young man, who answered roll-call to Kent Edwards.

"No, but I don't want to be knocked off like a green apple, before I'm
ripe and ready."

"Better be knocked off green and unripe," said Kent, his railing mood
changing to one of sad introspection, "than to prematurely fall, from a
worm gnawing at your heart."

Jake's fright was not so great as to make him forego the opportunity for
a brutal retort:

"You mean the 'worm of the still,' I s'pose. Well, it don't gnaw at my
heart so much as at some other folkses' that I know'd."

Kent's face crimsoned still deeper, and he half raised his musket, as
if to strike him, but at that moment came the order to march, and the
regiment moved forward.

The enemy was by this time known to be near, and the men marched in that
silence that comes from tense expectation.

The day was intensely hot, and the stagnant, sultry air was perfumed
with the thousand sweet odors that rise in the West Virginia forests in
the first flush of Summer.

The road wound around the steep mountain side, through great thickets
of glossy-leaved laurel, by banks of fragrant honeysuckle, by beds
of millions of sweet-breathing, velvety pansies, nestling under huge
shadowy rocks, by acres of white puccoon flowers, each as lovely as the
lily that grows by cool Siloam's shady rill--all scattered there with
Nature's reckless profusion, where no eye saw them from year to
year save those of the infrequent hunter, those of the thousands of
gaily-plumaged birds that sang and screamed through the branches of
the trees above, and those of the hideous rattlesnakes that crawled and
hissed in the crevices of the shelving rocks.

At last the regiment halted under the grateful shadows of the
broad-topped oaks and chestnuts. A patriarchal pheasant, drumming on a
log near by some uxorious communication to his brooding mate, distended
his round eyes in amazement at the strange irruption of men and
horses, and then whirred away in a transport of fear. A crimson crested
woodpecker ceased his ominous tapping, and flew boldly to a neighboring
branch, where he could inspect the new arrival to good advantage and
determine his character.

The men threw themselves down for a moment's rest, on the springing moss
that covered the whole mountain side. A hum of comment and conversation
arose. Jake Alspaugh began to think that there was not likely to be
any fight after all, and his spirits rose proportionately. Abe Bolton
growled t