“Do you see that white farm-house, across the river?” says a brave pigmy of a chap in navy uniform.  “That is head-quarters for Secession.  They were going to take the School from us, Sir, and the frigate; but we’ve got ahead of ’em, now you and the Massachusetts boys have come down,”—­and he twinkled all over with delight.  “We can’t study any more.  We are on guard all the time.  We’ve got howitzers, too, and we’d like you to see, to-morrow, on drill, how we can handle ’em.  One of their boats came by our sentry last night,” (a sentry probably five feet high,) “and he blazed away, Sir.  So they thought they wouldn’t try us that time.”

It was plain that these young souls had been well tried by the treachery about them.  They, too, had felt the pang of the disloyalty of comrades.  Nearly a hundred of the boys had been spoilt by the base example of their elders in the repudiating States, and had resigned.

After the middies, came anxious citizens from the town.  Scared, all of them.  Now that we were come and assured them that persons and property were to be protected, they ventured to speak of the disgusting tyranny to which they, American citizens, had been subjected.  We came into contact here with utter social anarchy.  No man, unless he was ready to risk assault, loss of property, exile, dared to act or talk like a freeman.  “This great wrong must be righted,” think the Seventh Regiment, as one man.  So we tried to reassure the Annapolitans that we meant to do our duty as the nation’s armed police, and mob-law was to be put down, so far as we could do it.

Here, too, voices of war met us.  The country was stirred up.  If the rural population did not give us a bastard imitation of Lexington and Concord, as we tried to gain Washington, all Pluguglydom would treat us a la Plugugly somewhere near the junction of the Annapolis and Baltimore and Washington Railroad.  The Seventh must be ready to shoot.

At dusk we were marched up to the Academy and quartered about in the buildings,—­some in the fort, some in the recitation-halls.  We lay down on our blankets and knapsacks.  Up to this time our sleep and diet had been severely scanty.

We stayed all next day at Annapolis.  The Boston brought the Massachusetts Eighth ashore that night.  Poor fellows! what a figure they cut, when we found them bivouacked on the Academy grounds next morning!  To begin:  They had come off in hot patriotic haste, half-uniformed and half-outfitted.  Finding that Baltimore had been taken by its own loafers and traitors, and that the Chesapeake ferry was impracticable, had obliged them to change line of march.  They were out of grub.  They were parched dry for want of water on the ferry-boat.  Nobody could decipher Caucasian, much less Bunker-Hill Yankee, in their grimy visages.

But, hungry, thirsty, grimy, these fellows were GRIT.

Massachusetts ought to be proud of such hardy, cheerful, faithful sons.