spite of all this heresy, however, the Aydelots became one of the
leading families in the development of the colonies. Their descendants
fell heir to the traits of their French-English forbears: freedom of
belief, courage to follow a cause, a touch of the wanderlust, the
mercurial French mind, and the steady poise of the followers of the Inward
Light. A trace of bitterness had come down the years, however, with the
family history; a feud-like resentment against the family of Jerome Thaine
of Virginia.

Francis Aydelot had crossed the Alleghanies and settled in Ohio in
frontier days. Here his life, like his narrow, woods-bound farm, was clean
and open but narrowed by surroundings and lack of opportunity. What had
made for freedom and reform in his ancestors, in him became prejudice and
stubborn will. Mrs. Aydelot was a broad-minded woman. Something of vision
was in her clear gray eyes. Love of beauty, respect for learning, and an
almost statesman-like grasp of civic duty and the trend of national
progress were hers, too.

From such ancestry came Asher Aydelot, the healthiest, happiest country
boy that ever waked the echoes of the old Ohio woodlands, or dared the
currents of her mad little rivers, or whistled fearlessly as he scampered
down the dusty pike road in the soft black summer nights.

Asher was just fifteen when the Civil War swept the nation off its feet.
The Quaker spirit of Mercy Pennington made fighting repulsive to his
father, but in Asher the old Huguenot courage of Jean Aydelot blazed
forth, together with the rash partisanship of a young hot-blood whose life
has been hemmed in too narrowly by forest walls. Almost before Cloverdale
knew there was a war, the Third Ohio Regiment was on its way to the front.
Among its bearded men was one beardless youth, a round-faced drummer boy
of fifteen, the only child of the big farmhouse beside the National road.
In company with him was his boyhood chum, Jim Shirley, son of the
Cloverdale tavern keeper.

* * * * *

An April sun was slipping behind the treetops, and the twilight mists were
already rising above the creek. Francis Aydelot and his wife sat on the
veranda watching Asher in the glory of a military suit and brass buttons
coming up the pike with springing step.

"How strong he is! I'm glad he is at home again," the mother was saying.

"Yes, he's here to stay at last. I have his plans all settled," Francis
Aydelot