=THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS ON THE WAR FRONT=




CHAPTER I

A CALL TO BATTLE


"Come on now, ready with those smoke bombs! Where's the Confederate
army, anyhow? And you Unionists, don't look as though you were going to
rob an apple orchard! Suffering snakes, you're going into battle and
you're going to lick the boots off the Johnnie Rebs! Look the part! Look
the part! Now, then, what about the cannon? Got plenty of powder in 'em
so there'll be lots of smoke?"

A stout man, with perspiration running down his face, one drop trickling
from his nose, was hurrying up and down the field.

On one side of him was a small army composed of what seemed to be Civil
War Union soldiers. A little farther back was a motley array of
Confederates. Farther off was an apple orchard, and close beside that
stood a ramshackle farmhouse which was soon to be the center of a
desperate moving-picture battle in the course of which the house would
be the refuge of the Confederates.

"The old man is sort of on his ear this morning, isn't he, Blake?" asked