The war had been going on two years, when the enemy first reached Jack’s home. It was a great shock to Jack, for he had never doubted that the Confederates would keep them back. There had been a great battle some time before, and his father had been wounded and taken prisoner (at first he was reported killed). But for that, Jack said, the “Yankees” would never have got there. The Union troops did not trouble Jack personally; but they made a great deal of trouble about the place. They took all the horses and mules that were good for anything and put them in their wagons. This was a terrible blow to Jack. All his life he had been brought up with the horses; each one was his pet or his friend. After that the war seemed to be much more about Jack’s home than it had been before. The place was in the possession first of one army and then of the other, and at last, one winter, the two armies lay not far apart, with Jack’s home just between them. “The Yankees” were the nearer. Their pickets were actually on the plantation, at the ford, and at the bridge over the little river into which the creek emptied, in the big woods. There they lay with their camps over behind the hills, a mile or two farther away. At night the glow of their camp-fires could be seen. Jack had a pretty aunt who used to stay with his mother, and many young officers used to come over from the Confederate side to see her. In such cases, they usually came at night, leaving their horses, for scouting parties used to come in on them occasionally and stir them up. Once or twice skirmishes took place in the fields beyond the creek. One evening a party of young officers came in and took supper. They had some great plan. They were quite mysterious, and consulted with Jack’s mother, who was greatly interested in them. They appeared a little shy of talking before Jack; but when his mother said he had so much judgment that he could be trusted, they talked openly in his presence. They had a plan to go into the Federal camp that night and seize the commanding officer. They wanted to know all the paths. Jack could tell them. He was so proud. There was not a cow-path he did not know for two or three miles around, for he and Jake had hunted all over the country. He could tell them everything, and he did so with a swelling heart. They laid sheets of paper down on the dining-table, and he drew them plans of the roads and hills and big woods; showed where the river could be waded, and where the ravines were. He asked his mother to let him go along with them, but she thought it best for him not to go. [Illustration: HE DREW THEM PLANS OF THE ROADS AND HILLS AND BIG WOODS.]