'll make short work with 'em. Say, we licked 'em, didn't we?"

"Of course," answered Marcy. "Fifty-one soldiers without food or powder
don't stand much chance against five thousand well-equipped men."

"It would have been all the same if there had been fifty-one thousand of
'em," declared the Baltimore man. "Aint got any business there. Fort
belongs to So' Car'lina. Why didn't they get out when Beau'gard told 'em
to, if they didn't want to get licked? Three cheers for Southern
Confed'sy!"

Much disgusted, Marcy Gray finally succeeded in releasing his hand from
the man's detaining grasp and forced his way 'to a seat; but he was
often stopped to hear his patriotism applauded, and President Lincoln
denounced for bringing on a useless war by trying to throw provisions
into Fort Sumter.

"I don't see what else he could have done," soliloquized the North
Carolina boy, as he squeezed himself into as small a compass as possible
in a seat next to a window. "The fort belonged to the United States, and
it was the President's business to hold fast to it if he could. South
Carolina wanted a pretext for firing on the flag, and she got it. She'll
be sorry for it when she sees grass growing in the streets of her
principal city. So I am taken for a rebel, am I? What would that
Baltimore fellow do to me if he knew that I have two Union flags in my
trunk, and that I mean to hoist them some day? My life wouldn't be worth
a minute's purchase if these passengers knew how I feel toward them and
their miserable Confederacy."

All the way to Raleigh, which was nearly three hundred and sixty miles
from Barrington, Marcy Gray lived in a fever of suspense. Although he
did not know a soul on board the train, he might have had companions
enough if he had been a little more sociable; but he did not care to
make any new acquaintances, especially among people who were so nearly
beside themselves. They all took him for just what he wasn't--a rebel
soldier; and being ignorant of the fact that he was going toward home as
fast as steam could take him, they supposed that the reason he was so
silent and thoughtful was because he was lonely, and felt sorrowful over
parting from his friends; and so it came about that now and then some
one would sit down beside him and try to give him a comforting and
cheering word. All the ladies who spoke to him were eager for war and
disunion. They were worse than the men; Marcy found that out before he
had gone fifty m