4 I'm nearer heaven this day Than I have been before.' "For us she sung 'The Young Recruit,' 'The Battle Cry of Freedom,' and other well known airs. One strain, wild and sweet as the music of a mountain horn, still echoes in my ears; the words were new to me, but this verse was an inspiration to us all, not soon to be forgotten: "They fight and bleed and die, On hill-side, plain and sea, That the old flag, cleansed from every stain, Hardly had she ceased when a strong bass voice from one of the cots began the chorus, 'Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Praise God forever more,' and from the long rows and gathered groups went up a grand volume of melody, while tuneful and unfaltering above the manly voices, rose the lady's soprano. Are you smiling at my enthusiasm? But truly I expect never to hear finer music till round the earth is sung that other chorus, 'Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to men. "I have heard of a soldier lying on one of our fields who, as he saw the colors of a passing regiment, shouted, 'Hurrah for the old Flag yet, the old Fag yet.' And again, mustering his remaining force for the effort, he repeated the salutation. The sergeant drooped the banner, that its folds might touch the dying man, who pressed it to his lips, whispering still, The old Flag yet, the old Flag yet.' Such are the refrains from hospital and field. Can we ever behold our banner it in days of peace, and cease to remember those who have saved it for us with their lives? I think not." CHAPTER XI." THE FAR WEST. 66 "FRANK," said Roger one afternoon when the two were on their way to school, ❝ do you remember the rebel father told us about, that took a trip to Indiana, and was put in the Penitentiary for vagrancy? Well, he has burrowed his way out, he and seven of his cronies; did you know it?" "What, Morgan the guerrilla?" asked Frank opening his eyes wide, and curving his eye-brows into interrogation marks. "Yes, that same scamp; if you don't believe it, ask father. The guards and the keepers are all in a fluster about it, and search has been made in every direction; for after the runaways changed their clothes in a sentry box, each one started on his own track southward, though a telegram appeared in the papers announcing that Morgan had just arrived at Toronto,' off in Canada, you know." "Who sent the message, and who furnished the clothes ?" asked Frank. "There Roger shrugged his shoulders. was a long rigmarole in the paper, but it didn't describe the cat's paw that whisked out these Butternuts. All the disunionists don't live in the rebel States, you know." In the afternoon a quantity of clean dry corn-husks were deposited in a corner of the kitchen to be "hatchelled" for mattresses; a process in which the husks were slit into small strips by drawing them across a home-made hatchel, an instrument formed of two or three sharp-pointed wires, fastened like the teeth of a comb, in a piece of wood. The children declared the work to be 'fun;' certainly they made it such by their gayety and heartiness, and in an hour or so, with the mother's superin tendence, they had prepared the stuffing and filled a bed-tick. "How thankful some of the impoverished refugees would be for such a comfortable bed," said Mrs. Warren in praising their work; whereupon Roger, who deemed guerrilla stories next in interest to those of pirates, told several, illustrating their ferocity; of their stopping a steamboat, ranging the passengers in a line on shore, and shooting them through the head; of smashing the faces of Union men with their bootheels, exploding gunpowder in the ears of their prisoners, and of other atrocities. "The Confederate authorities neither prevent nor punish these crimes," said Mrs. Warren. "On the contrary, one of the generals has issued a document authorizing the raising of guerrilla bands, though the fact is notorious that their warfare is waged for the most part against non-combatants and their families. I have heard nothing since the insurrection of the East India Sepoys, so barbarous as that massacre at |