"Don't let this thing be repeated," said he earnestly. "I think just as you do, and if I could have my own way, your flag would now be waving on the tower; but it is my duty to obey orders, and it is your duty as well. Don't make another move until this State joins the Confederacy, and then there will be no one to oppose you. The hoisting of another flag will break up the school, but that is to be expected. You may go." "He said, in effect, that he would keep this thing hanging over our heads to see how we behave in future," said Rodney to Billings and Cole, who were in the hall waiting for him. "He is on our side, but not being the head of the school, he can't back us up as he would like to. But then this will keep," he added, once more shaking out his flag, which he had all the while carried under his arm. "I was afraid the teachers would take it away from me, but as they didn't, we'll hold ourselves in readiness to run it up when the other is ordered down." But the incidents of the morning, exciting as they were, did not long monopolize the attention of the students, or remain the principal subjects of discussion. They were forgotten the minute the mail was distributed, for of course their papers contained news from all parts, and the boys made it their business to keep posted. There was one thing the papers had already begun to do that excited derisive laughter among all the sensible boys in school. They called dispatches from the North "Foreign Intelligence." But there were some, like Rodney Gray, who could not see that that was anything to laugh at, and following the lead of their favorite journals in politics, they soon learned to follow their vocabulary also, and always spoke of the North as "the United States," and of the South as "the Confederate States." When the adjutant's call was sounded Marcy Gray fell in with the other members of his company who had been warned for duty, and marched to the parade-ground to go through the ceremony of guard-mounting. Immediately after that he went on post in a remote part of the grounds, a favorite place with the sentries on hot summer days, for the woods on the other side came close up to the fence, and the trees threw a grateful shade over the beat. The only order the boy he relieved had to pass, was a simple as well as a useless one. It was to "keep his eye peeled for that fence and not permit anybody to climb over it"; but Marcy listened as though he meant to obey it. Then the relief passed on, and he was left alone with his thoughts, which, considering the incidents connected with that skirmish on the tower, were not the most agreeable company.