er. Even a Yankee wouldn't fear it. But
you are so afraid you'll have to get your feet wet that you actually send
for soldiers to protect you!"

George's companions looked at him in astonishment. The boatman, losing his
placidity, turned a deep red. "Take care, young fellow," he said, in a
voice of anger; "there's not a man in Tennessee who dares to call Ned
Jackson a coward!"

"I dare to call you a coward unless you take us over to Chattanooga!"
answered the boy, sturdily. "You're afraid--and that's the whole truth!"

Jackson's face now underwent a kaleidoscopic transformation ranging all
the way from red to purple, and then to white. All his stolidity had
vanished; he was no longer the slow countryman; he had become the
courageous, impetuous Southerner.

"If you weren't a boy," he shouted, "I'd knock you down!"

"That wouldn't prove your bravery," returned George, regarding him with an
expression of well-feigned contempt. "That would only show you to be a
bully. If you have any courage in your veins--the kind of courage that
most Southerners have--prove it by taking us across the river."

The soldiers were gradually drawing near the wharf. Meanwhile George's
companions had caught his cue. He was trying to goad Jackson into ferrying
them over the riotous stream.

"Humph!" said Macgreggor; "a good boatman is never afraid of the water;
but our friend here seems to have a consuming fear of it!"

"He ought to live on a farm, where there is nothing but a duck pond in the
shape of water," added Jenks. Jackson was actually trembling with rage;
his hands were twisting nervously.

Watson eyed him with seeming pity, as he said: "It's a lucky thing for you
that you didn't enlist in the Confederate army. You would have run at the
first smell of gunpowder!"

Jackson could contain his wrath no longer. "So you fellows think I'm a
coward," he cried. "Very well! I'll prove that I'm not! Get into my boat,
and I'll take you across--or drown you all and myself--I don't care which.
But no man shall ever say that Ned Jackson is a coward!" He ran to the
boat, leaped into it and beckoned to the Northerners. "Come on!" he
shouted. Within a minute George, Macgreggor, Watson and Jenks were in the
little craft, and the ferryman had unmoored it from the wharf.

"Never mind," he cried, waving his hand to the soldiers, who had now
reached the wharf. "I don't want you. I'm going to ferry 'em over the
river--or go to the bottom! It's all r