XVI. SECRET ENEMIES, 349 XVII. MARCY GRAY PRIVATEERSMAN, 372 XVIII. CONCLUSION, 397 TRUE TO HIS COLORS. ---- CHAPTER I. ALL ABOUT THE FLAG. "Rodney Gray, I am ashamed of you; and if you were not my cousin, I should be tempted to thrash you within an inch of your life." "Never mind the relationship. After listening to the sentiments you have been preaching in this academy for the last three months, I am more ashamed of it than you can possibly be. You're a Yankee at heart, and a traitor to your State. Let go those halliards!" "I'll not do it. Look here, Rodney. Your ancestors and mine have fought under this flag ever since it has been a flag, and, if I can help it, you shall not be the first of our name to haul it down. Let go yourself, and stand back, or I will throw you over the parapet." "But that flag doesn't belong up there any longer, and I say, and we all say, that it shall not stay. Here's our banner; and if there's a war coming, as some of you seem to think, it will lead us to victory on every battle-field." An exciting scene was being enacted in and around the belfry of the Barrington Military Institute on the morning of the 9th of March, 1861; and it was but one of many similar scenes which, for some time past, had been of almost daily occurrence in many parts of the South. It had been brought about by the efforts of a band of young secessionists, headed by Rodney Gray, to haul down the academy flag, and to hoist in its place a strange banner--one that nobody had ever seen or heard of previous to the 4th of March, the day on which Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated President of the United States. The students who were gathered on the top of the tower at the time our story begins were Southern boys without exception, but they did not all believe in secession and disunion. Many of them were loyal to the old flag, and were not ready to see it hauled down, and a strange piece of bunting run up in its place.