“I do not mean to be sorry for them, but I am,” she answered. “They did their best and it was not really their quarrel.”
“And to-morrow,” concluded Miles excitedly, “we are all to turn out, the fighting-men all over New England, and march down to Boston to lay siege to the British Army. Oh, it will be a merry time!”
“Merry!” cried out Clotilde, “you call it merry when you may have to slay men and may never, never come back again yourself?”
“And if I should never come back,” said Miles, half laughing, half sober, “would you be sorry, Clotilde?”
“Sorry?” She looked up at him, at dear, bright-eyed, stout-hearted Miles with whom she had played, by whom she had been befriended ever since she was big enough to play at all. At the thought of his never coming back, a gush of tears rose to her eyes and ran unchecked down her cheeks. She sprang up without speaking further and ran into the house.
The study door stood open so that within she could see Stephen sitting in his big chair with his grey head bowed upon his hands. He looked, as he sat there, pathetically weary and worn. She slipped into the room, and dropped upon her knees beside his chair and laid her hand upon his.
“Dear Master Sheffield,” she said, “are you so grieved that the war has come at last?”
“Ay, grieved I am,” he answered slowly as he put his arm about her, “yet, in a measure, I am lighter of heart, now that the thing that we have so long dreaded has finally come upon us. But, dear Clotilde, while I would give all I have, house, lands, life itself, for the winning of this struggle, yet I thank a kind Heaven that the war has found me old and outworn, unable to go forth and slay my fellow men.”
CHAPTER XIII
LIGHTING THE FIREBRAND