the Carolina hills, cold enough to make fur-lined overcoats welcome.
But we'll forget about cold winds and everything else unpleasant,
before such a jolly fire as this."

They finished an abundant supper, and soon relapsed into silence.
The flames threw out such a generous heat that they were content to rest
their backs against the log, and gaze sleepily into the coals. Beyond
the fire, in the shadow, they saw the sentinels walking up and down.
Harry felt for the first time that he was really within the iron bands
of military discipline. He might choose to leave the camp and go into
Montgomery, but he would choose and nothing more. He could not go.
Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St. Hilaire were friends,
but they were masters also, and he was recognizing sooner than some of
the youths around him that it was not merely play and spectacle that
awaited them.



CHAPTER V

THE NEW PRESIDENT


Their great day came. Clear sunlight shone over the town, the hills and
the brown waters of the Alabama. It was a peculiarly Southern country,
different, Harry thought, from his own Kentucky, more enthusiastic,
perhaps, and less prone to count the cost. The people had come not only
on the railroad, but they were arriving now from far places in wagons
and on horseback. Men of distinction, almost universally, wore black
clothes, the coats very long, black slouch hats, wide of brim, and white