en extracts, too," said Thorold. "They say, Alexander H.
Stephens is counselling the rebels to lay hold on Washington."

"Well, sit down and tell us what you do know, and how to understand
things," said Miss Cardigan. "I don't talk to anybody, much, about
politics."

So Thorold did as he was asked. He sat down on the other side of me,
and with my hand in his, talked to us both. We went over the whole
ground of the few months past, of the work then doing and preparing,
of what might reasonably be looked for in both the South and the
North. He said he was not very wise in the matter; but he was
infinitely more informed than we; and we listened as to the most
absorbing of all tales, till the night was far worn. A sense of the
gravity and importance of the crisis; a consciousness that we were
embarked in a contest of the most stubborn character, the end of which
no man might foretell, pressed itself more and more on my mind as the
night and the talk grew deeper. If I may judge from the changes in
Miss Cardigan's face, it was the same with her. The conclusion was,
the North was gathering and concentrating all her forces to meet the
trial that was coming; and the young officers of the graduating class
at the Military Academy had been ordered to the seat of war a little
before their time of study was out, their help being urgently needed.

"And where is Preston?" said I, speaking for the first time in a long
while.

"Preston?" echoed Thorold.

"My Cousin Preston--Gary; your classmate Gary."

"Gary! Oh, he is going to Washington, like the rest of us."

"Which side will he take?"

"You should know, perhaps, better than I," said Thorold. "He always
_has_ taken the Southern side, and very exclusively."

"_Has_ taken?" said I. "Do you mean that among the cadets there has
been a South and a North--until now, lately?"

"Aye, Daisy, always, since I have been in the Academy. The Southern
clique and the Northern clique have been well defined; there is always
an assumption of superiority on the one side, and some resenting of it
on the other side. It was on that ground Gary and I split."

"Split!" I repeated.

But Thorold laughed and kissed me, and would give me no satisfaction.
I began to put things together, though. I saw from Christian's eyes
that _he_ had nothing to be ashamed of, in looking back; I remembered
Preston's virulence, and his sudden flush when somebody had repeated
the word "coward," which he had applied t