And so the old man had marched off with a gun on his shoulder, insisting on being taken as a common soldier and put where he could face constant and terrible danger, and the seeds of an undying hatred against the son had been planted deep in the hearts of the whole family.
The dullest mind surely will comprehend now what a position father was in when, in answer to the shouts of the officer, lights began to appear all through the house. Was it not a situation to wring tears from the heart of a man of stone! As for a woman’s heart—one can scarcely speak of the matter.
And in the house, before father’s eyes, there was one—a pure and innocent southern girl of rare beauty—a pearl of womanhood in fact—rarest example of the famed spotless womanhood of the Southland—his younger sister—the only woman child of the family.
You see, as father would so carefully have explained that evening in the farmhouse, he did not care so much for his own life. That had already been given to his country, he would have said proudly.
But, as you will understand quickly enough, had his presence among the prisoners been discovered, his proud mother—eager to wipe out the only stain on the family escutcheon—would at once have insisted that he be hanged to the doorpost of the very house in which he was born, her own hand pulling at the rope that was to jerk him up, into the arms of death—to make white again the family escutcheon, you understand.
Could a proud southern woman do less?
And in the event of such an outcome to the adventures of the night, see how that younger sister—the love of his life at that time—see how she would have suffered.
There she was, the pure and innocent girl, the one who understood nothing, to be sure, of the import of his decision to stick to the old flag and fight for the land of Washington and Lincoln, and who, in her innocent way, just loved him. On that day at his father’s table, when he—so deeply affected by the Lincoln-Douglas debates—had dared say a word for the cause of the North, it had been her eyes and her eyes alone that had looked at him with love, when all the other eyes of his family had looked at him with hatred and loathing.
And she would just be bursting into womanhood now. The aroma of awakening womanhood would be lying over her as perfume over the opening rosebud.
Think of it! There she, the pure and innocent one, would have to stand and see him hanged. A blight would be brought down upon her young life and her head would, ever after that night, be bowed in lonely and silent sorrow. That brave pure and just girl made old before her time. Ah; well might it be that in one night the mass of golden locks, that now covered her head like a cloud just kissed by the evening sun—that very golden hair might be turned as white as snow!