"I don't know that we have anything to say against that," replied Billings, looking around upon his friends to see what they thought about it. "Holler as much as you please. That's the only way you can salute it, for the colonel would go crazy if you asked him to lend you the battery."
"That's the only way," said Marcy as he unfastened the color-halliards from the cleat. "I shall not ask for the guns, for I shall have my trouble for my pains. Attention! Three cheers for the Star Spangled Banner; and may the traitors who caused it to be lowered in Charleston harbor for the time being be glad to turn to it for protection."
"That flag will wave over Sumter again, and don't you forget what I tell you," shouted Dixon.
It was not a very noisy salute that greeted the flag as it fluttered down from aloft, but it was a heart-felt one, and there was not a rebel on the tower who dared utter a derisive word, however much he might have felt inclined to do so. But when the Stars and Bars were bent on to the halliards and run up to the masthead, the yells of its supporters were almost deafening and their antics quite indescribable. There was an abundance of enthusiasm about that time. There wasn't quite so much one short year later, when some of those same boys learned, to their great disgust and rage, that the Confederate Congress had passed a sweeping conscription law, and that their one year's enlistment had been arbitrarily lengthened to three. Then they began to see what despotism meant.
All hope of conciliation or peace at any price was gone now. There was nothing to hold them together any longer, and the following morning saw another and larger exodus of students from the academy who were homeward bound. Among them were Cole, Graham, Billings, Dixon, and Marcy Gray. It was not quite so solemn a parting as the first one was, for the drooping spirits of the rebels had been raised to blood-heat by that glorious news from Charleston.
"Shoot high, Marcy, when you meet the Stars and Bars on the battlefield," said Billings. "There may be a Barrington boy thereabouts. But you can't deny that we've whipped you once in a fair fight, can you?"
"I don't know what you call a fair fight," replied Marcy. "Of course five thousand men, well supplied with grub and ammunition, ought to whip fifty-one soldiers and a few hired mechanics. But they held out against you as long as they had anything to eat or powder to shoot with. I wouldn't crow over it, if I were in your place."
"Well, we have given you a taste of what is in store for you, at all events."
"And you have learned something that I have tried to get through your thick heads ever since these troubles began," chimed in Dixon. "I told you the North would fight. But let's jump in if we are going home. You know the trains meet here, and we haven't much more than time to get to the depot."
The boys once more shook hands with their teachers, cheered lustily for the Barrington Military Academy and everybody connected with it, shouted themselves hoarse for their respective flags, and then sprang into the carriages and were driven away.