“You cannot prevent me, sir,” shouted the young man, in a frenzy. “When foreigners take our flag for them own, it is time for us to shoot them down.”
Wrenching himself free, he ran down the steps and up the street ahead of the regiment. Then the soldiers and the noisy crowd were upon them and while these were passing the two stood there as in a dream. After that silence fell upon the street, and Mr. Brinsmade turned and went back into the house, his head bowed as in prayer. Stephen and his mother drew back, but Anne saw them.
“He is a rebel,” she faltered. “It will break my father's heart.”
She looked at Stephen appealingly, unashamed of the tears in her eyes. Then she, too went in.
“I cannot stay here mother,” he said.
As he slammed the gate, Anne ran down the steps calling his name. He paused, and she caught his sleeve.
“I knew you would go,” she said, “I knew you would go. Oh, Stephen, you have a cool head. Try to keep Jack—out of mischief.”
He left her standing on the pavement. But when he reached the corner and looked back he saw that she had gone in at his own little gate to meet his mother. Then he walked rapidly westward. Now and again he was stopped by feverish questions, but at length he reached the top of the second ridge from the river, along which crowded Eighteenth Street now runs. There stood the new double mansion Mr. Spencer Catherwood had built two years before on the outskirts of the town, with the wall at the side, and the brick stable and stable yard. As Stephen approached it, the thought came to him how little this world's goods avail in times of trouble. One of the big Catherwood boys was in the blue marching regiment that day, and had been told by his father never again to darken his doors. Another was in Clarence Colfax's company of dragoons, and still another had fled southward the night after Sumter.
Stephen stopped at the crest of the hill, in the white dust of the new-turned street, to gaze westward. Clouds were gathering in the sky, but the sun still shone brightly, Half way up the rise two blue lines had crawled, followed by black splotches, and at the southwest was the glint of the sun on rifle barrels. Directed by a genius in the art of war, the regiments were closing about Camp Jackson.
As he stood there meditating and paying no attention to those who hurried past, a few familiar notes were struck on a piano. They came through the wide-shuttered window above his head. Then a girl's voice rose above the notes, in tones that were exultant:—