Chapter VI. Sumter

Harry saw an increase of energy after the arrival of Beauregard. There were fresh rumors about the great fleet the North was going to send down for the relief of Sumter. Major Anderson, the commander in the fort, steadily refused all demands for surrender. It was said freely that the Northern States did not intend to let their Southern sisters go in peace. The Mercury, with all the power and fire of the Rhett family behind it, thundered continually for action. Sumter with its guns menacing the city should not be allowed to remain under the hostile flag.

It seemed to Harry afterward that he was in a sort of fever, not a fever that parched and burned, but a fever that made his pulse leap faster, and his heart long for the thrill of conflict. Often he sat with St. Clair and Langdon on their earthworks, and looked at Sumter.

"I wonder when the word will come for us to turn these big guns loose?" Langdon said one day, as he looked at the cannon. "Seems to me we ought to take Sumter before that fleet comes."

"But wouldn't it be better for them to make the first hostile movement, Happy?" asked Harry. "Then we'd put them in the wrong."

"What difference does it make if we should happen to fight them, anyhow? The question who began it we'd settle afterwards on victorious fields. Oh, we're bound to win, Harry! We can't help it. If there's any war, I expect inside of a year to sleep with my boots on in the President's bed in the White House, and then I'd go on to Philadelphia and New York and Boston and show myself as a fair specimen of the unconquerable Southern soldier."

"Happy," said Harry, in a rebuking tone, "you're the most terrific chatterer I ever heard. Before you've done anything whatever, you talk about having done it all."

"And they call us Charlestonians fiery boasters," said St. Clair. "Why, there's nobody in all Charleston who's half a match for this sea islander, Happy Tom Langdon."

Charleston received Lincoln's threat and gave it back. Many were glad that he had made the issue. The enthusiasm swelled yet further, when they heard that the Confederate envoys at Washington, treating for a peaceful separation, had left the capital at once when Lincoln had sent his message that Sumter would be relieved.

"It looks more like war now," said Langdon, with satisfaction, "and I may make my victorious march into the North after all."

Harry said nothing. As events marched forward on swift foot, he felt more intensely their gravity. For every month that had passed since he put the Tacitus in his desk at Pendleton Academy, the boy had grown a year in mind and thought. So, that rumor about the relieving fleet had come true and they might look for it in Charleston in two or three days.

Harry had his place in one of the batteries nearest