"Hatred is long and lasty, boys—you have got a lifetime before you to work hit out in. The folks of this county is plumb wore to a frazzle with fighting and fear. What they need is a spell of rest. I allow you would have kept the peace anyhow for these few weeks, out of respect to the women; but everybody'll feel better if hit's agreed on in public. Now I don't ax you to take one another's hands—hit would be hy-pocrisy, your feelings being what they air; but I do ax you both to jine hands with me, and give your solemn word not to take up the war again in no way, or let it be tuck up by your friends, while these women stays with us. Ponder hit, boys,—study on hit,—take all the time you need; be plumb satisfied in your minds."
Silence fell, while Uncle Ephraim and all the audience gazed upon the two tall young men, one so fair, one so dark, both so handsome, and both standing as if turned to stone.
Uncle Ephraim's voice again broke the intense stillness.
"As I look upon you two boys," he said, "both so pretty, both so upstanding and brave, both orphants through this war that has been handed down to you, both honest as the day, both feeling hit your bounden duty to kill each other off if you can, both knowing that, if either one had his way, t'other's fair body would be laying under the sod, hit does seem like sorrow plumb swallows me up, and my heart swells too big for hits socket, like I would gladly pour out my life here before you, if hit could only bring you together in right feeling.
"Boys, when Amy here was a-reading Scripter to me a-Sunday, she read where hit said, 'Give place to wrath—vengeance is mine, saith the Lord'; and another, and better, read: 'Love your enemies, pray for them that despitefully use you.' I ax you to meditate on them words in days to come, to open up your hearts and your minds to 'em. Not now,—the day is still far off when you can accept sech idees,—love being a puny-growing and easy-killed plant. I don't ax for nothing of that kind now. All I request is your word calling a truce while the women stays. All I ax is for you to think about the county and forget yourselves. Do you, Darcy, my offspring, and the oldest of the two, feel to give me your hand on hit?"
Darcy, flushed and then pale, reached up and slowly laid a hand in his grandfather's. "I do," he said, firmly.
Fult did not wait to be asked. "Me, too," he said, taking Uncle Ephraim's other hand. Then, impulsively, "And I'll say furder, Uncle Ephraim, that if all the Kents was like you there never would have been no war."
"There would not," repeated Uncle Ephraim, emphatically, clasping the hands of the two.
He looked out over the assembly. "Citizens of this county," he said, "you have witnessed this solemn covenant this day made and sealed in your presence. And I call upon all here that has ever tuck sides or had hard feelings, to see to hit that they keep the truce their leaders has agreed on, and make hit stand. And I hereby declare peace in this county for the time these women stays with us. And now, may the Lord dig round our hearts with the mattock of his love, till the roots goes to spreading, and the sap goes to rising, and the leaves buds out, and the blossoms of love and righteousness shoots forth and abounds in all our lives!"