Thanks, thanks, O ye heroes of Lookout! ye girded your souls to the fight, Drew the sword, dropped the scabbard, and went in the full conscious strength of your might! Now climbing o'er rock and o'er tree mound, up, up, by the hemlock ye swung! Now plunging through thicket and swamp, on the edge of the hollow ye hung! One hand grasped the musket, the other clutched ladder of root and of bough: The trunk the tornado had shivered, the landmark pale glimmering now, And now the mad torrent's white lightning;--no drum tapped, no bugle was blown-- To the words that encouraged each other, and quick breaths, ye toiled up alone! Oh, long as the mountains shall rise o'er the waters of bright Tennessee, Shall be told the proud deeds of the 'White Star,' the cloud-treading host of the free! The camp-fire shall blaze to the chorus, the picket-post peal it on high, How was fought the fierce battle of Lookout--how won THE GRAND FIGHT OF THE SKY! ONE NIGHT. I. From the window at which I write, in these November days, I see a muddy, swollen river, spread over the meadows into a dingy lake; it is not a picturesque or a pretty stream, in spite of its Indian name. Beyond it the land slopes away into a range of long, low hills, which the autumn has browned; the long swaths of fog stretching between river and hill are so like to them and to the dissolving gray sky that they all blend in one general gloom. This picture filling my eye narrows and shapes itself into the beginning of my story: I see a lazy, dirty river on the outskirts of a manufacturing city; where the stream has broadened into a sort of pond it is cut short by the dam, and there is a little cluster of mills. They all belong to one work, however, and they look as if they had been set down there for a few months only; 'contract' seems written all over them, and very properly, for they are running on a Government order for small arms. There is no noise but an underhum of revolving shafts and the smothered thud of trip hammers. Ore dust blackens everything, and is scattered everywhere, so that the whole ground is a patchwork of black and gray; elsewhere there is snow, but here the snow is turned to the dingy color of the place. It is very quiet outside, being early morning yet; a cold mist hides the dawn, and the water falls with a winter hiss; the paths are indistinct, for the sky is only just enough lightening to show the east.