woods, accustomed to hardship and not afraid of danger. Many of them
had fought bravely during the Indian war, and when Jackson called for
volunteers, a good many of these boys joined him, some of them being
mere lads just turning into their teens.

Sam Hardwicke, was noted all through that country for several reasons.
In the first place he was a boy of very fine appearance and unusual
skill in all the things which help to make either a boy or a man
popular in a new country. He was a capital shot with rifle or
shot-gun; he was a superb horseman, a tireless walker, and an expert
in all the arts of the hunter.

He was strong and active of body, and better still he was a boy of
better intellect and better education than was common in that country
at that early day when there were few schools and poor ones. His
father was a gentleman of wealth and education, who had removed to
Alabama for the sake of his health a few years before, bringing a
large library with him, and he had educated his children very
carefully, acting as their teacher himself. Sam was ready for college,
and but for Jackson's call for troops he would have been on his way to
Virginia, to attend the old William and Mary University there, at the
time our story begins. When it became known, however, that men were
needed to defend the country against the British, Sam thought it his
duty to help, and reluctantly resolved to postpone the beginning of
his college course for another year.

All these things made Sam Hardwicke a special favorite, and persons a
great deal older than he was, held him in very high regard, on account
of his superior education, but more particularly on account of the
real superiority which was the result of that education; and I want to