And what of George Knight? He is an active, healthy-minded drummer boy belonging to one of the Ohio regiments in General Mitchell's division. His mother had died in his infancy. At the outbreak of the war, a year before the opening of our story, he was living in Cincinnati with his father. The latter suddenly gave up a prosperous law practice to go to the help of the North, secured a commission as a captain of volunteers, went to the front, and was either captured or killed by the Confederates. Since the preceding Christmas nothing had been heard of him. George, with an aching heart, stayed at home with an uncle, and chafed grievously as he saw company after company of militia pass through his native town on the way to the South. Where was his father? This he asked himself twenty times a day. And must he, the son, stand idly by whilst thousands of the flower of the land were rushing forward to fight on one side or the other in the great conflict? "I must enlist!" George had cried, more than once. "Pshaw!" replied his uncle; "you are too young--a mere child." But one fine day George Knight had himself enrolled as a drummer boy in a regiment then being recruited in Cincinnati, and, as his uncle had a large family of his own, with no very strong affection to spare for his nephew, there was not as much objection as might have been expected. So the lad went to the war. He had now become a particular _protege_ of General Mitchell, who had taken him into his own service as an assistant secretary--a position in which George had already shown much natural cleverness. After reading the letter just brought to him, Andrews tears it into a hundred little pieces which he scatters to the winds. "What's the matter?" ask several of the men, as they crowd around him. "Hurry's the matter," laughs the leader, as unconcernedly as if he were speaking of nothing more dangerous than a picnic. "The General tells me we must start at once, if we want to accomplish anything. To-morrow [Tuesday] morning he takes his army straight south to Huntsville. If he captures the town by Friday, as he expects to do, he can move eastwards, to Chattanooga. So we will do our bridge-burning and our train-stealing on Friday, before the railroad is obstructed with trains bringing Confederate reinforcements to the latter city." Even in the darkness one could detect the gleam in the eyes of the men as they saw before them, with pleasure rather than fear, the risky part they were to play in the drama of warfare. The eyes of George sparkled, likewise. "If I could only go with them," he thought. What was camp life compared to the delight of such an adventure? Waggie gave a bark. Even he seemed to scent something interesting.