y,'" read the tollgate keeper; "'Ten companies from Old
Botetourt,--The Mountain Rifles, the Fincastle Rifles, the Botetourt
Dragoons, the Zion Hill Company, the Roaring Run men, the Thunder Run--'
Air you listenin', Sairy?"

Sairy brought a fresh iron from the stove. "I am a-listenin', Tom.
'Pears to me I ain't done nothing but listen sence last December! It's
got to be sech a habit that I ketch myself waking up at night to listen.
But I've got to iron as well as listen, or Allan Gold won't have any
shirts fit to fight in! Go on reading, I hear ye."

"It's an editorial," said Tom weightily. "'Three weeks have passed since
war was declared. At once Governor Letcher called for troops; at once
the call was answered. We have had in Botetourt, as all over Virginia,
as through all the Southern States, days of excitement, sleepless
nights, fanfare of preparation, drill, camp, orders, counter-orders,
music, tears and laughter of high-hearted women--'"

Sairy touched her iron with a wet finger-tip. "This time next year
thar'll be more tears, I reckon, and less laughter! I ain't a girl, and
I don't hold with war--Well?"

"'Beat of drums and call of fife, heroic ardour and the cult of Mars--'"

"Of--?"

"That's the name of the heathen idol they used to sacrifice men to.
'Parties have vanished from county and State. Whigs and Democrats,
Unionists and Secessionists, Bell and Everett men and Breckinridge
men--all are gone. There is now but one party--_the party of the
invaded_. A month ago there was division of opinion; it does not exist
to-day. It died in the hour when we were called upon to deny our
convictions, to sacrifice our principles, to juggle with the
Constitution, to play fast and loose, to blow hot and cold, to say one
thing and do another, to fling our honour to the winds and to assist in
coercing Sovereign States back into a Union which they find intolerable!
It died in the moment when we saw, no longer the Confederation of
Republics to which we had acceded, but a land whirling toward Empire. It
is dead. There are no Union men to-day in Virginia. The ten Botetourt
companies hold themselves under arms. At any moment may come the order
to the front. The county has not spared her first-born--no, nor the
darling of his mother! It is a rank and file different from the Old
World's rank and file. The rich man marches, a private soldier, beside
the poor man; the lettered beside the unlearned; the planter, the
lawyer, th