told me to put Strong to whatever work
+I could find for him to do."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come ahead," said Sheridan. "You'll see
+some beautiful fighting!"</p>
+
+<p>Sheridan loved fighting, but he made no pretense
+of never being afraid. He thought a general
+should be close to the front, to keep his
+soldiers' spirits high.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you never afraid?" Charles A. Dana,
+then Assistant Secretary of War, once asked
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"If I was, I should not be ashamed of it. If I
+should follow my natural impulse, I should run
+away always at the beginning of the danger.
+The men who say they are never afraid in a battle
+do not tell the truth."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="pmb2">March 29, 1865, the twelve-day campaign began.
+The cavalry swung out towards Five
+Forks, where Lee's right wing lay behind deep
+entrenchments. April 1, Sheridan attacked in
+force. Americans fought Americans with stubborn
+bravery on both sides. The issue was long
+in doubt. Sheridan and his staff were close to
+the firing-line, so that Tom had but a few hundred
+yards to gallop under fire when his general
+said to him:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 444px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_302.jpg" width="444" height="700" alt="Statue of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan" title="" />
+  <span class="caption"><span class="font08 smcap">Statue of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan</span><br />
+  <span class="font08">Sheridan Square, Washington, D. C.</span><br />
+  <span class="font07a">Copyright by Underwood &amp; Underwood, New York.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">"Tell General Griffin to charge and keep
+charging."</p>
+
+<p>Griffin's order to his troops was so quickly
+given that it seemed an echo of the order Tom
+brought him. It was the boy's business to return
+forthwith and report upon his mission, but
+he simply couldn't do it. There were the Confederate
+lines manned with hungry soldiers in
+the remnants of their gray uniforms, the Stars-and-Bars
+flying above them. And there were
+battalions of blue-clad cavalry, men and horses
+in prime condition, straining to start like hounds
+upon a leash. Griffin's order was the electric
+spark that fired the battery. The men shouted
+with joy as they spurred their horses into a mad
+gallop. The shout was answered by the shrill
+"rebel yell" from the dauntless foe in the
+trenches. The charging column shook the
+ground. In its foremost files rode Second-lieutenant
+Tom Strong, forgetful of everything
+else in the world but the joy of battle. Musketry
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+and artillery tore bloody lanes in the close-packed
+column. Men and horses fell in heaps
+upon the blood-stained ground. But the column
+went on. At dusk of that April day it poured
+over the parapets so bravely held. Even then
+the fight was not over. There was still stout
+resistance. The two armies were a mass of
+struggling men, shooting, stabbing, striking.
+The battle had become a series of duels man to
+man. Tom, pistol in hand, rode at a big Kentuckian,
+but the gray-clad giant dodged the bullet,
+caught his own unloaded musket by the
+muzzle, and dealt the boy a blow with its butt
+that knocked him off his horse and left him
+senseless on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later, when he came to his
+senses, he felt as if he were a boy annexed to a
+shoulder twice as big as all the rest of his body.
+It was on his shoulder that the blow of the
+clubbed musket had gone home. The fall from
+his horse had stunned him. Bob was standing
+over him, as Black Auster stood over Herminius,
+nuzzling at the outstretched hand of this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+silent, motionless thing that had been his
+master. They had been together for less than
+a week, but a day is often long enough for a
+horse to find out that his master is his friend.
+Tom had been more careful of his horse's comfort
+than of his own. Now the good gray had
+stood by him and over him, perhaps saving him
+from being trampled to death in that fierce last
+act of the Drama of Five Forks. Bob whinnied
+with joy as Tom's eyes slowly opened again.
+He thrust his muzzle down along the boy's
+cheek and the boy caught hold of the flowing
+mane with his right hand and pulled himself
+upon his feet again. His left arm hung useless
+by his side. One glance told him the battle was
+won. The duels were over. The Confederates
+were in full retreat. A stream of prisoners was
+already flowing by him. He mounted and followed
+it to Sheridan's headquarters. There the
+skillful fingers of a surgeon found that no bones
+were broken. The swollen shoulder was dressed
+and bandaged. The healthy blood that filled
+Tom's veins did much to make a speedy cure.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+So did the joy of victory. Sheridan had done
+what Grant had given him to do. He had
+driven back Lee's right flank and cut the railroad
+by which Lee must escape from Richmond,
+if escape he could.</p>
+
+<p>Richmond was doomed. The next morning,
+Sunday, April 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis, President
+of the Confederate States of America, sat
+in his pew in St. Paul's Church, Richmond. The
+solemn service began. Soon there was a stir at
+the door, a rustle, a turning of heads away from
+the chancel, where the gray-haired rector stood.
+Swiftly a messenger came up the aisle. Davis
+rose from his knees to receive the message. The
+service stopped. Every eye was bent upon the
+leader of the Lost Cause. He put on his spectacles,
+opened the missive, and read it amid a
+breathless silence. It told him that the Cause
+was lost indeed. It was from Lee, who wrote:
+"My lines are broken in three places. Richmond
+must be evacuated this evening." There
+was no sign of feeling upon Jefferson Davis's
+impassive face, as he read the fateful dispatch.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+Without a word, without a sign, he left the
+church with the wife whose utter devotion had
+helped him bear the burden of those terrible
+years, during which proud hope gradually gave
+way to sickening fear. Davis was not of those
+weak men who despair. There was still a little
+hope in his heart, despite the tremendous blow
+Lee's letter had dealt him. He walked down
+the aisle with head as high as though he were
+marching to assured victory. But through the
+congregation there ran the whisper "Richmond
+is to be evacuated." A panic-stricken mob
+poured out of the church with faltering steps
+behind Jefferson Davis's firm, proud ones.
+Early that afternoon the Confederate Government
+fled. Early the next morning, Monday,
+April 3, 1865, Gen. Godfrey Weitzel marched
+his negro troops into the Confederate capital.
+The flag of the free floated from the dome of
+the Statehouse, which almost from the earliest
+days of the war had sheltered what was now
+indeed the Lost Cause. It was raised there by
+Lieut. Johnston L. De Peyster, a youth of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+eighteen, who had carried it wrapped around the
+pommel of his saddle for some days, hoping for
+the chance that now came to him. The second
+Union flag that was raised that day in Richmond
+was over Libby. The prison gates gave up their
+prey. The prisoners poured out, some too weak
+to do more than smile, others in a frenzy of
+joy. Major Hans Rolf, reduced by hunger to a
+long lath of a man, had lost none of his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, boys," he shouted, "three times three
+for the old flag!"</p>
+
+<p>The cheers rang out in a feeble chorus and
+then there rang out Han's contagious laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha!" he roared. "We're free, boys,
+we're free."</p>
+
+<p>By that Sunday night, the fate of Petersburg
+was sealed. Grant had ordered an assault in
+force at six o'clock Monday morning, but the
+Confederates abandoned their works in the gray
+dawn and our troops met little resistance in taking
+over the town. "General Meade and I,"
+says General Grant in his "Personal Memoirs,"
+"entered Petersburg on the morning of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+third and took a position under cover of a house
+which protected us from the enemy's musketry
+which was flying thick and fast there. As we
+would occasionally look around the corner, we
+could see ... the Appomattox bottom ...
+packed with the Confederate army.... I had
+not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a
+mass of defeated and fleeing men and I hoped
+to capture them soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us follow up Lee," Meade suggested.
+He was a better follower than a fighter. He had
+followed Lee before, from Gettysburg to Richmond,
+without ever attacking him.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," Grant replied, "we will
+cut off his retreat by occupying the Danville railroad
+and capture him. He must get to his food
+to keep his troops alive. We will get between
+him and his food."</p>
+
+<p>With constant fighting this was done. By
+Wednesday, April 5, the Union lines were drawn
+about the Confederate army. Sheridan, hampered
+by Meade's slowness, was urgent that
+Grant should come to the front. He sent message
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+after message to that effect to Grant on
+Wednesday. A scout in gray uniform was entrusted
+with the second message. He was made
+up to look like a Confederate scout, but he was
+Tom Strong. He had put on his disguise at
+Sheridan's headquarters. As he stood at attention
+to receive his orders, Sheridan laughed and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"You make a good 'Johnny Reb.' Do you
+chew tobacco?"</p>
+
+<p>Surprised at the question, Tom said he didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you may have to begin the habit today.
+You're to take this message to General Grant.
+If you're caught, chew it&mdash;and swallow it quick."</p>
+
+<p>He handed the boy a bit of tinfoil. It looked
+like a small package of chewing-tobacco, but it
+contained a piece of tissue-paper upon which
+Sheridan's message was written.</p>
+
+<p>The ride from the left flank to the center was
+not without danger. Tom, duly provided with
+the password, could go by any Union forces
+without difficulty, but the country swarmed
+with Confederates, some of them deserters,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+many of them straggling detachments cut off
+from the main army and seeking to rejoin it, all
+of them more than ready to capture a Union
+soldier and his horse.</p>
+
+<p>The boy climbed a little clumsily into the saddle.
+His left shoulder still felt like a big balloon
+stuffed full of pain. But there was nothing
+clumsy in his seat, as Bob shot off like an arrow
+at the touch of Tom's heel on his flank. It was
+a beautiful, bright April morning, too beautiful
+a day for men to be killing each other. Evidently,
+however, it did not seem so to the commander
+of a company of Confederate cavalry,
+who had laid an ambush into which Tom gayly
+galloped. He heard a sharp order to halt. He
+saw men ride across the road in front of him.
+He whirled about, only to see the road behind
+him blocked. He was fairly trapped. But there
+was one chance of escaping from the trap and
+Tom took it. His would-be captors had come
+from the left of the road, its northern side, for
+he was traveling east. On the south was a high
+rail-fence, laid in the usual zigzags, one of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+few which had not fed the camp-fires of Northern
+Virginia. It was a good five feet high; it was
+only a few feet away; Bob was standing still
+for a second in slippery mud. It was not at all
+the kind of place to select for a jump, but the
+Confederates had selected the place, not Tom.
+He remembered Colonel Porter's saying "You
+can bet your life Bob can jump," and he bet his
+life on Porter's being right. He put Bob at
+the fence. The gallant gray, as if he sensed his
+master's danger, took one bound toward the
+rails, gathered himself together into a tense
+mass of muscle, and rose into the air like a bird.
+As he flew over the top-rail, carbines cracked behind
+him, but as he leaped southward across the
+countryside, a ringing cheer followed him too.
+The brave Southerners rejoiced in the brave feat
+that took their captive into freedom. Their jaded
+horses could not follow. There was no pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>It took Tom some hours to double back towards
+Grant's headquarters. He met long lines
+of Union cavalry, infantry, and artillery pressing
+forward to strengthen Sheridan's forces. They
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+were going west and they choked every road
+and lane and path by which the boy sought to go
+east. They had begun their march at three
+o'clock that morning. They had had no breakfast.
+They carried no food. Their wagon-trains
+were miles in the rear. It was their fourth day
+of continuous fighting. They had a right to be
+tired, but they were not tired. They had a right
+to be hungry, but they were not hungry. When
+the air was full of victory, what did an empty
+stomach matter? Cheering and singing, they
+swept along. The end of four years' fighting
+was in sight. The hunted foe was trying to
+slink away to safety, as many a fox, with hounds
+and huntsmen closing in upon him, had tried to
+do on these Virginian fields. Never were huntsmen
+more anxious to be "in at the death" than
+were those joyous Union soldiers on that memorable
+April day.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly night when the boy reached
+headquarters, saluted the commander-in-chief,
+said "A message from General Sheridan," and
+handed over the little tinfoil package.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You can go back with me," said Grant.
+"That horse of yours is Bob, isn't it?" Grant
+never forgot a horse he had once ridden.</p>
+
+<p>Within an hour the General and his staff, with
+a small cavalry escort, started for Sheridan's
+headquarters. By ten that night the two were
+together. Sheridan was almost crying over the
+orders Meade had given him. By midnight
+Sheridan was happy. "I explained to Meade,"
+say the "Personal Memoirs," "that we did not
+want to follow the enemy; we wanted to get
+ahead of him; and that his orders would allow
+the enemy to escape.... Meade changed his
+orders at once."</p>
+
+<p>That change of orders incidentally put Tom
+Strong the next day into the hottest fight of his
+life. This was the battle of Sailor's Creek, almost
+forgotten since amid the mightier happenings
+of that wonderful April week, but never
+forgotten by Tom Strong. Our forces had attacked
+Lee's retreating legions, retreating toward
+the provision trains that were their only
+hope of food. The fight was fierce. We had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+attacked with both infantry and cavalry, but our
+gallant fellow-countrymen held their lines unbroken.
+Then with a thunder of wheels our
+field artillery came into action. The Confederate
+guns were shelling the hillside up which the
+plunging horses drew our cannon. There were
+six horses in each team, an artilleryman riding
+each near horse and holding the off horse of
+the pair by a bridle. Tom had come up with
+orders and was standing by General Wright as
+the guns bounded up the hillside. Bob stood
+behind his master, whinnying a bit with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>General Wright snapped his watch shut impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"They're ten minutes late," he complained.
+"We're beaten if we don't get 'em into action
+instantly. Good Heavens! there goes our first
+gun to destruction!"</p>
+
+<p>A Confederate shell had struck and burst
+close to the leaders. A fragment of it swept the
+foremost rider from his seat and from life. The
+two horses he had handled reared, plunged,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+jumped to one side. The six horses were huddled
+into a frightened heap. The two other soldiers
+could do nothing with the leaders out of
+control. The gun stopped short. And behind it
+stopped all of one of the two lines of advancing
+artillery.</p>
+
+<p>"Take that gun into action!"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Tom heard the General's brief command and
+ran toward the huddled horses. He sprang into
+the saddle, seized both bridles, and drove on.
+As he did so, another Confederate shell burst
+beside the off horse. Its fragments spared the
+foremost rider this time, but they dealt death
+to one of his two comrades. The man in control
+of the wheelers threw his right arm out and
+toppled over into the road, dead before the
+heavy cannon-wheel crashed and crushed over
+him. The leaders, so skillfully handled that
+their very fear made them run more madly into
+danger, tore ahead, keeping the other four
+horses galloping behind them, until the gun was
+in position. It roared the news of its coming
+with a well-aimed shot into the midst of the
+enemy's forces.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_318.jpg" width="600" height="373" alt="Tom Takes a Battery Into Action" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">Tom Takes a Battery Into Action</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">Its fellows fell into line and
+followed suit. The infantry and cavalry attacked
+with renewed spirit. Sullenly and savagely,
+fighting until darkness forbade more
+fighting, Lee's troops withdrew towards the
+west, with the Union forces pounding away at
+them. They left a mass of dead upon the battlefield,
+lives finely lost for the Lost Cause, and
+they also left as prisoners six general officers
+and seven thousand men. More than a third of
+all the prisoners taken in the battles before the
+final surrender were taken at the battle of
+Sailor's Creek. Tom had stuck to his new arm
+of the service through the three hours of fighting.
+The guns had been continually advanced
+as the Southerners retreated. They had been
+continually under fire. Nearly half the gunners
+had been killed or wounded. When the fight
+was over, Tom remembered for the first time his
+own wounded shoulder. He had never thought
+of it from the moment when he had sprung upon
+the artillery horse. Now it began to throb with
+a renewed and a deeper pain, as if resenting his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+ignoring of it so long, but the new pain also
+vanished when he rejoined General Wright and
+heard him say:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Strong, you helped to save the day.
+I shall recommend you for promotion for distinguished
+bravery under fire."</p>
+
+<p>The boy saluted, his heart too full to speak.
+As he rode away upon Bob, some of the joy
+in his heart must have got into Bob's heels, for
+Bob pirouetted up the main street of the little
+town of Farmville, late that night, as though he
+were prouder than ever of his master.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">Farmville was now headquarters. Grant was
+there, in a bare hotel, not long before a Confederate
+hospital. It was from the Farmville hotel
+that he wrote to Lee a historic note. It ran
+thus:</p>
+
+<div class="block2">
+<p class="right">
+"Headquarters Armies of the U. S.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+5 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, April 7, 1865.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="left">
+"General R. E. Lee,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Commanding C. S. A.:<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The results of the last week must convince
+you of the hopelessness of further resistance on
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in
+this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it
+as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility
+of any further effusion of blood by asking
+of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate
+States army known as the Army of
+Northern Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">U. S. Grant&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>,<br />
+Lieut.-General."&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p1">Under a flag of truce, this note reached General
+Lee that evening, so near together were the
+headquarters of the contending armies in those
+last days. His letter in reply, asking what terms
+of surrender were offered, reached Grant the
+next morning while he was talking on the steps
+of the Farmville hotel to a Confederate Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' tho't I'd repo't to you, General," said
+the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"You see I own this hyar hotel you're
+a-occupyin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, we shall move out soon. We are
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+moving around a good deal, nowadays. Why
+aren't you with your regiment?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, General, I am my regiment."</p>
+
+<p>"How's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"All the men wuz raised 'round hyar. A few
+days ago they jes' begun nachally droppin' out.
+They all dun dropped out, General, so I jes'
+tho't there wan't any use being a cunnel without
+no troops and I dun dropped out too. Here
+I be? What you goin' to do with me, General?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to leave you here to take care of
+your property. Don't go back to your army and
+nobody'll bother you."</p>
+
+<p>That was a sample of the way in which the
+beaten army was melting away. Not even the
+magic of Lee's great name could hold it together
+now. But the men who did not drop out fought
+with heroism to the bitter end.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Saturday, April 8, 1865,
+Sheridan captured some more of Lee's provision
+trains at Appomattox Station and on Sunday,
+April 9, Lee's whole army attacked there,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+still seeking to cut its way out of its encircling
+foes. Its brave effort was in vain. Held in a
+vice, it threw up its hands. A white flag flew
+above the Confederate lines.</p>
+
+<p>Grant had spent Saturday night struggling
+with a sick headache, his feet in hot water and
+mustard, his wrists and the back of his neck covered
+with mustard-plasters. On Sunday morning,
+still sick and suffering, he was jogging along
+on horseback towards the front, when a Confederate
+officer was brought before him. He carried
+a note from Lee offering to surrender.
+"When the officer reached me," writes Grant,
+"I was still suffering with the sick headache;
+but the instant I saw the contents of the note,
+I was cured." The ending of the war ended
+Grant's headache.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The two commanders met at Appomattox
+Court House, a sleepy Virginian village, five
+miles from the railroad and endless miles from
+the great world. It lies in a happy valley, not
+wrapped in happiness that April day, for Sheridan's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+forces held the crest at the south and Lee's
+were deployed along the hilltop to the north. A
+two-hour armistice had been granted. If that
+did not bring the end desired, that end was to
+be fought out with all the horrors of warfare
+amid the peaceful houses that had straggled together
+to make the peaceful little town.</p>
+
+<p>At the northern end of the village street, surrounded
+by an apple orchard, stood a two-story
+brick house with a white wooden piazza in front
+of it. It was the home of Wilmer McLean, a
+Virginia farmer upon whose farm part of the
+battle of Bull Run had been fought at the outbreak
+of the war. Foreseeing that other battles
+might be fought there&mdash;as the second battle of
+Bull Run, in 1862, was&mdash;he had sold his property
+there and had moved by a strange chance
+to the very village and the very house in which
+the final scene of the great tragedy of this war
+between brothers was to be played. Here Lee
+awaited Grant.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The Union general had gone to Sheridan's
+headquarters before riding up to the McLean
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+house. Sheridan and his staff had gone on with
+him. Least important of the little group of
+Union officers who followed Grant into the
+presence of Lee was Tom Strong, but the boy's
+heart beat as high as that of any man there.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_326.jpg" width="600" height="450" alt="THE McLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">The McLeanN House, Appomattox Courthouse</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2 pmb2">It was in the orchard about the house that
+the myth of "the apple-tree of Appomattox"
+was born. Millions of men and women have
+believed that Lee surrendered to Grant under an
+apple tree at Appomattox. That apple tree is
+   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+as famous in mistaken history as is that other
+mythical tree, the cherry tree which George
+Washington did not cut down with his little
+hatchet. Washington could not tell a lie, it is
+true, but he never chopped down a cherry tree
+and then said to his angry, questioning father:
+"Father, I cannot tell a lie; I cut it down with
+my little hatchet." That fairy story came from
+the imagination of one Parson Weems, who did
+not resemble our first President in the latter's
+inability to tell lies. Perhaps the myth of the
+apple tree will never die, as the myth of the
+cherry tree has never died. In 1880, when
+Grant's mistaken friends tried to nominate him
+for a third Presidential term, other candidates
+had been urged because this one, it was said,
+could carry Ohio, that one Maine, and so on.
+Then Roscoe Conkling of New York strode
+upon the stage to nominate Grant and declaimed
+to a hushed audience of twenty thousand men:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And if you ask what State <i>he</i> comes from,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Our sole reply shall be:</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">He</span> comes from Appomattox</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And the famous apple tree!"</span><br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">The twenty thousand were swept off their feet
+by the magic of that myth. Grant was almost
+nominated&mdash;but not quite.</p>
+
+<p>The historic interview began in the room to
+the left of the front door in the McLean house.
+Two very different figures confronted each
+other. Grant had not expected the meeting to
+take place so soon and had left the farmhouse
+where he had spent the night before in rough
+garb. He writes: "I was without a sword, as
+I usually was when on horseback in the field,
+and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the
+shoulder-straps of my rank to indicate to the
+army who I was.... General Lee was
+dressed in a full uniform, which was entirely
+new, and was wearing a sword of considerable
+value, very likely the sword which had been presented
+by the State of Virginia.... In my
+rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private
+with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must
+have contrasted very strangely with a man so
+handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+form. But this was not a matter that I
+thought of until afterwards."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Lee requested that the terms to be given his
+army should be written out. Grant asked General
+Parker of his staff, a full-blooded American
+Indian, for writing materials. He had prepared
+nothing beforehand, but he knew just what he
+wanted to say and he wrote without hesitation
+terms such as only a great and magnanimous
+nation could offer its conquered citizens. After
+providing for the giving of paroles (that is, an
+agreement not to take up arms again unless the
+paroled prisoner is later exchanged for a prisoner
+of the other side) and for the surrender of
+arms, artillery, and public property, he added:
+"This will not embrace the sidearms of the officers
+nor their private horses or baggage. This
+done, each officer and man will be allowed to
+return to their homes, not to be disturbed by
+United States authority so long as they observe
+their paroles and the laws in force where they
+reside." There are some mistakes in grammar
+in these words, but there are no mistakes in
+magnanimity. When Lee, having put on his
+glasses, had read the first sentence quoted
+above, he said with feeling:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 454px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_330.jpg" width="454" height="700" alt="Lee Surrenders to Grant" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08 smcap">Lee Surrenders to Grant</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">"This will have a happy effect upon my
+army."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">He went on to say that many of the privates
+in the Confederate cavalry and artillery owned
+their own horses; could they retain them?
+Grant did not change the written terms, but he
+said his officers would be instructed to let every
+Confederate private who claimed to own a horse
+or mule take the animal home with him. "It
+was doubtful," writes Grant, "whether they
+would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves
+and their families through the next winter
+without the aid of the horses they were then
+riding." Again Lee remarked that this would
+have a happy effect. He then wrote and signed
+an acceptance of the proposed terms of surrender.
+The war was over. The first act of
+peace was our issuing 25,000 rations to the army
+we had captured. For some days it had lived
+on parched corn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 531px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_333.jpg" width="531" height="690" alt="GEN. U. S. GRANT" title="" />
+  <span class="caption font08">GEN. U. S. GRANT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The news of the surrender flashed along the
+waiting lines like wildfire and the Union forces
+began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor
+of the victory. "I at once sent word," says
+Grant, "to have it stopped. The Confederates
+were now our prisoners and we did not want to
+exult over their downfall." This was the spirit
+of a great man and of a great nation. It was
+not the soldiers who fought the war who kept
+its rancors alive after peace had come, It was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+the politicians, who tore open the old wounds
+and kept the country bleeding for a dozen years
+after the Lost Cause was lost.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 1865,
+Grant and Lee again met between the lines and
+sitting on horseback talked for half an hour.
+Then Grant began his journey to Washington.
+His staff, including Tom, went with him. When
+they reached their goal, Second-Lieutenant
+Strong found he was that no longer. For General
+Wright had done what he had told Tom
+he meant to do. The recommendation had been
+heeded. Lincoln himself handed the boy his
+new commission as a brevet-captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I was glad to sign that, Tom," the President
+told him, "and even Stanton didn't kick this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know how glad I am to get it,
+Mr. President," was the reply. "Now I'm a
+boy-captain, as my great-grandfather was before
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not much on pedigrees and ancestry and
+genealogical trees, my boy," answered Lincoln.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+"Out West we think more of trees that grow
+out of the ground than we do of trees that grow
+on parchment. But you're right to be proud of
+an ancestry of service to your country. When
+family pride is based on money or land or social
+standing, it is one of the most foolish things
+God Almighty ever laughed at, but when it is
+based on service, real service, to your country,
+to your fellowmen, to the world, why, then,
+Tom, it's one of the biggest and best things in
+God's kingdom. But remember this, son,"&mdash;Lincoln's
+eyes flashed in their deep sockets&mdash;"if
+a boy has an ancestor who has done big
+things, the way to be proud of him is to do big
+things yourself. Living on the glory of what
+somebody else has done before you is a mighty
+poor kind of living. I never knew but one man
+that was perfect and I'd never have known he
+was if he hadn't told me so. Nobody else ever
+found it out. But if we can't be perfect, we can
+grow less imperfect by trying every day to serve
+our fellowmen. Remember that, Tom."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>On the evening of Good Friday, April 14,
+1865, Laura Keene, an English actress of
+great repute in America, was to play <i>Our American
+Cousin</i> at Ford's Theater, the chief place of
+amusement for war-time Washington.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, Assistant-Secretary-of-War
+Dana was notified by wire that Jacob Thompson
+of Mississippi, once Secretary of the Interior
+under our poor old wavering President,
+Buchanan, afterwards a leading Secessionist,
+would take a steamship for England that
+evening at Portland, Maine.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do?" Dana asked Stanton.</p>
+
+<p>"Arrest him! No, wait; better go over and
+see the President."</p>
+
+<p>So Dana went to the White House. Office-hours
+were over. He found Lincoln washing his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Halloo, Dana!" was Lincoln's greeting.
+"What's up?"</p>
+
+<p>The telegram was read aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"What does Stanton say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says to arrest him, but that I should
+refer the question to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, I rather think not. When you
+have got an elephant by the hind legs and he's
+trying to run away; it's best to let him run."</p>
+
+<p>Dana reported this to Stanton.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stuff!" said Stanton.</p>
+
+<p>But Thompson was not arrested, so that the
+last recorded act of Lincoln as President was
+one of mercy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In the upper stage-box, to the right of the
+audience, that evening, sat Abraham Lincoln,
+President of the United States, Mrs. Lincoln, a
+friend, Miss Harris, and an officer, Major Henry
+R. Rathbone. The cares of State seemed to
+have slipped for the moment from Lincoln's
+shoulders. He had bowed smilingly from the
+box in response to the cheers of the packed audience
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+in the body of the house. He had followed
+intently the action of the amusing play, constantly
+smiling, often applauding. The eyes of
+the little party of four were bent upon the stage,
+about ten o'clock, when the door of the box was
+jerked violently open behind them. As they
+turned at the noise, Death stalked in upon
+them.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Five minutes before, Tom Strong had been
+idly strolling along Tenth Street and had paused
+at the theater door to read the play-bills posted
+there. A small group of belated play-goers was
+at the ticket-booth. A man shoved roughly
+through them. A woman's "Oh!" of surprise
+and protest drew Tom's attention to the man.
+He had seen him but thrice before, yet the man's
+face was engraved upon his memory. Once, at
+Charlestown, Virginia, Wilkes Booth had stood
+in the ranks of the militia, eagerly awaiting the
+execution of John Brown. Once, upon a railroad
+train north of Baltimore, Wilkes Booth had
+drugged the boy and left him, as the scoundrel
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+thought, to die. Once, upon a railroad platform
+at Kingston, Alabama, Wilkes Booth had recognized
+him and had again sought his death.
+Whose death did he seek to compass now?
+What was the Confederate spy doing here?
+Tom had scarcely glimpsed the hawk-like features,
+the pallid face, the flowing black hair of
+his foe, when Booth disappeared from his sight
+in the crowded lobby of the theater.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Tom pursued him. But he was delayed
+by the little group through whom Booth
+had elbowed his rough way. And when he
+reached the ticket-window, he found no money
+in his pocket with which to buy admittance. He
+had put on civilian clothes that evening and had
+left his scanty store of currency in his uniform.
+The wary ticket-seller, used to all sorts of
+dodges by people who wanted to get in without
+paying, laughed at his story and refused to give
+him a ticket on trust. Tom's claim that he was
+an officer caused especial amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't go down, bub," said the ticket-seller.
+"Try to think up a better lie next time.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+And clear out now. Don't block up the passageway."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>must</i> get in," said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"You shan't," snarled the man, sure that he
+was being imposed upon.</p>
+
+<p>The doorkeeper, attracted by the little row,
+had come towards the ticket-window. He
+swung his right arm with a threatening gesture.
+As Tom started towards him he struck the
+threatened blow, but his clenched fist hit nothing.
+The boy had ducked under his arm and
+had fled into the theater. The doorkeeper pursued
+him. But Tom was now making his way
+like a weasel through the crowd. He had
+caught sight of Wilkes Booth nearly at the top
+of the right-hand staircase that led to the aisle
+from which the upper right-hand box was
+reached. Without any actual premonition of
+the coming tragedy which was to echo around
+the world upon the morrow, he still felt that
+Booth had in mind some evil deed and that it
+was his duty to prevent him. As he struggled
+toward the foot of the stairway, Booth saw
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+him, recognized him and smiled at him, a smile
+of triumphant hideous evil. Tom yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"Spy! Confederate spy! Stop him! Let
+me follow!"</p>
+
+<p>Upon the startled crowd there fell a sudden
+stillness. Nobody laid hand upon Booth, but
+everybody made way for the frantic boy who
+rushed up the stairway as the scoundrel he
+chased ran down the corridor. He clutched the
+newel post at the head of the stairway just as
+Booth flung open the door of the box. Tom
+ran towards him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The door of the box was violently jerked
+open. Wilkes Booth sprang across the
+threshold. He put his pistol close to the head
+of the unarmed man he meant to murder. He
+fired. The greatest American sank forward
+into his wife's arms. High above her shrieks
+rose the actor's trained voice. He leaped upon
+the balustrade of the box, shouted "<i>Sic semper
+tyrannis!</i>" and jumped down to the stage. He
+was booted and spurred for his escape. His
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+horse was held for him near the stage-door.
+One of his spurs caught upon the curtain of the
+box, so that he stumbled and fell heavily. But
+he had played his part upon that stage many a
+time before. He knew every nook and cranny
+of the mysterious labyrinth behind the footlights.
+He rose to his feet, disregarding a
+twisted ankle, and rushed to safety&mdash;for a few
+hours. He reached his horse and galloped into
+the calm night of God, profaned forever by this
+hideous crime of a besotted fanatic.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The martyred President was taken to a neighboring
+house, No. 453 Tenth Street. In a back
+hall bedroom, upon the first floor, that that was
+still Abraham Lincoln, but was soon to cease
+to be so, was laid upon a narrow bed. Tom had
+helped to carry him there. Wife and son, John
+Hay, Secretary-of-War Stanton, and a few
+others crowded into the tiny room. Doctors
+worked feverishly over the dying man. Their
+skill was in vain. The slow and regular breathing
+grew fainter. The automatic moaning
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+ceased. A look of unspeakable peace came to
+the face the world now knows so well. In a
+solemn hush, at twenty-two minutes after seven
+in the morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865, the
+great soul of Abraham Lincoln went back to
+the God Who had given him to America and to
+the world. A moment later Stanton spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Now he belongs to the ages."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tom Hunts Wilkes Booth</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">The End of the
+Murderer</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Andrew Johnson, President of
+the United States</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tom and Towser Go
+Home.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The assassination of Lincoln was not the
+only crime that stained that memorable
+night. Secretary-of-State Seward was stabbed
+in his sick-bed by one of Booth's co-conspirators.
+Attempts were made upon the lives of other
+Cabinet ministers. Many arbitrary arrests had
+been made during the war by Secretary Stanton.
+It had been said that whenever Stanton's little
+bell rang, somebody went to prison. That little
+bell had little rest this Saturday. Wholesale
+arrests were made of suspected Southern sympathizers
+who might have known something of
+the hideous conspiracy of murder. Stanton put
+all the grim energy of him into the pursuit of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+the leading criminals. He was said never to
+forget anything. One of the things he had not
+forgotten was that Tom Strong knew Wilkes
+Booth by sight. He sent him from Lincoln's
+bedside, hours before Lincoln died, to join a
+troop of cavalry that was to pursue Booth. The
+road by which the murderer had left Washington
+was known. Hard upon his heels rode the
+avengers of crime. Wherever there was a light
+in one of the few houses along the lonely road,
+often where there was no light, the occupants
+were seized, questioned, sometimes sent to
+Washington under guard, sometimes released
+and sternly bidden to say nothing of the midnight
+ride. Piecing together scraps of information
+gathered here and there, studying every
+crossroad for possible hoof-marks of flight, the
+silent commander of the cavalrymen at last convinced
+himself that he was on the trail of the
+quarry. The troops broke into full gallop. A
+few minutes before dawn they reached a small
+village on the bank of the Potomac, where the
+fires of a smithy gleamed. They pulled up short
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+as the startled blacksmith came out of his sooty
+shed.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" demanded the
+captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been&mdash;I've been&mdash;putting on a horseshoe,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>"For what kind of a looking man?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said his name was Barnard."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, sir," said Tom from his
+saddle, "but Barnard was the name Wilkes
+Booth once gave me for his own." At the beginning
+of the ride, Tom had described Booth's
+appearance to the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Was the man pale? Did he have long black
+hair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Long black hair," answered the blacksmith,
+"but his cheeks were red. He seemed excited.
+While I was replacing the shoe his horse had
+cast, he kept drinking brandy from a bottle he
+carried. He never gave me none of it," the
+man added with an injured air.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. He said I'd hear great news later
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+today, that the Southerners had won their
+greatest victory. I asked him where and he
+swore at me and told me to shut up. But he
+gave me a silver dollar. Perhaps it's bad.
+Is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith pulled out of his grimy pocket
+a dollar and showed it to the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who that man was?" was the
+stern command.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, o' course I don't. I s'pose he was
+Mr. Barnard."</p>
+
+<p>"He was Judas. He has murdered Abraham
+Lincoln. And he has given you one of the forty
+pieces of silver."</p>
+
+<p>With wild-eyed horror, the smith started
+back. He flung the accursed dollar far into the
+Potomac.</p>
+
+<p>"God's curse go with it," he cried. "Captain,
+the man went straight down the river road.
+He gave his horse a cut with his whip 'n he
+yelled 'Carry me back to ole Virginny!' and
+he went off lickety-split. He ain't half-an-hour
+ahead of you."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No need to command full speed now. Every
+man was riding hard. Every horse was putting
+his last ounce of strength into his stride. Within
+an hour, the hounds saw the slinking fox they
+chased. Booth, abandoning his exhausted steed,
+took refuge in a tumble-down barn. A cordon
+was thrown about it and he was called on to
+surrender. The reply was a shot. Tom heard
+the whiz of the bullet as it tore by him. The
+cavalry pumped lead into the barn. Once,
+twice, thrice they fired. At the first volley, the
+trapped murderer had again fired. There was no
+answer to the second and third. With reloaded
+carbines, the troopers charged, burst open the
+barred door, and rushed into the rickety shed.
+A man lay on the earthen floor, breath and
+blood struggling together in his gaping mouth.
+As they gathered about him, the Captain
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know this man, Captain Strong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wilkes Booth, sir."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sound of his own name half recalled
+Booth to life. He looked up at the boy who
+stood beside him and recognized him. Ferocious
+hate filled the glazing eyes. Then Wilkes
+Booth went to his eternal doom, hating to the
+end.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he dead?" said the Captain, turning to a
+major of the medical service, who had galloped
+beside Tom on that fierce ride of the avengers.
+A big, bearded man knelt beside the body of
+Wilkes Booth, put his finger where the pulse
+had been and laid his hand where the heart had
+once beat.</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead," answered Major Hans Rolf.</p>
+
+<p>His body was thrust somewhere into the earth
+he had disgraced or else was flung, weighted
+with stones, into the river, all the flood tides of
+which could not wash away the black guilt of
+him. No man knows where the body of Wilkes
+Booth was buried.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"The king is dead! Long live the king!"</p>
+
+<p>When Tom rode sadly up Pennsylvania Avenue,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+with a crape-laden flag at half-mast over
+the Capitol, glad for the stern justice that had
+been dealt out to the murderer he loathed, but
+bowed down with grief for the murdered President
+he had loved, Abraham Lincoln was no
+longer President of the United States. In his
+stead, our uncrowned king was Andrew Johnson,
+of Tennessee, a Southern Unionist who had
+been elected Vice President when the people
+chose Lincoln a second time for their ruler.
+Johnson had been born to grinding poverty in a
+rough community where "skule-l'arnin'" was
+not to be had. He was a grown man, earning a
+scanty livelihood as a village tailor, when his
+wife taught him to read and write. He worked
+his hard way up in life, became a man of
+prominence in his village, in his county, in his
+State, until he was chosen for Lincoln's running-mate
+as a representative Southern Unionist. He
+was of course a man of native force, but he
+sometimes drowned his mind in liquor. That
+fatal habit pulled him down. He was a failure
+as a President, though thereafter he served his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+State and his country well as a United States
+Senator from Tennessee.</p>
+
+<p>The White House was changed under its new
+ruler. John Hay, full of cheer and wit, was
+abroad as a secretary of legation. Nicolay, his
+superior officer, was a consul in Europe. The
+Lincoln family had gone West through a sorrowing
+country, bearing the body of the martyr-President
+to its burial-place in Springfield,
+Illinois. For a while some familiar faces were
+left. At first, the same Cabinet ministers served
+the new President. For some time, Uncle Moses
+had to learn no new names as he carried about
+the summons to the Cabinet meetings. But the
+visitors to the White House had changed mightily.
+Rough men from Tennessee and the other
+Border States, some of them diamonds in the
+rough, swarmed there. Lincoln had never used
+tobacco. The new-comers both smoked and
+chewed. Clouds of smoke filled the lower story
+and giant spittoons lined the corridors and invaded
+the public rooms. Gradually the Republican
+leaders ceased to wait upon the President.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Among the people who left the White House
+soon after Lincoln left it was Tom Strong. On
+a bright May morning he walked across the
+portico, where Towser was eagerly awaiting
+him and where Uncle Moses followed him.
+Unk' Mose lifted his withered black hands and
+called down blessings on the boy who had been
+his angel of freedom and had led him out of
+bondage.</p>
+
+<p>"De good Lawd bress you, Mas'r Tom. And
+de good Lawd bress dat dar wufless ol' houn'
+dawg Towser, too. 'Kase Towser, he lubs you,
+Mas'r Tom,&mdash;and so duz I," Uncle Moses shyly
+added.</p>
+
+<p>The venerable old negro and the white boy
+shook hands in a long farewell upon the steps
+of the White House. Then Tom turned away
+from the historic roof that had so long sheltered
+him and walked to the railroad station, to take
+the train for New York. Towser trotted stiffly
+by his side, trying at every step to lick his master's
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Strong studied hard at home and then
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+went to Yale, as his father had done before him.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">Towser could not go with him. The laws of
+Yale forbade it. That is one of the chief disadvantages
+of being a dog. Soon after Tom
+went to New Haven, Towser went to heaven.
+At least, let us hope he did. He deserved to do
+so. One of the human things about Martin
+Luther, the stern founder of Protestantism in
+Germany in the Sixteenth Century, was that he
+once said to a tiny girl, weeping over the death
+of her tiny dog: "Do not cry, little maid; for
+you will find your dog in heaven and he will
+have a golden tail."</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb3">THE END</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 380px;">
+  <img src="images/illo_353.jpg" width="380" height="308" alt="TOWSER" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2 pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="block1">
+
+<p class="center font20">BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font15">THE DOGS OF BOYTOWN</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Walter A. Dyer</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Author of "Pierrot, Dog of Belgium," etc.</i><br />
+
+<i>Illustrated. $1.50 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09"><i>New York Sun</i>: "It takes the cake&mdash;in this case, of course,
+a dog biscuit.... It is the most unusual book of its kind....
+Dyer enters a new field for boys ... all boys will
+want to know about Dogs&mdash;their ways and habits, their histories
+and origins.... Threaded through this wonderful
+textbook on dogs is the story of adventures of two boys ...
+shows the reader where to find out about everything from
+bench shows and the care of puppies to fleas...."</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font15">THE FIVE BABBITTS AT BONNYACRES</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Walter A. Dyer</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Illustrated, by J. O. Chapin. $1.50 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">A back-to-the-farm story for young folks based on actual
+experience. The farm problems and results are such as could
+actually occur on thousands of American farms.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font15">MAGIC PICTURES OF THE LONG AGO</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Anna Curtis Chandler</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>With some forty illustrations. $1.30 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">Each recounts the youth and something of the later life of
+some striking character in art, history, or literature, and is
+made very vivid by reproductions of famous pictures, etc.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font15">BLUE HERON COVE</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Fannie Lee McKinney</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Author of "Nora-Square-Accounts."</i></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Illustrated. $1.35 net</i><br /></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">Tells how Blue Heron Island and its seafaring folks
+change "a little German countess in white satin" into "a
+real, authentic American girl."</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center font15">THE GUN BOOK</p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">Thomas H. McKee</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09"><i>Profusely illustrated. $1.60 net</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font09">A book about guns for boys of all ages. The history is
+accurate; boys will remember the anecdotes; and the technical
+parts are sensibly adapted to show "just how it works."</span></p>
+
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:2.0em">COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.9em">FOR BOYS <i>By CHARLES P. BURTON</i></span></p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="p2 center font13"><b>THE BOYS OF BOB'S HILL</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">George A. Williams</span>. 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p>A lively story of a party of boys in a small New England
+town.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"A first-rate juvenile ... a real story for the live human boy&mdash;any
+boy will read it eagerly to the end ... quite thrilling adventures."&mdash;<i>Chicago
+Record-Herald</i>.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE BOB'S CAVE BOYS</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Victor Perard</span>. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="font08 pmb2">"It would be hard to find anything better in the literature of New
+England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, human boys, full of fun,
+into trouble and out again, but frank, honest, and clean."&mdash;<i>The Congregationalist.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE BOB'S HILL BRAVES</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">H. S. DeLay</span>. 12mo. $1.35 net.</span></p>
+
+<p>The "Bob's Hill" band spend a vacation in Illinois, where
+they play at being Indians, hear thrilling tales of real Indians,
+and learn much frontier history. A history of especial interest
+to "Boy Scouts."</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"Merry youngsters. Capital. Thrilling tales of the red men and
+explorers. These healthy red-blooded, New England boys."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia
+Press.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE BOY SCOUTS OF BOB'S HILL</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Gordon Grant</span>. 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The "Bob's Hill" band organizes a Boy Scouts band and
+have many adventures. Mr. Burton brings in tales told around
+a camp-fire of La Salle, Joliet, the Louisiana Purchase, and
+the Northwestern Reservation.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>CAMP BOB'S HILL</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Gordon Grant</span>. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">A tale of Boy Scouts on their summer vacation.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span style="font-size:1.3em"><b>THE RAVEN PATROL OF BOB'S HILL</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Gordon Grant</span>. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The account of a camping trip of the Raven Patrol of the
+Boy Scouts to the Massachusetts coast, with much real boy
+fun and wholesome adventure.</p>
+
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+<p class="center font20">BY ALICE CALHOUN HAINES</p>
+
+<p class="center font15"><i>For Young Folks from 9 to 16 Years old.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>PARTNERS FOR FAIR</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">With illustrations by <span class="smcap">Faith Avery</span>. $1.35 net</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">A story full of action, not untinged by pathos, of a boy
+and his faithful dog and their wanderings after the poor-house
+burns down. They have interesting experiences with a
+traveling circus; the boy is thrown from a moving train, and
+has a lively time with the Mexican Insurrectos, from whom he
+is rescued by our troops.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Francis Day</span>. 300 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p>A family story of city life. Lightened by humor and an
+airship.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="font08">"Among the very best of books for young folks. Appeals especially
+to girls."&mdash;<i>Wisconsin List for Township Libraries.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="font08">"Promises to be perennially popular. A family of happy, healthy,
+inventive, bright children make the best of restricted conditions and
+prove themselves masters of circumstances."&mdash;<i>Christian Register.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"Sparkles with cleverness and humor."&mdash;<i>Brooklyn Eagle.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>COCK-A-DOODLE HILL</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">
+A sequel to the above. Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Francis Day</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="center font08">296 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.</p>
+
+<p>"Cockle-a-doodle Hill" is where the Dudley Graham family
+went to live when they left New York, and here Ernie started
+her chicken-farm, with one solitary fowl, "Hennerietta." The
+pictures of country scenes and the adventures and experiences
+of this household of young people are very life-like.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"No better book for young people than 'The Luck of the Dudley
+Grahams' was offered last year. 'Cock-a-Doodle Hill' is another of
+similar qualities."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Press.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+<p class="center font20">By ALFRED BISHOP MASON</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="p2 center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, WASHINGTON'S SCOUT</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">A story of adventure. The principal characters, a boy and
+a trapper, are in the Revolutionary army from the defeat at
+Brooklyn to the victory at Yorktown.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, BOY-CAPTAIN</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Tom Strong and a sturdy old trapper take part in such
+stirring events following the Revolution as the Indian raid
+with Crawford and a flat-boat voyage from Pittsburgh to
+New Orleans, etc.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, JUNIOR</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">The story of the son of Tom Strong in the young United
+States. Tom sees the duel between Alexander Hamilton and
+Aaron Burr; is in Washington during the presidency of Jefferson;
+is on board of the "Clermont" on its first trip, and
+serves in the United States Navy during the War of 1812.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, THIRD</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Tom Strong, Junior's son helps his father build the first railroad
+in the United States and then goes with Kit Carson on
+the Lewis and Clarke Expedition.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font13"><b>TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Illustrated. $1.30 net.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Serving under President Lincoln, the fourth Tom Strong becomes
+an actor in the most stirring events of the Civil War.</p>
+
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="r95" />
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="center font14">STANDARD CYCLOPÆDIAS FOR YOUNG OR OLD</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font16">CHAMPLIN'S</p>
+
+<p class="center font20"><span class="smcap">Young Folks' Cyclopædias</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font12">By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN</p>
+
+<p class="center font07"><i>Late Associate Editor of the American Cyclopædia</i></p>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Bound in substantial red buckram. Each volume complete
+in itself and sold separately. 12mo, $3.00 per volume, net.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>COMMON THINGS</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">New, Enlarged Edition, 850 pp. Profusely Illustrated</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"A book which will be of permanent value to any boy or girl to
+whom it may be given, and which fills a place in the juvenile library,
+never, so far as I know, supplied before."&mdash;<i>Susan Coolidge.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>PERSONS AND PLACES</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">New, Up-to-Date Edition, 985 pp. Over 375 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"We know copies of the work to which their young owners turn
+instantly for information upon every theme about which they have
+questions to ask. More than this, we know that some of these copies
+are read daily, as well as consulted; that their owners turn the leaves
+as they might those of a fairy book, reading intently articles of which
+they had not thought before seeing them, and treating the book simply
+as one capable of furnishing the rarest entertainment in exhaustless
+quantities.&mdash;<i>N. Y. Evening Post.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>LITERATURE AND ART</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">604 pp. 270 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"Few poems, plays, novels, pictures, statues, or fictitious characters
+that children&mdash;or most of their parents&mdash;of our day are likely to inquire
+about will be missed here. Mr. Champlin's judgment seems unusually
+sound."&mdash;<i>The Nation.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>GAMES AND SPORTS</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">John D. Champlin</span> and <span class="smcap">Arthur Bostwick</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">Revised Edition, 784 pp. 900 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2 font08">"Should form a part of every juvenile library, whether public or
+private."&mdash;<i>The Independent.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center font14"><b>NATURAL HISTORY</b></p>
+
+<p class="center font10">By <span class="smcap">John D. Champlin</span>, assisted by <span class="smcap">Frederick A. Lucas</span></p>
+
+<p class="center font09">725 pp. Over 800 Illustrations</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="font08">"Here, in compact and attractive form, is valuable and reliable information
+on every phase of natural history, on every item of interest
+to the student. Invaluable to the teacher and school, and should be on
+every teacher's desk for ready reference, and the children should be
+taught to go to this volume for information useful and interesting."&mdash;<i>Journal
+of Education.</i></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center font16">
+HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</p>
+<p class="center font10 pmb1">
+PUBLISHERS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout
+
+Author: Alfred Bishop Mason
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2013 [EBook #44132]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                 STORIES OF ADVENTURE IN THE
+
+                     YOUNG UNITED STATES
+
+                  _By ALFRED BISHOP MASON_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                     WASHINGTON'S SCOUT
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                         BOY-CAPTAIN
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                           JUNIOR
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                         TOM STRONG,
+                            THIRD
+
+                   _Illustrated, $1.30 net_
+
+
+                    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+                   Publishers      New York
+
+
+
+
+        [Illustration: ST. GAUDENS' STATUE OF LINCOLN]
+
+
+
+
+                          TOM STRONG,
+                        LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+             _A STORY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE
+                 TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS_
+
+
+                               By
+
+                      ALFRED BISHOP MASON
+
+    Author of "Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom Strong,
+            Boy-Captain," Tom Strong, Junior," and
+                      "Tom Strong, Third"
+
+
+                          ILLUSTRATED
+
+                         [Illustration]
+
+                           NEW YORK
+                    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+                             1919
+
+
+
+
+                       COPYRIGHT, 1919
+                             BY
+                   HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+
+                 The Quinn & Boden Company
+                     BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+                 RAHWAY         NEW JERSEY
+
+
+
+
+                  DEDICATED BY PERMISSION
+
+                             TO
+
+                     THEODORE ROOSEVELT
+
+                   INSPIRER OF PATRIOTISM,
+                      A GREAT AMERICAN
+
+
+
+
+                          OYSTER BAY
+                       LONG ISLAND, N.Y.
+
+                                                 August 31st, 1917.
+
+  Dear Mr. Mason:
+
+  All right, I shall break
+  my rule and have you dedicate that book to
+  me. Thank you!
+
+                              Faithfully yours,
+
+[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt signature]
+
+  Mr. Alfred B. Mason,
+  University Club,
+  New York City.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Many of the persons and personages who appear
+upon the pages of this book have already
+lived, some in history and some in the pages of
+"Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," "Tom
+Strong, Boy-Captain," "Tom Strong, Junior,"
+or "Tom Strong, Third." Those who wish to
+know the full story of the four Tom Strongs,
+great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son,
+should read those books, too.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                         CHAPTER I
+                                                             PAGE
+
+  TOM RIDES IN WESTERN MARYLAND--HALTED BY ARMED
+  MEN--JOHN BROWN--THE ATTACK UPON HARPER'S FERRY--THE
+  FIGHT--JOHN BROWN'S SOUL GOES MARCHING ON                     3
+
+
+                         CHAPTER II
+
+  OUR WAR WITH MEXICO--KIT CARSON AND HIS LAWYER, ABE
+  LINCOLN--TOM GOES TO LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION--S. F. B.
+  MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE TELEGRAPH--TOM BACK IN
+  WASHINGTON                                                   22
+
+
+                         CHAPTER III
+
+  CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS--MR. STRONG GOES TO RUSSIA--TOM
+  GOES TO LIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE--BULL RUN--"STONEWALL"
+  JACKSON--GEO. B. MCCLELLAN--TOM STRONG, SECOND-LIEUTENANT,
+  U. S. A.--THE BATTLE OF THE "MERRIMAC" AND THE "MONITOR"     40
+
+
+                         CHAPTER IV
+
+  TOM GOES WEST--WILKES BOOTH HUNTS HIM--DR. HANS ROLF
+  SAVES HIM--HE DELIVERS DESPATCHES TO GENERAL GRANT           71
+
+
+                         CHAPTER V
+
+  INSIDE THE CONFEDERATE LINES--"SAIREY" WARNS TOM--OLD MAN
+  TOMBLIN'S "SETTLEMINT"--STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE--WILKES
+  BOOTH GIVES THE ALARM--A WILD DASH FOR THE UNION LINES       90
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VI
+
+  TOM UP A TREE--DID THE CONFEDERATE OFFICER SEE HIM?--THE
+  FUGITIVE SLAVE GUIDES HIM--BUYING A BOAT IN THE
+  DARK--ADRIFT IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY                         117
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VII
+
+  TOWSER FINDS THE FUGITIVES--TOWSER BRINGS UNCLE
+  MOSES--MR. IZZARD AND HIS YANKEE OVERSEER, JAKE
+  JOHNSON--TOM IS PULLED DOWN THE CHIMNEY--HOW UNCLE
+  MOSES CHOKED THE OVERSEER--THE FLIGHT OF THE FOUR           129
+
+
+                         CHAPTER VIII
+
+  LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF
+  LINCOLN--THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS
+  NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA
+  FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE RUSSIAN FLEET
+  COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER                      160
+
+
+                         CHAPTER IX
+
+  TOM GOES TO VICKSBURG--MORGAN'S RAID--GEN. BASIL W. DUKE
+  CAPTURES TOM--GETTYSBURG--GEN. ROBERT E. LEE GIVES TOM
+  HIS BREAKFAST--IN LIBBY PRISON--LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT
+  GETTYSBURG                                                  182
+
+
+                         CHAPTER X
+
+  TOM IS HUNGRY--HE LEARNS TO "SPOON" BY SQUADS--THE BULLET
+  AT THE WINDOW--WORKING ON THE TUNNEL--"RAT HELL"--THE
+  RISK OF THE ROLL-CALL--WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE JOHNSON,
+  CONFEDERATE SPY--TOM IN LIBBY PRISON--HANS ROLF ATTENDS
+  HIM--HANS REFUSES TO ESCAPE--THE FLIGHT THROUGH THE
+  TUNNEL--FREE, BUT HOW TO STAY SO?                           213
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XI
+
+  TOM HIDES IN A RIVER BANK--EATS RAW FISH--JIM GRAYSON
+  AIDS HIM--DOWN THE JAMES RIVER ON A TREE--PASSING THE
+  PATROL BOATS--CANNONADED--THE END OF THE VOYAGE             249
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XII
+
+  TOWSER WELCOMES TOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE--LINCOLN
+  RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT--GRANT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--SHERMAN
+  MARCHES FROM ATLANTA TO THE SEA--TOM ON GRANT'S
+  STAFF--FIVE FORKS--FALL OF RICHMOND--HANS ROLF FREED--BOB
+  SAVES TOM FROM CAPTURE--TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO
+  ACTION--LEE SURRENDERS--TOM STRONG, BREVET-CAPTAIN,
+  U. S. A.                                                    265
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XIII
+
+  THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN                        307
+
+
+                         CHAPTER XIV
+
+  TOM HUNTS WILKES BOOTH--THE END OF THE MURDERER--ANDREW
+  JOHNSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES--TOM AND TOWSER
+  GO HOME                                                     315
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN                                  _Frontispiece_
+    St. Gaudens Statue, Lincoln Park, Chicago
+                                                          PAGE
+
+  JOHN BROWN                                                   10
+
+  THE ATTACK UPON THE ENGINE HOUSE                             17
+
+  BATTLE OF THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC"                   66
+
+  ADMIRAL FARRAGUT                                             72
+
+  MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS                                   85
+
+  THE LOCOMOTIVE TOM HELPED TO STEAL                          106
+
+  TOWSER                                                      157
+
+  GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES                               191
+
+  ARLINGTON                                                   198
+
+  GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER                              201
+
+  LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR                                  214
+
+  FIGHTING THE RATS                                           224
+
+  LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL                                 229
+
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1864                                     269
+
+  GEN. W. T. SHERMAN                                          272
+    St. Gaudens Statue, Central Park Plaza, New York
+
+  BOB                                                         275
+
+  GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN                                     278
+    Sheridan Square Statue, Washington, D. C.
+
+  TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO ACTION                             292
+
+  THE MCLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE                     299
+
+  LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT                                     302
+
+  GEN. U. S. GRANT                                            304
+
+
+                         MAP
+
+  EASTERN HALF OF UNITED STATES                                 2
+
+
+
+
+                      TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE EASTERN UNITED STATES
+               (Showing places mentioned in this book)]
+
+
+
+
+                      TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+     TOM RIDES IN WESTERN MARYLAND--HALTED BY ARMED MEN--JOHN BROWN--THE
+     ATTACK UPON HARPER'S FERRY--THE FIGHT--JOHN BROWN'S SOUL GOES
+     MARCHING ON.
+
+
+On a beautiful October afternoon, a man and a boy were riding along a
+country road in Western Maryland. To their left lay the Potomac, its
+waters gleaming and sparkling beneath the rays of the setting sun. To
+their right, low hills, wooded to the top, bounded the view. They had
+left the little town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, an hour before; had
+crossed to the Maryland shore of the Potomac; and now were looking for
+some country inn or friendly farmhouse where they and their horses could
+be cared for overnight.
+
+The man was Mr. Thomas Strong, once Tom Strong, third, and the boy was
+his son, another Tom Strong, the fourth to bear that name. Like the
+three before him he was brown and strong, resolute and eager, with a
+smile that told of a nature of sunshine and cheer. They were looking for
+land. Mr. Strong had inherited much land in New York City. The growth of
+that great town had given him a comfortable fortune. He had decided to
+buy a farm somewhere and a friend had told him that Western Maryland was
+almost a paradise. So it was, but this Eden had its serpent. Slavery was
+there. It was a mild and patriarchal kind of slavery, but it had left
+its black mark upon the countryside. Across the nearby Mason and Dixon's
+line, Pennsylvania was full of little farms, tilled by their owners, and
+of little towns, which reflected the wealth of the neighboring farmers.
+Western Maryland was largely owned by absentee landlords. Its towns were
+tiny villages. Its farms were few and far between. The free State was
+briskly alive; the slave State was sleepily dead.
+
+The two riders were splendidly mounted, the father on a big bay
+stallion, Billy-boy, and the son on a black Morgan mare, Jennie.
+Billy-boy was a descendant of the Billy-boy General Washington had given
+to the first Tom Strong, many years before. Jennie was a descendant of
+the Jennie Tom Strong, third, had ridden across the plains of the great
+West with John C. Fremont, "the Pathfinder," first Republican candidate
+for President of the United States.
+
+"We haven't seen a house for miles, Father," said the boy.
+
+"And we were never out of sight of a house when we were riding through
+Pennsylvania. There's always a reason for such things. Do you know the
+reason?"
+
+"No, sir. What is it?"
+
+"The sin of slavery. I don't believe I shall buy land in Maryland. I
+thought I might plant a colony of happy people here and help to make
+Maryland free, in the course of years, but I'm beginning to think the
+right kind of white people won't come where the only work is done by
+slaves. We must find soon a place to sleep. Perhaps there'll be a house
+around that next turn in the road. Billy-boy whinnies as though there
+were other horses near."
+
+Billy-boy's sharp nose had not deceived him. There were other horses
+near. Just around the turn of the road there were three horses. Three
+armed men were upon them. Father and son at the same moment saw and
+heard them.
+
+"You stop! Who be you?"
+
+The sharp command was backed by uplifted pistols. The Strongs reined in
+their horses, with indignant surprise. Who were these three farmers who
+seemed to be playing bandits upon the peaceful highroad? The boy glanced
+at his father and tried to imitate his father's cool demeanor. He felt
+the shock of surprise, but his heart beat joyously with the thought:
+"This is an adventure!" All his young life he had longed for adventures.
+He had deeply enjoyed the novel experience of the week's ride with the
+father he loved, but he had not hoped for a thrill like this.
+
+Mr. Strong eyed the three horsemen, who seemed both awkward and uneasy.
+"What does this mean?" he asked.
+
+"Now, thar ain't goin' to be no harm done you nor done bub, thar,
+neither," the leader of the highwaymen answered, with a note almost of
+pleading in his voice. "Don't you be oneasy. But you'll have to come
+with us----"
+
+"And spend Sunday with us----" broke in another man.
+
+"Shet up, Bill. I'll do all the talkin' that's needed."
+
+"That's what you do best," the other man grumbled.
+
+"Well, Tom," said Mr. Strong, turning with a smile to his son, "we seem
+to have found that place to spend the night." He faced his captors.
+"This is a queer performance of yours. You don't look like highwaymen,
+though you act like them. Do you mean to steal our horses?" he added,
+sharply.
+
+"We ain't no hoss thieves," replied the leader. "You've got to come with
+us, but you needn't be no way oneasy. You, Bill, ride ahead!"
+
+Bill turned his horse and rode ahead, Mr. Strong and Tom riding behind
+him, the other two men behind them. It was a silent ride, but not a long
+one. Within a mile, they reached a rude clearing that held a couple of
+log huts. The sun had set; the short twilight was over. Firelight
+gleamed in the larger of the huts. The prisoners were taken to it. A man
+who was lounging outside the door had a whispered talk with the three
+horsemen. Then he turned rather sheepishly; said: "Come in, mister; come
+in, bub;" opened the door, called within: "Prisoners, Captin' Smith,"
+and stepped aside as father and son entered.
+
+There were a dozen men in the big room, farmers all, apparently. They
+were all on their feet, eyeing keenly the unexpected prisoners. Their
+eyes turned to a tall man, who stepped forward and held out his hand,
+saying:
+
+"Sorry the boys had to take you in, but you and your hosses are safe and
+we won't keep you long. The day of the Lord is at hand."
+
+There was a grim murmur of approval from the other men. The Lord's day,
+as Sunday is sometimes called, was at hand, for it was then the evening
+of Saturday, October 15, 1859. But that was not what the speaker meant.
+He was not what his followers called him, Captain Smith. He was John
+Brown, of North Elba, New York, of Kansas ("bleeding Kansas" it was
+called then, when slaveholders from Missouri and freedom-lovers under
+John Brown had turned it into a battlefield), and he was soon to be John
+Brown of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, first martyr in the cause of Freedom
+on Virginian soil. To him "the day of the Lord" was the day when he was
+to attack slavery in its birthplace, the Old Dominion, and that attack
+had been set by him for Sunday, October 16. His plan was to seize
+Harper's Ferry, where there was a United States arsenal, arm the slaves
+he thought would come to his standard from all Virginia, and so compass
+the fall of the Slave Power. A wild plan, an impossible plan, the plan
+of an almost crazy fanatic, and a splendid dream, a dream for the sake
+of which he was glad to give his heroic life.
+
+He had rented this Maryland farm in July, giving his name as Smith and
+saying he expected to breed horses. By twos and threes his followers had
+joined him in this solitary spot, until now there were twenty-one of
+them. The few folk scattered through the countryside had begun to be
+suspicious of this strange gathering of men. All sorts of wild stories
+circulated, though none was as wild as the truth. The men themselves
+were tense under the strain of the long wait. They feared discovery and
+attack. For the three days before "the day of the Lord" they had
+patrolled the one road, looking out for soldiers or for spies. Tom and
+his father had been their sole captives.
+
+John Brown was one of Nature's noblemen and among his friends in
+Massachusetts and New York were some of the foremost men of their time,
+so he had learned to know a real man when he met one. He soon found
+out that Mr. Strong was a real man. He told him of his plans, and urged
+him to join in the projected foray on Harper's Ferry. But when Mr.
+Strong refused and tried to show him how mad his project was, the fires
+of the fanatic blazed within him.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BROWN]
+
+"Did not Joshua bring down the walls of Jericho with a ram's horn?" he
+shouted. "And with twenty armed men cannot I pull down the walls of the
+citadel of Slavery? Are you a true man or not? Will you join me or not?
+Answer me yes or no."
+
+"No," was the response, quiet but firm.
+
+"You shall join me; you and your boy," thundered the crusader, hammering
+the table with his mighty fist. "Here, Jim, put these people under guard
+and keep them until we start."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tom and his father were well-treated, but they were kept under guard
+until the next night and were then taken along by John Brown's "army,"
+which trudged off into the darkness afoot, while Billy-boy and Jennie
+and the other horses in the corral whinnied uneasily, sensing, as
+animals do, the stir of a departure which is to leave them behind. In
+the center of the little column the two captives marched the five miles
+to Harper's Ferry and started across the bridge that led to that tiny
+town.
+
+A brave man, one Patrick Hoggins, was night-watchman of the bridge. He
+heard the trampling of many feet upon the plank-flooring. He hurried
+towards the strange sound.
+
+"Halt!" shouted somebody in the column.
+
+"Now I didn't know what 'halt' mint then," Patrick testified afterwards,
+"anny more than a hog knows about a holiday."
+
+But he had seen armed men and he turned to run and give an alarm. A
+bullet was swifter than he, but not swifter than his voice. He fell, but
+his shouts had alarmed the town. There were two or three watchmen at the
+arsenal. They came forward, only to be made prisoners. The few citizens
+who had been aroused could do nothing. The "army" seized the arsenal
+without difficulty.
+
+Five miles from Harper's Ferry lived Col. Lewis W. Washington,
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, great-grand-nephew of another
+gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, George Washington. At midnight,
+Colonel Washington was awakened by a blow upon his bedroom door. It
+swung open and the light of a burning torch showed the astonished
+Southerner four armed men, one of them a negro, who bade him rise and
+dress. They were a patrol sent out by Brown. Their leader, Stevens,
+asked:
+
+"Haven't you a pistol Lafayette gave George Washington and a sword
+Frederick the Great sent him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Downstairs."
+
+His four captors tramped downstairs with him. Pistol and sword were
+found.
+
+"I'll take the pistol," said Stevens. "You hand the sword to this
+negro."
+
+John Brown wore this sword during the fighting that followed. It is now
+in the possession of the State of New York. While its being sent George
+Washington by Frederick the Great is doubtful--the story runs that the
+Prussian king sent with it a message "From the oldest general to the
+best general"--its being surrendered by Lewis Washington to the negro is
+true.
+
+Lewis was then on the staff of the Governor of Virginia, and had
+acquired in this way his title of Colonel. He was put into his own
+carriage. His slaves, few in number, were bundled into a four-horse
+farm-wagon. They were told to come and fight for their freedom. Too
+scared to resist, they came as they were bidden to do, but they did no
+fighting. At Harper's Ferry they and their fellow-slaves, seized at a
+neighboring plantation, escaped back to slavery at the first possible
+moment. Not a single negro voluntarily joined John Brown. He had
+expected a widespread slave insurrection. There was nothing of the sort.
+By Monday morning he knew he had failed, failed utterly.
+
+Before Monday's sun set, Harper's Ferry was full of soldiers, United
+States regulars and State militia. Brown, his men and his white
+captives, eleven of the latter, were shut up in the fire-engine house of
+the armory. The militia refused to charge the engine-house, saying that
+this might cost the captives their lives. Many of them were drunk; all
+of them were undisciplined; their commander did not know how to command.
+The situation changed with the arrival of the United States Marines led
+by Lieut.-Col. Robert E. Lee, afterwards the famous chief of the army of
+the Confederate States.
+
+By this time Tom was beginning to think he had had enough adventure. He
+had enjoyed that silent tramp through the darkness beside his father. He
+had enjoyed it the more because they were both prisoners-of-war. Being a
+prisoner was an amazingly thrilling thing. He was sorry when brave
+Patrick Hoggins was shot and glad to know the wound was slight, but
+sharing in the skirmish, even in the humble capacity of a captive, had
+excited the boy immensely. Now that there was almost constant firing
+back and forth, when two or three wounded men were lying on the floor,
+and when his father and he and Colonel Washington were perforce risking
+their lives in the engine-house, with nothing to gain and everything to
+lose, and when scanty sleep and little food had tired out even his stout
+little body, Tom felt quite ready to go home and have his adored mother
+"mother" him. His father saw the homesickness in his eyes.
+
+"Steady, my son," said Mr. Strong. "This won't last long. No stray
+bullet is apt to reach this corner, where Captain Brown has put us. The
+only other danger is when the regulars rush in here, but unless they
+mistake us for the raiders, there'll be no harm done then. Steady." He
+looked through a bullet-hole in the boarded-up window and added: "Here
+comes a flag of truce. Listen."
+
+The scattering fire died away. The hush was broken by a commanding
+voice, demanding surrender.
+
+"There will be no surrender," quoth grim John Brown.
+
+At dawn of Tuesday, two files of United States Marines, using a long
+ladder as a battering ram, attacked the door. It broke at the second
+blow. The marines poured in, shooting and striking. The battle was over.
+John Brown, wounded and beaten to the floor, lay there among his men.
+The captives were free. Their captors had changed places with them.
+
+[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE]
+
+Colonel Washington took Mr. Strong and Tom home with him, for a rest
+after the strain of the captivity. He was much interested when he found
+out that Tom's great-grandfather had visited General Washington at Mount
+Vernon and Tom was intensely interested in seeing the home and home life
+of a rich Southern planter. The Colonel asked his guests to stay until
+after the trial of their recent jailer. They did so and Mr. Strong,
+after some hesitation, decided to take Tom to the trial and afterwards
+to the final scene of all. He wrote to his wife: "Life is rich, my dear,
+in proportion to the number of our experiences and their depth.
+Ordinarily, I would not dream of taking Tom to see a criminal hung. But
+John Brown is no ordinary criminal. He is wrong, but he is heroic. He
+faces his fate--for of course they will hang him--like a Roman. I think
+it will do Tom good to see a hero die."
+
+Whether or no his father was right, Tom was given these experiences. He
+sat beside his father and Colonel Washington at the trial. He heard them
+testify. He noted the angry stir of the mob in the court-room when Mr.
+Strong made no secret of his admiration for the great criminal.
+
+Robert E. Lee, who captured Brown, said: "I am glad we did not have to
+kill him, for I believe he is an honest, conscientious old man."
+Virginia, Lee's State, thought she did have to kill this invader of her
+soil and disturber of her slaves.
+
+November 2, John Brown was sentenced to be hung December 2. The next day
+he added this postscript to a letter he had already written to his wife
+and children:
+
+     "P.S. Yesterday Nov. 2d I was sentenced to be hanged on Decem 2d
+     next. Do not grieve on my account. I am still quite cheerful. God
+     bless you all."
+
+Northern friends offered to try to help him to break jail. He put aside
+the offer with the calm statement: "I am fully persuaded that I am worth
+inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."
+
+December 2, John Brown started on his last journey. He sat upon his
+coffin in a wagon and as the two horses paced slowly from jail to
+gallows, he looked far afield, over river and valley and hill, and said:
+"This _is_ a beautiful country." He was sure he was upon the threshold
+of a far more beautiful country. The gallows were guarded by a militia
+company from Richmond, Virginia. In its ranks, rifle on shoulder, stood
+Wilkes Booth, a dark and sinister figure, who was to win eternal infamy
+by assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Beside the militia was a trim lot of
+cadets, the fine boys of the Virginia Military Institute. With them was
+their professor, Thomas J. Jackson, "Stonewall" Jackson, one of the
+heroic figures upon the Southern side of our Civil War.
+
+When the end came, Stonewall Jackson's lips moved with a prayer for John
+Brown's soul; Colonel Washington's and Mr. Strong's eyes were wet; and
+Tom Strong sobbed aloud. Albany fired a hundred guns in John Brown's
+honor as he hung from the gallows. In 1859 United States troops captured
+him that he might die. In 1899 United States troops fired a volley of
+honor over his grave in North Elba that the memory of him might live.
+Victor Hugo called him "an apostle and a hero." Emerson dubbed him
+"saint." Oswald Garrison Villard closes his fine biography of John Brown
+with these words: "Wherever there is battling against injustice and
+oppression, the Charlestown gallows that became a cross will help men to
+live and die."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     OUR WAR WITH MEXICO--KIT CARSON AND HIS LAWYER, ABE LINCOLN--TOM
+     GOES TO LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION--S. F. B. MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE
+     TELEGRAPH--TOM BACK IN WASHINGTON.
+
+
+In 1846, Mr. Strong, long enough out of Yale to have begun business and
+to have married, had heard his country's call and had helped her fight
+her unjust war with Mexico. General Grant, who saw his first fighting in
+this war and who fought well, says of it in his Memoirs that it was "one
+of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
+
+Much more important things were happening here then than the Mexican
+War. In 1846 Elias Howe invented the sewing-machine. In 1847 Robert Hoe
+invented the rotary printing press. Great inventions like these are the
+real milestones of the path of progress.
+
+Mr. Strong served as a private in the ranks throughout the war. He
+refused a commission offered him for gallantry in action because he knew
+he did not know enough then to command men. It is a rare man who knows
+that he does not know. His regiment was mustered out of service at the
+end of the war in New Orleans. The young soldier decided to go home by
+way of St. Louis because of his memories of that old town in the days
+when he had followed Fremont. He went again to the Planters' Hotel and
+there by lucky accident he met again the famous frontiersman Kit Carson.
+Carson was away from the plains he loved because of a lawsuit. A sharp
+speculator was trying to take away from him some land he had bought
+years ago near the town, which the growth of the town had now made quite
+valuable. Carson was heartily glad to see his "Tom-boy" once more. He
+insisted upon his staying several days, took him to court to hear the
+trial, and introduced him to his lawyer, a tall, gaunt, slab-sided,
+slouching, plain person from the neighboring State of Illinois.
+Everybody who knew him called him "Abe." His last name was Lincoln.
+
+"I'd heard so much of Abe Lincoln," said Carson, "that when this
+speculator who's trying to do me hired all the big lawyers in St. Louis,
+I just went over to Springfield, Illinois, to get Abe. When I saw him I
+rather hesitated about hiring such a looking skeesicks, but when I came
+to talk with him, he did the hesitating. I asked him what he'd charge
+for defending a land-suit in St. Louis. He told me. I sez: 'All right.
+You're hired. You're my lawyer.'
+
+"'Wait a bit,' sez he.
+
+"'What for?' sez I. 'I'll pay what you said.'
+
+"'That ain't all,' sez he. 'Before I take your money, Kit, I've got to
+know your side of the case is the right side.'
+
+"'What difference does that make to a lawyer?' sez I.
+
+"'It makes a heap o' difference to this lawyer,' sez he. 'You've got to
+prove your case to me before I'll try to prove it to the court. If you
+ain't in the right, Abe Lincoln won't be your lawyer.'
+
+"Darned if he didn't make me prove I was in the right, too, before he'd
+touch my money. No wonder they call him 'Honest Abe.'"
+
+It took Lincoln a couple of days to win Kit Carson's suit. During those
+two days young Strong saw much of him and came to admire the sterling
+qualities of the man. Lincoln, too, liked this young college-bred fellow
+from the East, unaffected, well-mannered, friendly, and gay. There was
+the beginning of a friendship between the Westerner and the Easterner.
+Thereafter they wrote each other occasionally. When Lincoln served his
+one brief term in Congress, Mr. Strong spent a week with him in
+Washington and asked him (but in vain) to visit him in New York.
+
+So, when this new giant came out of the West and Illinois gave her
+greatest son to the country, as its President, Mr. Strong went to
+Washington to see him inaugurated and took with him his boy Tom, as his
+father had taken him in 1829 to Andrew Jackson's inauguration.
+
+Washington was still a great shabby village, not much more attractive
+March 4, 1861, than it was March 4, 1829. The crowds at the two
+inaugurations were much alike. In both cases the favorite son of the
+West had won at the polls. In both cases the West swamped Washington.
+But in 1829 there was jubilant victory in the air. In 1861 there was
+somber anxiety. Seven Southern States had "seceded" and had formed
+another government. Other States were upon the brink of secession. Was
+the great democratic experiment of the world about to end in failure?
+Would there be civil war? What was this unknown man out of the West
+going to do? Could he do anything?
+
+Mr. Strong and Tom, with a few thousand other people, went to the
+reception at the White House on the afternoon of March fourth. President
+Lincoln was laboriously shaking hands with everybody in the long line.
+Almost every one of them seemed to be asking him for something. He was
+weary long before Tom and his father reached him, but his face
+brightened as he saw them. A boy always meant a great deal to Abraham
+Lincoln. "There _may_ be so much in a boy," he used to say. He greeted
+the two warmly.
+
+"Howdy, Strong? Glad to see you. This your boy? Howdy, sonny?"
+
+Tom did not enjoy being called "sonny" much more than he had enjoyed
+being called "bub," but he was glad to have this big man with a woman's
+smile call him anything. He wrung the President's offered hand,
+stammered something shyly, and was passing on with his father, when
+Lincoln said:
+
+"Hold on a minute, Strong. You haven't asked me for anything."
+
+"I've nothing to ask for, Mr. President. I'm not here to beg for an
+office."
+
+"Good gracious! You're the only man in Washington of that kind, I
+believe. Come to see me tomorrow morning, will you?"
+
+"Most gladly, sir."
+
+The impatient man behind them pushed them on. They heard him begin to
+plead: "Say, Abe, you know I carried Mattoon for you; I'd like to be
+Minister to England."
+
+Boys and girls always appealed to the President's heart. When there were
+talks of vital import in his office, little Tad Lincoln often sat upon
+his father's knee. At a White House reception, Charles A. Dana once put
+his little girl in a corner, whence she saw the show. The father tells
+the story. When the reception was over, he said to Lincoln: "'I have a
+little girl here who wants to shake hands with you.' He went over to her
+and took her up and kissed her and talked to her. She will never forget
+it if she lives to be a thousand years old."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning Tom followed his father into a room on the second floor
+of the White House. Lincoln sat at a flat-topped desk, piled high with
+papers. He was in his shirt-sleeves, with shabby black trousers, coarse
+stockings, and worn slippers. He stretched out his long legs, swung his
+long arms behind his head, and came straight to the point.
+
+"Strong, I'm going to need you. Your country is going to need you. I
+want you to go straight home and fix up your business affairs so you can
+come whenever I call you. Will you do it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+President and citizen rose and shook hands upon it. The citizen was
+about to go when Tom, with his heart in his mouth, but with a fine
+resolve in his heart, suddenly said:
+
+"Oh, Father! Oh, Mr. President----"
+
+Then he stopped short, too shy to speak, but Lincoln stooped down to
+him, patted his young head and said with infinite kindness in his tone:
+
+"What is it, Tom? Tell me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. President, I'm only a boy, but can't I do something for my
+country, right now? Can't I stay here? Father will let me, won't you,
+Father?"
+
+Mr. Strong shook his head. The boy's face fell. It brightened again when
+Lincoln told him:
+
+"When I send for your father, I'll send for you, Tom."
+
+With that promise ringing in his ears, Tom went home to New York City.
+Home was a fine brick house at the northeast corner of Washington Place
+and Greene Street. The house was a twin brother of those that still
+stand on the north side of Washington Square. Tom had been born in it.
+Not long after his birth, his parents had given a notable dinner in it
+to a notable man. Tom had been present at the dinner, and he remembered
+nothing about it. As he was at the table but a few minutes, in the arms
+of his nurse, and less than a year old, it is not surprising that he did
+not remember it. His proud young mother had exhibited him to a group of
+money magnates, gathered at Mr. Strong's shining mahogany table for
+dinner, at the fashionable hour of three P.M., to see another young
+thing, almost as young as Tom. This other young thing was the
+telegraph, just invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, at the University of the
+City of New York, which then filled half of the eastern boundary of
+Washington Square.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Tom waited in the old brick house and played in Washington Square,
+history was making itself. Pope Walker, first Secretary of War of the
+Confederate States, sitting in his office at the Alabama Statehouse at
+Montgomery, the first Confederate capital, said: "It is time to sprinkle
+some blood in the face of the people." So he telegraphed the fateful
+order to fire on Fort Sumter, held by United States troops in Charleston
+harbor. Sumter fell. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Virginia, the
+famous Old Dominion, "the Mother of Presidents"--Washington, Jefferson,
+Madison, and Monroe were Virginians--seceded. The war between the States
+began.
+
+Mr. Strong found in his mail one day this letter:
+
+                                           "The Executive Mansion,
+                                           Washington, April 17, 1861.
+
+      Sir:
+
+      The President bids me say that he would like to have you come to
+      Washington at once and bring your son Tom with you.
+
+                                            Respectfully,
+
+                                                             JOHN HAY,
+                                         Assistant Private Secretary."
+
+Tom and his father started at once, as the President bade them. At
+Jersey City, they found the train they had expected to take had been
+pre-empted by the Sixth Massachusetts, a crack militia regiment of the
+Old Bay State, which was hurrying to Washington in the hope of getting
+there before the rebels did. The cars were crammed with soldiers. A
+sentry stood at every door. No civilian need apply for passage. However,
+a civilian with a letter from Lincoln's secretary bidding him also hurry
+to Washington was in a class by himself. With the help of an officer,
+the father and son ran the blockade of bayonets and started southward,
+the only civilians upon the train. It was packed to suffocation with
+soldiers. Mr. Strong sat with the regimental officers, but he let Tom
+roam at will from car to car. How the boy enjoyed it. The shining
+gun-barrels fascinated him. He joined a group of merry men, who hailed
+him with a shout:
+
+"Here's the youngest recruit of all."
+
+"Are you really going to shoot rebels?" asked Tom.
+
+"If we must," said Jack Saltonstall, breaking the silence the question
+brought, "but I hope it won't come to that."
+
+"The war will be over in three months," Gordon Abbott prophesied.
+
+"Pooh, it will never begin,--and I'm sorry for that," said Jim Casey,
+"I'd like to have some real fighting."
+
+Within about three hours, Jim Casey was to see fighting and was to die
+for his country. The beginning of bloodshed in our Civil War was in the
+streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, just eighty-six years to a day
+from the beginning of bloodshed in our Revolution on Lexington Common.
+Massachusetts and British blood in 1775; Massachusetts and Maryland
+blood in 1861.
+
+When the long train stopped at the wooden car-shed which was then the
+Baltimore station, the regiment left the cars, fell into line and
+started to march the mile or so of cobblestone streets to the other
+station where the train for Washington awaited it. The line of march was
+through as bad a slum as an American city could then show. Grog-shops
+swarmed in it and about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of Baltimore.
+They were known locally as "plug-uglies." Like the New York "Bowery
+boys" of that time, they affected a sort of uniform, black dress
+trousers thrust into boot-tops and red flannel shirts. Far too poor to
+own slaves themselves, they had gathered here to fight the slave-owners'
+battles, to keep the Massachusetts troops from "polluting the soil of
+Maryland," as their leaders put it, really to keep them from saving
+Washington.
+
+A roar of jeers and taunts and insults hailed the head of the marching
+column. Tom was startled by it. He turned to his father. The two were
+walking side by side, in the center of the column, between two companies
+of the militia. He found his father had already turned to him.
+
+"Keep close to me, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
+
+The storm of words that beat upon them increased. At the next corner,
+stones took the place of words. The mob surged alongside the soldiers,
+swearing, stoning, striking, finally stabbing and shooting. The Sixth
+Massachusetts showed admirable self-restraint, which the "plug-uglies"
+thought was cowardice. They pressed closer. With a mighty rush, five
+thousand rioters broke the line of the thousand troops. The latter were
+forced into small groups, many of them without an officer. Each group
+had to act for itself. Tom and his father found themselves part of a
+tiny force of about twenty men, beset upon every side by desperadoes now
+mad with liquor and with the lust of killing. Jack Saltonstall took
+command by common consent. Calmly he faced hundreds of rioters.
+
+"Forward, march!"
+
+As he uttered the words, he pitched forward, shot through the chest. A
+giant "plug-ugly" bellowed with triumph over his successful shot, yelled
+"kill 'em all!" and led the mob upon them. But Mr. Strong had snatched
+Saltonstall's gun as it fell from his nerveless hands, had leveled and
+aimed it, and had shouted "fire!" to willing ears. A score of guns rang
+out. The mob-leader whirled about and dropped. Half-a-dozen other
+"plug-uglies" lay about him. This section of the mob broke and ran. Some
+of them fired as they ran, and Jim Casey's life went out of him.
+
+"Take this gun, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
+
+The boy took it, reloading it as he marched, while his sturdy father
+lifted the wounded Saltonstall from the stony street and staggered
+forward with the body in his arms. Casey and two other men were dead.
+Their bodies had to be left to the fury of the mob. Saltonstall lived
+to fight to the end. As the survivors of the twenty pressed forward, the
+mob behind followed them up. Bullets whizzed unpleasantly near. Twice,
+at Mr. Strong's command, the men faced about and fired a volley. In both
+these volleys, Tom's gun played its part. He had hunted before, but
+never such big game as men. The joy of battle possessed him. Since it
+was apparently a case of "kill or be killed," he shot to kill. Whether
+he did kill, he never knew. The two volleys checked two threatening
+rushes of the rioters and enabled Mr. Strong to bring what was left of
+the gallant little band safely to the railroad station. An hour later
+the Sixth Massachusetts was in Washington. During that hour Tom had been
+violently sick upon the train. He was new to this trade of man-killing.
+
+At Washington, once vacant spaces were soon filled with camps. Soldiers
+poured in on every train. Orderlies were galloping about. Artillery
+surrounded the Capitol. And from its dome Tom saw a Confederate flag,
+the Stars-and-Bars, flying defiantly in nearby Alexandria.
+
+Those were dark days. There were Confederate forces within a few miles
+of the White House. Sumter surrendered April 15th. Virginia seceded on
+the 17th. Harper's Ferry fell into Southern hands on the 18th. The Sixth
+Massachusetts had fought its way through Baltimore on the 19th. Robert
+E. Lee resigned his commission in our army on the 20th and left
+Arlington for Richmond, taking with him a long train of army and navy
+officers whose loyal support, now lost forever, had seemed a national
+necessity. Lincoln spent many an hour in his private office, searching
+with a telescope the reaches of the Potomac, over which the troop-laden
+transports were expected. Once, when he thought he was alone, John Hay
+heard him call out "with irrepressible anguish": "Why don't they come?
+Why don't they come?" In public he gave no sign of the anxiety that was
+eating up his heart. He had the nerve to jest about it. The Sixth
+Massachusetts, the Seventh New York, and a Rhode Island detachment had
+all hurried to save Washington from the capture that threatened. When
+the Massachusetts men won the race and marched proudly by the White
+House, Lincoln said to some of their officers: "I begin to believe there
+is no North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is another.
+You are the only real thing." They were very real, those men of
+Massachusetts, and they were the vanguard of the real army that was to
+be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+     CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS--MR. STRONG GOES TO RUSSIA--TOM GOES TO LIVE
+     IN THE WHITE HOUSE--BULL RUN--"STONEWALL" JACKSON--GEO. B.
+     MCCLELLAN--TOM STRONG, SECOND LIEUTENANT, U. S. A.--THE BATTLE OF
+     THE "MERRIMAC" AND THE "MONITOR."
+
+
+A few days passed before the President had time to see Mr. Strong and
+Tom. When they were finally ushered into his working-room, they found
+there, already interviewing Lincoln, the hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed
+Secretary of State, William H. Seward of New York, scholar, statesman,
+and gentleman, and a short, grizzled man, the worthy inheritor of a
+great tradition. He was Charles Francis Adams of Boston, son and
+grandson of two Presidents of the United States. He had been appointed
+Minister to England, just then the most important foreign appointment
+in the world. What England was to do or not do might spell victory or
+defeat for the Union. Mr. Adams had come to receive his final
+instructions for his all-important work. And this is what happened.
+
+Shabby and uncouth, Lincoln faced his two well-dressed visitors, nodding
+casually to the two New Yorkers as they entered at what should have been
+a great moment.
+
+"I came to thank you for my appointment," said Adams, "and to ask
+you----"
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied Lincoln, "thank Seward. He's the man
+that put you in." He stretched out his legs and arms, and sighed a deep
+sigh of relief. "By the way, Governor," he added, turning to Seward,
+"I've this morning decided that Chicago post-office appointment. Well,
+good-by."
+
+And that was all the instruction the Minister to Great Britain had from
+the President of the United States. Even in those supreme days, the rush
+of office-seekers, the struggle for the spoils, the mad looting of the
+public offices for partisan purposes, was monopolizing the time and
+absorbing the mind of our greatest President. There is a story that one
+man who asked him to appoint him Minister to England, after taking an
+hour of his time, ended the interview by asking him for a pair of old
+boots. Civil Service Reform has since gone far to stop this scandal and
+sin, but much of it still remains. Today you can fight for the best
+interests of our beloved country by fighting the spoils system in city,
+state, and nation.
+
+Adams, amazed, followed Secretary Seward out of the little room. Then
+Lincoln turned to the father and son.
+
+Tom had more time to look at him now. He saw a tall man with a thin,
+muscular, big nose, with heavy eyebrows above deep-set eyes and below a
+square, bulging forehead, and with a mass of black hair. The face was
+dark and sallow. The firm lips relaxed as he looked down upon the boy. A
+beautiful smile overflowed them. A beautiful friendliness shone from the
+deep-set eyes.
+
+"So this is another Tom Strong," he said. "Howdy, Tommy?"
+
+The boy smiled back, for the welcoming smile was irresistible. He put
+his little hand into Lincoln's great paw, hardened and roughened by a
+youth of strenuous toil. The President squeezed his hand. Tom was happy.
+
+"You're to go to Russia, Strong," Mr. Lincoln said to the father.
+"England and France threaten to combine against us. You must get Russia
+to hold them back. We'll have a regular Minister there, but I'm going to
+depend upon you. See Governor Seward. He'll tell you all about it. Will
+you take Mrs. Strong with you?"
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"Well, I s'posed you would. And how about Tom here?"
+
+Tom's heart beat quick. What was coming now?
+
+"Mrs. Strong must decide that. I suppose he had better keep on with his
+school in New York."
+
+"Why not let him come to school in Washington?" asked Lincoln. "In the
+school of the world? You see," he added, while that irresistible smile
+again softened the firm outlines of his big man's mouth, "you see I've
+taken a sort of fancy to your boy Tom. S'pose you give him to me while
+you're away. There are things he can do for his country."
+
+It was perhaps only a whim, but the whims of a President count. A month
+later, Mr. and Mrs. Strong started for St. Petersburg and Tom reported
+at the White House. He was welcomed by John Hay, a delightful young man
+of twenty-three, one of the President's two private secretaries. The
+welcome lacked warmth.
+
+"You're to sleep in a room in the attic," said Hay, "and I believe
+you're to eat with Mr. Nicolay and me. I haven't an idea what you're to
+do and between you and me and the bedpost I don't believe the Ancient
+has an idea either. Perhaps there won't be anything. Wait a while and
+see."
+
+The Ancient--this was a nickname his secretaries had given him--had a
+very distinct idea, which he had not seen fit to tell his zealous young
+secretary. Tom found the waiting not unpleasant. He had a good many
+unimportant things to do. "Tad" Lincoln, though younger, was a good
+playmate. The White House staff was kind to him. Even Hay found it
+difficult not to like him. Then there was the sensation of being at the
+center of things, big things. He saw men whose names were household
+words. Half a dozen times he lunched with the President's family, a
+plain meal with plain folks. Even the dinners at the White House, except
+the state dinners, were frugal and plain. Lincoln drank little or no
+wine. He never used tobacco. This was something of a miracle in the case
+of a man from the West, for in those days, particularly in the
+unconventional West, practically every man both smoked and chewed
+tobacco. The filthy spittoon was everywhere conspicuous. We fiercely
+resented the tales told our English cousins, first by Mrs. Trollope and
+then by Charles Dickens, about our tobacco-chewing, but the resentment
+was so fierce because the tales were so true. Those were dirty days. In
+1860 there were few bathrooms except in our largest cities. Those that
+existed were mostly new. In 1789, when the present Government of the
+United States came into being, in New York City, there was not one
+bathroom in the whole town.
+
+At these family luncheons, Tom was apt to become conscious that
+Lincoln's eyes were bent beneath their shaggy eyebrows full upon him.
+There was nothing unkind in the glance, but the boy felt it go straight
+through him. He wondered what it all meant. Why was he not given more
+work to do? Had he been weighed and found wanting? He waited in suspense
+a good many months.
+
+The early months of waiting were not merry months. In July, 1861, the
+first battle of Bull Run had been fought and had been lost. Our troops
+ran nearly thirty miles. Telegram after telegram brought news of
+disgrace and defeat to the White House. In the afternoon Lincoln went
+to see Gen. Winfield S. Scott, then commander-in-chief of our armies.
+The fat old general was taking his afternoon nap. Awakened with
+difficulty, he gurgled that everything would come out well. Then he fell
+asleep again. Before six o'clock it was known that everything had turned
+out most badly. Washington itself was threatened by the Confederate
+pursuit. Lincoln had no sleep that night. The gray dawn found him at his
+desk, still receiving dispatches, still giving orders. When he left the
+desk, Washington was safe.
+
+It was at the beginning of the battle of Bull Run, when the Confederates
+came near running away but did not do so because the Union troops ran
+first, that "Stonewall" Jackson got his famous nickname. The brigade of
+another Southern soldier, Gen. Bernard Bee, was wavering and falling
+back. Its commander, trying to hearten his men, called out to them:
+"Look! there's Jackson standing like a stone wall!" The men looked,
+rallied, and went on fighting. It may have been that one thing of
+Jackson's example that turned the tide at Bull Run, gave the battle to
+the South, and prolonged the war by at least two years. Stonewall
+Jackson's soldiers were called foot-cavalry, because under his inspiring
+leadership they made marches which would have been a credit to mounted
+men. It was his specialty to be where it was impossible for him to be,
+by all the ordinary rules of war. He was a thunderbolt in attack, a
+stone wall in defense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In November of that sad year of 1861, the President made another
+noteworthy call upon the then commander-in-chief, Gen. George B.
+McClellan. President and Secretary of State, escorted by young Hay and
+younger Tom, called upon the General at the latter's house, in the
+evening. They were told he was out, but would return soon, so they
+waited. McClellan did return and was told of his patient visitors. He
+walked by the open door of the room where they were seated and went
+upstairs. Half an hour later Lincoln sent a servant to tell him again
+that they were there. Word came back that General McClellan had gone to
+bed. John Hay's diary justly speaks of "this unparalleled insolence of
+epaulettes." As the three men and the boy walked back to the White
+House, Hay said:
+
+"It was an insolent rebuff. Something should be done about it."
+
+Lincoln's almost godlike patience, however, had not been worn out.
+
+"It is better," the great man answered, "at this time not to be making a
+point of etiquette and personal dignity."
+
+The President, however, stopped calling upon the pompous General. After
+that experience, he always sent word to McClellan to call upon him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, at the close of a family luncheon, the President said to Tom:
+"Come upstairs with me."
+
+In the little private office, Lincoln took off his coat and waistcoat
+with a sigh of relief and lounged into his chair. He bade Tom take a
+chair nearby. Then he looked at the boy for a moment, while his
+wonderful smile overflowed his strong lips.
+
+"I've been studying you a bit, Tom. I think you'll do. Now I'll tell you
+what I want you to do."
+
+The smile died quite away.
+
+"Are you sure you can keep still when you ought to keep still? Balaam's
+ass isn't the only ass that ever talked. Most asses talk--and always at
+the wrong time."
+
+"The last thing Father told me," Tom answered, "was never to say
+anything to anybody 'less I was sure you'd want me to say it."
+
+"Your father is a wise man, my boy. Pray God he does what I hope he will
+in Russia."
+
+The serious face grew still more serious. The long figure slouching in
+the chair straightened and stiffened. The sloping shoulders seemed to
+broaden, as if to bear steadfastly a weight that would have crushed
+most men. The dark eyes gleamed with a solemn hope. Tom longed to ask
+what his father was to try to do, but he was not silly enough to put his
+thought into words. Another good-by counsel his father had given him was
+never to ask the President a question, unless he had to do so. There was
+silence for a moment. Then Lincoln spoke again:
+
+"You're to carry dispatches for me, Tom. This may take you into the
+enemy's country sometimes. If you were captured and were a civilian, it
+might go hard with you. So I've had you commissioned as a second
+lieutenant. If you should slip into a fight occasionally I wouldn't
+blame you much. Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, kicked about it. He
+said he didn't believe in giving commissions to babies. I told him you
+could almost speak plain and could go 'round without a nurse. Finally he
+gave in. I haven't much influence with this Administration"--here Tom
+looked puzzled until the President smiled over his own jest--"but I did
+get you the commission. Here it is."
+
+He laid the precious parchment on the desk, put on his spectacles, took
+up his quill pen, and wrote at the foot of it
+
+[Illustration: Autograph, A. Lincoln]
+
+The boy's heart thrilled and throbbed. He had never dreamed of such an
+opportunity and such an honor. He was an officer of the Union. He was to
+carry dispatches for the President of the United States. His hand shook
+a little as he took the commission, reverently.
+
+"You've been detailed for special service, Tom. Stanton wanted to know
+whether your special service was to be to play with my boy, Tad. Stanton
+was pretty mad; that's a fact. Well, well, you must do your work so well
+that he'll get over the blow. You would have thought I was asking him
+for a brigadier's commission for a girl. Well, well. Being a war
+messenger is only one of your duties, son. You're to be my scout. Keep
+your ears and eyes both open, Tom, and your mouth shut. Ever hear the
+story of what Jonah said to the whale when he got out of him? The whale
+said to Jonah: 'You've given me a terrible stomach-ache.' And Jonah
+said: 'That's what you got because you didn't have sense enough to keep
+your mouth shut.' But remember, Tom, to go scouting in the right way.
+What I want is the truth. It's a hard thing for a President to get. I
+don't want tittle-tattle, evil gossip, idle talk. When I was in
+Congress, there was a fine old fellow in the House from Florida. I
+remember he said once that the Florida wolf was 'a mean critter that'd
+go snoopin' 'round twenty miles a night ruther than not do a mischief.'
+Don't be a wolf, Tom,--but don't be a lamb either, with the wool pulled
+over your eyes and ears. Here's your first job. This envelope"--Lincoln
+took from the desk a sealed envelope, not addressed, and handed it to
+the boy--"this envelope is for the commander of the 'Cumberland,' in
+Hampton Roads. This War Department pass will carry you anywhere. When
+Stanton signed it, he asked me whether he was to spend a whole day
+signing things for you to play with. Mrs. Lincoln has had a uniform made
+for you, on the sly. I rather think you'll find it in your room, Tom.
+You'd better start tomorrow."
+
+"Mayn't I start this afternoon, Mr. President?"
+
+"Good for you. Of course you may. I'll say good-by to the folks for you.
+God bless you, son."
+
+Lincoln waved a kindly farewell as Tom, with drumbeats in his young
+heart, gave a fair imitation of an officer's salute--and strode out of
+the room with what he meant to be a manly step. Once outside, the step
+changed to a run. He flew along the halls and up the stairs to the
+attic. He burst into his room. On his narrow bed lay his new uniform.
+Mrs. Lincoln, kindly housewife that she was, had done her part in the
+little conspiracy for the benefit of the boy who was Tad Lincoln's
+beloved playmate. She had herself smuggled an old suit of Tom's to a
+tailor, who had made from its measure the resplendent new blue uniform
+that now greeted Tom's enraptured eyes.
+
+That afternoon, Lieutenant Tom Strong left the White House for Hampton
+Roads. A swift dispatch boat carried him there. He reached the flagship
+on a lovely, peaceful, spring day, and delivered his dispatches. The
+boat that had taken him there was to take him back the next morning. He
+was glad to have a night on a warship. It was a new experience. And his
+father had told him that experience was the best teacher in the world.
+The beautiful lines of the frigate were a joy to see. Her spick and span
+cleanliness, the trim and trig sailors and marines, the rows of polished
+cannon that thrust their grim mouths out of the portholes, these things
+delighted him. He was standing on the quarter-deck with Lieutenant
+Morris, almost wishing he could exchange his brand-new lieutenancy in
+the army for one in the navy, when from the Norfolk navy yard a rocket
+flared up into the air.
+
+"What is that, sir?" asked Tom. "Is it a signal to you?"
+
+"I fancy it is," Morris answered, "but it isn't meant to be. That's a
+rebel rocket. You know we lost the navy-yard early in the war and we
+haven't got it back--yet. That rocket went up from there. The Secesh are
+up to some deviltry. They've been signaling a good bit of late. I wish
+they'd come out and give us a chance at them. Hampton Roads is dull as
+ditchwater, with not a thing happening."
+
+The gallant lieutenant yawned prodigiously. He little knew what terrible
+things were to happen on the morrow. That rocket meant that the rebel
+ram, the "Merrimac," the first iron-clad vessel that ever went into
+action, was to sail down Hampton Roads, where nothing ever happened, the
+next morning and was to make many things happen. The Confederates had
+converted the old Union frigate, the "Merrimac," into a new, strange,
+and monstrous thing. They had placed a battery of cannon of a size never
+before mounted on shipboard upon her deck, close to the water-line;
+they had built over the battery a framework of stout timbers, covered
+with armor rolled from rails, and they had put a cast-iron bow upon this
+marine marvel. A wooden ship was a mere toy to her.
+
+The next morning came--it was March 8, 1862--and the "Merrimac" came. As
+she emerged from distance and mist, our scout-boats came racing to the
+"Cumberland" with news of the danger that was fast nearing her. The news
+was a tonic to officers and to men. Here at last was something to fight.
+Here at last was something to do. They were all weary of having the
+flagship lie, week after week,
+
+    "As idle as a painted ship
+    Upon a painted ocean."
+
+The men sprang to quarters with a joyful cheer. The officers were at
+their posts. The gun-crews waited impatiently for the order to fire. And
+Tom, again upon the quarter-deck, thrilled with the thrill of all about
+him, was glad to know that the dispatch boat would not sail until that
+afternoon and that he could see the fight. Everyone around him was sure
+of victory. The foe was soon to be sunk. The Stars-and-Bars, now flying
+so impudently at her stern, was to be hung up as a trophy in the
+ward-room of the "Cumberland." It never was.
+
+The ram steered straight for the flagship. She did not fire a shot,
+though the flagship's cannon roared. A tongue of fire blazed from every
+porthole of the starboard side, towards which she came, silently and
+swiftly. Behind every tongue of fire there rushed a cannon-ball. Many a
+ball hit the "Merrimac." A wooden ship would have been blown to bits by
+the concentrated fury of the cannonade. Alas! the cannon-balls glanced
+from her armored sides "like peas from a pop-gun." They rattled like
+hail upon her and did her no more hurt than hail-stones would have done.
+She came on like an irresistible Fate. There had been shouts of savage
+joy below decks when the first order to fire had echoed through them. A
+burst of wild cheering from the gun-crews had almost drowned the first
+thunder of the guns. There were no shouts or cheers now. Sharp orders
+pierced the clangor of artillery.
+
+"Stand by to board!"
+
+The marines formed quickly at the starboard bow of the "Cumberland."
+Then at last the guns of the "Merrimac" spoke. She was close upon her
+prey now. The sound of her first volley was the voice of doom. Her great
+cannon sent masses of iron through and through the pitiful wooden walls
+that had dared to stand up against walls of iron. The shrieks of wounded
+men, of men screaming their mangled lives away, rolled up to the
+quarter-deck. A messenger dashed up there.
+
+"Half the gun-crew officers are dead. Send us others!"
+
+"Go below," said Lieutenant Morris, turning to two young midshipmen who
+stood near Tom, "keep the guns manned."
+
+The two middies bounded below and Tom bounded down with them. There was
+no hope of victory now, but the fight must be fought to a finish. If
+the cannon could still be served, a lucky shot might strike the foe in a
+vital part, might disable her engines, might carry away her
+steering-gear, might--there was a long chapter of possible accidents to
+the "Merrimac" that might still save the "Cumberland" from what seemed
+to be her sure destruction. As the three boys raced down to the
+gun-deck, they saw a fearful scene. Dead and wounded men lay everywhere.
+The sawdust that in those days used to be strewn about, before entering
+action, in order to soak up the blood of the men who fell and keep the
+decks from growing slippery with it, had soaked up all it could, but
+there were thin red trickles flowing along the deck. Two or three of the
+cannon had been dismounted. Crushed masses that had been human flesh lay
+beneath them. A dying officer half raised himself to give one last
+command and fell back dead before he could speak. The men were standing
+to their task as American sailors are wont to do, but like all men they
+needed leaders. Three leaders came. The two middies and Tom took
+command of these officerless cannon. The other two boys knew their work
+and did it. Tom knew that it was his business to keep his cannon at work
+and he did it. He repeated, mechanically:
+
+"Load! Fire! Load! Fire!"
+
+His men responded to the command. The cannon roared once, twice. Then
+there came a sickening shock. The rebel ram drove its iron prow home
+through the side of the "Cumberland." The good ship reeled far over
+under the deadly blow, righted herself, but began to sink. Her race was
+run. The black bulk of the "Merrimac" was just opposite the porthole of
+the gun Tom was handling. There was a last order. With the lips of their
+muzzles wet with the engulfing sea, the cannon of the "Cumberland"
+roared their last defiance of death. Down went the ship. The sea about
+her was black with wreckage and with struggling men. Boats from other
+ships and from the shore darted among them, picking them up. The
+dispatch boat that had brought Tom down was busy with that good work.
+The "Merrimac" could have sunk her without effort, but of course the
+Confederates never dreamed of making the effort. Americans do not fire
+at drowning men. When Tom jumped into the water, as the ship sank
+beneath him, he swam to a shattered spar and clutched it. But other men
+who could not swim clutched at it too. It threatened to sink with their
+added weight and carry them down with it. So the boy, thoroughly at home
+in the water, let go, turned upon his back, floated with his nose just
+above the surface, and waited for the help that was at hand. A boat-hook
+caught his trousers at the waist-band. He was pulled up to the deck of
+the dispatch boat. It was not quite the way in which he had expected to
+board her. From her bridge, with the deck below him crowded with the
+rescued sailors of the "Cumberland," he saw the second sad act of that
+day's tragedy.
+
+The "Merrimac" had backed away, after that terrible thrust of her iron
+ram, until she was free from the ship she had destroyed. Then she laid
+her course for the "Congress," invincible yesterday, today helplessly
+weak in the face of this new terror of the seas. The "Congress" fought
+to the last gasp, but that last gasp came all too soon. Raked fore and
+aft by her adversary's guns, unable to fire a single effective shot in
+reply, she ran upon a shoal while trying to escape from being rammed and
+lay there, no longer a fighting machine, but a mere target for her foe.
+Her captain could not hope to save his ship. The only thing he could do
+was to save the lives of such of his crew as were still alive. And there
+was but one way to do that. The "Congress" surrendered. The
+Stars-and-Stripes fluttered down from her masthead. In place of the flag
+of the free, the Stars-and-Bars, symbol of slavery, flew above the
+surrendered ship. The "Cumberland," going down with her flag, had had
+the better fate of the two.
+
+The "Merrimac," justly satisfied with her day's work and with the toll
+she had taken of the Union squadron, steamed proudly back to Norfolk, to
+repair the slight damages she had suffered and to make ready to
+complete her conquest on the morrow. Three Union ships still lay in
+Hampton Roads, great frigates, the finest of their kind then afloat,
+perfectly appointed, fully manned,--and as useless as though they had
+been the toy-boats of a child. The "Minnesota," now the flagship,
+signaled Captain Lawrence's stirring slogan: "Don't give up the ship!"
+It might have been called a bit of useless bravery, but no bravery is
+useless. At least the officers and men of the three doomed ships would
+fight for the flag until they died. It was just possible that one of the
+three might so maneuver that she would strike the foe amidships and sink
+with her to a glorious death.
+
+That night the wild anxiety at Hampton Roads was more than echoed at New
+York and Washington. The wires had told the terrible tale of the
+"Merrimac." It was thought she could go straight to New York, sink all
+the shipping there, command the city and levy tribute upon it. Lincoln's
+Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles of Connecticut, wrote in his diary
+that night: "The most frightened man on that gloomy day was the
+Secretary of War. He was at times almost frantic.... He ran from room to
+room, sat down and jumped up after writing a few words, swung his arms,
+and scolded and raved." Hay records that "Stanton was fearfully
+stampeded. He said they would capture our fleet, take Fort Monroe, be in
+Washington before night."
+
+Without consulting the Secretary of the Navy, Stanton had some fifty
+canal-boats loaded with stone and sent them to be sunk on Kettle Bottom
+Shoals, in the Potomac, to keep the "Merrimac" from reaching Washington.
+The canal-boats reached the Shoals, but the order to sink them was
+countermanded by cooler heads. They were left in a long row, tied up to
+the river bank.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three doomed ships at Hampton Roads soon knew that at nine o'clock
+of that fateful night there had steamed in from the ocean a Union
+iron-clad. Her coming, however, brought scant comfort.
+
+"What is she like?" asked the first captain to hear the news.
+
+"Like? She's like a cheese-box on a raft."
+
+[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC"]
+
+It was not a bad description. She was the "Monitor," an unknown boat of
+an unknown type that day, and on the morrow the most famous fighting
+craft that ever sailed the seas. She was born of the brain of a
+Swedish-American, Capt. John Ericsson, whose statue stands in Battery
+Park, the southern tip of the metropolis, looking down to the ocean he
+saved for freedom's cause.
+
+Lieut. A. L. Worden, commanding the "Monitor," was soon in consultation
+with the other commanders. They scarcely tried to disguise their belief
+that he had merely brought another predestined victim. His ship was
+tiny, compared with the "Merrimac." She was not built to ram, as was her
+terrible antagonist. Her guns were of a greater caliber, to be sure,
+than any wooden ship mounted, but there were but two of them and they
+could be brought to bear only by revolving the "Monitor's" turret,--a
+newfangled device in everyday use now, but then unknown and consequently
+despised. Men either fear or despise the unknown. They are usually wrong
+in doing either. The council of captains agreed upon a plan for the next
+day's fight. The plan was based upon the theory that the "Monitor" would
+be speedily sunk. Nevertheless, she was to face the foe first of all.
+
+Again the next morning came and again there came the rebel ram. Decked
+out in flags as if for a festival, proudly certain of victory, the
+"Merrimac" steamed down Hampton Roads. The cheese-box on a raft steamed
+out to meet her. It was David confronting Goliath. Goliath had fourteen
+guns and David had two. The iron-clads came nearer and the most famous
+sea-duel ever fought began. Tom saw it all from the bridge of the
+"Minnesota." Both vessels fired and fired again, without result. Their
+armor defied even the big guns they carried. Then the "Merrimac" tried
+to bring her deadly ram into play. The "Monitor" dodged into shoal
+water, hoping her foe would follow her and run aground. The "Merrimac"
+did not fall into the trap. On the contrary, she left her adversary and
+made a headlong course for the helpless "Minnesota." On board the
+latter, drums beat to quarters, shrill whistles gave orders, and the
+great ship moved forward to what seemed certain destruction. But the
+"Monitor" slipped away from the shoals and made after the "Merrimac,"
+firing her guns as rapidly as her creaking turret could turn. The
+"Merrimac" faced about, bound this time to make short work of this
+wretched little gnat that was seeking to sting her. This time the two
+came to close grips. Each tried to ram the other down. Each struck the
+other, but struck a glancing blow. They lay almost alongside and pounded
+each other with their giant guns. A missile from the "Monitor" came
+through a porthole of the "Merrimac," breaking a cannon and dealing
+death and destruction within her iron sides. She turned and ran for
+safety to the shelter of the Confederate batteries at Norfolk. The
+"Monitor" lay almost unharmed upon the gentle waves of Hampton Roads,
+the ungainly master of the seas. The "Merrimac" never dared again to try
+conclusions with her stout little rival. She stayed at her moorings
+until she was blown up there just before the Union forces captured
+Norfolk. The Union blockade was never broken. The "Monitor" survived the
+fight only to founder later in "the graveyard of ships," off Cape
+Hatteras.
+
+The wires had told the story of the famous fight before Tom reached
+Washington, but he was the first eye-witness of it to reach there and he
+had to tell the tale many and many a time. His first auditors were
+Lincoln and Secretary Welles. The dispatch boat that carried him back
+put him on board the President's boat, south of Kettle Bottom Shoals, on
+the Potomac, in obedience to orders signaled to it. When he had finished
+his story, there was silence for a moment. The boy saw Lincoln's lips
+move, perhaps in prayer, perhaps in thanksgiving. Then the grave face
+relaxed and the pathetic eyes twinkled with humor. The President laid
+his hand upon the Secretary's arm and pointed to a long line of
+stone-laden canal-boats that bordered the bank.
+
+"There's Stanton's navy," said Lincoln.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+     TOM GOES WEST--WILKES BOOTH HUNTS HIM--DR. HANS ROLF SAVES HIM--HE
+     DELIVERS DISPATCHES TO GENERAL GRANT.
+
+
+At the end of the next month, April, 1862, Admiral Farragut gallantly
+forced open the closed mouth of the Mississippi. He took his wooden
+ships into action against forts and iron-clad gunboats and captured New
+Orleans. Within fifteen months thereafter, the North was in practical
+control of the whole Mississippi. By July, 1863, the Confederacy had
+been split into two parts, east and west of the "Father of Waters." That
+was the poetic Indian name of the Mississippi. Farragut's fleet began
+the driving of the wedge. Grant's army drove it home. When the driving
+home had just begun, Tom, to his intense delight, was sent West with
+dispatches for Grant. He left on an hour's notice.
+
+[Illustration: ADMIRAL FARRAGUT]
+
+During that hour, a colored servant employed in the White House, whose
+heart was blacker than his sooty skin, had left the mansion, had sought
+a tumble-down tenement in the slums, and had found there a vulture of a
+man, very white as to face, very black as to the masses of hair that
+fell to his shoulders.
+
+"Dat dar boy Strong, he's dun sure goin'," said the darkey, "wid papers
+fur dat General Grant out West."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Coz I listened to de door, when dey-uns wuz a-talkin'."
+
+"He'll have to go West by Baltimore," mused the white man. "The next
+train leaves in half an hour. I can make it. Here, Reub, here's your
+pay."
+
+He took a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket. The negro clutched at
+it. Then what was left of his conscience stirred within him. He said,
+pleadingly, hesitatingly:
+
+"Massa, you knows I'se doin' dis coz old Massa told me to. You ain't
+a-goin' to hurt dat boy Strong, is you? He's a nice boy. Eberybody lubs
+him up dar."
+
+"What is it to you, confound you!" snarled the man, "whether I hurt him
+or not? What's a boy's life to winning the war? You keep on doing what
+old Massa told you to do, or I'll cut your black heart out."
+
+With a savage gesture, he thrust the trembling negro out of the dingy
+room. With savage haste, he packed his scanty belongings. With a pistol
+in his hip pocket, with a bowie-knife slung over his left breast beneath
+his waistcoat, with a vial of chloroform in his valise, Wilkes Booth
+left Washington on the trail of Tom Strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hunter and hunted were in the same car. Tom little dreamed that a few
+seats behind him sat a deadly foe, who would stick at nothing to get the
+precious papers he carried. Washington swarmed with Confederate spies.
+The face of everybody at the White House was well known to every spy.
+The hunter did not have to guess where the hunted sat.
+
+General Grant had begun his career of victory in the West. It was
+all-important to the Confederacy to know where his next blow was to be
+aimed. The papers in the scout's possession would tell that great
+secret. Wilkes Booth meant to have those papers soon. As the train
+bumped over the rough iron rails, towards Baltimore, Booth went to the
+forward end of the car for a glass of water and as he walked back along
+the aisle with a slow, lounging step, he stopped where Tom sat and held
+out his hand, saying:
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Strong? I'm Mr. Barnard. I have had the pleasure of
+seeing you about the White House sometimes, when I have been calling on
+our great President. Lincoln will crush these accursed rebels soon!"
+
+It was a trifle overdone, a trifle theatrical. Wilkes Booth could never
+help being theatrical. His greeting was one of the few times Tom had
+ever been called "Mister." He felt flattered and took the proffered hand
+willingly, but he searched his memory in vain for any real recollection
+of the striking face of the man who spoke to him. There was some vague
+stirring of memory about it, but certainly this had no relation to that
+happy life at the White House. Something evil was connected with it.
+Puzzled, he wondered. He had seen Booth under arms at John Brown's
+scaffold, but he did not remember that.
+
+The alleged Mr. Barnard slipped into the seat beside him and began to
+talk. He talked well. Little by little, suspicion fell asleep in Tom's
+mind as his companion told of adventures on sea and land. Booth was
+trying to seem to talk with very great frankness, in order to lure Tom
+into a similar frankness about himself. He larded all his talk with
+protestations of fervent loyalty to the Union. Tom bethought himself of
+a favorite quotation his father often used from Shakespeare's great play
+of "Hamlet." The conscience-stricken queen says to Hamlet, her son:
+
+"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
+
+Wilkes Booth was protesting too much. The drowsy suspicion in Tom's mind
+stirred again. But he was but a boy and Booth was a man, skilled in all
+the craft of the stage. Once more his easy, brilliant talk lulled
+caution to sleep. Tom, questioned so skillfully that he did not know he
+was being drawn out, little by little told the story of his short life.
+But the story ended with his saying he was going to Harrisburg "on
+business." He was still enough on his guard not to admit he was going
+further than Harrisburg.
+
+"You're pretty young to be on the way to the State Capitol on business,"
+said the skillful actor, hoping to hear more details in answer to the
+half-implied sneer. But just then Tom remembered what his father had
+advised: "Never say anything to anybody, unless you are sure the
+President would wish you to say it." He shut up like a clam. Booth could
+get nothing more out of him. But he meant to get those dispatches out of
+him. They were either in the boy's pocket or his valise, probably in his
+pocket. When he fell asleep, the spy's time would come. So the spy
+waited.
+
+Darkness came. Two smoky oil-lamps gave such light as they could. The
+train rumbled on in the night. There were no sleeping cars then. People
+slept in their seats, if they slept at all. Booth's tones grew soothing,
+almost tender. They served as a lullaby. Tom slept. The spy beside him
+drew a long, triumphant breath. His time had come.
+
+Some time before, he had shifted his traveling-bag to this seat. Now he
+drew from it, gently, quietly, the little bottle of chloroform and a
+small sponge, which he saturated with the stupefying drug. Then he
+slipped his arm under the sleeping boy's head, drew him a little closer
+to himself, and glanced through the dusky car. Nearly everybody was
+asleep. Those who were not were trying to go to sleep. No one was
+watching. Booth pressed the sponge to Tom's nostrils. Tom stirred
+uneasily. "Sh-sh, Tom," purred the actor, "go to sleep; all's well." The
+drug soon did its work. The boy was dead to the world for awhile. Only a
+shock could rouse him.
+
+The shock came. Booth's long, sensitive, skilled fingers--the fingers of
+a musician--ransacked his coat and waistcoat pockets swiftly, finding
+nothing. But beneath the waistcoat their tell-tale touches had detected
+the longed-for papers. The waistcoat was deftly unbuttoned--it could
+have been stripped off without arousing the unconscious boy--and a
+triumphant thrill shot through Booth's black heart as he drew from an
+inner pocket the long, official envelope that he knew must hold what he
+had stealthily sought. He was just about to slip it into his own pocket
+and then to leave his stupefied victim to sleep off the drug while he
+himself sought safety at the next station, when one of those little
+things which have big results occurred. The sturdy man who was snoring
+in the seat behind this one happened to be a surgeon. He was returning
+from Washington, whither he had gone to operate on a dear friend, a
+wounded officer. Chloroform had of course been used, but the patient had
+died under the knife. It had been a terrible experience for the
+operator. It had made his sleep uneasy. A mere whiff from the sponge
+Booth had used reached the surgeon's sensitive nostril. It revived the
+poignant memories of the last few hours. He awoke with a start that
+brought him to his feet. And there, just in front of him, he saw by the
+dim light a boy sunk in stupefied slumber and a man glancing guiltily
+back as he tried to thrust a stiff and crackling paper into his pocket.
+The sponge had fallen to the floor, but its fumes, far-spreading now,
+told to the practiced surgeon a story of foul play. He grabbed the man
+by the shoulder and awoke most of the travelers, but not Tom, with a
+stentorian shout: "What are you doing, you scoundrel?"
+
+The scoundrel leaped to his feet, throwing off the doctor's hand, and
+sprang into the aisle, clutching the long envelope in his left hand,
+while his right held a revolver. He rushed for the door, pursued by half
+a dozen men, headed by the doctor. Close pressed, he whirled about and
+leveled his pistol at his unarmed pursuers. They fell back a pace. He
+whirled again, stumbled over a bag in the aisle, fell, sprang to his
+feet once more. A brakeman opened the door. He was hurrying to see what
+this clamor meant. Wilkes Booth fired at him pointblank. The bullet
+missed, but it made the brakeman give way. Booth rushed by him, gained
+the platform and leaped from the slow train into the sheltering night.
+
+The shock that waked Tom was the sound of the shot. Weak, dizzy, and
+sick, he knew only that some terrible thing was happening.
+Instinctively, his hand sought that inner pocket, only to find it empty.
+Then, indeed, he was wide awake. The horror of his loss burned through
+his brain. He shouted: "Stop him! Stop thief!" and collapsed again into
+his seat.
+
+He was in fact a very sick boy. The dose of chloroform that had been
+given him would have been an overdose for a man. Notwithstanding his
+awakening, he might have relapsed into sleep and death, had not the
+skillful surgeon been there to devote himself to him. An antidote was
+forced down his throat. Willing volunteers, for of course the whole car
+was now awake in a hurly-burly of question and answer, rubbed life back
+into him. When he was a bit better, he was kept walking up and down the
+aisle, while two strong men held him up and his head swayed helplessly
+from side to side. But the final cure came when the surgeon who had kept
+catlike watch upon him saw that he could now begin to understand things.
+
+"Here is something of yours," he whispered into the lad's
+half-unconscious ear. "That scoundrel stole it from you. When he fell,
+he must have dropped it on the floor. I found it there after he had
+jumped off the platform."
+
+Tom's hand closed over the fateful envelope. His trembling fingers ran
+along its edges. It had not been opened. He had not betrayed his trust.
+A profound thankfulness and joy stirred within him. Within an hour he
+was practically himself again. Then he poured out his heart in thanks to
+the sturdy surgeon who had saved not only his life, but his honor. He
+asked his name and started at his reply:
+
+"Dr. Hans Rolf, of York, Pennsylvania."
+
+"Dr. Hans Rolf," repeated Tom, "but perhaps you are the grandson of the
+Hans Rolf I've heard about all my life. My father is always telling me
+of things Hans Rolf did for my grandfather and great-grandfather."
+
+"And what is _your_ name?" queried the doctor, surprised as may be
+imagined that this unknown boy should know him so well.
+
+"Tom Strong."
+
+"By the Powers," shouted the hearty doctor, seizing the boy's hand and
+wringing it as his grandfather used to wring the hand of the Tom Strongs
+he knew, "By the Powers, next to my own name there's none I know so well
+as yours. My grandfather never wearied of talking about the two Tom
+Strongs, father and son. The last day he lived, he told me how your
+great-grandfather saved his life."
+
+"And you know he saved great-grandfather's, too," answered Tom, "and now
+you have saved mine."
+
+He looked shyly at his preserver. He was still weak with the
+after-effects of the drug that had been given him. The Hans Rolf he saw
+was a bit blurred by the unshed tears through which he saw him.
+
+"Nonsense," said the surgeon, "whatever I've done is just in the day's
+work. But you must stop at York and rest. I can't let my patient travel
+just yet, you know. And this may be your last chance to see me at home.
+I go into the army next month."
+
+However, Tom was not to be persuaded to stop. Duty called him Westward
+and to the West he went, as fast as the slow trains of those days could
+carry him. But when Hans Rolf and he parted, a few hours after they had
+met, they were friends for life.
+
+It took Tom two days to get from Harrisburg to Cairo, the southernmost
+town in Illinois. It lies at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio
+rivers. The latter pours a mass of beautiful blue water--the early
+French explorers named the Ohio "the beautiful river"--into the muddy
+flood of the Mississippi. For miles below Cairo the blue and yellow
+streams seem to flow side by side. Then the yellow swallows the blue and
+the mighty Mississippi rolls its murky way to the Gulf of Mexico. A
+gunboat took the young messenger from Cairo to General Grant's
+headquarters.
+
+[Illustration: MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS]
+
+A Western gunboat was an odd thing. James B. Eads, an eminent engineer,
+who after the war built the St. Louis bridge and the New Orleans
+jetties, which keep the mouth of the Mississippi open, had launched a
+flotilla of gunboats for the government within four months of the time
+when the trees which went to their making were growing in the forests.
+On a flat-boat of the ordinary Western-river type, Mr. Eads put a long
+cabin, framed of stout timbers, cut portholes in the sides, front and
+rear of it, mounted cannon inside it, covered it with rails outside
+(later armor-plate was used), and behold, a gunboat. The one which sped
+swiftly with Tom down the Mississippi and waddled slowly with him up the
+Tennessee, against the current of the Spring freshets, finally landed
+him at Grant's headquarters.
+
+Tom approached the tent over which headquarters' flag was flying with a
+beating heart. It beat against the long envelope that lay in the inner
+pocket of his waistcoat. He was about to finish his task and he was
+about to see the one successful soldier of the Union, up to that time.
+The Northern armies had not done well in the East--the defeat had been
+disgraceful and the panic sickening with the raw troops at Bull Run,
+Virginia, and little had been gained elsewhere--but in the West Grant
+was hammering out success. All eyes turned to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon the top of a low knoll, half a dozen packing-boxes were grouped in
+front of the tent. Two or three officers, most of them spick and span,
+sat upon each box except one. Upon that one there lounged a man,
+thick-set, bearded, his faded blue trousers thrust into the tops of
+dusty boots, his blue flannel shirt open at the throat, his worn blue
+coat carrying on each shoulder the single star of a brigadier-general.
+
+It was General Grant, Hiram Ulysses Grant, now known as U. S. Grant.
+When the Confederate commander of Fort Donelson had asked him for terms
+of surrender, he had answered practically in two words: "unconditional
+surrender." The curt phrase caught the public fancy, and gave his
+initials a new meaning. He was long known as "Unconditional Surrender"
+Grant.
+
+Born in Ohio, he had been educated at West Point, had fought well in our
+unjust war against Mexico, had resigned in the piping times of peace
+that followed, had been a commercial failure, and was running an
+insignificant business as a farmer in Galena, Illinois, an obscure and
+unimportant citizen of that unimportant town, when the Civil War began.
+Eight years afterwards, he became President of the United States and
+served as such for eight years, doing his dogged best, but far less
+successful as a statesman than he had been as a soldier. He was a
+patriot and a good man. In the last years of his life, ruined
+financially by a wicked partner and tortured by the cancer that finally
+killed him, he wrote his famous memoirs, which netted his family a
+fortune after the grave had closed upon this great American. He ran a
+race with Death to write his life. And he won the grim race.
+
+The young second-lieutenant saluted and explained his mission. The long
+envelope, deeply dented with the mark of Wilkes Booth's dirty thumb and
+finger, had reached its destination at last. Grant took it, opened it,
+read it without even a slight change of expression, though it contained
+not only orders for the future, but Lincoln's warm-hearted thanks for
+the past and the news of his own promotion to be major-general. Not only
+Tom, but every member of his staff was watching him. The saturnine face
+told no one anything. The little he said at the moment was said to Tom.
+
+"The President tells me he would like to have you given a glimpse of the
+front. Have you had any experience?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"When were you commissioned?"
+
+"A week ago, sir."
+
+"Are all the Eastern boys of your age in the army?"
+
+"They would like to be, sir."
+
+"Well," said Grant, with a kindly smile, "perhaps a little experience at
+the front may make up for the years you lack. Send him to General
+Mitchell, Captain," he added, turning to a spruce aide who rose from his
+packing-box seat to acknowledge the command.
+
+"Pray come with me, Mr. Strong," said the captain.
+
+Tom saluted, turned, and followed his guide. A backward glance showed
+him the general, his eyes now bent sternly upon Lincoln's letter, his
+staff eyeing him, a group of quiet, silent figures. And that was all
+that Tom saw, at that time, of the greatest general of our Civil War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+     INSIDE THE CONFEDERATE LINES--"SAIREY" WARNS TOM--OLD MAN TOMBLIN'S
+     "SETTLEMINT"--STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE--WILKES BOOTH GIVES THE
+     ALARM--A WILD DASH FOR THE UNION LINES.
+
+
+Three days afterwards, Tom found himself "on special service," on the
+staff of Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing towards
+Huntsville, Alabama. They occupied that delightfully sleepy old town,
+the center of a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but Tom was
+not then with the column. Five days before, with Mitchell's permission,
+he had volunteered for a gallant foray into the enemy's country. He had
+taken prompt advantage of Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if he
+wanted to do so. He was to have his fill of fighting now.
+
+Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who left camp before dawn on April
+7, under the command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a man, who had
+persuaded General Mitchell to let him try to slip across the lines with
+a handful of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order to steal a
+locomotive and rush it back to the Union front, burning all the railroad
+bridges it passed. The railroads to be crippled were those which ran
+from the South to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and from the East through
+Chattanooga and Huntsville to Memphis. A few miles from camp, Andrews
+gave his men their orders. They were to separate and singly or in groups
+of two or three were to make their way to the station of Big Shanty,
+Georgia, where they were to meet on the morning of Saturday, April 12.
+Andrews took Tom with him. For two days they hid in the wooded hills by
+day and traveled by night, guided by a compass and by the stars. Then
+their scanty supply of food was exhausted and they had to take to the
+open. Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellow with the oil of the
+butternut, the chief dye-stuff the South then had, their belts with
+"C.S.A."--"Confederate States of America"--upon them, their Confederate
+rifles (part of the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray slouched
+hats made them look like the Confederate scouts they had to pretend to
+be.
+
+Danger lurked about them and detection meant death. They did their best
+to talk in the soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts in the
+hills and asked for food, but the drawl was hard for a Northern tongue
+to master and more than one bent old woman or shy and smiling girl
+started with suspicion at the strange accents of these "furriners." The
+men of the hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On the fourth
+day they reached a log-hut or rather a home made of two log-huts, with a
+floored and roofed space between them, a sort of open-air room where all
+the household life went on when good weather permitted. An old, old
+woman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy with a rag quilt, her
+toothless gums busy with holding her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sat
+her granddaughter, busy too with her spinning wheel. The two women with
+their home as a background made a pleasing and a peaceful picture.
+
+"Howdy," said Andrews.
+
+The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched upon the old woman's lap. She
+took her pipe from her mouth.
+
+"Howdy," said she.
+
+The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are not quick of speech.
+
+"Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk?" asked Tom.
+
+"Sairey," called the old dame, "you git sum milk."
+
+Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, trying to hide her bare feet
+with her short skirt and not succeeding, and walked back of the house to
+the "spring-house," a square cupboard built over a neighboring spring.
+It was dark and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill-folk knew.
+While she was away, her grandmother began to talk. The man and boy would
+much rather she had kept still. For she peered at them suspiciously, and
+said:
+
+"How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I hearn thar wuz a right smart
+heap o' Yankee sojers not fur off'n hereabouts."
+
+At this moment Sairey fortunately returned. She brought in her brown
+hand an old glass goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brim
+with a foaming mixture that looked like delicious milk. Alas! Tom, who
+loathed buttermilk, was now to learn that in the hills "milk" meant
+"buttermilk." He should have asked for "sweet milk." Sairey handed him
+the goblet with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's hand touched
+hers. He lifted it eagerly to his thirsty lips, took a long draught, and
+sputtered and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking and the girl had
+gone a hundred yards to get him what she thought he wanted. He was a
+boy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed the nauseous stuff to the last
+drop, and made his best bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old woman
+said to him:
+
+"Where wuz you born, bub?"
+
+"New--New----" stammered Tom. His tongue did not lend itself readily to
+a lie, even in his country's cause. When he was still too young to
+understand what the words meant, his mother had told him: "A lie soils a
+boy's mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that big truth into his
+small mind. Now, taken by surprise, the habit of his young life asserted
+itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been born in New York was on
+his unsoiled lips, when Andrews finished the sentence for him.
+
+"New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly.
+
+"He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old beldam.
+
+"He was raised up No'th," Andrews explained, "but soon as this yer
+onpleasantness began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns."
+
+Andrews had overdone his dialect.
+
+"Sairey," commanded the old woman, "put up the flag."
+
+"Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where she had taken refuge behind her
+grandmother's chair, "what's the use?"
+
+"Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag."
+
+From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands in a warning gesture, and
+then, before she entered one of the log-houses, she pointed to a
+cart-track that wound up the hill before the hut. She came out with a
+Confederate flag, made of part of an old red petticoat with white
+stripes sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long sapling. She put the
+staff into a rude socket in front of the platform. As she passed Tom in
+order to do this, she whispered to him: "You-uns run!"
+
+"What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar?" her grandmother asked in anger.
+
+"I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah replied.
+
+But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old woman's, sharpened by fear, had
+caught the words.
+
+"We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. "You-uns haz bin right down good to
+us. Thanky, ma'am."
+
+"Jes' wait a minute," the old woman answered. "I'll give you somethin'
+fer yer to eat as ye mosey 'long."
+
+She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into the dark log-room. Sairey
+wrung her hand and whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track." Instantly
+the grandmother appeared on the threshold, her old eyes flashing, a
+double-barreled shot-gun in her shaking hands. She tried to cover both
+man and boy, as she screamed at them:
+
+"You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees! My man'll know what to do with
+you-uns."
+
+Their guns were at her feet. There was no way to get them, even if they
+would have used them against a woman.
+
+"Run!" shouted Andrews and bounded towards the cart-track.
+
+Tom sprang after him, but not in time to escape a few birdshot which the
+old woman's gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting of them
+redoubled his speed. The second barrel sent its load far astray. They
+had run just in time, for from another hilltop behind the hut a dozen
+armed men came plunging down to the house, shouting after the scared
+fugitives. The raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon signal for
+their coming. Sairey's father and several other men had taken to the
+nearby hills to avoid being impressed into the Confederate army, but
+they adored the Confederacy, up to the point of fighting for it, and
+they would have rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old woman's
+eyes and ears had pierced the thin disguise of the raiders. So she had
+forced her granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid to disobey
+her fierce old grandmother but loath to see the boy she had liked at
+first sight captured, had warned him to flee. Man and boy were out of
+gunshot, but still in sight, when their pursuers reached the house,
+yelled with joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the cart-track
+like hounds hot upon the scent. As Tom and Andrews panted to the
+hilltop, they saw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart-track. At
+the summit, it branched into half a dozen lanes which wound through a
+pine forest. Lanes and woodlands were covered with pineneedles, the
+deposit of years, which rose elastic under their flying feet and left no
+marks by which they could be tracked. And beyond the forest was a vast
+laurel-brake in which a regiment could have hidden, screened from
+discovery save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter and safety. Once
+they heard the far-off voices of their pursuers, but only once. Ere many
+hours they had the added security of the night.
+
+When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny brook that flowed at the
+roots of the laurel-bushes, Tom found that his wound, forgotten in the
+fierce excitement of the flight, had begun to pain him. His left
+shoulder grew stiff. When Andrews examined it, all it needed was a
+little care. Three or four birdshot had gone through clothing and skin,
+but they lay close beneath the skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smears
+of red blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. They were picked out with
+the point of a knife. The cool water of the brook washed away the blood
+and stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a bit of his own shirt,
+soaked it in the brook, and bandaged the shoulder in quite a good
+first-aid-to-the-injured way. Tom and he were none the worse, except for
+the loss of their guns. And that was the less serious because both
+knives and pistols were still in their belts.
+
+They slept that night in the laurel-brake, forgetting their hunger in
+the soundness of their sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled to
+hear a human voice. But it was the voice of a gentle girl. It kept
+calling aloud "Coo, boss, coo, boss," while every now and then it said
+in lower tones: "Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's suthin' to eat." At first
+they thought it was a trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred by
+hunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and found it was Sairey who
+was calling them. When she saw them, she ran towards them, while the
+cows she had collected from their pasture stared with dull amazement.
+
+"Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her hands in anxiety.
+
+Reassured as to this, she produced the cold cornbread and bacon she had
+taken from the spring-house when she left home that morning for her
+daily task of gathering the family cows. Man and boy bolted down the
+food.
+
+"You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom.
+
+"Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl replied, peering slyly out
+of her big sunbonnet and digging her brown toes into the earth, "but I
+dun it, kase--kase--I jes' had to. Kin you get away today?"
+
+"We'll try."
+
+"Whar be you goin'?"
+
+Should they tell her where they were going? It was a risk, but they took
+it. They were glad they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help them
+on their way, but could be of real aid. Once in her life she had been at
+Big Shanty. She told them of a short cut through the hills, by which
+they would pass only one "settle_mint_," as the infrequent clearings in
+the hills were called.
+
+"When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_," said Sairey, "I
+'low you-uns better stand at the fence corner and holler. Old Man
+Tomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when furriners don't do no
+hollerin'. But when he comes out, you-uns tell him Old Man Gernt's
+Sairey told you he'd take care of you-uns. 'N he will. 'N you kin tell
+Bud Tomblin--no, you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by."
+
+The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up to Andrews and smiled as
+she shook hands. She looked down at Tom--she was half a head taller than
+he--and smiled again as she shook hands. Then suddenly she stooped and
+kissed the startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane by which she
+had come, leaving the placid cows and the thankful man and boy behind
+her. With a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare, brown
+feet, she vanished from their sight.
+
+Thanks to her directions, they found Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_
+without difficulty. They duly stood at the corner of the sagging rail
+fence and there duly "hollered." Old Man Tomblin and Bud Tomblin came
+out of the cabin, each with a gun, and were proceeding to study the
+"furriners" before letting them come in, when Andrews repeated what Old
+Man Gernt's Sairey had told them to say. There was an instant welcome.
+Bud Tomblin was even more anxious than his father to do anything Sairey
+Gernt wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had been scouting near
+General Mitchell's line of march and had lost their guns and nearly lost
+themselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was accepted without demur. Old
+Mrs. Tomblin, decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill-folk,
+whose hard living conditions make women old at forty and venerable at
+fifty, cackled a welcome to them from the corner of the fireplace where
+she sat "dipping" snuff. "Lidy" Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped and
+hindered by the rest of a brood of children, took care of their comfort.
+They feasted on the best the humble household had to offer. They slept
+soundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr. and Mrs. Tomblin and
+Lidy, slept in the same room. In the morning they were given a bountiful
+breakfast and were bidden good-by as old friends.
+
+"I hate to deceive good people like the Tomblins," said Tom, when they
+were out of earshot.
+
+"Sometimes the truth is too precious to be told," laughed Andrews.
+
+But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as he tramped along. He made up
+his mind to fight for his country, the next time he had a chance, in
+some other way. Telling a lie and living a lie were hateful to him.
+
+The next morning found them at Big Shanty, a tiny Georgia village, which
+the war had made a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed day,
+Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty-two men who had started with
+Andrews, eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The train for
+Chattanooga stopped there for breakfast on those infrequent days when it
+did not arrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It was what is
+called a "mixed" train, both freight and passenger, with many freight
+cars following the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby passenger
+cars. On this particular morning it surprised everybody, including its
+own train-crew, by being on time. Passengers and crew swarmed in to
+breakfast. The train was deserted. The time for the great adventure had
+come.
+
+Before the train was seized, one thing must be done. The telegraph wire
+between Big Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this were left
+intact, their flight, sure to be discovered as soon as the train-crew
+finished their brief breakfast, would end at the next station, put on
+guard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest and most agile of the
+party, the task of cutting the wire had been assigned. He was already at
+the spot selected for the attempt, a clump of trees a hundred yards from
+the station, where the wire was screened from sight by the foliage. As
+soon as the train came in, Tom started to climb the telegraph-pole. He
+had just started when he heard a most unwelcome sound.
+
+"Hey, thar! What's you doin'?"
+
+He turned his head and saw a Confederate sentry close beside him. He
+recognized him as a man with whom he had been chatting around a
+camp-fire early that morning. His name was Bill Coombs. Tom's ready wit
+stood by him.
+
+"Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you. Somethin's wrong with the wire.
+The Cunnel's sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?"
+
+The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and watched him without a thought
+of his doing anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top of the rickety
+pole, cut the one wire it carried, fastened the ends to the pole so that
+from the ground nobody could tell it was cut, and climbed down. Bill
+urged him to stay and talk awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentries
+mustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon ran towards the
+station. He had to run to catch the train. The instant Andrews saw him
+returning, he sprang into the cab of the locomotive.
+
+[Illustration: THE LOCOMOTIVE TOM HELPED TO STEAL]
+
+One of his men had already uncoupled the first three freight cars from
+the rest of the train. All the men jumped into the cab or the tender or
+swarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews jerked the throttle wide
+open. The engine jumped forward, the tender and the three cars bounding
+after it. The crowd upon the platform gaped after the retreating train,
+without the slightest idea of what was happening under their very noses.
+A boy came running like an antelope from the end of the platform. He
+jumped for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched by a half-dozen
+hands and drawn aboard. But as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reason
+to remember call out:
+
+"They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong, a Yankee! Stop 'em! Shoot
+'em!"
+
+Livid with rage, his long black hair streaming in the wind as he ran
+after them, Wilkes Booth fired his pistol at them, while the motley
+crowd his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley after the train.
+Nobody was hurt then, but the danger to everybody had just begun.
+
+There was instant pursuit. The train-crew, startled by the sound of the
+departing train, came running from the station. They actually started to
+run along the track after the flying locomotive. They jerked a hand-car
+off a siding and chased the fugitives with that. At a station not far
+off, they found a locomotive lying with steam up. They seized that and
+thundered ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more even terms. The
+hunters reached Kingston, Georgia, within four minutes after the hunted
+had left. The latter had had to make frequent stops, to cut the wires,
+to take on fuel, to bundle into the freight cars ties that could be used
+to start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear up an occasional
+rail. This last expedient delayed their pursuers but little. When a
+missing rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore up a rail
+behind them, slipped it into the vacant place, and rushed ahead again.
+
+Andrews was running the captured train on its regular time schedule, so
+he could not exceed a certain speed. From Kingston, however, where the
+only other train of the day met this one, he expected a free road and
+plenty of time to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet the regular
+train at Kingston, but alas! it carried on its engine a red flag. That
+meant that a second section of the same train was coming behind it.
+There was nothing to do but to wait for this second section. The
+railroad was single-track, so trains could pass only where there was a
+siding. But in every moment of waiting there lurked the danger of
+detection. Southerners, soldiers, and civilians, crowded about the
+locomotive as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston sidetrack,
+puffing away precious steam and precious time.
+
+"Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man. "I cum hyar to meet up with
+Cunnel Tompkins. Whar's he'n the rest of 'em?"
+
+"We were ordered to drop everything at Big Shanty," explained Andrews,
+"except these three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on General
+Beauregard's staff and am taking the stuff to him at Corinth. Jove,
+there's the whistle of the second section. I'm glad to hear it."
+
+He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he had bundled most of his men
+into the freight cars. The cars were battered old things without any
+locks. If a carelessly curious hand were to slide back one of the doors
+and reveal within, not powder, but armed men, all their lives would pay
+the forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with engineer, fireman, and Tom, who
+had been helping the fireman feed wood into the maw of the furnace on
+every mile of the run. His young back ached with the strain of the
+unaccustomed toil. His young neck felt the touch of the noose that
+threatened them all.
+
+"Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch for us as soon as the other
+train pulls in," said Andrews. "We mustn't keep General Beauregard
+waiting for this powder a minute longer than we can help. He needs it to
+blow the Yankees to smithereens."
+
+So Tom ran ahead, stood by the switch as the second section came in, and
+promptly threw the switch as it passed. But his train did not move and
+a brakeman jumped off the rear platform of the caboose of the second
+section, as it slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a fool, pushed
+him out of the way and reset the switch.
+
+"You plum fool," shouted the brakeman, after much stronger expressions,
+"didn't ye see the flag fur section three?"
+
+Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it, but it was too true that the
+engine of section two also bore the red flag that meant that section
+three was coming behind it.
+
+Again there was a long wait, again the sense of danger closing in upon
+them, again the thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity of
+playing their parts with laughter and good-natured chaff amid the foes
+who thought them friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves away. At
+last the third section came whistling and lumbering in. Thank fortune,
+it bore no red flag. This time Tom threw the switch unchecked and then
+jumped on the puffing engine as she reached the main-track and sped
+onwards.
+
+"Free, by Jove!" said Andrews, with a deep breath of deep relief. "Now
+we can burn Johnny Reb's bridges for him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Four minutes later, while section three of the train that had so long
+delayed them was still at Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed into
+the station. Its occupants, shouting a story of explanation that put
+Kingston into a frenzy, ran from it to an engine that lay upon a second
+sidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They had reached Kingston so
+speedily by using their last pint of water and their last stick of wood.
+They saved precious minutes by changing engines.
+
+Five seconds after their arrival, the station-agent had been at the
+telegraph-key, frantically pounding out the call of a station beyond
+Andrews's fleeing train. There was no reply.
+
+"Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the station. Of course that had
+been done by the fugitives just out of sight of Kingston. "Wire cut! I
+kain't git no message through."
+
+"We'll take the message!" answered the Confederate commander, from the
+cab of the locomotive that was already swaying with her speed, as she
+darted ahead.
+
+They came near delivering the message within four miles of Kingston.
+Andrews's men, with a most comforting sense of safety had stopped and
+were pulling up a rail, when they heard the whistle of their avenging
+pursuer.
+
+"Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called. "They're closer'n I like to
+have 'em."
+
+Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates came closer still. Around
+the next curve, quite hidden from sight until close upon it, the
+fugitives had put a rail across the track. It delayed the pursuit not
+one second. Whether the cowcatcher of the engine thrust it aside or
+broke it or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody knew then in
+the wild excitement of the chase and nobody knows now. The one thing
+certain is that there was no delay. Very likely the rail broke. Rails
+of those days were of iron, not steel, and throughout the South they
+were in such condition that at the close of the Civil War one of the
+chief Southern railroads was said to consist of "a right-of-way and two
+streaks of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly and sped on.
+
+On the Union train, Tom had crept back to the rear car along the
+rolling, jumping carroofs, with orders to set it on fire and stand ready
+to cut it off. The men inside arranged a pile of ties, thrust fat pine
+kindling among them, and touched the mass with a match. It burst into
+flame as they scuttled to the roof and passed to the car ahead. A long
+covered wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway across it, Andrews
+stopped, dropped the flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very few
+minutes the bridge would have been a burning mass, but the few minutes
+were not to be had. The Confederate locomotive was now close upon them.
+It dashed upon the bridge, drove the burning car across the bridge
+before it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and again whistled
+triumphantly as it took up the fierce chase. The two remaining cars were
+detached, one by one, but in vain. The game was up.
+
+"Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly, as he looked back over the
+tender, now almost empty of wood, to the smokestack that was belching
+sooty vapor within a mile of them. "By this time, they've got a telegram
+ahead of us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods. We must take to
+the woods. Don't try to keep together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star.
+Make the Union lines if you can. We've done our best."
+
+The engine checked its mad pace, slowed, stopped.
+
+"Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he sprang from the engine and
+disappeared in the forest that there bordered the track. "We'll meet
+again."
+
+Seven of them did meet him again. It was upon a Confederate scaffold,
+where he and they were hung. The other six of the fourteen who were
+captured were exchanged, a few months later. Three others reached the
+Union lines within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom Strong?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     TOM UP A TREE--DID THE CONFEDERATE OFFICER SEE HIM?--A FUGITIVE
+     SLAVE GUIDES HIM--BUYING A BOAT IN THE DARK--ADRIFT IN THE ENEMY'S
+     COUNTRY.
+
+
+At first, Tom was up a tree. When he jumped from the abandoned
+locomotive, his mind was working as quickly as his body. He reasoned
+that the Confederates would expect them all to run as fast and as far
+away as they could; that they would run after them; that they would very
+probably catch him, utterly tired out as he was, so tired that even fear
+could not lend wings to his leaden feet; that the pursuit, however,
+would not last long, because the Confederates would wish to reach a
+station soon, in order both to report their success and to send out a
+general alarm and so start a general search for the fugitives; and that
+he would best hide as near at hand as might be. In other words, he
+thought, quite correctly, that the best thing to do is exactly what your
+enemy does not expect you to do. He picked out a big oak tree quite
+close to the track, its top a mass of thick-set leaves such as a
+Southern April brings to a Southern oak. He climbed it, nestled into a
+sheltered crotch high above the ground, and waited. He did not have to
+wait long. He could still hear the noise of his comrades plunging
+through the woods when the Confederate engine drew up beneath his feet.
+Before it stopped, the armed men who clustered thick upon locomotive and
+tender were on the ground and running into the woods. A gallant figure
+in Confederate gray led them. He heard the rush of them, then a shot or
+two, exultant yells, and ere long the tramp of returning feet. They came
+back in half a dozen groups, bringing with them three of his comrades in
+flight, less fortunate than he, at least less fortunate up to that time.
+Andrews was one of the prisoners. He had slipped and fallen, had
+strained a sinew, and had lain helpless until his pursuers reached him.
+Tom, peering cautiously through his leafy shelter, saw that his late
+leader was limping and was held upright by a kindly Confederate, who had
+passed his arm about him.
+
+"'Tain't fur," said his captor, cheerily, "hyar's the injine."
+
+"The Yank's goin' fur," sneered a soldier of another kind, "he's goin'
+to Kingdom Cum, blast him!" He lifted his fist to strike the helpless
+man, but the young officer in command caught the upraised arm.
+
+"None of that," he said, sternly. "Americans don't treat prisoners that
+way. You're under arrest. Put down your gun and climb into the tender.
+Do it now and do it quick." Sulkily the brute obeyed. "Lift him in,"
+went on the officer to the man who was supporting Andrews. This was
+gently done. The other two captives climbed in. So did the Confederates.
+Their officer turned to them.
+
+"You've done your duty well," he said. "You've been chasing brave men.
+They've done their duty well too.
+
+    "'For such a gallant feat of arms
+    Was never seen before.'"
+
+Tom started with surprise. The young officer was quoting from Macaulay's
+"Lays of Ancient Rome." The boy had stood beside his mother's knee when
+she read him the "Lays" and had often since read them himself.
+
+That start of surprise had almost been Tom's undoing. He had rustled the
+leaves about him. A tiny shower of pale green things fell to the ground.
+
+"Captain, there's somebody up that tree," said a soldier, pointing
+straight at the point where Tom sat. "I heard him rustle."
+
+The captain looked up. The boy always thought the officer saw him and
+spared him, partly because of his youth--he knew the fate the prisoners
+faced--and partly because of his admiration for "the gallant feat of
+arms." Be that as it may, he certainly took no step just then to make
+another prisoner. Instead he laughed and answered:
+
+"That's a 'possum. We haven't time for a coon-hunt just now. Get ahead.
+We'll send an alarm from the next station and so bag all the Yankees."
+
+The engine, pushing the recaptured one before it, started and
+disappeared around the end of the short curve upon which Andrews had
+made his final stop. For the moment at least, Tom was safe. But he knew
+the hue-and-cry would sweep the country. Everybody would be on the
+lookout for stray Yankees. And as everybody would think the estrays
+were all going North, Tom decided to go South. He slid down the
+tree, looked at his watch, studied the sunlight to learn the points of
+the compass, drew his belt tighter to master the hunger that now
+assailed him, and so began his southward tramp, a boy, alone, in the
+enemy's country.
+
+That part of Georgia is a beautiful country and Tom loved beauty, but it
+did not appeal to him that afternoon. He was hungry; he was tired; the
+excitement that had upheld him through the hours of flight on the
+captured engine was over. He plodded through a little belt of forest
+and found himself in a broad valley, with a ribbon of water flowing
+through it. He stumbled across plowed fields to the little river. A
+dusty road, with few marks of travel, meandered beside the stream. He
+was evidently near no main highway. Not far away a planter's home, with
+a stately portico, gleamed in the sunlight through its screen of trees.
+In the distance lay a little village. There was food in both places and
+he must have food. To which should he go? It was decided for him that he
+was to go to neither. As he slipped down the river bank, to quench his
+burning thirst and to wash his dusty face and hands, he almost stepped
+upon a negro who lay full length at the foot of the bank, hidden behind
+a tree that had been uprooted by the last flood and left stranded there.
+The boy was scared by the unexpected meeting, but not half as much as
+the negro.
+
+"Oh, Massa," said the negro, on his knees with outstretched hands, "don'
+tell on me, Massa. I'll be your slabe, Massa. Jes' take me with you.
+Please don't tell on me. You kin make a lot o' money sellin' me, Massa.
+Please lemme go wid you."
+
+"What is your name?" asked Tom.
+
+"Morris, Massa."
+
+"Where did you come from?"
+
+"From dat house, Massa." He pointed to the big house nearby.
+
+"And what are you doing here?"
+
+Little by little, Morris (reassured when he found Tom was a Northern
+soldier and like himself a fugitive) told his story. He had been born on
+this plantation. Reared as a house-servant, he could read a little. He
+had learned from the newspapers his master took that a Northern army was
+not far away. He made up his mind to try for freedom. His master kept
+dogs to track runaways, but no dog can track a scent in running water.
+It was not probable his flight would be discovered until after
+nightfall. So he had stolen to his hiding-place in the afternoon,
+intending to wade down the tiny stream as soon as darkness came. Two
+miles below, the stream merged itself into a larger one. There he hoped
+to steal a boat, hide by day and paddle by night until he reached the
+Tennessee. "Dat ribber's plum full o' Massa Lincum's gunboats," he
+assured Tom.
+
+"How are you going to live on the journey?" asked the boy.
+
+"I spec' dey's hen-roosts about," quoth Morris with a chuckle, "and I'se
+got a-plenty to eat to start wid. Dis darkey don' reckon to starve
+none."
+
+"Give me something to eat, quick!"
+
+Morris willingly produced cornpone and bacon from a sack beside him. Tom
+wanted to eat it all, but he knew these precious supplies must be kept
+as long as possible, so he did not eat more than half of them. The two
+agreed to keep together in their flight for freedom. As soon as it was
+dark, they began their wading. The two miles seemed an endless distance.
+The noises of the night kept their senses on the jump. Once a distant
+bloodhound's bay scared Morris so much that his white teeth clattered
+like castanets. Once the "too-whit-too" of a nearby owl sent Tom into an
+ecstasy of terror. He fairly clung to Morris, who, just ahead of him,
+was guiding his steps through the shallow water. When he found he had
+been scared by an owl, he was so ashamed that he forced himself to be
+braver thereafter. At last they reached their first goal, the larger
+river. Here Morris's knowledge of the ground made him the temporary
+commander of the expedition. He knew of a little house nearby, the home
+of a "poor white," who earned part of his precarious livelihood by
+fishing. Morris knew just where he kept his boat. There was no light in
+the little house and no sound from it as they crept stealthily along the
+bank to the tree where the boat was tied. Tom drew his knife to cut the
+rope.
+
+"No, Massa," whispered Morris. "Not dat-a-way. Ef it's cut, dey'll know
+it's bin tuck and dey'll s'picion us. Lemme untie it. Den dey'll t'ink
+it's cum loose and floated away. 'N dey'll not hurry after it. Dey'll
+t'ink dey kin fin' it in some cove any time tomorrer."
+
+Morris was right. It did not take him long to untie the clumsy knot.
+Three oars and some fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat. They
+got into it, pushed off, and floated down the current without a sound.
+Morris steered with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot, they rowed
+as fast as the darkness, intensified by the shadows of the overhanging
+trees, permitted.
+
+Just before they had pushed off, Tom had asked:
+
+"What is this boat worth, Morris?"
+
+"Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one jest like it, dis lastest
+week."
+
+Tom's conscience had told him that even though a fugitive for his life
+in the enemy's country he ought not to take the "poor white's" boat
+without paying for it. He unbuttoned an inside pocket in his shirt and
+drew out a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces. There were twenty
+of them, each wrapped in tissue-paper and the whole then bound together
+in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so that there would be no
+sound of clinking gold as he walked. He figured that the three oars and
+the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth more than the boat was, so
+he took out two coins and put them in a battered old pan that lay beside
+the stump to which the boat was tied. There the "cracker"--another name
+for the "poor white"--would be sure to see them in the morning. As a
+matter of fact he did. And they were worth so much more than his
+vanished property that he was inclined to think an angel, rather than a
+thief, had passed that way. Tom's conscientiousness spoiled Morris's
+plan of having the owner think the boat had floated away, but the
+"cracker" was glad to clutch the gold and start no hue-and-cry. He was
+afraid that if he recovered his boat, he would have to give up the gold.
+It was much cheaper to make another. So he kept still.
+
+And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they paddled slowly down
+the stream until the first signs of dawn sent them into hiding. They
+hid the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth of a tiny creek
+and they themselves crept a few yards into the forest, ate very much
+less than they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's scanty store
+of food, and went to sleep. They slept until--but that is another
+story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+     TOWSER FINDS THE FUGITIVES--TOWSER BRINGS UNCLE MOSES--MR. IZZARD
+     AND HIS YANKEE OVERSEER, JAKE JOHNSON--TOM IS PULLED DOWN THE
+     CHIMNEY--HOW UNCLE MOSES CHOKED THE OVERSEER--THE FLIGHT OF THE
+     FOUR.
+
+
+They slept until late in the afternoon.
+
+Then Morris woke up with a yell. A dog's cold nose was thrusting itself
+against his cheek. He thought his master's bloodhounds were upon him and
+that the whipping-post was the least he had to fear. As Tom, startled
+from sound sleep by the negro's scream of terror, sprang to his feet, he
+saw Morris crouching upon the ground, babbling "Sabe me, good Lord, sabe
+old Morris!" The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel, a very distant
+cousin of the bloodhound the scared darkey imagined him to be, was
+looking with a grieved surprise at the cowering man. He was a most
+good-natured beast, accustomed to few caresses and many kicks, and he
+had never before seen a man who was afraid of him. As he turned to Tom,
+he saw a boy who wasn't afraid of him. Tom, who had always been loved by
+dogs and children, smiled at the big yellow mongrel, said "Come here,
+old fellow," and in an instant had the great hound licking his hand and
+looking up to him with the brown-yellow eyes full of a dog's faith and a
+dog's fidelity. These are great qualities. A cynic once said: "The more
+I see of men the more I like dogs." That cynic probably got from men
+what he gave to them. But still it is true that the unfaltering faith of
+a dog and a child, once their confidence has been won, is a rare and a
+precious thing. Tom patted his new friend's head. The big tail wagged
+with joy. The hound looked reproachfully at Morris, as much as to say:
+"See how you misunderstood me; I want to be friends: but here"--he
+turned and looked at the boy who was smiling at him--"here is my best
+friend."
+
+He stayed with them an hour, contented and happy, humbly grateful for a
+tiny piece of meat they gave him. Then, as dark drew near, he became
+uneasy. Two or three times he started as if to leave them, turned to see
+whether they were following him, looked beseechingly at them, barked
+gently, put his big paw on Tom's arm and pulled at him. Evidently he
+wanted them to come with him, but this they did not dare to do.
+
+"Ef we lets him go, he'll bring his folkses here," Morris whispered.
+
+"I suppose we must tie him up," Tom reluctantly assented. "I hate to
+treat him that way, for he's a good dog. But if we leave him tied and
+push off in the boat, he'll howl after a while and his master will find
+him. Take a bit of fishing-line and tie him."
+
+Morris turned towards the hidden boat, but the hound, as if aware of
+what they had said, suddenly started for his hidden home and vanished
+into the underbrush before Tom could catch hold of him. When Tom called,
+he stopped once and looked back, but he did not come back. He
+shouldered his way into the bushes and trotted off, with that amusing
+air of being in a hurry to keep a most important appointment which all
+dogs sometimes show. And as he started, Morris appeared again, with a
+shrill whisper: "De boat's dun sunk hisself."
+
+Tom ran to the bank of the creek. The news was too true. The boat had
+sunk. The rotten caulking had dropped from one of the rotten seams. The
+bow, tied to a tree in the canebrake, was high in air. The stern was
+under five feet of water. The oars had floated away. The fishing-pole
+was afloat, held to the old craft by the hook-and-line, which had caught
+in the sunken seat. What were they to do? They felt as a Western trapper
+used to feel, when he had lost his horse and saw himself compelled to
+make his perilous way on foot through a country swarming with savage
+foes. What to do?
+
+"We must raise the boat, Morris, get her on shore, turn her over, caulk
+her with something, make some paddles somehow and get off."
+
+They did, by great effort and with much more noise than they liked to
+make, drag the crazy old craft upon the bank of the creek. They turned
+her bottom-side up. The negro plucked down a long, waving mass of
+Spanish moss from a cypress that grew in the swampy soil. Children in
+the South call this Spanish moss "old men's gray beards." Each long
+drift of it looks as if it might have grown on the chin of an aged
+giant. They were pressing it into the gaping seam with feverish haste,
+listening the while for any sign of that dreaded coming of the big
+hound's "folkses." The short twilight of Southern skies ended. A deep
+curtain of darkness fell upon them. And through it they heard the nearby
+patter of the dog's paws and the shuffling footfalls of a man. And they
+saw the gleam of a lantern.
+
+"We'se diskivered, Massa Tom," old Morris whispered, "we'se diskivered."
+
+As he spoke, he slipped over the bank into the creek and lay in much his
+attitude when Tom had first "diskivered" him, except that the water
+covered all of him except mouth and nose and eyes. Tom bent down to him.
+
+"Hush," he said, "keep still. There's only one man coming. The dog's all
+right. I'll meet the man. You stay here."
+
+Then he stepped into a circle of light cast by the lantern upon a mass
+of underbrush and said, with a cheerful confidence he did not feel:
+
+"Howdy, neighbor?"
+
+The big yellow dog was fawning at his feet in a second. A quavering old
+voice came from behind the light of the lantern.
+
+"Howdy, Massa," it said. "Is I intrudin' on you?"
+
+An old, old negro shambled up to him, the lantern in one hand, a ragged
+hat in another. He bowed his crown of white kinky hair respectfully
+before the white boy. There was no enemy to be feared here. The boy's
+heart bounded with relief and he laughed as he answered:
+
+"No, Uncle, you're not intruding. I'm glad to see you. I'm sure you'll
+help us. Come here, Morris."
+
+Morris scrambled up the bank, the wettest man in the world. His eyeballs
+shone as he neared them. They shone still more as he stood before the
+old negro, held out his hand, and said:
+
+"Unk' Moses, I'se po'erful glad to meet up wid you."
+
+Uncle Moses almost dropped his rude lantern in his surprise.
+
+"Well, ef it ain't Massa Pinckney's Morris! Howdy, Morris? How cum so as
+you-uns is here, a-hidin'? I know'd de way dat ar Towser wuz a-actin'
+when he dun cum home dat dere wuz sum-un in de bush out hyar, but I
+neber s'picioned t'wuz you, Morris. Is you dun run away?"
+
+The situation was soon explained. Uncle Moses had already become
+familiar with it. Hunted men, both white and black, were no novelty to
+him by that time. He had helped many of them on their scared way. Too
+old to work, he lived alone in a little cabin on the outskirts of his
+owner's plantation. He tilled a tiny plot of vegetables when "de
+rumatiz" permitted and with these and some rations from "de big house"
+he eked out a scanty living. This owner's self-respect had not prevented
+his working Moses through all a long life, with no payment except food
+and lodging, and behind these always the shadow of the whip. But the
+slave's self-respect required him to work for the hand that fed him, so
+long as failing strength permitted. All he could do now was to scare
+crows from the cornfield, but that he could do well, for his one suit of
+the ragged remains of what had been several other people's clothes made
+him a perfect scarecrow. Besides his vegetables, he had some chickens, a
+sacred possession. "Old Unk' Mose" was known and respected through all
+the countryside. No chicken-thief ever came to his cabin. The kind old
+patriarch was reaping the reward of a kind long life. He dwelt in peace.
+
+He took Tom and Morris to the lonely cabin and treated them there with a
+royal hospitality. Despite his protests, Tom was obliged to take the
+one bed. Unk' Mose and Morris slept upon the floor. First, they had a
+mighty dinner. Two of Moses's fattest chickens and everything Moses had
+in the way of other food filled their starved stomachs. Then to sleep.
+The last thing Tom heard that night was the swish of Towser's mighty
+tail upon the earthen floor as the dog lay beside his cot. The last
+thing of which he was conscious was Towser's gently licking the hand
+that hung down from the cot.
+
+The next day they toiled with such feeble help as Moses could give them
+upon their leaky boat. They put it in fair shape and then, with a rusty
+ax which was one of Unk' Mose's most precious possessions, they
+fashioned a couple of rough oars. Then they spent a day trying to
+persuade Moses to seek freedom with them. It was in vain.
+
+"I'se too old, Massa Tom," said Uncle Moses. "Dey wuz timeses when I dun
+thought all de days and dun prayed all de nights dat freedum'd cum along
+or dat I cud go to freedum. It's too late nowadays. Unk' Mose mus' jes'
+sot hyar, a-waitin'. P'raps, ef I keeps a-helpin' udder folkses to find
+deir freedum, p'raps sum day, 'fore I'se troo' a-waitin', de angel ob de
+Lawd'll cum a-walkin' up to my do' and he'll be a-holdin' by de han' ob
+a great big udder angel 'n de udder angel he'll dun smile at me and say:
+'Unk' Moses, I'se Freedum 'n I'se cum to you.' Den I'll say: 'Thank de
+good Lawd,' and I'll be so happy I guess I'll jes' die 'n go to de great
+White Throne, whar ebberybody's free."
+
+Late that afternoon when they had had to give up the hope of taking
+Uncle Mose with them, they were making a bundle of the food he had given
+them. It was a big bundle. He would have slaughtered his last chicken
+for them, had they permitted it. Suddenly there came the sound of a
+long, shrill whistle. Uncle Moses, tying up the bundle on his knees,
+forgot "de rumatiz" and almost sprang to his feet.
+
+"Lawd-a-massy, dat's de oberseer! He's dun callin' de hands to de
+quarters." The quarters were the slave-quarters which always clustered
+at a respectful distance in the rear of a planter's home. "Dat ar
+oberseer mebbe'll cum hyar. You folkses mus' hide."
+
+The whistle had sounded dangerously near. As they looked out of the one
+door that gave light to the slave's cabin, they saw three horsemen
+trotting towards it, two white men and a negro. They were Moses's
+master, the dreaded overseer, and a groom. It was impossible to run
+across the small cleared space about the cabin and seek the woods
+without being seen. But where could they hide in a one-roomed hut?
+
+"De chimbley, quick, de chimbley," gasped Uncle Mose.
+
+A big chimney, full of the soot of many years of wood-fires on the broad
+hearth below, filled half one side of the room. Tom and Morris rushed to
+it, climbed up the rough stone sides, found a precarious footing just
+above the fireplace, and waited. Fortunately the fire upon which the
+food for the journey had been cooked had almost died down. A little
+smoke floated up the wide opening. The smoke and the soot tickled the
+boy's nostrils until it seemed to him that he must sneeze. A sneeze
+might mean death. With a mighty effort he kept still for what seemed to
+him an hour. It was really about five minutes.
+
+Mr. Izzard, owner of Uncle Moses and of some hundreds of other black
+men, Jake Johnson, his overseer, a renegade Yankee, with a face that
+told of the cruel soul within him, trotted up to the door, the black
+groom a few yards behind them. Uncle Moses had thrust the bundle of food
+far back under the bed. He stood respectfully in his doorway, bowing to
+the ground. Towser cowered beside him. Towser had felt more than once
+the sting of the long whip Jake Johnson carried. He feared and he hated
+the overseer.
+
+"Howdy, Massa Izzard?" said Moses. "Howdy, Mista Johnsing? Will you-uns
+light down 'n cum in?"
+
+"Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied. He was a tall, pale,
+well-born, well-bred, well-educated man, as kind a man as ever held his
+fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was justified in doing so by
+the laws of both God and man as the German emperor was that he ruled a
+subject people by divine right. "No, we won't light down. We just came
+to say howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you want anything, come
+up to the big house and ask for it."
+
+He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the old negro as he stammered a
+few words of thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked:
+
+"Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's Morris, Mose?"
+
+"No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen hide nor har ob Morris. Has
+dat fool nigger runned away?"
+
+Johnson looked at him sharply.
+
+"If I thought you knew already he had run away," said he, "I'd"--he
+cracked his whip in the air to show what he would have done.
+
+Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard told Johnson to stop
+frightening "the best darkey on the place" and they rode away. Mose
+dropped upon his one chair and was just about to give fervent thanks for
+the escape from detection, when Johnson, who had turned a short distance
+away and had galloped back, flung himself off his horse at the door and
+strode into the dusky hut.
+
+"I b'lieve you know something about that Morris," he roared at the
+shrinking old negro. "You looked guilty. Tell me what you know or I'll
+thrash you within an inch of your black life." He cracked his dreaded
+whip again.
+
+"I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista Johnsing," Moses pleaded.
+
+Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved too much for the overtried
+nostrils of Tom. He sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held back.
+His "at-choo! at-choo!" sounded down the chimney like a chorus of
+bassoons. Johnson was across the room in a bound. He knelt upon the
+hearth, groped up the chimney, caught the boy by the ankle and pulled
+him down. The soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer was sure he had
+caught the fleeing Morris.
+
+At that terrible moment, when Johnson's throat was swelling for a yell
+of triumph that would surely have brought Mr. Izzard back to the hut,
+Uncle Moses cast the traditions of a life of servile fear of the white
+man behind him. Never had he dreamed of laying a finger on one of his
+owner's race, even in those long-ago days when stout thews and muscles
+made him fit to fight. Now, in trembling old age, the truth of the
+poet's saying,
+
+    "Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,"
+
+put spirit for a second into his old heart. He knew the danger that lay
+in that yell. He meant to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was
+still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching Tom's ankle, the boy
+still sprawling on the hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery
+and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old body hurled itself upon
+the overseer's broad back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's
+windpipe and choked him into a second's silence. That second was enough.
+Tom sprang to his feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and good
+old Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that beckoned to him, sunk his
+teeth in Johnson's shoulder and tore him down from the back while Tom
+struck his strongest just below the overseer's chin and knocked him out
+for the time being. Before he came to, he had been lashed hand-and-foot
+into a long bundle, had been effectually gagged with his own whip, had
+been blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the bed, from under which
+the food had been hurriedly withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had neither been
+seen nor heard. Tom called up the chimney to him to come down.
+
+"I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice. It had never occurred to
+Morris to slip down and help in the fight he heard going on below. His
+one thought had been to escape himself. So he had climbed still higher
+up the chimney and in his frantic haste he had so wedged himself into it
+that it took Tom an hour to pull him down. It was a battered, bruised,
+and bleeding negro who finally appeared. That was a very long hour. Mr.
+Izzard might return in search of his overseer at any moment. The
+overseer himself must be conscious by this time. His ears must have told
+him much. Tom whispered to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His anxious
+gesture toward the bed beneath which Johnson lay frightened both negroes
+into scared silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's ears had told
+him nothing. Towser's teeth had drawn so much blood--the mighty hound
+had been pried off his foe with difficulty--that the man lay in a faint
+until the four fugitives had fled. For there were four fugitives now.
+Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face the coming wrath. The rest
+of Moses's chickens were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered.
+When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until she had a scant two
+inches of free-board above the water, was slipping down the river again.
+Uncle Moses was no longer "a-waitin' fer freedum." He was going in
+search of the freedom he had so long craved. He and his fellows had two
+clear days in which to get away without pursuit, for Johnson lay in his
+dark prison beneath the bed for fortyeight hours before he was found.
+One of the ropes used to bind him had caught upon an old nail in the
+wall. He was too weak to tear it away and so could not even roll himself
+to the outer air. On the second day of his unexplained absence, Mr.
+Izzard had sent all the negroes in search of him and had offered a
+reward for his finding. The discovery of his horse in a distant part of
+the plantation had concentrated the search there. The darkies who
+finally got the reward did not rejoice much in it, for in finding the
+overseer, they knew they were finding a cruel taskmaster and his cruel
+whip. But the story of his discomfiture by three negroes, for he had
+never known that Tom's sooty face was really white, soon spread through
+the countryside. He became a neighborhood joke and in his wrath at being
+made a butt he resigned as Mr. Izzard's overseer. Leaving this place
+deprived him of his immunity from conscription. He was promptly seized
+by the nearest Confederate officer and impressed into the army. The
+Izzard negroes had the infinite joy of seeing their hated ex-overseer
+marched off under guard to a Confederate camp, to serve as a private
+soldier.
+
+Tom was destined to see Jake Johnson again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two nights they rowed down the river, almost without a word, afraid to
+speak lest someone in the infrequent houses and still more infrequent
+villages along the banks should hear them. Wise old Towser knew enough
+not to bark when men about him kept so still. He lay always where with
+nose or paw or tail he could touch Tom. The latter was the commander of
+the expedition and Towser felt it and became his abject slave
+accordingly. At the close of the second night they had reached the
+Tennessee River. By day they camped upon shore in some hidden place,
+first craftily secreting the boat amid rushes and reeds. From their
+second hiding-place, they saw about noon a Confederate gunboat, a small
+stern-wheel steamboat, with cotton-bales at her bow and stern screening
+her two guns. Though she was making all possible speed up the current,
+she moved but slowly. Her decks were thick with excited men. A babble of
+voices reached the fugitives, peering at her behind a mass of bushes.
+The few words that could be made out told them nothing. The sight of
+her, however, warned them that a new danger might await them on the
+traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their hearts would have beat higher,
+had they known that General Mitchell had pushed south from Huntsville
+and that Union forces were then encamped in strength upon the river, not
+many miles below where they were cowering. The Confederate gunboat had
+been steaming upstream to escape capture.
+
+When darkness came, they embarked again upon what proved to be the last
+chapter in the history of the old flat-boat. The next morning, caught in
+an eddy at the mouth of a small, swift tributary of the Tennessee, she
+whirled about, the Spanish moss dropped out of her rotten seams, she
+filled and sank. She dropped so swiftly beneath them that before they
+realized their danger they were all floundering in water over their
+heads. Tom could swim like a fish. That is one of the first things a boy
+should learn to do. To his delight, he found Uncle Moses was also
+surprisingly at home in the water, considering his years. Towser
+accepted the situation as something he did not understand, but which was
+doubtless entirely all right, as his lord and master, Tom, was in the
+water too. Morris, however, could not swim a stroke and saw only certain
+death before him. He gave a yell of terror as he went under. That yell
+came near costing them dear. As he rose to the surface, Tom on one side
+and Uncle Mose on the other, acting under Tom's instructions, edged a
+shoulder under him, and started to swim to shore with him. Again he
+yelled. This time Moses lost patience.
+
+"Shet up, you fool nigger. You sho'ly needs to be 'mersed."
+
+With this whispered menace, he reached up one hand and ducked Morris's
+head quite under water. That stopped all further sound from him. And by
+this time their feet had touched bottom. They waded ashore, with Towser
+wagging a triumphant tail, shaking himself and sending showers of spray
+over them. There they stood, wet as water-rats, with nothing in the
+world except the dripping clothes they wore. And there was no
+hiding-place near. For half a mile on either side of them a cleared
+field lay open to the day and the day was upon them. They had tempted
+Fate by rowing on too long after the first signs of dawn. Fate had
+turned the trump upon them. The sun rolled up above the eastern horizon
+at their back. It showed them, not half a mile away, a plantation house.
+It showed them a swarm of field-hands coming to the day's toil. It
+showed them a mounted overseer, only a few hundred feet away, riding up
+to the flat range of the field from a ravine that had hidden him. He had
+heard Morris's yells. He saw the three and rode furiously at them,
+calling out:
+
+"What are you niggers doin' here?"
+
+Tom stepped forward to meet him. His two companions were useless in an
+emergency like this. They cowered back and were dumb. Towser strode
+ahead beside Tom and barked. The overseer pulled up short. He saw he was
+dealing with a white man, or rather with a white boy. The circumstances
+were suspicious. Who were these three dripping ragamuffins? But since
+one of them was white, the man's tone changed and he modified his
+question.
+
+"Who are ye? And what are ye doin' here?"
+
+"I am on my way to Vicksburg," Tom answered, "by the river. My boat sunk
+just off shore here and we swam ashore. Can you give me another boat?"
+
+"I mout 'n I moutn't."
+
+"I am carrying dispatches," said Tom, sternly. "You will delay me at
+your peril. I shall take one of those boats, whether you consent or
+not."
+
+With this he pointed at the most encouraging thing the sunrise had shown
+him. This was a line of three boats fastened to a wooden landing-place
+by the river.
+
+"I b'lieve you're a Yankee," said the horseman, "and these are runaway
+niggers. You and they must come up to the big house with me. If you're
+all right, we'll send you on your way. If you're not, well, we know what
+to do with Yanks and runaway niggers! March!"
+
+He slipped his hand behind him, as if to draw a pistol. Tom was already
+making the same gesture. Neither of them had a pistol. Tom's had gone to
+the bottom. It was pure bluff on both sides. And in a moment, seeing
+this and being Americans, both laughed. But none the less the overseer
+demanded that they should go to the big house. Tom, protesting, but
+apparently half-yielding, edged along until he was near the
+landing-platform. Then, shouting "Come on, boys!" he ran to it, the
+frightened negroes following at his heels and Towser running ahead. He
+hustled them into the boat at the eastern end of the pier, jumped in
+himself, jerked the rope off the wooden peg that insecurely held it, and
+pushed off. The overseer, angrily protesting, stood a moment watching
+his prey escape and then galloped like mad for the big house, shouting
+"Yanks! spies!! thieves!!! Yanks!!!!" He was met halfway by half a dozen
+men in Confederate gray, roused by his yells. They were officers who had
+spent the night at the hospitable house, had breakfasted at daybreak,
+and were just about to mount for their day's march when the overseer
+gave the alarm. It was lucky for the fugitives that officers do not
+carry anything bigger than pistols. A fusillade of revolver-bullets all
+fell short of the fleeing mark. Tom and Morris were pulling an oar
+apiece--they had found but two in the boat--with a desperate energy. But
+it was unlucky for the fugitives that they had not thought to steal or
+to scuttle the other two boats. This was Tom's fault, for he was
+captain.
+
+"I'll know better next time," said Tom to himself ruefully, as he saw
+three men spring into each boat for the pursuit. "I'll know better next
+time--if there ever is a next time."
+
+It did not seem likely that there would be a next time. One of the
+pursuing boats fell behind, to be sure. In it, too, there were but two
+oars and the men who plied them could not match the black man and the
+white boy who rowed for freedom's sake and life's sake. But in the other
+boat, two strong men each pulled two oars, while the third man crouched
+in the bow, pistol in hand, calling out steering instructions. This boat
+gained upon them, bit by bit. The fugitives could hear the lookout call
+"Port, hard-a-port!" and could almost see the extra weight thrown into
+the sweep of the starboard oars to send the boat's head the right way.
+Once the man at the bow took a chance on a long shot. His bullet fell
+harmlessly two hundred feet astern of Towser who stood in the stern of
+the fleeing boat, barking savagely. Thrice they turned a sharp bend and
+were out of sight of their enemy for a moment, but each time there was a
+shorter interval before the enemy shot into sight behind them. A fourth
+point lay just ahead. Tom looked back over his shoulder and measured the
+distance with his eye.
+
+"We can just make that next point," he panted. "Soon as we do, we'll
+land and run. It's our only chance."
+
+"I kain't run," said Uncle Moses, "but you'se right, Massa Tom. Dey'll
+catch us ef we keep a-rowin'."
+
+They had almost reached the bend. Another strong pull would have sent
+them around it. But the pursuers had now so gained upon them that the
+lookout chanced another shot. By chance or by skill, it was a very good
+shot. The bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade. The blade
+dropped off as Tom was putting every ounce of his failing strength into
+a prodigious pull. The handle, released from all pressure, flew through
+the air and Tom rolled over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a
+shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent to their work with a
+fierce vigor, feeling the victory won. Morris gave one last pull with
+his one oar and it sent the boat around the bend.
+
+"And dere," as Uncle Moses with widespread arms used to tell the tale
+thereafter, "and dere wuz Massa Lincum's gunboats, a-crowdin' ob de
+ribber--'n de Stars-'n-Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky!"
+
+[Illustration: TOWSER]
+
+And so Unk' Mose and Morris came to their freedom and Tom came to his
+own. Towser became Tom's own. Uncle Moses insisted upon this and Towser
+highly approved of it. The giant hound worshiped the boy. Morris was
+speedily put to work driving a four-mule team for the commissary
+department of General Mitchell's force. He was accustomed to having food
+and lodging doled out to him, so it seemed quite natural to be given
+sleeping quarters (usually under the canvas cover of the wagon he drove)
+and rations, but it took him some months to recover from the shock of
+actually being paid wages for his work. When this too became natural, he
+felt that he was really free. Uncle Moses was too old for that sort of
+thing. He was bewildered by the rough and teeming life of an army-camp.
+He clung to Tom, was as devoted to him as Towser was, and much more
+helpless than the dog was. Towser made friends and important friends at
+once. It happened that food was rather short at headquarters the day
+after the fugitives found safety. Tom, waiting for a chance to go North,
+had been asked to share the tent of a staff-officer and to eat at
+headquarters' mess. An hour before dinner, one of his hosts was
+bewailing the scanty fare they were to have when Towser sidled around
+the corner of the tent with a fat chicken in his mouth and laid it with
+respectful devotion at his master's feet. There was a shout of applause
+and a roar from the assembled officers of "Good dog, good dog, Towser,
+do it again!" Whereupon, after some majestic wags of his mighty tail, he
+disappeared for a few minutes and did do it again. When the second
+chicken was laid at Tom's feet, Towser's position was assured. He was
+named an orderly by acclamation and was given a collar made of an old
+army belt, with the magic letters "U. S. A." upon it, a collar which he
+wore proudly through his happy life.
+
+Tom, who felt quite rich when his arrears of pay were handed him,
+decided to give himself a treat by making Uncle Moses happy. That is the
+best kind of treat man or boy can give himself. Make somebody else happy
+and you will be happy yourself. Try it and see. So, when he finally
+started back for Cairo and Washington he took both Uncle Moses and
+Towser with him. Neither of them had ever been on a railroad train
+before. Equally bewildered and equally happy, they sped by steam across
+the thousand miles between Cairo and Washington. In those days dogs
+could travel with their masters, without being banished to the
+baggage-car. As the three neared the latter city, the great dome of the
+Capitol sprang into sight. Tom eagerly pointed it out.
+
+"Look, Uncle Mose, look, Towser, there's the Capitol."
+
+"Dat's Freedum's home," murmured Unk' Mose.
+
+And Towser, stirred by the others' emotion, barked joyfully. He felt at
+home, too, because he was with Tom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF LINCOLN--THE
+     EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES
+     RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE
+     RUSSIAN FLEET COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER.
+
+
+Tom neared the White House with a beating heart. He had done what
+Lincoln had bade him do. The dispatches had been carried safely and had
+been put into General Grant's hands. But he had taken a rather large
+advantage of the President's smiling suggestion that he might
+occasionally slip into a fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteered
+to go with Andrews on the railroad raid, which was to take a week, and
+he had been away for many weeks, during which he had been carried on the
+army-rolls as "missing." Would the President think of him as a truant,
+who had run away and stayed away from duty? John Hay's welcome of him
+was frigid. The boy's heart went down into his boots. But it sprang up
+into his mouth when he was ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted
+with the winning smile he knew so well and to be congratulated both on
+his bravery in going with Andrews and on his good fortune in finally
+getting back to the Union lines.
+
+The President was not alone when Tom entered the room. There sat beside
+the desk a middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes red with weeping,
+her rusty black dress spotted with recent tears. Her thin hands were
+nervously twisting the petition someone had prepared for her to present
+to the President. She looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he
+turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk with her which Tom's
+entrance had interrupted.
+
+"So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" he
+asked.
+
+"No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the woman. "He said--he said it
+was time to make an example and that my boy Jim ought to be shot and
+would be shot at--at--sunrise tomorrow."
+
+The sentence ended in a wail and the woman crumpled up into a heap and
+slid down to the floor at the President's feet. She had gained one
+moment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the only son of his mother and she a
+widow," had overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried before a
+court-martial of elderly officers who were tired of hearing the
+frivolous excuses of careless boys for not coming back promptly to the
+front, had been found guilty of desertion, and had been sentenced to be
+shot in a week. Six days the mother had haunted the crowded anteroom of
+the stern Secretary of War, bent beneath the burden of her woe. Admitted
+at last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life had been ruthlessly
+refused.
+
+"The life of the nation is at stake, madam," Stanton had growled at her.
+"We must keep the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life to that
+of our country? It is unfortunate," the grim Secretary's tones grew
+softer at the sight of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunate
+that the life happens to be that of your boy, but an example is needed
+and an example there shall be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise.
+Good-day."
+
+He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing mother was ushered out and
+the next person on the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards she was
+with Lincoln. There was no six days' wait at the White House for the
+mother of a Union soldier.
+
+When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom sprang to help her, but the
+President was quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her like a
+child and laid her upon a sofa. He touched a bell and sent word to Mrs.
+Lincoln asking her to come to him. When she did so, she took charge of
+Mrs. Jenkins and speedily revived her. But it was the President, not his
+wife, who completed the cure and saved the weeping woman's reason from
+wreck and her life from long anguish. He pointed to the petition which
+had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor.
+
+"Hand me that paper, Tom."
+
+He put on his spectacles and started to read it. The glasses grew misty
+with the tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna
+handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and wrote beneath it in bold
+letters: "This man is pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held the
+petition close to the sofa so that the first thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as
+she came back to consciousness in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins's
+pardon. It was that blessed news which made her herself again. She broke
+into a torrent of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved aside.
+
+"You see, ma'am," said the President, "I don't believe the way to keep
+the fighting ranks full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's
+been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb: 'Never drown a boy
+baby.' I guess that means that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to
+give him a chance not to make another. You tell Jim from me to do
+better after this. Tom, you take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and
+show him that little line of mine. He won't like it very much. Usually
+he has his own way, but sometimes I have mine and this happens to be one
+of those times. Glad you came to see me, Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of
+things you can do to an American boy that are better than shooting him.
+Here's a little note you can read later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a
+bit. Good-by--and God bless you."
+
+Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her happiness, to the War
+Department, where the formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins
+back to the front, resolute to pay his country for the life the
+President had given him. Only when the order had been entered did the
+mother remember the envelope clutched in her hand which the President
+had given her. It contained no words, unless it be true that "money
+talks." It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had spent her last
+cent on her journey to Washington and her six days' stay there. Abraham
+Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and happiness. When once
+again she had occasion to weep over her son, a year later, her tears
+were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins died a hero's death at
+Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide of
+the Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate commander,
+saw the surge of his splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks of
+the Union line, in the heart of the North. The bullet that killed Jim
+Jenkins tore through the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always wore over
+his heart. And Lincoln found time in that great hour of the country's
+salvation to turn aside from the myriad duties of every day long enough
+to write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter about her dead son's gift of his
+life to his country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and of a wondrous
+consolation, which was buried with the soldier's mother not long
+afterwards, when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier son.
+
+Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a typical one. Everybody
+hated to come in contact with the surly Secretary. One day, when Private
+Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came into the offices with a letter in
+his hand and a cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants me to take
+some people to see Stanton," he said. "I would rather make the tour of a
+smallpox hospital."
+
+Lincoln always shrank from studying the records of court-martials, but
+he often had to do so, that justice or injustice might be tempered by
+mercy. He caught at every chance of showing mercy. A man had been
+sentenced to be shot for cowardice.
+
+"Oh, I won't approve that," said the President. "'He who fights and runs
+away, may live to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is a
+coward, it would frighten him too terribly to shoot him."
+
+The next case was that of a deserter. After sentence, he had escaped and
+had reached Mexico.
+
+"I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln commented. "We can't catch
+him, you see. We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana,
+'as they run.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this time the fortunes of war were not favoring the North. There were
+days of doubt, days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse of the
+President sounded from many Northern newspapers. Its keynote was struck
+by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_ and the foremost
+man in a group of great editors such as the country has never seen
+since. They were Horace Greeley of the _Tribune_, Henry J. Raymond of
+the _New York Times_, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.)
+_Republican_. Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan"; Raymond
+demanded that he be "superseded" as President; and Greeley, in a letter
+that was published in England and that greatly harmed the Union cause,
+said Lincoln ruled "a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."
+
+In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three were household words and names
+by which to conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln pierced his
+heart, but his gentle patience never gave way. He bore with their
+well-meant but unjust criticism as he bore with so much else in those
+dark days, careless of hurt to himself, if he could but serve his
+country and do his duty as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one
+great duty and this he did. On September 22, 1862, he signed his famous
+Emancipation Proclamation, which with its sequence the Thirteenth
+Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ended forever slavery
+wherever the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days of that great
+September, even a boy could feel in the tense atmosphere of the White
+House that some great event was impending. Nobody knew upon just what
+the master mind was brooding, but the whole world was to know it soon.
+It was not until Lincoln had written with his own hand in the solitude
+of his own room the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves that he
+called together his Cabinet, not to advise him about it, but to hear
+from him what he had resolved to do. The messenger who summoned the
+Cabinet officials to that historic session was none other than Uncle
+Moses. Tom of course had long since told the story of his flight for
+freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted attack at the very nick of
+time upon the overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of the old
+negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring Moses to see him and Moses emerged
+from that interview the proudest darkey in the world, for he was made a
+messenger and general utility man at the White House. Part of his duty
+was to keep in order the room where the Cabinet met and to summon its
+members when a meeting of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly but
+majestically from the White House to the different Departments, bearing
+a message from the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a very
+different person from the Unk' Mose who had cared for Tom and Morris in
+the Alabama canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man. On these little
+journeys, Tad Lincoln often went with him, his small white hand
+clutching one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although Moses knew
+nothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting at
+which the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day of
+his life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a
+great event in the world's history.
+
+"I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say with
+ever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, he
+came to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet,
+instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which the
+Proclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. So
+Unk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residence
+of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. He
+wrote that evening in his diary: "They all seemed to feel a sort of new
+and exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's Proclamation
+had freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called
+themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of
+appropriating that horrible name." The Proclamation made it respectable
+to be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until it
+succeeds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man has
+made a New Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in
+bondage--emancipation was to take place wherever the Stars-and-Stripes
+flew on January 1, 1863--such a man must have a wonderful glow of
+reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keen
+eye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.
+
+Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's office. Lincoln
+was stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long
+legs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foot
+telescope to his eyes, its other end resting upon his toes. He was
+looking at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news did
+they bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head,
+called out: "Come in, Tommy."
+
+Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, a
+telegram in his hand, saying:
+
+"Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He is
+behaving very badly."
+
+"Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busy
+to quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll
+never hear of it."
+
+He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds.
+
+That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and Hay had asked him to spend the
+evening, after the household had gone to bed, in their office. Crackers
+and cheese and a jug of milk were the refreshments and John Hay's talk
+was the delight of the little gathering. Midnight had just struck when
+the door opened quietly and the President slipped into the room. Never
+had Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he had on was a short
+nightshirt and carpet-slippers. He was smiling as he entered.
+
+"Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the 'Biglow Papers.' That fellow
+Lowell knows how to put things. Just hear this. He puts these Yankee
+words into Jeff Davis's mouth:
+
+    "'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over
+    Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done
+    Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day
+    Consists in triumphantly gettin' away!'
+
+And here," continued the President, utterly unaware of the oddity of his
+garb, "and here is a good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the
+'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear this:
+
+    "'An' why should we kick up a muss
+        About the Pres'dent's proclamation?
+    It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us
+        Ef we don't like emancipation.
+    The right to be a cussed fool
+        Is safe from all devices human.
+    It's common (ez a gin'l rule)
+        To every critter born o' woman.'"
+
+Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly unconscious," says Hay's
+diary, "that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs and
+setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was
+infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at."
+
+"That fellow Lowell" was James Russell Lowell, an American critic, poet,
+and essayist, later our Minister to England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day Tom had a welcome letter from his father, saying he was on his
+way home and would be in Washington almost as soon as his letter was.
+The letter was written from St. Petersburg and had upon its envelope
+Russian stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp before. He showed the
+envelope as a curiosity to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's
+eager request gave it to him. Tom happened to lunch with the Lincoln
+family that day. Tad produced his new possession at the table, crying to
+his mother:
+
+"See what Tommy has given me."
+
+"Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs. Lincoln.
+
+"My father," the boy answered. "He sent me good news. He's coming home
+right away."
+
+"Your father sent me good news, too," said Mr. Lincoln from the head of
+the table.
+
+"What was that?" interjected the first lady of the land.
+
+"You shall know soon, my dear." Then the beautiful smile came to the
+President's firm lips and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said
+to Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans could give to a fellow-citizen
+was to decree that he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That can be
+said of your father now. He has deserved well of the Republic. Before
+long, the world will know what he has done. Until then," he turned as he
+spoke to his wife, "until then we'd better not talk about it."
+
+This talk was in early June of 1863. By September the whole world, or at
+least all the governments of the world, did know what Mr. Strong had
+done after Lincoln sent him abroad. The whole world saw the symbol of
+his work, without in many cases knowing what the symbol signified. That
+symbol was the famous visit of the Russian fleet to New York City in
+September of 1863.
+
+The governing classes of both England and France were in favor of the
+South during our Civil War. The English and French Empires were jealous
+of the growth of the Republic and wished to see it torn asunder. France
+hoped to establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France, if the
+Confederacy won. England needed Southern cotton and could not get it
+unless our blockade of Southern ports was broken. The people of both
+France and England had little to say as to what their governments would
+do. Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side and the mass of
+Englishmen were also on our side, but the latter were helpless in the
+grip of their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their belief,
+however, splendidly. In the height of what was called "the cotton
+famine," when the Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the fleecy
+staple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives were facing actual
+starvation, a tiny group of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas
+Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout Lancashire on behalf of the
+Northern cause. There was to be a great meeting at Manchester, in the
+heart of the stricken district. The cost of hall, lights, advertising,
+etc., was considerable. Someone suggested charging an admission fee. It
+was objected that the unemployed poor could not afford to pay anything.
+Finally it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with placards saying
+that anyone who chose could give something towards the cost of the
+meeting. When it was over, the baskets were found to hold over four
+bushels of pennies and ha'pennies. The starving poor of Lancashire had
+given them, not out of their abundance, but out of their grinding want.
+
+This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.
+
+The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon the Little," as the great
+French poet and novelist, Victor Hugo, called him, asked England to
+have the English fleet join the French fleet in breaking our blockade
+and in making Slavery triumph. England hesitated before the proposed
+crime, but finally said it was inclined to follow the Napoleonic lead,
+if Russia would do likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote what is
+called a holographic letter, that is, a letter entirely in his own
+handwriting, to the then Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his
+fleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.
+
+Russia was then a despotism, with one despot. It was not only a European
+and an Asiatic Power, but an American Power as well, for it did not sell
+Alaska to the United States until 1867. Despotism does not like to see
+Liberty flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty is a
+contagious thing. Might not the American example infect Alaska, spread
+through Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne at St.
+Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the work of our Minister to Russia
+and of our extra-official representative there, the Hon. Thomas Strong,
+Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian Czar wrote the French Emperor
+that the Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed attack upon
+the Northern navy, but that on the contrary it was about to sail for New
+York in order that its commander might place it at the disposal of the
+President of the United States in case any Franco-English squadron
+appeared with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.
+
+This was the beginning of the traditional friendship between America and
+Russia. It explains why New York and Washington went mad in those
+September days of 1863 in welcoming the Russian fleet and the Russian
+officers. It explains why Lincoln told Tom that his father had "deserved
+well of the Republic."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at about this time that John Hay once asked Tom:
+
+"What do you think of the Tycoon by this time, my boy?"
+
+"Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were names his rather irreverent secretaries
+had given Lincoln. Nevertheless they both reverenced and loved him.
+Their nicknames for him were born of affection.
+
+"Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite know how to put into fitting
+words all he felt about his chief. But John Hay, who was never much
+interested in the opinion on anything of anybody but himself, went on:
+
+"I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods Jupiter. He sits here
+and wields both the machinery of government and the bolts of war. A
+backwoods Jupiter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+     TOM GOES TO VICKSBURG--MORGAN'S RAID--GEN. BASIL W. DUKE CAPTURES
+     TOM--GETTYSBURG--GEN. ROBERT E. LEE GIVES TOM HIS BREAKFAST--IN
+     LIBBY PRISON--LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG.
+
+
+Late in June of 1863 Tom again left General Grant's headquarters. These
+were then in the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The long siege of
+that town, held by a considerable Confederate force under General
+Pemberton, was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at the death, but
+that could not be. He had been sent with dispatches to Grant and this
+time there had been no suggestion by the President that he might fight a
+bit if he felt like it. So he was now again on his way to Washington. He
+was a long time getting there, nearly a year; and this was the way of
+it.
+
+July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant and daring Confederate
+cavalry commander, got his troops across the Cumberland River at
+Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats and canoes lashed
+together. None but he and his second in command knew whither the
+proposed raid was to lead. People about their starting-point thought
+Morgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creek
+went along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a
+"salt-lick" a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines.
+He expected to go and come back safely with Morgan's men. After he had
+been through a few marches and more fights and saw no chance of ever
+getting home, he plaintively said: "I swar ef I wouldn't give all the
+salt in Kaintucky to stand once more safe and sound on the banks of
+Calfkills Creek."
+
+Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had not reckoned upon John H.
+Morgan, general C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward from
+Cairo. No one dreamed that Morgan would dare do what he did do. The
+Confederate cavalry rode northward across Kentucky, with one or two
+skirmishes per day to keep it busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for
+the South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati. It threw southern
+Indiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damage
+such as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men were
+Americans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms was
+killed. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies were
+taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn up, and a clean sweep
+was made of all the horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry was in
+sad need of new horses. The Union officer who led the pursuit of Morgan
+said, in his official report: "His system of horse-stealing was
+perfect." But so far as war can be a Christian thing Morgan made it so.
+
+Now the railroad which suffered most from the Confederate raid was the
+one upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had taken came
+to a sudden stop at a way-station in Ohio, where a red flag was
+furiously waved.
+
+"Morgan's torn up the track just ahead," shouted the man who held the
+flag.
+
+Nothing more could be learned there and then. Of course the raiders had
+cut the wires. By and by fugitives began to straggle in from the
+eastward, farmers who had fled from their farms driving their horses
+before them, villagers who feared the sack and ruin that really came to
+no one, women and children on foot, on horseback, in carts, in wagons,
+in buggies. Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell, but nobody
+really knew anything. Tom questioned each newcomer. Piecing together
+what they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that the
+track had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that
+the quickest way for him to get to Washington was to walk across the
+short gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could find
+no one who would go with him, even as a guide, but well-meant directions
+were showered upon him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten warnings
+to one direction. The railroad, however, was his best guide-post. He
+started eastward, riding a horse he had bought from one of the
+fugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen hands high, but the
+price Tom paid for him was a good deal higher than the horse.
+
+All went well at first. He soon reached the place where the Confederates
+had wrecked the railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every little
+bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails and ties had been torn up, the
+ties massed together and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the burning
+ties and twisted by the heat into sinuous snakes of iron. Occasionally a
+hot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set of
+loops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. The
+telegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into a
+broken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirely
+disappeared. Doubtless these had been thrown into the little streams
+which the burned bridges had spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as
+if some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake had co-operated in
+its destruction. It would be many a day before a train could again run
+upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a railroad was almost as perfect as
+his system of horse-stealing.
+
+A country-road wandered along beside where the railroad had been, so
+Tom's progress was easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke, but the
+little streams were shallow and could be forded without difficulty, for
+June had been rainless and hot that year. The few houses the boy passed
+were shut-up and deserted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countryside
+bare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of a
+region normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to
+see a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind,
+but he was still in an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as dusk came,
+he rejoiced to see the gleam of a candle in a farmhouse not far ahead.
+He was so sure Morgan's whole command was by this time far to the
+northward that he galloped gayly up to the house--and, perforce,
+presented to the Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the entire
+raid.
+
+The gleam had come from a back window. The whole front of the house was
+closed, but that is common in rustic places and Tom was sure he would
+find the family in the kitchen, with both food and news to give him.
+Instead he found just outside the kitchen, as he and the big bay turned
+the corner, a group of dismounted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A
+mounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon,
+was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bent
+close to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of the
+men was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared and plunged
+and kicked. The rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from the
+saddle and landed on his hands and knees before the group. It was rather
+an abject position in which to be captured. The Southerners roared with
+good-humored laughter as they picked him up. Even the officer smiled at
+the boy's plight.
+
+Before the men, on a table outside the kitchen door, lay a half-dozen
+appetizing apple pies, evidently of that day's baking. The farmer's
+wife, before she fled, had put them there with the hope that they might
+propitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house from
+destruction. She did not know that Morgan's men did not make war that
+way. Those of them who had come there suspected a trap in this open
+offer of the pies.
+
+"They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.
+
+At that moment, when they were hesitating between hunger and fear, Tom
+butted in upon them and was seized.
+
+"Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a second soldier when the
+little scurry of the capture was over. This met instant approval and
+Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward to the table when the
+officer spoke, with a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend as
+well as the commander of his rude soldiery.
+
+"I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a pie."
+
+He bit with strong white teeth through the savory morsel and detected no
+foreign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of them down
+Tom's hungry throat. Then the officer spoke to him.
+
+"Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that uniform somewhere, didn't
+you? You're too young to wear it by right. Who are you?"
+
+He was a man of medium height, spare but splendidly built, with his face
+bronzed by long campaigning in the open air, regular features, piercing
+black eyes that twinkled, but could shoot fire, waving black hair above
+a beautiful brow, dazzling white teeth--altogether a vivid man. His
+mustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln
+was plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southern
+aristocrat, the other the son of a Southern poor white, an elusive
+resemblance. It may have been the innate nobleness and kindliness of
+both men. It may have been the Kentucky blood which was their common
+portion. At any rate, the resemblance was there.
+
+[Illustration: From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
+               GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES]
+
+Tom took one glance at the chief of his captors and then saluted with
+real respect as he replied:
+
+"I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant, U. S. A."
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it. We don't make war on boys. If
+you had been, as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I would have
+turned you loose at once. Now I must take you with us."
+
+Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with Tom, disarmed but unbound,
+in the middle of it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards ahead of
+it the officer rode with a free bridle rein, chatting with an aide
+beside him. He rode like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the finest
+soldiers he had ever seen. And so he was. He was Gen. Basil W. Duke,
+brother-in-law, second in command, and historian of General Morgan. He
+was a soldier and a gentleman, if ever God made one.
+
+A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost constant fighting, much of it
+with home-guards and militia who feared Morgan too much to fight him
+hard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers who fought as good Americans
+should, Morgan crossed the Ohio again into the comparative safety of
+West Virginia. He took across with him his few prisoners, including Tom.
+Then, finding that the mass of his brigade had been cut off from
+crossing, the Confederate general detached a dozen men to take the
+prisoners south while he himself with most of the troopers with him
+recrossed to where danger beckoned. On July 26, 1862, at Salineville,
+Ohio, not far from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered, he
+surrendered with the 364 men who were all that were left of his gallant
+band. Our government made the mistake of treating him and his officers
+not as captured soldiers but as arrested bandits. They were sent to the
+Ohio State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a daring escape not long
+afterwards. He made his way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile, Tom
+had been taken to captivity on that same soil. He was in Libby Prison,
+at the Confederate Capital, Richmond, Virginia.
+
+His journey thither had been long and hard and uneventful, except for
+the gradual loss of the few things he had with him. His pistol and his
+money had been taken when he was first captured. Now, as he was turned
+over to one Confederate command after another, bit by bit his belongings
+disappeared. His boots went early in the journey. His cap was plucked
+from his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by a Confederate spy, who
+meant to use it in getting inside the Union lines. When he was finally
+turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief Confederate army,
+commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and had
+nothing to wear except an old Confederate gray shirt and the ragged
+remains of what had once been a pair of Confederate gray trousers, held
+about his waist by a string. He was hungry and tired and unbelievably
+dirty. The one good meal he had had on his long march had been given him
+at Frederick, Maryland, by a delightful old lady whom Tom always
+believed to be Barbara Frietchie.
+
+It was August now. On July 4, Grant had taken Vicksburg and Meade had
+defeated Lee at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy had begun to
+dawn. None the less Robert E. Lee's tattered legions, forced back from
+the great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn defense of Richmond,
+trusted, worshiped, and loved their great general.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meade, the Union commander, by excess of caution, had let Lee escape
+after Gettysburg. He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln was
+deeply grieved.
+
+"We had them within our grasp," he said, throwing out his long arms. "We
+had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours. And nothing I
+could say or do could make our army move."
+
+Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of New York, a gallant fighter,
+one of the corps commanders who had tried to spur the too-prudent Meade
+into attacking, came to the White House.
+
+"Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly asked him.
+
+"Because nobody stopped him."
+
+And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been stopped, the war would
+have ended nearly two years before it did end. It is a wonderful proof
+of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that though he repeated: "Our
+army held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not close
+it," he added at once: "Still, I am very, very grateful to Meade for the
+great service he did at Gettysburg."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lee was a son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, the daring cavalry commander
+of the Revolution and the author of the immortal phrase about
+Washington: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
+his countrymen." Robert E. Lee had had an honorable career at West Point
+and in the war with Mexico and was Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers in
+the United States army when the war between the States began. He loved
+his country and her flag, but he had been bred in the belief that his
+loyalty was due first to Virginia rather than to the Union. When the Old
+Dominion, after first refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut.-Col.
+Lee, U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great efforts were made to
+keep him on the Union side. It is said he was offered the chief command
+of our army. Sadly he did his duty as he saw it. He put aside the offers
+made him, resigned his commission, and left Arlington for Richmond.
+
+Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union soldiers, crowns a hill on the
+Virginia side of the Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its feet.
+The valley of the Potomac spreads before it. From the portico of the
+old-fashioned house, a portico upheld by many columns, one can look
+towards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but hid from sight by
+clustering hills. The house was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke
+Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was his aide at Yorktown in
+1783, and grandson of Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in 1858,
+directed in his will that his slaves should be freed in five years. Lee,
+his son-in-law and executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and gave
+them passes through the Confederate lines. He had already given freedom
+to his own slaves. Long before the war, he wrote from Fort Brown, Texas,
+to his wife: "In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but will
+acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political
+evil in any country.... I think it is a greater evil to the white than
+the black race."
+
+[Illustration: ARLINGTON
+               Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. New York.]
+
+Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four Virginians. He ranks with
+George Washington, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No praise could
+be greater. When "the Lost Cause," as the Southerners fondly call their
+great fight for what they believed to be right, reeled down to decisive
+defeat, the general whom they had worshiped in war proved himself a
+great patriot in peace. His last years were passed as President of
+Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Long before his death, his
+name was honored by every fair-minded man on the Northern as well as the
+Southern side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the noblest eulogies of
+him was voiced upon the centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, at
+Washington and Lee University, by Charles Francis Adams. The best blood
+of Massachusetts honored the best blood of Virginia. Our country was
+then again one country and all of it was free.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tom Strong was standing with a group of other prisoners, all Northern
+officers, under guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at Lee's
+headquarters. These were upon a little knoll, from which the eye ranged
+over the long lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush that gave
+such shelter as they could to the ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions
+of the Confederacy. It was early in the morning. Scanty breakfasts were
+cooking over a thousand fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters, there
+came an odor of bubbling coffee that made the prisoners' hunger the
+harder to bear. The whole camp was strangely silent.
+
+Then, in the distance, there was a storm of cheering. It gained in sound
+and shrillness. The soldiers poured out of their tents by the thousand.
+Those who had hats waved them; those who had not waved their arms; and
+every throat joined in the famous "rebel yell." Through the shouting
+thousands rode a half-dozen superbly mounted horsemen, at their head a
+gallant figure, with close-cropped white beard, whiskers, and mustache,
+seated upon a superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the famous
+Traveler.
+
+[Illustration: GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER]
+
+It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the Confederacy. Even his iron
+self-control almost broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which he
+was hailed by the survivors of the gallant gray army he had launched in
+vain against the bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush almost as
+red as that of youth crept across his pale cheeks and a mist crept into
+his eyes. His charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll where the
+Union prisoners were huddled together. As his glance swept over them,
+he noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy who stood in the
+front line. Many a boy as young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks
+Lee led. Many an old man bent under the weight of his gun in those
+ranks. The Confederacy, by this time almost bled white, was said to
+have "robbed the cradle and the grave" to keep its armies at fighting
+strength. The North, with many more millions of people, had not been
+driven to do this. Tom was one of the few boys in the armies of the
+Union.
+
+"Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked Traveler before the group.
+
+"Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy.
+
+"Your rank?"
+
+"Second-lieutenant, sir."
+
+"Where were you captured?"
+
+"In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan."
+
+Tom was faint with hunger as he was put through this little catechism.
+As he made the last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner, Col.
+Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught and held him. Lee misunderstood
+the movement. His lip curled with disgust as he said:
+
+"Are you--a boy--drunk?"
+
+Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose and a half-dozen others
+answered for him.
+
+"Not drunk, but hungry, General."
+
+"I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian replied, "but at least you
+shall be hungry no longer. My staff and I will postpone our breakfast
+until you have eaten. Pompey!" An old negro came out of the cook-tent.
+He had been one of George Washington Parke Custis's slaves. When freed,
+he had refused to leave "Marse Robert," whose cook he had become. He
+wore the remains of a Confederate uniform. "Pompey, give these
+gentlemen our breakfast. We will wait."
+
+"But--but--Marse Robert, I'se dun got real coffee dis mornin'."
+
+"Our involuntary guests," said Lee with a gentle smile as he turned to
+the prisoners, "will, I hope, enjoy the real coffee."
+
+And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread and bacon that came with it
+were nectar and ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only fleck upon
+the feast was when one of them, in his hurry to be served, spoke rudely
+to old Pompey. The negro turned away without a word, but his feelings
+were deeply hurt. When the Union officer hurled after him a word of foul
+abuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand upon his ragged uniform, and
+said:
+
+"I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah, but you must 'speck de
+unicorn."
+
+After that the "unicorn" and the fine old negro who wore it were both
+amply respected. When everything in sight had been eaten, the prisoners
+were ordered to fall in line. Their guards stood in front of the little
+column, beside it, behind it.
+
+"Forward, march!"
+
+They marched southward for a few miles, tramped through the swarming,
+somber streets of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its doors closed
+behind them with a clang. Captivity in the open had been hard enough to
+bear. This new kind of captivity, within doors, with barred windows, was
+to be harder yet. Tom was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln made his wonderful
+Gettysburg speech.
+
+The battlefield of Gettysburg was made sacred by the men who died there
+for Freedom's sake and also by the men who died there for the sake of
+what they honestly thought were the rights of the Slave States. Congress
+made the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to be dedicated to its
+great memories on November 19, 1863. The morning before a special train
+left Washington for Gettysburg. It carried President Lincoln, Secretary
+of State Seward, two other members of the Cabinet, the two private
+secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished Pennsylvanian, Wayne
+MacVeagh, later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our Minister to
+Italy, and others of lesser note. Among those latter was the Hon. Thomas
+Strong, who had been made one of the party by Lincoln's kind
+thoughtfulness. It was he who afterwards told his son the story of
+Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the moment, but long
+since recognized as one of the masterpieces of English literature.
+
+The little town of Gettysburg was in a ferment that November night, when
+the President's train arrived. It was full of people and bands and
+whisky. Crowds strolled through the streets, serenading statesmen and
+calling for speeches with an American crowd's insatiable appetite for
+talky-talk. "MacVeagh," says Hay, "made a most beautiful and touching
+speech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian made a most
+disgusting and drunken speech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of his
+party of course had no share in all this brawling merriment. He and
+Seward had talked briefly to shouting thousands early in the evening.
+
+On the way up from Washington, the President had sat in a sad
+abstraction. He took little part in the talk that buzzed about him.
+Once, when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming about the way the Southern
+magnates were misleading the Southern masses, Lincoln said with a weary
+smile one of those sayings of his which will never be forgotten. "You
+can fool part of the people all the time; you can fool all the people
+part of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Then
+he became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on the
+morrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts,
+a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. He had been
+Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to England, Secretary of State,
+United States Senator. He was handsome, distinguished, graceful. The
+ungainly President felt that he and his words would be but a foil to
+Everett and his sonorous sentences, sentences that were sure to come
+rolling in like "the surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett had
+graduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log-cabin. Both must face on the
+morrow the same audience.
+
+The President searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil. From
+the aisle of the car, he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper,
+thrown there by Seward, who had just opened a package of books in the
+opposite seat. He penciled a few words, bent his head upon his great
+knotted hand in thought, then penciled a few more. Then he struck out
+some words and added others, read his completed task and did not find it
+good. He shook his head, stuffed the brown wrapping paper into his
+pocket, and took up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh.
+
+At eleven the next morning, from an open-air platform on the
+battlefield, Everett held the vast audience through two hours of fervent
+speech, fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bitterness against
+the men he called "the Southern rebels." His speech was literature and
+his voice was music. As the thunder of his peroration ended a
+thunderstorm of applause began. When it, too, died away, there shambled
+to the front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed man, contrasting
+sharply and in every way disadvantageously with Everett of the silver
+tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too. He tried to pitch his voice
+to reach all that vast audience and his first words came in a squeaking
+falsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lincoln stopped speaking.
+There were a few seconds of painful silence. Then he came to his own.
+With a voice enriched by a passionate sincerity, he began again and
+finished his Gettysburg speech. Here it is:
+
+"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this
+Continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
+proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
+great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so
+conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
+battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a
+final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation
+might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
+But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
+cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
+struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
+to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say
+here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
+living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
+who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to
+be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these
+honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
+here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve
+that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under
+God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the
+people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
+
+The President ceased to speak. There was no thunderstorm of applause
+such as had followed Everett's studied sentences and polished periods.
+There was no applause at all. One long stir of emotion throbbed through
+the silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitude
+dispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of what Lincoln
+had said. Most of the notables on the platform thought the President's
+speech a failure. Time has shown that it was one of the greatest things
+even he ever did.
+
+Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written in her short story "The Perfect
+Tribute" the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy who would know
+what manner of man our Abraham Lincoln was should read "The Perfect
+Tribute." One of the characters in the story, a dying Confederate
+officer, says to Lincoln without knowing to whom he was speaking: "The
+speech so went home to the hearts of all those thousands of people that
+when it ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath--there was
+not a hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud the Lord's
+prayer--it would be sacrilege. And they all felt it--down to the lowest.
+There was a long minute of reverent silence, no sound from all that
+great throng--it seems to me, an enemy, that it was the most perfect
+tribute that has ever been paid by any people to any orator."
+
+The Gettysburg speech was not for the moment. It is for all time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     TOM IS HUNGRY--HE LEARNS TO "SPOON" BY SQUADS--THE BULLET AT THE
+     WINDOW--WORKING ON THE TUNNEL--"RAT HELL"--THE RISK OF THE
+     ROLL-CALL--WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE JOHNSON, CONFEDERATE SPY--TOM IN
+     LIBBY PRISON--HANS ROLF ATTENDS HIM--HANS REFUSES TO ESCAPE--THE
+     FLIGHT THROUGH THE TUNNEL--FREE, BUT HOW TO STAY SO?
+
+
+When the war between the States began, Libby & Son were a thriving firm
+of merchants in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse, which fronted on
+Carey Street and extended back over land that sloped down to another
+street, which occupied all the space between the southern wall of the
+warehouse and the canal that here bordered the James River. The building
+was full before the war of that rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray
+praises in "The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands of the Old
+Dominion can no longer produce.
+
+[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR]
+
+The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to eat. The whole South was
+hungry. When Confederate soldiers were starving, Confederate prisoners
+could not expect to fatten. Nor was this the only evil thing. The prison
+was indescribably unclean. The cellar and the lower floor, upon which no
+prisoners were allowed except in the dining-room in the middle of the
+floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats which climbed upstairs at
+night and nipped mouthfuls of human flesh when they could. There was no
+furniture. The prisoners slept on the floor, so crowded together that
+they had to lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all. They had
+divided themselves into squads and had chosen commanders. Tom found
+himself assigned to Squad Number Four. The first night, when he had at
+last sunk into uncomfortable sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened
+by the sharp command of the captain of his group:
+
+"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to spoon! One, two, spoon!"
+
+The squad flopped over, from one weary bruised side to another. It
+seemed to the worn-out boy that he had just "spooned," when again he
+waked to hear the queer command and again he flopped. This was a sample
+of many nights.
+
+On the following morning Tom had one of the narrow escapes of his life.
+He was leaning against one of the barred windows, looking at the broad
+valley of the James, when he was suddenly seized violently by the arm
+and jerked to one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip that had
+been laid upon it and his knees, sticking through his torn trousers, had
+been barked against the floor, as he was dragged back, but he turned to
+the man who had laid hold of him, not with anger, but with thankfulness.
+For, at the second he had been seized a bullet had whizzed through the
+window just where his head had been. If he had not been jerked away, the
+Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended then and there.
+
+If Tom was not angry, the man was. He glared at him.
+
+"You little fool, don't you know better than that?"
+
+When the boy heard himself called a fool, he did become angry, but after
+all this big person had saved his life, even if he did call him names.
+So he swallowed his wrath--which is an excellent thing to do with
+wrath--and answered quite meekly:
+
+"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look out of the windows?"
+
+"Hasn't anybody told you that?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool." Tom smiled and nodded in
+acceptance of the implied apology. "The sentries outside have orders to
+fire whenever they see anybody at a window. Last week two men were
+killed that way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when I saw you
+looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but it's better to be hurt than to be
+killed. Shake."
+
+The boy wrung the big man's hand and thanked him for his timely aid.
+They strolled together up and down the big room now deserted by most of
+its occupants, who had begun below their patient wait for dinner. The
+man was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an
+intelligent boy in his business. Just then Colonel Rose's business was
+to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet
+it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundred
+intelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a
+most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to
+find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the
+plan a reality. One trouble about the former plans at Libby had been
+that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. There must always
+be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the
+crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the
+crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once
+or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had
+found their first free breath their last, for they had stumbled into a
+trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom.
+More often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without
+warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to
+despair. Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts. He
+planned along new lines. He decided upon absolute secrecy, except for
+the men who were actually to do the work. This work involved a good
+deal of burrowing into holes that must be particularly narrow at first
+and never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get into a hole where a
+stout man could not go. Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men
+could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human mole. He had picked Tom Strong
+for the job. Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy of the plan
+and asked his aid. Tom's shining eyes threatened to tell how important
+the talk was.
+
+"Act as though you were uninterested, my boy," Colonel Rose warned him.
+"Keep your eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."
+
+So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at all his natural appearance.
+He studied the floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it. He
+yawned so prodigiously as to attract the attention he was trying to
+escape. An amateur actor is apt to overact his part. And all the time he
+was listening with a passionate interest to Colonel Rose's story of the
+way to freedom. Of course he was glad to try to help make the hope a
+fact.
+
+That night the work began. The kitchen dining-hall was deserted from 10
+P.M. to 4 A.M., so it was selected as the field of operation. Below the
+kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No opening could be made into that
+without instant detection. On the same floor with the kitchen and just
+east of it was the hospital. That room must be avoided too. Below the
+hospital was an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and all full
+of squealing rats. It was called "Rat Hell." Outside of it was a small
+sewer that led to a larger one which passed under the canal and emptied
+its contents into the James River. These sewers were to be the highway
+to freedom. The first step must be to get from the kitchen to Rat Hell.
+To do this it was necessary to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed
+"S," like this:
+
+[Illustration: Reverse S]
+
+The upper end of the secret passage was to open into the kitchen
+fireplace, the lower into Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the
+secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had just one tool, an old knife.
+One of them owned a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress and
+sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new use now. It was spread upon the
+kitchen hearth in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was pulled
+down upon it. Then the mortar between a dozen bricks at the back of the
+fireplace was cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out of place.
+This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton, Colonel Rose's chief assistant.
+He carefully replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of soot over them.
+He and Rose crept upstairs, carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them,
+and slept through what was left of the night. The next day was an
+anxious time for them. When they went down to the kitchen, where a
+couple of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to them that the marks of
+their toil by night were too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their
+nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody saw what had been done. That
+night, as soon as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton again
+removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn stone behind the fireplace.
+Fortunately the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were pried out of
+the loosened mortar.
+
+Now came Tom's chance to serve the good cause. He was a proud boy, a few
+nights later, when he was permitted to go down to the kitchen with the
+Colonel and the Major, in order that he might creep into the hole they
+had made and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air. He laid upon his
+stomach in the upper part of the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as
+vigorously as it could be plied without making a tell-tale noise. When
+he had widened the passage, one of the men took his place in it and
+drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose in his eagerness got into the
+opening before the lower part of it had been sufficiently enlarged and
+stuck there. It was only by a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom
+finally dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping for breath.
+Finally, after many nights, Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen
+from about a box of food sent a prisoner, had been made into a rope
+ladder. It was hung from the edge of the hole. The three crept
+cautiously down to Rat Hell. This haven did not seem much like heaven.
+With squeals of wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the intruders
+fled up their ladder. They were no match for a myriad rats. Moreover
+they feared lest the noise would bring into the basement the sentry
+whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk outside. So they fled,
+taking their rope-ladder with them, and again, as ever, they replaced
+the bricks and painted them with the friendly soot.
+
+The next night, armed this time with sticks of wood, they fought it out
+with the rats and made them understand their masters had come to stay.
+Fortunately the fight was short. It was noisy and the sentry came. But
+when he opened the door from the street and looked into the darkness of
+the basement, the Union officers were safely hid under the straw and
+only a few of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the tunnel to
+the sewer could be begun. Colonel Rose had long since decided, by
+forbidden, stealthy glances from an upper window, just where it was to
+be. The measurement made above was now made below, the straw against
+the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old knife, or what was left of
+it after its battle with brick and stone, was put to the easier task of
+digging dirt.
+
+[Illustration: FIGHTING THE RATS
+
+From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War."
+
+The Century Co.]
+
+Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before the tunnel was five feet
+long, the air in it became so foul that candles went out in it. So would
+the lives of the diggers have gone out if they had stayed in it long.
+Five of the fifteen now went down each night, so that everybody had two
+nights' rest out of three. But the progress made was pitifully slow. Man
+after man was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous pit, almost at
+his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton had been brought out and was being
+fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom, the boy whispered:
+
+"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"
+
+Nobody had thought of that obvious plan. Like most great inventions it
+was simple--when seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at the end
+of the tunnel fanning air into it with their hats. But even so, many a
+candle went out and many a digger was pulled out, black in the face and
+almost dead.
+
+The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to reach the sewer. It sloped
+too far down. It got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton was
+caught in it by the rush of water and almost drowned. So much work had
+to be done over again. Then came a crushing blow. When the small sewer
+was finally reached, it proved to be too small for a man to pass through
+it. But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by bit taken off. When
+this had been done to within a few feet of the main sewer, two men were
+detailed to cut their way through. The next night was set as the time
+for the escape. None of the thirteen slept while the two were cutting
+away the final obstacle. The thirteen did not sleep the next night
+either, for it was 36 hours before the two came back with their
+heartbreaking news. They had found the last few feet of the sewer-lining
+made of seasoned oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The poor
+old knife that had served them so long and so well, could not even
+scratch the toughened oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had ended
+in failure.
+
+Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new problem. There were two
+roll-calls every day, at 9 A.M. and 4 P.M. How were the two absent men
+to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in one long line and everybody
+was counted. If the count were two short, there would be swift search
+for the missing. And the beginning of the tunnel was hidden only by a
+few bundles of straw. This was before they knew the tunnel was useless,
+but had they known it they would have been scarcely less anxious, for
+its discovery would have made all future attempts to escape more
+dangerous and more doubtful. However, the roll-call problem was safely
+solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper end of the line and two of
+them, as soon as they had answered to their own names, dropped back,
+crouched down, crept behind the backs of many men to the other end of
+the line, slipped into place, and there answered for the missing men,
+without detection. In the afternoon, they came very near being caught.
+Some of the other prisoners thought this was being done just for fun, to
+confuse the Confederate clerk who called the roll, and thought they
+would take a hand in the fun too. There was so much dodging and double
+answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored little clerk, lost his
+temper and ordered the captives to stand in squads of ten to be counted.
+By this time he had called the roll half a dozen times, with results
+varying from minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his order, an order
+obedience to which would have certainly told the tale of two absentees,
+he went on to explain why he gave it.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho'; there's eight or ten of you-uns
+yere that ain't yere."
+
+This remarkable statement brought a shout of laughter from the
+Confederate guards. The prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself
+caught the contagion and also began to laugh.
+
+[Illustration: From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
+
+     SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL
+
+     1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4.
+     Chickamauga room (upper); 5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6.
+     Dining-room; 7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg
+     room (upper); 9. Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11.
+     East or "Rat Hell" cellar; 12. South side Canal street, ten feet
+     lower than Carey street; 13. North side Carey street, ground
+     sloping toward Canal; 14. Open lot; 15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17.
+     Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James River Towing Co.; 20.
+     Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.]
+
+The dreaded order was laughed out of court and forgotten.
+
+The two men crept upstairs early the next morning. The first night
+daylight had caught them at work, so they had not dared to return, but
+had stayed and had worked through the 36 hours. They brought back the
+handle of the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and the depressing
+news of failure. But men who are fit for freedom do not cease to strive
+for it. If one road to it is blocked, they seek another. That very day,
+when the fifteen had gathered together and the two had told their tale,
+a pallor of despair crept over some of the faces, but it was dispelled
+by the flush of hope when Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south,
+we'll go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the vacant lot. We'll
+begin tonight."
+
+"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from the yard we'd have to come
+out on the street. There's a gas-lamp there--and a sentry."
+
+"We can put out the lamp and if need be the sentry," Colonel Rose
+answered, "when we get to them. The thing now is to get there. We have
+fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my figures are correct. That's a
+job of a good many nights. This night will see the job begun."
+
+It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate had put in their way and with
+a big wooden spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with earth, was
+pulled out, emptied, and returned for a fresh load. A fortnight
+afterwards the officer who was digging that night made a mistake in
+levels and came too near the surface, which broke above him. Dismayed,
+he backed out and reported the blunder. The hole was in plain sight.
+Discovery was certain if it were not hidden. The story was but half told
+when Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.
+
+"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the dirt and won't show. Stuff
+it into the hole so it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"
+
+Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole. There he smeared some more
+dirt on the dirty blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care, and
+wriggled back. That morning at sunrise, when they peeked down from
+their prison windows into the eastern lot, even their straining eyes
+could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that showed. No casual glance
+would detect it. Of that they were sure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every few days new prisoners were thrust into Libby. Whenever this
+happened it was the custom that on the first evening they should tell
+whatever news they could of the outside world and of their own capture
+to the whole prison community. One morning the keeper of Libby receipted
+for another captured Yankee and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in
+the grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially, rather too
+cordially, to the greetings he received. It soon became understood that
+he was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee. Now neither side was
+overproud of the guerillas who infested the borderland, who sometimes
+called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates, and who did more
+stealing than fighting. So a rather cold shoulder was turned to the new
+captive, though the community's judgment upon him was deferred until
+after he should have been heard that evening. He seemed to try to warm
+the cold shoulder by a certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts
+at too familiar conversation. He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon
+shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy
+was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him.
+Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There
+was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an
+undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time,
+but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely
+a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant
+fact. He peered about and sidled about in a way that might be due only
+to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like it. He disliked Johnson more
+and more as the newcomer kept returning to him and growing more
+confidential. His talk was on various natural enough themes, but it
+kept veering back to the chances of escape.
+
+"I don't mean to stay in this hole long," Johnson whispered. "Pretty
+mean-spirited in all these fellows to just hang around here, without
+even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye say 'bout our trying it on,
+son?"
+
+The familiar address increased the boy's dislike of the man, but he was
+too young to realize that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He was old
+enough, however, to know how to keep his mouth shut about the pending
+plan for an escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out of him, but in
+the many half-confidential talks the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him,
+perhaps he had revealed something after all. Perhaps, however, the
+newcomer got such information as he did from other men in the secret.
+Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the plan of escape.
+
+That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting men to tell his
+story,--a simple tale of Northern birth, of a Southern home, of belief
+in the Union, of raising a guerilla company to fight for it, of capture
+in a raid on a Confederate supply-depot,--the unpleasant memory which
+had been troubling Tom came back and hammered at his head until
+suddenly, as if a flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw
+himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle Mose's slave-cabin, with this
+man's hand clutching his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside
+Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:
+
+"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He was overseer on a plantation in
+Alabama. He 'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."
+
+Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's eye fixed upon him. He had
+seen Tom whisper to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat down.
+Rose walked across the circle and sat beside him. He had snapped his
+fingers as he walked and half a dozen men had answered the signal and
+were now close at hand.
+
+"What did you do before you turned guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.
+
+"I don't know that that's any of your darned business," said Johnson.
+
+"Answer me."
+
+The stronger man dominated the weaker. The spy sulkily said:
+
+"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."
+
+"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ever do anything else in the South?"
+
+"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such questions?"
+
+The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:
+
+"Major Hamilton."
+
+"Here, sir," answered the Major.
+
+"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before the war?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Seven years."
+
+"Who kept the general store there?"
+
+"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."
+
+"Did you know him?"
+
+"Rather. We were chums. He and I left Jonesboro' together to join the
+army."
+
+"Is this man he?"
+
+Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his feet, cowering, covering
+his face with his hands. Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's
+hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.
+
+"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than he's General Grant."
+
+By this time the whole prison community was crowded about Colonel Rose.
+The latter called again:
+
+"Mr. Strong."
+
+"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.
+
+"Do you know this man?"
+
+"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson on the Izzard plantation.
+
+There was an ominous low growl from the audience. Yankee overseers of
+Southern plantations were not exactly popular in that crowd of Northern
+officers. And evidently this particular overseer had been lying. But
+Colonel Rose lifted his hand and said:
+
+"Silence. No violence. What we do will be done decently and in order."
+After this impressive speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you would, would
+you?" and choked Johnson with every pound of strength he could put into
+the process. He had just seen him slip a bit of paper into his mouth and
+he meant to know what that paper was. It was plucked out of the spy's
+throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the spy's pencil had written:
+
+"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows about it. Think Colonel Rose
+heads it."
+
+It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report in his new business of
+being a spy. It put an end to all business on his part forever. Gagged
+and tied, he was pushed across the big room, while Tom watched
+uncomprehendingly, wondering what was to be done with the writhing man.
+Suddenly he understood, for he saw it done. Johnson was pushed into a
+window. Two kneeling men held his legs and another, standing beside him
+but screened by the wall, pushed him in front of the window. The
+Confederate sentry below obeyed his orders. There was no challenge, no
+warning. He aimed and fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws of
+the prison by looking out of the window. What had been Jake Johnson,
+Yankee, negro-overseer, Confederate conscript, volunteer spy, fell in a
+dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag and bonds were quickly removed, so
+there was nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause of the man's
+death when they came to remove the body. They had unwittingly executed
+their own spy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was right that the man should die, but the shock of seeing him done
+to death was too much for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship of
+the long captivity during which he had been carried from Ohio to
+Virginia and worn out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the toil
+of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake Johnson did and for a few
+moments seemed as dead as the man was. He was taken to the
+hospital-room, but the hospital in Libby was usually only the anteroom
+of the graveyard at Libby. One of the scarcest things in the
+Confederacy, the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The armies in the
+field needed far more doctors than there were in the whole South, at the
+outbreak of the war. Medical schools were quickly created, but the
+demand for doctors so far outran the supply that by this time ignorant
+country lads were being rushed through the schools, with reckless haste,
+so that they were graduated when they knew but little more than when
+they began. A so-called surgeon was handling his scalpel six months
+after he had been handling a plow. Some of them barely knew how to read
+and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals should be manned
+by the poorest of the poor among the graduates of these wretched
+schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is for Tom, gave him,
+however, care that was both skilful and tender.
+
+A few hours after the righteous execution of Jake Johnson there had been
+thrust into Libby a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeight
+hours before. Among them towered a jovial, bearded giant, an army
+surgeon, Major Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with talk of what
+had happened there that day. The new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson
+and of Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had given his parole not to
+try to escape and had been allowed to station himself beside Tom's bed.
+Through that night and through the next day, he fought Tom's battle for
+him, doing all that man could do. When the boy struggled out of his
+delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming upon him, his first thought
+was that he was still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad
+car. His right hand plucked feebly at his left side, where he had then
+carried the dispatches Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and understood the
+movement.
+
+"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's all right. Go to sleep."
+
+And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything was all right and
+that he was home in New York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. A
+gracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who gave her days to caring for
+her country's enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's eyes
+gleamed with a mistaken belief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled back and sank gently into a profound
+sleep, from which he awoke to life and health. Again a Hans Rolf had
+saved a Tom Strong's life.
+
+Night after night passed, one night of work by each man followed by two
+of such rest as lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed. On the
+seventeenth night of the new tunnel work, Colonel Rose was digging away
+in it. It was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered and went out.
+The foul air closed in upon him. Hats were fanning to and fro, back in
+Rat Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not reach him. He felt
+himself suffocating. With one last effort he thrust his strong fists
+upward and broke through the surface. Soon revived by the rush of fresh
+air into the tunnel, he dragged himself out and found himself in the
+yard that had been their aim. The tunnel had reached its goal. He
+climbed out and studied the situation. A high fence screened the yard
+from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door screened it from the
+street. At three A.M., February 6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to
+prison.
+
+That morning he told his news. Most of the men wanted to try for freedom
+the next night, but there was much to do to erase all traces of their
+work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith discovered after their
+flight, it could be used later by other fugitives. With a rare
+unselfishness, they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile each of the
+fifteen had been authorized to tell one other man, so that thirty in all
+could make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt that this was the
+limit. A general prison-delivery would, he believed, result in a general
+recapture. Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep a whisper of
+it spread through the prison.
+
+When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he had been at once taken into the
+inner councils of the tunnel group. He had not expressed as much joy in
+the plan as Tom had expected. The reason of this was now revealed. He
+declined to go.
+
+"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and Tom, "I gave my parole not
+to try to escape when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in order to be
+allowed to take care of him. I made up my mind not to ask to be relieved
+from it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected some plan to
+escape was on hand. And they seem to have forgotten all about it, for
+they haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in honor not to go.
+Don't bother, Tom." The boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans
+Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't
+bother. 'Twon't be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I can save
+some lives here by staying. Don't bother. It's all right. I rather like
+this boarding-house."
+
+The giant's great laugh rang out. The heartiness of it amazed the weary
+men scattered about the room. It brought smiles to lips that had not
+smiled for many a day. Laughter that comes from a clean heart does good
+to all who hear it.
+
+It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was an officer and a gentleman.
+Honor forbade it. Sadly, Tom left him.
+
+On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when the chosen thirty had crawled
+down the inverted "S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col. H. C.
+Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly offered to stay behind,
+so that he could replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced
+them. But before he could get upstairs, some hundreds of men had come
+down. The secret was a secret no longer. There was a fierce struggle to
+get to the fireplace, a struggle all the fiercer because it had to be
+made in grim silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet away, on the
+other side of the wall, in the hospital. The bricks were taken out
+again. In all, one hundred and nine Union officers got through the hole.
+Then, warned by approaching daylight, the less fortunate in the fight
+for freedom put back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs, resolved
+to try their luck the next night, if the tunnel were not before that
+discovered.
+
+Tom had wormed his way through the inverted "S" among the first fifteen.
+On the rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap upon the floor of
+Rat Hell. The huge rodents swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He
+almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he sprang to his feet, threw
+off his tormentors, and ran across the room to the opening of the
+tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more ragged and his face and hands
+were bleeding from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this. Was he
+not on his way to freedom? On his way, yes; but the way was a long one.
+He might never reach the end. When he had pushed and pulled himself
+through the tunnel; when he had come out into the yard and gone through
+the shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in the canal street was at
+the further end of his beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and
+turned in the opposite direction,--when all this had happened, he was
+out of prison, to be sure, but he was in the heart of the enemy's
+country, with all the risks of recapture or of death still to be run.
+
+The men had all been cautioned to stroll away in a leisurely fashion, on
+no account to run or even to walk fast, and not to try to get away in
+groups of more than two or three. It was hard to walk slowly to the next
+corner. The boy made himself do so, however. Half a block ahead of him
+on the side street, he saw a couple of men walking with a somewhat
+faster stride. He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate patrol
+turned the corner of Carey Street. He heard the two men challenged and
+he heard the little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief moment of
+freedom had passed. He stepped to one side of the wooden sidewalk and
+crawled under it. There was just space enough for him to lie at full
+length. Hurrying feet, the feet of men hunting other men, trampled an
+inch above his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it must be heard.
+The patrol reached the street along the canal and peered into the
+darkness there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering gas-lamp.
+Fortunately, nobody came out of the shed just then. The sentry happened
+to be coming towards it and the men inside were waiting for him to turn.
+The patrol had no thought of a general jail-delivery. It turned back
+with its two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head to Carey Street,
+and took its captives to the prison. The boy crawled out from under the
+sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of them, reached the
+corner. He ran down to them and warned them of the Carey Street patrol.
+The three men turned with him and walked along the canal. It was just
+after midnight. Not a soul was stirring. Not a light showed. As they
+walked unquestioned, their spirits rose. How fine to be free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+     TOM HIDES IN A RIVER BANK--EATS RAW FISH--JIM GRAYSON AIDS
+     HIM--DOWN THE JAMES RIVER ON A TREE--PASSING THE PATROL
+     BOATS--CANNONADED--THE END OF THE VOYAGE.
+
+
+Tom had made up his mind how he would try to reach the Union lines. As
+he had escaped before from the locomotive-foray by pushing boldly into
+the enemy's country, so he would do now. He would try his luck in
+following the James River to the sea, for off the river's mouth he knew
+there lay a squadron of Northern ships, blockading Hampton Roads. The
+"Merrimac's" attempt of March, 1862, had never been repeated. Our flag
+was still there, in these February days of 1864, and Tom knew it. He had
+resolved to seek it there.
+
+He explained his plan to his three comrades. They would steal a boat,
+row or drift down the James by night, hide and sleep by day, forage for
+food upon the rich plantations, many of them the historic homes of
+Virginia, that bordered the broad river, and finally float to freedom
+where our war-ships lay. But the three men would have nothing to do with
+it. By land the Union lines were much nearer. They meant to stick to the
+land. They asked the boy to go with them, but he stuck to his plan. So,
+with hearty handshakes and a whispered "good luck!" he left them, went
+over a canal-bridge, and found himself upon the bank of the river. He
+was again alone.
+
+Of his three temporary companions, one finally reached our lines, one
+was shot within a few hundred yards of his goal, and one was recaptured.
+Of the 109 who escaped from Libby, 48 were caught and thrust back into
+prison.
+
+Tom walked along the river bank, prying in the welcome darkness for a
+boat. It would not have been difficult to steal it, if he could have
+found it. But at this point the James is wide and shallow and full of
+miniature rapids. It was utterly bare of boats. The boy's search could
+not be carried on after dawn. He spent that day hidden in a clump of
+willows by the waterside. The excitement of the night had kept him up.
+Now the reaction from it left him limp and miserable and hungry as he
+never remembered being hungry before. It was hard work to "grin and bear
+it," but at least he tried to grin and he reminded himself a thousand
+times through that long, long day that he was much better off than if he
+were still a prisoner in Libby.
+
+That night he followed the bank until he was below the city, still
+without finding a boat. There had been plenty of boats along this part
+of the river the morning before, but as soon as the escape from Libby
+had been discovered, all boats had been seized by the military
+authorities, to prevent their being used by the fugitives. They had been
+taken to a point below the town. As Tom wormed himself cautiously near
+this point, very cautiously, for he heard voices upon the bank above his
+head, and also the crackle of a camp-fire, he saw in the gray dawn a
+flotilla of boats just below him. At first sight, his heart leaped into
+his mouth with joy. At the second sight, it sank down into his boots.
+For above the boats he saw a big Confederate camp and beyond them he saw
+a half-dozen small craft, negroes at the oars and armed men at bow and
+stern, patrolling the river. Hope left him. He crawled into a
+hiding-place in the bank. He was so hungry that he cried. But not for
+long. Stout hearts do not yield to such weakness long. If he could not
+escape in a boat fashioned by man's hands, why not in one fashioned by
+God? The early spring freshets of the James were making the river higher
+every hour. He saw in cautious peeps from the hole where he had hidden
+great trees from far-off forests, uprooted there by the high water, come
+plunging down mid-channel like battering rams. He noted that the
+patrol-boats gave these dangerous monsters a wide berth. If a trunk of a
+tree were to ram them or if the far-flung branches were to strike them,
+their next patrol would be at the bottom of the river. On a sandbank not
+a hundred yards from the boy's lair a big oak had stranded. It lay
+quite still now, but it evidently would not do so for many hours, for
+the rising water lapped higher and higher against it. Tom made up his
+mind that that tree should be his boat--if only it were still there when
+it was dark enough for him to swim out to it. Through the daylight hours
+he watched it with lynx eyes, fearing lest it were swept along towards
+the sea before he could shelter himself in it. And through these
+daylight hours he grew ever more faint with hunger, until he told
+himself that he must have food, at any risk, at any cost. Without the
+strength it would give, he felt he could not possibly swim even the
+hundred yards that lay between him and the now tossing tree. There is
+truth in the line:
+
+    "Fate cannot harm me; I have dined today."
+
+It is too much to do to face Fate on an empty stomach. Napoleon said
+that an army traveled on its belly. Men must have food if they are to
+march and fight.
+
+A Confederate soldier sauntered along the shore and stopped just in
+front of the boy's hiding-place. He had a rude fish-pole. Either he knew
+how to fish, or the James River fish were very hungry. A string of a
+dozen hung from his shoulder. The sight of them was too much for Tom to
+stand. A raw fish seemed to him the most toothsome morsel in the world.
+He knew he was courting certain capture, but he was starving. He would
+pretend to be a Confederate himself. He spoke to the soldier, not out of
+the fullness of his heart, but out of the emptiness of his stomach.
+
+"I'm hungry," he said, "give a fellow a fish, will you?"
+
+The soldier turned with a start. He was a tall, gaunt man, an East
+Tennessee mountaineer, who had started to join the Union army when a
+Confederate conscript-officer seized him and sent him South, under
+guard, to serve the cause he had meant to fight against. East Tennessee
+was, as a rule, loyal to the Union. The men from there who were found in
+the Confederate army were like the poor peons who are supposed to
+"volunteer" in the Mexican army. "I send you fifty volunteers," wrote a
+Mexican mayor to a Mexican general, "please return me the ropes." Jim
+Grayson had not been tied up with a rope, but he had had a bayonet
+behind him, when he was put into the Confederate ranks. He was a man of
+intelligence and of rather more education than most of his fellow
+mountaineers. Many of them could not even read and write. Grayson had
+learned both at a "deestrik skule" and had actually had a year, a
+precious year, at a "high skule." The last thing he had read before
+starting to fish that morning had been the printed handbills that had
+been flung broadcast by the Confederate authorities, announcing the
+escape of 108 men and one boy from Libby Prison and offering rewards for
+their recapture. And the first thing he thought as he saw Tom in his
+hole in the bank was that he was probably the boy of the handbills. He
+meant to give the fellow a fish, of course, but if he found the fellow
+was that boy he also meant to do what he could to help him go where he
+himself wanted to go, to the Union lines.
+
+"Sholy, I'll give you a fish," he said. "You can have all you want. I'll
+light a fire and cook some for you."
+
+"I can't wait," gasped Tom, wolf-hunger in his gleaming eyes. "I'm
+starving."
+
+He tried to reach out for the fish and collapsed in utter weakness. With
+food at last within his grasp, he was too far gone to take it. Jim
+Grayson had been very hungry more than once in his thirty years of hard
+life. He saw that Tom was telling the truth.
+
+"Hush," he whispered, for he had caught sight of some fellow soldiers on
+the bank, not a hundred feet away. "Hush, sumbuddy's comin'. You mus'
+take little pieces first. I'll cut one up for you."
+
+He was drawing out his knife from a deep pocket when the soldiers
+stopped on the bank above their heads and shouted down, asking him to
+give them some fish too.
+
+"Sholy," laughed Jim. "Here's some for you-uns."
+
+He tossed half a dozen up to them and then sat down at the mouth of the
+hole that sheltered Tom, thinking to hide him in case the others came
+down the bank. His back was towards the boy. What was left of his catch
+hung within two inches of Tom's nose. That was Tom's chance. He tore off
+a couple of little fish and tore them to bits with his teeth. His first
+sensation was one of deathly sickness; his next one of returning
+strength. Grayson twitched the remaining fish into his lap. He knew the
+boy had already had too much food, for a first meal. Meanwhile he was
+chatting cheerily with his fellow soldiers, who fortunately did not come
+down the bank and soon moved off, leaving Jim and Tom alone. Now was the
+time for explanations.
+
+"Don't be afeard," said Jim, with a kindly smile. "I 'low you be Tom
+Strong, bean't you? I guess you was in Libby day afore yisterday. I
+ain't goin' to give you up. I'm Union, I be, ef I do wear Secesh gray.
+How kin I help you?"
+
+The sense of safety, safety at least for the moment, was too much for
+Tom. He could not speak.
+
+"Thar, thar," Jim went on, "it's all right. Jes' tell me what I can do.
+I'll bring you eatins soon ez night comes, but what'll you do then?"
+
+Tom told him what he hoped to do then. It was a wild scheme to float
+down nearly two hundred miles of river through a hostile country, but
+yet it offered a chance of success. And if there was a chance of success
+for the boy, why not for the man?
+
+"Ef so be's ez you'se sot on it," Jim said, at the end of the talk, "I
+vum I'll run the resk with you. You ain't no ways fit to start off
+alone. Ef you have to hist that thar tree into the James River, you
+cudn't a-do it. I kin. 'N ef you wuz all alonst, you mout fall off'n be
+drownded. We-uns'll go together. 'N then I'll hev a chanst to fight fer
+the old Union."
+
+Tom was only too glad of the promised company. It was arranged that Jim
+was to come to him as soon as possible after nightfall, with whatever
+provisions he could lay his hands upon, and that then they were to get
+away on the queer craft Providence seemed to have prepared for them,
+provided only that Providence did not send the big tree swirling
+southward to the sea before they could reach it. The river was now
+considerably higher. It was tugging hard at its prey. Sometimes the tree
+shook with the impact of the rushing waves as if it had decided to let
+go the sandbank forthwith. If it did go before nightfall, they must try
+to find another. There were always others in sight, but they were far
+away in mid-channel, floating swiftly seaward. How could one of these be
+reached, if their fellow on the sandbank joined them? There was nothing
+to be done, however, except to wait. Tom's waiting was solaced by the
+eating of the rest of the fish. Man and boy agreed that the man must
+loiter there no longer. Making a fire would delay him beyond roll-call.
+So Jim went and Tom again ate raw fish, trying to do so slowly, but not
+making a great success of that. He felt as if he could eat a whale.
+
+Darkness came only a few minutes before Jim Grayson did. He brought with
+him a bundle of food, upon part of which Tom forthwith supped. He also
+brought his gun. "I'm a deserter now, you see," he explained to the boy,
+"and I'll be shot ef so be I'm caught. But ef I be caught, I'll shoot
+some o' they-uns fust."
+
+They could dimly see the outlines of the big tree, now tossing in the
+waves that broke above the submerged sandbank, as if it were struggling
+to be free. They swam out to it, Jim strongly, Tom weakly. They reached
+it none too soon. Ten minutes later it would have started of its own
+accord. Jim's task in "histing" it was easy. They were afloat at once.
+The top of the tree, a mass of bare branches, for the tiny tender leaves
+of the early Southern spring had been swept away by the water, formed
+the bow of their craft. They both perched far back, leaning against the
+tangled roots. Jim gave a final push with one dangling foot and they
+were off. That was all Tom knew for some time. He had fallen asleep as
+soon as he had snuggled securely into his place. He did not know it when
+they swept through the cordon of patrol-boats below, which hastened to
+give room to the vast battering ram. He did not even know that Jim's arm
+held him in place as the tree lurched and wobbled on its downward road.
+A few hours afterwards, he awoke, refreshed and hopeful, a new man, or
+rather a new boy. The night was clear. The outlines of both shores were
+visible. A young moon added its feeble light to the brilliant radiance
+of the stars.
+
+"Where are we?" whispered Tom. He knew the human voice carries a great
+distance over water and while there seemed to be no one who could
+overhear, he would run no unnecessary risk.
+
+"I never sailed no river before," Jim cheerily answered, "'n I dun know
+nothin' 'bout the Jeems River, but I 'low we've come 'bout a thousand
+mile. 'N it's nigh sun-up. How'll we-uns git to sho' 'n hide?"
+
+"If we did that," said Tom, "we'd have to give up our ship. Don't let us
+do that. Let's say what Captain Lawrence said: 'Don't give up the ship!'
+We'll call her the 'Liberty' and sail her down to Hampton Roads. We can
+hide in the branches or the roots if we meet anybody on the river.
+Everybody will give us a wide berth. We have some food, thanks to you.
+Forty-eight hours more will see us through."
+
+"All right, Captain," Jim Grayson replied. "You're the commander."
+
+Up to that time, the Confederate private had been in command of the
+expedition, but now that the Union officer was himself again, he took
+charge of everything, much to Jim's content and also, we must admit,
+much to Tom's content.
+
+The good ship "Liberty," Tom Strong, captain, Jim Grayson, mate, made a
+prosperous voyage. Its crew was thoroughly scared three or four times by
+the sight of Confederate craft, small and large. When a gunboat selected
+it as a floating target and plumped half-a-dozen cannon balls around it,
+the crew thought the end had come. But nobody on the gunboat saw the
+two people cowering amid the branches of the tree. The gunners were
+untrained. Their aim was poor. And powder and cannon-balls were not so
+abundant in the Confederacy that the practice-firing could continue
+long. Early on the third morning of the voyage, they were in Hampton
+Roads, borne by the ebbing tide towards the Union squadron that lay
+under the guns of Fortress Monroe. As the sun rose above the horizon,
+our flag sprang to the mastheads of the ships. Tom felt like echoing
+Uncle Mose's triumphant phrase: "De Stars 'n de Stripeses, dey jest
+kivered de sky."
+
+The "Liberty" would have gone straight out to sea, so far as any control
+by its crew was concerned. It did go out to sea, indeed, but not until
+after Tom and Jim had been taken from it by a boat from the Admiral's
+ship. Jim had fired off his gun to attract attention, as the "Liberty"
+neared the squadron, and then he and Tom had both stood up on the
+teetering trunk of their tree and shouted and waved their shirts, which
+they had taken off for that purpose, as they had nothing else to wave,
+until help came. The "Liberty" had brought them to liberty. They said
+good-by to her almost with regret. But their joy was deep when they
+stood on the deck of the flagship, under the flag of the free.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+     TOWSER WELCOMES TOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE--LINCOLN RE-ELECTED
+     PRESIDENT--GRANT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--SHERMAN MARCHES FROM ATLANTA
+     TO THE SEA--TOM ON GRANT'S STAFF--FIVE FORKS--FALL OF
+     RICHMOND--HANS ROLF FREED--BOB SAVES TOM FROM CAPTURE--TOM TAKES A
+     BATTERY INTO ACTION--LEE SURRENDERS--TOM STRONG, BREVET-CAPTAIN U.
+     S. A.
+
+
+The warmest welcome Tom had at the White House was given him by Towser.
+The next warmest was given him by Uncle Moses and the next by Lincoln.
+The staff was glad to see him back, but many of them were jealous of the
+President's evident liking for him and would not have sorrowed overmuch
+if he had not come back at all. The patient President found time, amid
+all his myriad cares, to listen to Tom's story and to make Secretary
+Stanton give a captain's commission to Jim Grayson, who was sent to his
+own mountains to gather recruits for the Union army. For Towser, time
+existed only to be spent in welcoming his young master home. He clung
+close to him, with slobbering jaws and thumping tail, through the first
+day, and the first night he managed to escape from Uncle Mose's care in
+the basement and to find Tom's attic room. Thenceforth, as long as Tom
+stayed at the White House, Towser stretched his yellow bulk across the
+threshold of his door every night and slept there the sleep of the
+utterly happy.
+
+There were no utterly happy men under the White House roof. Lincoln's
+presidential term was drawing to a close. He was renominated by the
+Republicans, but his re-election at times seemed impossible. The
+Democrats had put forward Gen. George B. McClellan, once chief commander
+of the Union forces, but a pitiful failure as an aggressive general. A
+discontented wing of the Republicans had nominated Gen. John C.
+Fremont. Fremont had not fulfilled the promise of his youth. At the
+beginning of the war, he had been put in command at St. Louis, had
+proved to be incompetent, and had been retired. He was still strong in
+the hearts of many people, but Lincoln feared the success, not of
+Fremont, but of McClellan. John Hay once said to the President:
+
+"Fremont might be dangerous if he had more ability and energy."
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "he is like Jim Jett's brother. Jim used to say
+that his brother was the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the
+infinite mercy of Providence he was also the greatest fool."
+
+Family sayings, when they are not loving, are apt to be bitter. One of
+the Vanderbilts said of a connection of his by marriage that he was
+"more kinds of a fool to the square inch than anybody else in the
+world."
+
+McClellan, who seemed practically certain of success in August, 1864,
+was badly beaten in November, when the battle of parties was fought out
+at the polls. Fremont had retired from the contest early in the
+campaign. At the first Cabinet meeting after the election, November 11,
+1864, the President took a paper out of his desk and said:
+
+"Gentlemen, do you remember last summer I asked you all to sign your
+names to the back of a paper, of which I did not show you the inside?
+This is it. Now, Mr. Hay, see if you can get this open without tearing
+it."
+
+Its cover was so thoroughly pasted up that it had to be cut open. This
+done, Lincoln read it aloud. Here it is:
+
+                                           "Executive Mansion,
+                                           Washington, August 23, 1864.
+
+     "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable
+     that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my
+     duty to so co-operate with the President elect as to save the Union
+     between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured
+     his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
+     afterwards.
+
+                                                          A. LINCOLN."
+
+In that memorandum is the sign-manual of a great soul. Lincoln,
+believing his own defeat was written in the stars, thought, not of
+himself, but of how he, defeated, could best save the cause of the Union
+from defeat. A small man thinks first of himself. A big man thinks first
+of his duty.
+
+Life was happy at the White House now. The President had been re-elected
+and it was clear that long before his second term was over, he would
+have won a victorious peace. The South was still fighting with all the
+energy brave men can show for a cause in the righteousness of which they
+believe, but after all the energy was that of despair. Grant was now in
+supreme command of the Union forces, East and West. He had been
+commissioned Lieutenant-General and put in command March 17, 1864. In
+commemoration of this event, the turning point in the great struggle,
+Lincoln had had a photograph of himself taken. But two copies of it were
+printed. One Lincoln kept himself. One he gave Grant. Here is the one
+given Grant.
+
+[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
+
+The new Lieutenant-General was hammering away at Richmond. The
+Mississippi, now under Union control, cut the Confederacy in two. All
+the chief Southern seaports, except Savannah and Charleston, had been
+captured. And in this same month of November, 1864, Gen. William
+Tecumseh Sherman, who ranked only second to Grant in the United States
+army, cut loose from Atlanta, Georgia, captured two months before and
+began his famous march to the sea, with Savannah as his destination. He
+illustrated his own well-known saying: "War is hell." If it was hell in
+Sherman's time, what word can describe the horror of it in our day? He
+swept with sword and fire a belt of fertile country, sixty miles wide,
+from Atlanta to the sea. He found it smiling and rich; he left it a bare
+and blackened waste. He had destroyed the granary of the Confederacy and
+before the next month ended he had made his country a Christmas present
+of the remaining chief Southern seaport, Savannah. He wrote to Lincoln:
+"I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with
+one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also
+twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Cotton was worth a dollar a pound
+in those days.
+
+Early in 1865 Sherman swung northward from Savannah, forced the
+surrender of Charleston, South Carolina, and joined Union forces
+advancing from the North at Goldsboro', North Carolina, March 23. Six
+days later Grant began the final campaign against the Confederacy. Six
+days before, Lincoln had said to the boy:
+
+"Tom, would you like to see some more fighting?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. President; very much."
+
+"Well, you needn't tell anybody, but I guess there'll be some to see
+before long near Richmond. I've had you ordered from special service at
+the White House to special service with the Lieutenant-General. Here's
+the order and here's a letter to General Grant. I wouldn't wonder if he
+put you on his staff."
+
+"How can I thank you, Mr. Lincoln?"
+
+"The best way to thank anybody is to do well the work he gives you to
+do. Good-by, my son, and good luck."
+
+[Illustration: GEN. W. T. SHERMAN
+               St. Gaudens' Statue, New York]
+
+With a pressure of Lincoln's huge hand Tom was sped on his rejoicing
+way. Two days later he was at Grant's headquarters, at City Point,
+Virginia, near Fortress Monroe. He saluted and handed the General
+Lincoln's letter. The soldier sat, a silent sphinx, for a moment. Then
+he looked up at Tom with a quizzical but not unkindly smile, and said:
+
+"Have you learned anything since you brought me dispatches at Fort
+Donelson and Vicksburg?"
+
+"I hope so, General."
+
+"Sometimes the President sends me people for political reasons. I
+suppose he has to. But I don't take them if I know it. Have you any
+political influence behind you?"
+
+"Not a bit, sir." Tom laughed at the thought.
+
+"You laugh well. You and Horace Porter ought to get on together. He
+laughs well, too. You can serve on my staff.
+
+"I thank you, General."
+
+Tom saluted and walked away, to find Horace Porter, whom he found to be
+a very nice fellow indeed. One of the first things the nice fellow did
+for him was to get him a good horse. There was no lack of horses at
+headquarters. The difficulty was not to find one, but to choose the best
+of many good ones. Tom, who had a good eye for a horse, found one that
+exactly suited him except as to color. He was of a mottled gray. The boy
+did not much care for such a color, but he knew it had its advantages.
+It does not advertise its presence. Where a black, a white or a bay
+horse would stand out and make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a
+mottled gray might well elude their view. And the horse, apart from
+this, was just what he wanted. He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he
+walked fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment in a horse. The
+average horse walks, as a rule, slower than the average man. In an hour,
+he covers a quarter-of-a-mile less ground. One question remained to be
+settled.
+
+"Can he jump?" asked Tom.
+
+"Jump, is it?" answered the soldier-groom. "Shure, the cow that jumped
+over the moon couldn't lift a leg to him."
+
+"You bet your life he can jump," said Horace Porter. "General Grant has
+ridden him twice and I saw him put Bob over a fence or two."
+
+[Illustration: BOB]
+
+Not long afterwards Tom did bet his life on Bob's jumping. He was named
+Bob before the United States took him. He had been captured the month
+before and had come across the lines with his name embroidered by some
+woman's hand on his saddle-blanket and with his late owner's blood upon
+his saddle. He was a tall, leggy animal who showed a trace of Arabian
+blood and who needed to be gentled a bit to get his best work out of
+him. His mouth was appreciative of sugar and his eyes were appreciative
+of kindness.
+
+Both dogs and horses talk with their eyes.
+
+"I like my new master," was what Bob's eyes said to Tom.
+
+It was through a chance suggestion of Colonel Porter that the boy saw
+most of what he did see of the final fight for freedom. Porter had
+presented Tom to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who was then at City Point,
+receiving Grant's final instructions for the twelve-day campaign that
+ended in the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's brave army.
+Sheridan was a stocky, red-faced young Irishman, a graduate of West
+Point, and a born leader of men, especially of cavalrymen. He liked the
+clear-eyed lad who stood respectfully before him. He had done too much
+in his own youth to think Tom was useless because he was so young.
+Porter saw that the boy had made a good impression. He ventured a
+suggestion.
+
+"Why don't you take young Strong with you, General?"
+
+Sheridan turned sharply to Tom, asking:
+
+"Can you ride?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. I've ridden ever since I can remember."
+
+"Well, that's not so very long a time. But I'll take your word for it.
+Would you like to go with me?"
+
+"I'd like it better than anything else in the world, General."
+
+Tom had rejoiced in the idea of being with Grant, but he knew that the
+commander-in-chief must stay behind his lines and that his staff could
+catch but glimpses of the fighting, when they were sent forward with
+orders, whereas with Sheridan he might be in the very thick of the
+fighting itself. His ready answer and the joy that beamed in his eyes
+pleased the fighting Irishman.
+
+"Can I borrow him of General Grant?" Sheridan asked Porter.
+
+"I'll answer for that," Porter replied. "The General told me to put
+Strong to whatever work I could find for him to do."
+
+"Come ahead," said Sheridan. "You'll see some beautiful fighting!"
+
+Sheridan loved fighting, but he made no pretense of never being afraid.
+He thought a general should be close to the front, to keep his soldiers'
+spirits high.
+
+"Are you never afraid?" Charles A. Dana, then Assistant Secretary of
+War, once asked him.
+
+"If I was, I should not be ashamed of it. If I should follow my natural
+impulse, I should run away always at the beginning of the danger. The
+men who say they are never afraid in a battle do not tell the truth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+March 29, 1865, the twelve-day campaign began. The cavalry swung out
+towards Five Forks, where Lee's right wing lay behind deep
+entrenchments. April 1, Sheridan attacked in force. Americans fought
+Americans with stubborn bravery on both sides. The issue was long in
+doubt. Sheridan and his staff were close to the firing-line, so that Tom
+had but a few hundred yards to gallop under fire when his general said
+to him:
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN
+               Sheridan Square, Washington, D. C.
+               Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York.]
+
+"Tell General Griffin to charge and keep charging."
+
+Griffin's order to his troops was so quickly given that it seemed an
+echo of the order Tom brought him. It was the boy's business to return
+forthwith and report upon his mission, but he simply couldn't do it.
+There were the Confederate lines manned with hungry soldiers in the
+remnants of their gray uniforms, the Stars-and-Bars flying above them.
+And there were battalions of blue-clad cavalry, men and horses in prime
+condition, straining to start like hounds upon a leash. Griffin's order
+was the electric spark that fired the battery. The men shouted with joy
+as they spurred their horses into a mad gallop. The shout was answered
+by the shrill "rebel yell" from the dauntless foe in the trenches. The
+charging column shook the ground. In its foremost files rode
+Second-lieutenant Tom Strong, forgetful of everything else in the world
+but the joy of battle. Musketry and artillery tore bloody lanes in the
+close-packed column. Men and horses fell in heaps upon the blood-stained
+ground. But the column went on. At dusk of that April day it poured over
+the parapets so bravely held. Even then the fight was not over. There
+was still stout resistance. The two armies were a mass of struggling
+men, shooting, stabbing, striking. The battle had become a series of
+duels man to man. Tom, pistol in hand, rode at a big Kentuckian, but the
+gray-clad giant dodged the bullet, caught his own unloaded musket by the
+muzzle, and dealt the boy a blow with its butt that knocked him off his
+horse and left him senseless on the ground.
+
+A few minutes later, when he came to his senses, he felt as if he were a
+boy annexed to a shoulder twice as big as all the rest of his body. It
+was on his shoulder that the blow of the clubbed musket had gone home.
+The fall from his horse had stunned him. Bob was standing over him, as
+Black Auster stood over Herminius, nuzzling at the outstretched hand of
+this silent, motionless thing that had been his master. They had been
+together for less than a week, but a day is often long enough for a
+horse to find out that his master is his friend. Tom had been more
+careful of his horse's comfort than of his own. Now the good gray had
+stood by him and over him, perhaps saving him from being trampled to
+death in that fierce last act of the Drama of Five Forks. Bob whinnied
+with joy as Tom's eyes slowly opened again. He thrust his muzzle down
+along the boy's cheek and the boy caught hold of the flowing mane with
+his right hand and pulled himself upon his feet again. His left arm hung
+useless by his side. One glance told him the battle was won. The duels
+were over. The Confederates were in full retreat. A stream of prisoners
+was already flowing by him. He mounted and followed it to Sheridan's
+headquarters. There the skillful fingers of a surgeon found that no
+bones were broken. The swollen shoulder was dressed and bandaged. The
+healthy blood that filled Tom's veins did much to make a speedy cure.
+So did the joy of victory. Sheridan had done what Grant had given him to
+do. He had driven back Lee's right flank and cut the railroad by which
+Lee must escape from Richmond, if escape he could.
+
+Richmond was doomed. The next morning, Sunday, April 2, 1865, Jefferson
+Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, sat in his pew in
+St. Paul's Church, Richmond. The solemn service began. Soon there was a
+stir at the door, a rustle, a turning of heads away from the chancel,
+where the gray-haired rector stood. Swiftly a messenger came up the
+aisle. Davis rose from his knees to receive the message. The service
+stopped. Every eye was bent upon the leader of the Lost Cause. He put on
+his spectacles, opened the missive, and read it amid a breathless
+silence. It told him that the Cause was lost indeed. It was from Lee,
+who wrote: "My lines are broken in three places. Richmond must be
+evacuated this evening." There was no sign of feeling upon Jefferson
+Davis's impassive face, as he read the fateful dispatch. Without a
+word, without a sign, he left the church with the wife whose utter
+devotion had helped him bear the burden of those terrible years, during
+which proud hope gradually gave way to sickening fear. Davis was not of
+those weak men who despair. There was still a little hope in his heart,
+despite the tremendous blow Lee's letter had dealt him. He walked down
+the aisle with head as high as though he were marching to assured
+victory. But through the congregation there ran the whisper "Richmond is
+to be evacuated." A panic-stricken mob poured out of the church with
+faltering steps behind Jefferson Davis's firm, proud ones. Early that
+afternoon the Confederate Government fled. Early the next morning,
+Monday, April 3, 1865, Gen. Godfrey Weitzel marched his negro troops
+into the Confederate capital. The flag of the free floated from the dome
+of the Statehouse, which almost from the earliest days of the war had
+sheltered what was now indeed the Lost Cause. It was raised there by
+Lieut. Johnston L. De Peyster, a youth of eighteen, who had carried it
+wrapped around the pommel of his saddle for some days, hoping for the
+chance that now came to him. The second Union flag that was raised that
+day in Richmond was over Libby. The prison gates gave up their prey. The
+prisoners poured out, some too weak to do more than smile, others in a
+frenzy of joy. Major Hans Rolf, reduced by hunger to a long lath of a
+man, had lost none of his spirit.
+
+"Now, boys," he shouted, "three times three for the old flag!"
+
+The cheers rang out in a feeble chorus and then there rang out Han's
+contagious laughter.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he roared. "We're free, boys, we're free."
+
+By that Sunday night, the fate of Petersburg was sealed.
+Grant had ordered an assault in force at six o'clock Monday morning, but
+the Confederates abandoned their works in the gray dawn and our troops
+met little resistance in taking over the town. "General Meade and I,"
+says General Grant in his "Personal Memoirs," "entered Petersburg
+on the morning of the third and took a position under cover of a house
+which protected us from the enemy's musketry which was flying thick and
+fast there. As we would occasionally look around the corner, we could
+see ... the Appomattox bottom ... packed with the Confederate army.... I
+had not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a mass of defeated and
+fleeing men and I hoped to capture them soon."
+
+"Let us follow up Lee," Meade suggested. He was a better follower than a
+fighter. He had followed Lee before, from Gettysburg to Richmond,
+without ever attacking him.
+
+"On the contrary," Grant replied, "we will cut off his retreat by
+occupying the Danville railroad and capture him. He must get to his food
+to keep his troops alive. We will get between him and his food."
+
+With constant fighting this was done. By Wednesday, April 5, the Union
+lines were drawn about the Confederate army. Sheridan, hampered by
+Meade's slowness, was urgent that Grant should come to the front. He
+sent message after message to that effect to Grant on Wednesday. A
+scout in gray uniform was entrusted with the second message. He was made
+up to look like a Confederate scout, but he was Tom Strong. He had put
+on his disguise at Sheridan's headquarters. As he stood at attention to
+receive his orders, Sheridan laughed and said:
+
+"You make a good 'Johnny Reb.' Do you chew tobacco?"
+
+Surprised at the question, Tom said he didn't.
+
+"Well, you may have to begin the habit today. You're to take this
+message to General Grant. If you're caught, chew it--and swallow it
+quick."
+
+He handed the boy a bit of tinfoil. It looked like a small package of
+chewing-tobacco, but it contained a piece of tissue-paper upon which
+Sheridan's message was written.
+
+The ride from the left flank to the center was not without danger. Tom,
+duly provided with the password, could go by any Union forces without
+difficulty, but the country swarmed with Confederates, some of them
+deserters, many of them straggling detachments cut off from the main
+army and seeking to rejoin it, all of them more than ready to capture a
+Union soldier and his horse.
+
+The boy climbed a little clumsily into the saddle. His left shoulder
+still felt like a big balloon stuffed full of pain. But there was
+nothing clumsy in his seat, as Bob shot off like an arrow at the touch
+of Tom's heel on his flank. It was a beautiful, bright April morning,
+too beautiful a day for men to be killing each other. Evidently,
+however, it did not seem so to the commander of a company of Confederate
+cavalry, who had laid an ambush into which Tom gayly galloped. He heard
+a sharp order to halt. He saw men ride across the road in front of him.
+He whirled about, only to see the road behind him blocked. He was fairly
+trapped. But there was one chance of escaping from the trap and Tom took
+it. His would-be captors had come from the left of the road, its
+northern side, for he was traveling east. On the south was a high
+rail-fence, laid in the usual zigzags, one of the few which had not fed
+the camp-fires of Northern Virginia. It was a good five feet high; it
+was only a few feet away; Bob was standing still for a second in
+slippery mud. It was not at all the kind of place to select for a jump,
+but the Confederates had selected the place, not Tom. He remembered
+Colonel Porter's saying "You can bet your life Bob can jump," and he bet
+his life on Porter's being right. He put Bob at the fence. The gallant
+gray, as if he sensed his master's danger, took one bound toward the
+rails, gathered himself together into a tense mass of muscle, and rose
+into the air like a bird. As he flew over the top-rail, carbines cracked
+behind him, but as he leaped southward across the countryside, a ringing
+cheer followed him too. The brave Southerners rejoiced in the brave feat
+that took their captive into freedom. Their jaded horses could not
+follow. There was no pursuit.
+
+It took Tom some hours to double back towards Grant's headquarters. He
+met long lines of Union cavalry, infantry, and artillery pressing
+forward to strengthen Sheridan's forces. They were going west and they
+choked every road and lane and path by which the boy sought to go east.
+They had begun their march at three o'clock that morning. They had had
+no breakfast. They carried no food. Their wagon-trains were miles in the
+rear. It was their fourth day of continuous fighting. They had a right
+to be tired, but they were not tired. They had a right to be hungry, but
+they were not hungry. When the air was full of victory, what did an
+empty stomach matter? Cheering and singing, they swept along. The end of
+four years' fighting was in sight. The hunted foe was trying to slink
+away to safety, as many a fox, with hounds and huntsmen closing in upon
+him, had tried to do on these Virginian fields. Never were huntsmen more
+anxious to be "in at the death" than were those joyous Union soldiers on
+that memorable April day.
+
+It was nearly night when the boy reached headquarters, saluted the
+commander-in-chief, said "A message from General Sheridan," and handed
+over the little tinfoil package.
+
+"You can go back with me," said Grant. "That horse of yours is Bob,
+isn't it?" Grant never forgot a horse he had once ridden.
+
+Within an hour the General and his staff, with a small cavalry escort,
+started for Sheridan's headquarters. By ten that night the two were
+together. Sheridan was almost crying over the orders Meade had given
+him. By midnight Sheridan was happy. "I explained to Meade," say the
+"Personal Memoirs," "that we did not want to follow the enemy; we wanted
+to get ahead of him; and that his orders would allow the enemy to
+escape.... Meade changed his orders at once."
+
+That change of orders incidentally put Tom Strong the next day into the
+hottest fight of his life. This was the battle of Sailor's Creek, almost
+forgotten since amid the mightier happenings of that wonderful April
+week, but never forgotten by Tom Strong. Our forces had attacked Lee's
+retreating legions, retreating toward the provision trains that were
+their only hope of food. The fight was fierce. We had attacked with
+both infantry and cavalry, but our gallant fellow-countrymen held their
+lines unbroken. Then with a thunder of wheels our field artillery came
+into action. The Confederate guns were shelling the hillside up which
+the plunging horses drew our cannon. There were six horses in each team,
+an artilleryman riding each near horse and holding the off horse of the
+pair by a bridle. Tom had come up with orders and was standing by
+General Wright as the guns bounded up the hillside. Bob stood behind his
+master, whinnying a bit with excitement.
+
+General Wright snapped his watch shut impatiently.
+
+"They're ten minutes late," he complained. "We're beaten if we don't get
+'em into action instantly. Good Heavens! there goes our first gun to
+destruction!"
+
+A Confederate shell had struck and burst close to the leaders. A
+fragment of it swept the foremost rider from his seat and from life. The
+two horses he had handled reared, plunged, jumped to one side. The six
+horses were huddled into a frightened heap. The two other soldiers could
+do nothing with the leaders out of control. The gun stopped short. And
+behind it stopped all of one of the two lines of advancing artillery.
+
+"Take that gun into action!"
+
+Tom heard the General's brief command and ran toward the huddled horses.
+He sprang into the saddle, seized both bridles, and drove on. As he did
+so, another Confederate shell burst beside the off horse. Its fragments
+spared the foremost rider this time, but they dealt death to one of his
+two comrades. The man in control of the wheelers threw his right arm out
+and toppled over into the road, dead before the heavy cannon-wheel
+crashed and crushed over him. The leaders, so skillfully handled that
+their very fear made them run more madly into danger, tore ahead,
+keeping the other four horses galloping behind them, until the gun was
+in position. It roared the news of its coming with a well-aimed shot
+into the midst of the enemy's forces.
+
+[Illustration: TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO ACTION]
+
+Its fellows fell into line and followed suit. The infantry and cavalry
+attacked with renewed spirit. Sullenly and savagely, fighting until
+darkness forbade more fighting, Lee's troops withdrew towards the west,
+with the Union forces pounding away at them. They left a mass of dead
+upon the battlefield, lives finely lost for the Lost Cause, and they
+also left as prisoners six general officers and seven thousand men. More
+than a third of all the prisoners taken in the battles before the final
+surrender were taken at the battle of Sailor's Creek. Tom had stuck to
+his new arm of the service through the three hours of fighting. The guns
+had been continually advanced as the Southerners retreated. They had
+been continually under fire. Nearly half the gunners had been killed or
+wounded. When the fight was over, Tom remembered for the first time his
+own wounded shoulder. He had never thought of it from the moment when he
+had sprung upon the artillery horse. Now it began to throb with a
+renewed and a deeper pain, as if resenting his ignoring of it so long,
+but the new pain also vanished when he rejoined General Wright and heard
+him say:
+
+"Mr. Strong, you helped to save the day. I shall recommend you for
+promotion for distinguished bravery under fire."
+
+The boy saluted, his heart too full to speak. As he rode away upon Bob,
+some of the joy in his heart must have got into Bob's heels, for Bob
+pirouetted up the main street of the little town of Farmville, late that
+night, as though he were prouder than ever of his master.
+
+Farmville was now headquarters. Grant was there, in a bare hotel, not
+long before a Confederate hospital. It was from the Farmville hotel that
+he wrote to Lee a historic note. It ran thus:
+
+                                     "Headquarters Armies of the U. S.
+                                             5 P.M., April 7, 1865.
+
+     "General R. E. Lee,
+       Commanding C. S. A.:
+
+     The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness
+     of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia
+     in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to
+     shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of
+     blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the
+     Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
+
+                                                     U. S. GRANT,
+                                                     Lieut.-General."
+
+Under a flag of truce, this note reached General Lee that evening, so
+near together were the headquarters of the contending armies in those
+last days. His letter in reply, asking what terms of surrender were
+offered, reached Grant the next morning while he was talking on the
+steps of the Farmville hotel to a Confederate Colonel.
+
+"Jes' tho't I'd repo't to you, General," said the Colonel.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You see I own this hyar hotel you're a-occupyin'."
+
+"Well, sir, we shall move out soon. We are moving around a good deal,
+nowadays. Why aren't you with your regiment?"
+
+"Well, you see, General, I am my regiment."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"All the men wuz raised 'round hyar. A few days ago they jes' begun
+nachally droppin' out. They all dun dropped out, General, so I jes'
+tho't there wan't any use being a cunnel without no troops and I dun
+dropped out too. Here I be? What you goin' to do with me, General?"
+
+"I'm going to leave you here to take care of your property. Don't go
+back to your army and nobody'll bother you."
+
+That was a sample of the way in which the beaten army was melting away.
+Not even the magic of Lee's great name could hold it together now. But
+the men who did not drop out fought with heroism to the bitter end.
+
+The next day, Saturday, April 8, 1865, Sheridan captured some more of
+Lee's provision trains at Appomattox Station and on Sunday, April 9,
+Lee's whole army attacked there, still seeking to cut its way out of
+its encircling foes. Its brave effort was in vain. Held in a vice, it
+threw up its hands. A white flag flew above the Confederate lines.
+
+Grant had spent Saturday night struggling with a sick headache, his feet
+in hot water and mustard, his wrists and the back of his neck covered
+with mustard-plasters. On Sunday morning, still sick and suffering, he
+was jogging along on horseback towards the front, when a Confederate
+officer was brought before him. He carried a note from Lee offering to
+surrender. "When the officer reached me," writes Grant, "I was still
+suffering with the sick headache; but the instant I saw the contents of
+the note, I was cured." The ending of the war ended Grant's headache.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two commanders met at Appomattox Court House, a sleepy Virginian
+village, five miles from the railroad and endless miles from the great
+world. It lies in a happy valley, not wrapped in happiness that April
+day, for Sheridan's forces held the crest at the south and Lee's were
+deployed along the hilltop to the north. A two-hour armistice had been
+granted. If that did not bring the end desired, that end was to be
+fought out with all the horrors of warfare amid the peaceful houses that
+had straggled together to make the peaceful little town.
+
+At the northern end of the village street, surrounded by an apple
+orchard, stood a two-story brick house with a white wooden piazza in
+front of it. It was the home of Wilmer McLean, a Virginia farmer upon
+whose farm part of the battle of Bull Run had been fought at the
+outbreak of the war. Foreseeing that other battles might be fought
+there--as the second battle of Bull Run, in 1862, was--he had sold his
+property there and had moved by a strange chance to the very village and
+the very house in which the final scene of the great tragedy of this war
+between brothers was to be played. Here Lee awaited Grant.
+
+The Union general had gone to Sheridan's headquarters before riding up
+to the McLean house. Sheridan and his staff had gone on with him. Least
+important of the little group of Union officers who followed Grant into
+the presence of Lee was Tom Strong, but the boy's heart beat as high as
+that of any man there.
+
+[Illustration: THE McLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE]
+
+It was in the orchard about the house that the myth of "the apple-tree
+of Appomattox" was born. Millions of men and women have believed that
+Lee surrendered to Grant under an apple tree at Appomattox. That apple
+tree is as famous in mistaken history as is that other mythical tree,
+the cherry tree which George Washington did not cut down with his little
+hatchet. Washington could not tell a lie, it is true, but he never
+chopped down a cherry tree and then said to his angry, questioning
+father: "Father, I cannot tell a lie; I cut it down with my little
+hatchet." That fairy story came from the imagination of one Parson
+Weems, who did not resemble our first President in the latter's
+inability to tell lies. Perhaps the myth of the apple tree will never
+die, as the myth of the cherry tree has never died. In 1880, when
+Grant's mistaken friends tried to nominate him for a third Presidential
+term, other candidates had been urged because this one, it was said,
+could carry Ohio, that one Maine, and so on. Then Roscoe Conkling of New
+York strode upon the stage to nominate Grant and declaimed to a hushed
+audience of twenty thousand men:
+
+    "And if you ask what State he comes from,
+    Our sole reply shall be:
+    HE comes from Appomattox
+    And the famous apple tree!"
+
+The twenty thousand were swept off their feet by the magic of that myth.
+Grant was almost nominated--but not quite.
+
+The historic interview began in the room to the left of the front door
+in the McLean house. Two very different figures confronted each other.
+Grant had not expected the meeting to take place so soon and had left
+the farmhouse where he had spent the night before in rough garb. He
+writes: "I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback in
+the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the
+shoulder-straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was.... General
+Lee was dressed in a full uniform, which was entirely new, and was
+wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had
+been presented by the State of Virginia.... In my rough traveling suit,
+the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must
+have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six
+feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I
+thought of until afterwards."
+
+Lee requested that the terms to be given his army should be written out.
+Grant asked General Parker of his staff, a full-blooded American Indian,
+for writing materials. He had prepared nothing beforehand, but he knew
+just what he wanted to say and he wrote without hesitation terms such as
+only a great and magnanimous nation could offer its conquered citizens.
+After providing for the giving of paroles (that is, an agreement not to
+take up arms again unless the paroled prisoner is later exchanged for a
+prisoner of the other side) and for the surrender of arms, artillery,
+and public property, he added: "This will not embrace the sidearms of
+the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each
+officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be
+disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their
+paroles and the laws in force where they reside." There are some
+mistakes in grammar in these words, but there are no mistakes in
+magnanimity. When Lee, having put on his glasses, had read the first
+sentence quoted above, he said with feeling:
+
+[Illustration: LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT]
+
+"This will have a happy effect upon my army."
+
+He went on to say that many of the privates in the Confederate cavalry
+and artillery owned their own horses; could they retain them? Grant did
+not change the written terms, but he said his officers would be
+instructed to let every Confederate private who claimed to own a horse
+or mule take the animal home with him. "It was doubtful," writes Grant,
+"whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and
+their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses
+they were then riding." Again Lee remarked that this would have a happy
+effect. He then wrote and signed an acceptance of the proposed terms of
+surrender. The war was over. The first act of peace was our issuing
+25,000 rations to the army we had captured. For some days it had lived
+on parched corn.
+
+[Illustration: GEN. U. S. GRANT]
+
+The news of the surrender flashed along the waiting lines like wildfire
+and the Union forces began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of
+the victory. "I at once sent word," says Grant, "to have it stopped. The
+Confederates were now our prisoners and we did not want to exult over
+their downfall." This was the spirit of a great man and of a great
+nation. It was not the soldiers who fought the war who kept its rancors
+alive after peace had come, It was the politicians, who tore open the
+old wounds and kept the country bleeding for a dozen years after the
+Lost Cause was lost.
+
+On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 1865, Grant and Lee again met
+between the lines and sitting on horseback talked for half an hour. Then
+Grant began his journey to Washington. His staff, including Tom, went
+with him. When they reached their goal, Second-Lieutenant Strong found
+he was that no longer. For General Wright had done what he had told Tom
+he meant to do. The recommendation had been heeded. Lincoln himself
+handed the boy his new commission as a brevet-captain.
+
+"I was glad to sign that, Tom," the President told him, "and even
+Stanton didn't kick this time."
+
+"You don't know how glad I am to get it, Mr. President," was the reply.
+"Now I'm a boy-captain, as my great-grandfather was before me."
+
+"I'm not much on pedigrees and ancestry and genealogical trees, my boy,"
+answered Lincoln. "Out West we think more of trees that grow out of the
+ground than we do of trees that grow on parchment. But you're right to
+be proud of an ancestry of service to your country. When family pride is
+based on money or land or social standing, it is one of the most foolish
+things God Almighty ever laughed at, but when it is based on service,
+real service, to your country, to your fellowmen, to the world, why,
+then, Tom, it's one of the biggest and best things in God's kingdom. But
+remember this, son,"--Lincoln's eyes flashed in their deep sockets--"if
+a boy has an ancestor who has done big things, the way to be proud of
+him is to do big things yourself. Living on the glory of what somebody
+else has done before you is a mighty poor kind of living. I never knew
+but one man that was perfect and I'd never have known he was if he
+hadn't told me so. Nobody else ever found it out. But if we can't be
+perfect, we can grow less imperfect by trying every day to serve our
+fellowmen. Remember that, Tom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+
+On the evening of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Laura Keene, an English
+actress of great repute in America, was to play _Our American Cousin_ at
+Ford's Theater, the chief place of amusement for war-time Washington.
+
+That afternoon, Assistant-Secretary-of-War Dana was notified by wire
+that Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, once Secretary of the Interior under
+our poor old wavering President, Buchanan, afterwards a leading
+Secessionist, would take a steamship for England that evening at
+Portland, Maine.
+
+"What shall I do?" Dana asked Stanton.
+
+"Arrest him! No, wait; better go over and see the President."
+
+So Dana went to the White House. Office-hours were over. He found
+Lincoln washing his hands.
+
+"Halloo, Dana!" was Lincoln's greeting. "What's up?"
+
+The telegram was read aloud.
+
+"What does Stanton say?"
+
+"He says to arrest him, but that I should refer the question to you."
+
+"Well, no, I rather think not. When you have got an elephant by the hind
+legs and he's trying to run away; it's best to let him run."
+
+Dana reported this to Stanton.
+
+"Oh, stuff!" said Stanton.
+
+But Thompson was not arrested, so that the last recorded act of Lincoln
+as President was one of mercy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the upper stage-box, to the right of the audience, that evening, sat
+Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, Mrs. Lincoln, a friend,
+Miss Harris, and an officer, Major Henry R. Rathbone. The cares of State
+seemed to have slipped for the moment from Lincoln's shoulders. He had
+bowed smilingly from the box in response to the cheers of the packed
+audience in the body of the house. He had followed intently the action
+of the amusing play, constantly smiling, often applauding. The eyes of
+the little party of four were bent upon the stage, about ten o'clock,
+when the door of the box was jerked violently open behind them. As they
+turned at the noise, Death stalked in upon them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five minutes before, Tom Strong had been idly strolling along Tenth
+Street and had paused at the theater door to read the play-bills posted
+there. A small group of belated play-goers was at the ticket-booth. A
+man shoved roughly through them. A woman's "Oh!" of surprise and protest
+drew Tom's attention to the man. He had seen him but thrice before, yet
+the man's face was engraved upon his memory. Once, at Charlestown,
+Virginia, Wilkes Booth had stood in the ranks of the militia, eagerly
+awaiting the execution of John Brown. Once, upon a railroad train north
+of Baltimore, Wilkes Booth had drugged the boy and left him, as the
+scoundrel thought, to die. Once, upon a railroad platform at Kingston,
+Alabama, Wilkes Booth had recognized him and had again sought his death.
+Whose death did he seek to compass now? What was the Confederate spy
+doing here? Tom had scarcely glimpsed the hawk-like features, the pallid
+face, the flowing black hair of his foe, when Booth disappeared from his
+sight in the crowded lobby of the theater.
+
+Instantly Tom pursued him. But he was delayed by the little group
+through whom Booth had elbowed his rough way. And when he reached the
+ticket-window, he found no money in his pocket with which to buy
+admittance. He had put on civilian clothes that evening and had left his
+scanty store of currency in his uniform. The wary ticket-seller, used to
+all sorts of dodges by people who wanted to get in without paying,
+laughed at his story and refused to give him a ticket on trust. Tom's
+claim that he was an officer caused especial amusement.
+
+"That won't go down, bub," said the ticket-seller. "Try to think up a
+better lie next time. And clear out now. Don't block up the
+passageway."
+
+"I _must_ get in," said Tom.
+
+"You shan't," snarled the man, sure that he was being imposed upon.
+
+The doorkeeper, attracted by the little row, had come towards the
+ticket-window. He swung his right arm with a threatening gesture. As Tom
+started towards him he struck the threatened blow, but his clenched fist
+hit nothing. The boy had ducked under his arm and had fled into the
+theater. The doorkeeper pursued him. But Tom was now making his way like
+a weasel through the crowd. He had caught sight of Wilkes Booth nearly
+at the top of the right-hand staircase that led to the aisle from which
+the upper right-hand box was reached. Without any actual premonition of
+the coming tragedy which was to echo around the world upon the morrow,
+he still felt that Booth had in mind some evil deed and that it was his
+duty to prevent him. As he struggled toward the foot of the stairway,
+Booth saw him, recognized him and smiled at him, a smile of triumphant
+hideous evil. Tom yelled:
+
+"Spy! Confederate spy! Stop him! Let me follow!"
+
+Upon the startled crowd there fell a sudden stillness. Nobody laid hand
+upon Booth, but everybody made way for the frantic boy who rushed up the
+stairway as the scoundrel he chased ran down the corridor. He clutched
+the newel post at the head of the stairway just as Booth flung open the
+door of the box. Tom ran towards him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door of the box was violently jerked open. Wilkes Booth sprang
+across the threshold. He put his pistol close to the head of the unarmed
+man he meant to murder. He fired. The greatest American sank forward
+into his wife's arms. High above her shrieks rose the actor's trained
+voice. He leaped upon the balustrade of the box, shouted "_Sic semper
+tyrannis!_" and jumped down to the stage. He was booted and spurred for
+his escape. His horse was held for him near the stage-door. One of his
+spurs caught upon the curtain of the box, so that he stumbled and fell
+heavily. But he had played his part upon that stage many a time before.
+He knew every nook and cranny of the mysterious labyrinth behind the
+footlights. He rose to his feet, disregarding a twisted ankle, and
+rushed to safety--for a few hours. He reached his horse and galloped
+into the calm night of God, profaned forever by this hideous crime of a
+besotted fanatic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The martyred President was taken to a neighboring house, No. 453 Tenth
+Street. In a back hall bedroom, upon the first floor, that that was
+still Abraham Lincoln, but was soon to cease to be so, was laid upon a
+narrow bed. Tom had helped to carry him there. Wife and son, John Hay,
+Secretary-of-War Stanton, and a few others crowded into the tiny room.
+Doctors worked feverishly over the dying man. Their skill was in vain.
+The slow and regular breathing grew fainter. The automatic moaning
+ceased. A look of unspeakable peace came to the face the world now knows
+so well. In a solemn hush, at twenty-two minutes after seven in the
+morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865, the great soul of Abraham Lincoln
+went back to the God Who had given him to America and to the world. A
+moment later Stanton spoke:
+
+"Now he belongs to the ages."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+     TOM HUNTS WILKES BOOTH--THE END OF THE MURDERER--ANDREW JOHNSON,
+     PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES--TOM AND TOWSER GO HOME.
+
+
+The assassination of Lincoln was not the only crime that stained that
+memorable night. Secretary-of-State Seward was stabbed in his sick-bed
+by one of Booth's co-conspirators. Attempts were made upon the lives of
+other Cabinet ministers. Many arbitrary arrests had been made during the
+war by Secretary Stanton. It had been said that whenever Stanton's
+little bell rang, somebody went to prison. That little bell had little
+rest this Saturday. Wholesale arrests were made of suspected Southern
+sympathizers who might have known something of the hideous conspiracy of
+murder. Stanton put all the grim energy of him into the pursuit of the
+leading criminals. He was said never to forget anything. One of the
+things he had not forgotten was that Tom Strong knew Wilkes Booth by
+sight. He sent him from Lincoln's bedside, hours before Lincoln died, to
+join a troop of cavalry that was to pursue Booth. The road by which the
+murderer had left Washington was known. Hard upon his heels rode the
+avengers of crime. Wherever there was a light in one of the few houses
+along the lonely road, often where there was no light, the occupants
+were seized, questioned, sometimes sent to Washington under guard,
+sometimes released and sternly bidden to say nothing of the midnight
+ride. Piecing together scraps of information gathered here and there,
+studying every crossroad for possible hoof-marks of flight, the silent
+commander of the cavalrymen at last convinced himself that he was on the
+trail of the quarry. The troops broke into full gallop. A few minutes
+before dawn they reached a small village on the bank of the Potomac,
+where the fires of a smithy gleamed. They pulled up short as the
+startled blacksmith came out of his sooty shed.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded the captain.
+
+"I've been--I've been--putting on a horseshoe, sir."
+
+"For what kind of a looking man?"
+
+"He said his name was Barnard."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Tom from his saddle, "but Barnard was the
+name Wilkes Booth once gave me for his own." At the beginning of the
+ride, Tom had described Booth's appearance to the captain.
+
+"Was the man pale? Did he have long black hair?"
+
+"Long black hair," answered the blacksmith, "but his cheeks were red. He
+seemed excited. While I was replacing the shoe his horse had cast, he
+kept drinking brandy from a bottle he carried. He never gave me none of
+it," the man added with an injured air.
+
+"Did he say anything?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He said I'd hear great news later today, that the
+Southerners had won their greatest victory. I asked him where and he
+swore at me and told me to shut up. But he gave me a silver dollar.
+Perhaps it's bad. Is it?"
+
+The blacksmith pulled out of his grimy pocket a dollar and showed it to
+the captain.
+
+"Do you know who that man was?" was the stern command.
+
+"No, sir, o' course I don't. I s'pose he was Mr. Barnard."
+
+"He was Judas. He has murdered Abraham Lincoln. And he has given you one
+of the forty pieces of silver."
+
+With wild-eyed horror, the smith started back. He flung the accursed
+dollar far into the Potomac.
+
+"God's curse go with it," he cried. "Captain, the man went straight down
+the river road. He gave his horse a cut with his whip 'n he yelled
+'Carry me back to ole Virginny!' and he went off lickety-split. He ain't
+half-an-hour ahead of you."
+
+No need to command full speed now. Every man was riding hard. Every
+horse was putting his last ounce of strength into his stride. Within an
+hour, the hounds saw the slinking fox they chased. Booth, abandoning his
+exhausted steed, took refuge in a tumble-down barn. A cordon was thrown
+about it and he was called on to surrender. The reply was a shot. Tom
+heard the whiz of the bullet as it tore by him. The cavalry pumped lead
+into the barn. Once, twice, thrice they fired. At the first volley, the
+trapped murderer had again fired. There was no answer to the second and
+third. With reloaded carbines, the troopers charged, burst open the
+barred door, and rushed into the rickety shed. A man lay on the earthen
+floor, breath and blood struggling together in his gaping mouth. As they
+gathered about him, the Captain asked:
+
+"Do you know this man, Captain Strong?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Wilkes Booth, sir."
+
+The sound of his own name half recalled Booth to life. He looked up at
+the boy who stood beside him and recognized him. Ferocious hate filled
+the glazing eyes. Then Wilkes Booth went to his eternal doom, hating to
+the end.
+
+"Is he dead?" said the Captain, turning to a major of the medical
+service, who had galloped beside Tom on that fierce ride of the
+avengers. A big, bearded man knelt beside the body of Wilkes Booth, put
+his finger where the pulse had been and laid his hand where the heart
+had once beat.
+
+"He is dead," answered Major Hans Rolf.
+
+His body was thrust somewhere into the earth he had disgraced or else
+was flung, weighted with stones, into the river, all the flood tides of
+which could not wash away the black guilt of him. No man knows where the
+body of Wilkes Booth was buried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The king is dead! Long live the king!"
+
+When Tom rode sadly up Pennsylvania Avenue, with a crape-laden flag at
+half-mast over the Capitol, glad for the stern justice that had been
+dealt out to the murderer he loathed, but bowed down with grief for the
+murdered President he had loved, Abraham Lincoln was no longer President
+of the United States. In his stead, our uncrowned king was Andrew
+Johnson, of Tennessee, a Southern Unionist who had been elected Vice
+President when the people chose Lincoln a second time for their ruler.
+Johnson had been born to grinding poverty in a rough community where
+"skule-l'arnin'" was not to be had. He was a grown man, earning a scanty
+livelihood as a village tailor, when his wife taught him to read and
+write. He worked his hard way up in life, became a man of prominence in
+his village, in his county, in his State, until he was chosen for
+Lincoln's running-mate as a representative Southern Unionist. He was of
+course a man of native force, but he sometimes drowned his mind in
+liquor. That fatal habit pulled him down. He was a failure as a
+President, though thereafter he served his State and his country well
+as a United States Senator from Tennessee.
+
+The White House was changed under its new ruler. John Hay, full of cheer
+and wit, was abroad as a secretary of legation. Nicolay, his superior
+officer, was a consul in Europe. The Lincoln family had gone West
+through a sorrowing country, bearing the body of the martyr-President to
+its burial-place in Springfield, Illinois. For a while some familiar
+faces were left. At first, the same Cabinet ministers served the new
+President. For some time, Uncle Moses had to learn no new names as he
+carried about the summons to the Cabinet meetings. But the visitors to
+the White House had changed mightily. Rough men from Tennessee and the
+other Border States, some of them diamonds in the rough, swarmed there.
+Lincoln had never used tobacco. The new-comers both smoked and chewed.
+Clouds of smoke filled the lower story and giant spittoons lined the
+corridors and invaded the public rooms. Gradually the Republican leaders
+ceased to wait upon the President.
+
+Among the people who left the White House soon after Lincoln left it was
+Tom Strong. On a bright May morning he walked across the portico, where
+Towser was eagerly awaiting him and where Uncle Moses followed him. Unk'
+Mose lifted his withered black hands and called down blessings on the
+boy who had been his angel of freedom and had led him out of bondage.
+
+"De good Lawd bress you, Mas'r Tom. And de good Lawd bress dat dar
+wufless ol' houn' dawg Towser, too. 'Kase Towser, he lubs you, Mas'r
+Tom,--and so duz I," Uncle Moses shyly added.
+
+The venerable old negro and the white boy shook hands in a long farewell
+upon the steps of the White House. Then Tom turned away from the
+historic roof that had so long sheltered him and walked to the railroad
+station, to take the train for New York. Towser trotted stiffly by his
+side, trying at every step to lick his master's hand.
+
+Tom Strong studied hard at home and then went to Yale, as his father
+had done before him.
+
+Towser could not go with him. The laws of Yale forbade it. That is one
+of the chief disadvantages of being a dog. Soon after Tom went to New
+Haven, Towser went to heaven. At least, let us hope he did. He deserved
+to do so. One of the human things about Martin Luther, the stern founder
+of Protestantism in Germany in the Sixteenth Century, was that he once
+said to a tiny girl, weeping over the death of her tiny dog: "Do not
+cry, little maid; for you will find your dog in heaven and he will have
+a golden tail."
+
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+[Illustration: TOWSER
+               "MAY HE REST IN PEACE"]
+
+
+
+
+                       BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS
+
+
+                        THE DOGS OF BOYTOWN
+
+                         By WALTER A. DYER
+
+             _Author of "Pierrot, Dog of Belgium," etc._
+                      _Illustrated. $1.50 net_
+
+  _New York Sun_: "It takes the cake--in this case, of course, a dog
+  biscuit.... It is the most unusual book of its kind.... Dyer enters a
+  new field for boys ... all boys will want to know about Dogs--their ways
+  and habits, their histories and origins.... Threaded through this
+  wonderful textbook on dogs is the story of adventures of two boys ...
+  shows the reader where to find out about everything from bench shows and
+  the care of puppies to fleas...."
+
+
+                 THE FIVE BABBITTS AT BONNYACRES
+
+                         By WALTER A. DYER
+
+            _Illustrated, by J. O. Chapin. $1.50 net_
+
+  A back-to-the-farm story for young folks based on actual experience. The
+  farm problems and results are such as could actually occur on thousands
+  of American farms.
+
+
+                  MAGIC PICTURES OF THE LONG AGO
+
+                      By ANNA CURTIS CHANDLER
+
+            _With some forty illustrations. $1.30 net_
+
+  Each recounts the youth and something of the later life of some striking
+  character in art, history, or literature, and is made very vivid by
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+
+
+                           BLUE HERON COVE
+
+                       By FANNIE LEE MCKINNEY
+
+                 _Author of "Nora-Square-Accounts."_
+
+                      _Illustrated. $1.35 net_
+
+  Tells how Blue Heron Island and its seafaring folks change "a little
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+
+
+                             THE GUN BOOK
+
+                          By THOMAS H. MCKEE
+
+                  _Profusely illustrated. $1.60 net_
+
+  A book about guns for boys of all ages. The history is accurate; boys
+  will remember the anecdotes; and the technical parts are sensibly
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+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                  COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE
+
+                  FOR BOYS     By CHARLES P. BURTON
+
+
+                        THE BOYS OF BOB'S HILL
+
+         Illustrated by GEORGE A. WILLIAMS. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
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+
+     "A first-rate juvenile ... a real story for the live human boy--any
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+
+
+                          THE BOB'S CAVE BOYS
+
+               Illustrated by VICTOR PERARD. $1.35 net.
+
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+     England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, human boys, full of fun,
+     into trouble and out again, but frank, honest, and clean."--_The
+     Congregationalist._
+
+
+                         THE BOB'S HILL BRAVES
+
+             Illustrated by H. S. DELAY. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  The "Bob's Hill" band spend a vacation in Illinois, where they play at
+  being Indians, hear thrilling tales of real Indians, and learn much
+  frontier history. A history of especial interest to "Boy Scouts."
+
+     "Merry youngsters. Capital. Thrilling tales of the red men and
+     explorers. These healthy red-blooded, New England
+     boys."--_Philadelphia Press._
+
+
+                      THE BOY SCOUTS OF BOB'S HILL
+
+             Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  The "Bob's Hill" band organizes a Boy Scouts band and have many
+  adventures. Mr. Burton brings in tales told around a camp-fire of La
+  Salle, Joliet, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Northwestern
+  Reservation.
+
+
+                            CAMP BOB'S HILL
+
+                Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. $1.35 net.
+
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+
+
+                    THE RAVEN PATROL OF BOB'S HILL
+
+                Illustrated by GORDON GRANT. $1.35 net.
+
+  The account of a camping trip of the Raven Patrol of the Boy Scouts to
+  the Massachusetts coast, with much real boy fun and wholesome
+  adventure.
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                        BY ALICE CALHOUN HAINES
+
+               _For Young Folks from 9 to 16 Years old._
+
+
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+
+             With illustrations by FAITH AVERY. $1.35 net
+
+  A story full of action, not untinged by pathos, of a boy and his
+  faithful dog and their wanderings after the poor-house burns down.
+  They have interesting experiences with a traveling circus; the boy is
+  thrown from a moving train, and has a lively time with the Mexican
+  Insurrectos, from whom he is rescued by our troops.
+
+
+                    THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS
+
+         Illustrated by FRANCIS DAY. 300 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  A family story of city life. Lightened by humor and an airship.
+
+     "Among the very best of books for young folks. Appeals especially
+     to girls."--_Wisconsin List for Township Libraries._
+
+     "Promises to be perennially popular. A family of happy, healthy,
+     inventive, bright children make the best of restricted conditions
+     and prove themselves masters of circumstances."--_Christian
+     Register._
+
+     "Sparkles with cleverness and humor."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+
+                          COCK-A-DOODLE HILL
+
+          A sequel to the above. Illustrated by FRANCIS DAY.
+
+                       296 pp., 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+  "Cockle-a-doodle Hill" is where the Dudley Graham family went to live
+  when they left New York, and here Ernie started her chicken-farm, with
+  one solitary fowl, "Hennerietta." The pictures of country scenes and
+  the adventures and experiences of this household of young people are
+  very life-like.
+
+     "No better book for young people than 'The Luck of the Dudley
+     Grahams' was offered last year. 'Cock-a-Doodle Hill' is another of
+     similar qualities."--_Philadelphia Press._
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                        By ALFRED BISHOP MASON
+
+
+                   TOM STRONG, WASHINGTON'S SCOUT
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  A story of adventure. The principal characters, a boy and a trapper,
+  are in the Revolutionary army from the defeat at Brooklyn to the
+  victory at Yorktown.
+
+
+                       TOM STRONG, BOY-CAPTAIN
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Tom Strong and a sturdy old trapper take part in such stirring events
+  following the Revolution as the Indian raid with Crawford and a
+  flat-boat voyage from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, etc.
+
+
+                          TOM STRONG, JUNIOR
+
+                       Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  The story of the son of Tom Strong in the young United States. Tom
+  sees the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr; is in
+  Washington during the presidency of Jefferson; is on board of the
+  "Clermont" on its first trip, and serves in the United States Navy
+  during the War of 1812.
+
+
+                           TOM STRONG, THIRD
+
+                        Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Tom Strong, Junior's son helps his father build the first railroad
+  in the United States and then goes with Kit Carson on the Lewis and
+  Clarke Expedition.
+
+
+                     TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT
+
+                        Illustrated. $1.30 net.
+
+  Serving under President Lincoln, the fourth Tom Strong becomes an
+  actor in the most stirring events of the Civil War.
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+               _STANDARD CYCLOPAEDIAS FOR YOUNG OR OLD_
+
+
+                              CHAMPLIN'S
+
+                      Young Folks' Cyclopaedias
+
+                        By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN
+
+        _Late Associate Editor of the American Cyclopaedia_
+
+  Bound in substantial red buckram. Each volume complete in itself
+  and sold separately. 12mo, $3.00 per volume, net.
+
+
+                            COMMON THINGS
+
+       New, Enlarged Edition, 850 pp. Profusely Illustrated
+     "A book which will be of permanent value to any boy or girl to whom
+     it may be given, and which fills a place in the juvenile library,
+     never, so far as I know, supplied before."--_Susan Coolidge._
+
+
+                         PERSONS AND PLACES
+
+      New, Up-to-Date Edition, 985 pp. Over 375 Illustrations
+
+     "We know copies of the work to which their young owners turn
+     instantly for information upon every theme about which they have
+     questions to ask. More than this, we know that some of these copies
+     are read daily, as well as consulted; that their owners turn the
+     leaves as they might those of a fairy book, reading intently
+     articles of which they had not thought before seeing them, and
+     treating the book simply as one capable of furnishing the rarest
+     entertainment in exhaustless quantities.--_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+
+                         LITERATURE AND ART
+
+                     604 pp. 270 Illustrations
+
+     "Few poems, plays, novels, pictures, statues, or fictitious
+     characters that children--or most of their parents--of our day are
+     likely to inquire about will be missed here. Mr. Champlin's
+     judgment seems unusually sound."--_The Nation._
+
+
+                         GAMES AND SPORTS
+
+              By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN and ARTHUR BOSTWICK
+
+             Revised Edition, 784 pp. 900 Illustrations
+
+     "Should form a part of every juvenile library, whether public or
+     private."--_The Independent._
+
+
+                          NATURAL HISTORY
+
+        By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN, assisted by FREDERICK A. LUCAS
+
+                 725 pp. Over 800 Illustrations
+
+     "Here, in compact and attractive form, is valuable and reliable
+     information on every phase of natural history, on every item of
+     interest to the student. Invaluable to the teacher and school, and
+     should be on every teacher's desk for ready reference, and the
+     children should be taught to go to this volume for information
+     useful and interesting."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS                                   NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout, by Alfred Bishop Mason
+
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