The girls could hardly believe that they had heard aright. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then they looked at Rodney.
"I didn't think that Marcy Gray was such a coward," said one, at length.
"Oh, you are 'way off the track!" exclaimed Dick Graham, who, although he afterward went into the Confederate Army and became a partisan ranger, never forgot the warm friendship he cherished for Marcy Gray. "That fellow is nobody's coward, and you wouldn't think so if you could have seen him when—"
"Look here, Dick," interrupted Rodney, who was afraid that Marcy's friend was about to say something compromising. "It is very easy for a fellow to say that he is for the Union when he is so far away from the North that he can not, by any possible chance, be called upon to fight for the opinions he pretends to hold, but has Marcy the courage to show by his acts that he is sincere in what he says?"
"Well, yes; I think he has," answered Dick. "When you fellows had that fight over the flag—"
"That isn't what I mean," exclaimed Rodney, impatiently.
"What was it, Mr. Graham?" asked one of the girls, who rather wanted to see Marcy Gray's courage vindicated, if there were any way in which it could be done. "What did he do? Did you really have a fight at the academy over the flag? Go on, please, and tell us all about it."
Rodney tried to speak, but Dick was not to be put down. He knew that Rodney was determined to say something to his cousin's injury if he could, and Dick Graham was not the boy to stand by and see it done without raising his voice in protest.
"Yes; some of the boys tried their level best to get the flag," said
Dick, "but its defenders were much too numerous and strong for them.
During the struggle there were some middling heavy blows passed, and, if
I mistake not, Rodney came in for a few that he'll not soon forget."
Rodney tried to laugh it off as a joke, but it was easy to see that he was about as mad as he could hold.