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a friend down on the piano stool, and whirled with Nancy Carter into the middle of the room in a waltz. But Miss Lucy shook her head at her nephew, and Cousin William gazed sternly at Nancy, and the fiddlers looked scandalized. Scipio, the old, old one, who could remember the Lafayette ball, held his bow awfully poised. Judith Cary,
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dressed in a soft, strange, dull blue, and wearing a little crown of rosy flowers, danced along like the lady of Saint Agnes Eve. Maury Stafford marked how absent was her gaze, and he hoped that she was dreaming of their ride that afternoon, of the clear green woods and the dogwood stars, and of some words that he had
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said. In these days he was hoping against hope. Well off and well-bred, good to look at, pleasant of speech, at times indolent, at times ardent, a little silent on the whole, and never failing to match the occasion with just the right shade of intelligence, a certain grip and essence in this man made itself felt like the firm
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bed of a river beneath the flowing water. He was not of Albemarle; he was of a tide-water county, but he came to Albemarle and stayed with kindred, and no one doubted that he strove for an Albemarle bride. It was the opinion of the county people that he would win her. It was hard to see why he should
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not. He was desperately in love, and far too determined to take the first "No" for an answer. Until the last eight months it had been his own conclusion that he would win. The old clock in the hall struck ten; in an interval between the dances Judith slipped away. Stafford wished to follow her, but Cousin William held him
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like the Ancient Mariner and talked of the long past on the Eastern Shore. Judith, entering the library, came upon the Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood, deep in a great chair and a calf-bound volume. "Come in, come in, Judith my dear, and tell me about the dance." "It is a pretty dance," said Judith. "Do you think it would be
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very wrong of you to watch it?" Mr. Wood, the long thin fingers of one hand lightly touching the long thin fingers of the other hand, considered the matter. "Why, no," he said in a mellow and genial voice. "Why, no--it is always hard for me to think that anything beautiful is wrong. It is this way. I go into
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the drawing-room and watch you. It is, as you say, a very pretty sight! But if I find it so and still keep a long face, I am to myself something of a hypocrite. And if I testify my delight, if I am absorbed in your evolutions, and think only of springtime and growing things, and show my thought, then
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to every one of you, and indeed to myself too, my dear, I am something out of my character! So it seems better to sit here and read Jeremy Taylor." "You have the book upside down," said Judith softly. Her old friend put on his glasses, gravely looked, and reversed the volume. He laughed, and then he sighed. "I was
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thinking of the country, Judith. It's the only book that is interesting now--and the recital's tragic, my dear; the recital's tragic!" From the hall came Edward Cary's voice, "Judith, Judith, we want you for the reel!" In the drawing-room the music quickened. Scipio played with all his soul, his eyes uprolled, his lips parted, his woolly head nodding, his vast
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foot beating time; young Eli, black and shining, seconded him ably; without the doors and windows gathered the house servants, absorbed, admiring, laughing without noise. The April wind, fragrant of greening forests, ploughed land, and fruit trees, blew in and out the long, thin curtains. Faster went the bow upon the fiddle, the room became more brilliant and more dreamy.
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The flowers in the old, old blue jars grew pinker, mistier, the lights had halos, the portraits smiled forthright; but from greater distances, the loud ticking of the clock without the door changed to a great rhythm, as though Time were using a violin string. The laughter swelled, waves of brightness went through the ancient room. They danced the "Virginia
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Reel." Miss Lucy, sitting beside Cousin William on the sofa, raised her head. "Horses are coming up the drive!" "That's not unusual," said Cousin William, with a smile. "Why do you look so startled?" "I don't know. I thought--but that's not possible." Miss Lucy half rose, then took her seat again. Cousin William listened. "The air's very clear to-night, and
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there must be an echo. It does sound like a great body of horsemen coming out of the distance." "Balance corners!" called Eli. "Swing yo' partners!--_Sachay!_" The music drew to a height, the lights burned with a fuller power, the odour of the flowers spread, subtle and intense. The dancers moved more and more quickly. "There are only three horses,"
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said Cousin William, "two in front and one behind. Two gentlemen and a servant. Now they are crossing the little bridge. Shall I go see who they are?" Miss Lucy rose. Outside a dog had begun an excited and joyous barking. "That's Gelert! It's my brother he is welcoming!" From the porch came a burst of negro voices. "Who dat
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comin' up de drive? Who dat, Gelert?--Dat's marster!--Go 'way, 'ooman! don' tell me he in Richmon'! Dat's marster!" The reel ended suddenly. There was a sound of dismounting, a step upon the porch, a voice. "Father, father!" cried Judith, and ran into the hall. A minute later the master of Greenwood, his children about him, entered the drawing-room. Behind him
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came Richard Cleave. There was a momentary confusion of greeting; it passed, and from the two men, travel-stained, fatigued, pale with some suppressed emotion, there sped to the gayer company a subtle wave of expectation and alarm. Miss Lucy was the first whom it reached. "What is it, brother?" she said quickly. Cousin William followed, "For God's sake, Cary, what
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has happened?" Edward spoke from beside the piano, "Has it come, father?" With his words his hand fell upon the keys, suddenly and startlingly upon the bass. The vibrations died away. "Yes, it has come, Edward," said the master. Holding up his hand for silence, he moved to the middle of the room, and stood there, beneath the lit candles,
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the swinging prisms of the chandelier. Peale's portrait of his father hung upon the wall. The resemblance was strong between the dead and the living. "Be quiet, every one," he said now, speaking very quietly himself. "Is all the household here? Open the window wide, Julius. Let the house servants come inside. If there are men and women from the
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quarter on the porch, tell them to come closer, so that all may hear." Julius opened the long windows, the negroes came in, Mammy in her turban, Easter and Chloe the seamstresses, Car'line the cook, the housemaids, the dining-room boys, the young girls who waited upon the daughters of the house, Isham the coachman, Shirley the master's body-servant, Edward's boy
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Jeames, and the nondescript half dozen who helped the others. The ruder sort upon the porch, "outdoor" negroes drawn by the music and the spectacle from the quarter, approached the windows. Together they made a background, dark and exotic, splashed with bright colour, for the Aryan stock ranged to the front. The drawing-room was filled. Mr. Corbin Wood had come
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noiselessly in from the library, none was missing. Guests, family, and servants stood motionless. There was that in the bearing of the master which seemed, in the silence, to detach itself, and to come toward them like an emanation, cold, pure, and quiet, determined and imposing. He spoke. "I supposed that you had heard the news. Along the railroad and
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in Charlottesville it was known; there were great crowds. I see it has not reached you. Mr. Lincoln has called for seventy-five thousand troops with which to procure South Carolina and the Gulf States' return into the Union. He--the North--demands of Virginia eight thousand men to be used for this purpose. She will not give them. We have fought long
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and patiently for peace; now we fight no more on that field. Matters have brought me for a few hours to Albemarle. To-morrow I return to Richmond, to the Convention, to do that which I never thought to do, to give my voice for the secession of Virginia." There was a general movement throughout the room. "So!" said Corbin Wood
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very softly. Cousin William rose from the sofa, drew a long breath, and smote his hands together. "It had to come, Cary, it had to come! North and South, we've pulled in different directions for sixty years! The cord had to snap." From among the awed servants came the voice of old Isham the coachman, "'Secession!' What dat wuhd 'Secession,'
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marster?" "That word," answered Warwick Cary, "means, Isham, that Virginia leaves of her free will a Union that she entered of her free will. The terms of that Union have been broken; she cannot, within it, preserve her integrity, her dignity, and her liberty. Therefore she uses the right which she reserved--the right of self-preservation. Unterrified she entered the Union,
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unterrified she leaves it." He paused, standing in the white light of the candles, among his children, kinsmen, friends, and slaves. To the last, if ingrained affection, tolerance, and understanding, quiet guidance, patient care, a kindly heart, a ready ear, a wise and simple dealing with a simple, not wise folk, are true constituents of friendship, he was then their
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friend as well as their master. They with all the room hung now upon his words. The light wind blew the curtains out like streamers, the candles flickered, petals from the blossoms in the jars fell on the floor, the clock that had ticked in the hall for a hundred years struck eleven. "There will be war," said the master.
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"There should not be, but there will be. How long it will last, how deadly its nature, no man can tell! The North has not thought us in earnest, but the North is mistaken. We are in earnest. War will be for us a desperate thing. We are utterly unprepared; we are seven million against twenty million, an agricultural country
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against a manufacturing one. We have little shipping, they have much. They will gain command of the sea. If we can get our cotton to Europe we will have gold; therefore, if they can block our ports they will do it. There are those who think the powers will intervene and that we will have England or France for our
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ally. I am not of them. The odds are greatly against us. We have struggled for peace; apparently we cannot have it; now we will fight for the conviction that is in us. It will be for us a war of defence, with the North for the invader, and Virginia will prove the battle-ground. I hold it very probable that
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there are men here to-night who will die in battle. You women are going to suffer--to suffer more than we. I think of my mother and of my wife, and I know that you will neither hold us back nor murmur. All that is courageous, all that is heroically devoted, Virginia expects and will receive from you." He turned to
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face more fully the crowding negroes. "To every man and woman of you here, not the less my friends that you are called my servants, emancipated at my death, every one of you, by that will which I read to you years ago, each of you having long known that you have but to ask for your freedom in my
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lifetime to have it--to you all I speak. Julius, Shirley, Isham, Scipio, Mammy, and the rest of you, there are hard times coming! My son and I will go to war. Much will be left in your trust. As I and mine have tried to deal by you, so do you deal by us--" Shirley raised his voice. "Don' leave
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nothin' in trus' ter me, marster! Kase I's gwine wid you! Sho! Don' I know dat when gent'men fight dey gwine want dey bes' shu't, an dey hat breshed jes' right! I'se gwine wid you!" A face as dark as charcoal, with rolling eyes, looked over mammy's shoulder. "Ain' Marse Edward gwine? 'Cose he gwine! Den Jeames gwine, too!" A
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murmuring sound came from the band of servants. They began to rock themselves, to strike with the tongue the roof of the mouth, to work toward a camp-meeting excitement. Out on the porch Big Mimy, the washerwoman, made herself heard. "Des' let um _dar_ ter come fightin' Greenwood folk! Des' let me hab at um with er tub er hot
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water!" Scipio, old and withered as a last year's reed, began to sway violently. Suddenly he broke into a chant. "Ain' I done heard about hit er million times? Dar wuz Gineral Lafayette an' dar wuz Gineral Rochambeau, an' dar wuz Gineral Washington! An' dar wuz Light Horse Harry Lee, an' dar wuz Marse Fauquier Cary dat wuz marster's gran'father,
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an' Marse Edward Churchill! An' dey took de swords, an' dey made to stack de ahms, an' dey druv--an' dey druv King Pharaoh into de sea! Ain' dey gwine ter do hit ergain? Tell me dat! Ain' dey gwine ter do hit ergain?" The master signed with his hand. "I trust you--one and all. I'll speak to you again before
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I go away to-morrow, but now we'll say good-night. Good-night, Mammy, Isham, Scipio, Easter, all of you!" They went, one by one, each with his bow or her curtsy. Mammy paused a moment to deliver her pronunciamento. "Don' you fret, marster! I ain' gwine let er soul _tech_ one er my chillern!" Julius followed her. "Dat's so, marster! An' Gawd
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Ermoughty knows I'se gwine always prohibit jes' de same care ob de fambly an' de silver!" When they were gone came the leave-taking of the guests, of all who were not to sleep that night at Greenwood. Maury Stafford was to stay, and Mr. Corbin Wood. Of those going Cousin William was the only one of years; the others were
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all young,--young men, young women on the edge of an unthought-of experience, on the brink of a bitter, tempestuous, wintry sea. They did not see it so; there was danger, of course, but they thought of splendour and heroism, of trumpet calls and waving banners. They were much excited; the young girls half frightened, the men wild to be at
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home, with plans for volunteering. "Good-bye, and good-bye, and good-bye again! and when it's all over--it will be over in three months, will it not, sir?--we'll finish the 'Virginia Reel!'" The large, old coach and the saddle horses were brought around. They drove or rode away, through the April night, by the forsythia and the flowering almond, between the towering
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oaks, over the bridge with a hollow sound. Those left behind upon the Greenwood porch, clustered at the top of the steps, between the white pillars, stood in silence until the noise of departure had died away. Warwick Cary, his arm around Molly, his hand in Judith's, Unity's cheek resting against his shoulder, then spoke. "It is the last merry-making,
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poor children! Well--'Time and tide run through the longest day!'" He disengaged himself, kissed each of his daughters, and turned toward the lighted hall. "There are papers in the library which I must go over to-night. Edward, you had best come with me." Father and son left the porch. Miss Lucy, too, went indoors, called Julius, and began to give
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directions. Ready and energetic, she never wasted time in wonder at events. The event once squarely met, she struck immediately into the course it demanded, cheerfully, without repining, and with as little attention as possible to forebodings. Her voice died away toward the back of the house. The moon was shining, and the lawn lay chequered beneath the trees. Corbin
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Wood, who had been standing in a brown study, began to descend the steps. "I'll take a little walk, Judith, my dear," he said, "and think it over! I'll let myself in." He was gone walking rapidly, not toward the big gate and the road, but across to the fields, a little stream, and a strip that had been left
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of primeval forest. Unity and Molly, moving back to the doorstep, sat there whispering together in the light from the hall. Judith and Richard were left almost alone, Judith leaning against a white pillar, Cleave standing a step or two below her. "You have been in Richmond?" she said. "Molly had a letter from Miriam--" "Yes, I went to find,
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if possible, rifled muskets for my company. I did not do as well as I had hoped--the supply is dreadfully small--but I secured a few. Two thirds of us will have to manage, until we can do better, with the smoothbore and even with the old flintlock. I have seen a breech-loader made in the North. I wish to God
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we had it!" "You are going back to Botetourt?" "As soon as it is dawn. The company will at once offer its services to the governor. Every moment now is important." "At dawn.... You will be its captain?" "I suppose so. We will hold immediately an election of officers--and that's as pernicious a method of officering companies and regiments as
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can be imagined! 'They are volunteers, offering all--they can be trusted to choose their leaders.' I don't perceive the sequence." "I think that you will make a good captain." He smiled. "Why, then, the clumsy thing will work for once! I'll try to be a good captain.--The clock is striking. I do not know when nor how I shall see
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Greenwood again. Judith, you'll wish me well?" "Will I wish you well, Richard? Yes, I will wish you well. Do not go at dawn." He looked at her. "Do you ask me to wait?" "Yes, I ask you. Wait till--till later in the morning. It is so sad to say good-bye." "I will wait then." The light from the hall
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lay unbroken on the doorstep. Molly and Unity had disappeared. A little in yellow lamplight, chiefly in silver moonlight the porch lay deserted and quiet before the murmuring oaks, above the fair downward sweep of grass and flowers. "It is long," said Cleave, "since I have been here. The day after the tournament--" "Yes." He came nearer. "Judith, was it
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so hard to forgive--that tournament? You had both crowns, after all." "I do not know," said Judith, "what you mean." "Do you remember--do you remember last Christmas when, going to Lauderdale, I passed you on your way to Silver Hill?" "Yes, I remember." "I was on my way to Lauderdale, not to see Fauquier, but to see you. I wished
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to ask you a question--I wished to make certain. And then you passed me going to Silver Hill, and I said, 'It is certainly so.' I have believed it to be so. I believe it now. And yet I ask you to-night--Judith--" "You ask me what?" said Judith. "Here is Mr. Stafford." Maury Stafford came into the silver space before
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the house, glanced upward, and mounted the steps. "I walked as far as the gate with Breckinridge. He tells me, Mr. Cleave, that he is of your Company of Volunteers." "Yes." "I shall turn my face toward the sea to-morrow. Heigho! War is folly at the best. And you?--" "I leave Greenwood in the morning." The other, leaning against a
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pillar, drew toward him a branch of climbing rose. The light from the hall struck against him. He always achieved the looking as though he had stepped from out a master-canvas. To-night this was strongly so. "In the morning! You waste no time. Unfortunately I cannot get away for another twenty-four hours." He let the rose bough go and turned
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to Judith. His voice when he spoke to her became at once low and musical. There was light enough to see the flush in his cheek, the ardour in his eye. "'Unfortunately!' What a word to use in leaving Greenwood! No! For me most fortunately I must wait another four and twenty hours." "Greenwood," said Judith, "will be lonely without
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old friends." As she spoke, she moved toward the house door. In passing a great porch chair her dress caught on the twisted wood. Both men started forward, but Stafford was much the nearer to her. Released, she thanked him with grave kindness, went on to the doorway, and there turned, standing a moment in her drapery of dim blue,
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in the two lights. She had about her a long scarf of black lace, and now she drew it closer, holding it beneath her chin with a hand slender, fine, and strong. "Good-night," she said. "It is not long to morning, now. Good-night, Mr. Stafford. Good-night, Richard." The "good-night" that Stafford breathed after her needed no commentary. It was that
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of the lover confessed. Cleave, from his side of the porch, looked across and thought, "I will be a fool no longer. She was merely kind to me--a kindness she could afford. 'Do not go till morning--_dear cousin_!'" There was a silence on the Greenwood porch, a white-pillared rose-embowered space, paced ere this by lovers and rivals. It was broken
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by Mr. Corbin Wood, returning from the fields and mounting the moonlit steps. "I have thought it out," he said. "I am going as chaplain." He touched Stafford, of whom he was fond, on the shoulder. "It's the sweetest night, and as I came along I loved every leaf of the trees and every blade of grass. It's home, it's
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fatherland, it's sacred soil, it's mother, dear Virginia--" He broke off, said good-night, and entered the house. The younger men prepared to follow. "The next time that we meet," said Stafford, "may be in the thunder of the fight. I have an idea that I'll know it if you're there. I'll look out for you." "And I for you," said
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Cleave. Each had spoken with entire courtesy and a marked lack of amity. There was a moment's pause, a feeling as of the edge of things. Cleave, not tall, but strongly made, with his thick dark hair, his tanned, clean shaven, squarely cut face, stood very straight, in earnest and formidable. The other, leaning against the pillar, was the fairer
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to look at, and certainly not without his own strength. The one thought, "I will know," and the other thought, "I believe you to be my foe of foes. If I can make you leave this place early, without speaking to her, I will do it." Cleave turned squarely. "You have reason to regret leaving Greenwood--" Stafford straightened himself against
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the pillar, studied for a moment the seal ring which he wore, then spoke with deliberation. "Yes. It is hard to quit Paradise for even such a tourney as we have before us. Ah well! when one comes riding back the welcome will be the sweeter!" They went indoors. Later, alone in a pleasant bedroom, the man who had put
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a face upon matters which the facts did not justify, opened wide the window and looked out upon moon-flooded hill and vale. "Do I despise myself?" he thought. "If it was false to-night I may yet make it truth to-morrow. All's fair in love and war, and God knows my all is in this war! Judith! Judith! Judith! look my
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way, not his!" He stared into the night, moodily enough. His room was at the side of the house. Below lay a slope of flower garden, then a meadow, a little stream, and beyond, a low hilltop crowned by the old Greenwood burying-ground. "Why not sleep?... Love is war--the underlying, the primeval, the immemorial.... All the same, Maury Stafford--" In
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her room upon the other side of the house, Judith had found the candles burning on the dressing-table. She blew them out, parted the window curtains of flowered dimity, and curling herself on the window-seat, became a part of the April night. Crouching there in the scented air, beneath the large, mild stars, she tried to think of Virginia and
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the coming war, but at the end of every avenue she came upon a morning hour. Perhaps it would be in the flower garden, perhaps in the summer-house, perhaps in the plantation woods where the windflower and the Judas tree were in bloom. Her heart was hopeful. So lifted and swept was the world to-night, so ready for great things,
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that her great thing also ought to happen, her rose of happiness ought to bloom. "After to-morrow," she said to herself, "I will think of Virginia, and I'll begin to help." Toward daybreak, lying in the large four-post bed beneath the white tasselled canopy, she fell asleep. The sun was an hour high when she awoke. Hagar, the girl who
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waited upon her, came in and flung wide the shutters. "Dar's er mockin' bird singin' mighty neah dish-yer window! Reckon he gwine mek er nes' in de honeysuckle." "I meant to wake up very early," said Judith. "Is any one downstairs yet, Hagar?--No, not that dress. The one with the little flowers." "Dar ain' nobody down yit," said Hagar. "Marse
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Richard Cleave, he done come down early, 'way 'bout daybreak. He got one of de stable-men ter saddle he horse an' he done rode er way. Easter, she come in de house jes' ez he wuz leaving en he done tol' her ter tell marster dat he'd done been thinkin' ez how dar wuz so much ter do dat he'd
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better mek an early start, en he lef' good-bye fer de fambly. Easter, she ax him won't he wait 'twel the ladies come down, en he say No. 'Twuz better fer him ter go now. En he went. Dar ain' nobody else come down less'n hits Marse Maury Stafford.--Miss Judith, honey, yo' ain' got enny mo' blood in yo' face
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than dat ar counterpane! I gwine git yo' er cup er coffee!" THUNDER RUN Allan Gold, teaching the school on Thunder Run, lodged at the tollgate halfway down the mountain. His parents were dead, his brothers moved away. The mountain girls were pretty and fain, and matches were early made. Allan made none; he taught with conscientiousness thirty tow-headed youngsters,
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read what books he could get, and worked in the tollgate keeper's small, bright garden. He had a passion for flowers. He loved, too, to sit with his pipe upon the rude porch of the toll-house, fanned by the marvellous mountain air, and look down over ridges of chestnut and oak to the mighty valley below, and across to the
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far blue wall of the Alleghenies. The one-roomed, log-built schoolhouse stood a mile from the road across the mountains, upon a higher level, in a fairy meadow below the mountain clearings. A walnut tree shaded it, Thunder Run leaped by in cascades, on either side the footpath Allan had planted larkspur and marigolds. Here, on a May morning, he rang
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the bell, then waited patiently until the last free-born imp elected to leave the delights of a minnow-filled pool, a newly discovered redbird's nest, and a blockhouse in process of construction against imaginary Indians. At last all were seated upon the rude benches in the dusky room,--small tow-headed Jacks and Jills, heirs to a field of wheat or oats, a
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diminutive tobacco patch, a log cabin, a piece of uncleared forest, or perhaps the blacksmith's forge, a small mountain store, or the sawmill down the stream. Allan read aloud the Parable of the Sower, and they all said the Lord's Prayer; then he called the Blue Back Speller class. The spelling done, they read from the same book about the
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Martyr and his Family. Geography followed, with an account of the Yang-tse-Kiang and an illustration of a pagoda, after which the ten-year-olds took the front bench and read of little Hugh and old Mr. Toil. This over, the whole school fell to ciphering. They ciphered for half an hour, and then they had a history lesson, which told of one
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Curtius who leaped into a gulf to save his country. History being followed by the writing lesson, all save the littlest present began laboriously to copy a proverb of Solomon. Half-past eleven and recess drawing on! The scholars grew restless. Could the bird's nest still be there? Were the minnows gone from the pool? Had the blockhouse fallen down? Would
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writing go on forever?--The bell rang; the teacher, whom they liked well enough, was speaking. _No more school!_ Recess forever--or until next year, which was the same thing! No more geography, reading, writing, arithmetic, and spelling; no more school! Hurrah! Of course the redbird's nest was swinging on the bough, and the minnows were in the pool, and the blockhouse
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was standing, and the sun shining with all its might! "All the men about here are going to fight," said Allan. "I am going, too. So we'll have to stop school until the war is over. Try not to forget what I've taught you, children, and try to be good boys and girls. You boys must learn now to be
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men, for you'll have to look after things and the women. And you girls must help your mothers all you can. It's going to be hard times, little folk! You've played a long time at fighting Indians, and latterly I've noticed you playing at fighting Yankees. Playtime's over now. It's time to work, to think, and to try to help.
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You can't fight for Virginia with guns and swords, but every woman and child, every young boy and old man in Virginia can make the hearts easier of those who go to fight. You be good boys and girls and do your duty here on Thunder Run, and God will count you as his soldiers just the same as if
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you were fighting down there in the valley, or before Richmond, or on the Potomac, or wherever we're going to fight. You're going to be good children; I know it!" He closed the book before him. "School's over now. When we take in again we'll finish the Roman History--I've marked the place." He left his rude old desk and the
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little platform, and stepping down amongst his pupils, gave to each his hand. Then he divided among them the scanty supply of books, patiently answered a scurry of questions, and outside, upon the sunshiny sward, with the wind in the walnut tree and the larkspur beginning to bloom, said good-bye once more. Jack and Jill gave no further thought to
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the bird's nest, the minnows in the pool, the unfinished blockhouse. Off they rushed, up the side of the mountain, over the wooded hills, along Thunder Run, where it leaped from pool to pool. They must be home with the news! No more school--no more school! And was father going--and were Johnny and Sam and Dave? Where were they going
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to fight? As far as the big sawmill? as far away as the _river_? Were the dogs going, too? Allan Gold, left alone, locked the schoolhouse door, walked slowly along the footpath between the flowers he had planted, and, standing by Thunder Run, looked for awhile at the clear, brown water, then, with a long breath and a straightening of
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the shoulders, turned away. "Good-bye, little place!" he said, and strode down the ravine to the road and the toll-house. The tollgate keeper, old and crippled, sat on the porch beside a wooden bucket of well-water. The county newspaper lay on his knee, and he was reading the items aloud to his wife, old, too, but active, standing at her
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ironing-board within the kitchen door. A cat purred in the sunshine, and all the lilac bushes were in bloom. "'Ten companies from this County,'" read the tollgate keeper; "'Ten companies from Old Botetourt,--The Mountain Rifles, the Fincastle Rifles, the Botetourt Dragoons, the Zion Hill Company, the Roaring Run men, the Thunder Run--' Air you listenin', Sairy?" Sairy brought a fresh
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iron from the stove. "I am a-listenin', Tom. 'Pears to me I ain't done nothing but listen sence last December! It's got to be sech a habit that I ketch myself waking up at night to listen. But I've got to iron as well as listen, or Allan Gold won't have any shirts fit to fight in! Go on reading,
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I hear ye." "It's an editorial," said Tom weightily. "'Three weeks have passed since war was declared. At once Governor Letcher called for troops; at once the call was answered. We have had in Botetourt, as all over Virginia, as through all the Southern States, days of excitement, sleepless nights, fanfare of preparation, drill, camp, orders, counter-orders, music, tears and
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laughter of high-hearted women--'" Sairy touched her iron with a wet finger-tip. "This time next year thar'll be more tears, I reckon, and less laughter! I ain't a girl, and I don't hold with war--Well?" "'Beat of drums and call of fife, heroic ardour and the cult of Mars--'" "Of--?" "That's the name of the heathen idol they used to
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sacrifice men to. 'Parties have vanished from county and State. Whigs and Democrats, Unionists and Secessionists, Bell and Everett men and Breckinridge men--all are gone. There is now but one party--_the party of the invaded_. A month ago there was division of opinion; it does not exist to-day. It died in the hour when we were called upon to deny
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our convictions, to sacrifice our principles, to juggle with the Constitution, to play fast and loose, to blow hot and cold, to say one thing and do another, to fling our honour to the winds and to assist in coercing Sovereign States back into a Union which they find intolerable! It died in the moment when we saw, no longer
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the Confederation of Republics to which we had acceded, but a land whirling toward Empire. It is dead. There are no Union men to-day in Virginia. The ten Botetourt companies hold themselves under arms. At any moment may come the order to the front. The county has not spared her first-born--no, nor the darling of his mother! It is a
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rank and file different from the Old World's rank and file. The rich man marches, a private soldier, beside the poor man; the lettered beside the unlearned; the planter, the lawyer, the merchant, the divine, the student side by side with the man from the plough, the smith, the carpenter, the hunter, the boatman, the labourer by the day. Ay,
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rank and file, you are different; and the army that you make will yet stir the blood and warm the heart of the world!'" The ironer stretched another garment upon the board. "If only we fight half as well as that thar newspaper talks! Is the editor going?" "Yes, he is," said the old man. "It's fine talking, but it's
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mighty near God's truth all the same!" He moved restlessly, then took his crutch and beat a measure upon the sunken floor. His faded blue eyes, set in a thousand wrinkles, stared down upon and across the great view of ridge and spur and lovely valleys in between. The air at this height was clear and strong as wine, the
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noon sunshine bright, not hot, the murmur in the leaves and the sound of Thunder Run rather crisp and gay than slumbrous. "If it had to come," said Tom, "why couldn't it ha' come when I was younger? If 't weren't for that darned fall out o' Nofsinger's hayloft I'd go, anyhow!" "Then I see," retorted Sairy, "what Brother Dame
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