was now no longer "make believe," but deadly earnest. Blood had
flowed; insults had been exchanged in due order, and offended
honor cried for vengeance.

It was fortunate that the river divided the West-Siders from the
East-Siders, or it would have been difficult to tell what might
have happened. Viggo Hook, the West-Side general, was a
handsome, high-spirited lad of fifteen, who was the last person
to pocket an injury, as long as red blood flowed in his veins, as
he was wont to express it. He was the eldest son of Colonel Hook
of the regular army, and meant some day to be a Von Moltke or a
Napoleon. He felt in his heart that he was destined for something
great; and in conformity with this conviction assumed a superb
behavior, which his comrades found very admirable.

He had the gift of leadership in a marked degree, and established
his authority by a due mixture of kindness and severity. Those
boys whom he honored with his confidence were absolutely attached
to him. Those whom, with magnificent arbitrariness, he punished
and persecuted, felt meekly that they had probably deserved it;
and if they had not, it was somehow in the game.

There never was a more absolute king than Viggo, nor one more
abjectly courted and admired. And the amusing part of it was
that he was at heart a generous and good-natured lad, but
possessed with a lofty ideal of heroism, which required above all
things that whatever he said or did must be striking. He
dramatized, as it were, every phrase he uttered and every act he
performed, and modelled himself alternately after Napoleon and
Wellington, as he had seen them represented in the old engravings