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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crisis, Volume 4, by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Crisis, Volume 4
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5391]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRISIS, VOLUME 4 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CRISIS
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+Volume 4.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AN EXCURSION
+
+I am going ahead two years. Two years during which a nation struggled in
+agony with sickness, and even the great strength with which she was
+endowed at birth was not equal to the task of throwing it off. In 1620 a
+Dutch ship had brought from Guinea to his Majesty's Colony of Virginia
+the germs of that disease for which the Nation's blood was to be let so
+freely. During these years signs of dissolution, of death, were not
+wanting.
+
+In the city by the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women
+were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be
+left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new
+monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again
+the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a
+power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had
+wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat
+among the highest, to share with them the responsibilities of manhood.
+
+Meanwhile, Stephen Brice had been given permission to practise law in the
+sovereign state of Missouri. Stephen understood Judge Whipple better. It
+cannot be said that he was intimate with that rather formidable
+personage, although the Judge, being a man of habits, had formed that of
+taking tea at least once a week with Mrs. Brice. Stephen had learned to
+love the Judge, and he had never ceased to be grateful to him for a
+knowledge of that man who had had the most influence upon his life,
+--Abraham Lincoln.
+
+For the seed, sowed in wisdom and self-denial, was bearing fruit. The
+sound of gathering conventions was in the land, and the Freeport Heresy
+was not for gotten.
+
+We shall not mention the number of clients thronging to Mr. Whipple's
+office to consult Mr. Brice. These things are humiliating. Some of
+Stephen's income came from articles in the newspapers of that day. What
+funny newspapers they were, the size of a blanket! No startling headlines
+such as we see now, but a continued novel among the advertisements on the
+front page and verses from some gifted lady of the town, signed Electra.
+And often a story of pure love, but more frequently of ghosts or other
+eerie phenomena taken from a magazine, or an anecdote of a cat or a
+chicken. There were letters from citizens who had the mania of print,
+bulletins of different ages from all parts of the Union, clippings out of
+day-before-yesterday's newspaper of Chicago or Cincinnati to three-weeks
+letters from San Francisco, come by the pony post to Lexington and then
+down the swift Missouri. Of course, there was news by telegraph, but that
+was precious as fine gold,--not to be lightly read and cast aside.
+
+In the autumn of '59, through the kindness of Mr. Brinsmade, Stephen had
+gone on a steamboat up the river to a great convention in Iowa. On this
+excursion was much of St. Louis's bluest blood. He widened his circle of
+acquaintances, and spent much of his time walking the guards between Miss
+Anne Brinsmade and Miss Puss Russell. Perhaps it is unfair to these young
+ladies to repeat what they said about Stephen in the privacy of their
+staterooms, gentle Anne remonstrating that they should not gossip, and
+listening eagerly the while, and laughing at Miss Puss, whose mimicry of
+Stephen's severe ways brought tears to her eyes.
+
+Mr. Clarence Colfax was likewise on the boat, and passing Stephen on the
+guards, bowed distantly. But once, on the return trip, when Stephen had a
+writing pad on his knee, the young Southerner came up to him in his
+frankest manner and with an expression of the gray eyes which was not to
+be withstood.
+
+"Making a case, Brice?" he said. "I hear you are the kind that cannot be
+idle even on a holiday."
+
+"Not as bad as all that," replied Stephen, smiling at him.
+
+"Reckon you keep a diary, then," said Clarence, leaning against the rail.
+He made a remarkably graceful figure, Stephen thought. He was tall, and
+his movements had what might be called a commanding indolence. Stephen,
+while he smiled, could not but admire the tone and gesture with which
+Colfax bade a passing negro to get him a handkerchief from his cabin. The
+alacrity of the black to do the errand was amusing enough. Stephen well
+knew it had not been such if he wanted a handkerchief.
+
+Stephen said it was not a diary. Mr. Colfax was too well bred to inquire
+further; so he never found out that Mr. Brice was writing an account of
+the Convention and the speechmaking for the Missouri Democrat.
+
+"Brice," said the Southerner, "I want to apologize for things I've done
+to you and said about you. I hated you for a long time after you beat me
+out of Hester, and--" he hesitated.
+
+Stephen looked up. For the first time he actually liked Colfax. He had
+been long enough among Colfax's people to understand how difficult it was
+for him to say the thing he wished.
+
+"You may remember a night at my uncle's, Colonel Carvel's, on the
+occasion of my cousin's birthday?"
+
+"Yes," said Stephen, in surprise.
+
+"Well," blurted Clarence, boyishly, "I was rude to you in my uncle's
+house, and I have since been sorry."
+
+"He held out his hand, and Stephen took it warmly.
+
+"I was younger then, Mr. Colfax," he said, "and I didn't understand your
+point of view as well as I do now. Not that I have changed my ideas," he
+added quickly, "but the notion of the girl's going South angered me. I
+was bidding against the dealer rather than against you. Had I then known
+Miss Carvel--" he stopped abruptly.
+
+The winning expression died from the face of the other.
+
+He turned away, and leaning across the rail, stared at the high bluffs,
+red-bronzed by the autumn sun. A score of miles beyond that precipice was
+a long low building of stone, surrounded by spreading trees,--the school
+for young ladies, celebrated throughout the West, where our mothers and
+grandmothers were taught,--Monticello. Hither Miss Virginia Carvel had
+gone, some thirty days since, for her second winter.
+
+Perhaps Stephen guessed the thought in the mind of his companion, for he
+stared also. The music in the cabin came to an abrupt pause, and only the
+tumbling of waters through the planks of the great wheels broke the
+silence. They were both startled by laughter at their shoulders. There
+stood Miss Russell, the picture of merriment, her arm locked in Anne
+Brinsmade's.
+
+"It is the hour when all devout worshippers turn towards the East," she
+said. "The goddess is enshrined at Monticello."
+
+Both young men, as they got to their feet, were crimson. Whereupon Miss
+Russell laughed again. Anne, however, blushed for them. But this was not
+the first time Miss Russell had gone too far. Young Mr. Colfax, with the
+excess of manner which was his at such times, excused himself and left
+abruptly. This to the further embarrassment of Stephen and Anne, and the
+keener enjoyment of Miss Russell.
+
+"Was I not right, Mr. Brice?" she demanded. "Why, you are even writing
+verses to her!"
+
+"I scarcely know Miss Carvel," he said, recovering. "And as for writing
+verse--"
+
+"You never did such a thing in your life! I can well believe it."
+
+Miss Russell made a face in the direction Colfax had taken.
+
+"He always acts like that when you mention her," she said.
+
+"But you are so cruel, Puss," said Anne. "You can't blame him."
+
+"Hairpins!" said Miss Russell.
+
+"Isn't she to marry him?" said Stephen, in his natural voice.
+
+He remembered his pronouns too late.
+
+"That has been the way of the world ever since Adam and Eve," remarked
+Puss. "I suppose you meant to ask: Mr. Brice, whether Clarence is to
+marry Virginia Carvel."
+
+Anne nudged her.
+
+"My dear, what will Mr. Brice think of us?"
+
+"Listen, Mr. Brice," Puss continued, undaunted. "I shall tell you some
+gossip. Virginia was sent to Monticello, and went with her father to
+Kentucky and Pennsylvania this summer, that she might be away from
+Clarence. Colfax."
+
+"Oh, Puss!" cried Anne.
+
+Miss Russell paid not the slightest heed.
+
+"Colonel Carvel is right," she went on. "I should do the same thing. They
+are first cousins, and the Colonel doesn't like that. I am fond of
+Clarence. But he isn't good for anything in the world except horse racing
+and--and fighting. He wanted to help drive the Black Republican emigrants
+out of Kansas, and his mother had to put a collar and chain on him. He
+wanted to go filibustering with Walker, and she had to get down on her
+knees. And yet," she cried, "if you Yankees push us as far as war, Mr.
+Brice, just look out for him."
+
+"But--" Anne interposed.
+
+"Oh, I know what you are going to say,--that Clarence has money."
+
+"Puss!" cried Anne, outraged. "How dare you!"
+
+Miss Russell slipped an arm around her waist.
+
+"Come, Anne," she said, "we mustn't interrupt the Senator any longer. He
+is preparing his maiden speech."
+
+That was the way in which Stephen got his nickname. It is scarcely
+necessary to add that he wrote no more until he reached his little room
+in the house on Olive Street.
+
+They had passed Alton, and the black cloud that hung in the still autumn
+air over the city was in sight. It was dusk when the 'Jackson' pushed her
+nose into the levee, and the song of the negro stevedores rose from below
+as they pulled the gang-plank on to the landing-stage. Stephen stood
+apart on the hurricane deck, gazing at the dark line of sooty warehouses.
+How many young men with their way to make have felt the same as he did
+after some pleasant excursion. The presence of a tall form beside him
+shook him from his revery, and he looked up to recognize the benevolent
+face of Mr. Brinsmade.
+
+"Mrs. Brice may be anxious, Stephen, at the late hour," said he. "My
+carriage is here, and it will give me great pleasure to convey you to
+your door."
+
+Dear Mr. Brinsmade! He is in heaven now, and knows at last the good he
+wrought upon earth. Of the many thoughtful charities which Stephen
+received from him, this one sticks firmest in his remembrance: A
+stranger, tired and lonely, and apart from the gay young men and women
+who stepped from the boat, he had been sought out by this gentleman, to
+whom had been given the divine gift of forgetting none.
+
+"Oh, Puss," cried Anne, that evening, for Miss Russell had come to spend
+the night, "how could you have talked to him so? He scarcely spoke on the
+way up in the carriage. You have offended him."
+
+"Why should I set him upon a pedestal?" said Puss, with a thread in her
+mouth; "why should you all set him upon a pedestal? He is only a Yankee,"
+said Puss, tossing her head, "and not so very wonderful."
+
+"I did not say he was wonderful," replied Anne, with dignity.
+
+"But you girls think him so. Emily and Eugenie and Maude. He had better
+marry Belle Cluyme. A great man, he may give some decision to that
+family. Anne!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Shall I tell you a secret?"
+
+"Yes," said Anne. She was human, and she was feminine.
+
+"Then--Virginia Carvel is in love with him."
+
+"With Mr. Brice!" cried astonished Anne. "She hates him!"
+
+"She thinks she hates him," said Miss Russell, calmly.
+
+Anne looked up at her companion admiringly. Her two heroines were Puss
+and Virginia. Both had the same kind of daring, but in Puss the trait had
+developed into a somewhat disagreeable outspokenness which made many
+people dislike her. Her judgments were usually well founded, and her
+prophecies had so often come to pass that Anne often believed in them for
+no other reason.
+
+"How do you know?" said Anne, incredulously.
+
+"Do you remember that September, a year ago, when we were all out at
+Glencoe, and Judge Whipple was ill, and Virginia sent us all away and
+nursed him herself?"
+
+"Yes," said Anne.
+
+"And did you know that Mr. Brice had gone out, with letters, when the
+Judge was better?"
+
+"Yes," said Anne, breathless.
+
+"It was a Saturday afternoon that he left, although they had begged him
+to stay over Sunday. Virginia had written for me to come back, and I
+arrived in the evening. I asked Easter where Jinny was, and I found her
+--"
+
+"You found her--?" said Anne.
+
+Sitting alone in the summer-house over the river. Easter said she had
+been there for two hours. And I have never known Jinny to be such
+miserable company as she was that night."
+
+"Did she mention Stephen?" asked Anne.
+
+"No."
+
+"But you did," said Anne, with conviction.
+
+Miss Russell's reply was not as direct as usual.
+
+"You know Virginia never confides unless she wants to," she said.
+
+Anne considered.
+
+"Virginia has scarcely seen him since then," she said. "You know that I
+was her room-mate at Monticello last year, and I think I should have
+discovered it."
+
+"Did she speak of him?" demanded Miss Russell.
+
+"Only when the subject was mentioned. I heard her repeat once what Judge
+Whipple told her father of him; that he had a fine legal mind. He was
+often in my letters from home, because they have taken Pa's house next
+door, and because Pa likes them. I used to read those letters to Jinny,"
+said Anne, "but she never expressed any desire to hear them."
+
+"I, too, used to write Jinny about him," confessed Puss.
+
+"Did she answer your letter?"
+
+"No," replied Miss Puss,--"but that was just before the holidays, you
+remember. And then the Colonel hurried her off to see her Pennsylvania
+relatives, and I believe they went to Annapolis, too, where the Carvels
+come from."
+
+Stephen, sitting in the next house, writing out his account, little
+dreamed that he was the subject of a conference in the third story front
+of the Brinsmades'. Later, when the young ladies were asleep, he carried
+his manuscript to the Democrat office, and delivered it into the hands of
+his friend, the night editor, who was awaiting it.
+
+Toward the end of that week, Miss Virginia Carvel was sitting with her
+back to one of the great trees at Monticello reading a letter. Every once
+in a while she tucked it under her cloak and glanced hastily around. It
+was from Miss Anne Brinsmade.
+
+"I have told you all about the excursion, my dear, and how we missed you.
+You may remember" (ah, Anne, the guile there is in the best of us), "you
+may remember Mr. Stephen Brice, whom we used to speak of. Pa and Ma take
+a great interest in him, and Pa had him invited on the excursion. He is
+more serious than ever, since he has become a full-fledged lawyer. But he
+has a dry humor which comes out when you know him well, of which I did
+not suspect him. His mother is the dearest lady I have ever known, so
+quiet, so dignified, and so well bred. They come in to supper very often.
+And the other night Mr. Brice told Pa so many things about the people
+south of Market Street, the Germans, which he did not know; that Pa was
+astonished. He told all about German history, and how they were
+persecuted at home, and why they came here. Pa was surprised to hear that
+many of them were University men, and that they were already organizing
+to defend the Union. I heard Pa say, 'That is what Mr. Blair meant when
+he assured me that we need not fear for the city.'
+
+"Jinny dear, I ought not to have written you this, because you are for
+Secession, and in your heart you think Pa a traitor, because he comes
+from a slave state and has slaves of his own. But I shall not tear it up.
+
+"It is sad to think how rich Mrs. Brice lived in Boston, and what she has
+had to come to. One servant and a little house, and no place to go to in
+the summer, when they used to have such a large one. I often go in to sew
+with her, but she has never once mentioned her past to me.
+
+"Your father has no doubt sent you the Democrat with the account of the
+Convention. It is the fullest published, by far, and was so much admired
+that Pa asked the editor who wrote it. Who do you think, but Stephen
+Brice! So now Pa knows why Mr. Brice hesitated when Pa asked him to go up
+the river, and then consented. This is not the end. Yesterday, when I
+went in to see Mrs. Brice, a new black silk was on her bed, and as long
+as I live I shall never forget how sweet was her voice when she said, 'It
+is a surprise from my son, my dear. I did not expect ever to have
+another.' Jinny, I just know he bought it with the money he got for the
+article. That was what he was writing on the boat when Clarence Colfax
+interrupted him. Puss accused him of writing verses to you."
+
+At this point Miss Virginia Carvel stopped reading. Whether she had read
+that part before, who shall say? But she took Anne's letter between her
+fingers and tore it into bits and flung the bits into the wind, so that
+they were tossed about and lost among the dead leaves under the great
+trees. And when she reached her room, there was the hated Missouri
+Democrat lying, still open, on her table. A little later a great black
+piece of it came tossing out of the chimney above, to the affright of
+little Miss Brown, teacher of Literature, who was walking in the grounds,
+and who ran to the principal's room with the story that the chimney was
+afire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE COLONEL IS WARNED
+
+It is difficult to refrain from mention of the leave-taking of Miss
+Virginia Carvel from the Monticello "Female Seminary," so called in the
+'Democrat'. Most young ladies did not graduate in those days. There were
+exercises. Stephen chanced to read in the 'Republican' about these
+ceremonies, which mentioned that Miss Virginia Carvel, "Daughter of
+Colonel Comyn Carvel, was without doubt the beauty of the day. She wore
+--" but why destroy the picture? I have the costumes under my hand. The
+words are meaningless to all males, and young women might laugh at a
+critical time. Miss Emily Russell performed upon "that most superb of all
+musical instruments the human voice." Was it 'Auld Robin Gray' that she
+sang? I am sure it was Miss Maude Catherwood who recited 'To My Mother',
+with such effect. Miss Carvel, so Stephen learned with alarm, was to read
+a poem by Mrs. Browning, but was "unavoidably prevented." The truth was,
+as he heard afterward from Miss Puss Russell, that Miss Jinny had refused
+point blank. So the Lady Principal, to save her reputation for
+discipline, had been forced to deceive the press.
+
+There was another who read the account of the exercises with intense
+interest, a gentleman of whom we have lately forborne to speak. This is
+Mr. Eliphalet Hopper. Eliphalet has prospered. It is to be doubted if
+that somewhat easy-going gentleman, Colonel Carvel, realized the full
+importance of Eliphalet to Carvel & Company. Mr. Hood had been
+superseded. Ephum still opened the store in the mornings, but Mr. Hopper
+was within the ground-glass office before the place was warm, and through
+warerooms and shipping rooms, rubbing his hands, to see if any were late.
+Many of the old force were missed, and a new and greater force were come
+in. These feared Eliphalet as they did the devil, and worked the harder
+to please him, because Eliphalet had hired that kind. To them the Colonel
+was lifted high above the sordid affairs of the world. He was at the
+store every day in the winter, and Mr. Hopper always followed him
+obsequiously into the ground-glass office, called in the book-keeper, and
+showed him the books and the increased earnings.
+
+The Colonel thought of Mr. Hood and his slovenly management, and sighed,
+in spite of his doubled income. Mr. Hopper had added to the Company's
+list of customers whole districts in the growing Southwest, and yet the
+honest Colonel did not like him. Mr. Hopper, by a gradual process, had
+taken upon his own shoulders, and consequently off the Colonel's,
+responsibility after responsibility. There were some painful scenes, of
+course, such as the departure of Mr. Hood, which never would have
+occurred had not Eliphalet proved without question the incapacity of the
+ancient manager. Mr. Hopper only narrowed his lids when the Colonel
+pensioned Mr. Hood. But the Colonel had a will before which, when roused,
+even Mr. Hopper trembled. So that Eliphalet was always polite to Ephum,
+and careful never to say anything in the darkey's presence against
+incompetent clerks or favorite customers, who, by the charity of the
+Colonel, remained on his books.
+
+One spring day, after the sober home-coming of Colonel Carvel from the
+Democratic Convention at Charleston, Ephum accosted his master as he came
+into the store of a morning. Ephum's face was working with excitement.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Ephum?" asked the Colonel, kindly. "You
+haven't been yourself lately."
+
+"No, Marsa, I ain't 'zactly."
+
+Ephum put down the duster, peered out of the door of the private office,
+and closed it softly.
+
+"Marse Comyn?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Marse Comyn, I ain't got no use fo' dat Misteh Hoppa', Ise kinder
+sup'stitious 'bout him, Marsa."
+
+The Colonel put down his newspaper.
+
+"Has he treated you badly, Ephum?" he asked quietly.
+
+The faithful negro saw another question in his master's face. He well
+knew that Colonel Carvel would not descend to ask an inferior concerning
+the conduct of a superior.
+
+"Oh no, suh. And I ain't sayin' nuthin' gin his honesty. He straight, but
+he powerful sharp, Marse Comyn. An' he jus' mussiless down to a cent."
+
+The Colonel sighed. He realized that which was beyond the grasp of the
+negro's mind. New and thriftier methods of trade from New England were
+fast replacing the old open-handedness of the large houses. Competition
+had begun, and competition is cruel. Edwards, James, & Company had taken
+a Yankee into the firm. They were now Edwards, James, & Doddington, and
+Mr. Edwards's coolness towards the Colonel was manifest since the rise of
+Eliphalet. They were rivals now instead of friends. But Colonel Carvel
+did not know until after years that Mr. Hopper had been offered the place
+which Mr. Doddington filled later.
+
+As for Mr. Hopper, increase of salary had not changed him. He still lived
+in the same humble way, in a single room in Miss Crane's boarding-house,
+and he paid very little more for his board than he had that first week in
+which he swept out Colonel Carvel's store. He was superintendent, now, of
+Mr. Davitt's Sunday School, and a church officer. At night, when he came
+home from business, he would read the widow's evening paper, and the
+Colonel's morning paper at the office. Of true Puritan abstemiousness,
+his only indulgence was chewing tobacco. It was as early as 1859 that the
+teller of the Boatman's Bank began to point out Mr. Hopper's back to
+casual customers, and he was more than once seen to enter the president's
+room, which had carpet on the floor.
+
+Eliphalet's suavity with certain delinquent customers from the Southwest
+was A wording to Scripture. When they were profane, and invited him into
+the street, he reminded them that the city had a police force and a jail.
+While still a young man, he had a manner of folding his hands and smiling
+which is peculiar to capitalists, and he knew the laws concerning
+mortgages in several different states.
+
+But Eliphalet was content still to remain in the sphere in which
+Providence had placed him, and so to be an example for many of us. He did
+not buy, or even hire, an evening suit. He was pleased to superintend
+some of the details for a dance at Christmas-time before Virginia left
+Monticello, but he sat as usual on the stair-landing. There Mr. Jacob
+Cluyme (who had been that day in conversation with the teller of the
+Boatman's Bank) chanced upon him. Mr. Cluyme was so charmed at the
+facility with which Eliphalet recounted the rise and fall of sugar and
+cotton and wheat that he invited Mr. Hopper to dinner. And from this meal
+may be reckoned the first appearance of the family of which Eliphalet
+Hopper was the head into polite society. If the Cluyme household was not
+polite, it was nothing. Eliphalet sat next to Miss Belle, and heard the
+private history of many old families, which he cherished for future use.
+Mrs. Cluyme apologized for the dinner, which (if the truth were told)
+needed an apology. All of which is significant, but sordid and
+uninteresting. Jacob Cluyme usually bought stocks before a rise.
+
+There was only one person who really bothered Eliphalet as he rose into
+prominence, and that person was Captain Elijah Brent. If, upon entering
+the ground-glass office, he found Eliphalet without the Colonel, Captain
+Lige would walk out again just as if the office were empty. The inquiries
+he made were addressed always to Ephum. Once, when Mr. Hopper had bidden
+him good morning and pushed a chair toward him, the honest Captain had
+turned his back and marched straight to the house or Tenth Street, where
+he found the Colonel alone at breakfast. The Captain sat down opposite.
+
+"Colonel," said he, without an introduction. "I don't like this here
+business of letting Hopper run your store. He's a fish, I tell you."
+
+The Colonel drank his coffee in silence.
+
+"Lige," he said gently, "he's nearly doubled my income. It isn't the old
+times, when we all went our own way and kept our old customers year in
+and year out. You know that."
+
+The Captain took a deep draught of the coffee which Jackson had laid
+before him.
+
+"Colonel Carvel," he said emphatically, "the fellow's a damned rascal,
+and will ruin you yet if you don't take advice."
+
+The Colonel shifted uneasily.
+
+"The books show that he's honest, Lige."
+
+"Yes," cried Lige, with his fist on the table. "Honest to a mill. But if
+that fellow ever gets on top of you, or any one else, he'll grind you
+into dust."
+
+"He isn't likely to get on top of me, Lige. I know the business, and keep
+watch. And now that Jinny's coming home from Monticello, I feel that I
+can pay more attention to her--kind of take her mother's place," said the
+Colonel, putting on his felt hat and tipping his chair. "Lige, I want
+that girl to have every advantage. She ought to go to Europe and see the
+world. That trip East last summer did her a heap of good. When we were at
+Calvert House, Dan read her something that my grandfather had written
+about London, and she was regularly fired. First I must take her to the
+Eastern Shore to see Carvel Hall. Dan still owns it. Now it's London and
+Paris."
+
+The Captain walked over to the window, and said nothing. He did not see
+the searching gray eyes of his old friend upon him.
+
+"Lige!" said the Colonel.
+
+The Captain turned.
+
+"Lige, why don't you give up steamboating and come along to Europe?
+You're not forty yet, and you have a heap of money laid by."
+
+The Captain shook his head with the vigor that characterized him.
+
+"This ain't no time for me to leave," he said. "Colonel; I tell you
+there's a storm comin'."
+
+The Colonel pulled his goatee uneasily. Here, at last, was a man in whom
+there was no guile.
+
+"Lige," he said, "isn't it about time you got married?"
+
+Upon which the Captain shook his head again, even with more vigor. He
+could not trust himself to speak. After the Christmas holidays he had
+driven Virginia across the frozen river, all the way to Monticello, in a
+sleigh. It was night when they had reached the school, the light of its
+many windows casting long streaks on the snow under the trees. He had
+helped her out, and had taken her hand as she stood on the step.
+
+"Be good, Jinny," he had said. "Remember what a short time it will be
+until June. And your Pa will come over to see you."
+
+She had seized him by the buttons of his great coat, and said tearfully:
+"O Captain Lige! I shall be so lonely when you are away. Aren't you going
+to kiss me?"
+
+He had put his lips to her forehead, driven madly back to Alton, and
+spent the night. The first thing he did the next day when he reached St.
+Louis was to go straight to the Colonel and tell him bluntly of the
+circumstance.
+
+"Lige, I'd hate to give her up," Mr. Carvel said; "but I'd rather you'd
+marry her than any man I can think of."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SIGNS OF THE TIMES
+
+In that spring of 1860 the time was come for the South to make her final
+stand. And as the noise of gathering conventions shook the ground,
+Stephen Brice was not the only one who thought of the Question at
+Freeport. The hour was now at hand for it to bear fruit.
+
+Meanwhile, his hero, the hewer of rails and forger of homely speech,
+Abraham Lincoln, had made a little tour eastward the year before, and had
+startled Cooper Union with a new logic and a new eloquence. They were the
+same logic and the same eloquence which had startled Stephen.
+
+Even as he predicted who had given it birth, the Question destroyed the
+great Democratic Party. Colonel Carvel travelled to the convention in
+historic Charleston soberly and fearing God, as many another Southern
+gentleman. In old Saint Michael's they knelt to pray for harmony, for
+peace; for a front bold and undismayed toward those who wronged them. All
+through the week chosen orators wrestled in vain. Judge Douglas, you
+flattered yourself that you had evaded the Question. Do you see the
+Southern delegates rising in their seats? Alabama leaves the hall,
+followed by her sister stakes. The South has not forgotten your Freeport
+Heresy. Once she loved you now she will have none of you.
+
+Gloomily, indeed, did Colonel Carvel return home. He loved the Union and
+the flag for which his grandfather Richard had fought so bravely. That
+flag was his inheritance. So the Judge, laying his hand upon the knee of
+his friend, reminded him gravely. But the Colonel shook his head. The
+very calmness of their argument had been portentous.
+
+"No, Whipple," said he. "You are a straightforward man. You can't
+disguise it. You of the North are bent upon taking away from us the
+rights we had when our fathers framed the Constitution. However the
+nigger got to this country, sir, in your Bristol and Newport traders, as
+well as in our Virginia and Maryland ships, he is here, and he was here
+when the Constitution was written. He is happier in slavery than are your
+factory hands in New England; and he is no more fit to exercise the
+solemn rights of citizenship, I say, than the halfbreeds in the South
+American states."
+
+The Judge attempted to interrupt, but Mr. Carvel stopped him.
+
+"Suppose you deprive me of my few slaves, you do not ruin me. Yet you do
+me as great a wrong as you do my friend Samuels, of Louisiana, who
+depends on the labor of five hundred. Shall I stand by selfishly and see
+him ruined, and thousands of others like him?"
+
+Profoundly depressed, Colonel Carvel did not attend the adjourned
+Convention at Baltimore, which split once more on Mason and Dixon's line.
+The Democrats of the young Northwest stood for Douglas and Johnson, and
+the solid South, in another hall, nominated Breckenridge and Lane. This,
+of course, became the Colonel's ticket.
+
+What a Babel of voices was raised that summer! Each with its cure for
+existing ills. Between the extremes of the Black Republican Negro
+Worshippers and the Southern Rights party of Breckenridge, your
+conservative had the choice of two candidates,--of Judge Douglas or
+Senator Bell. A most respectable but practically extinct body of
+gentlemen in ruffled shirts, the Old Line Whigs, had likewise met in
+Baltimore. A new name being necessary, they called themselves
+Constitutional Unionists Senator Bell was their candidate, and they
+proposed to give the Nation soothing-syrup. So said Judge Whipple, with a
+grunt of contempt, to Mr. Cluyme, who was then a prominent Constitutional
+Unionist. Other and most estimable gentlemen were also Constitutional
+Unionists, notably Mr. Calvin Brinsmade. Far be it from any one to cast
+disrespect upon the reputable members of this party, whose broad wings
+sheltered likewise so many weak brethren.
+
+One Sunday evening in May, the Judge was taking tea with Mrs. Brice. The
+occasion was memorable for more than one event--which was that he
+addressed Stephen by his first name for the first time.
+
+"You're an admirer of Abraham Lincoln," he had said.
+
+Stephen, used to Mr. Whipple's ways, smiled quietly at his mother. He had
+never dared mention to the Judge his suspicions concerning his journey to
+Springfield and Freeport.
+
+"Stephen," said the Judge (here the surprise came in), "Stephen, what do
+you think of Mr. Lincoln's chances for the Republican nomination?"
+
+"We hear of no name but Seward's, sir," said Stephen, When he had
+recovered.
+
+The Judge grunted.
+
+"Do you think that Lincoln would make a good President?" he added.
+
+"I have thought so, sir, ever since you were good enough to give me the
+opportunity of knowing him."
+
+It was a bold speech--the Judge drew his great eyebrows together, but he
+spoke to Mrs. Brice.
+
+"I'm not as strong as I was once, ma'am," said he. "And yet I am going to
+that Chicago convention."
+
+Mrs. Brice remonstrated mildly, to the effect that he had done his share
+of political work. He scarcely waited for her to finish.
+
+"I shall take a younger man with me, in case anything happens. In fact,
+ma'am, I had thought of taking your son, if you can spare him."
+
+And so it was that Stephen went to that most dramatic of political
+gatherings,--in the historic Wigwam. It was so that his eyes were opened
+to the view of the monster which maims the vitality of the Republic,
+--the political machine. Mr. Seward had brought his machine from New York,
+--a legion prepared to fill the Wigwam with their bodies, and to drown
+with their cries all names save that of their master.
+
+Stephen indeed had his eyes opened. Through the kindness of Judge Whipple
+he heard many quiet talks between that gentleman and delegates from other
+states--Pennsylvania and Illinois and Indiana and elsewhere. He perceived
+that the Judge was no nonentity in this new party. Mr. Whipple sat in his
+own room, and the delegates came and ranged themselves along the bed.
+Late one night, when the delegates were gone, Stephen ventured to speak
+what was in his mind.
+
+"Mr. Lincoln did not strike me as the kind of man, sir; who would permit
+a bargain."
+
+"Mr. Lincoln's at home playing barn-ball," said the Judge, curtly. "He
+doesn't expect the nomination."
+
+"Then," said Stephen, rather hotly, "I think you are unfair to him."
+
+You are expecting the Judge to thunder. Sometimes he liked this kind of
+speech.
+
+"Stephen, I hope that politics may be a little cleaner when you become a
+delegate," he answered, with just the suspicion of a smile. "Supposing
+you are convinced that Abraham Lincoln is the only man who can save the
+Union, and supposing that the one way to get him nominated is to meet
+Seward's gang with their own methods, what would you do, sir? I want a
+practical proposition, sir," said Mr. Whipple, "one that we can use
+to-night. It is now one 'clock."
+
+As Stephen was silent, the Judge advised him to go to bed. And the next
+morning, while Mr. Seward's henchmen, confident and uproarious, were
+parading the streets of Chicago with their bands and their bunting, the
+vast Wigwam was quietly filling up with bony Westerners whose ally was
+none other than the state of Pennsylvania. These gentlemen possessed wind
+which they had not wasted in processions. And the Lord delivered Seward
+and all that was his into their hands.
+
+How the light of Mr. Seward's hope went out after the first ballot, and
+how some of the gentlemen attached to his person wept; and how the voices
+shook the Wigwam, and the thunder of the guns rolled over the tossing
+water of the lake, many now living remember. That day a name was
+delivered to the world through the mouths political schemers which was
+destined to enter history that of the saviour of the Nation.
+
+Down in little Springfield, on a vacant lot near the station, a tall man
+in his shirt sleeves was playing barn-ball with some boys. The game
+finished, he had put on his black coat and was starting homeward under
+the tree--when a fleet youngster darted after him with a telegram. The
+tall man read it, and continued on his walk his head bent and his feet
+taking long strides, Later in the day he was met by a friend.
+
+"Abe," said the friend, "I'm almighty glad there somebody in this town's
+got notorious at last."
+
+In the early morning of their return from Chicago Judge Whipple and
+Stephen were standing in the front of a ferry-boat crossing the
+Mississippi. The sun was behind them. The Judge had taken off his hat,
+and his gray hair was stirred by the river breeze. Illness had set a
+yellow seal on the face, but the younger man remarked it not. For
+Stephen, staring at the black blur of the city outline, was filled with a
+strange exaltation which might have belonged to his Puritan forefathers.
+Now at length was come his chance to be of use in life,--to dedicate the
+labor of his hands and of his brains to Abraham Lincoln uncouth prophet
+of the West. With all his might he would work to save the city for the
+man who was the hope of the Union.
+
+The bell rang. The great paddles scattered the brow waters with white
+foam, and the Judge voiced his thoughts.
+
+"Stephen," said he, "I guess we'll have to put on shoulders to the wheel
+this summer. If Lincoln is not elected I have lived my sixty-five years
+for nothing."
+
+As he descended the plank, he laid a hand on Stephen's arm, and tottered.
+The big Louisiana, Captain Brent's boat, just in from New Orleans, was
+blowing off her steam as with slow steps they climbed the levee and the
+steep pitch of the street beyond it. The clatter of hooves and the crack
+of whips reached their ears, and, like many others before them and since,
+they stepped into Carvel & Company's. On the inside of the glass
+partition of the private office, a voice of great suavity was heard. It
+was Eliphalet Hopper's.
+
+"If you will give me the numbers of the bales, Captain Brent, I'll send a
+dray down to your boat and get them."
+
+It was a very decisive voice that answered.
+
+"No, sir, I prefer to do business with my friend, Colonel Carvel. I guess
+I can wait."
+
+"I could sell the goods to Texas buyers who are here in the store right
+now."
+
+"Until I get instructions from one of the concern," vowed Captain Lige,
+"I shall do as I always have done, sir. What is your position here, Mr.
+Hopper?"
+
+"I am manager, I callate."
+
+The Captain's fist was heard to come down on the desk.
+
+"You don't manage me," he said, "and I reckon you don't manage the
+Colonel."
+
+Mr. Hopper's face was not pleasant to see as he emerged. But at sight of
+Judge Whipple on the steps his suavity returned.
+
+"The Colonel will be in any minute, sir," said he.
+
+But the Judge walked past him without reply, and into the office. Captain
+Brent, seeing him; sprang to his feet.
+
+"Well, well, Judge," said he, heartily, "you fellows have done it now,
+sure. I'll say this for you, you've picked a smart man."
+
+"Better vote for him, Lige," said the Judge, setting down.
+
+The Captain smiled at Stephen.
+
+"A man's got a lot of choice this year;" said he. "Two governments,
+thirty-three governments, one government patched up for a year ox two."
+
+"Or no government," finished the Judge. "Lige, you're not such a fool as
+to vote against the Union?"
+
+"Judge," said the Captain, instantly, "I'm not the only one in this town
+who will have to decide whether my sympathies are wrong. My sympathies
+are with the South."
+
+"It's not a question of sympathy, Captain," answered the Judge, dryly.
+"Abraham Lincoln himself was born in Kentucky."
+
+They had not heard a step without.
+
+"Gentlemen, mark my words. If Abraham Lincoln is elected, the South
+leaves this Union."
+
+The Judge started, and looked up. The speaker was Colonel Carvel himself.
+
+"Then, sir," Mr. Whipple cried hotly, "then you will be chastised and
+brought back. For at last we have chosen a man who is strong enough,
+--who does not fear your fire-eaters,--whose electors depend on Northern
+votes alone."
+
+Stephen rose apprehensively, So did Captain Lige The Colonel had taken a
+step forward, and a fire was quick to kindle in his gray eyes. It was as
+quick to die. Judge Whipple, deathly pale, staggered and fell into
+Stephen' arms. But it was the Colonel who laid him on the horsehair sofa.
+
+"Silas!" he said, "Silas!"
+
+Nor could the two who listened sound the depth of the pathos the Colonel
+put into those two words.
+
+But the Judge had not fainted. And the brusqueness in his weakened voice
+was even more pathetic-- "Tut, tut," said he. "A little heat, and no
+breakfast."
+
+The Colonel already had a bottle of the famous Bourbon day his hand, and
+Captain Lige brought a glass of muddy iced water. Mr. Carvel made an
+injudicious mixture of the two, and held it to the lips of his friend. He
+was pushed away.
+
+"Come, Silas," he said.
+
+"No!" cried the Judge, and with this effort he slipped back again. Those
+who stood there thought that the stamp of death was already on Judge
+Whipple's face.
+
+But the lips were firmly closed, bidding defiance, as ever, to the world.
+The Colonel, stroking his goatee, regarded him curiously.
+
+"Silas," he said slowly, "if you won't drink it for me, perhaps you will
+drink it--for--Abraham--Lincoln."
+
+The two who watched that scene have never forgotten it. Outside, in the
+great cool store, the rattle of the trucks was heard, and Mr. Hopper
+giving commands. Within was silence. The straight figure of the Colonel
+towered above the sofa while he waited. A full minute passed. Once Judge
+Whipple's bony hand opened and shut, and once his features worked. Then,
+without warning, he sat up.
+
+"Colonel," said he, "I reckon I wouldn't be much use to Abe if I took
+that. But if you'll send Ephum after, cup of coffee--"
+
+Mr. Carvel set the glass down. In two strides he had reached the door and
+given the order. Then he came hack and seated himself on the sofa.
+
+Stephen found his mother at breakfast. He had forgotten the convention He
+told her what had happened at Mr. Carvel's store, and how the Colonel had
+tried to persuade Judge Whipple to take the Glencoe house while he was in
+Europe, and how the Judge had refused. Tears were in the widow's eyes
+when Stephen finished.
+
+"And he means to stay here in the heat and go through, the campaign?" she
+asked.
+
+"He says that he will not stir."
+
+"It will kill him, Stephen," Mrs. Brice faltered.
+
+"So the Colonel told him. And he said that he would die willingly--after
+Abraham Lincoln was elected. He had nothing to live for but to fight for
+that. He had never understood the world, and had quarrelled with at all
+his life."
+
+'He said that to Colonel Carvel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Stephen!"
+
+He didn't dare to look at his mother, nor she at him. And when he reached
+the office, half an hour later, Mr. Whipple was seated in his chair,
+defiant and unapproachable. Stephen sighed as he settled down to his
+work. The thought of one who might have accomplished what her father
+could not was in his head. She was at Monticello.
+
+Some three weeks later Mr. Brinsmade's buggy drew up at Mrs. Brice's
+door. The Brinsmade family had been for some time in the country. And
+frequently, when that gentleman was detained in town by business, he
+would stop at the little home for tea. The secret of the good man's visit
+came out as he sat with them on the front steps afterward.
+
+"I fear that it will be a hot summer, ma'am," he had said to Mrs. Brice.
+"You should go to the country."
+
+"The heat agrees with me remarkably, Mr. Brinsmade," said the lady,
+smiling.
+
+"I have heard that Colonel Carvel wishes to rent his house at Glencoe,"
+Mr. Brinsmade continued, "The figure is not high." He mentioned it. And
+it was, indeed nominal. "It struck me that a change of air would do you
+good, Mrs. Brice, and Stephen. Knowing that you shared in our uneasiness
+concerning Judge Whipple, I thought--"
+
+He stopped, and looked at her. It was a hard task even for that best and
+roost tactful of gentlemen, Mr. Brinsmade. He too had misjudged this calm
+woman.
+
+"I understand you, Mr. Brinsmade," she said. She saw, as did Stephen, the
+kindness behind the offer--Colonel Carvel's kindness and his own. The
+gentleman's benevolent face brightened:
+
+"And, my dear Madam, do not let the thought of this little house trouble
+you. It was never my expectation to have it occupied in the summer. If we
+could induce the Judge to go to Glencoe with you for the summer; I am
+sure it would be a relief for us all."
+
+He did not press the matter; but begged Stephen to call on him in a day
+or two, at the bank.
+
+"What do you think, Stephen," asked his mother, when Mr. Brinsmade was
+gone, Stephen did not reply at once. What, indeed, could he say? The
+vision of that proud figure of Miss Virginia was before him, and he
+revolted. What was kindness from Colonel Carvel and Mr. Brinsmade was
+charity from her. He could not bear the thought of living in a house
+haunted by her. And yet why should he let his pride and his feelings
+stand in the way of the health--perhaps of the life--of Judge Whipple?
+
+It was characteristic of his mothers strength of mind not to mention the
+subject again that evening. Stephen did not sleep in the hot night. But
+when he rose in the morning he had made up his mind. After breakfast he
+went straight to the Colonel's store, and fortunately found. Mr. Carvel
+at his desk, winding up his affairs.
+
+The next morning, when the train for the East pulled out of Illinoistown,
+Miss Jinny Carvel stood on the plat form tearfully waving good-by to a
+knot of friends. She was leaving for Europe. Presently she went into the
+sleeping-car to join the Colonel, who wore a gray liners duster. For a
+long time she sat gazing at the young, corn waving on the prairie,
+fingering the bunch of June roses on her lap. Clarence had picked them
+only a few hours ago, in the dew at Bellegarde. She saw her cousin
+standing disconsolate under the train sheds, just as she had left him.
+She pictured him riding out the Bellefontaine Road that afternoon, alone.
+Now that the ocean was to be between them, was it love that she felt for
+Clarence at last? She glanced at her father. Once or twice she had
+suspected him of wishing to separate them. Her Aunt Lillian, indeed, had
+said as much, and Virginia had silenced her. But when she had asked the
+Colonel to take Clarence to Europe, he had refused. And yet she knew that
+he had begged Captain Lige to go.
+
+Virginia had been at home but a week. She had seen the change in Clarence
+and exulted. The very first day she had surprised him on the porch at
+Bellegarde with "Hardee's tactics". From a boy Clarence had suddenly
+become a man with a Purpose,--and that was the Purpose of the South.
+
+"They have dared to nominate that dirty Lincoln," he said.--"Do you think
+that we will submit to nigger equality rule? Never! never!" he cried. "If
+they elect him, I will stand and fight them until my legs are shot from
+under me, and then I will shoot down the Yankees from the ground."
+
+Virginia's heart had leaped within her at the words, and into her eyes
+had flashed once more the look for which the boy had waited and hoped in
+vain. He had the carriage of a soldier, the animation and endurance of
+the thoroughbred when roused. He was of the stuff that made the
+resistance of the South the marvel of the world. And well we know,
+whatever the sound of it, that his speech was not heroics. Nor was it
+love for his cousin that inspired it, save in this: he had apotheosized
+Virginia. To him she was the inspired goddess of the South--his country.
+His admiration and affection had of late been laid upon an altar. Her
+ambition for him he felt was likewise the South's ambition for him.
+
+His mother, Virginia's aunt, felt this too, and strove against it with
+her feeble might. She never had had power over her son; nor over any man,
+save the temporal power of beauty. And to her mortification she found
+herself actually in fear of this girl who might have been her daughter.
+So in Virginia's presence she became more trivial and petty than ever. It
+was her one defence.
+
+It had of course been a foregone conclusion that Clarence should join
+Company A. Few young men of family did not. And now he ran to his room to
+don for Virginia that glorious but useless full dress,--the high bearskin
+rat, the red pigeon-tailed coat, the light blue trousers, and the
+gorgeous, priceless shackle. Indeed, the boy looked stunning. He held his
+big rifle like a veteran, and his face was set with a high resolve there
+was no mistaking. The high color of her pride was on the cheek of the
+girl as he brought his piece to the salute of her, his mistress. And yet,
+when he was gone, and she sat alone amid the roses awaiting him, came
+wilfully before her another face that was relentless determination,--the
+face of Stephen Brice, as he had stood before her in the summer house at
+Glencoe. Strive as she might against the thought, deny it to herself and
+others, to Virginia Carvel his way become the face of the North. Her
+patriotism and all that was in her of race rebelled. To conquer that face
+she would have given her own soul, and Clarence's. Angrily she had arisen
+and paced the garden walks, and cried out aloud that it was not
+inflexible.
+
+And now, by the car window, looking out over the endless roll of the
+prairie, the memory of this was bitter within her.
+
+Suddenly she turned to her father.
+
+"Did you rent our house at Glencoe?" she asked.
+
+"No, Jinny."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Brice was too proud to accept it at your charitable rent,
+even to save Mr, Whipple's life."
+
+The Colonel turned to his daughter in mild surprise. She was leaning back
+on the seat, her eyes half closed.
+
+"Once you dislike a person, Jinny, you never get over it. I always had a
+fancy for the young man, and now I have a better opinion of him than ever
+before. It was I who insulted them by naming that rent."
+
+"What did he do?" Virginia demanded.
+
+"He came to my office yesterday morning. 'Colonel Carvel,' said he, 'I
+hear you wish to rent your house.' I said yes. 'You rented it once
+before, sir,' said he. 'Yes,' said I. 'May I ask you what price you got
+for it?' said he."
+
+"And what did you say?" she asked, leaning forward.
+
+"I told him," said the Colonel, smiling. "But I explained that I could
+not expect to command that price now on short notice. He replied that
+they would pay it, or not consider the place."
+
+Virginia turned her head away and stared out over the fields.
+
+"How could they afford it!" she murmured.
+
+"Mr. Brinsmade tells me that young Brice won rather a remarkable case
+last winter, and since then has had some practice. And that he writes for
+the newspapers. I believe he declined some sort of an editorial position,
+preferring to remain at the law."
+
+"And so they are going into the house?" she asked presently.
+
+"No," said the Colonel. "Whipple refused point-blank to go to the
+country. He said that he would be shirking the only work of his life
+likely to be worth anything. So the Brices remain in town."
+
+Colonel Carvel sighed. But Virginia said nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+RICHTER'S SCAR
+
+This was the summer when Mr. Stephen Brice began to make his appearance
+in public. The very first was rather encouraging than otherwise, although
+they were not all so. It was at a little town on the outskirts of the
+city where those who had come to scoff and jeer remained to listen.
+
+In writing that speech Stephen had striven to bear in mind a piece of
+advice which Mr. Lincoln had given him. "Speak so that the lowest may
+understand, and the rest will have no trouble." And it had worked. At the
+halting lameness of the beginning an egg was thrown,--fortunately wide of
+the mark. After this incident Stephen fairly astonished his audience,
+--especially an elderly gentleman who sat on a cracker-box in the rear, out
+of sight of the stand. This may have been Judge Whipple, although we have
+no proof of the fact.
+
+Stephen himself would not have claimed originality for that speech. He
+laughs now when it is spoken of, and calls it a boyish effort, which it
+was. I have no doubt that many of the master's phrases slipped in, as
+young Mr. Brice could repeat most of the Debates, and the Cooper Union
+speech by heart. He had caught more than the phrasing, however. So imbued
+was he with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln that his hearers caught it; and
+that was the end of the rotten eggs and the cabbages. The event is to be
+especially noted because they crowded around him afterward to ask
+questions. For one thing, he had not mentioned abolition. Wasn't it true,
+then, that this Lincoln wished to tear the negro from his master, give
+him a vote and a subsidy, and set him up as the equal of the man that
+owned him? "Slavery may stay where it is," cried the young orator. "If it
+is content there, so are we content. What we say is that it shall not go
+one step farther. No, not one inch into a northern territory."
+
+On the next occasion Mr. Brice was one of the orators at a much larger
+meeting in a garden in South St. Louis. The audience was mostly German.
+And this was even a happier event, inasmuch as Mr. Brice was able to
+trace with some skill the history of the Fatherland from the Napoleonic
+wars to its Revolution. Incidentally he told them why they had emigrated
+to this great and free country. And when in an inspired moment he coupled
+the names of Abraham Lincoln and Father Jahn, the very leaves of the
+trees above them trembled at their cheers.
+
+And afterwards there was a long-remembered supper in the moonlit grove
+with Richter and a party of his college friends from Jena. There was Herr
+Tiefel with the little Dresden-blue eyes, red and round and jolly; and
+Hauptmann, long and thin and sallow; and Korner, redbearded and
+ponderous; and Konig, a little clean-cut man with a blond mustache that
+pointed upward. They clattered their steins on the table and sang
+wonderful Jena songs, while Stephen was lifted up and his soul carried
+off to far-away Saxony,--to the clean little University town with its
+towers and crooked streets. And when they sang the Trolksmelodie,
+"Bemooster Bursche zieh' ich aus,--Ade!" a big tear rolled down the scar
+on Richter's cheek.
+
+       "Fahrt wohl, ihr Strassen grad and krumm
+        Ich zieh' nicht mehr in euch herum,
+        Durchton euch nicht mehr mit Gesang,
+        Mit Larm nicht mehr and Sporenklang."
+
+As the deep tones died away, the soft night was steeped in the sadness of
+that farewell song. It was Richter who brought the full force of it home
+to Stephen.
+
+"Do you recall the day you left your Harvard, and your Boston, my
+friend?" he asked.
+
+Stephen only nodded. He had never spoken of the bitterness of that, even
+to his mother. And here was the difference between the Saxon and the
+Anglo-Saxon.
+
+Richter smoked his pipe 'mid dreamy silence, the tear still wet upon his
+face.
+
+"Tiefel and I were at the University together," he said at length. "He
+remembers the day I left Jena for good and all. Ah, Stephen, that is the
+most pathetic thing in life, next to leaving the Fatherland. We dine with
+our student club for the last time at the Burg Keller, a dingy little
+tavern under a grim old house, but very dear to us. We swear for the last
+time to be clean and honorable and patriotic, and to die for the
+Fatherland, if God so wills. And then we march at the head of a slow
+procession out of the old West Gate, two and two, old members first, then
+the fox major and the foxes."
+
+"The foxes?" Stephen interrupted.
+
+"The youngsters--the freshmen, you call them," answered Richter, smiling.
+
+"And after the foxes," said Herr Tiefel, taking up the story, "after the
+foxes comes the empty carriage, with its gay postilion and four. It is
+like a long funeral. And every man is chanting that song. And so we go
+slowly until we; come to the Oil Mill Tavern, where we have had many a
+schlager-bout with the aristocrats. And the president of our society
+makes his farewell speech under the vines, and we drink to you with all
+the honors. And we drank to you, Carl, renowned swordsman!" And Herr
+Tiefel, carried away by the recollection, rose to his feet.
+
+The others caught fire, and stood up with their mugs high in the air,
+shouting:
+
+"Lebe wohl, Carl! Lebe wohl! Salamander, salamander, salamander! Ein ist
+ein, zwei ist zwei, drei ist drei! Lebe wohl!"
+
+And so they toasted every man present, even Stephen himself, whom they
+complimented on his speech. And he soon learned to cry Salamander, and to
+rub his mug on the table, German fashion. He was not long in discovering
+that Richter was not merely a prime favorite with his companions, but
+likewise a person of some political importance in South St. Louis. In the
+very midst of their merriment an elderly man whom Stephen recognized as
+one of the German leaders (he afterwards became a United States general)
+came and stood smiling by the table and joined in the singing. But
+presently he carried Richter away with him.
+
+"What a patriot he would have made, had our country been spared to us!"
+exclaimed Herr Konig. "I think he was the best man with the Schlager that
+Jena ever saw. Even Korner likes not to stand against him in mask and
+fencing hat, all padded. Eh, Rudolph?"
+
+Herr Korner gave a good-natured growl of assent.
+
+"I have still a welt that he gave me a month since," he said. "He has
+left his mark on many an aristocrat."
+
+"And why did you always fight the aristocrats?" Stephen asked.
+
+They all tried to tell him at once, but Tiefel prevailed.
+
+"Because they were for making our country Austrian, my friend," he cried.
+"Because they were overbearing, and ground the poor. Because the most of
+them were immoral like the French, and we knew that it must be by
+morality and pure living that our 'Vaterland' was to be rescued. And so
+we formed our guilds in opposition to theirs. We swore to live by the
+standards of the great Jahn, of whom you spoke. We swore to strive for
+the freedom of Germany with manly courage. And when we were not duelling
+with the nobles, we had Schlager-bouts among ourselves."
+
+"Broadswords?" exclaimed Stephen, in amazement.
+
+"Ja wohl," answered Korner, puffing heavily. The slit in his nose was
+plain even in the moonlight. "To keep our hands in, as you would say. You
+Americans are a brave people--without the Schlager. But we fought that we
+might not become effete."
+
+It was then that Stephen ventured to ask a question that, had been long
+burning within him.
+
+"See here, Mr. Korner," said he, "how did Richter come by that scar? He
+always gets red when I mention it. He will never tell me."
+
+"Ah, I can well believe that," answered Korner. "I will recount that
+matter,--if you do not tell Carl, lieber Freund. He would not forgive me.
+I was there in Berlin at the time. It was a famous time. Tiefel will bear
+me out."
+
+"Ja, ja!" said Tiefel, eagerly.
+
+"Mr. Brice," Herr Korner continued, "has never heard of the Count von
+Kalbach. No, of course. We at Jena had, and all Germany. Many of us of
+the Burschenschaft will bear to the grave the marks of his Schlager. Von
+Kalbach went to Bonn, that university of the aristocrats, where he was
+worshipped. When he came to Berlin with his sister, crowds would gather
+to look at them. They were like Wodan and Freya. 'Donner'!" exclaimed
+Herr Korner, "there is something in blood, when all is said. He was as
+straight and strong as an oak of the Black Forest, and she as fair as a
+poplar. It is so with the Pomeranians.
+
+"It was in the year '47, when Carl Richter was gone home to Berlin before
+his last semester, to see his father: One fine morning von Kalbach rode
+in at the Brandenburg gate on a great black stallion. He boasted openly
+that day that none of the despised 'Burschenschaft' dare stand before
+him. And Carl Richter took up the challenge. Before night all Berlin had
+heard of the temerity of the young Liberal of the Jena 'Burschenschaft'.
+To our shame be it said, we who knew and loved Carl likewise feared for
+him.
+
+"Carl chose for his second Ebhardt, a man of our own Germanian Club at
+Jena, since killed in the Breite Strasse. And if you will believe me, my
+friend. I tell you that Richter came to the glade at daybreak smoking his
+pipe. The place was filled, the nobles on one side and the Burschenschaft
+on the other, and the sun coming up over the trees. Richter would not
+listen to any of us, not even the surgeon. He would not have the silk
+wound on his arm, nor the padded breeches, nor the neck covering
+--Nothing! So Ebhardt put on his gauntlets and peaked cap, and his apron
+with the device of the Germanians.
+
+"There stood the Count in his white shirt in the pose of a statue. And
+when it was seen that Richter likewise had no protection, but was calmly
+smoking the little short pipe, with a charred bowl, a hush fell upon all.
+At the sight of the pipe von Kalbach ground his heel in the turf, and
+when the word was given he rushed at Richter like a wild beast. You, my
+friend, who have never heard the whistle of sharp Schlager cannot know
+the song which a skilled arm draws from the blade. It was music that
+morning: You should have seen the noble's mighty strokes--'Prim und
+Second und Terz und Quart'. You would have marked how Richter met him at
+every blow. Von Kalbach never once took his eyes from the blue smoke from
+the bowl. He was terrible in his fury, and I shiver now to think how we
+of the Burschenschaft trembled when we saw that our champion was driven
+back a step, and then another. You must know that it is a lasting
+disgrace to be forced over one's own line. It seemed as if we could not
+bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the
+half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's
+pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as
+it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still
+clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He
+pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count
+was smiling as he put up his sword, his friends crowding around him, when
+Ebhardt cried out that his man could fight the second mensur,--though the
+wound was three needles long. Then Kalbach cried aloud that he would kill
+him. But he had not seen Carl's eyes. Something was in them that made us
+think as we washed the cut. But when we spoke to him he said nothing. Nor
+could we force the pipe stems from his teeth.
+
+"Donner Schock!" exclaimed Herr Korner, but reverently, "if I live to a
+hundred I never hope to see such a sight as that 'Mensur'. The word was
+given. The Schlager flew so fast that we only saw the light and heard the
+ring alone. Before we of the Burschenschaft knew what had happened the
+Count von Kalbach was over his line and had flung his Schlager into a
+great tree, and was striding from the place with his head hung and the
+tears streamin down his face."
+
+Amid a silence, Herr Korner lifted his great mug and emptied it slowly. A
+wind was rising, bearing with it song and laughter from distant groups,
+--Teutonic song and, laughter. The moonlight trembled through the shifting
+leaves. And Stephen was filled with a sense of the marvelous. It was as
+if this fierce duel, so full of national significance to a German, had
+been fought in another existence, It was incredible to him that the
+unassuming lawyer he knew, so wholly Americanized, had been the hero of
+it. Strange, indeed, that the striving life of these leaders of European
+Revolution had been suddenly cut off in its vigor. There came to Stephen
+a flash of that world-comprehension which marks great statesmen. Was it
+not with a divine purpose that this measureless force of patriotism and
+high ideal had been given to this youngest of the nations, that its high
+mission might be fulfilled?
+
+Miss Russell heard of Stephen's speeches. She and her brothers and Jack
+Brinsmade used to banter him when he came a-visiting in Bellefontaine
+Road. The time was not yet come when neighbor stared coldly upon
+neighbor, when friends of long standing passed each other with averted
+looks. It was not even a wild dream that white-trash Lincoln would be
+elected. And so Mr. Jack, who made speeches for Breckenridge in the face
+of Mr. Brinsmade's Union leanings, laughed at Stephen when he came to
+spend the night. He joined forces with Puss in making clever fun of the
+booby Dutch, which Stephen was wise enough to take good-naturedly. But
+once or twice when he met Clarence Colfax at these houses he was aware of
+a decided change in the attitude of that young gentleman. This troubled
+him more than he cared to admit. For he liked Clarence, who reminded him
+of Virginia--at once a pleasure and a pain.
+
+It is no harm to admit (for the benefit of the Society for Psychical
+Research) that Stephen still dreamed of her. He would go about his work
+absently all the morning with the dream still in his head, and the girl
+so vividly near him that he could not believe her to be travelling in
+England, as Miss Russell said. Puss and Anne were careful to keep him
+informed as to her whereabouts. Stephen set this down as a most natural
+supposition on their part that all young men must have an interest in
+Virginia Carvel.
+
+How needless to add that Virginia in her correspondence never mentioned
+Stephen, although Puss in her letters took pains to record the fact every
+time that he addressed a Black Republican meeting: Miss Carvel paid no
+attention to this part of the communications. Her concern for Judge
+Whipple Virginia did not hide. Anne wrote of him. How he stood the rigors
+of that campaign were a mystery to friend and foe alike.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HOW A PRINCE CAME
+
+Who has not heard of the St. Louis Agricultural Fair. And what memories
+of its October days the mere mention of at brings back to us who knew
+that hallowed place as children. There was the vast wooden amphitheatre
+where mad trotting races were run; where stolid cattle walked past the
+Chinese pagoda in the middle circle, and shook the blue ribbons on their
+horns. But it was underneath the tiers of seats (the whole way around the
+ring) that the chief attractions lay hid. These were the church booths,
+where fried oysters and sandwiches and cake and whit candy and ice-cream
+were sold by your mothers and sister for charity. These ladies wore white
+aprons as they waited on the burly farmers. And toward the close of the
+day for which they had volunteered they became distracted. Christ Church
+had a booth, and St. George's; and Dr. Thayer's, Unitarian, where Mrs.
+Brice might be found and Mr. Davitt's, conducted by Mr. Eliphalet Hopper
+on strictly business principles, and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, where
+Miss Renault and other young ladies of French descent presided: and Dr.
+Posthelwaite's, Presbyterian, which we shall come to presently. And
+others, the whole way around the ring.
+
+There is one Fair which old St. Louisans still delight to recall,--that
+of the autumn of 1860--Think for a minute. You will remember that
+Virginia Carvel came back from Europe; and made quite a stir in a town
+where all who were worth knowing were intimates. Stephen caught a glimpse
+of her an the street, received a distant bow, and dreamed of her that
+night. Mr. Eliphalet Hopper, in his Sunday suit, was at the ferry to pay
+his respects to the Colonel, to offer his services, and to tell him how
+the business fared. His was the first St. Louis face that Virginia saw
+(Captain Lige being in New Orleans), and if she conversed with Eliphalet
+on the ferry with more warmth than ever before, there is nothing strange
+in that. Mr. Hopper rode home with them in the carriage, and walked to
+Miss Crane's with his heart thumping against his breast, and wild
+thoughts whirling in his head.
+
+The next morning, in Virginia's sunny front room tears and laughter
+mingled. There was a present for Eugenie and Anne and Emily and Puss and
+Maude, and a hear kiss from the Colonel for each. And more tears and
+laughter and sighs as Mammy Easter and Rosetta unpacked the English
+trunks, and with trembling hands and rolling eyes laid each Parisian gown
+upon the bed.
+
+But the Fair, the Fair!
+
+At the thought of that glorious year my pen fails me. Why mention the
+dread possibility of the negro-worshiper Lincoln being elected the very
+next month? Why listen, to the rumblings in the South? Pompeii had
+chariot-races to the mutterings of Vesuvius. St. Louis was in gala garb
+to greet a Prince.
+
+That was the year that Miss Virginia Carvel was given charge of the booth
+in Dr. Posthelwaite's church,--the booth next one of the great arches
+through which prancing horses and lowing cattle came.
+
+Now who do you think stopped at the booth for a chat with Miss Jinny? Who
+made her blush as pink as her Paris gown? Who slipped into her hand the
+contribution for the church, and refused to take the cream candy she
+laughingly offered him as an equivalent?
+
+None other than Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Duke of Saxony, Duke of
+Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Chester and Carrick, Baron Renfrew, and
+Lord of the Isles. Out of compliment to the Republic which he visited, he
+bore the simple title of Lord Renfrew.
+
+Bitter tears of envy, so it was said, were shed in the other booths.
+Belle Cluyme made a remark which is best suppressed. Eliphalet Hopper, in
+Mr. Davitt's booths, stared until his eyes watered. A great throng peered
+into the covered way, kept clear for his Royal Highness and suite, and
+for the prominent gentlemen who accompanied them. And when the Prince was
+seen to turn to His Grace, the Duke of Newcastle, and the subscription
+was forthcoming, a great cheer shook the building, while Virginia and the
+young ladies with her bowed and blushed and smiled. Colonel Carvel, who
+was a Director, laid his hand paternally on the blue coat of the young
+Prince. Reversing all precedent, he presented his Royal Highness to his
+daughter and to the other young ladies. It was done with the easy grace
+of a Southern gentleman. Whereupon Lord Renfrew bowed and smiled too, and
+stroked his mustache, which was a habit he had, and so fell naturally
+into the ways of Democracy.
+
+Miss Puss Russell, who has another name, and whose hair is now white,
+will tell you how Virginia carried off the occasion with credit to her
+country.
+
+It is safe to say that the Prince forgot "Silver Heels" and "Royal Oak,"
+although they had been trotted past the Pagoda only that morning for his
+delectation. He had forgotten his Honor the Mayor, who had held fast to
+the young man's arm as the four coal-black horses had pranced through the
+crowds all the way from Barnum's Hotel to the Fair Grounds. His Royal
+Highness forgot himself still further, and had at length withdrawn his
+hands from the pockets of his ample pantaloons and thrust his thumbs into
+his yellow waistcoat. And who shall blame him if Miss Virginia's replies
+to his sallies enchained him?
+
+Not the least impressive of those who stood by, smiling, was the figure
+of the tall Colonel, his hat off for once, and pride written on his face.
+Oh, that his dear wife might have lived to see this!
+
+What was said in that historic interview with a future Sovereign of
+England, far from his royal palaces, on Democratic sawdust, with an
+American Beauty across a board counter, was immediately recorded by the
+Colonel, together with an exact description of his Royal Highness's blue
+coat, and light, flowing pantaloons, and yellow waist-coat, and colored
+kids; even the Prince's habit of stroking his mustache did not escape the
+watchful eye. It is said that his Grace of Newcastle smiled twice at Miss
+Virginia's retorts, and Lord Lyons, the British Minister, has more than
+two to his credit. But suddenly a strange thing happened. Miss Virginia
+in the very midst of a sentence paused, and then stopped. Her eyes had
+strayed from the Royal Countenance, and were fixed upon a point in the
+row of heads outside the promenade. Her sentence was completed--with
+some confusion. Perhaps it is no wonder that my Lord Renfrew, whose
+intuitions are quick, remarked that he had already remained too long,
+thus depriving the booth of the custom it otherwise should have had. This
+was a graceful speech, and a kingly. Followed by his retinue and the
+prominent citizens, he moved on. And it was remarked by keen observers
+that his Honor the Mayor had taken hold once more of the Prince's elbow,
+who divided his talk with Colonel Carver.
+
+Dear Colonel Carvel! What a true American of the old type you were. You,
+nor the Mayor, nor the rest of the grave and elderly gentlemen were not
+blinded by the light of a royal Presence. You saw in him only an amiable
+and lovable young man, who was to succeed the most virtuous and lovable
+of sovereigns, Victoria. You, Colonel Carvel, were not one to cringe to
+royalty. Out of respect for the just and lenient Sovereign, his mother,
+you did honor to the Prince. But you did not remind him, as you might
+have, that your ancestors fought for the King at Marston Moor, and that
+your grandfather was once an intimate of Charles James Fox. But what
+shall we say of Mr. Cluyme, and of a few others whose wealth alone
+enabled them to be Directors of the Fair? Miss Isabel Cluyme was duly
+presented, in proper form, to his Royal Highness. Her father owned a
+"peerage," and had been abroad likewise. He made no such bull as the
+Colonel. And while the celebrated conversation of which we have spoken
+was in progress, Mr. Cluyme stood back and blushed for his countryman,
+and smiled apologetically at the few gentlemen of the royal suite who
+glanced his way.
+
+His Royal Highness then proceeded to luncheon, which is described by a
+most amiable Canadian correspondent who sent to his newspaper an account
+of it that I cannot forbear to copy. You may believe what he says, or
+not, just as you choose: "So interested was his Royal Highness in the
+proceedings that he stayed in the ring three and a half hours witnessing
+these trotting matches. He was invited to take lunch in a little wooden
+shanty prepared for the Directors, to which he accordingly repaired, but
+whether he got anything to eat or not, I cannot tell. After much trouble
+he forced his way to the table, which he found surrounded by a lot of
+ravenous animals. And upon some half dozen huge dishes were piled slices
+of beef, mutton, and buffalo tongue; beside them were great jugs of lager
+beer, rolls of bread, and plates of a sort of cabbage cut into thin
+shreds, raw, and mixed with vinegar. There were neither salt spoons nor
+mustard spoons, the knives the gentlemen were eating with serving in
+their stead; and, by the aid of nature's forks, the slices of beef and
+mutton were transferred to the plates of those who desired to eat. While
+your correspondent stood looking at the spectacle, the Duke of Newcastle
+came in, and he sat looking too. He was evidently trying to look
+democratic, but could not manage it. By his side stood a man urging him
+to try the lager beer, and cabbage also, I suppose. Henceforth, let the
+New York Aldermen who gave to the Turkish Ambassador ham sandwiches and
+bad sherry rest in peace."
+
+Even that great man whose memory we love and revere, Charles Dickens, was
+not overkind to us, and saw our faults rather than our virtues. We were a
+nation of grasshoppers, and spat tobacco from early morning until late at
+night. This some of us undoubtedly did, to our shame be it said. And when
+Mr. Dickens went down the Ohio, early in the '40's, he complained of the
+men and women he met; who, bent with care, bolted through silent meals,
+and retired within their cabins. Mr. Dickens saw our ancestors bowed in a
+task that had been too great for other blood,--the task of bringing into
+civilization in the compass of a century a wilderness three thousand
+miles it breadth. And when his Royal Highness came to St. Louis and
+beheld one hundred thousand people at the Fair, we are sure that he knew
+how recently the ground he stood upon had been conquered from the forest.
+
+A strange thing had happened, indeed. For, while the Prince lingered in
+front of the booth of Dr. Posthelwaite's church and chatted with
+Virginia, a crowd had gathered without. They stood peering over the
+barricade into the covered way, proud of the self-possession of their
+young countrywoman. And here, by a twist of fate, Mr. Stephen Brice found
+himself perched on a barrel beside his friend Richter. It was Richter who
+discovered her first.
+
+"Himmel! It is Miss Carvel herself, Stephen," he cried, impatient at the
+impassive face of his companion. "Look, Stephen, look there."
+
+"Yes," said Stephen, "I see."
+
+"Ach!" exclaimed the disgusted German, "will nothing move you? I have
+seen German princesses that are peasant women beside her. How she carries
+it off! See, the Prince is laughing!"
+
+Stephen saw, and horror held him in a tremor. His one thought was of
+escape. What if she should raise her eyes, and amid those vulgar stares
+discern his own? And yet that was within him which told him that she
+would look up. It was only a question of moments, and then,--and then she
+would in truth despise him! Wedged tightly between the people, to move
+was to be betrayed. He groaned.
+
+Suddenly he rallied, ashamed of his own false shame. This was because of
+one whom he had known for the short, space of a day--whom he was to
+remember for a lifetime. The man he worshipped, and she detested. Abraham
+Lincoln would not have blushed between honest clerks and farmers Why
+should Stephen Brice? And what, after all, was this girl to him? He could
+not tell. Almost the first day he had come to St. Louis the wires of
+their lives had crossed, and since then had crossed many times again,
+always with a spark. By the might of generations she was one thing, and
+he another. They were separated by a vast and ever-widening breach only
+to be closed by the blood and bodies of a million of their countrymen.
+And yet he dreamed of her.
+
+Gradually, charmed like the simple people about him, Stephen became lost
+in the fascination of the scene. Suddenly confronted at a booth in a
+public fair with the heir to the English throne, who but one of her own
+kind might have carried it off so well, have been so complete a mistress
+of herself? Since, save for a heightened color, Virginia gave no sign of
+excitement. Undismayed, forgetful of the admiring crowd, unconscious of
+their stares until--until the very strength of his gaze had compelled her
+own. Such had been the prophecy within him. Nor did he wonder because, in
+that multitude of faces, her eyes had flown so straightly homeward to
+his.
+
+With a rough effort that made an angry stir, Stephen flung the people
+aside and escaped, the astonished Richter following in his wake. Nor
+could the honest German dissuade him from going back to the office for
+the rest of the day, or discover what had happened.
+
+But all through the afternoon that scene was painted on the pages of
+Stephen's books. The crude booth in the darkened way. The free pose of
+the girl standing in front of her companions, a blue wisp of autumn
+sunlight falling at her feet. The young Prince laughing at her sallies,
+and the elderly gentleman smiling with benevolence upon the pair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+INTO WHICH A POTENTATE COMES
+
+Virginia danced with the Prince, "by Special Appointment," at the ball
+that evening. So did her aunt, Mrs. Addison Colfax. So likewise was Miss
+Belle Cluyme among those honored and approved. But Virginia wore the most
+beautiful of her Paris gowns, and seemed a princess to one watching from
+the gallery. Stephen was sure that his Royal Highness made that
+particular dance longer than the others. It was decidedly longer than the
+one he had with Miss Cluyme, although that young lady had declared she
+was in heaven.
+
+Alas, that princes cannot abide with us forever! His Royal Highness bade
+farewell to St. Louis, and presently that same 'City of Alton' which bore
+him northward came back again in like royal state, and this time it was
+in honor of a Democrat potentate. He is an old friend now, Senator and
+Judge and Presidential Candidate,--Stephen Arnold Douglas,--father of the
+doctrine of Local Sovereignty, which he has come to preach. So goes the
+world. We are no sooner rid of one hero than we are ready for another.
+
+Blow, you bandsmen on the hurricane deck, let the shores echo with your
+national airs! Let the gay bunting wave in the river breeze! Uniforms
+flash upon the guards, for no campaign is complete without the military.
+Here are brave companies of the Douglas Guards, the Hickory Sprouts, and
+the Little Giants to do honor to the person of their hero. Cannon are
+booming as he steps into his open carriage that evening on the levee,
+where the piles of river freight are covered with people. Transparencies
+are dodging in the darkness. A fresh band strikes up "Hail Columbia," and
+the four horses prance away, followed closely by the "Independent Broom
+Rangers." "The shouts for Douglas," remarked a keen observer who was
+present, "must have penetrated Abraham's bosom at Springfield."
+
+Mr. Jacob Cluyme, who had been a Bell and Everett man until that day, was
+not the only person of prominence converted. After the speech he assured
+the Judge that he was now undergoing the greatest pleasure of his life in
+meeting the popular orator, the true representative man of the Great
+West, the matured statesman, and the able advocate of national
+principles. And although Mr. Douglas looked as if he had heard something
+of the kind before, he pressed Mr. Cluyme's hand warmly.
+
+So was the author of Popular Sovereignty, "the great Bulwark of American
+Independence," escorted to the Court House steps, past houses of his
+stanch supporters; which were illuminated in his honor. Stephen, wedged.
+among the people, remarked that the Judge had lost none of his
+self-confidence since that day at Freeport. Who, seeing the Democratic
+candidate smiling and bowing to the audience that blocked the wide
+square, would guess that the Question troubled him at all, or that he
+missed the votes of the solid South? How gravely the Judge listened to
+the eulogy of the prominent citizen, who reminded him that his work was
+not yet finished, and that he still was harnessed to the cause of the
+people! And how happy was the choice of that word harnessed!
+
+The Judge had heard (so he said) with deep emotion the remarks of the
+chairman. Then followed one of those masterful speeches which wove a
+spell about those who listened,--which, like the most popular of novels,
+moved to laughter and to tears, to anger and to pity. Mr. Brice and Mr
+Richter were not the only Black Republicans who were depressed that
+night. And they trudged homeward with the wild enthusiasm still ringing
+in their ears, heavy with the thought that the long, hot campaign of
+their own Wide-Awakes might be in vain.
+
+They had a grim reproof from Judge Whipple in the morning.
+
+"So you too, gentlemen, took opium last night," was all he said.
+
+The dreaded possibility of Mr. Lincoln's election did not interfere with
+the gayeties. The week after the Fair Mr. Clarence Colfax gave a great
+dance at Bellegarde, in honor of his cousin, Virginia, to which Mr.
+Stephen Brice was not invited. A majority of Company A was there.
+Virginia would have liked to have had them in uniform.
+
+It was at this time that Anne Brinsmade took the notion of having a ball
+in costume. Virginia, on hearing the news, rode over from Bellegarde, and
+flinging her reins to Nicodemus ran up to Anne's little dressing-room.
+
+"Whom have you invited, Anne?" she demanded.
+
+Anne ran over the long list of their acquaintance, but there was one name
+she omitted.
+
+"Are you sure that that is all?" asked Virginia, searchingly, when she
+had finished.
+
+Anne looked mystified.
+
+"I have invited Stephen Brice, Jinny," she said. But!--"
+
+"But!" cried Virginia. "I knew it. Am I to be confronted with that Yankee
+everywhere I go? It is always 'Stephen Brice', and he is ushered in with
+a but."
+
+Anne was quite overcome by this outburst. She had dignity, however, and
+plenty of it. And she was a loyal friend.
+
+"You have no right to criticise my guests, Virginia."
+
+Virginia, seated on the arm of a chair, tapped her foot on the floor.
+
+"Why couldn't things remain as they were?" she said. "We were so happy
+before these Yankees came. And they are not content in trying to deprive
+us of our rights. They must spoil our pleasure, too."
+
+"Stephen Brice is a gentleman," answered Anne. "He spoils no one's
+pleasure, and goes no place that he is not asked."
+
+"He has not behaved according to my idea of a gentleman, the few times
+that I have been unfortunate enough to encounter him," Virginia retorted.
+
+"You are the only one who says so, then." Here the feminine got the
+better of Anne's prudence, and she added. "I saw you waltz with him once,
+Jinny Carvel, and I am sure you never enjoyed a dance as much in your
+life."
+
+Virginia blushed purple.
+
+"Anne Brinsmade!" she cried. "You may have your ball, and your Yankees,
+all of them you want. But I shan't come. How I wish I had never seen that
+horrid Stephen Brice! Then you would never have insulted me."
+
+Virginia rose and snatched her riding-whip. This was too much for Anne.
+She threw her arms around her friend without more ado.
+
+"Don't quarrel with me, Jinny," she said tearfully. "I couldn't bear it.
+He--Mr. Brice is not coming, I am sure."
+
+Virginia disengaged herself.
+
+"He is not coming?"
+
+"No," said Anne. "You asked me if he was invited. And I was going on to
+tell you that he could not come."
+
+She stopped, and stared at Virginia in bewilderment. That young lady,
+instead of beaming, had turned her back. She stood flicking her whip at
+the window, gazing out over the trees, down the slope to the river. Miss
+Russell might have interpreted these things. Simple Anne!
+
+"Why isn't he coming?" said Virginia, at last.
+
+"Because he is to be one of the speakers at a big meeting that night.
+Have you seen him since you got home, Jinny? He is thinner than he was.
+We are much worried about him, because he has worked so hard this
+summer."
+
+"A Black Republican meeting!" exclaimed Virginia, scornfully ignoring the
+rest of what was said. "Then I'll come, Anne dear," she cried, tripping
+the length of the room. "I'll come as Titania. Who will you be?"
+
+She cantered off down the drive and out of the gate, leaving a very
+puzzled young woman watching her from the window. But when Virginia
+reached the forest at the bend of the road, she pulled her horse down to
+a walk.
+
+She bethought herself of the gown which her Uncle Daniel had sent her
+from Calvert House, and of the pearls. And she determined to go as her
+great-grandmother, Dorothy Carvel.
+
+Shades of romance! How many readers will smile before the rest of this
+true incident is told?
+
+What had happened was this. Miss Anne Brinsmade had driven to town in her
+mother's Jenny Lind a day or two before, and had stopped (as she often
+did) to pay a call on Mrs. Brice. This lady, as may be guessed, was not
+given to discussion of her husband's ancestors, nor of her own. But on
+the walls of the little dining-room hung a Copley and two Stuarts. One of
+the Stuarts was a full length of an officer in the buff and blue of the
+Continental Army. And it was this picture which caught Anne's eye that
+day.
+
+"How like Stephen!" she exclaimed. And added. "Only the face is much
+older. Who is it, Mrs. Brice?"
+
+"Colonel Wilton Brice, Stephen's grandfather. There is a marked look
+about all the Brices. He was only twenty years of age when the Revolution
+began. That picture was painted much later in life, after Stuart came
+back to America, when the Colonel was nearly forty. He had kept his
+uniform, and his wife persuaded him to be painted in it."
+
+"If Stephen would only come as Colonel Wilton Brice!" she cried. "Do you
+think he would, Mrs. Brice?"
+
+Mrs. Brice laughed, and shook her head.
+
+"I am afraid not, Anne," she said. "I have a part of the uniform
+upstairs, but I could never induce him even to try it on."
+
+As she drove from shop to shop that day, Anne reflected that it certainly
+would not be like Stephen to wear his grandfather's uniform to a ball.
+But she meant to ask him, at any rate. And she had driven home
+immediately to write her invitations. It was with keen disappointment
+that she read his note of regret.
+
+However, on the very day of the ball, Anne chanced to be in town again,
+and caught sight of Stephen pushing his way among the people on Fourth
+Street. She waved her hand to him, and called to Nicodemus to pull up at
+the sidewalk.
+
+"We are all so sorry that you are not coming," said she, impulsively. And
+there she stopped short. For Anne was a sincere person, and remembered
+Virginia. "That is, I am so sorry," she added, a little hastily.
+"Stephen, I saw the portrait of your grandfather, and I wanted you to
+come in his costume."
+
+Stephen, smiling down on her, said nothing. And poor Anne, in her fear
+that he had perceived the shade in her meaning, made another unfortunate
+remark.
+
+"If you were not a--a Republican--" she said.
+
+"A Black Republican," he answered, and laughed at her discomfiture. "What
+then?"
+
+Anne was very red.
+
+"I only meant that if you were not a Republican, there would be no
+meeting to address that night."
+
+"It does not make any difference to you what my politics are, does it?"
+he asked, a little earnestly.
+
+"Oh, Stephen!" she exclaimed, in gentle reproof.
+
+"Some people have discarded me," he said, striving to smile.
+
+She wondered whether he meant Virginia, and whether he cared. Still
+further embarrassed, she said something which she regretted immediately.
+
+"Couldn't you contrive to come?"
+
+He considered.
+
+"I will come, after the meeting, if it is not too late," he said at
+length. "But you must not tell any one."
+
+He lifted his hat, and hurried on, leaving Anne in a quandary. She wanted
+him. But what was she to say to Virginia? Virginia was coming on the
+condition that he was not to be there. And Anne was scrupulous.
+
+Stephen, too, was almost instantly sorry that he had promised. The little
+costumer's shop (the only one in the city at that time) had been
+ransacked for the occasion, and nothing was left to fit him. But when he
+reached home there was a strong smell of camphor in his mother's room.
+Colonel Brice's cocked hat and sword and spurs lay on the bed, and
+presently Hester brought in the blue coat and buff waistcoat from the
+kitchen, where she had been pressing them. Stephen must needs yield to
+his mother's persuasions and try them on--they were more than a passable
+fit. But there were the breeches and cavalry boots to be thought of, and
+the ruffled shirt and the powdered wig. So before tea he hurried down to
+the costumer's again, not quite sure that he was not making a fool of
+himself, and yet at last sufficiently entered into the spirit of the
+thing. The coat was mended and freshened. And when after tea he dressed
+in the character, his appearance was so striking that his mother could
+not refrain from some little admiration. As for Hester, she was in
+transports. Stephen was human, and young. But still the frivolity of it
+all troubled him. He had inherited from Colonel Wilton Brice, the
+Puritan, other things beside clothes. And he felt in his heart as he
+walked soberly to the hall that this was no time for fancy dress balls.
+All intention of going was banished by the time his turn had come to
+speak.
+
+But mark how certain matters are beyond us. Not caring to sit out the
+meeting on the platform, he made his way down the side of the crowded
+hall, and ran into (of all people) big Tom Catherwood. As the Southern
+Rights politics of the Catherwood family were a matter of note in the
+city, Stephen did not attempt to conceal his astonishment. Tom himself
+was visibly embarrassed. He congratulated Stephen on his speech, and
+volunteered the news that he had come in a spirit of fairness to hear
+what the intelligent leaders of the Republican party, such as Judge
+Whipple, had to say. After that he fidgeted. But the sight of him started
+in Stephen a train of thought that closed his ears for once to the
+Judge's words. He had had before a huge liking for Tom. Now he admired
+him, for it was no light courage that took one of his position there. And
+Stephen remembered that Tom was not risking merely the displeasure of his
+family and his friends, but likewise something of greater value than,
+either. From childhood Tom had been the devoted slave of Virginia Carvel,
+with as little chance of marrying her as a man ever had. And now he was
+endangering even that little alliance.
+
+And so Stephen began to think of Virginia, and to wonder what she would
+wear at Anne's party; and to speculate how she would have treated him if
+had gone. To speak truth, this last matter had no little weight in his
+decision to stay away. But we had best leave motives to those whose
+business and equipment it is to weigh to a grain. Since that agonizing
+moment when her eyes had met his own among the curiously vulgar at the
+Fair, Stephen's fear of meeting Virginia had grown to the proportions of
+a terror. And yet there she was in his mind, to take possession of it on
+the slightest occasion.
+
+When Judge Whipple had finished, Tom rose. He awoke Mr. Brice from a
+trance.
+
+"Stephen," said he, "of course you're going to the Brinsmade's."
+
+Stephen shook his head.
+
+"Why not?" said Tom, in surprise. "Haven't you a costume?"
+
+"Yes," he answered dubiously.
+
+"Why, then, you've got to come with me," says Tom, heartily. "It isn't
+too late, and they'll want you. I've a buggy, and I'm going to the
+Russells' to change my clothes. Came along"
+
+Steven went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AT MR. BRINSMADE'S GATE
+
+The eastern side of the Brinsmade house is almost wholly taken up by the
+big drawing-room where Anne gave her fancy-dress ball. From the windows
+might be seen, through the trees in the grounds, the Father of Waters
+below. But the room is gloomy now, that once was gay, and a heavy coat of
+soot is spread on the porch at the back, where the apple blossoms still
+fall thinly in the spring. The huge black town has coiled about the place
+the garden still struggles on, but the giants of the forest are dying and
+dead. Bellefontaine Road itself, once the drive of fashion, is no more.
+Trucks and cars crowd the streets which follow its once rural windings,
+and gone forever are those comely wooded hills and green pastures,--save
+in the memory of those who have been spared to dream.
+
+Still the old house stands, begrimed but stately, rebuking the sordid
+life around it. Still come into it the Brinsmades to marriage and to
+death. Five and sixty years are gone since Mr. Calvin Brinsmade took his
+bride there. They sat on the porch in the morning light, harking to the
+whistle of the quail in the corn, and watching the frightened deer
+scamper across the open. Do you see the bride in her high-waisted gown,
+and Mr. Calvin in his stock and his blue tail-coat and brass buttons?
+
+Old people will tell you of the royal hospitality then, of the famous men
+and women who promenaded under those chandeliers, and sat down to the
+game-laden table. In 1835 General Atkinson and his officers thought
+nothing of the twenty miles from Jefferson Barracks below, nor of dancing
+all night with the Louisville belles, who were Mrs. Brinsmade's guests.
+Thither came Miss Todd of Kentucky, long before she thought of taking for
+a husband that rude man of the people, Abraham Lincoln. Foreigners of
+distinction fell in love with the place, with its open-hearted master and
+mistress, and wrote of it in their journals. Would that many of our
+countrymen, who think of the West as rough, might have known the quality
+of the Brinsmades and their neighbors!
+
+An era of charity, of golden simplicity, was passing on that October
+night of Anne Brinsmade's ball. Those who made merry there were soon to
+be driven and scattered before the winds of war; to die at Wilson's
+Creek, or Shiloh, or to be spared for heroes of the Wilderness. Some were
+to eke out a life of widowhood in poverty. All were to live soberly,
+chastened by what they had seen. A fear knocked at Colonel Carvel's heart
+as he stood watching the bright figures.
+
+"Brinsmade," he said, "do you remember this room in May, '46?"
+
+Mr. Brinsmade, startled, turned upon him quickly.
+
+"Why, Colonel, you have read my very thoughts," he said. "Some of those
+who were here then are--are still in Mexico."
+
+"And some who came home, Brinsmade, blamed God because they had not
+fallen," said the Colonel.
+
+"Hush, Comyn, His will be done," he answered; "He has left a daughter to
+comfort you."
+
+Unconsciously their eyes sought Virginia. In her gown of faded primrose
+and blue with its quaint stays and short sleeves, she seemed to have
+caught the very air of the decorous century to which it belonged. She was
+standing against one of the pilasters at the side of the room, laughing
+demurely at the antics of Becky Sharp and Sir John Falstaff,--Miss Puss
+Russell and Mr. Jack Brinsmade, respectively.
+
+Mr. Tennyson's "Idylls" having appeared but the year before, Anne was
+dressed as Elaine, a part which suited her very well. It was strange
+indeed to see her waltzing with Daniel Boone (Mr. Clarence Colfax) in his
+Indian buckskins. Eugenie went as Marie Antoinette. Tall Maude Catherwood
+was most imposing as Rebecca; and her brother George made a towering
+Friar Tuck, Even little fifteen-year-old Spencer Catherwood, the
+contradiction of the family, was there. He went as the lieutenant
+Napoleon, walking about with his hands behind his back and his brows
+thoughtfully contracted.
+
+The Indian summer night was mild. It was at tine very height of the
+festivities that Dorothy Carvel and Mr. Daniel Boone were making their
+way together to the porch when the giant gate-keeper of Kenilworth Castle
+came stalking up the steps out of the darkness, brandishing his club in
+their faces. Dorothy screamed, and even the doughty Daniel gave back a
+step.
+
+"Tom Catherwood! How dare you? You frightened me nearly to death."
+
+"I'm sorry, Jinny, indeed I am," said the giant, repentant, and holding
+her hand in his.
+
+"Where have you been?" demanded Virginia, a little mollified. "What makes
+you so late?"
+
+"I've been to a Lincoln meeting," said honest Tom; "where I heard a very
+fine speech from a friend of yours."
+
+Virginia tossed her head.
+
+"You might have been better employed," said she, and added, with dignity,
+"I have no friends who speak at Black Republican meetings."
+
+"How about Judge Whipple?" said Tom.
+
+She stopped. "Did you mean the Judge?" she asked, over her shoulder.
+
+"No," said Tom, "I meant--"
+
+He got no further. Virginia slipped her arm through Clarence's, and they
+went off together to the end of the veranda. Poor Tom! He passed on into
+the gay drawing-room, but the zest had been taken out of his antics for
+that night.
+
+"Whom did he mean, Jinny?" said Clarence, when they were on the seat
+under the vines.
+
+"He meant that Yankee, Stephen Brice," answered Virginia, languidly. "I
+am so tired of hearing about him."
+
+"So am I," said Clarence, with a fervor by no means false. "By George, I
+think he will make a Black Republican out of Tom, if he keeps on. Puss
+and Jack have been talking about him all summer, until I am out of
+patience. I reckon he has brains. But suppose he has addressed fifty
+Lincoln meetings, as they say, is that any reason for making much of him?
+I should not have him at Bellegarde. I am surprised that Mr. Russell
+allows him in his house. I can see why Anne likes him."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He is on the Brinsmade charity list."
+
+"He is not on their charity list, nor on any other," said Virginia,
+quickly. "Stephen Brice is the last person who would submit to charity."
+
+"And you are the last person who I supposed would stand up for him,"
+cried her cousin, surprised and nettled.
+
+There was an instant's silence.
+
+"I want to be fair, Max," she said quietly. "Pa offered them our Glencoe
+House last summer at a low price, and they insisted on paying what Mr.
+Edwards gave five years ago,--or nothing. You know that I detest a Yankee
+as much as you do," she continued, indignation growing in her voice. "I
+did not come out here with you to be insulted."
+
+With her hand on the rail, she made as if to rise. Clarence was perforce
+mollified.
+
+"Don't go, Jinny," he said beseechingly. "I didn't mean to make you
+angry--"
+
+"I can't see why you should always be dragging in this Mr. Brice," she
+said, almost tearfully. (It will not do to pause now and inquire into
+Virginia's logic.) "I came out to hear what you had to tell me."
+
+"Jinny, I have been made second lieutenant of Company A."
+
+"Oh, Max, I am so glad! I am so proud of you!"
+
+"I suppose that you have heard the result of the October elections,
+Jinny."
+
+"Pa said something about them to-night," she answered; why?"
+
+"It looks now as if there were a chance of the Republicans winning," he
+answered. But it was elation that caught his voice, not gloom.
+
+"You mean that this white trash Lincoln may be President?" she exclaimed,
+seizing his arm.
+
+"Never!" he cried. "The South will not submit to that until every man who
+can bear arms is shot down." He paused. The strains of a waltz mingled
+with talk and laughter floated out of the open window. His voice dropped
+to a low intensity. "We are getting ready in Company A," he said; "the
+traitors will be dropped. We are getting ready to fight for Missouri and
+for the South."
+
+The girl felt his excitement, his exaltation.
+
+"And if you were not, Max, I should disown you," she whispered.
+
+He leaned forward until his face was close to hers.
+
+"And now?" he said.
+
+"I am ready to work, to starve, to go to prison, to help--"
+
+He sank back heavily into the corner.
+
+"Is that all, Jinny?"
+
+"All?" she repeated. "Oh, if a woman could only do more!"
+
+"And is there nothing--for me?"
+
+Virginia straightened.
+
+"Are you doing this for a reward?" she demanded.
+
+"No," he answered passionately. "You know that I am not. Do you remember
+when you told me that I was good for nothing, that I lacked purpose?"
+
+"Yes, Max."
+
+"I have thought it over since," he went on rapidly; "you were right. I
+cannot work--it is not in me. But I have always felt that I could make a
+name for myself--for you--in the army. I am sure that I could command a
+regiment. And now the time is coming."
+
+She did not answer him, but absently twisted the fringe of his buckskins
+in her fingers.
+
+"Ever since I have known what love is I have loved you, Jinny. It was so
+when we climbed the cherry trees at Bellegarde. And you loved me then--I
+know you did. You loved me when I went East to school at the Military
+Institute. But it has not been the same of late," he faltered. "Something
+has happened. I felt it first on that day you rode out to Bellegarde when
+you said that my life was of no use. Jinny, I don't ask much. I am
+content to prove myself. War is coming, and we shall have to free
+ourselves from Yankee insolence. It is what we have both wished for. When
+I am a general, will you marry me?"
+
+For a wavering instant she might have thrown herself into his
+outstretched arms. Why not, and have done with sickening doubts? Perhaps
+her hesitation hung on the very boyishness of his proposal. Perhaps the
+revelation that she did not then fathom was that he had not developed
+since those childish days. But even while she held back, came the beat of
+hoofs on the gravel below them, and one of the Bellegarde servants rode
+into the light pouring through the open door. He called for his master.
+
+Clarence muttered his dismay as he followed his cousin to the steps.
+
+"What is it?" asked Virginia, alarmed.
+
+"Nothing; I forgot to sign the deed to the Elleardsville property, and
+Worington wants it to-night." Cutting short Sambo's explanations,
+Clarence vaulted on the horse. Virginia was at his stirrup. Leaning over
+in the saddle, he whispered: "I'll be back in a quarter of an hour Will
+you wait?"
+
+"Yes," she said, so that he barely heard.
+
+"Here?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+He was away at a gallop, leaving Virginia standing bareheaded to the
+night, alone. A spring of pity, of affection for Clarence suddenly welled
+up within her. There came again something of her old admiration for a
+boy, impetuous and lovable, who had tormented and defended her with the
+same hand.
+
+Patriotism, stronger in Virginia than many of us now can conceive, was on
+Clarence's side. Ambition was strong in her likewise. Now was she all
+afire with the thought that she, a woman, might by a single word give the
+South a leader. That word would steady him, for there was no question of
+her influence. She trembled at the reckless lengths he might go in his
+dejection, and a memory returned to her of a day at Glencoe, before he
+had gone off to school, when she had refused to drive with him. Colonel
+Carvel had been away from home. She had pretended not to care. In spite
+of Ned's beseechings Clarence had ridden off on a wild thoroughbred colt
+and had left her to an afternoon of agony. Vividly she recalled his
+home-coming in the twilight, his coat torn and muddy, a bleeding cut on
+his forehead, and the colt quivering tame.
+
+In those days she had thought of herself unreservedly as meant for him.
+Dash and courage and generosity had been the beacon lights on her
+horizon. But now? Were there not other qualities? Yes, and Clarence
+should have these, too. She would put them into him. She also had been at
+fault, and perhaps it was because of her wavering loyalty to him that he
+had not gained them.
+
+Her name spoken within the hall startled Virginia from her reverie, and
+she began to walk rapidly down the winding drive. A fragment of the air
+to which they were dancing brought her to a stop. It was the Jenny Lind
+waltz. And with it came clear and persistent the image she had sought to
+shut out and failed. As if to escape it now, she fairly ran all the way
+to the light at the entrance and hid in the magnolias clustered beside
+the gateway. It was her cousin's name she whispered over and over to
+herself as she waited, vibrant with a strange excitement. It was as
+though the very elements might thwart her wail. Clarence would be
+delayed, or they would miss her at the house, and search. It seemed an
+eternity before she heard the muffled thud of a horse cantering in the
+clay road.
+
+Virginia stood out in the light fairly between the gate posts. Too late
+she saw the horse rear as the rider flew back in his seat, for she had
+seized the bridle. The beams from the lamp fell upon a Revolutionary
+horseman, with cooked hat and sword and high riding-boots. For her his
+profile was in silhouette, and the bold nose and chin belonged to but one
+man she knew. He was Stephen Brice. She gave a cry of astonishment and
+dropped the rein in dismay. Hot shame was surging in her face. Her
+impulse was to fly, nor could she tell what force that stayed her feet.
+
+As for Stephen, he stood high in his stirrups and stared down at the
+girl. She was standing full in the light,--her lashes fallen, her face
+crimson. But no sound of surprise escaped him because it was she, nor did
+he wonder at her gown of a gone-by century. Her words came first, and
+they were low. She did not address him by name.
+
+"I--I thought that you were my cousin," she said. "What must you think of
+me!"
+
+Stephen was calm.
+
+"I expected it," he answered.
+
+She gave a step backward, and raised her frightened eyes to his.
+
+"You expected it?" she faltered.
+
+"I can't say why," he said quickly, "but it seems to me as if this had
+happened before. I know that I am talking nonsense--"
+
+Virginia was trembling now. And her answer was not of her own choosing.
+
+"It has happened before," she cried. "But where? And when?"
+
+"It may have been in a dream," he answered her, "that I saw you as you
+stand there by my bridle. I even know the gown you wear."
+
+She put her hand to her forehead. Had it been a dream? And what mystery
+was it that sent him here this night of all nights? She could not even
+have said that it was her own voice making reply.
+
+"And I--I have seen you, with the sword, and the powdered hair, and the
+blue coat and the buff waistcoat. It is a buff waistcoat like that my
+great-grandfather wears in his pictures."
+
+"It is a buff waistcoat," he said, all sense of strangeness gone.
+
+The roses she held dropped on the gravel, and she put out her hand
+against his horse's flank. In an instant he had leaped from his saddle,
+and his arm was holding her. She did not resist, marvelling rather at his
+own steadiness, nor did she then resent a tenderness in his voice.
+
+"I hope you will forgive me--Virginia," he said. "I should not have
+mentioned this. And yet I could not help it."
+
+She looked up at him rather wildly.
+
+"It was I who stopped you," she said; "I was waiting for--"
+
+"For whom?"
+
+The interruption brought remembrance.
+
+"For my cousin, Mr. Colfax," she answered, in another tone. And as she
+spoke she drew away from him, up the driveway. But she had scarcely taken
+five steps whey she turned again, her face burning defiance. "They told
+me you were not coming," she said almost fiercely. "Why did you come?"
+
+It was a mad joy that Stephen felt.
+
+"You did not wish me to come?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, why do you ask that?" she cried. "You know I would not have been
+here had I thought you were coming. Anne promised me that you would not
+come."
+
+What would she not have given for those words back again
+
+Stephen took astride toward her, and to the girl that stride betokened a
+thousand things that went to the man's character. Within its compass the
+comparison in her mind was all complete. He was master of himself when he
+spoke.
+
+"You dislike me, Miss Carvel," he said steadily. "I do not blame you. Nor
+do I flatter myself that it is only because you believe one thing, and I
+another. But I assure you that it is my misfortune rather than my fault
+that I have not pleased you,--that I have met you only to anger you."
+
+He paused, for she did not seem to hear him. She was gazing at the
+distant lights moving on the river. Had he come one step farther?--but he
+did not. Presently she knew that he was speaking again, in the same
+measured tone.
+
+"Had Miss Brinsmade told me that my presence here would cause you
+annoyance, I should have stayed away. I hope that you will think nothing
+of the--the mistake at the gate. You may be sure that I shall not mention
+it. Good night, Miss Carvel."
+
+He lifted his hat, mounted his horse, and was gone. She had not even
+known that he could ride--that was strangely the first thought. The
+second discovered herself intent upon the rhythm of his canter as it died
+southward upon the road. There was shame in this, mingled with a
+thankfulness that he would not meet Clarence. She hurried a few steps
+toward the house, and stopped again. What should she say to Clarence now?
+What could she say to him?
+
+But Clarence was not in her head. Ringing there was her talk with Stephen
+Brice, as though it were still rapidly going on. His questions and her
+replies--over and over again. Each trivial incident of an encounter real
+and yet unreal! His transformation in the uniform, which had seemed so
+natural. Though she strove to make it so, nothing of all this was
+unbearable now, nor the remembrance of the firm torch of his arm about
+her nor yet again his calling her by her name.
+
+Absently she took her way again up the drive, now pausing, now going on,
+forgetful. First it was alarm she felt when her cousin leaped down at her
+side,--then dread.
+
+"I thought I should never get back," he cried breathlessly, as he threw
+his reins to Sambo. "I ought not to have asked you to wait outside. Did
+it seem long, Jinny?"
+
+She answered something, There was a seat near by under the trees. To lead
+her to it he seized her hand, but it was limp and cold, and a sudden fear
+came into his voice.
+
+"Jinny!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She resisted, and he dropped her fingers. She remembered long how he
+stood in the scattered light from the bright windows, a tall, black
+figure of dismay. She felt the yearning in his eyes. But her own
+response, warm half an hour since, was lifeless.
+
+"Jinny," he said, "what is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, Max. Only I was very foolish to say I would wait for you."
+
+"Then--then you won't marry me?"
+
+"Oh, Max," she cried, "it is no time to talk of that now. I feel to-night
+as if something dreadful were to happen."
+
+"Do you mean war?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Yes."
+
+"But war is what we want," he cried, "what we have prayed for, what we
+have both been longing for to-night, Jinny. War alone will give us our
+rights--"
+
+He stopped short. Virginia had bowed her head an her hands, and he saw
+her shoulders shaken by a sob. Clarence bent over her in bewilderment and
+anxiety.
+
+"You are not well, Jinny," he said.
+
+"I am not well," she answered. "Take me into the house."
+
+But when they went in at the door, he saw that her eyes were dry.
+
+Those were the days when a dozen young ladies were in the habit of
+staying all night after a dance in the country; of long whispered talks
+(nay, not always whispered) until early morning. And of late breakfasts.
+Miss Russell had not been the only one who remarked Virginia's long
+absence with her cousin; but Puss found her friend in one of those moods
+which even she dared not disturb. Accordingly Miss Russell stayed all
+night with Anne.
+
+And the two spent most of the dark hours remaining in unprofitable
+discussion as to whether Virginia were at last engaged to her cousin, and
+in vain queried over another unsolved mystery. This mystery was taken up
+at the breakfast table the next morning, when Miss Carvel surprised Mrs.
+Brinsmade and the male household by appearing at half-past seven.
+
+"Why, Jinny," cried Mr. Brinsmade, "what does this mean? I always thought
+that young ladies did not get up after a ball until noon."
+
+Virginia smiled a little nervously.
+
+"I am going to ask you to take me to town when you go, Mr. Brinsmade."
+
+"Why, certainly, my dear," he said. "But I under stood that your aunt was
+to send for you this afternoon from Bellegarde."
+
+Virginia shook her head. There is something I wis to do in town."
+
+"I'll drive her in, Pa," said Jack. "You're too old. Will you go with me,
+Jinny?"
+
+"Of course, Jack."
+
+"But you must eat some breakfast, Jinny," said Mrs Brinsmade, glancing
+anxiously at the girl.
+
+Mr. Brinsmade put down his newspaper.
+
+"Where was Stephen Brice last night, Jack?" he asked. "I understood Anne
+to say that he had spoke; of coming late."
+
+"Why, sir," said Jack, "that's what we can't make out. Tom Catherwood,
+who is always doing queer things, you know, went to a Black Republican
+meeting last night, and met Stephen there. They came out in Tom's buggy
+to the Russells', and Tom got into his clothes first and rode over.
+Stephen was to have followed on Puss Russell's horse. But he never got
+here. At least I can find no one who saw him. Did you, Jinny?"
+
+But Virginia did not raise her eyes from her plate. A miraculous
+intervention came through Mrs. Brinsmade.
+
+"There might have been an accident, Jack," said that lady, with concern.
+"Send Nicodemus over to Mrs. Russell's at once to inquire. You know that
+Mr. Brice is a Northerner, and may not be able to ride."
+
+Jack laughed.
+
+"He rides like a dragoon, mother," said he. "I don't know where he picked
+it up."
+
+"The reason I mentioned him," said Mr. Brinsmade, lifting the blanket
+sheet and adjusting his spectacles, "was because his name caught my eye
+in this paper. His speech last night at the Library Hall is one of the
+few sensible Republican speeches I have read. I think it very remarkable
+for a man as young as he." Mr. Brinsmade began to read: "'While waiting
+for the speaker of the evening, who was half an hour late, Mr. Tiefel
+rose in the audience and called loudly for Mr. Brice. Many citizens in
+the hall were astonished at the cheering which followed the mention of
+this name. Mr. Brice is a young lawyer with a quiet manner and a
+determined face, who has sacrificed much to the Party's cause this
+summer. He was introduced by Judge Whipple, in whose office he is. He had
+hardly begun to speak before he had the ear of everyone in the house. Mr.
+Brice's personality is prepossessing, his words are spoken sharply, and
+he has a singular emphasis at times which seems to drive his arguments
+into the minds of his hearers. We venture to say that if party orators
+here and elsewhere were as logical and temperate as Mr. Brice; if, like
+him, they appealed to reason rather than to passion, those bitter and
+lamentable differences which threaten our country's peace might be
+amicably adjusted.' Let me read what he said."
+
+But he was interrupted by the rising of Virginia. A high color was on the
+girl's face as she said:
+
+"Please excuse me, Mrs. Brinsmade, I must go and get ready."
+
+"But you've eaten nothing, my dear."
+
+Virginia did not reply. She was already on the stairs.
+
+"You ought not have read that, Pa," Mr. Jack remonstrated; "you know that
+she detests Yankees"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE BREACH BECOMES TOO WIDE
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN!
+
+At the foot of Breed's Hill in Charlestown an American had been born into
+the world, by the might of whose genius that fateful name was sped to the
+uttermost parts of the nation. Abraham Lincoln was elected President of
+the United States. And the moan of the storm gathering in the South grew
+suddenly loud and louder.
+
+Stephen Brice read the news in the black headlines and laid down the
+newspaper, a sense of the miraculous upon him. There again was the
+angled, low-celled room of the country tavern, reeking with food and
+lamps and perspiration; for a central figure the man of surpassing
+homeliness,--coatless, tieless, and vestless,--telling a story in the
+vernacular. He reflected that it might well seem strange yea, and
+intolerable--to many that this comedian of the country store, this crude
+lawyer and politician, should inherit the seat dignified by Washington
+and the Adamses.
+
+And yet Stephen believed. For to him had been vouchsafed the glimpse
+beyond.
+
+That was a dark winter that followed, the darkest in our history. Gloom
+and despondency came fast upon the heels of Republican exultation. Men
+rose early for tidings from Charleston, the storm centre. The Union was
+cracking here and there. Would it crumble in pieces before Abraham
+Lincoln got to Washington?
+
+One smoky morning early in December Stephen arrived late at the office to
+find Richter sitting idle on his stool, concern graven on his face.
+
+"The Judge has had no breakfast, Stephen," he whispered. "Listen!
+Shadrach tells me he has been doing that since six this morning, when he
+got his newspaper."
+
+Stephen listened, and he heard the Judge pacing and pacing in his room.
+Presently the door was flung open, And they saw Mr. Whipple standing in
+the threshold, stern and dishevelled. Astonishment did not pause here. He
+came out and sat down in Stephen's chair, striking the newspaper in his
+hand, and they feared at first that his Mind had wandered.
+
+"Propitiate!" he cried, "propitiate, propitiate, and again propitiate.
+How long, O Lord?" Suddenly he turned upon Stephen, who was frightened.
+But now his voice was natural, and he thrust the paper into the young
+man's lap. "Have you read the President's message to Congress, sir? God
+help me that I am spared to call that wobbling Buchanan President. Read
+it. Read it, sir. You have a legal brain. Perhaps you can tell me why, if
+a man admits that it is wrong for a state to abandon this Union, he
+cannot call upon Congress for men and money to bring her back. No, this
+weakling lets Floyd stock the Southern arsenals. He pays tribute to
+Barbary. He is for bribing them not to be angry. Take Cuba from Spain,
+says he, and steal the rest of Mexico that the maw of slavery may be
+filled, and the demon propitiated."
+
+They dared not answer him. And so he went back into his room, shutting
+the door. That day no clients saw him, even those poor ones dependent on
+his charity whom had never before denied. Richter and Stephen took
+counsel together, and sent Shadrach out for his dinner.
+
+Three weeks passed. There arrived a sparkling Sunday, brought down the
+valley of the Missouri from the frozen northwest. The Saturday had been
+soggy and warm.
+
+Thursday had seen South Carolina leave that Union into which she was
+born, amid prayers and the ringing of bells. Tuesday was to be Christmas
+day. A young lady, who had listened to a solemn sermon of Dr.
+Posthelwaite's, slipped out of Church before the prayers were ended, and
+hurried into that deserted portion of the town about the Court House
+where on week days business held its sway.
+
+She stopped once at the bottom of the grimy flight of steps leading to
+Judge Whipple's office. At the top she paused again, and for a short
+space stood alert, her glance resting on the little table in the corner,
+on top of which a few thumbed law books lay neatly piled. Once she made a
+hesitating step in this direction. Then, as if by a resolution quickly
+taken, she turned her back and softly opened the door of the Judge's
+room. He was sitting upright in his chair. A book was open in his lap,
+but it did not seem to Virginia that he was reading it.
+
+"Uncle Silas," she said, "aren't you coming to dinner any more?"
+
+He looked up swiftly from under his shaggy brows. The book fell to the
+floor.
+
+"Uncle Silas," said Virginia, bravely, "I came to get you to-day."
+
+Never before had she known him to turn away from man or woman, but now
+Judge Whipple drew his handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose
+violently. A woman's intuition told her that locked tight in his heart
+was what he longed to say, and could not. The shiny black overcoat he
+wore was on the bed. Virginia picked it up and held it out to him, an
+appeal in her eyes.
+
+He got into it. Then she handed him his hat. Many people walking home
+from church that morning marvelled as they saw these two on Locust Street
+together, the young girl supporting the elderly man over the slippery
+places at the crossings. For neighbor had begun to look coldly upon
+neighbor.
+
+Colonel Carvel beheld them from his armchair by the sitting-room window,
+and leaned forward with a start. His lips moved as he closed his Bible
+reverently and marked his place. At the foot of the stairs he surprised
+Jackson by waving him aside, for the Colonel himself flung open the door
+and held out his hand to his friend. The Judge released Virginia's arm,
+and his own trembled as he gave it.
+
+"Silas," said the Colonel, "Silas, we've missed you."
+
+Virginia stood by, smiling, but her breath came deeply. Had she done
+right? Could any good come of it all? Judge Whipple did not go in at the
+door--He stood uncompromisingly planted on the threshold, his head flung
+back, and actual fierceness in his stare.
+
+"Do you guess we can keep off the subject, Comyn?" he demanded.
+
+Even Mr. Carvel, so used to the Judge's ways, was a bit taken aback by
+this question. It set him tugging at his goatee, and his voice was not
+quite steady as he answered:
+
+"God knows, Silas. We are human, and we can only try."
+
+Then Mr. Whipple marched in. It lacked a quarter of an hour of dinner,
+--a crucial period to tax the resources of any woman. Virginia led the
+talk, but oh, the pathetic lameness of it. Her own mind was wandering
+when it should not, and recollections she had tried to strangle had
+sprung up once more. Only that morning in church she had lived over again
+the scene by Mr. Brinsmade's gate, and it was then that a wayward but
+resistless impulse to go to the Judge's office had seized her. The
+thought of the old man lonely and bitter in his room decided her. On her
+knees she prayed that she might save the bond between him and her father.
+For the Colonel had been morose on Sundays, and had taken to reading the
+Bible, a custom he had not had since she was a child.
+
+In the dining-room Jackson, bowing and smiling, pulled out the Judge's
+chair, and got his customary curt nod as a reward. Virginia carved.
+
+"Oh, Uncle Silas," she cried, "I am so glad that we have a wild turkey.
+And you shall have your side-bone." The girl carved deftly, feverishly,
+talking the while, aided by that most kind and accomplished of hosts, her
+father. In the corner the dreaded skeleton of the subject grinned
+sardonically. Were they going to be able to keep it off? There was to be
+no help from Judge Whipple, who sat in grim silence. A man who feels his
+soul burning is not given to small talk. Virginia alone had ever
+possessed the power to make him forget.
+
+"Uncle Silas, I am sure there are some things about our trip that we
+never told you. How we saw Napoleon and his beautiful Empress driving in
+the Bois, and how Eugenie smiled and bowed at the people. I never saw
+such enthusiasm in my life. And oh, I learned such a lot of French
+history. All about Francis the First, and Pa took me to see his chateaus
+along the Loire. Very few tourists go there. You really ought to have
+gone with us."
+
+Take care, Virginia!
+
+"I had other work to do, Jinny," said the Judge.
+
+Virginia rattled an.
+
+"I told you that we stayed with a real lord in England, didn't I?" said
+she. "He wasn't half as nice as the Prince. But he had a beautiful house
+in Surrey, all windows, which was built in Elizabeth's time. They called
+the architecture Tudor, didn't they, Pa?"
+
+"Yes, dear," said the Colonel, smiling.
+
+"The Countess was nice to me," continued the girl, "and took me to garden
+parties. But Lord Jermyn was always talking politics."
+
+The Colonel was stroking his goatee.
+
+"Tell Silas about the house, Jinny--Jackson, help the Judge again."
+
+"No," said Virginia, drawing a breath. "I'm going to tell him about that
+queer club where my great-grand-father used to bet with Charles Fox. We
+saw a great many places where Richard Carvel had been in England. That
+was before the Revolution. Uncle Daniel read me some of his memoirs when
+we were at Calvert House. I know that you would be interested in them,
+Uncle Silas. He sailed under Paul Jones."
+
+"And fought for his country and for his flag, Virginia," said the Judge,
+who had scarcely spoken until then. "No, I could not bear to read them
+now, when those who should love that country are leaving it in passion."
+
+There was a heavy silence. Virginia did not dare to look at her father.
+But the Colonel said, gently:
+
+"Not in passion, Silas, but in sorrow."
+
+The Judge tightened his lips. But the effort was beyond him, and the
+flood within him broke loose.
+
+"Colonel Carvel," he cried, "South Carolina is mad--She is departing in
+sin, in order that a fiendish practice may be perpetuated. If her people
+stopped to think they would know that slavery cannot exist except by
+means of this Union. But let this milksop of a President do his worst. We
+have chosen a man who has the strength to say, 'You shall not go!'"
+
+It was an awful moment. The saving grace of it was that respect and love
+for her father filled Virginia's heart. In his just anger Colonel Carvel
+remembered that he was the host, and strove to think only of his
+affection for his old friend.
+
+"To invade a sovereign state, sir, is a crime against the sacred spirit
+of this government," he said.
+
+"There is no such thing as a sovereign state, sir," exclaimed the Judge,
+hotly. I am an American, and not a Missourian."
+
+"When the time comes, sir," said the Colonel, with dignity, "Missouri
+will join with her sister sovereign states against oppression."
+
+"Missouri will not secede, sir."
+
+"Why not, sir!" demanded the Colonel.
+
+Because, sir, when the worst comes, the Soothing Syrup men will rally for
+the Union. And there are enough loyal people here to keep her straight."
+
+"Dutchmen, sir! Hessians? Foreign Republican hirelings, sir," exclaimed
+the Colonel, standing up. "We shall drive them like sheep if they oppose
+us. You are drilling them now that they may murder your own blood when
+you think the time is ripe."
+
+The Colonel did not hear Virginia leave the room, so softly had she gone,
+He made a grand figure of a man as he stood up, straight and tall, those
+gray eyes a-kindle at last. But the fire died as quickly as it had
+flared. Pity had come and quenched it,--pity that an unselfish life of
+suffering and loneliness should be crowned with these. The Colonel longed
+then to clasp his friend in his arms. Quarrels they had had by the
+hundred, never yet a misunderstanding. God had given to Silas Whipple a
+nature stern and harsh that repelled all save the charitable few whose
+gift it was to see below the surface, and Colonel Carvel had been the
+chief of them. But now the Judge's vision was clouded.
+
+Steadying himself by his chair, he had risen glaring, the loose skin
+twitching on his sallow face. He began firmly but his voice shook ere he
+had finished.
+
+"Colonel Carvel," said he, "I expect that the day has come when you go
+your way and I go mine. It will be better if--we do not meet again, sir."
+
+And so he turned from the man whose friendship had stayed him for the
+score of years he had battled with his enemies, from that house which had
+been for so long his only home. For the last time Jackson came forward to
+help him with his coat. The Judge did not see him, nor did he see the
+tearful face of a young girl leaning over the banisters above. Ice was on
+the stones. And Mr. Whipple, blinded by a moisture strange to his eyes,
+clung to the iron railing as he felt his way down the steps. Before he
+reached the bottom a stronger arm had seize his own, and was helping him.
+
+The Judge brushed his eyes with his sleeve, and turned a defiant face
+upon Captain Elijah Brent--then his voice broke. His anger was suddenly
+gone, and his thought had flown back to the Colonel's thousand charities.
+
+"Lige," he said, "Lige, it has come."
+
+In answer the Captain pressed the Judge's hand, nodding vigorously to
+hide his rising emotion. There was a pause.
+
+"And you, Lige?" said Mr. Whipple, presently.
+
+"My God!" cried the Captain, "I wish I knew."
+
+"Lige," said the Judge, gravely, "you're too good a man to be for
+Soothing Syrup."
+
+The Captain choked.
+
+"You're too smart to be fooled, Lige," he said, with a note near to
+pleading. "The time has come when you Bell people and the Douglas people
+have got to decide. Never in my life did I know it to do good to dodge a
+question. We've got to be white or black, Lige. Nobody's got much use for
+the grays. And don't let yourself be fooled with Constitutional Union
+Meetings, and compromises. The time is almost here, Lige, when it will
+take a rascal to steer a middle course."
+
+Captain Lige listened, and he shifted from one foot to the other, and
+rubbed his hands, which were red. Some odd trick of the mind had put into
+his head two people--Eliphalet Hopper and Jacob Cluyme. Was he like them?
+
+"Lige, you've got to decide. Do you love your country, sir? Can you look
+on while our own states defy us, and not lift a hand? Can you sit still
+while the Governor and all the secessionists in this state are plotting
+to take Missouri, too, out of the Union? The militia is riddled with
+rebels, and the rest are forming companies of minute men."
+
+"And you Black Republicans," the Captain cried "have organized your Dutch
+Wideawakes, and are arming them to resist Americans born."
+
+"They are Americans by our Constitution, sir, which the South pretends to
+revere," cried the Judge. "And they are showing themselves better
+Americans than many who have been on the soil for generations."
+
+"My sympathies are with the South," said the Captain, doggedly, "and my
+love is for the South."
+
+"And your conscience?" said the Judge.
+
+There was no answer. Both men raised their eyes to the house of him whose
+loving hospitality had been a light in the lives of both. When at last
+the Captain spoke, his voice was rent with feeling.
+
+"Judge," he began, "when I was a poor young man on the old 'Vicksburg',
+second officer under old Stetson, Colonel Carvel used to take me up to
+his house on Fourth Street to dinner. And he gave me the clothes on my
+back, so that I might not be ashamed before the fashion which came there.
+He treated me like a son, sir. One day the sheriff sold the Vicksburg.
+You remember it. That left me high and dry in the mud. Who bought her,
+sir? Colonel Carvel. And he says to me, 'Lige, you're captain now, the
+youngest captain on the river. And she's your boat. You can pay me
+principal and interest when you get ready.'
+
+"Judge Whipple, I never had any other home than right in, this house. I
+never had any other pleasure than bringing Jinny presents, and tryin' to
+show 'em gratitude. He took me into his house and cared for me at a time
+when I wanted to go to the devil along with the stevedores when I was a
+wanderer he kept me out of the streets, and out of temptation. Judge, I'd
+a heap rather go down and jump off the stern of my boat than step in here
+and tell him I'd fight for the North."
+
+The Judge steadied himself on his hickory stick and walked off without a
+word. For a while Captain Lige stood staring after him. Then he slowly
+climbed the steps and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER, XV
+
+MUTTERINGS
+
+Early in the next year, 1861,--that red year in the Calendar of our
+history,--several gentlemen met secretly in the dingy counting-room of a
+prominent citizen to consider how the state of Missouri might be saved to
+the Union. One of these gentlemen was Judge Whipple, another, Mr.
+Brinsmade; and another a masterly and fearless lawyer who afterward
+became a general, and who shall be mentioned in these pages as the
+Leader. By his dash and boldness and statesmanlike grasp of a black
+situation St. Louis was snatched from the very bosom of secession.
+
+Alas, that chronicles may not stretch so as to embrace all great men of a
+time. There is Captain Nathaniel Lyon,--name with the fateful ring.
+Nathaniel Lyon, with the wild red hair and blue eye, born and bred a
+soldier, ordered to St. Louis, and become subordinate to a wavering
+officer of ordnance. Lyon was one who brooked no trifling. He had the
+face of a man who knows his mind and intention; the quick speech and
+action which go with this. Red tape made by the reel to bind him, he
+broke. Courts-martial had no terrors for him. He proved the ablest of
+lieutenants to the strong civilian who was the Leader. Both were the men
+of the occasion. If God had willed that the South should win, there would
+have been no occasion.
+
+Even as Judge Whipple had said, the time was come for all men to decide.
+Out of the way, all hopes of compromises that benumbed Washington. No
+Constitutional Unionists, no Douglas Democrats, no Republicans now.
+
+All must work to save the ship. The speech-making was not done with yet.
+Partisanship must be overcome, and patriotism instilled in its place. One
+day Stephen Brice saw the Leader go into Judge Whipple's room, and
+presently he was sent for. After that he was heard of in various
+out-of-the-way neighborhoods, exhorting all men to forget their quarrels
+and uphold the flag.
+
+The Leader himself knew not night from day in his toil,--in organizing,
+conciliating, compelling when necessary. Letters passed between him and
+Springfield. And, after that solemn inauguration, between him and
+Washington. It was an open secret that the Governor of Missouri held out
+his arms to Jefferson Davis, just elected President of the new Southern
+Confederacy. It soon became plain to the feeblest brain what the Leader
+and his friends had perceived long before, that the Governor intended to
+use the militia (purged of Yankee sympathizers) to save the state for the
+South.
+
+The Government Arsenal, with its stores of arms and ammunition, was the
+prize. This building and its grounds lay to the south of the City,
+overlooking the river. It was in command of a doubting major of ordnance;
+the corps of officers of Jefferson Barracks hard by was mottled with
+secession. Trade was still. The Mississippi below was practically closed.
+In all the South, Pickens and Sumter alone stood stanch to the flag. A
+general, wearing the uniform of the army of the United States,
+surrendered the whole state of Texas.
+
+The St. Louis Arsenal was next in succession, and the little band of
+regulars at the Barracks was powerless to save it. What could the Leader
+and Captain Lyon do without troops? That was the question that rang in
+Stephen's head, and in the heads of many others. For, if President
+Lincoln sent troops to St. Louis, that would precipitate the trouble. And
+the President had other uses for the handful in the army.
+
+There came a rain-sodden night when a mysterious message arrived at the
+little house in Olive Street. Both anxiety and pride were in Mrs. Brice's
+eyes as they followed her son out of the door. At Twelfth Street two men
+were lounging on the corners, each of whom glanced at him listessly as he
+passed. He went up a dark and narrow stair into a lighted hall with
+shrouded windows. Men with sober faces were forming line on the sawdust
+of the floors. The Leader was there giving military orders in a low
+voice. That marked the beginning of the aggressive Union movement.
+
+Stephen, standing apart at the entrance, remarked that many of the men
+were Germans. Indeed, he spied his friend Tiefel there, and presently
+Richter came from the ranks to greet him.
+
+"My friend," he said, "you are made second lieutenant of our company, the
+Black Jaegers."
+
+"But I have never drilled in my life," said Stephen.
+
+"Never mind. Come and see the Leader."
+
+The Leader, smiling a little, put a vigorous stop to his protestations,
+and told him to buy a tactics. The next man Stephen saw was big Tom
+Catherwood, who blushed to the line of his hair as he returned Stephen's
+grip.
+
+"Tom, what does this mean?" He asked.
+
+"Well," said Tom, embarrassed, "a fellow has got to do what he think's
+right."
+
+"And your family?" asked Stephen.
+
+A spasm crossed Tom's face.
+
+"I reckon they'll disown me, Stephen, when they find it out."
+
+Richter walked home as far as Stephen's house. He was to take the Fifth
+Street car for South St. Louis. And they talked of Tom's courage, and of
+the broad and secret military organization the Leader had planned that
+night. But Stephen did not sleep till the dawn. Was he doing right? Could
+he afford to risk his life in the war that was coming, and leave his
+mother dependent upon charity?
+
+It was shortly after this that Stephen paid his last visit for many a
+long day upon Miss Puss Russell. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Puss was
+entertaining, as usual, a whole parlor-full of young men, whose leanings
+and sympathies Stephen divined while taking off his coat in the hall.
+Then he heard Miss Russell cry:
+
+"I believe that they are drilling those nasty Dutch hirelings in secret."
+
+"I am sure they are," said George Catherwood. "One of the halls is on
+Twelfth Street, and they have sentries posted out so that you can't get
+near them. Pa has an idea that Tom goes there. And he told him that if he
+ever got evidence of it, he'd show him the door."
+
+"Do you really think that Tom is with the Yankees?" asked Jack Brinsmade.
+
+"Tom's a fool," said George, with emphasis, "but he isn't a coward. He'd
+just as soon tell Pa to-morrow that he was drilling if the Yankee leaders
+wished it known."
+
+"Virginia will never speak to him again," said Eugenie, in an awed voice.
+
+"Pooh!" said Puss, "Tom never had a chance with Jinny. Did he, George?
+Clarence is in high favor now. Did you ever know any one to change so,
+since this military business has begun? He acts like a colonel. I hear
+that they are thinking of making him captain of a company of dragoons."
+
+"They are," George answered. "And that is the company I intend to join."
+
+"Well," began Puss, with her usual recklessness, "it's a good thing for
+Clarence that all this is happening. I know somebody else--"
+
+Poor Stephen in the hall knew not whether to stay or fly. An accident
+decided the question. Emily Russell came down the stairs at that instant
+and spoke to him. As the two entered the parlor, there was a hush
+pregnant with many things unsaid. Puss's face was scarlet, but her hand
+was cold as she held it out to him. For the first time in that house he
+felt like an intruder. Jack Brinsmade bowed with great ceremony, and took
+his departure. There was scarcely a distant cordiality in the greeting of
+the other young men. And Puss, whose tongue was loosed again, talked
+rapidly of entertainments to which Stephen either had not been invited,
+or from which he had stayed away. The rest of the company were almost
+moodily silent.
+
+Profoundly depressed, Stephen sat straight in the velvet chair, awaiting
+a seasonable time to bring his visit to a close.
+
+This was to be the last, then, of his intercourse with a warmhearted and
+lovable people. This was to be the end of his friendship with this
+impetuous and generous girl who had done so much to brighten his life
+since he had come to St: Louis. Henceforth this house would be shut to
+him, and all others save Mr. Brinsmade's.
+
+Presently, in one of the intervals of Miss Russell's feverish talk, he
+rose to go. Dusk was gathering, and a deep and ominous silence penetrated
+like the shadows into the tall room. No words came to him. Impulsively,
+almost tearfully, Puss put her hand in his. Then she pressed it
+unexpectedly, so that he had to gulp down a lump that was in his throat.
+Just then a loud cry was heard from without, the men jumped from their
+chairs, and something heavy dropped on the carpet.
+
+Some ran to the window, others to the door. Directly across the street
+was the house of Mr. Harmsworth, a noted Union man. One of the third
+story windows was open, and out of it was pouring a mass of gray wood
+smoke. George Catherwood was the first to speak.
+
+"I hope it will burn down," he cried.
+
+Stephen picked up the object on the floor, which had dropped from his
+pocket, and handed it to him.
+
+It was a revolver.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Crisis, Volume 4, by Winston Churchill
+
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