, aristocratic-looking, and full of a quiet courage
which, in his own dangerous profession, answers far better than the
greatest impetuosity. He has plenty of daring, but it is a daring tempered
with prudence. Although he has masqueraded among the enemy at times when
the slightest slip of the tongue might have betrayed him, he has thus far
returned to the Union lines in safety. How long, some of his friends ask
anxiously, will he be able to continue in so perilous an enterprise? Yet
here he is, planning, with the consent of General Mitchell, a scheme
bolder than anything yet dreamed of in the annals of the war.

And what of George Knight? He is an active, healthy-minded drummer boy
belonging to one of the Ohio regiments in General Mitchell's division. His
mother had died in his infancy. At the outbreak of the war, a year before
the opening of our story, he was living in Cincinnati with his father. The
latter suddenly gave up a prosperous law practice to go to the help of the
North, secured a commission as a captain of volunteers, went to the front,
and was either captured or killed by the Confederates. Since the preceding
Christmas nothing had been heard of him. George, with an aching heart,
stayed at home with an uncle, and chafed grievously as he saw company
after company of militia pass through his native town on the way to the
South. Where was his father? This he asked himself twenty times a day. And
must he, the son, stand idly by whilst thousands of the flower of the land
were rushing forward to fight on one side or the other in the great
conflict? "I must enlist!" George had cried, more than once. "Pshaw!"
replied his uncle; "you are too young--a mere child." But one fine day
George Knight had himself enrolled as a drummer boy in a regiment then
being recruited in Cincinnati, and, as his uncle had a large family of his
own, with no very strong affection to spare for his nephew, there was not
as much objection as might have been expected. So the lad went to the war.
He had now become a particular _protege_ of General Mitchell, who had
taken him into his own service as an assistant secretary--a position in
which George had already shown much natural cleverness.

After reading the letter just brought to him, Andrews tears it into a
hundred little pieces which he scatters to the winds.

"What's the matter?" ask several of the men, as they crowd around him.

"Hurry's the matter," laughs the leader, as unconcernedly a