“It’s all gone,” Private Harris piped up. Harry said, “I’m very sorry that our flag of truce has been eaten by one of our starving troopers. We are here to demand the surrender——” “Scouts are supposed to say _please_” Will Dawson piped up. Harry said, “Right. Scouts are polite even amid bloodshed and the roar of cannon.” Major Grumpy said, “You look as if you had just taken the city of Frankfort, judging from your rear guard.” Harry said, “Major Grumpy, your official report that Uncle Tom’s Cabin will not be given here to-day is not true; it is a garbled report. Allow me to tell you that, thanks to the boy scouts whom you sneer at and evict from your property, Eliza will be chased as per schedule, Uncle Tom will be thoroughly beaten, and little Eva will die and go to heaven as announced.” Major Grumpy was kind of surprised. First he looked us all over, and Brent took off his hat and flapped his long sleeves at him, awful funny. Then the major said, “Who put you off this property?” Then Harry said, “What you do to a boy scout, you do to every boy scout in the United States, including Mars and Grumpy’s Cross-roads and all outlying sections. When you put these little townsmen of yours out of that shady grove over there, you put _us_ out. Do you know that? Even Uncle Tom, who gets whipped six times a week, not including Wednesday and Saturday matinees, says he never heard of such treatment. You call the Grand Army a kind of brotherhood, but let me tell you, Major, that we’ve got that name _brotherhood_ copyrighted, all rights reserved. When you put these little fellows off your land, you put half a million scouts off your land, and that’s a bigger army than the Grand Army ever was. “We sent up a signal to say that we were coming and that message was delivered to you and you thought it was a lot of nonsense.” The major said, “So you were responsible for that column of smoke, hey?” Harry said, “You’re kind of old fashioned, Major, on signal corps work. That was us, all right, and these little neighbors of yours gave you the message and you laughed at them. Well, here we are with the goods, Little Eva weeping her eyes out, Topsy ready to cut up, and Simon Legree with his whip; here we are just as we said we’d be—Johnny on the spot. We’ve brought with us every veteran between here and Barrow’s Homestead and they’re with us to the last ditch. Field Marshal Gaylong here is feared by every crow in the west. Now what are you going to do about it? “We purpose, Major, to cut off your base of supplies; it’s either that or surrender. We want that shady little grove over there as indemnity. If we don’t get it we’re going to seize all the ice cream, all the soda water, all the lemonade, all the candy, all the popcorn on this bloody battlefield and starve you out. The Grand Army will look like Grand Street, New York, when we get through with it.” “And frankfurters too!” Pee-wee shouted.