some of the bystanders rushed in to assist, the horses were more firmly
secured, and the poor driver was dragged out, bloody and half
insensible, but not seriously injured. One ready and daring hand had
prevented the certain loss of one life, and the probable loss of more.
Fire-crackers, pistols and other abominations had vanished from the
street as if by magic; the noise over, the horses came again under
command; they were raised, and horses, harness and carriage all found
comparatively uninjured; the disabled driver was taken to a neighboring
drug-store; one of the bystanders volunteered to drive the carriage to
its destination, and took his seat on the box; the owner droned out his
thanks from the inside of the carriage, in a fat, wheezy voice, mingled
with the sobs of a woman in partial hysterics; and the equipage rolled
away almost as suddenly as it had come--perhaps not five minutes having
been consumed in the whole affair.

Short as was the time occupied, the Colonel had disappeared. When the
trouble was over he was no longer standing on the piazza. Frank Wallace
had apparently been once beaten down, and had some soiled spots on his
Melton, and a few bruises, but he had received no injury of any
consequence. For what violent and even dangerous exertion he had
undergone, he was unquestionably more than repaid when Aunt Martha
caught him by one hand and said fervently, "God bless you!" and when
Emily Owen took the other hand with a warmer and fonder pressure than
she had ever given it before, and said--so low that probably not even
Aunt Martha heard her: "Good--brave--generous Frank!--I won't scold you
again in a twelvemonth!"

All that Frank Wallace replied to both these generous outbursts, was
comprised in a snap of his fingers in the direction supposed to have
been taken by the Colonel, and the words:

"Bah! I told you that man was a coward and wouldn't fight! If he had not
pluck enough to risk the feet of those two horses, what would he do in
the face of a charge of rebel cavalry!"

CHAPTER IX.

THE FIRST WEEK OF JULY--A CHAPTER THAT SHOULD ONLY BE READ BY THOSE WHO
THINK--THE DESPAIR OF THE SEVEN DAYS BATTLES--SHOULDER-STRAPS AND
STAY-AT-HOME SOLDIERS--AN INCIDENT OF THE SECOND.

The first week of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-two. What a time it
was!--and who that took part in it, in any portion of the loyal States
to which the telegraph and the newspaper had reached, can ever forget
it? Ev