e country
owing to the news from Charleston. He could give them only one room,
but it had two beds.

"It will do," said the colonel, in his soft but positive voice. "My
young friend and I have been traveling hard and we need rest."

Harry would have preferred a room alone, but his trust in Colonel Talbot
had already become absolute. This man must be what he claimed to be.
There was no trace of deceit about him. His heart had never before
warmed so much to a stranger.

Colonel Talbot closed and locked the door of their room. It was a large
bare apartment with two windows overlooking the town, and two small beds
against opposite walls. The colonel put his valise at the foot of one
bed, and walked to the window. The night had lightened somewhat and he
saw the roofs of buildings, the dim line of the yellow river, and the
dusky haze of hills beyond. He turned his head and looked steadily in
the direction in which lay Charleston. A look of ineffable sadness
overspread his face.

The light on the table was none too bright, but Harry saw Colonel
Talbot's melancholy eyes, and he could not refrain from asking:

"What's the trouble, colonel?"

The South Carolinian turned from the window, sat down on the edge of the
bed and smiled. It was an illuminating smile, almost the smile of youth.

"I'm afraid that everything's the matter, Harry, boy," he said. "South
Carolina, the state that I love even more than the Union to which it
belongs, or belonged, has gone out, and, Harry, because I'm a son of
South Carolina I must go with it--and I don't want to go. But I've been
a soldier all my life. I know little of politics. I have grown up with
the feeling that I must stay with my people through all things. I must
be kin by blood to half the white people in Charleston. How could I
desert them?"

"You couldn't," said Harry emphatically.

Colonel Leonidas Talbot smiled. It is possible that, at the moment,
he wished for the sanguine decision of youth, which could choose a side
and find only wrong in the other.

"In my heart," he continued, "I do not wish to see the Union broken up,
although the violence of New England orators and the raid of John Brown
has appalled me. But, Harry, pay good heed to me when I say it is not a
mere matter of going out of the Union. It may not be possible for South
Carolina and the states that follow her to stay out."

"I don't understand you," said the boy.

"It means war! It means