SI AND SHORTY'S RECRUITS ENTER KENTUCKY. THE bright, active minds of the 65 boys that Si and Shorty were put in charge of were aflame with curiosity regarding everything connected with the war. For two years they had been fed on stories and incidents of the mighty conflict then convulsing the land. Every breath they had drawn had some taste of battle in it. Wherever they went or were they heard incessantly of the storm-swept "front"--of terrific battles, perilous adventures, heroic achievements, death, wounds and marvelous escapes. The older boys were all at the front, or going there, or coming back with heroic marks of shot and shell. The one burning aspiration in every well-constructed boy's heart was to get big enough to crowd past the recruiting officer, and go where he could see with his own eyes the thunderous drama. There was concentrated all that fills a healthy boy's imagination and stirs his blood--something greater than Indian-fighting, or hunting lions and tigers. They looked on Si and Shorty with little short of reverence. Here were two men who had captured a rebel flag in a hand-to-hand fight, both of whom had been left for dead, and both promoted for gallantry. What higher pinnacle of greatness could any boy hope to reach? They began at once seriously imitating the walk and manners of their heroes. The tall, lank boys modeled themselves on Shorty, and the short, chubby ones on Si. And there at once rose contention between them as to which was the greater hero. "I heard," said Henry Joslyn, "that Corpril Elliott was the first to reach the rebel flag, he havin' much the longest legs, but jest as he grabbed it a big rebel knocked him, and then they all piled on to him, and about had him finished when Serg't Klegg reached there at a charge bayonets, and he bayoneted everybody in sight, until a sharpshooter in a tree shot him with an explosive bullet that tore his breast all to pieces, but he kept right on bayonetin' 'em till he dropped from loss o' blood. Then they fired a cannon at the sharpshooter and blowed him to pieces just as you'd blow a chippy to pieces with a bullet from a bear-gun." "'Twan't that way at all," said tall, lathy Gid Mackall. "A whole lot of 'em made for the flag together. A charge o' grapeshot come along and blowed the rest away, but Serg't Klegg and Corpril Elliott kep' right on. Then Corpril Elliott he lit into the crowd o' rebels and laid a swath right around him, while Sergint Klegg grabbed the flag. A rebel Colonel shot him, but they couldn't stop Corpril Elliott till they shot a brass six-pounder at him." The boys stood on the banks of the Ohio River and gazed eagerly at the other side. There was the enemy's country--there the theater in which the great drama was being enacted. Everything there had a weird fascination for them, as a part of, or accessory to, the stupendous play. It was like peeping under the circus tent, when they were smaller, and catching glimpses of the flying horses' feet.