"Then that's what I'm going to do when I'm a man," said Joe decisively.
After a long pause he lifted his eyes to his father's face.
"Do you believe in the abolition of slavery, Father?"
"I do indeed, my son," replied Mr. Peniman earnestly. "As Mr. Lincoln said 'No man has a right to own and govern another without that other's consent.'"
"Do you believe in the abolition of slavery enough to fight for it, Father,—if our country should have to go to war?"
"Quakers cannot fight, Joe. We are bound to peace."
"But if war should come," urged the boy, "if we should have to fight—if the South should secede——"
"God forbid!" cried Joshua Peniman, in a voice whose deep, quavering earnestness was a slight indication of the storm that was raging in his heart. "May God forbid such a catastrophe! Let us not talk of it. Let us not think of it. Let us pray the Almighty Ruler of the Universe to avert so frightful a calamity to our nation!"
Joe glanced up quickly and opened his lips to speak, but the expression that he surprised upon his father's face caused him to close them promptly, avert his eyes, and walk silently beside him.
In the evening there was a great torchlight procession, followed by more speaking at the Opera House. But this function the Peniman family did not attend. Mr. Peniman, stirred, anxious, feeling a prescience of the storm that was brewing in the country, was eager to get away; to get his young lads out of the spirit of rancor and bitterness that was abroad in the land, and out onto the clean, quiet prairies where the inhumanity of man to man would not throw its baleful shadow over them.