"Betty glanced at the stolid, set face and firm lips."
Her brown eyes sparkled with anger:
"You'll not find this a joke!"
"That's why I treat it seriously, my dear," was the firm reply. "If I could throw up my position in this war on the sudden impulse of my sweetheart, I'd be ashamed to look a man in the face—and you would despise me!"
"If your Commander succeeds to-day in bringing disaster to our army I'll despise you for aiding him——"
"Let's not discuss it—please, dear!" he begged with a frown.
"As you please," was the cold reply.
They rode on in silence, broken only by the increasing roar of the great guns at Manassas. Betty glanced at the stolid, set face and firm lips. Her anger steadily rose with every throb of Pope's cannon. Each low thunder peal on the horizon now was a cry for help from dying mangled thousands and the man she loved refusing to hear.
Suddenly the picture of his brother flashed before her vision, the high-strung, clean young spirit, chivalrous, daring, fighting for what he knew to be right—right because right is right, and wrong is wrong.