"Bosh!" sneered Rodney; and then he apologized for the interruption and for the expression he had used.
"But we need an army to hold possession of our coast defences, do we not? All the government property in the Confederacy has been seized, and now that we have got it, we must hold fast to it."
"Certainly; but we don't need an army to do that. Our school battalion, if the boys were only united, could do it and not half try."
"If they were united?" repeated one of the girls. "You do not mean to say that there are traitors in that school?"
Rodney replied that was just what he did mean to say. He declared that the academy was a hotbed of treason, and Cole and Billings confirmed his words. The girls were surprised to hear it.
"And even the colonel hasn't the pluck of a cat or a mind of his own," continued Billings. "He doesn't seem to know where he stands."
"Every one in town wonders why that flag has been permitted to float so long, and now I know," said one of the girls. "The colonel is friendly to it; but still, if you young gentlemen had half the courage we have given you credit for, you would have pulled it down long ago."
Rodney winced. He did not like to confess that he and his friends had tried their best to haul the flag down, but the Union boys had prevented them from doing it; for he knew the girls would laugh at him. They might do even worse than that. They might tell him that he need not trouble himself to call upon them any more (for things had come to that pass already), so he brought forward the best excuse he could think of on the spur of the moment.
"But the colonel will not allow it," he protested. "He says it will be time enough to bother with the flag when we find out what the State is going to do."
"But I don't see how you can march under those colors when your own gallant Louisiana has followed South Carolina out of the Union."