There was nothing concealed. It was a big family of yeomanry, brave and bent on ridding their country of any foe their leaders pitted them against. And General Jackson was their father. Around him they gathered, proud, trustful, with all the confidence of big children and all the daring, strong love of big men. And their hearts were hot and vengeful—for they were children in their tenderer natures and saw things with the eyes of children. And the things they had seen had stirred them to their fierce, quick fighting depths. Cut off from the rest of the world, wedged in between the mountains, which barred them from the east, and the savages on the south and west, their government had neglected them, left them to fight their own battles against savage foe and savage nature. But they had fought, and now they had followed Jackson from the Tennessee to the Horse Shoe Bend—they had swept a goodly land of a savage foe, opened it for the white race, destroyed their hated enemy’s most formidable ally, and had an open and unmolested road to the sea. This they had done and asked nothing from their country. This they had done on acorns and parched corn, in pestilence and swamp, in deadly savage-brooding woods—fighting famine and foe alike. And now a greater fight was on. Their country, she who had counted them as naught until now, who had paid no heed to their wants and their sufferings, was now in a death struggle with her ancient and bitterest foe. And that foe had walked through the land above them with rifle, torch and tomahawk until it seemed that nothing could stand up before them. They had whipped the American army and scattered her few weak, little ships and now scoffed and derided her army to the nations of the earth. And though their country had forgotten them, in the hearing of it all their hearts burned but for vengeance, and they forgot all their injustice when they remembered it was their country and that they, too, were Americans. And then had come Jackson, and his call to arms and his fierce fighting spirit and the fiercer fighting love they bore him. “B’ar or British, Indian or devil, lead us ag’in’ ’em, General!” they kept shouting, again and again. Juliette felt someone touch her arm. It was Mrs. Jackson: “Come, Juliette, all you girls—we are going to hand them out the cakes. I heard a hint of this—in fact, I was warned, and Aunt Hannah, I think, has baked them cakes enough.” There was another shout from the lines when great waiters of sliced cake were brought out, and with the buckets not yet empty and the tin dippers in demand, there was a roar of jollity and laughter and jokes.