smoke bombs! Where's the Confederate
army, anyhow? And you Unionists, don't look as though you were going to
rob an apple orchard! Suffering snakes, you're going into battle and
you're going to lick the boots off the Johnnie Rebs! Look the part! Look
the part! Now, then, what about the cannon? Got plenty of powder in 'em
so there'll be lots of smoke?"

A stout man, with perspiration running down his face, one drop trickling
from his nose, was hurrying up and down the field.

On one side of him was a small army composed of what seemed to be Civil
War Union soldiers. A little farther back was a motley array of
Confederates. Farther off was an apple orchard, and close beside that
stood a ramshackle farmhouse which was soon to be the center of a
desperate moving-picture battle in the course of which the house would
be the refuge of the Confederates.

"The old man is sort of on his ear this morning, isn't he, Blake?" asked
Joe Duncan of his chum and camera partner, Blake Stewart. "I haven't
heard him rage like this since the time C. C. dodged the custard pie he
was supposed to take broadside on."

"Yes, he's a bit nervous, Joe; but----"

"Nervous isn't the word for it, Blake. He's boiling over! What's it all
about, anyhow? Is he mad because I was a bit late getting here with the
extra reels of film?"

"No, he didn't say a word about that. It's just that he can't get this
battle scene to suit him. We've rehearsed it and rehearsed it again and
again, but each time it seems to go worse. The extras don't seem to know
how to fight."

"That's queer, considering all the war preparations that have been going
on here since we got in the game against Germany," observed Joe Duncan,
as he made some adjustments to his camera, one of several which he and
Blake would use in filming part of a big serial, a number of scenes of
which were to center around the battle in the apple orchard. "With all
the volunteering and drafting that's been going on, soldiers quartered
all over and as thick as bees around the cities, you'd think these
extra fellows would know something about the game, wouldn't you?"

"You'd think so; but they seem to be afraid of the guns, even though
they are loaded with blanks. Here comes Mr. Hadley again, and he's got
fire in his eyes!"

Mr. Hadley, producer of the Consolidated Film Company, approached Jacob
Ringold, a theatrical manager who was in charge of the company taking
the parts in "The Dividing Line," wh