Frank\'s Campaign, or, Farm and Camp
CHAPTER I. THE WAR MEETING The Town Hall in Rossville stands on a moderate elevation overlooking the principal street. It is generally open only when a meeting has been called by the Selectmen to transact town business, or occasionally in the evening when a lecture on temperance or a political address is to be delivered. Rossville is not large enough to sustain a course of lyceum lectures, and the townspeople are obliged to depend for intellectual nutriment upon such chance occasions as these. The majority of the inhabitants being engaged in agricultural pursuits, the population is somewhat scattered, and the houses, with the exception of a few grouped around the stores, stand at respectable distances, each encamped on a farm of its own. One Wednesday afternoon, toward the close of September, 1862, a group of men and boys might have been seen standing on the steps and in the entry of the Town House. Why they had met will best appear from a large placard, which had been posted up on barns and fences and inside the village store and postoffice.
lantern to the ground, and extinguished the light. A moment afterwards,
the door was closed and bolted, and the carpenter found himself alone.
"Mercy on us!" cried he, as a thrill of apprehension ran through his
frame. "The Dutchman was right, after all."
This exclamation had scarcely escaped him, when the discharge of a
pistol was heard, and a bullet whizzed past his ears.
"I have him!" cried a voice in triumph.
A man, then, rushed up the entry, and, seizing the unlucky carpenter by
the collar, presented a drawn sword to his throat. This person was
speedily followed by half a dozen others, some of whom carried
flambeaux.
"Mur--der!" roared Wood, struggling to free himself from his assailant,
by whom he was half strangled.
"Damnation!" exclaimed one of the leaders of the party in a furious
tone, snatching a torch from an attendant, and throwing its light full
upon the face of the carpenter; "this is not the villain, Sir Cecil."
"So I find, Rowland," replied the other, in accents of deep
disappointment, and at the same time relinquishing his grasp. "I could
have sworn I saw him enter this passage. And how comes his cloak on this
CHAPTER I. THE WAR MEETING The Town Hall in Rossville stands on a moderate elevation overlooking the principal street. It is generally open only when a meeting has been called by the Selectmen to transact town business, or occasionally in the evening when a lecture on temperance or a political address is to be delivered. Rossville is not large enough to sustain a course of lyceum lectures, and the townspeople are obliged to depend for intellectual nutriment upon such chance occasions as these. The majority of the inhabitants being engaged in agricultural pursuits, the population is somewhat scattered, and the houses, with the exception of a few grouped around the stores, stand at respectable distances, each encamped on a farm of its own. One Wednesday afternoon, toward the close of September, 1862, a group of men and boys might have been seen standing on the steps and in the entry of the Town House. Why they had met will best appear from a large placard, which had been posted up on barns and fences and inside the village store and postoffice.