feller
that invented them brick-red eruptions on the face o' the earth."

This was a prosaic side of the war that had not occurred to the boys.

[Illustration: 'HERE, YOU YOUNG BRATS, WHAT ARE YOU UP TO 225]

As the train ran out into the country there were plentiful signs of war
to rivet the attention of the youngsters--hospitals, with the emaciated
patients strolling feebly about; corrals of mules and horses, the waste
and wreckage where camps had been, and bridges which had been burned and
rebuilt.

"But we haint seen no guerrillas yit," said Harry Joslyn and Gid
Mackall, whose minds seemed more fascinated with that species of an
enemy than any other, and they apparently voiced the minds of the rest.
"When're we likely to see some guerrillas?"

"O, the guerrillas are layin' purty low now, betwixt here and
Nashville," Si carelessly explained. "After we pass Nashville you kin
begin to look out for 'em."

"Why," Gid Mackall complained to the rest of them, "Corpril Elliott said
that we could begin to look out for guerrillas jest as soon's we crossed
the Ohio--that the whole o' Kentucky was full of 'em. I believe Corpril
Elliott knows more about his business than Sargint Klegg. Sargint Klegg
seems careless like. I see lots o' fellers along the road in butternut
clothes that seemed savage and sneaky like. They looked at us in a way
that made me certain they wuz spying us, and had their guns hid away
somewhere, ready to jump us whenever there wuz a good chanst."

"So did I," chorused the others.

The train made a long stop on a switch and manuvered around a while,
taking on some cars found there, and Si and Shorty seeing nothing to do
went forward to another car, where they found some returning veterans,
and were soon absorbed in a game of seven-up. Shorty had just
successfully turned a jack from the bottom, and was snickering to
himself that his fingers had not lost their cunning by long idleness,
when the game was interrupted by a train-hand rushing up with the
information:

"Here, you fellers, you want to git out there and 'tend to them kids o'
your'n. They've got a couple o' citizens down there in the brush and I
believe are goin' to hang 'em."

Si and Shorty ran down in the direction indicated. They found the
boys, stern-eyed and resolute, surrounding two weak-eyed, trembling
"crackers," who had apparently come to the train with baskets of
leathery-crusted dried-apple pies for sale. The men were specimens