"There's where you are wrong," exclaimed Marcy promptly. "Dick had nothing whatever to do with it, and when he saw this new flag, he was as much surprised as the rest of you were. I have had it concealed in my room for more than six weeks. I meant to be ready for you, you see." "Where did you get it? if that is a fair question." "It was made by a young lady who lives in Barrington, but of course you do not expect me to mention her name. She is true to her colors, and that's more than can be said in favor of you fellows who would have hauled it down if you had possessed the pluck." "That was well put in, Marcy," said Rodney. "There isn't pluck enough among the whole lot of them to fit out a good-sized cat. If the Yankees should come down here, they could drive an army of such fellows with nothing but cornstalks for weapons." The tone in which these words were uttered set Dick Graham going again, and he started all the rest that is, all except a few who were so angry they couldn't laugh. If that dread functionary, the officer of the day, heard the uproar, he must have thought that the culprits who had been commanded to report to him did not take their prospective punishment very much to heart. Of course the boys who remained below were impatient to hear all about the things that had happened in and around the belfry, and to know what was going to be done with Rodney and his cousin. But the last was a point upon which no one could enlighten them, not even the cousins themselves when they came from the presence of the officer of the day, who had given them a stern reprimand and a warning. Being from Louisiana himself, and having offered his services to her in case they should be required, he bore down upon Marcy harder than he did upon Rodney, and even went so far as to try and convince the North Carolina boy that the word "traitor," which had so often been applied to him by his schoolmates, was deserved and appropriate. But Marcy could not look at it that way, and even in the presence of the man who could have shut him up in the guard-house, with nothing but bread to eat and water to drink, he did not "haul in his shingle one inch." He never had made any trouble in the school, and, what was more to the point, he did not intend to; but neither was he going to stand still and permit a lot of rebels to run over him. The colonel had said, in so many words, that the flag was to be hoisted every morning until further orders; and in hoisting a new one in the place of the one that had disappeared, he had not broken any rule. The officer knew that to be true, and as he could not punish one without punishing the other also, he was obliged to let them both go scot-free; but he detained Rodney a moment to whisper a word of caution to him.