There were protests from some of the mountaineers, but Polly finally had her way. Lovejoy was unbound and permitted to go with the others, who were escorted a piece of the way down the mountain by Spurlock and some of the others. When the mountaineers started back, and before they had got out of sight, Lovejoy seized a musket from one of his men and turned and ran a little way back. What he would have done will never be known, for before he could raise his gun a streak of fire shot forth into his face, and he fell and rolled to the side of the road. An instant later Danny Lemmons leaped from the bushes, flourishing his smoking rifle.
“You see ’im now!” he cried. “You see what he was atter! He’d better have gone over the mountain. Lord, yes! Lots better.”
Moseley looked at Chadwick.
“Damn him!” said the latter; “he’s got what he’s been a-huntin’ for.”
By this time the little squad of militia-men, demoralized by the incident, had fled down the mountain, and Moseley and his companion hurried after them.
ANANIAS.
I.
Middle Georgia, after Sherman passed through on his famous march to the sea, was full of the direst confusion and despair, and there were many sad sights to be seen. A wide strip of country with desolate plantations, and here and there a lonely chimney standing sentinel over a pile of blackened and smouldering ruins, bore melancholy testimony to the fact that war is a very serious matter. All this is changed now, of course. The section through which the grim commander pushed his way to the sea smiles under the application of new and fresher energies. We have discovered that war, horrible as it is, sometimes drags at its bloody tumbril wheel certain fructifying and fertilizing forces. If this were not so, the contest in which the South suffered the humiliation of defeat, and more, would have been a very desperate affair indeed. The troubles of that unhappy time—its doubts, its difficulties, and its swift calamities—will never be known to posterity, for they have never been adequately described.