at is to be expected. You may go."

"He said, in effect, that he would keep this thing hanging over our
heads to see how we behave in future," said Rodney to Billings and Cole,
who were in the hall waiting for him. "He is on our side, but not being
the head of the school, he can't back us up as he would like to. But
then this will keep," he added, once more shaking out his flag, which he
had all the while carried under his arm. "I was afraid the teachers
would take it away from me, but as they didn't, we'll hold ourselves in
readiness to run it up when the other is ordered down."

But the incidents of the morning, exciting as they were, did not long
monopolize the attention of the students, or remain the principal
subjects of discussion. They were forgotten the minute the mail was
distributed, for of course their papers contained news from all parts,
and the boys made it their business to keep posted. There was one thing
the papers had already begun to do that excited derisive laughter among
all the sensible boys in school. They called dispatches from the North
"Foreign Intelligence." But there were some, like Rodney Gray, who could
not see that that was anything to laugh at, and following the lead of
their favorite journals in politics, they soon learned to follow their
vocabulary also, and always spoke of the North as "the United States,"
and of the South as "the Confederate States."

When the adjutant's call was sounded Marcy Gray fell in with the other
members of his company who had been warned for duty, and marched to the
parade-ground to go through the ceremony of guard-mounting. Immediately
after that he went on post in a remote part of the grounds, a favorite
place with the sentries on hot summer days, for the woods on the other
side came close up to the fence, and the trees threw a grateful shade
over the beat. The only order the boy he relieved had to pass, was a
simple as well as a useless one. It was to "keep his eye peeled for that
fence and not permit anybody to climb over it"; but Marcy listened as
though he meant to obey it. Then the relief passed on, and he was left
alone with his thoughts, which, considering the incidents connected with
that skirmish on the tower, were not the most agreeable company.

He had been there perhaps a couple of hours, out of sight of everybody,
when he was brought to a stand-still by a rustling among the bushes on
the other side of the fence, and presently discovered old T