“I am well, now,” she said, “and affairs are in such condition I think we can care for them.”
“But––er––no, I ought not to.”
“My boy, you have my permission, indeed I’m not sure but it is your duty to give your service, your young life perhaps, to the cause of liberty.”
Rodney sprang up, his face aflame with eagerness. “Do you mean it, mother?”
“Some one must fight our battles if we are to win. Your father is not here to go to the front, as he would have done had he lived, and––and I feel sure he would like to have the house of Allison represented in a cause he had so much at heart, and I’m afraid I should make a poor soldier, Rodney.”
“Mother, you are braver than any soldier who ever went to war!”
And so it happened that the following Monday, dressed in the homespun of his mother’s loom and carrying the rifle he had taken from the lodge of the Wyandotte chieftain, Rodney Allison left for Winchester to join Morgan’s command.