He shall guide the van of Truth! And in manhood, as in youth, Be her fearless, be her peerless Color-Bearer! With his high and bright example, Like a banner brave and ample, Ever leading through receding clouds of Error, To the empire of the Strong, And to Wrong he shall long Be a terror! _J. T. Trowbridge._ THE LITTLE PRISONER. PART I. ON THE BATTLE-GROUND. We--grandma, "our young folks," and I--live up here among the hills, in a quaint, old-fashioned farm-house,--older than any of the "old folks" now living; and every day, when the sun goes down, we gather around the great wood fire in the sitting-room, and talk and tell stories by the hour together. I tell the most of the stories; for, though I am only a plain farmer, going about in a slouched hat, a rusty coat, and a pair of pantaloons so old and threadbare that you would not wear them if you were in the ash business, I have mingled with men, seen a great many places, and been almost all over the world. My own children like my stories, because they think they are true, and because they are all about the men I have met, and the places I have seen, and so give them some glimpses of what is going on in the busy life outside of our quiet country home; but I do not expect other young folks to like them as well as my own do,--for their own father will not tell them. However, I am going to write out a few of the many I know, in the hope that they may give some trifling pleasure and instruction to boys and girls I have never seen, and who gather of evenings around firesides far away from the one where all my stories are first told. As I sit down to write by this bright, blazing fire, the clouds are scudding across the moon, and the wind is moaning around the old house, shaking the doors, and rattling the windows, and snapping the branches of the great trees as if a whole regiment of young giants were cracking their whips in the court-yard. On just such a night a wounded boy lay out on the Wilderness battle-ground! You have heard of that great battle; how two hundred thousand men met in a dense forest, and for two long days and nights, over wooded hills, and through tangled valleys, and deep, rocky ravines, surged against each other like angry waves in a storm. And you have heard, too--what is very pitiful to hear--how, when that bloody storm was over, and the sun came out, dim and cold, on the cheerless May morning which followed, thirty thousand men--every one the father, brother, or friend of some young folks at home--lay dead and dying on that awful field. Amid such a host of dead and dying men, you might overlook one little boy, who, all that starless Friday night, lay there wounded in the Wilderness. I do not want you to overlook him, and therefore I am going to tell you his story.