"Read it to me, my son. I forgot my glasses."

"It is addressed to Captain Penhallow."

"Yes, I was always that to Josiah--always."

John opened the letter, which was carefully sealed with a large red
wafer.

"It is well written, uncle."

"Yes--yes. Rivers taught him--and he speaks nearly as good English as
George Grey."

John looked up from the letter. "Oh, that is funny! It begins,
'Respectable Sir.'"

"My dear John, that isn't funny at all--it's old-fashioned. I have seen a
letter from the great Dr. Rush in which the mother of Washington is
mentioned as 'that respectable lady.' But now, sir, you will be good
enough to let me hear that letter without your valuable comments."

The tone was impatient. John said, "Excuse me, uncle, but I couldn't help
it."

"Oh, read it."

"I am driven away again. I write this to thank you for all you done for
me at Westways. Mr. Grey he met me here on the beach and I'm afraid--I
don't take no chances. I saved money here. I can get on anywhere. It's
awful to have to ran away, and that drunkard Peter Lamb all the while
safe with his mother. I can't get him out of my mind. I'm a Christian
man--and I tried to forgive him. I can't do it. If I am quiet and let
alone, I forget. I've got to get up and go and hide, and I curse him that
done it. Please, sir, not tell Mr. Rivers what I say. I seen Miss Leila.
I always said Miss Leila would be a beauty. There ain't no young lady
here can hold a candle to her. I want to say I did have hope to see Mr.
John.

"God bless you, Captain.

"Your obedient servant,

"JOSIAH."

The Squire halted in the open pine forest on a wood-road behind the
cabin. He threw one leg over the pommel and sat still with the ease of a
horseman in any of the postures the saddle affords. "Read me both of
those letters again, and slowly."

This time John made no remarks. When he came to the end of Josiah's
letter, he looked towards the silent figure seated sideways. The Squire
made no comment, but searched his pockets for the flint and steel he
always carried. Lighting his pipe he slid to the ground.

"Take the rein, John," he said, "or the mare will follow me."

Penhallow was deep in the story these letters told, and he thought best
when walking. John sat in his saddle watching the tall soldierly figure
move up the road and back again to the cabin his ancestors had held
through one long night of fear. John caught sight of the face as
Penhallow came and then turned away on his slow walk, smoking furiously.
He sat still, having learned to be respectful of the long silences to
which at times Penhallow was given. Now and then with a word he quieted
the uneasy mare--a favourite taught to follow the master. At last
Penhallow struck his pipe on a stone to empty it, and by habit carefully
set a foot on the live coal. Then he came to the off side of his mare and
took the rein. Facing John, he set an elbow on the horse's back and a
hand on his own cheek. This was no unusual attitude. He did not mount,
but stood still. The ruddy good-humoured face, clean-shaven and large of
feature, had lost its look of constant good-humour. In fact, the feature
language expressed the minute's mood in a way which any one less familiar
with the man than John might have read with ease. Then he said, in an
absent way, "Are we men of the North all cowards like Josiah? They think
so--they do really think so. It is helping to make trouble." Then he
lifted himself lightly into the saddle, with swift change of mood and an
odd laugh of comment on his conclusion, as he broke into a gallop. "Let
us get into the sun."

John followed him as they rode swiftly over a cross-road and out on to
the highway. Again the horses were walking, and Penhallow said, "I
suppose you may not have understood me. I was suddenly angry. It is a
relief sometimes to let off steam. Well, I fancy time will answer me--or
that is what I try not to believe--but it may--it may. Let us talk of
something else. I must find out from Rivers just how well you are
prepared for the Point. Then I mean to give you every night an hour or so
of what he cannot teach. You ride well, you know French and German, you
box--it may be of service, keep it up once a week at least. I envy you
the young disciplined life--the simpleness of it--the want of
responsibilities."

"Thank you, sir," returned John, "I hope to like it and to do you credit,
uncle."

"You will, I am sure. Let us go to the mills."

John hesitated before he asked, "Could not I have, sir, a few days with
Aunt Ann at the Cape?"

"No, I shall want you here."

John was silent and disappointed. The Squire saw it. "It can't be
helped--I do not feel able to be alone. Leila will be away a year more
and you will be gone for several years. For your sake and mine I want you
this summer. Take care! You lost a stirrup when Dixy shied. Oh! here are
the mills. Good morning, McGregor. All well?"

"Yes, sir. Tom has gone to the city. He is to be in the office of a
friend of mine this summer. I shall be alone."

"John goes to West Point this September, Doctor."

"Indeed! You too will be alone. Next it will be Leila. How the young
birds are leaving the nests! Even that slow lad of Grace's is going. He
is to learn farming with old Roberts. He has a broad back and the
advantage of not being a thinking-machine."

"He may have made the best choice, McGregor."

"No, sir," said the Doctor, "my son has the best of it."

John laughed. "I don't think I should like either farm or medicine."

"No," returned the Doctor, with his queer way of stating things, "there
must be some one to feed the people; Tom is to be trained to cure, and
you to kill."

"I don't want to kill anybody," said John, laughing.

"But that is the business you are going to learn, young man." John was
silent. The idea of killing anybody!

"Heard from Mrs. Penhallow lately?" asked the doctor.

"No, but from Leila to-day; and, you will be surprised, from Josiah too."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Give him the two letters, John. Let me have them to-morrow, Doctor.
Good-bye," and they rode on to the mills.

"It is a pity, John, Josiah gave no address," said Penhallow,--"a
childlike man, intelligent, and with some underlying temper of the old
African barbarian." The summer days ran on with plenty of work for John
and without incidents of moment, until the rector went away as was his
habit the first of August, more moody than usual. If the rectory were
finished, he would go there in September, and Mrs. Ann had written to him
about the needed furniture.

On August 20th that lady wrote from Cape May that she must go home, and
Leila that her aunt was well but homesick. The Squire, who missed her
greatly, unreluctantly yielded, and on August 25th she was met at the
station by Penhallow and John. To the surprise of both, she had brought
Leila, as her school was not to begin until September 10th.

"My dear James," cried Mrs. Ann, "it is worth while to have been away to
learn how good it is to get home again. I thought I would surprise you
with Leila." As the Squire kissed her, Leila and the maid came from the
car to the platform loaded with bundles.

John stood still. Nature had been busy with her artist-work. A year had
gone by--the year of maturing growth of mind and body for a girl nearing
sixteen. Unprepared for her change, John felt at once that this was a
woman, who quickly smiling gave him a cordial greeting and her hand.
"Why, John Penhallow," she said, "what a big boy you are grown!" It was
as if an older person had spoken to a younger. A head taller than the
little Mrs. Ann, she was in the bloom of maiden loveliness, rosy, joyous,
a certain new stateliness in her movements. The gift of grace had been
added by the fairy godmother nature.

John said, with gravity, "You are most welcome home, Leila," and then
quickly aware of some coldness in his words, "Oh, I am so very glad to
see you!" She had gone by him in the swift changes of life. Without so
putting it distinctly into the words of a mental soliloquy, John was
conscious that here was another Leila.

"Come, in with you," said the happy master of Grey Pine.

"How well you look, Ann, and how young! The cart will bring your
bundles."

John Penhallow on an August afternoon was of Billy's opinion that Leila
had "rowed a lot" as she came out upon the porch and gaily laughing
cried, "At last,--Aunt Ann has done with me."

They were both suffering from one of those dislocations of relation which
even in adult life are felt when friends long apart come together again.
The feeling of loss, as far as John was concerned, grew less as Leila
with return of childlike joy roamed with him over the house and through
the stables, and next day through Westways, with a pleasant word for
every one and on busying errands for her aunt. He was himself occupied
with study; but now the Squire had said it would be wise to drop his
work.

With something of timidity he said to Leila, "I am free for this
afternoon; come and see again our old playgrounds. It will be a long
while before we can take another walk."

"Certainly, John. And isn't it a nice, good-natured day? The summer is
over. Sometimes I wish we had no divisions of months, and the life of the
year was one quiet flow of days--oh, with no names to remind you."

"But think, Leila, of losing all the poetry of the months. Why not have
no day or night? Oh, come along. What do you want with a sunshade and a
veil--we will be mostly in the woods."

"My complexion, Mr. Penhallow," cried Miss Grey gaily.

He watched her young figure as she went upstairs--the mass of darkened
gold hair coiled in the classic fashion of the day on the back of her
head. She looked around from the stair. "I shall be ready in a minute,
John. It rained yesterday--will it be wet in the woods?"

"No," cried John, "and what does it matter?" He had a dull feeling of
resentment, of loss, of consciousness of new barriers and of distance
from the old comrade.

Their way led across the garden, which was showing signs of feeling the
chilly nights of the close of summer in this upland, where the seasons
sometimes change abruptly.

"The garden has missed Aunt Ann," said Leila. "Uncle Jim looks at it from
the porch, says 'How pretty!' and expects to see roses on his table every
day. I do believe he considers a garden as merely a kind of flower-farm."

"Aunt Ann's garden interests her the way Westways does. There are sick
flowers and weeds like human weeds, and bugs and diseases that need a
flower-doctor, and flowers that are morbid or ill-humoured. That is not
my wisdom, Leila, it is Mr. Rivers's."

"No, John, it isn't at all like you."

"Aunt Ann didn't like it, and yet I think he meant it to be a compliment,
for he really considers Aunt Ann a model of what a woman ought to be."

"I know that pretty well," said Leila. "When I used to lose my temper
over that horrid algebra, I was told to consider how Aunt Ann kept her
temper no matter what happened, as if that had anything to do with
algebra and equations. If he had seen her when she talked to George Grey
about Josiah, he would have known Aunt Ann better. I was proud of her."

"Aunt Ann angry!" said John. "I should have liked to have seen that. Poor
Josiah!"

They talked of the unlucky runaway, and were presently among the familiar
pine and spruce, far beyond the garden bounds. "Do put up that veil,"
said John, "and you have not the least excuse for your parasol."

"Oh, if you like, John. Tell me about West Point. It was such a
surprise."

"I will when I am there, if I am able to pass the examinations."

"You will--you will. Uncle Jim told me you would pass easily."

"Indeed! He never told me that. I have my doubts."

"And I have none," she returned, smiling. "Mr. Rivers dislikes it.
He wrote to me about it just before he left. Do you know, he did
really think that you ought to be a clergyman. He said you were so
serious-minded for--for a boy."

John laughed, "nice clergyman I'd have made." Did Leila too consider him
a boy? "Oh! here we are at the old cabin. I never forget the first day we
came here--and the graves. The older I grow, Leila, the more clearly I
can see the fight and the rifle-flashes, and the rescue--and the night--I
can feel their terror."

"Oh, we were mere children, John; and I do suppose that it is a pretty
well decorated tradition." He looked at her with surprise, as she added,
"I used to believe it all, now it seems strange to me, John--like a dream
of childhood. I think you really are a good deal of a boy yet."

"No, I am not a boy. I sometimes fancy I never was a boy--I came here a
child." And then, "I think you like to tease me, Leila," and this was
true, although she was not pleased to be told so. "You think, Leila, that
it teases me to be called a boy by your ladyship. I think it is because
you remember what a boy once said to you here--right here."

"What do you mean?" She knew very well what he meant, but quickly
repenting of her feminine fib, said, "Oh, I do know, but I wanted to
forget--I wanted to pretend to forget, because you know what friends we
have been, and it was really so foolish."

He had been lying at her feet; now he rose slowly. "You are not like my
Leila to-day."

"Oh, John!"

"No--and it is hard, because I am going away--and--it will not be
pleasant to think how you are changed."

"I wish you wouldn't say such things to me, John."

"I had to--because--I love you. If I was a boy when I was, as you say,
silly, I was in earnest. It was nonsense to ask you, to say you would
marry me some day. It wasn't so very long ago after all; but I agree with
you, it _was_ foolish. Now I mean to make no such proposal."

"Please, John." She looked up at him as he stood over her so grave, so
earnest--and so like Uncle Jim. For the time she got the fleeting
impression of this being a man.

He hardly heard her appeal. "I want to say now that I love you." For a
moment the 'boy's will, the wind's will,' blew a gale. "I love you and I
always shall. Some day I shall ask you that foolish question again, and
again."

She too was after all very young and had been playing a bit at being a
woman. Now his expression of passion embarrassed her--because she had no
answer ready; nor was it all entirely disagreeable.

He stood still a moment, and added, "That is all--I ask nothing now."

Then she stood up, having to say something and unwilling to hurt
him--wanting not to say too much or too little, and ending by a childlike
reply. "Oh, John, I do wish you would never say such things to me. I am
too young to listen to such nonsense."

"And I am young too," he laughed. "Well--well--let us go home and confess
like children."

"Now I know you are a fool, John Penhallow, and very disagreeable."

"When we were ever so young, Leila, and we quarrelled, we used to agree
not to speak to one another for a day. Are you cross enough for that
now?"

"No, I am not; but I want to feel sure that you will not say such things
to me again."

"I make no promise, Leila; I should break it. If I gave you a boy's love,
forget it, laugh at it; but if I give you a man's love, take care."

This odd drama--girl and woman, boy and maturing man--held the stage; now
one, now the other.

"Take care, indeed!" she said, repeating his words and turning on him
with sudden ungraciousness, "I think we have had enough of this
nonsense."

She was in fact the more disturbed of the two, and knowing it let anger
loose to chase away she knew not what, which was troubling her with
emotion she could neither entirely control nor explain later as the
result of what seemed to her mere foolishness. If he was himself
disturbed by his storm of primitive passion, he did not show it as she
did.

"Yes," he said in reply, "we have had for the present enough of
this--enough talk, I mean--"

"We!" she exclaimed.

"Leila! do you want me to apologize?"

"No."

"Then--let us get those roses for Aunt Ann--what are left of them."

She was glad to escape further discussion--not sure of her capacity to
keep in order this cousin who was now so young and now so alarmingly old.
His abrupt use of self-control she recognised--liked and then disliked,
for a little wrath in his reply would have made her feel more at ease.
With well-reassumed good-humour, she said, "Now you are my nice old
playmate, but never, never bother me that way again."

"Yes, ma'am," said John, laughing. "I can hear Aunt Ann say, 'Run, dears,
and get me flowers--and--there will be cakes for you.'"

"No, bread and apple-butter, John." They went along merry, making believe
to be at ease.

"The robins are gone," said Leila. "I haven't seen one today; and the
warblers are getting uneasy and will be gone soon. I haven't seen a
squirrel lately. Josiah used to say that meant an early winter."

"Oh, but the asters! What colour! And the golden-rod! Look at it close,
Leila. Each little flower is a star of gold."

"How pretty!" She bent down over the flowers to pay the homage of honest
pleasure. "How you always see, John, so easily, the pretty little wild
beauties of the woods; I never could." She was "making up" as children
say.

"Oh, you were the schoolmaster once," he laughed. "Come, we have enough;
now for the garden."

They passed through the paling fence and along the disordered beds, where
a night of too early frost had touched with chill fingers of disaster the
latest buds. Leila moved about looking at the garden, fingering a bud
here and there with gentle epitaphs of "late," "too late," or gathering
the more matronly roses which had bloomed in time. John watched her bend
over them, and then where there were none but frost-wilted buds stand
still and fondle with tender touch the withered maidens of the garden.

He came to her side, "Well, Leila, I'll swap thoughts with you."

She looked up, "Your's first then."

"I was thinking it must be hard to die before you came to be a rose--like
some other more human things."

"Is that a charade, John? You will be writing poems about the lament of
the belated virgin roses that had not gathered more timely sunshine and
were alas! too late."

He looked at her with a smile of pleased surprise. "Thanks, cousin; it is
you who should be the laureate of the garden. Shelley would envy you."

"Indeed! I am flattered, sir, but I have not read any of Shelley as yet.
You have, I suppose? He is supposed to be very wicked. Get me some more
golden-rod, John." He went back to the edge of the wood and came again
laden, rejoining her at the porch.

For two days her aunt kept her busy. Early in the week she went away to
be met in Philadelphia by her Uncle Charles, and to be returned to her
Maryland school.

A day or two later John too left to undergo the dreaded examination at
West Point. The two older people were left alone at Grey Pine with the
rector, who had returned from his annual holiday later than usual. Always
depressed at these seasons, he was now indisposed for the society of even
the two people who were his most valued friends. He dined with them the
day John went away and took up the many duties of his clerical life,
until as was his custom, a week later he came in smiling for the Saturday
dinner, saying, "Well, here comes the old house-dog for his bone."

They made him welcome as gaily. "Has the town wickedness accumulated in
your absence, Mark?" said Penhallow.

"Mine has," said Ann Penhallow, "but I never confess except to myself."

"Ann Penhallow might be a severe confessor," said Rivers as they sat
down. "How you must miss John and Leila. I shall most sadly."

"Oh, for my part," said Ann, "I have made up my mind not to lament the
inevitable, but my husband is like a lost dog and--oh!--heart-hungry
for Leila, and worried about that boy's examination--his passing."

"Have I said a word?" said the Squire indignantly. "Pass! Of course, he
will pass."

"No one doubts that, James; but you are afraid he will not be near the
top."

"You are a witch, Ann. How did you know that?"

"How?" and she laughed. "How long have we been married!"

"Nonsense, Ann! What has that got to do with the matter?"

"Well," said Rivers, a little amused, "we shall know in a day or two. He
will pass high."

"Of course," said Penhallow.

Then the talk drifted away to the mills, the village and the farm work.
When after dinner Rivers declined to smoke with the Squire, Ann walked
with the clergyman down the avenue and said presently, "Dine with us on
Monday, Mark, and as often as possible. My husband is really worrying
about John."

"And you, dear lady?"

"I--oh, of course, I miss them greatly; but Leila needs the contact with
the social life she now has in the weekly holiday at Baltimore; and as
for John, did it never occur to you that he ought to be among men of his
age--and social position--and women too, who will not, I fancy, count for
much in the 'West Point education.'

"Yes--yes, what you say is true of course, but ah! I dread for him the
temptations of another life than this."

"Would you keep him here longer, if you could?" she asked.

"No. What would life be worth or how could character be developed without
temptation? That is one of my puzzles about the world to come, a world
where there would be no 'yes and no' would hardly be worth while."

"And quite beyond me," cried Ann, laughing. "We have done our best for
them. Let us pray that they will not forget. I have no fear for Leila. I
do not know about John. I must go home. Come often. Good-night. I suppose
the sermon takes you away so early."

"Yes--more or less, and I am poor company just now. Good-night."

CHAPTER XV

When at breakfast on a Monday morning Penhallow said, "That mail is late
again," his wife knew that he was still eager for news from John.

"The mail is always late on Monday morning, James. If you are in haste to
get to the mills, I will send it after you."

"No, it is unimportant, Ann. Another cup, please. Ah! there it is now."
He went out on to the porch. "You are late, Billy."

"I ain't late--it was Mrs. Crocker--she kept me."

Penhallow selected two letters postmarked West Point, and opening one as
he went in to the breakfast-room, said, "My dear, it is rather
satisfactory--quite as much as could be expected."

"Well, James! What is rather satisfactory? You are really exasperating at
times."

"Am I? Well, John has passed in the first half dozen--he does not yet
know just where--"

"And are you not entirely contented? You ought to be. What is the other
letter?"

He opened it. "It is only a line from the old drawing-master to say that
John did well and would have been second or third, they said, except for
not being higher in mathematics." As he spoke he rose and put both
letters in his pocket. "Now I must go."

"But let me see them, James."

"Oh, John's is only a half dozen lines, and I must go at once--I have an
appointment at the mills--I want to look over the letters again, and
shall write to him from the office." Ann was slightly annoyed, but said
no more until on the porch before he mounted she took a mild revenge.
"I know where you are going."

"Well, and where, please?" He fell into her trap.

"First, you will stop at the rectory and read those letters to Mark
Rivers; then the belated mail will excuse a pause at the post-office to
scold Mrs. Crocker. Tell Pole as you go by that last mutton was
atrociously tough. Of course, you won't mention John."

"Well, are you done?" he said, as he mounted Dixy. "I can wait, Ann,
until you read the letters."

"Thanks, I am in no hurry." He turned in the saddle and gave her the
letters. She put aside her brief feeling of annoyance and stood beside
him as she read them. "Thank you, James. What an uneasy old uncle you
are. Now go. Oh, be off with you--and don't forget Dr. McGregor." As he
rode away, she called after him, "James--James--I forgot something."

He turned, checking Dixy. "Oh, I forgot to say that you must not forget
the office clerks, because you know they are all so fond of John."

"What a wretch you are, Ann Penhallow! Go in and repent."

"I don't," and laughing, joyously, she stood and looked after the tall
figure as he rode away happy and gaily singing, as he was apt to do if
pleased, the first army carol the satisfaction of the moment suggested:

Come out to the stable
As soon as you 're able,
And see that the horses
That they get some corn.
For if you don't do it,
The colonel will know it,
And then you will rue it
As sure as you're born.

"Ah!" said his wife, "how he goes back--always goes back--to the wild
army life when something pleases him. Thank God that can never come
again." She recalled her first year of married life, the dull garrison
routine, the weeks of her husband's absences, and when the troop came
back and there were empty saddles and weeping women.

At dinner the Squire must needs drink the young cadet's health and
express to Rivers his regret that there was not a West Point for Leila.
Mrs. Ann was of opinion that she had had too much of it already. Rivers
agreed with his hostess, and in one of his darkest days won the privilege
of long silences by questioning the Squire in regard to the studies and
life at West Point, while Mrs. Ann more socially observant than her
husband saw how moody was Rivers and with what effort he manufactured
an appearance of interest in the captain's enthusiasm concerning
educative methods at the great army school. She was relieved when he
carried off Rivers to the library.

"It is chilly, Mark; would you like a fire?" he asked.

"Yes, I am never too warm."

The Squire set the logs ablaze. "No pipe, Mark?"

"Not yet." He stretched out his lean length before the ruddy birch blaze
and was silent. The Squire watched him and made no attempt to disturb the
deep reverie in which the young clergyman remained. At last the great
grey eyes turned from the fire, and Rivers sat up in his chair, as he
said, "You must have seen how inconsiderately I have allowed my
depression to dismiss the courtesies of life. I owe you and my dear Mrs.
Penhallow both an apology and an explanation."--

"But really, Mark--"

"Oh, let me go on. I have long wanted to talk myself out, and as often my
courage has failed. I have had a most unhappy life, Penhallow. All the
pleasant things in it--the past few years--have been given me here. I
married young--"

"One moment, Mark. Before you came to us the Bishop wrote me in
confidence of your life. Not even Mrs. Penhallow has seen that letter."

"Then you knew--but not all. Now I have had a sad relief. He told you
of--well, of my life, of my mother's hopeless insanity--and the rest."

"Yes--yes--all, I believe--all."

"Not quite all. I have spent a part at least of every August with her;
now at last she is dead. But my family story has left with me the fear of
dying like my brothers or of becoming as she became. When I came to you I
was a lonely soul, sick in mind and weak in body. I am better--far
better--and now with some renewal of hope and courage I shall face my
world again. You have had--you will have charity for my days of
melancholy. I never believed that a priest should marry--and yet I
did. I suffered, and never again can I dream of love. I am doubly armed
by memory and by the horror of continuing a race doomed to disaster.
There you have it all to my relief. There is some mysterious consolation
in unloading one's mind. How good you have been to me! and I have been so
useless--so little of what I might have been."

Penhallow rose, set a hand on Rivers's shoulder, seeing the sweat on his
forehead and the appeal of the sad eyes turned up to meet his gaze.
"What," he said, "would our children have been without you? God knows I
have been a better man for your company, and the mills--the village--how
can you fail to see what you have done--"

"No--no--I am a failure. It may be that the moods of self-reproach are
morbid. That too torments me. Even to-day I was thinking of how Christ
would have dealt with that miserable man, Peter Lamb, and how
uncharitable I was, how crude, how void of sympathy--"

"You--you--" said Penhallow, as he moved away. "My own regret is that
I did not turn him over to the law. Well, points of view do differ
curiously. We will let him drop. He will come to grief some day. And now
take my thanks and my dear Ann's for what you have told me. Let us drop
that too. Take a pipe."

"No, I must go. I am the easier in my mind, but I am tired and not at
all in the pipe mood." He went out through the hall, and with a hasty
"good-night" to his hostess and "pleasant dreams--or none," went slowly
down the avenue.

The woman he left, with her knitting needles at rest a moment, was
considering the man and his moods with such intuitive sympathy and
comprehension as belongs to the sex which is physiologically the more
subject to abrupt changes in the climate of the mind. As her husband
entered, she began anew the small steadying industry for which man has no
substitute.

"Upon my word, James, when you desire to exchange confidences, you must
get further away from me."

"You don't mean me to believe you overheard our talk in the library, with
the door closed and the curtain across it." Her acuteness of hearing
often puzzled him, and he had always to ask for proof.

She nodded gay assurance, and said again, ceasing to knit, "I overheard
too much--oh, not all--bits--enough to trouble me. I moved away so as not
to hear. All I care to know is how to be of real service to a friend to
whom we owe so much."

"I want you--in fact, Mark wants you--to hear in full what you know in
part."

"Well, James, I have very little curiosity about the details of the
misfortunes of my friends unless to know is to obtain means of
helpfulness."

"You won't get any here, I fear, but as he has been often strange and
depressed and, as he says, unresponsive to your kindness, he does want
you now to see what cause there was."

"Very well, if he wants it. I see you have a letter."

"Yes, I kept it. It was marked strictly confidential--I hate that--" She
smiled as he added, "It seems to imply the possibility of indiscretion on
my part."

"Oh, James! Oh, you dear man!" and she laughed outright, liking to tease
where she deeply loved, knowing him through and through, as he never
could know her. Then she saw that he was not in the mood for jesting with
an edge to it; nor was she. "At all events, you did not let me see that
letter--now I am to see it."

"Yes, you are to see it. You might at any time have seen it."

"Yes, read it to me."

"When our good Bishop sent Mark Rivers here to us, he wrote me this
letter--"

"Well, go on."

"MY DEAR SIR: I send you the one of my young clergy with whom I am the
most reluctant to part. You will soon learn why, and learning will be
thankful. But to make clear to you why I urge him--in fact, order him to
go--requires a word of explanation. He is now only twenty-six years of
age but looks older. He married young and not wisely a woman who lived a
childlike dissatisfied life, and died after two years. One of his
brothers died an epileptic; the other, a promising lawyer, became insane
and killed himself. This so affected their widowed mother that she fell
into a speechless melancholy and has ever since been in the care of
nurses in a farmer's family--a hopeless case. I became of late alarmed at
his increasing depression and evident failure in bodily strength. He was
advised to take a small country parish, and so I send him to you and my
friend, Mrs. Penhallow, sure that he will give as much as he gets. I need
not say more. He is well worth saving--one of God's best--with too
exacting a conscience--learned, eloquent and earnest, and to end, a
gentleman."

"There is a lot more about Indian missions, which I think are hopeless,
but I sent him a cheque, of course."

"I supposed, James, that his depression was owing to his want of vigorous
health. Now I see, but how very sorrowful it is! What else is there? I
did not mean to listen, but something was said about his mother."

"Yes. He has spent with her a large part of every August--he called it
his holiday. My God, Ann! Poor fellow! This August she died. It must be a
relief."

"Perhaps."

"Oh, surely. This is all, Ann."

"I wish you had been less discreet long ago, James. I think that the
Bishop knowing how sensitive, how very reticent Mark is, meant only that
he should not learn what was confided to you."

"I never thought of that, Ann. You may be right."

She made no further comment, except to say, "But to know clears the air
and leaves me free to talk to him at need." Penhallow felt that where he
himself might be a useless confessor, his wife was surely to be trusted.

"If, Ann, the man could only be got on to the back of a horse--" She won
the desirable relief of laughter, and the eyes that were full of the
tears of pity for this disastrous life overflowed of a sudden with mirth
at the Squire's one remedy for the troubles of this earthly existence.

"Oh, I am in earnest," he said. "Now I must write to John."

When after a week or more she did talk to Mark Rivers, he was the better
for it and felt free to speak to her as a younger man may to an older
woman and can rarely do to the closest of male friends, for, after all,
most friendships have their personal limitations and the man who has not
both men and women friends may at some time miss what the double
intimacies alone can give.

The uneasy sense of something lost was more felt than mentioned that fall
at Grey Pine, where quick feet on the stair and the sound of young
laughter were no longer heard. Rivers saw too how distinctly the village
folk missed these gay young people. Mrs. Crocker, of the shop where
everything was to be bought, bewailed herself to Rivers, who was the
receiver of all manner of woes. "Mrs. Penhallow is getting to be so
particular no one knows where to find her. You would never think it, sir,
but she says my tea is not fit to drink, and she is going to get her
sugar from Philadelphia. It's awful! She says it isn't as sweet as it
used to be--as if sugar wasn't always the same--"

"Which it isn't," laughed Rivers.

"And my tea!--Then here comes in the Squire to get a dog-collar, and
roars to my poor deaf Job, 'that last tea was the best we have ever had.
Send five pounds to Dr. McGregor from me--charge it to me--and a pound to
Mrs. Lamb.' It wasn't but ten minutes later. Do set down, Mr. Rivers." He
accepted the chair she dusted with her apron and quietly enjoyed the
little drama. The facts were plain, the small influential motives as
clear.

Secure of her hearer, Mrs. Crocker went on: "I was saying it wasn't ten
minutes later that same morning Mrs. Penhallow came down on me about the
sugar and the tea--worst she ever had. She--oh, Lord!--She wouldn't
listen, and declared that she would return the tea and get sugar from
town."

"Pretty bad that," said Rivers, sympathetic. "Did she send back the tea?"

"No, sir. In came Pole grinning that very evening. He said she had made
an awful row about the last leg of mutton he sent. Pole said she was that
bad--She didn't show no temper, but she kept on a sort of quiet mad about
the mutton."

"Well, what did Pole do?"

"You'd never guess. It was one of the Squire's own sheep. Pole he just
sent her the other leg of the same sheep!"

Again the rector laughed. "Well, and what did Mrs. Penhallow do?"

"She told him that was all right. Pole he guessed I'd better send her a
pound of the same tea."

"Did you?"

"I did--ain't heard yet. Now what would you advise? Never saw her this
way before."

"Well," said Rivers, "tell her how the town misses Leila and John."

"They do. I do wonder if it's just missing those children upsets her so."

Whether his advice were taken or not, Rivers did not learn directly, but
Mrs. Crocker said things were better when next they met, and the
clergyman asked no questions.

Penhallow had his own distracting troubles. The financial condition which
became serious in the spring and summer of 1857 was beginning to cause
him alarm, and soon after the new year came in he felt obliged to talk
over his affairs and to advise his wife to loan the mill company money
not elsewhere to be had except at ruinous interest. She wished simply to
give him the sum needed, but he said no, and made clear to her why he
required help. She was pleased to be consulted, and showing, as usual,
notable comprehension of the business situation, at once did as he
desired.

Rivers not aware of what was so completely occupying Penhallow's mind,
wondered later why he would not discuss the decision of the Supreme Court
in the Dred Scott case and did not share his own indignation. "But," he
urged, "it declares the Missouri Compromise not warranted by the
Constitution!"

"I can't talk about it, Mark," said Penhallow, "I am too worried by my
own affairs."

Then Rivers asked no further questions; he hoped he would read the
masterly dissenting opinion of Justices McLean and Curtis. Penhallow
returned impatiently that he had no time, and that the slavery question
were better left to the decision of "Chief Justice Time."

It was unlike the Squire, and Rivers perplexed and more or less ignorant
concerning his friend's affairs left him, in wonder that what was so
angrily disturbing the Northern States should quite fail to interest
Penhallow.

Meanwhile there were pleasant letters from Leila. She thought it hard to
be denied correspondence with John, and wrote of the satisfaction felt by
her Uncle Henry and his friends in regard to the Dred Scott decision. She
had been wise enough to take her Uncle Charles's advice and to hold her
Republican tongue, as he with a minority in Baltimore was wisely doing.

The money crisis came with full force while the affairs of Kansas were
troubling both North and South. In August there was widespread ruin.
Banks failed, money was held hard, contracts were broken and to avoid a
worse calamity the Penhallow mills discharged half of the men. Meanwhile
under Governor Walker's just and firm rule, for a brief season 'Bleeding
Kansas' was no longer heard of. To add to the confusion of parties,
Douglas broke with the Administration and damaged the powerful Democratic
machine when he came out with changed opinions and dauntless courage
against the new Lecompton constitution.

In June Leila's school life came to a close, and to the delight of her
relations she came home. When that afternoon Rivers came into the hall, a
tall young woman rose of a sudden and swept him a curtsey, saying, "I am
Leila Grey, sir. Please to be glad to see me."

"Good gracious, Leila! You are a woman!"

"And what else should I be?"

"Alas! what? My little friend and scholar--oh! the evil magic of time."

"Oh! Friend--friend!" she exclaimed, "then, now, and always." She gave
him both hands.

"Yes, always," he said quickly. "And this," he said to himself, "is the
child who used to give me the morning kiss. It is very wonderful!"

"I really think, Aunt Ann, that Mr. Rivers just for a moment did not know
me."

"Indeed! That must have amused him."

"Oh, here is James." There was laughter at dinner and a little gay
venture into the politics of Leila's school, which appeared to have been
disagreeable to Miss Grey.

Rivers watched the animated face as she gave her account of how the
school took a vote in the garden and were all Democrats. The Squire a
little puzzled by his wife's evident disinclination to interfere with the
dinner-table politics got a faint suspicion that here had come into Grey
Pine a new and positive influence. He was more surprised that Mrs. Ann
asked, "What did you say, Leila?"

"I? Now, Aunt Ann, what would you have done or said?"

"Oh, voted with the Democrats, of course."

"Oh, Mrs. Penhallow!" cried the Rector.

The Squire much amused asked, "Well, Leila, did you run away?"

"I--Oh, Uncle Jim! I said I was a democrat--I voted the Democratic
ticket."

"Did you?" exclaimed Rivers.

"So James Penhallow and my brother Charles have lost a Republican vote,"
laughed Ann.

"But, Aunt Ann, I added that I was a Douglas Democrat."

The Squire exploded into peals of laughter. Ann said, "For shame!"

"They decided to lynch me, but no one of them could catch me before Miss
Mayo appeared on the playground and we all became demure as pussy cats.
She was cross."

"She was quite right," said her aunt. "I do not see why girls should be
discussing politics."

Rivers became silently regardant, and Penhallow frowning sat still. The
anticipated bolt had fallen--it fell in vain. Leila did not accept the
decree, but defended herself gaily. "Aunt Ann," she said, "Douglas is
right, or at least half right. And do tell me how old must a girl be
before she has a right to think?"

"Think! Oh, if you like, think. But, my dear Leila, your uncle, Mr.
Rivers and I, although we think and hold very diverse opinions, feel that
on such matters discussion only leaves a sting, and so we tacitly leave
it out of our talk. There, my dear, you have my opinion."

There was a moment of silence. Leila looked up. "Oh, my dear Aunt Ann, if
you were on the side of old Nick, Mr. Rivers wouldn't care a penny less
for you, and I never could see why to differ in talk about politics is
going to hurt past anything love could accept. Aunt Helen and Uncle
Charles both talk politics and they do love one another, although Aunt
Helen is tremendously Democratic."

"My dear Leila!"

"Oh, Aunt Ann! I will not say a word more if you want me to hold my
tongue."

"Wouldn't the other way be more wholesome on the whole?" said Rivers.

"I have long thought so," said the Squire. "There are ways and ways--"

"Perhaps," said Ann. "Shall you ride with your uncle tomorrow, Leila?"

"Oh, shall I! I long for it--I dream about it. May I ride Dixy, Uncle
Jim?"

"Yes, if you have a riding-habit you can wear. We will see to that. You
have grown a good bit, but I fancy we can manage."

"And how is Pole, aunt; and the doctor and Crocker and his fat wife--oh,
and everybody?"

"Oh, much, as usual. We had a skirmish about mutton, but the last Pole
sent is good--in fact, excellent. He needs watching."

Then the talk fell on the lessened work at the mills, and there being now
four players the Squire had his whist again, and later carried Rivers
away to smoke in the library, leaving Ann and Leila.

As the library door closed, Leila dropped on a cushion at her aunt's
feet, and with her head in Ann's lap expressed her contentment by a few
moments of silence. Then sitting up, she said, "I am so happy I should
like to purr. I was naughty at dinner, but it was just because I wanted
to make Uncle Jim laugh. He looks--Don't you think he looks worried,
aunt? Is it the mills and--the men out of work? Dear Aunt Ann, how can
one keep on not talking about politics and things that are next to one's
religion--and concerning our country--my country?"

Ann made no direct reply, but went back to what was nearer than any creed
of politics. "Yes, dear. When one big thing worries James, then
everything worries him. The state of the money market makes all business
difficult, and he feels uncomfortable because the mill company is in want
of work, and because their debts are overdue and not likely to be paid in
full or at all."

"I wish I could do something to help Uncle Jim."

"You can ride with him and I cannot. You can talk to him without
limitations; I cannot. He is reasonable about this grave question of
slavery. He does not think it right; I do--oh, good for master and best
for the black. When, soon after our marriage, we spoke of it, he was
positive and told me to read what Washington had said about slavery. We
were both young and said angry things which left a pang of remembrance.
After that we were careful. But now this terrible question comes up in
the village and in every paper. It will get worse, and I see no end to
it."

Leila was silent, remembering too her aunt's share in Josiah's escape.
The advice implied in her aunt's frank talk she saw was to be accepted.
"I will remember, Aunt Ann." At least she was free to talk to her uncle.

"Has any one heard of Josiah?" asked Leila.

"No, I was sorry for him. He had so many good traits. I think he would
have been more happy if he had remained with his master."

Leila had her doubts, but was self-advised to say no more than, "I often
think of him. Now I shall go to bed."

"Yes, you must be tired."

"I am never tired, but to be free to sit up late or go to bed and read
what I want to--and to ride! Good-night. I can write to John--now there's
another bit of freedom. Oh, dear, how delightful it all is!" She went
upstairs thinking how hard it would be to keep off of the forbidden
ground, and after all was her aunt entirely wise? Well, there was Uncle
Jim and John.

While this talk went on the rector alone with his host said, "You are
evidently to have a fresh and very positive factor in your household
life--"

"Hush," said the Squire. "Talk low--Ann Penhallow has incredible
hearing."

"True--quite true--I forgot. How amazingly the child has changed. She
will be a useful ferment, I fancy. How strange it is always--this abrupt
leap of the girl into the heritage of womanhood. The boy matures slowly,
by imperceptible gradations. Now Leila seems to me years older than John,
and the change is really somewhat startling; but then I have seen very
little of young women. There is the girl, the maid, the woman."

"Oh, but there is boy, lad, and man."

"Not comparable, Squire; continuously growing in one case, and in the
other developmental surprises and, ever after, fall and rise of energy.
The general trouble about understanding women is that men judge them by
some one well-known woman. I heard a famous doctor say that no man need
pretend to understand women unless he had been familiar with sick women."

The Squire recalling the case of Ann Penhallow was silent. The clergyman
thinking too of his own bitter experience lapsed into contemplative
cleaning of a much valued meerschaum pipe. The Squire not given to morbid
or other psychological studies made brief reply. "I hope that Leila will
remain half boy."

"Too late, Squire--too late. You've got a woman on your hands. There will
be two heads to Grey Pine."

"And may I ask where do I come in?" He was at times almost dull-witted,
and yet in danger swift to think and quick to act.

Rivers filling the well-cleaned pipe looked up. There was something of
unwonted gaiety in the moving face-lines which frame the eyes and give to
them the appearance of change of expression. "My dear friend, you were as
dough that is kneaded in the hands of Leila, the girl; you will be no
less so now in the hands of this splendid young woman."

"Oh, now--by George! Rivers, you must think me--"

"Think you! Oh, like other men. And as concerns Mrs. Ann, there
will sometimes be a firm alliance with Leila before which you will
wilt--or--no, I will not venture further."

"You had better not, or you may fail like other prophets."

"No, I was thinking as you spoke of the fact that Leila has seen a good
deal of a very interesting society in Baltimore, and has had the chance,
and I am sure the desire, to hear more of the wild Southern party-talk
than most girls have."

"Yes, she has been in both camps."

"And always was and is, I fancy, eagerly curious in the best sense. More
than my dear Mrs. Ann, she has wide intellectual sympathies--and
appetites."

"That's a very fine phrase, Mark."

"Isn't it, Squire? I was also comparing in my mind John's want of
association with men of his own social accident of position. He lived
here with some rough country lads and with you and me. He has had no such
chance as Leila's."

"Oh, the Point will mature him. Then two years on the Plains--and after
that the mills."

"Perhaps--two years! But, Penhallow, who can dare to predict what God has
in store for us. Two years!"

"Yes--too true--who can! Just now we are financially diseased, and men
are thinking more of the bread and butter and debts of to-morrow than of
Mr. Buchanan in the toils of his Southern Cabinet."

"That's so. Good-night."

Leila took upstairs with her John's last letter to her aunt, and sitting
down read it eagerly:

"WEST POINT.

"MY DEAR AUNT: The life here, as I wrote you, is something almost
monastic in its systematic regularity, and its despotic claims on one's
time. It leaves small leisure for letters except on Sundays; and if a
fellow means to be well placed, even then he is wise to do some work. The
outside world seems far away, and we read and can read few papers.

"I am of Uncle Jim's politics, but although there are many pretty
sensitive cadets from the South, some of them my friends, there is so
pleasant a camaraderie among us that there are few quarrels, and
certainly none of the bitterness of the two sections.

"I think I may have told you that we have no furlough until we have been
here two years, but I hope some time for a visit from Uncle Jim and you,
or at least from him and Leila. How she would enjoy it! The wonderful
beauty of the great river in the embrace of these wooded mountains, the
charm of the heroic lives it has nourished and the romance of its early
history are delightful--"

"Enjoy it," murmured Leila, "oh, would I not indeed!" Then she read on:

"Tell Leila to write me all about the horses and the town, and if Josiah
has been heard of. Tom McGregor writes me that after he is graduated next
year, he means to try for a place in the army and get a year or two of
army life before he settles down to help his father. So it takes only two
years to learn how to keep people alive and four to learn how to kill
them."

"I wonder who John means to kill." She sat in thought a while, and rising
to undress said, "He must be greatly changed, my dear boy, Jack. Jack!"

CHAPTER XVI

The widespread disapproval at the North of the Dred Scott Decision was
somewhat less manifest in the middle months of the year because of the
general financial distress, which diverted attention from what was so
agreeable to the slave States, where in fact the stringency in the money
market had been felt but little.

At Grey Pine, as elsewhere in Pennsylvania, the evil influence of the
depression in trade was felt as never before. More men were discharged,
and Penhallow and his wife practised economy which to him was difficult
and distasteful. To limit expenditure on herself was of little moment to
Ann Penhallow, but to have to limit her ability to give where more and
more were needing help was to her at least a hard trial. With the spring
of 1858, business had begun to revive, while more bitterness arose when
in the senatorial contest Stephen Douglas encountered the soil-born
vigorous intellect of the little known lawyer Lincoln. The debate put
fresh life into the increasing power of the Republican party in the West.

"Listen to this," said Rivers to the Squire in July of 1858. "Here is a
new choice. Long ago I got touch of this man, when he said, 'A house
divided against itself cannot stand.'" He went on to read aloud parts of
the famous speech.

Leila sitting with them on the porch looked round to hear her uncle's
comment. He said, "It is too radical, Rivers. It leaves no chance for
compromise--it is a declaration of war."

"It is God's truth," said Rivers.

"The Democrats will rejoice," said Penhallow. "The Administration will be
as I am against Douglas and against this man's views."

"I wish he were even more of an abolitionist, Squire. The right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, ought to apply to all men, black
and white."

"Yes, but are there to be further applications. Shall your free black
vote? Does he say that?"

"No, but I do."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the Squire. "I move we adjourn. Here comes
Ann."

Keen to have the last word, Rivers urged, "He is not against some
fugitive-slave law--not for abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia--or the slave trade between the States."

"But," said Leila, "I read it all last night in my room. He said it was
the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the
territories."

"The right," said Penhallow, "Miss Politician?"

"And the duty," returned Rivers. They rose as Ann came up the steps.

Billy was carrying the baskets she had emptied in the village, and as
usual with Ann when there had been much to do, she came home, Rivers
said, refreshed by the exercise of her gentle despotisms as a man may be
by use of competent muscles. "You are all struck dumb," she cried. "I
smell the sulphur of bad politics."

"I'm for Buch and Breck," said Billy. "Misses she give me a dollar to
vote for Buchanan, I know--"

Leila delightedly encouraged him. "Did you?"

"No, it was for poll-tax. Take in those baskets at once," said Ann.

"Yes, ma'am. Bought a fishing-pole."

The confusion of mind which had made this practical use of Ann's mild
political contribution was new to the Squire, and deliciously funny to
Leila. Penhallow laughed outright. Rivers was silent watching Mrs. Ann.

To his surprise, she said, "You are bad--all of you. If the women could
vote we would cease to have trouble. It may please you all to know that
since that idiot Pole has mortgaged his farm to Swallow and bought out
the butcher at the mills, he has repented of his Democratic wickedness
and says, 'After all the Squire was right.'"

"And where, my dear, did you get all this gossip?" asked Penhallow.

"It is complicated; ask Pole."

"I could guess," laughed Leila.

"And I," cried the Squire.

"You will all suffer," cried Ann, "and don't complain, James Penhallow,
if tough beef is the final result of political complications." Whereupon
she gathered her skirts and fled laughing.

"Pole will pay dearly," said the Squire, who was secretly securing meat
for the discharged mill-hands and understood what had influenced Pole.

Grey Pine and Westways during the summer and fall of 1858 felt, like many
in the Northern States, the need to live with economy. Want of employment
added to the unrest, and the idle men found time to discuss the angry
politics which rang through the debates in the Senate. The changed tariff
on iron, to which Pennsylvania was always selfishly sensitive, affected
the voting, and Penhallow was pleased when the Administration suffered
disaster in the October elections. All parties--Republican, American and
Douglas Democrats--united to cast discredit on the President's policy,
but Penhallow knew that the change of duties on iron had little to do
with the far-spread ruin of trade and manufactures the result of long
credits and the careless finance of an over-prosperous people. The
electoral results were looked upon as a Republican victory. He so
explained it on a November afternoon, as he rode through the still forest
with Leila Grey, when the faint haze and warmer days told of that
mysterious arrest of decay we call the Indian summer.

As they rode, the long lapses into silence told of the pleasant relations
of two people entirely at ease with one another. Now it was a question
asked--and now quick discussion. She had slowly won with maidenhood what
few children have, more or less of the varied forms of imagination, which
once had rather amused or puzzled her in John Penhallow. Her uncle, who
thought slowly unless in danger, rode on with his mind upon a small order
for rails and was far from feeling the mystery of the autumn days. The
girl beside him was reading into the slow rocking to and fro of the
falling leaves some reluctance to become forever a part of the decaying
mould.

"Please, Uncle Jim, don't trot. Let them walk. It is so full of tender
deaths."

"What do you mean, Leila?--as if death were ever beautiful or tender. You
and your aunt bother me with your absurd manufacture of some relation to
nature--"

"Oh, Uncle Jim! Once I saw you pat a big pine and say 'how are you, old
fellow?' I told John it was nonsense, but he said it was fine."

"Oh, but that was a tree."

Leila laughed. "Of that there can be no doubt."

"Well, and what of it? It was half fun. You and John and your aunt sit up
and explode into enthusiasm over verse, when it could all be said far
better in simple prose."

"I should like to put that to the test some night."

"Not I, Miss Grey. I have no poetry in me. I am cold prose through and
through."

"You--you!" she cried. "Some people like poetry--some people are poetry."

"What--what?"

"Wasn't your hero Cromwell just magnificent, stately blank verse?"

"What confounded nonsense!" She glanced at the manly figure with the
cavalry seat, erect, handsome, to her heroic--an ideal gentleman in all
his ways. "Stuff and nonsense!" he added.

"Well, Uncle Jim--to talk prose--the elections please you?"

"Yes. The North is stiffening up. It is as well. Did you see what Seward
said, 'An irrepressible conflict,' and that man Lincoln, 'The house
divided against itself cannot stand'? Now I should like to think them
both wrong."

"And do you not?" she asked.

"No. Some devilish fate seems to be at the helm, as Rivers says. We avoid
one rock to fall into wild breakers of exasperation; with fugitive-slave
cases on one side, and on the other importations of slaves. Where will it
end?"

"But what would you do, uncle?"

"Oh, amend the Fugitive-Slave Law. Try the cases by jury. Let slavery
alone to cure itself, as it would in time. It would if we let it alone."

"And Kansas?" asked Leila.

"Oh, Douglas is right, but his view of the matter will never satisfy the
South nor the extreme men at the North. My dear Leila, the days are dark
and will be darker, and worst of all they really think we are afraid."
His face grew stern. "I hate to talk about it. Have you heard from John
lately?"

"Yes, only last week."

"And you write to him, of course?"

"Yes, I answer his letters. Aunt Ann writes every Sunday. Are things
better at the mills?"

"Rather. Now for a gallop--it puts me always in a more hopeful humour.
Don't let your aunt overwork you, Leila; she will."

"She can't, Uncle Jim." It was true. Leila gently rebelled against
incessant good works--sewing-classes for the village girls, Sunday
school, and the endless errands which left no time for books. Her
occasional walks with Marks Rivers enabled her to form some clear idea of
the difference of opinion which so sharply divided parties north of
Maryland. His own belief was that slavery was a sinful thing with which
there should be no truce and no patient waiting upon the influence of
time. He combated the Squire's equally simple creed--the unbroken union
of the States. She fought the rector hard, to his delight. Far more
pleasant on three afternoons in the week were the lessons in Italian with
her aunt, and Rivers's brilliant commentary on Dante. The months ran on
into and through the winter, with an economical Christmas to Ann's
regret.

As a rule the political contests of our country go on without deeply
affecting the peace of families. In the cotton States opinion was or had
to appear to be at one. In the North the bitterness and unreason of
limited groups of anti-slavery people excited the anger of men who saw in
their ways and speeches continual sources of irritation, which made all
compromise difficult. The strife of parties where now men were earnest as
they never were before since revolutionary days was felt most seriously
in the border States.

"James," said Ann after breakfast, when Leila had gone to dress for a
ride, "I think I ought to tell you that I have had this morning letters
from both my brothers. I wrote, you know, asking them to bring the girls
to us. Leila is too much alone. They both decline. Charles has come out
for the Republicans, and now--it is too dreadful--they do not speak.
Charles tells me there is a strong minority with him and that the State
is not all for the South. I cannot believe it."

"Indeed!" He was not altogether displeased. "I am sorry for you, Ann, as
their sister."

"And as a man, you are not! Where will it all end? There is neither
charity nor reason at the North. I am disturbed for our country."

"You ask where it will all end. Where will it end? God alone knows. Let
us at least wait quietly the course of events we cannot control. I at
least try to be reasonable." He left her standing in tears, for which he
had no comfort in thought or word. Over all the land, North and South,
there were such differences of opinion between wife and husband,
brothers, friends and kinsmen. As he stood at the door about to ride to
the mills he looked back and heard her delayed comment.

"One moment, James--"

"Oh, what is the matter?" cried Leila at the foot of the stairs. To see
Ann Penhallow in tears was strange indeed.

Her uncle standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder had just spoken.
Turning to Leila, he said: "Your aunt and I have had some unpleasant news
from your uncles in Baltimore--a political quarrel."

"I knew it in the spring, Uncle Jim."

The girl's thoughtful reticence surprised him. Neither to him nor to Ann
had she said a word of this family feud.

"Thank you, Leila," murmured her aunt. The Squire wondered why, as her
aunt added, "I am greatly troubled. We have always been a most united
family; but, dear, this--this has brought home to me, as nothing else
has, the breaking up of the ties which bound the South and North
together. It is only the sign of worse things to come."

"But, Ann," said Penhallow, "I must say"--A sharp grip on his arm by
Leila's hand stopped him. He checked himself in time--"it is all very
sad, but neither you nor I can help it."

"That is too true, James. I should not have said what I did. I want to
see one of the men at the mills. His children are ill, his wife is in
great distress."

"I will drive you myself this morning. I will send Dixy away and order
the gig."

"Thank you; I shall like that, James."

Meanwhile Leila rode away, having in a moment of tactful interference
made her influence felt. She was well aware of it and smiled as she
walked her horse down the avenue, murmuring,

"I suppose I shall catch it from Uncle Jim." And then, "No, he will be
glad I pinched him, but he did look cross for a moment." No word of the
family dissension reached John in their ever cheerful letters.

On a wild windy afternoon in February, the snow falling heavily, Leila on
her way to the village rang at the Rector's door. Getting no answer, she
went in and passing through the front room knocked at the library door.

"Come in." Rivers was at his table in a room littered with books and
newspapers. The gentle smile of his usual greeting was missing. She saw
at once that he was in one of his moods of melancholy--rare of late. Her
eyes quick to see when she was interested noted that where he sat there
was neither book nor paper in front of him. He rose as she entered, tall,
stooping, lean, and so thin-featured that his large eyes were the more
notable.

"Aunt Ann has a cold, and Joe Grace was at the house to say that his
father is ill, and aunt wishes you to go with me and see what is wanted.
He has no way to send for the doctor; and so you see, as he is in bed,
you must go with me."

"Oh, I saw him this morning. It is of no moment. I did what was needed."

"But I have to see Mrs. Lamb too. Come for the walk. It is blowing a gale
and the snow is splendid--do come."

Of late he had rarely walked with her. He hesitated.

"Do come."

"If I die of cold, Leila."

"Die! You do not take exercise enough to keep your blood in motion. Come,
please!"

He said no more except "Wait a moment," and returned fitly clad. A fury
of charging battalions of snow met them in the avenue. She faced it
gallantly, joyous and rosy. He bent to avoid the sting of the driven
snow, shivering, and more at ease when in the town the houses broke the
force of the gale.

"You won't need to go to Grace's," he urged.

"I am under orders. Don't you know Aunt Ann?"

Presently plunging through the snow-drifts they came into the dreary
disordered back room which had so troubled Penhallow. It was cold with
that indoor cold which is so unpleasant. Joe Grace came in--a big
strapping young fellow. "I came from the farm and found father in bed and
no wood in the stack. Some one has just fetched a load." He began to
make a fire.

"Go up to your father," said Rivers. "Make a fire in his room. You ought
to have come sooner. Oh, that poor helpless Baptist saint--there isn't
much wrong, but the man is half frozen--and it is so needless."

"Come," said Leila. "Does he require anything?"

"No, I saw to that." As he spoke, he piled log on log and warmed his long
thin hands. "Wait a little, Leila." She sat down, while the loose
casements rattled.

"Leila," he said, "there is no chance to talk to you at Grey Pine. I am
troubled about these, my friends. What I now have of health and mental
wholesomeness in my life, I owe to them. I came hither a broken, hopeless
man. Now they are in trouble." She looked up at him in some surprise at
his confession. "I want to help them. Your uncle told me of your aunt's
new distress and the cause. Then I made him talk business, and asked him
to let me lend him thirty thousand dollars. He said no, but I did see how
it pleased him. He said that it would be lost. At all events his refusal
was decisive."

"But," said Leila, increasingly surprised, "that was noble of you."

"Nonsense, my dear Leila; I have more than I need--enough to help
others--and would still have enough."

She had a feeling of astonishment at the idea of his being so well-off,
and now from his words some explanation of the mysterious aid which had
so helped at the mills and so puzzled Mrs. Ann. Why had he talked to her?
He himself could not have told why. As he stood at the fire he went on
talking, while she made her quick mental comments.

"You call it noble. It is a rather strange thing; but to go to a friend
in financial despair with a cheque-book is a test of friendship before
which many friendships fail. Before my uncle left me rich beyond my
needs, I had an unpleasant experience on a small scale, but it was a
useful example in the conduct of life." He paused for a moment, and then
said, "I shall try the Squire again."

"I think you will fail--I know Uncle Jim. But what you tell me--is it
very bad? I mean, is he--are the mills--likely to fail?"

"That depends as I see it on the summer nominations and the fall
elections, and their result no one can predict. The future looks to me
full of peril."

"But why?" she asked, and had some surprise when he said, "I have lived
in the South. I taught school in Macon. I know the South, its increasing
belief in the despotic power of cotton and tobacco, its splendid courage,
and the sense of mastery given by the ownership of man. Why do I talk my
despair out to a young life like yours? I suppose confession to be a
relief--the tears of the soul. I suppose it is easier to talk to a
woman." "Then why not to Aunt Ann?" thought Leila, as he went on to say,
"I have often asked myself why confession is such a relief." He smiled as
he added, "I wonder if St. Francis ever confessed to Monica." Then he was
silent, turning round before the fire, unwilling to leave it.

Leila had been but recently introduced to the knowledge of St. Francis,
and was struck with the oddity of representing Monica; and the tall,
gaunt figure with the sad eyes, as the joyful St. Francis.

"Now, I must go home," he said.

"Indeed, no! You are to go with me to the post-office and then to see
Mrs. Lamb."

He had some pleasant sense of liking to be ordered about by this young
woman. As they faced the snow, he asked, "How tall are you, Leila?"

"Five feet ten inches and--to be accurate--a quarter. Why do you ask?"

"Idle curiosity."

"Curiosity is never idle, Mr. Rivers. It is industrious. I proved that in
a composition I wrote at school. It did bother Miss Mayo."

"I should think it might," said Rivers. "Any letters, Mrs. Crocker?"

"No, sir; none for Squire's folk. Two newspapers. Awful cold, Miss Leila.
Molasses so hard to-day, had to be chopped--"

"Oh, now, Mrs. Crocker!"

The fat post-mistress was still handling the pile of finger-soiled
letters. "Oh, there's one for Mrs. Lamb."

"We are going there. I'll take it."

"Thanks, miss. She's right constant in coming for letters, but the
letters they don't come, and now here's one at last." Leila tucked it
into her belt. "I tell you, Miss Leila, a post-office is a place to make
you laugh one day and cry the next. When you see a girl from the country
come here twice a week for maybe two months and then go away trying that
hard to make believe it wasn't of any account. There ought to be some one
to write 'em letters--just to say, 'Don't cry, he'll come.' It might be a
queer letter."

Rivers wondered at the very abrupt and very American introduction of
unexpected sentiment and humour.

"Let me know and I'll write them, Mrs. Crocker," cried Leila. She had the
very youthful reflection that it was odd for such a fat woman to be
sentimental.

"I should like to open all the letters for a week, Mrs. Crocker," said
Rivers.

"Wouldn't Uncle Sam make a row?"

"He would, indeed!"

"Idle curiosity," laughed Leila, as they went out into the storm.

He made no reply and reflected on this young woman's developmental change
and the gaiety which he so lacked.

Leila, wondering what Peter wrote to the lonely old widow, went to look
for her in the kitchen, while Rivers sat down in the neatly kept front
room. He waited long. At last Leila came out alone, and as they walked
away she said, "The letter was from Peter."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, I got it all out of her."

"Got what?"

"She gets three dollars a week from Aunt Ann and all her vegetables from
Aunt Ann, and she is all the time complaining to Uncle Jim. Then, of
course, Uncle Jim gives her more money--and Peter gets it--"

"Where is he?"

"Oh, in Philadelphia, and here and there."

"You should tell the Squire."

"No, I think not."

"Perhaps--yes--perhaps you are right." And facing the wild norther she
left him at his door and went homewards with a new burden of thought on
her mind.

The winter broke up and late in May Penhallow left home on business. He
wrote from Philadelphia:

"My dear Ann: Trade is dead, money still locked up, and the railways
hesitating to give orders for much-needed rails. I have one small order,
which will keep us going, but will hardly pay.

"I never talk of the political disorder, but now you will feel as I do a
certain dismay at the action of the Vicksburg Convention in the interest
of the slave States. Not all were represented--Tennessee and Florida
voted against the resolution that all State and Federal laws prohibiting
the African slave trade ought to be repealed. South Carolina to my
surprise divided its vote; there were forty for, nineteen against this
resolution. It seems made to exasperate the North and build up the
Republican party. I who am simply for the Union most deeply regret this
action.

"I want Leila to meet me here to-day week. We will take the steamer and
go to West Point, let her see the place, and bring John home for his
month of furlough.

"I have talked here to the Mayor and other moderate Union men, and find
them more hopeful than I of a peaceful ending.

"Yours always,

"JAMES PENHALLOW."

CHAPTER XVII

When Leila sat upon the upper deck of the great Hudson River steamer, she
was in a condition of excitement natural to an imaginative nature unused
to travel. Her mind was like a fresh canvas ready for the hand of the
artist. She was wondering at times what John Penhallow would look like
after over two years of absence and hardly heard the murmur of talk
around her, and was as unconscious of the interested glances of the young
men attracted by the tall figure standing in the bow as the great river
opened before her.

"That," said her uncle, "is Weehawken. There--just there--Hamilton was
killed by Burr, and near by Hamilton's son four years before was killed
in a duel--a political quarrel." She knew the sad story well, and with
the gift of visualization saw the scene and the red pistol-flashes which
meant the death of a statesman of genius.

"And there are the palisades, Leila." The young summer was clothing the
banks with leafage not yet dark green, and translucent in the morning
sun. No railroads marred the loveliness of the lawns on the East bank,
and the grey architecture of the palisades rose in solemn grandeur to
westward.

"It is full of history, Leila. There is Tarrytown, where André was
taken." She listened in silence. The day ran on--the palisades fell away.
"Dobbs's Ferry, my dear;" and pointing across the river, "on that hill
André died."

Presently the mountains rose before them, and in the afternoon they drew
up at the old wharf. "We stay at Cozzen's Hotel, Leila. I will send on
the baggage and we will walk up to the Point."

She hardly heard him. A tall young man in white pantaloons and blue
jacket stood on the pier. "Good gracious, Uncle Jim, it is John!" A
strange sense of disappointed remembrance possessed her. The boy playmate
of her youth was gone. He gave both hands of welcome, as he said, "By
George, Leila, I am glad to see you."

"You may thank uncle for our visit. Aunt Ann was not very willing to part
with me."

He was about to make the obvious reply of the man, but refrained. They
talked lightly of the place, of her journey, and at last he said very
quietly, even coldly, as if it were merely a natural history observation,
"You are amazingly grown, Cousin Leila. It is as well for cadets and
officers that your stay is to be brief."

"John, I have been in Baltimore. You will have to put it stronger than
that--I am used to it."

"I will see if I can improve on it, Leila."

Now this was not at all the way she meant to meet him, nor these the
words they meant to use--or rather, she--for John Penhallow had given it
no thought, except to be glad as a child promised a gift and then
embarrassed into a word of simple descriptive admiration. When John
Penhallow said, with a curious gravity and a little of his old formal
manner, "I will reflect on it," she knew with the quick perception of her
sex that here was a new masculine study for the great naturalist woman.
The boy--the lad--she knew were no more.

"Who is that with Uncle James?" she asked.

"The Commandant."

"My niece, Miss Grey. Colonel Beauregard, my dear. Let us walk up to the
Point." The Commandant, who made good his name, took possession of the
delighted young woman and carried her away to his home with Penhallow,
leaving the cadet to return to his routine of duty. As they parted, he
said, "I am set free to-morrow, Leila, at five, and excused from the
afternoon parade. If you and Uncle Jim will walk up to Port Putnam, I
will join you."

"I will tell Uncle Jim. You will be at the hop of course? I have been
thinking of nothing else for a week."

"I may be late."

"Oh, why?"

"We are in the midst of our examinations. Even to get time for a walk
with you and uncle was hard. I wrote Uncle Jim not to come now. He must
have missed it."

"And so I am to suffer."

"I doubt the anguish," he returned, laughing, as he touched his cap, and
left her to brief consideration of the cadet cousin.

"Uncle Jim might have been just like that--looked like that. They are
very unlike too. I used to be able to tell just what Jack would do when
we were children--don't think I can now. How tall he is and how handsome.
The uniform is becoming. I wonder if I too am so greatly changed."

It is well here to betray the secrets of the novelists' confessional.
Leila Grey had seen in the South much of an interesting society where
love affairs were brief, lightly taken, easily ended, or hardly more than
the mid-air flirtations of butterflies. No such perilous approaches to
the most intimate relations of men and women were for this young woman,
on whom the love and tactful friendship of the married life of Grey Pine
had left a lasting impression. One must have known her well to become
aware of the sense of duty to her ideals which lay behind her alert
appearance of joyous gaiety and capacity to see the mirthful aspects of
life. Once long ago the lad's moment of passionate longing had but
lightly stirred the dreamless sleep of unawakened power to love. Even the
memory of John's boy-folly had faded with time. Her relation to him had
been little more than warm friendship. Even that tie--and she was
abruptly aware of it--had become less close. She was directly conscious
of the fact and wondered if this grave young man felt as she did. She lay
awake that night and wondered too if his ideals of heroism and ambition
were still actively present, and where too was his imagination--ever on
the wing and far beyond her mental flight? She also had changed. Did he
know it or care? Then she dismissed him and fell asleep.

As John Penhallow near to noon came out a little weary and anxious from
the examination ordeal, he chanced on his uncle and Leila waiting with
the officer of the day, who said to him, "After dinner you are free for
the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Penhallow has asked me to relieve you."

As he bade them good-morning, his uncle said, "How goes the examination?"

"Don't ask me yet, sir; but I cannot go home until the end of next week.
Then I shall know the result."

"But what examination remains?" persisted the Squire.

"Don't ask him, Uncle Jim."

"Well--all right."

"Thank you, Leila. I am worn out. I am glad of a let-up. I dream
equations and pontoon bridges--and I must do some work after dinner. Then
I will find you and Uncle Jim on Fort Putnam, at five."

"I want to talk with Beauregard," said Penhallow, "about the South. Leila
can find her way."

"I can," she said. "I want to sketch the river, and that will give me
time."

"Oh, there goes the dinner call. Come in at a quarter to one with Uncle
Jim. I have leave to admit you. There will be something to interest you."

"And what, John--men eating?"

"No. One of my best friends, Gresham from South Carolina, has been
ordered home by his father."

"And why?" asked Penhallow.

"Oh, merely because his people are very bitter, and, as he tells me, they
write about secession as if it were merely needed to say to the North 'We
mean to cut loose'--and go; it is just to be as simple as 'Good-bye,
children.' I think I wrote you, uncle, that we do not talk politics here,
but this quiet assumption of being able to do with us what they please is
not the ordinary tone of the Southern cadets. Now and then there is
a row--"

Leila listened with interest and some presently gratified desire to hear
her cousin declare his own political creed. She spoke, as they stood
beside the staff from which the flag was streaming in the north wind,
"Would it not be better, John, as Mr. Rivers desires, to let the Southern
States go in peace?" As she spoke, she was aware of something more than
being merely anxious that he should make the one gallant answer to the
words that challenged opinion. The Squire caught on to some comprehension
of the earnestness with which she put the question.

To his uncle's surprise, the cadet said, "Ah, my dear Leila, that is
really asking me on which side I should be if we come to an open
rupture."

"I did not mean quite that, John, and I spoke rather lightly; but you do
not answer."

He somewhat resented this inquisition, but as he saw his uncle turn,
apparently expectant, he said quietly and speaking with the low voice
which may be so surpassingly expressive, "I hardly see, Leila, why
you put such a question to me here under the flag. If there is to be
war--secession, I shall stand by the flag, my country, and an unbroken
union." The young face flushed a little, the mouth, which was of singular
beauty, closed with a grip on the strong jaw. Then, to Leila's surprise,
the Captain and John suddenly uncovered as music rang out from the
quarters of the band.

"Why do you do that, Uncle Jim?"

"Don't you hear, Leila? It is the 'Star Spangled Banner'--we all
uncover." Here and there on the parade ground, far and near, officers,
cadets and soldiers, stood still an instant bareheaded.

"Oh," murmured Leila. "How wonderful! How beautiful!" Surprised at the
effect of this ceremonial usage upon herself, she stood a moment with
that sense of constriction in the throat which is so common a signal of
emotion. The music ceased, and as they moved on Penhallow asked, "What
about Gresham, your friend?"

"Oh, you know, uncle, when a cadet resigns for any cause which involves
no dishonour, we have a little ceremony. I want you to see it. No college
has that kind of thing. Don't be late. I will join you in time."

The captain and Leila attracted much attention from the cadets at dinner
in the Mess Hall. "Now, dear, look!" said Penhallow. At the end of the
long table a cadet rose--the captain of the corps in charge of the
battalion. There was absolute silence. The young officer spoke:

"You all know that to our regret one of us leaves to-day. Mr. Gresham,
you have the privilege of calling the battalion to attention."

A slightly built young fellow in citizen's dress rose at his side. For a
moment he could not fully command his voice; then his tones rang clear:
"Most unwillingly I take my farewell. I am given the privilege of those
who depart with honour. Battalion! Attention! God bless you! Good-bye!"

The class filed out, and lifting the departing man on their shoulders
bore him down to the old south dock and bade him farewell.

Penhallow looked after them. "There goes the first, Leila. There will be
more--many more--to follow, unless things greatly change--and they will
not. I hoped to take John home with us, but he will come in a week. I
must leave to-morrow morning. John is in the dumps just now, but
Beauregard has only pleasant things to say of him. I wish he were as
agreeable about the polities of his own State."

"Are they so bad?"

"Don't ask me, Leila."

The capital of available energy in the young may be so exhausted by
mental labour, when accompanied by anxiety, that the whole body for a
time feels the effect. Muscular action becomes overconscious, and intense
use of the mind seems to rob the motor centres of easy capacity to use
the muscles. John Penhallow walked slowly up the rough road to where the
ruined bastions of Port Putnam rose high above the Hudson. He was aware
of being tired as he had not been for years. The hot close air and the
long hours of concentration of mind left him discouraged as well as
exhausted. He was still in the toils of the might-have-been, of that
wasting process--an examination, and turning over in his mind logistics,
logarithms, trajectories, equations, and a mob of disconnected questions.
"Oh, by George!" he exclaimed, "what's the worth while of it?" All the
pleasantly estimated assets of life and love and friendship became
unavailable securities in the presence of a mood of depression which came
of breathing air which had lost its vitalizing ozone. And now at a turn
in the road nature fed her child with a freshening change of horizon.

Looking up he saw a hawk in circling flight set against the blue sky. He
never saw this without thinking of Josiah, and then of prisoned things
like a young hawk he had seen sitting dejected in a cage in the barracks.
Did he have dreams of airy freedom? It had affected him as an image of
caged energy--of useless power. With contrasted remembrance he went
back to the guarded procession of boys from the lyceum in France, the
flower-stalls, and the bird-market, the larks singing merrily in their
small wicker cages. Yes, he had them--the two lines he wanted--a poet's
condensed statement of the thought he could not fully phrase:

Ah! the lark!
He hath the heaven which he sings,--
But my poor hawk hath only wings.

The success of the capture of this final perfection of statement of his
own thought refreshed him in a way which is one of the mysteries of that
wild charlatan imagination, who now and then administers tonics to the
weary which are of inexplicable value. John Penhallow felt the sudden
uplift and quickened his pace until he paused within the bastion lines of
the fort. Before him, with her back to him, sat Leila. Her hat lay beside
her finished sketch. She was thinking that John Penhallow, the boy
friend, was to-day in its accepted sense but an acquaintance, of whom she
desired, without knowing why, to know more. That he had changed was
obvious. In fact, he had only developed on the lines of his inherited
character, while in the revolutionary alterations of perfected womanhood
she had undergone a far more radical transformation.

The young woman, whom now he watched unseen, rose and stood on the
crumbling wall. A roughly caressing northwest wind blew back her skirts.
She threw out her wide-sleeved arms in exultant pleasure at the
magnificence of the vast river, with its forest boundaries, and the
rock-ribbed heights of Crow's Nest. As she stood looking "taller than
human," she reminded him of the figure of victory he had seen as a boy
on the stairway of the Louvre. He stood still--again refreshed. The
figure he then saw lived with him through life, strangely recurrent in
moments of peril, on the march, or in the loneliness of his tent.

"Good evening," he said as he came near. She sat down on the low wall and
he at her feet. "Ah, it is good to get you alone for a quiet talk,
Leila."

She was aware of a wild desire to lay a hand among the curls his
cadet-cropped hair still left over his forehead. "Do you really like the
life here, John?"

"Oh, yes. It is so definite--its duties are so plain--nothing is left to
choice. Like it? Yes, I like it."

"But, isn't it very limited?"

"All good education must be--it is only a preparation; but one's
imagination is free--as to a man's future, and as to ambitions. There
one can use one's wings."

She continued her investigation. "Then you have ambitions. Yes, you must
have," she cried with animation. "Oh, I want you to have them--ideals too
of life. We used to discuss them."

He looked up. "You think I have changed. You want to know how. It is all
vague--very vague. Yet, I could put my creed of what conduct is desirable
in life in a phrase--in a text."

"Do, John." She leaned over in her interest.

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and to God the things
which are God's." The seriousness of the upturned face for a moment kept
her silently reflective.

"Caesar! What of Caesar, John?"

"My country, of course; that is simple. The rest, Leila, covers
all--almost all of life and needs no comment. But how serious we are.
Tell me all about home and the village and the horses and Uncle Jim.
He has some grey hairs."

"He may well have grey hairs, John. The times are bad. He is worried.
Imagine Uncle Jim economical!"

"Incredible."

"Yes. He told me that his talk with Colonel Beauregard had made him
despair of a peaceful ending, and usually he is hopeful."

"Well, don't make me talk politics. We rarely do. Isn't this outlook
beautiful? People rarely come here and it often gives me a chance to be
alone and to think."

"And what do you think about, John?" She was again curious.

"Oh, many things, big and little. Uncle Jim, Aunt Ann, Mr. Rivers,
Dixy--hornets, muskrats," he laughed. She noted the omission of Leila
Grey.

"And what else?"

"Oh, the tragedy of Arnold,--the pathos of Washington's despair,--his
words, 'Who is there now I can trust?'"

"It came home to me, John, this morning when Colonel Beauregard showed us
the portraits of the major-generals of the Revolution. I saw a vacant
place and a tablet like the rest, but with 'Major General--Born 1740' and
no name! I asked what it meant. The Colonel said only, 'Arnold.' That is
too pitiful--and his wife--I read somewhere that she was young,
beautiful, and innocent of his horrible treason."

"Yes, what crime could be worse than his, and, too, such a gallant
soldier. Let us walk around the fort. Oh, by the way, I found here last
week two Continental buttons, Third Pennsylvania Infantry. Like to have
them, Leila? I thought you might."

"Would I like?" She took them eagerly. "They ought to be gilded and used
as sleeve-links." But where she kept them John Penhallow never knew. They
did not make the sleeve-links for which she agreed they were so suitable.

"Isn't there a walk down through the woods?" asked Leila.

"Yes, this way." Leaving the road they followed a rough trail through the
woods to a more open space half-way down the hill. Here he paused. "This
is our last chance to talk until I am at Grey Pine."

"That will be very soon, John." She sat down amid numberless violets,
adding, "There will be the hop to-night, as you call it."

"Yes, the hop. I forgot. You will give me the first dance?"

To her surprise he asked no others. "Cadets have to learn to dance, but
Baltimore may have left you critical."

Still on her investigation track, she returned, "Oh, Baltimore! It seems
odd to me that I should have seen so much of the world of men and women
and you who are older so little in this military monastery."

He laughed outright. "We have the officers' families, and if we are
allowed to visit, the Kembles and Gouverneurs and Pauldings across the
river--no better social life anywhere. And as for young women--sisters,
cousins--_embarras de choix_, Miss Grey. They come in flocks like the
blackbirds. I assure you that this branch of natural history is pretty
well illustrated at the Point. We are apt to be rather over-supplied in
June."

"Indeed!--all sorts, I suppose."

"Yes, a variety, and just now three charming young women from the South."

"Rather a strong adjective--charming. I might hesitate to apply it to a
whole flock. I think men are more apt to use it than women."

"I stand by my adjective. Take care of your laurels, Miss Grey. I am
lucky enough to have two dances with Miss Ramsay. Her brother is a
cadet."

"Introduce him to me. What myriads of violets!"

"Do you remember how, when we were small, we used to fight violets?"

"How long ago it seems, John. It must have been the first June after you
appeared in that amazing cap and--the cane I have it yet. Let's fight
violets. It may have a charm to make me look young again--I feel so old
sometimes."

Intent on her game, she was already gathering the flowers in her lap,
while the young man a little puzzled and a little amused watched the face
which she described for his benefit as needing to look young. She ran on
gaily, "You will pick five and I will pick five. I never heard of any
other children fighting violets. It is a neglected branch of education. I
got it from the Westways children. Now, fair play, John Penhallow." He
was carelessly taking his five violets, while Leila was testing hers,
choosing them with care. The charm she sought was working--they were
children again.

"That's not fair, Leila."

"Why not?"

"You are testing yours. It is a mean advantage. I would scorn to do such
a thing. It is just like a woman--the way you do about dress. All women
ought to dress alike--then the competition would be fair."

Leila looked up from her lap full of violets. "I should like to see
_your_ Miss Ramsay in one of my gowns."

"_My_ Miss Ramsay! No such luck."

"You're a goose, Jack."

"You're a silly, Leila."

"Oh, now, we are children, John. This is the magic of the June violets."

"And you are just fourteen, Leila. The wrinkles of age are gone--they
used to be dimples."

"Nonsense! Let's play."

They hooked together the bent stems of the flowers. Then there was a
quick jerk, and one violet was decapitated. "One for you, Leila;--and
another."

"You are not paying any attention to the game. Please to keep young a
little while." He was watching the sunlight as it fell upon her neck when
it bent over the flowers.

"And how am I to keep young, Miss Grey?"

"Oh, any woman can answer that--ask Miss Ramsay."

"I will. There! you have won, Leila, three to two. There used always to
be a forfeit. What must I pay?"

"Now, John, what terrible task shall I put upon you? I have it. You shall
ask me to give you the third dance."

"That is Miss Ramsay's. I am sorry."

"Oh, one girl is as good as another."

"Perhaps--for women." He did not ask of her any other dances. "But
really, Leila, the better bred of these Southern girls we see here are
most pleasant acquaintances, more socially easy of acquaintance than
Northern girls. As they are butterflies of the hour--their frank ways are
valuable in what you call our monastery."

"Yes, I know them well. There may be time here for some brief
flirtations. I used to see them in Maryland, and once when Aunt Margaret
took me on visits to some old Virginia homes. These pleasant girls take
to it with no more conscience than birds in the spring. I used to see it
in Maryland."

"Oh, yes," he said, "but it means very little;--quite harmless--mere
practice, like our fencing bouts."

"Did you ever kiss a woman, John--just for practice?" "Why did I say
that!" thought Leila. "Come, sir, confess!"

"Yes," he said, not liking it and far from any conception of the little
mob of motives which betrayed to her a state of mind he had not the
daring to guess. "Did I? That requires courage. Have I--ever kissed a
woman? Yes, often--"

"Oh, I did not ask who."

"Aunt Ann--and a girl once--"

"Indeed!"

"Yes--Leila Grey, aged fifteen--and got my ears boxed. This confession
being at an end, I want absolution." The air was cleared.

"How about the first polka as absolution?" said Leila.

"It is unusual, but as penance it may answer."

"The penance may be mine. I shall know better after the first round, Mr.
Penhallow."

"You are complimentary, Miss Grey," he added, with the whimsical display
of mirth which was more than a smile and not a laugh, and was singularly
attractive.

In place of keeping up the gay game of trifles as shuttle-cocks, Leila
stood still upon the edge of the wood, "I don't think you liked what I
asked."

"What, about kissing? I did not, but upon my honour I answered you
truly." He was grave as he replied.

"You did not think it impertinent, Jack?"

"I don't know what I thought it." And then, as if to avoid need to defend
or explain contradictory statements, he said, "Put yourself in my place.
Suppose I had dared to ask you if ever a man had kissed you--"

"Oh, that's the difference between kissing and being kissed."

"Then put it my way."

"John Penhallow, I should dearly like to box your ears. Once a man did
kiss me. He was tall, handsome, and had the formal courtly manners you
have at times. He was General Winfield Scott. He kissed my hand."

"You minx!" cried John, "you are no better than you used to be. There
goes the bugle!" And laughing as he deserted her, he ran down the hill
and across the parade ground.

"He is not really handsome," said the young woman, "but no man ought to
have so beautiful a mouth--I could have made him do it in a minute. Why
did I not? What's the matter? I merely couldn't. He hasn't the remotest
idea that if he were to kiss me--I--" She reddened at the thought and
went with quick steps of "virgin liberty" to take tea with the
Commandant.

In New York, on his way home, Penhallow received a telegram, "I am third.
John Penhallow." Then the Squire presented Leila with a bracelet, to the
belated indignation of Aunt Ann, who was practising the most disagreeable
economy. Her husband wrote her that the best policy for a man financially
in peril was to be extravagant enough to discredit belief in his need to
lessen expenditure. He was, moreover, pleasantly aware that the improving
conditions of trade this summer of 1859 had enabled him to collect some
large outstanding debts. He encouraged Leila to remember their old
village friends, but when he proposed a set of furs for Ann Penhallow's
winter wear Leila became ingeniously impossible about choice, and the
Squire's too lavish generosity somehow failed to materialize; but why or
how was not clear to him because of their being feminine diplomatic
ways--which attain results and leave with the male a mildly felt
resentment without apparent cause of defeat.

As Cadet No. 3 of his class in this year's studies made the railway
journey of a warm June day, he recalled with wondering amusement his
first lonely railway travel. "I was a perfect little snob." The formal,
too old-mannered politeness of his childhood had left, if the child is
father of the man, an inheritance of pleasant courtesy which was unusual
and had varied values in the intercourse of life. Rivers said of him
later that the manner of John Penhallow's manners had the mystery of
charm. Even when younger, at Grey Pine, he liked to talk to people, with
curiosity about their lives and their work. Now, as the train moved on,
he fell into chat with the country folk who got on the train for short
travel. Soon or late they all talked politics, but 'generally guessed
things would be settled somehow'--which is the easily reached conclusion
of the American. When the old conductor, with the confidence John's
manner invited, asked what uniform he wore, John said, laughing, "Do you
not remember the boy with a cane who got out at Westways Crossing?"

"You ain't him--?? not really? Why it's years ago! You are quite a bit
changed."

"For the better, I hope."

"Well, here's your station, and Miss Grey waiting."

"Oh, John, glad to see you! I told aunt no one must go for you but me.
Get in. And Billy, look out how you drive."

Billy, bewildered by the tall figure in cadet jacket and grey pantaloons,
needed the warning.

Then there was the avenue, the big grey pine, home, and Aunt Ann's kiss
of welcome. The old familiar life was again his. He rode with the Squire
or Leila, swam, and talked to Rivers whenever he could induce the too
easily tired man to walk with him. He was best pleased to do so when
Leila was of the party. Then at least the talk was free and wandered from
poetry and village news to discussion of the last addition to the causes
of quarrel between the North and South. When tempted to speak at length,
Rivers sat down.

"How can a man venture to speak, John, like Mr. Jefferson Davis? Have you
read his speech?"

"No, sir."

"Well, he says the importation of Africans ought to be left to the
States--and the President. He thinks that as Cuba is the only spot in the
civilized world where the African slave-trade is permitted, its cession
to us would put an end to that blot on civilization. An end to it,
indeed! Think of it!" His voice rose as he spoke. "End slavery and you
end that accursed trade. And to think that a woman like Ann Penhallow
should think it right!" Neither John nor Leila were willing to discuss
their aunt's definitely held views.

"I think," said Leila, who had listened silently, "Aunt Ann has lost or
put aside her interest in politics."

"I wish I could," said John. "But what do you mean, Leila? She has never
said so."

"It's just this. Aunt Ann told me two weeks ago that Uncle Henry Grey was
talked of as a delegate to the Democratic Convention to meet next year.
Now her newspapers remain unopened. They are feeding these dissensions
North and South. No wonder she is tired of it all. I am with Uncle Jim,
but I hate to wrangle over politics like Senator Davis and this new man
Lincoln--oh, and the rest. No good comes of it. I can't see it as you do,
Mr. Rivers."

"And yet, I am right," said Rivers gravely. "God knows. It is in His
hands."

"What Aunt Ann thinks right," said Leila, "can't be so unpardonably
wicked." She spoke softly. "Oh, John, look at that squirrel. She is
carrying a young one on her back--how pretty! She has to do it. What a
lovely instinct. It must be heavy."

"I suppose," said Rivers, "we all have loads we must carry, are born to
carry--"

"Like the South, sir," said John. "We can help neither the squirrel nor
the South. You think we can throw stones at the chipmunk and make her
drop it--and--"

"Bad logic, John," returned Rivers. "But soon there will be stones
thrown."

"And who will cast the first stone?" rejoined Leila, rising.

"It is an ancient crime," said Rivers. "It was once ours, and it will
be ours to end it. Now I leave you to finish your walk; I am tired." As
they moved away, he looked after them. "Beauty, intelligence, perfect
health--oh, my God!"

In August with ever resisted temptation John Penhallow went back to West
Point to take up his work again.

The autumn came, and in October, at night, the Squire read with dismay
and anger of the tragic attempt of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. "My poor
Ann," he exclaimed. He went at once from his library back to the hall,
where Leila was reading aloud. "Ann," he said, "have you seen the papers
to-day?"

"I have read no paper for a month, James. They only fill me with grief
and the sense of how helpless I am--even--even--with those I love. What
is it now, James?"

"An insane murderer named John Brown has made an attack on Harper's Perry
with a dozen or so of infatuated followers." He went on to tell briefly
the miserable story of a madman's folly.

"The whole North is mad," said Ann, not looking up, but knitting faster
as she spoke, "mad--the abolitionists of Boston are behind it." It was
too miserably true. "Thank you, James, for wanting to make me see in this
only insanity."

The Squire stood still, watched by the pitiful gaze of Leila. "I want
you, Ann--I wanted you to see, dear, to feel how every thoughtful man in
the North condemns the wickedness of this, and of any, attempt to cause
insurrection among the slaves."

"Yes--yes, of course--no doubt--but it is the natural result of Northern
sentiment."

"Oh, Aunt Ann!"

"Keep quiet, child!"

"You should not have talked politics to me, James."

"But, my God, Ann, this is not politics!" He looked down at her
flushed face and with the fatal newspaper in his hand stood still a
moment, and then went back to his library. There he stayed before the
fire, distressed beyond measure. "Just so," he said, "the South will
take it--just so."

Ann Penhallow said, "Where did you leave off, Leila? Go on, my dear, with
the book."

"I can't. You were cruel to Uncle Jim--and he was so dear and sweet."

"If you can't read, you had better go to bed." Leila broke into tears and
stumbled up the stairs with half-blinded eyes.

Ann sat long, hearing Penhallow's steps as he walked to and fro. Then she
let fall her knitting, rose, and went into the library.

"James, forgive me. I was unjust to say such things--I was--"

"Please don't," he cried, and took her in his arms. "Oh, my love," he
said, "we have darker days than this before us. If only there was between
North and South love like ours--there is not. We at least shall love on
to the end--no matter what happens."

The tearful face looked up, "And you do forgive me?" "Forgive! There
is no need for any such word in the dictionary of love." Between
half-hysterical laughter and ready tears, she gasped, "Where did you
get that prettiness?"

"Read it in a book, you goosey. Go to bed."

"No, not yet. This crime or craze will make mischief?"

"Yes, Ann, out of all proportion to the thing. The South will be in a
frenzy, and the North filled with regret and horror. Now go to bed--we
have behaved like naughty children."

"Oh, James, must I be put in a corner?"

"Yes--of my heart. Now, good night."

November passed. The man who had sinned was fairly tried, and on December
2nd went to a well-deserved death. Penhallow refused to talk of him to
Rivers, who praised the courage of his last hours.

"Mark," he said, "have been twice or thrice sure I was to die--and I
have seen two murderers hanged, and I do assure you that neither they
nor I were visibly disturbed. The fact is, when a fellow is sure to be
put to death, he is either dramatic--as this madman was--or quietly
undemonstrative. Martyr! Nonsense! It was simply stupid. I don't want
to talk about it. Those mischief-makers in Congress will howl over it."
They did, and secession was ever in the air.

CHAPTER XVIII

The figure of Lincoln had been set on the by-ways of State politics by
his debate with Douglas. His address in New York in February of 1860 set
him on the highways of the nation's life. Meanwhile there were no talks
about politics at Grey Pine. The Christmas Season had again gone by with
unwonted economies.

While Douglas defined his opinions in the Senate and Jefferson Davis made
plain that the Union would be dissolved if a radical Republican were
elected, it became clear that the Democratic party which in April was to
nominate candidates would be other than of one mind. Penhallow in
Washington heard Seward in the Senate. Of this memorable occasion he
wrote with such enthusiasm to Leila as he rarely showed:

"I may not write to your aunt, and I am moved to write to you by the
effect Mr. Seward's speech had on me. He is not much of a man in his
make-up. His voice is husky and his gestures are awkward and have no
relation to what he says. It seemed a dried-up sort of talk, but he held
the Senate and galleries to fascinated attention for two hours, and was
so appealing, so moderate. The questions at issue were handled with what
Rivers calls and never uses--the eloquence of moderation. I suppose he
will be the nominee of the Republican party. It won't please the
abolitionists at all. I wish you could have heard it.

"I came here to see two Southern Senators who have been counsel for us in
regard to debts owing the mills by Southern railways. I gathered easily
that my well-known Republican views made collection difficult. I was
about to say something angry--it would have done no good, and I am
opposed to useless anger. It is all pretty bad, because the South has
hardly felt the panic, or its continued effect on our trade.

"I am wrong to trouble you with my troubles. We shall pull through.

"Yours,

"JAMES PENHALLOW."

"P.S. I should have been prepared for my failure to get fair treatment.
I had learned in New York that lists of abolition houses have been
published in the South, and Southern buyers warned not to place orders
with them. I wonder if I am thus listed. Our agent in Savannah writes
that it is quite useless to solicit orders on account of the prevalent
sentiment, and he is leaving the town."

Penhallow went home disappointed and discouraged, and called a private
meeting of his Pittsburgh partners. He set before them the state of their
affairs. There would be no debts collectible in the South. He smiled as
he added that he had collected certain vague promises, which could hardly
be used to pay notes. These could and would be met, they said, but
finally agreed with him that unless they had other orders, it might be
necessary to further reduce their small force. His partners were richer
than he, but indisposed to take risks until the fall conventions were
over. It was so agreed. As they were leaving, Penhallow said, "But there
will be our workmen--what will become of them?" They were sure times
would get better, and did not feel his nearness of responsibility for
workmen he knew so long and so well.

He rode home at a walk. The situation of his firm was like that of many
others, and now this April of 1860 business doubts, sectional feeling and
love of country seemed to intensify the interest with which all classes
looked forward to the Charleston Democratic Convention.

The Convention met on April 23rd. It was grave and able. There were daily
prayers in the churches of Charleston for the success of Southern
principles. Henry Grey, a delegate, wrote to his sister:

"The Douglas platform was adopted and at once the delegations of six
cotton States withdrew. We who cannot accept Douglas meet in Richmond. It
means secession unless the Republicans are reasonable when they nominate
in Chicago. Mr. Alexander Stephens predicts a civil war, which most men I
meet here consider very unlikely."

Ann handed this letter to her husband, saying, "This will interest you."

He read it twice, and then said, "There is at least one man in the South
who believes the North will fight--Stephens."

"But will it, James?" A predictive spectre of fear rose before her.

Slowly folding the letter he said, "Yes, the South does not know us." She
walked away.

On May 16th the Republicans met in Chicago. The news of the nomination of
Lincoln came to the Squire as riding from the mills he met Dr. McGregor
afoot.

"What, walking!" he said. "I never before saw you afoot--away from that
saint of a mare."

"Yes, my old mare got bit by something yesterday and kicked the gig to
smithereens, and lamed her off hind-leg."

"I will lend you a horse and a gig," said Penhallow.

"Thanks," said McGregor simply. "I am sweating through my coat."

"But don't leave my horse half a day tied to a post--any animal with
horse-sense would kick."

"As if I ever did--but when the ladies keep me waiting. Heard the good
news? No--We have nominated Lincoln--and Hamlin."

"I preferred Seward. You surprise me. What of the platform?"

"Oh, good! The Union, tariff, free soil. You will like it. The October
elections in Pennsylvania will tell us who will win--later you will have
to take an active part."

"No. Come up to-morrow and get that horse--No, I'll send it."

The Squire met Rivers on the avenue. As he walked beside the horse, he
said, "I am going to dine with you."

"That is always good, but be on your guard about politics at Grey Pine.
Lincoln is nominated."

"Thank God! What do you think of it, Squire?"

"I think with you. This is definite--no more wabbling. But rest assured,
it means, if he is elected, secession, and in the end war. We will try to
avert it. We will invent compromises, at which the South will laugh; at
last, we will fight, Mark. But we are a quiet commercial people and will
not fight if we can avoid it. They believe nothing will make us fight.
The average, every-day Northerner thinks the threat of secession is
mere bluff."

"Do you recall, Squire, what Thucydides said of the Greeks at the time of
the Peloponnesian War?"

"I--how the deuce should I?--what did he say?"

"He said the Greeks did not understand each other any longer, although
they spoke the same language. The same words in Boston and in Charleston
have different meanings."

"But," said Penhallow, "we never did understand one another."

"No, never. War--even war--is better than to keep up a partnership in
slavery--a sleeping partnership. Oh, I would let them go--or accept the
gage of battle."

"Pretty well that, for a clergyman, Mark. As for me, having seen war, I
want never to see it again. This may please you." As he spoke, he
extracted a slip of paper from his pocket-book, where to Leila's
amusement queer bits of all kinds of matters were collected. Now it was
verse. "Read that. You might have written it. I kept it for you. There is
Ann on the porch. Don't read it now."

Late that evening Rivers sat down to think over the sermon of the next
Sunday. The Squire had once said to him, "War brings out all that is best
and all that is worst in a nation." He read the verses, and then read
them aloud.

"They say that war is hell, the great accursed,
  The sin impossible to be forgiven;
Yet I can look beyond it at its worst
  And still find blue in Heaven.

"And as I note how nobly natures form
  Under the war's red reign, I deem it true
That He who made the earthquake and the storm
  Perchance makes battles too.

"The life He loves is not the life of span
  Abbreviated by each passing breath;
It is the true humanity of man
  Victorious over death."

"No great thing in the way of poetry--but--a thought--a thought. Oh, I
should like to preach of men's duty to their country just now. I envy
Grace his freedom. If I preached as he does, people would say it was none
of a preacher's business to apply Christ's creed of conduct to a question
like slavery. Mrs. Penhallow would walk out of the church. But before
long men will blame the preacher who does not say, 'Thou shalt love thy
country as thyself'--ah, and better, yes, and preach it too."

During the early summer of 1860, James Penhallow guarded an awkward
silence about politics. Leila found that her uncle would not talk of what
the closing months of Buchanan's administration might contribute to
insure peaceful settlement. John Penhallow was as averse to answering her
eager questions. Their silence on matters which concerned a nation's
possible dismemberment and her aunt's too evident distress weighed
heavily upon Leila. The newspapers bewildered her. The _Tribune_ was for
peaceful separation, and then later was against it. Uncle Jim had said he
was too worried about the mills to talk politics, "Don't ask me, Leila."
At last, an errand to Dr. McGregor's gave her the chance she desired.

"Yes," said the doctor, "I'll come to-day. One of the maids? Well, what
else, Leila?" seeing that she still lingered.

"I want to know something about all this tangle of politics. There's
Breckinridge, Douglas, Bell and Lincoln--four candidates. Uncle Jim gets
almost cross when I ask him what they all stand for. Mr. Rivers told me
to be thankful I have no vote. If there is to be war, have I no interest?
There is Uncle Jim--and--and John."

The doctor said, "Sit down, Leila. Your uncle could answer you. He won't
talk. I don't believe John Penhallow owns any politics except a soldier's
blind creed of devotion to the Flag."

"Oh, the Flag, Doctor! But it is a symbol--it is history. I won't write
to a man any more who has no certain opinions. He never answers."

"Well, my dear, see how hard it is to know what to think! One State after
another is seceding. The old juggle of compromises goes on in that circus
we call Congress. The audience is grimly silent. Crittenden's compromise
has failed. The President is at last against secession--and makes no
vigorous effort to reinforce Fort Sumter. The Cabinet was distinctly with
the South--the new men came in too late. You--a girl--may well call it a
tangle. It is a diabolical cat's-cradle. My only hope, my dear, is in a
new and practically untried man--Abraham Lincoln. The South is one in
opinion--we are perplexed by the fears of commerce and are split. There
you have all my wisdom. Read the news, but not the weathercock essays
called editorials. Oh! I forgot to tell the Squire that Tom, my young
doctor, has passed the Army Board and is awaiting orders in Washington.
By-bye!"

"Tom as a doctor--and in uniform," Leila murmured, as her horse walked
away. "How these boys go on and on, and we women just wait and wait while
men dispose of our fates."

In February the Confederacy of the South was organising, and in March of
1861 Mr. Lincoln was President. Penhallow groaned over Cameron as
Secretary of War, smiled approval of the Cabinet with Seward and Chase
and anxiously waited to see what Lincoln would do.

Events followed fast in those eventful days. On the thirteenth of April
Ann Penhallow sat in the spring sunshine on the porch, while Leila read
aloud to her with entranced attention "The Marble Faun." The advent of an
early spring in the uplands was to be seen in the ruddy colour of the
maples. Bees were busy among the young flowers. There was noiseless peace
in the moveless infant foliage.

"How still it is!" said Leila looking up from the book. They were far
from the madding crowd. "What is it, Billy?"

He was red, breathless, excited, and suddenly broke out in his thin
boy-like voice, "Hurrah! They've fired on the flag."

"Who--what flag?"

"Don't know." He had no least idea of what his words meant. "Don't know,"
and crying "Hurrah! They've fired on the flag," fled away.

Ann said, "Go to the village and find out what that idiot meant."

In a half hour Leila came back. "Well, what is it?"

"The Charleston troops have fired on Fort Sumter--My God! Aunt Ann--on
the flag--our flag!"

Ann rose, gathered up her work, hesitated a moment, and saying, "That is
bad news, indeed," went into the house.

Leila sat down on the step of the porch and broke into a passion of
tears, as James Penhallow coming through the woods dismounted at her
side. "What is the matter, my dear child?"

"They have fired on the flag at Sumter--it is an insult!"

"Yes, my child, that--and much more. A blunder too! Mr. Lincoln should
thank God to-day. He will have with him now the North as one man. Colonel
Anderson must surrender; he will be helpless. Alas for his wife, a
Georgia woman!--and my Ann, my dear Ann."

There are few alive to-day who recall the effect caused in the States of
the North by what thousands of men and women, rich and poor, felt to be
an insult, and for the hour, far more to them than the material
consequences which were to follow.

When Rivers saw the working people of the little town passionately
enraged, the women in tears, he read in this outbreak of a class not
given to sentimental emotion what was felt when the fatal news came home
to lonely farms or great cities over all the North and West.

Memorable events followed in bewildering succession during the early
spring and summer of 1861. John wrote that Beauregard and all but a score
of Southern cadets had left the Point. Robert Lee's decision to resign
from the army was to the Squire far more sorrowfully important.

When Lincoln's call to arms was followed in July by the defeat of Bull
Run, James Penhallow wrote to his nephew:

"My Dear John: Your aunt is beyond measure disturbed. I have been more at
ease now that this terrible decision as to whether we are to be one or
God knows how many is to be settled by the ordeal of battle. I am amazed
that no one has dwelt upon what would have followed accepted secession.
We should have had a long frontier of custom houses, endless rows over
escaping slaves, and the outlet of the Mississippi in the possession of a
foreign country. Within ten years war would have followed; better let it
come now.

"I am offered a regiment by Governor Curtin. To accept would be fatal to
our interests in the mills. It may become an imperative duty to accept;
but this war will last long, or I much underestimate the difficulties of
overcoming a gallant people waging a defensive war in a country where
every road and creek is familiar.

"Yours, in haste,

"JAMES PENHALLOW."

John wrote later:

"MY DEAR UNCLE: Here is news for you! All of my class are ordered to
Washington. I shall be in the engineer corps. I see General McClellan is
put in command of the army. I will write again from Washington."

Ann Penhallow heard the letter, and saying merely, "It had to come!" made
the bitter forecast that it would be James Penhallow's turn next.

John wrote again as he had promised, but now to Leila:

"At last we are in this crowded city. We get our uniforms in a day or
two. I am a lieutenant of engineers. We are now in tents. On arrival we
were marched to General Scott's headquarters, and while drawn up in line
Mr. Lincoln came out. He said a few words to us. His appearance was
strange to me. A tall stooping figure, in what our village calls 'store
clothes,' but very neat; the face big, homely, with a look of sadness in
the eyes. He shook hands with each of us in turn, saying a word of
encouragement. Why he spoke specially to me, I do not know. He asked my
name. I said 'Penhallow.' 'Oh,' he said, 'a Cornish name--the great
iron-works. Do you know the Cornish rhyme? It rings right true.' I said,
'No, sir.' 'Well, it is good. Do your duty. There is a whole creed in the
word--man needs no other. God bless you, boys.' It was great, Leila. What
is the Cornish rhyme? Ask Uncle Jim. Write me care of the Engineer Camp.

"I put this on a separate slip for you. In Baltimore we were delayed and
I had an hour's leave. I called on your uncle, Charles Grey. He is Union
through and through. His brother Henry has gone South. While I was
walking with Mr. Charles Grey, a lady went by us, drawing away her skirts
with quite unmistakable contempt and staring at your uncle in a way which
was so singular that I asked what it all meant. He replied, 'It is your
United States cadet uniform--and the lady is Mrs. Henry Grey. I am not of
their acquaintance.' This, Leila, was my first taste of the bitterness of
feeling here. It is the worse for the uprising of union feeling all over
Maryland.

"My class-mates are rather jolly about their commissions and the prospect
of active war. I have myself a certain sense of being a mere cipher, a
dread too of failure. I can say so to you and to no one else. I am going
where death is in the air--and there are things which make me eager to
live--and--to be able to live to feel that I have done my duty. Thinking
of how intensely you feel and how you grieve over being unable to do more
than pray, I mean to pet a little the idea that I am your substitute."

At this point she sat a while with the letter on her lap. Then
she read on:

"I hoped for a brief furlough, but got none, and so I shall apply to
memory and imagination for frequent leave of absence,--from duty.

"Yours,

"JOHN PENHALLOW."

"To pet a little the idea! That is so like John. Well, yes--I don't mind
being petted as a substitute and at a distance. It's rather confusing."

CHAPTER XIX

It was late in October and ten at night, when Leila with her uncle was
endeavouring to discover on one of the large maps, then so much in
demand, the situation of the many small conflicts which local feeling
brought about.

"It all wants a head--one head, Leila. Now it is here, there and
everywhere, useless gain or loss--and no large scheme. John left
Washington two weeks ago. You saw his letter?"

"No."

"Then I may have told you--I am sure I did. Damn it, Leila! I am so
bothered. I did tell Ann, I suppose."

"Why, of course, Uncle Jim. I wish I could help you. Is it the mills?"

"Yes. Your little property, part of John's--your aunt's--are all in the
family business. Ann says, 'What's the difference? Nothing matters now.'
It isn't like her."

"I'm sure I don't care, Uncle Jim."

"Don't talk nonsense. In a month we shall know if we are bankrupt. I did
not mean to trouble you. I did mean to tell you that to my relief John is
out of Washington and ordered to report to General Grant at Cairo. See,
dear, there is a pin marking it on the map."

"Do you know this General?"

"Yes. He took no special rank at the Point, but--who can tell! Generals
are born, not made. I saw a beautiful water-colour by him at the Point.
That's all I know of him. Now, go to bed--and don't take with you my
worries and fight battles in your dreams."

There was in fact no one on whom he could willingly unload all of his
burdens. The need to relieve the hands out of work--two-thirds of his
force--was growing less of late, as men drifted off into the State force
which the able Governor Curtin was sending to McClellan. Penhallow's
friends in Pittsburgh had been able to secure a mortgage on Grey Pine,
and thus aided by his partners he won a little relief, while Rivers
watched him with increasing anxiety.

On the 17th of January, 1862, he walked into McGregor's office and said
to his stout friend, "McGregor, I am in the utmost distress about my
wife. Inside my home and at the mills I am beset with enough difficulties
to drive a man wild. We have a meeting in half an hour to decide what we
shall do. I used to talk to Ann of my affairs. No one has or had a
clearer head. Now, I can't."

"Why not, my friend?"

"She will not talk. Henry Grey is in the Confederate service; Charles is
out and out for the Union; we have no later news of John. We miserably
sit and eat and manufacture feeble talk at table. It is pitiful. Her
duties she does, as you may know, but comes home worn out and goes to bed
at nine. Even the village people see it and ask me about her. If it were
not for Leila, I should have no one to talk to."

A boy came in. "You are wanted, sir, at the mill office."

"Say I will come at once. I'll see you after the meeting, McGregor."

"One moment, Squire. Here's a bit of good news for you. Cameron has
resigned, and Edwin Stanton is Secretary of War."

"Stanton! Indeed! Thank Heaven for that. Now things will move, I am
sure."

The Squire found in his office Sibley, one of his partners, a heavy old
man, who carried the indifferent manners of a farmer's son into a middle
age of successful business. He sat with his chair tilted back, a huge
Cabana cigar hanging unlighted from the corner of his mouth. He made no
movement towards rising, but gave his hand as he sat, and said: "There,
Penhallow, just read that!"

As the Squire took the telegram, Sibley scratched a match on the back of
his pantaloons and waiting for the sulphur to burn out lit his cigar.
Ever after the smell of sulphur brought to the Squire of Grey Pine the
sense of some pleasant association and then a less agreeable remembrance.

"Read it--read it out loud, Penhallow! It was a near thing. Wardlow
couldn't meet us--be here at noon. Read it--I've read it about ten
times--want to hear it again. I've been as near broke as you--but that's
an old story. When you're at your last dollar, buy a fast pair of
trotters--one thousand-dollar pair--and drive them. Up goes your credit!
Told you that once."

Penhallow looked up from the telegram. "Is this certain?"

"Yes, it has been repeated--you can rely on it."

"WASHINGTON, Willard's Hotel.

"Mr. Stanton has given contract for field artillery to the Penhallow
Mills.

"RICHARD AINSELEY."

Penhallow had read it aloud as he stood. Then he sat down.

"Don't speak to me for a moment, Sibley. Thank God!" he murmured, while
the care-wrinkled face of the veteran speculator looked at him with a
faint smile of affectionate regard.

"Well," said Penhallow, "is this all?"

"No. While Cameron was in office the contract was drawn in favour of the
Lancaster Works. We have been urging our own claims, and their Washington
agent, your very particular friend, Mr. Swallow, would have had the job
in a week more. When Stanton saw our bid and that it was really a more
advantageous offer, he sent first for Swallow and then for Ainseley
and settled it at once. I believe your name and well-known character did
the business. Do you know--do you realize what it means to us?"

"Hardly. I had no hope while Cameron was in office. I left it to you and
Ainseley."

"Well, you will see the contract to-morrow." He wriggled on to one leg of
the frail office chair and came down with a crash. He gathered up his two
hundred pounds and laughing said, as he looked at the wreck, "That's what
we would have been tomorrow but for that bit of yellow paper. In six
months you will be a rich man, my friend. Cannon--shells--the whole
outfit. We must get to work at once. An ordnance officer will be here
to-morrow with specifications, and your own knowledge will be invaluable.
I'd like to see Swallow again. He was so darned sure!"

Wardlow turned up by the noon train, and they worked until dusk, when his
partners left him to secure hands in Pittsburgh, while the good news
spread among the men still at work. Penhallow rode home through the woods
humming his old army songs--a relieved and happy man.

The Doctor waited a half-hour in vain, and after his noonday dinner was
about to go out when Mrs. Penhallow was driven to his door. Somewhat
surprised, he went back with her.

"Sit down," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh, for me nothing! I want to talk about my husband. He is ill, I am
sure--he is ill. He eats little, he sleeps badly, he has lost--oh,
altogether lost--his natural gaiety. He hardly speaks at all."

The Doctor was silent.

"Well," she said.

"Can you bear a little frank talk?" he asked.

"Yes--why not?"

"Do you know that he is on the verge of complete financial ruin?"

"What does that matter? I can--I can bear anything--give up anything--"

"You have the woman's--the good woman's--indifference about money. Do you
talk to him about it?"

"No. We get on at once to the causes of trouble--this unrighteous
war--that I can't stand."

"Ah, Mrs. Penhallow, there must be in the North and South many families
divided in opinion; what do you suppose they do? This absolute silence is
fatal. You two are drifting apart--"

"Oh, not that! Surely not that!"