ng my poor Robert. I couldn't before he went, much less now.

I must describe Percy if I can. She was of middling height, and very
delicately formed, with a face as destitute of color as if it had been
carved out of marble. Her dark hair was cut short in her neck, and
parted over her forehead and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and
soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in black, and
wore over her small head a little tarlatan cap as close as a Shaker's.
You might call her interesting-looking, but for a certain listlessness
and want of sympathy with others. She had been married, was not more
than twenty years old at the time I am describing her, and had been in
Barton only about a year, since her husband's death.

As I had neither chick nor child to offer to my country, I was glad to
hear my nephew, Robert Elliott, say that the Barton boys had chosen him
for Captain, and that they were all to start for Boston the next
morning, and go on at once to Fortress Monroe.

This boy's black eyes were very near to my heart,--almost as near as
they were to his own mother's. And when he came in to bid me good by, I
could not look on his pale, resolute face without a sinking, trembling
feeling, do what I would to keep up a brave outside? This was in the
very beginning of the war, when word first came that blood had been shed
in Baltimore; and our Barton boys were in Boston reporting to Governor
Andrew in less than a week after. Now we didn't, one of us, believe in
the bravery of the South. We believed them braggarts and bullies, and
that was all. We believed that, once let them see that the North was not
going to give way to them, they would go back where they came from.

"You will be back in a month, Robert, all of you. Mind, I don't say you
will send these hounds back to their kennels,--rather, send these gentry
back to their ladies' chambers. But I won't say either. Only let them
see that you are ready for a fair stand-up fight, and I'll be bound
they'll be too much astonished to stop running for a week."

So we all said and thought at the North,--all but a few who had been at
the South, and who knew too well how much in earnest it was in its
treason, and how slight was the struggle it anticipated. These few
shuddered at the possibility that stood red and gloomy in the path of
the future,--these few, who knew both sides. Meanwhile both sides most
heartily underrated each other, and had the sincerest recip