True To His Colors

"Whom do you mean by us and we?" demanded Marcy, who had listened in silence to this speech, which was addressed to the boys gathered in the hall rather than to himself. "You don't live in South Carolina."

"No, but I do," said Ed Billings, elbowing his way to the foot of the stairs on which Bob had perched himself when he began his address. "I go with my State, and you will have to go with yours or show yourself a traitor."

"A traitor to what?" inquired Marcy.

"To your State," Billings almost shouted.

"My State hasn't seceded yet; but if she does, and I go with her, how will I stand in regard to the old flag--the one that waves over this academy?"

Billings tried to answer, but his voice was drowned in the wild shouts that arose from the assembled stud