ved by the Home Guard, an organization of grey-headed men.

Sunday afternoon brought many rumours. Milroy would march from McDowell
to-morrow--Banks was coming down the turnpike--Fremont hovering closer.
Excited country people flocked into town. Farmers whose sons were with
Jackson came for advice from leading citizens. Ought they to bring in
the women and children?--no end of foreigners with the blue coats, and
foreigners are rough customers! And stock? Better drive the cows up into
the mountains and hide the horses? "Tom Watson says they're awful
wanton,--take what they want and kill the rest, and no more think of
paying!--Says, too, they're burning barns. What d'you think we'd better
do, sir?" There were Dunkards in the Valley who refused to go to war,
esteeming it a sin. Some of these were in town, coming in on horseback
or in their white-covered wagons, and bringing wife or daughter. The men
were long-bearded and venerable of aspect; the women had peaceful Quaker
faces, framed by the prim close bonnet of their peculiar garb. These
quiet folk, too, were anxious-eyed. They would not resist evil, but
their homes and barns were dear to their hearts.

By rights the cadets should have been too leg weary for parade, but if
Staunton (and the young ladies) wished to see how the V. M. I. did
things, why, of course! In the rich afternoon light, band playing, Major
Smith at their head, the newly-arrived Corps of Defence marched down the
street toward a green field fit for evolutions. With it, on either
sidewalk, went the town at large, specifically the supremely happy,
small boy. The pretty girls were already in the field, seated, full
skirted beneath the sweet locust trees.

V. M. I., Home Guard, and attendant throng neared the Virginia Central.
A whistle shrieked down the line, shrieked with enormous vigour--"What's
that? Train due?"--"No. Not due for an hour--always late then! Better
halt until it pulls in. Can't imagine--"

The engine appeared, an old timer of the Virginia Central, excitedly
puffing dark smoke, straining in, like a racer to the goal. Behind it
cars and cars--_cars with men atop_! They were all in grey--they were
all yelling--the first car had a flag, the battle-flag of the
Confederacy, the dear red ground, and the blue Saint Andrew's Cross and
the white stars. There were hundreds of men! hundreds and hundreds,
companies, regiments, on the roof, on the platforms, half out of the
windows, waving, shouting