There was great excitement among the citizens of the town of Pittsfield in the province of Massachusetts on the first day of May in the year 1775. Master Edward Mott and Noah Phelps, forming a committee appointed by the Provincial Assembly of Connecticut, had arrived on the previous evening charged with an important commission, the making known of which had so aroused the inhabitants of the peaceful settlement that it was as if the reports of the muskets fired at Lexington and Concord were actually ringing in their ears.

In 1781, at Yorktown, cousins Guy Peyton and Louis Poindexter are eager to join their fathers in service to their country, but the boys are too young to join the Continental army. Then a chance meeting with a patriot spy named Morgan opens the door to a daring adventure that will lead the young Americans right into the British camp.

In the year there was in North Carolina, west of Broad River, and near the site of what is now known as Rutherfordton, a settlement called Gilbert Town. Within five or six miles of this village on a certain September day in the year above mentioned, two lads, equipped for a hunting trip, had halted in the woods. One was Nathan Shelby, a boy sixteen years of age, and nephew of that Isaac Shelby whose name is so prominent in the early history of North Carolina; the other, Evan McDowells, son of Colonel Charles McDowells, was one year younger than Nathan. But for the fact that these two lads were sorely needed at their homes, both would have been enrolled either among the American forces, or with those hardy pioneers who were then known as Mountain Men, for the time was come when the struggling colonists required every arm that could raise a musket. On the previous month the American forces under General Gates had been defeated by Cornwallis at Camden. Tarleton had dispersed Sumter's forces at Rocky Mount, and the southern colonists appeared to have been entirely subdued by the royal troops.

Story loosely based on the attempted capture of Benedict Arnold after his decision to go over to the British side during the Revolutionary War.

Originally published as With the Swamp Fox: A Story of General Marion's Young Spies, as part of The Young Patriots series. Reprinted as The Boy Spies with the Swamp Fox, as part of The Boy Spies series.

In the history of our country there is no more thrilling story than that of the work done on the Mississippi river by a handful of frontiersmen. Mr. Otis takes the reader on that famous expedition from the arrival of Major Clarke's force on Corn Island, until Kaskaskia was captured. He relates that part of Simon Kenton's life history which is not usually touched upon either by the historian or the story teller. This is on of the most entertaining books for young people which has been published. -A. L. Burt

Originally published as With the Regulators: A Story of North Carolina in 1768, as part of The Young Patriots series. Also published as The Boy Spies With the Regulators: A Story of How the Boys Assisted the Carolina Patriots to Drive the British from that State as part of The Boy Spies series. "It is not for one like me to make any pretense at trying to fashion a scholar's story out of the poor efforts of Sidney Hubbard, and myself, Clare Butler, to second the brave work of those noble men who, by enduring countless hardships and sparing not their own blood, finally rid the Carolinas of those leeches who claimed to be the king's servants-Governor William Tryon, Edmund Fanning and others of like brood. I count to set down on these pages such an account as I may be able to give concerning what we of the Carolinas did in those dark days eight years before the first patriot blood was shed at Lexington, and this task is to be performed simply that my descendants may, by reading our story, use their utmost efforts to preserve the fair country which has cost their forefathers so much of blood, anguish and bodily suffering."