ose;
Lookout, lookout, if you tread on their toes."

Suddenly Polly broke away, pulled up an iron-weed growing on the
road-side, and fell to whipping a large purple thistle. Her thirst grew;
she left the thistle and fell to whipping the rank grass. Then was heard
an angry buzz, as the assaulted bees swarmed out of their defenses and
literally stormed her.

They settled all over her. Head, face, bare feet and legs were attacked
all at once. They stung her terribly. The death of their comrade was
summarily avenged. She rent the air with her cries, and backed toward Mam'
Sarah, fighting them off as she went from different parts of her body.
Mam' Sarah covered up her retreat as well as she could, saying:

"I natchel hate ter see fo'ks in trubble, but I ain' er bit sorry fur you.
I never seed ennybody fo' that wuz allers on the war-paf. Them bees haden'
dun nuffin' ter you. They is prezak lak humans. Ef you let 'em erlone you
won't hear from 'em; but fite 'em en they'll fite you back, erver time."

At the same time that Mam' Sarah and Roberta were fussing over Polly, a
line of glittering points were coming up the rise near the bend of the
river. A column of Confederate soldiers appeared, marching shoulder to
shoulder, their arms shining in the morning sun. On they came, crossing
the fields with the springing step of hope and the steady step of high,
dauntless courage, making directly for the works the Federals had thrown
up and protected with the bodies of felled trees.

Well-nigh impregnable, those works, from their vast advantage of
position, but in their line of march it was the policy of their leaders to
fight every thing of like nature that came in the way, to hide, if
possible, their real weakness in numbers. So they were told to take those
works, and take them they would. Knowing not the hesitancy of doubt, nor
the trammels of fear, what recked they of danger or of death, as they
sprung to their work?

Alas! the awful death-trap that caught them, held them, while that deadly
fusilade opened upon them, reddened with their warm, young blood the soil
of their native State--mowed them down, ruthlessly, those hapless
Kentuckians. For ruthless it ever seems, when youth and hope and glorious
promise are offered in vain. At last they fell back, the living; what
flesh and blood could do otherwise? Fell back, but undismayed, and
fighting stubbornly inch by inch, as they bore off their wounded. O, those
darlings of old