Alvin never made it.
In the middle of November his summons reached him. He had but twenty-four hours to respond.
He sent a note to Gracie, telling her his "little blue card" had come and he asked her to meet him at the church—which always stands open by the roadside. As they walked toward her home they arranged to meet the next morning at the rock under the beech trees, when she would leave to carry the cows to the pasture. And it was there she promised to marry him—when he returned from the war.
Men at the store saw Alvin come down from the mountain and he could not escape some banterings over the success or failure of his early morning tryst.
"Jes left it to her," he is said to have frankly confessed, "she can have me for the takin' when I git back."
He and his mother were alone in their home for several hours. When he left he stopped at the Brooks' porch where relatives and neighbors had assembled. As he walked away he turned, unexpectedly, up the path toward the rock on the mountainside. It is now known he went there to kneel alone in prayer.
When he came down to the store, to the men waiting for him, he spoke with an assured faith he had not shown before. "I know, now, that I'll be back," he told them.
His mother, weeping, tho hiding it from him, had slowly followed as far as the Brooks' porch.
Alvin, looking back toward the old Coonrod Pile home, saw her and waved to her, then hurried to the buggy that was to take him to Jamestown.
As the grating of the moving buggy wheels on the road reached the Brooks porch, Mrs. York gave a cry that went to responsive hearts in every home in that part of the valley. And she secluded herself, and sobbed for days.