boy came upon a soldier. The man was kneeling beside a uniformed figure rifling the pockets. He looked up startled, but, seeing it was only a boy, bent again over the body. Charlie Phillips, telling of it, speaks in awed wonder of the madness that fell upon him, rage such as he never since has seen or known. He snatched up a rusty musket, and the man, reading in his eyes a purpose of which the boy himself was hardly conscious, sprang to his feet with an oath and caught up a broken saber, then struck as a snarling animal strikes. The blow, il parried, glanced down the musket - barrel and gashed open the thumb that held it; but the boy swung the musket under the man's guard and felled him, then in blind fury made many times sure that he had killed him.

Back in Richmond his father asked. "What happened to the thumb, Charlie?" "Oh," he said, "I cut it." The scar is there to-day, a souvenir of the man who gave it.

Winter came again, the winter of '6263, when conscription began to grow more rigorous. John Phillips concocted, in what purported to be the Family Bible, a new register of ages for himself and his sons. He beat the conscription laws, but there was still the home guard, which at last he refused to join; then the soldiers came and marched him away. Charlie remembers the terror he and his mother were in lest it be on a graver charge. But the newspapers (which they have kept to this day) brought reassurance that, after all, it was but the simple accusation: "John Y. Phillips, Castle Godwin; committed March 20th; charge, disloyalty." For sixty four days John Phillips lay in Castle Godwin, that had been McDonald's negro jail before the war. It was while his father was in prison that the boy accomplished a bit of service unequaled for sheer impudence and audacity-in short, stole a Confederate despatch out of the office of ProvostMarshal General Winder.

There came to him one day as he was selling papers one of those men whom he recognized as having authority over him, for it was as though he had been presented body and soul to the secret service. He was a communistic tool for the use of any member. He was told to go to

the neighborhood of Winder's office and watch for a certain (described) man, one of General Winder's force. He was to follow this man into the office and "get" the paper which he would lay on the table; and that was exactly what he did. He followed the man into the busy, crowded office, saw him lay a folded paper on the table, and immediately he went over and laid his newspapers down on top of it. When he picked them up again the despatch was with them, and he went out of the office with it pressed close to his side. Perhaps there was a high-andlow hunt and a hue and cry when the despatch was missed-he never knew; nor does he know whether the man who brought the despatch to the office was a Federal spy who had worked himself in there or whether he was one who had sold himself for secret - service money. The Unionist who had sent him for the paper passed soon after. The boy deftly slipped the despatch to him, and after that he did not care even if he were searched, and he loitered in front of the office long enough to set at rest any suspicions.

There is the story of how at last Charlie was conscripted-" got the collar." Not much of a story, he says; then swiftly sketches it in until a picture has been made complete the soldiers at the door when he unsuspectingly opened it to their knock. The sight, as he looked back, of his mother standing framed in the doorway bravely waving to him, the crying children clinging to her skirts. It wouldn't have seemed so bad if there had just been a little sun, but that had been such a dispiriting day-slush and mud, the slowly falling snow, and the lowering, unbroken clouds. The soldiers had turned him into a big, gloomy room, stiflingly overheated and crowded with sullen men and boys. He had wandered about for a time, then, with suddenly formed purpose, made his way to the door. "Say, I'm sick t' my stomach. Le' me go to the wash-room," he begged. The sentries hesitated. There were other guards at the outer doors, and this was such a young, white faced kid; they nodded. "No tricks, mind!" one said. Once around the turn of the corridor, he assumed a jaunty air. At the front door he motioned the guards to one side. "Ta, ta, boys-the jedge said I was to go home

an' grow some." They laughed goodnaturedly and let him by. For days after that he was afraid to go home, but for some inexplicable reason they never came for him again.

There came a night when, on his way to the office for his newspapers, he suddenly met his father and another man. His father made a sign to him to stop, and he stepped back into the shadows and waited. He overheard the man say, "But it has got to be done!" And after a moment's hesitation his father's seemingly reluctant answer, "All righthere's the boy." John Phillips motioned to his son, and then they moved away, Charlie following at a little distance. At the river's edge close to Mayo Bridge they stopped, and he joined them. The night was cloudy; heavy rains had fallen, and the river was swollen and noisy. It was here that they told the boy for the first time what he was to do. He was given the despatch, and the man untied a flat-bottomed, square - ended boat into which Charlie Phillips climbed and lay down. The two men covered the boat over with brush and debris until the gunwale was brought down within a few inches of the water, and the whole looked like some tangled mass of wreckage; then Charlie's father carefully pushed it out until it was caught by the swift current.

Of that ride details like these stick in his memory: the sound of the water against the boat-sides and the smell of the wet, rotten wood above him; the penetrating chill as his clothes soaked up the seeping water, and the twinges of pain from his cramped position; the loudness of the river foaming round some rock or snag, dizzy spinnings in whirlpools, or the rocking and bobbing in eddies where portions of the driftwood blind tore loose with loud raspings and crackles. There was the ever-present thought that the boat might sink and he be entangled and held down by the heap of driftwood; but worse than any sense of danger was the feeling of utter loneliness. He trailed an old broom to steer with, and, when the flying wrack of clouds blew away and it grew lighter, he wobbled the broom to make the too straightly drifting boat better simulate a pile of wreckage borne by the current. There were obstructions -old ships and the gunboat Jamestown

that had been sunk to block the channel, and the river was studded with torpedoes; but he had been warned and instructed, so hugged the left-hand shore and thus avoided them. A shot brought his heart into his throat as he drifted past Fort Darling on Drewry's Bluff, but it was followed by no others. At last he went ashore on the north bank, and there, by comparison with what had gone before, the adventure seemed ended. He slept in the woods all next day. At dusk he swam across and "delivered the message."

The second time he saw Grant is very different from that of the first meeting in front of Donelson. He had been given a message to deliver; he had his passport-the bundle of Richmond papersand he had his disguise-his fair skin and the face of a child, hardened and sharpened, keener than that of the boy of three years ago; and he had his unbounded self-assurance, and so (not the only newsboy, you must remember) he passed through the Confederate army to the outermost picket-line. There was no fighting just then; the armies lay within half - musket - shot, watching each other, cat-and-mouse fashion, with their picket eyes.

"Mister," he said, with his broadest Southern drawl, "let me go and sell my papers to the Yanks over yonder?"

"Bring us back some Yankee papers and y' kin go," they bargained.

But within the Union lines something for once went wrong. He was arrested and locked up until they could overhaul his story. He He played baby "-whined and begged-but they would not let him go; then, as a last resort," Corporal of the guard!" he bawled, "take me to General Grant. He won't let you keep me in the guard-house." At last an officer was called, and he must have reported to the general. Grant sent for him. The officer led the way to the tent, saluting. "Here is that boy, General." Charlie Phillips, barefooted, coatless, his torn trousers held up by one suspender, stood unabashed before the general-in-chief of the Union armies.

officers.

In the tent were half a dozen

"I'd like to see you alone for a couple of minutes, General," the boy boldly said. Grant turned to his officers: "Retire.

please, gentlemen." When they had gone the boy fumbled at one of the many rips in his trousers and drew out a small wad of paper which he handed without a word to Grant, who read it, then stood looking thoughtfully at the messenger.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, impassively. To the boy's answer his rejoinder was another question: "How did you come through the lines?" Then: "How are you going back?" That was all; no comments, only questions; for commendation, only a quick, pleased nod that thrilled the boy as no outpouring of words could have done.

General Grant went to the tent door and beckoned to the waiting officer. "This boy is doing no harm," he said, mildly. "Let him sell his papers in the camp."

As he walked exultantly away the boy glanced back for one more look at the tent where he and Grant had talked together. The general was still standing in the tent door, still smoking and biting on the short, thick cigar, still thoughtfully watching him. Did Grant remember their other meeting? Charlie Phillips says that he has wondered about that from then till now. "Maybe yes, maybe no, but I've always thought he did."

"The next thing that I mind-after Grant and I had our little visit together," says Charlie Phillips, "was the time I stole old Dill's horse, and killed it, an' blame near got killed m'self." On this occasion another despatch was to be delivered, not to General Grant in person this time, but just to the Union army. There were no instructions except to get it there. For some reason he did not use the way of openly passing the pickets by the newsboy dodge. Instead, he headed for the Federal army and tramped out of Richmond by the shortest road.

In

a field by the roadside a pastured horse put its head over the fence and whinnied to him; he recognized it as "old Dill's the government hardtack baker's horse one of the best horses left in Richmond." Perhaps some devil of recklessness seized him, perhaps a too strong desire to be mounted on that glossy back and to feel beneath him the bird-like glide of a thoroughbred. He whistled softly, and the horse neighed an answer. He says it seemed to say to him, "Steal me, Charlie,

steal me!" Tempted and slowly yielding, he climbed the fence. The moment he was mounted the horse stole him; they were over the fence and going like mad down the road before he had made up his mind or realized what had happened.

He

He rode at an easy gallop cross country until he reached the point where he believed that he had passed, by blind luck, between the guards and patrols and pickets, out of the Confederate lines, and into the no-man's land between the two armies. Then came a sudden shout from a little patch of woodland which he had just skirted, and without looking back he began to ride for his life. By the time the vedettes had mounted he had gained the start which saved him. His only fear, he says, was that in some way his father would learn of his folly. He was riding the better horse, and his slight weight was as nothing compared with that borne by the cavalry horses. began to draw away from them rapidly. One after another of his pursuers fired at him, and their shots told that they had almost given up hope of taking him. He was looking back over his shoulder when the end came, and never saw the gully at all. He had an instant's sensation of flying, of a terrible jar, then of being whirled end over end. He had staggered to his feet and had instinctively commenced to run before he comprehended that his horse had fallen short in its leap and had struck with its forelegs, breaking both of them against the gully's edge. He heard the yells of the cavalrymen and a sputter of pistol-shots, but that from which he tried to flee was the sound of his wounded horse's screams. It was a long run to the strip of woods toward which he had intuitively headed, but he was almost there before the Confederates could cross the gully and resume the chase. By the time they reached the wood he was in a tree-top safely hidden. Twilight was nearly done. He could hear the clanking of the cavalrymen's sabers as they stamped about beating the undergrowth for him. When it was quite dark they went away, and he climbed stiffly down and pushed on for the Union lines, still grieving for his horse.

The war wrought horrors upon the bodies of children who fought in it, but