visit his hare-traps,
rushed into his mother's room, white-faced and wide-eyed. "Oh!
mamma!" he gasped, "they have hung him, just because he had on those
clothes. Uncle Saunders heard all about it."

Mrs. Stafford, though she was much moved herself, endeavored to explain
to the boy that this was one of the laws of war, but Ran's mind was not
able to comprehend the principles which imposed so cruel a sentence for
what he deemed so harmless a fault.

"It's that old General Denby!" he exclaimed, hotly. "Even his own
soldiers say he works them to death. I wish somebody would capture
him."

This act and some other measures of severity gave General Denby a
reputation for much harshness among the few old residents who yet
remained at their homes within the lines, and the boys used to gaze at
him furtively as he would ride by, grim and stern, followed by his
staff. Yet there were those who said that General Denby's rigor was
simply the result of a high standard of duty, and that at bottom he had
a soft heart.

The children, however, could never bear to think of him, and when he
would pass along with his staff, as he sometimes did, while they were
watching beside the road, and would look at them with something very
like a smile in his eyes, they would turn their heads away for fear he
would speak to them.

V

THE SPY

The approach of Christmas was marked even in the Federal camps, and
many a song and ringing laugh were heard around the camp-fires glowing
along the hills and in the tents and little cabins used as
winter-quarters, over the boxes which were pouring in from home.

The troops in the camps near General Denby's head-quarters on Christmas
Eve had been larking and frolicking all day like so many boys,
preparing for the festivities of the evening, when they proposed to
have a great entertainment; and the General, as he sat in the smoky
front room in the old farm-house used as his head-quarters, writing
official papers, had more than once during the afternoon half-frowned
at the noise and shouting outside. It disturbed him. A holiday
occasion was not the easiest time for a general in command, especially
when the enemy lay in force scarcely five miles away. The men were apt
to think that at such a time discipline should be relaxed, and they be
allowed to take it easy. And such an occasion was just the moment when
his opponent, a general as watchful as he was able, was likely to make
an attack. N