idle and held on, choking.

"O pappy!--take me with you! I--I'll die if you don't take me with you!"

Who can tell what Caleb Gordon saw in his son's eyes when he bent to
loosen the grip of the small brown hand on the rein? Was it some
sympathetic reincarnation of his own militant soul striving to break its
bonds? Without a word he bent lower and swung the boy up to a seat
behind him. "Hold on tight, Buddy," he cautioned. "I'll have to run the
mare some to catch up with the boys."

And the mother? She was still kneeling on the door-stone, but the burden
of her prayer was not now for Caleb Gordon. "O Lord, have mercy on my
boy! Thou knowest how, because of my disobedience, he has the fierce
fighting blood and the stubborn unbelief of all the Gordons to contend
with: save him alive and make him a man of peace and a man of faith, I
beseech Thee, and let not the unbelief of the father or the
unfaithfulness of the mother be visited on the son!"

When the one-piece battery dashed at a clumsy gallop through the open
gate of the Dabney pasture and swung with a sharp turn into the vista of
felled trees, Thomas Jefferson beheld a thing to set his heritage of
soldier blood dancing through his veins. Standing fair in the midst of
the ax-and-shovel havoc and clearing a wide circle to right and left
with the sweep of his old service cavalry saber, was the Major,
coatless, hatless, cursing the invaders with mighty and corrosive
soldier oaths, and crying them to come on, the unnumbered host of them
against one man.

Opposed to him the men of the construction force, generaled by the young
engineer in brown duck and buttoned leggings, were deploying cautiously
to surround him. Gordon spoke to his mare; and when he drew rein and
wheeled to shout to the gun crew, Thomas Jefferson heard the engineer's
low-toned order to the shovelers: "Be careful and don't hurt him, boys.
He's the old maniac who threw me off the veranda of his house. Two of
you take him behind, and--"

The break came on the uprush of the unanticipated reinforcements. With
the battle readiness of a disciplined soldier, Caleb Gordon whipped from
the saddle and ran to help the gun crew slue the makeshift field-piece
into position.

"Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "fall back on your front line and give
the artillery a chanst at 'em. I reckon a dose o' broken pot-iron'll
carry fu'ther than that saber o' yourn. Buddy, hunt me a punk match,
quick, will ye?"

[Illustratio