"I am a friend to no boy, cousin or no cousin, who talks as he does," said Rodney spitefully. "I despise a traitor, and the fellow who sticks up for him--" Dick stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, rested his clenched hands upon his hips, and waited for Rodney to finish the sentence. For a second or so it looked as though the two boys were going to "mix up" directly; but Cole and Billings interposed. "This will never do," said the latter. "If you are determined to have a fight, hurry and get your mail, and then we'll go back to the academy and fight the Yankees and their sympathizers. That's what we've got to do tomorrow, if we run that new flag up on the tower, and we might as well get our hands in first as last. Cole, you go on with Dick, and Rodney and I will follow." Dick laughingly declared that as he was not spoiling for a fight he could get on very well without an escort, but still he did not raise any objection when Cole took him by the arm and led him away. Rodney slowly followed, with Billings for a companion, the latter using his best arguments to make the stubborn Rodney see that he could not hope to gain anything by showing so much hostility toward his cousin, who was popular both at the academy and in the town, and that the Taylor girls, from whom they had just parted, didn't think any the more of him for what he had said. Rodney saw that plainly, and it was another thing that made him angry; but he was careful not to let Billings know it. He took no little pride in his horsemanship, and was confident that he made a very fine looking sergeant of artillery; but none of the girls had ever told him so, and he couldn't bear to hear Marcy praised either. He was envious, as well as jealous, and when Rodney got that way, he was in the right humor to do something desperate. "That new law will fix him and Graham, too," he said to himself. "I'll take pains to call their attention to it the minute I get back to the academy, and if they don't take the hint and make themselves scarce about here, I will set somebody on their track. There are a good many traitors in and around Barrington, and I wonder that they haven't been driven out before this time. I'll rid the school of those two, I bet you; but before they go I'll pick a quarrel with them and whip them out of their boots." This confident assertion recalls to mind something that was said by the Confederate General Rosser on the morning of the 9th of October, 1864, just previous to the beginning of the fight known in history as "Woodstock Races." Having formed his line of battle, Rosser sat on his horse watching the movements of his old schoolmate, General Custer, who was busy getting his own forces in shape to attack him. Finally Rosser turned to his staff and said: "You see that officer down there? That is General Custer, of whom the Yanks are so proud, and I intend to give him the best whipping to-day he ever got; see if I don't."