less cruel than those dealing
death and wounds. Tearful parents came to him day by day to beg his help
in restoring sons who had fled to the wars. Others came to warn him that
if their boys applied to him he must refuse them, as they were
under age.

In this list the Perley sisters, Dick's three maiden aunts, came on a
respectful embassy to implore Jack to discourage their nephew, who had
quite deserted school and gave all his time to drilling with the
"college squad." Jack pledged himself that he would hand Dick over to
the justice of the peace, to be detained at the house of refuge, if he
didn't give up his evil designs. But, when that young aspirant appeared,
so soon as his aunts had gone, and reminded Jack of years of intimate
companionship in dare-deviltry, the elder saw that his own safety would
be in flight, and that night, his company was removed to Warchester.
There in the great camp, surrounded by sentinels, his Acredale cronies
were shut out, and Jack began in earnest his soldier life.

CHAPTER IV.

GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE.

The shifting of Jack's company to the regimental camp in Warchester left
a broad gap in the lines of the social life of Acredale. Jack's going
alone, to say nothing of the others, would have eclipsed the gayety of
many home groups besides his own, in which the Sprague primacy in a
social sense was acknowledged. Since the influx of the new-made rich,
under the stimulus of the war and Acredale's advantages as a resort,
there were a good many who disputed the Sprague leadership--tacitly
conceded rather than asserted. Chief of the dissidents was Elisha Boone,
who, by virtue of longer tenure, vast wealth, and political precedence,
divided not unequally the homage paid the patrician family. Boone was
fond of speaking of himself as a "self-made man," and the satirical were
not slow to add that he had no other worship than his "creator." This
was a gibe made rather for the antithesis than its accuracy, for even
Boone's enemies owned that he was a good neighbor, and, where his
prejudices were not in question, a man with few distinctly repellent
traits. He delighted in showing his affluence--not always in good taste.
He filled his fine house with bizarre crowds, and made no stint to his
friends who needed his purse or his influence. He had in the early days
when he came to Acredale aspired to political leadership in the
Democratic party.

But Senator Sprague was too firmly enshrined in