Title:  The Littlest Rebel

Author:  Edward Peple

Release Date:  March 19, 2005 [EBook #15414]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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The

LITTLEST REBEL

By

EDWARD PEPLE

Grosset & Dunlap:  Publishers

NEW YORK

Copyright, 1914 By the estate of Edward H. Peple

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

FOREWORD

The play, from which this book is written, was in no sense of the word intended as a war drama; for war is merely its background, and always in the center stands a lonely little child.

War is its theme but not its purpose.  War breeds hatred, horror, pestilence and famine, yet from its tears and ashes eventually must rise the clean white spirit of humanity.

The enmity between North and South is dead; it sleeps with the fathers and the sons, the brothers and the lovers, who died in a cause which each believed was just.

Therefore this story deals, not with the right or wrong of a lost confederacy, but with the mercy and generosity, the chivalry and humanity which lived in the hearts of the Blue and Gray, a noble contrast to the grim brutality of war.

* * * * *

The author is indebted to Mr. E.S.  Moffat, who has novelized the play directly from its text, with the exception of that portion which appeared as a short story under the same title several years ago, treating of Virgie in the overseer’s cabin, and the endorsing of her pass by Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison.

Edward Peple.

THE LITTLEST REBEL

CHAPTER I

Young Mrs. Herbert Cary picked up her work basket and slowly crossed the grass to a shady bench underneath the trees.  She must go on with her task of planning a dress for Virgie.  But the prospect of making her daughter something wearable out of the odds and ends of nothing was not a happy one.  In fact, she was still poking through her basket and frowning thoughtfully when a childish voice came to her ears.