182 BENNY’S

“Té thine enemy hunger, feed him! -
I obey, dear Christ!” she said ;

A creeping blush, with its scarlet flush,
O’er the face of the soldier spread.

Herose: “ You have said it, madam!
Standing within your doors

Is the Rebel foe; but as forth they go
They shall trouble not you nor yours !”

Alas, for the word of the leader!
Alas, for the soldier’s vow!

When the captain’s men rode down the glen,
They carried the widow’s cow.

It was then the fearless Jamie
Sprang up with flashing eyes,

And in spite of tears and his mother’s fears,
On the gray mare, off he flies.

Like a wild young Tam O’Shanter
He plunged with piercing whoop,
O’er field and brook till he overtook

The straggling Rebel troop

Laden with spoil and plunder,
And laughing and shouting still,

As with cattle and sheep they lazily creep
Through the dust o’er the winding hill,

“Oh! the coward crowd!” cried Jamie ;
“There’s Brindle! I’ll teach them now!”

WIGWAM.

And with headlong stride, at the captain’s side,
He called for his mother’s cow. .

“Who are you, and who is your mother ?—
I promised she should not miss ? —

Well! upon my word, have I never heard _
Of assurance like to this!” : :

“Ts your word the word of a soldier?” —=
And the young lad faced his foes,

As a jeering laugh, in anger half
And half in sport, arose.

But the captain drew his sabre,
And spoke, with lowering brow:

“ Fall back into line! The joke is mine!
Surrender the widow’s cow!”

And a capital joke they thought it,
That a barefoot lad of ten

Should demand his due— and get it too—
In the face of forty men. =

And the rollicking Rebel raiders
Forgot themselves somehow,

And three cheers brave for the hero gave,
And three for the brindle cow.

He lived in the Cumberland Valley,
And his name was Jamie Brown ;

But it changed that day, so the neighbors say,
To the “ Bravest Boy in Town.”

BENNY’S WIGWAM.

- By Mrs. Mary CATHERINE LEE.

OW, Pettikins,” said Benny Briggs, on the first
day of vacation, “come along if you want to
see the old Witch.”

Pettikins got her little straw hat, and holding
Benny’s hand with a desperate clutch, trotted along
beside him, giving frequent glances at his heroic face
to keep up her courage. Her heart beat hard as

they took their way across to the island. The isla

is really no island at all, but a lonely, lovely porti :
of Still Harbor, between Benny’s home and Grandm:
Potter’s, which by means of a smalt inlet and a little
creek, and one watery thing and another, is so nearly
surrounded by water as to feel justified in calling
itself an island. They crossed over the little bridge