'll give the word."

Jim groaned. "I feel sicker'n a yaller dog after a fight--'n' you know I
didn't mind 'em at all when they were really here! You two go on, 'n'
I'll come after awhile."

Coffin and Billy found the back street. It lay clear, warm, sunny,
empty. "They're all down at the bridge," said Billy. "Bang! bang! bang!"
They came to a house, blinds all closed, shrinking behind its trees.
Houses, like everything else, had personality in this war. A town
occupied changed its mien according to the colour of the uniform in
possession. As the two hurrying grey figures approached, a woman,
starting from the window beside which she had been kneeling, watching
through a crevice, ran out of the house and through the yard to the
gate. "You two men, come right in here! Don't you know the Yankees are
in town?"

She was young and pretty. Coffin swept off his cap. "That's the reason
we're trying to get to the edge of town--to help the men with the wagon
train."

Her eyes grew luminous. "How brave you are! Go, and God bless you!"

The two ran on. Mathew Coffin added another line to his letter: "A lady
besought me to enter her house, saying that I would surely be killed,
and that she could conceal me until the enemy was gone. But I--"

They were nearly out of town--they could see the long train hurriedly
moving on the Staunton road. There was a sudden burst of musketry. A
voice reached them from the street below. "Halt, you two Confeds running
there! Come on over here! Rally to the colours!" There was a flash of
the stars and bars, waved vigorously. "Oh, ha, ha!" cried Billy, "thar
was some of us wasn't taken! Aren't you glad we didn't stay behind the
cowshed?"

It came into Coffin's head that Billy might tell that his sergeant had
wished to stay behind the cowshed. The blood rushed to his face; he saw
the difficulty of impressing men who knew about the cowshed with his
abilities in the way of storming batteries single-handed. He had really
a very considerable share of physical courage, and naturally he esteemed
it something larger than it was. He began to burn with the injustice of
Billy Maydew's thinking him backward in daring and so reporting him
around camp-fires. As he ran he grew angrier and angrier, and not far
from the shaken flag, in a little grassy hollow which hid them from
view, he called upon the other to halt. Billy's sense of discipline
brought him to a stop, but did not keep him from saying, "What for?"