The tract of ground on the mountain was a half-hundred acres in extent, with an abundance of wood and water, protected on the borders by trees and bushes, and accessible only by the wooden ladder by which they themselves had come up the ledge. Their camp was in the center of the tract, where the smoke of their fires would never be seen from the valleys. Overhanging the boulder face of the mountain, just back of the ridge they had used for a signal-station, was a clump of black oaks, through which something like an old trail led down to a narrow tongue of land caught on a shelf of granite, which was dark with a tall growth of pines, and the earth beneath was covered with a thick, gray carpet of needles, clean and springy to the feet. Along the southern cliff, and to the west of the spring which welled out from under the rock, was a curtain of dogwoods and birches, and elsewhere the timber was chestnut. At some points the trees of the latter variety were old and gnarled, and clung to the rocks by fantastic twisted roots like the claws of great birds, and at others they grew in thrifty young groves, three and four lusty trunks springing from the sides of a decayed stump. They were certainly in the heart of the Confederacy, but the plateau was theirs by the right of possession, and over this, come what might, they were determined that the old flag with its thirty-five stars should continue to float. They at least would stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that there had been any change in the number of States. Owing to the danger of being seen, they agreed together that no one should go down the ladder during the day. They were satisfied that they had not been seen since they had occupied the mountain. They had no reason to believe that any human being had crossed the bridge since the night the captain and his troopers had ridden away into the darkness; but still the bridge remained, the only menace to their safety, and, with the military instinct of a small army retreating in an enemy's country, they determined to destroy that means of reaching them.