"We're done playing soldier," said Dick Graham. "The next time we shoulder muskets or draw sabers, there will be more reality in it than some of us will care to face. Let's keep track of one another as long as we can, and bear always in mind that we are not enemies, if we do march under different flags."
Marcy Gray was glad when his train came along and bore him away from Barrington. He wanted to settle back in his seat and think; but that was something he was not permitted to do. The passengers, with now and then a notable exception, acted as though they were fit candidates for a lunatic asylum. They were walking about the car, flourishing their hats or fists in the air, talking loudly and shaking hands as often as they met in the aisle. "Glorious news," "Southern rights," "Yankee mudsills," "Fort Sumter," were the words that fell upon Marcy's ear when he opened the door and walked into the car. In an instant his uniform attracted general attention.
CHAPTER XIV.
MARCY CHANGES HIS CLOTHES.
Marcy Gray was blessed with as much courage as most boys, but he would have been glad if he could have backed out of that car without being seen, and gone into another. Perhaps the conviction that he was "an odd sheep in the flock," and that he held, and had often published, opinions that differed widely from those that animated the excited, gesticulating men before him, had something to do with his nervousness and timidity; and it may be that the revolvers he saw brandished by two or three of the half-tipsy passengers had more effect upon him. But he could not retreat. They saw his uniform as soon as he opened the door, and some of the noisiest among them stumbled to greet him.
"Here's one of our brave fellows now," shouted one, firing his revolver out of the window with one hand while he extended the other to Marcy. "Got his soldier clothes on and going to the front before our guns in Charleston harbor have got through smoking. Young man, you're my style. I'm a member of the Baltimore Grays, and I'm on my way home to join 'em in defense of our young republic. What regiment?"
"Company A, Barrington Cadets," replied Marcy, rightly supposing that the Baltimore man was too far gone to remember, if indeed he had ever heard, that there was a military school in the town they had just left. "I'm going home on a leave of absence."
"Course you are," replied the man. "Services not needed at present and mebbe never will be. The Yankees are all mechanics and small trades-people, and there's no fight in such. We're gentlemen, and there's fight in us, I bet you. But you show your good will in putting on those soldier clothes, and that's what every man's got to do, or go up to the United States. Those who are not for us are against us, and we'll make short work with 'em. Say, we licked 'em, didn't we?"
"Of course," answered Marcy. "Fifty-one soldiers without food or powder don't stand much chance against five thousand well-equipped men."
"It would have been all the same if there had been fifty-one thousand of 'em," declared the Baltimore man. "Aint got any business there. Fort belongs to So' Car'lina. Why didn't they get out when Beau'gard told 'em to, if they didn't want to get licked? Three cheers for Southern Confed'sy!"