She held him close, tears streaming down her face.
Presently he raised his head. "I'll have to go, dear. They are waiting for me. I"—he hesitated, then said brokenly,—"I enlisted last night."
She gave a little gasping cry.
"You have enlisted—already? Oh, Joe, Joe!"
"Lige enlisted, too, Mother," he forced himself to tell her, "and Herbert. In the First Regiment of Nebraska Volunteers."
"Lige—Lige, too?"
Her cry stabbed him like a knife.
"Yes, Mother, he asked me to tell you. You know how soft he is. He said he—he couldn't."
"Lige—Lige, too!" she repeated in a stricken whisper. "Both my boys! My two eldest—my sons—my little boys! We came to this far country to save you this. We thought to keep you free from warfare and slaughter! And now it has come—even here! You—the descendants of old Quaker stock—you are going away to war!"
He caught her in his arms and held her close, whispering to her, consoling her, explaining over and over again the convictions and principles that actuated himself and his brother in this, the most difficult and momentous decision of their lives.