Emmeline hurried down the alley and the back street, and at last reached her own garden. Leaving the baby in the kitchen, she[Pg 16] came through the side yard to the gate. There she halted, with quaking knees.

[Pg 16]

It was not the rebels that had come, but some strange, tanned, half-clad creatures; they marched in good order, and looked steadily from their hollow eyes at astonished Gettysburg, which crowded, half fearful, at corners, and hung, curious, from windows. Many of the soldiers were barefooted; others wore shoes from which the soles had fallen; some had tied the soles to their shoes with strips of soiled and blackened rags. Emmeline stared with open mouth.

Half in fun and half in earnest, the strangers began to jeer at their amazed and paralyzed audience:—

"We're not a parade, Yankees!"

"We've come to eat you up!"

[Pg 17]One of them caught sight of Emmeline, with her ruffled dress, staring eyes, and open mouth. "Hello, sissy!" he called. "Look out that when you close your mouth you don't bite your tongue off!"

[Pg 17]

Emmeline did not realize the full measure of the insult, for as he spoke, she had caught sight of a flag that hitherto she had beheld only in pictures—a flag that she scorned and despised. She mounted at once to a higher bar on her mother's gate.

"'Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,'" sang Emmeline.

"'What so—'" Suddenly she felt some one seize her. She struggled, and cried, "Let me go! Let me go, I tell you!"

Then she realized that the hand on her shoulder was a familiar one.

[Pg 18]"Emmeline," commanded her mother, "be still!"

[Pg 18]

"He insulted me! He's a rebel!"

"Emmeline," commanded Mrs. Willing again, "be still!" Then from her mother's lips came an incredible order: "Go and fill the water pail, and bring it here with a dipper."

"Mother!" gasped Emmeline. "Are we going to give them water?"

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