"Here goes:
"She has gone—she has left us in passion and pride,
Our stormy-browed sister so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe.
"O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,
We can never forget that our hearts have been one,
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name
From the fountain of blood with the fingers of flame."
St. Clair read well in a full, round voice, and when he stopped with the second verse Harry said:
"It sounds well. I like particularly that expression, 'the fingers of flame.' After all, there's some grief in parting company, breaking up the family, so to speak."
"But he's wrong when he says we left in passion and pride," exclaimed Langdon. "In pride, yes, but not in passion. We may be children of the sun, too, but I've felt some mighty cold winds sweeping down from the Carolina hills, cold enough to make fur-lined overcoats welcome. But we'll forget about cold winds and everything else unpleasant, before such a jolly fire as this."
They finished an abundant supper, and soon relapsed into silence. The flames threw out such a generous heat that they were content to rest their backs against the log, and gaze sleepily into the coals. Beyond the fire, in the shadow, they saw the sentinels walking up and down. Harry felt for the first time that he was really within the iron bands of military discipline. He might choose to leave the camp and go into Montgomery, but he would choose and nothing more. He could not go. Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St. Hilaire were friends, but they were masters also, and he was recognizing sooner than some of the youths around him that it was not merely play and spectacle that awaited them.