e merchant, the divine, the student side by side with the man
from the plough, the smith, the carpenter, the hunter, the boatman, the
labourer by the day. Ay, rank and file, you are different; and the army
that you make will yet stir the blood and warm the heart of the world!'"

The ironer stretched another garment upon the board. "If only we fight
half as well as that thar newspaper talks! Is the editor going?"

"Yes, he is," said the old man. "It's fine talking, but it's mighty near
God's truth all the same!" He moved restlessly, then took his crutch and
beat a measure upon the sunken floor. His faded blue eyes, set in a
thousand wrinkles, stared down upon and across the great view of ridge
and spur and lovely valleys in between. The air at this height was clear
and strong as wine, the noon sunshine bright, not hot, the murmur in the
leaves and the sound of Thunder Run rather crisp and gay than slumbrous.
"If it had to come," said Tom, "why couldn't it ha' come when I was
younger? If 't weren't for that darned fall out o' Nofsinger's hayloft
I'd go, anyhow!"

"Then I see," retorted Sairy, "what Brother Dame meant by good comin'
out o' evil!--Here's Christianna."

A girl in a homespun gown and a blue sunbonnet came up the road and
unlatched the little gate. She had upon her arm a small basket such as
the mountain folk weave. "Good-mahnin', Mrs. Cole. Good-mahnin', Mr.
Cole. It cert'ny is fine weather the mountain's having."

"Yes, it's fine weather, Christianna," answered the old man. "Come in,
come in, and take a cheer!"

Christianna came up the tiny path and seated herself, not in the
split-bottomed chair to which he waved her, but upon the edge of the
porch, with her back to the sapling that served for a pillar, and with
her small, ill-shod feet just touching a bed of heartsease. She pushed
back her sunbonnet. "Dave an' Billy told us good-bye yesterday. Pap is
going down the mountain to-day. Dave took the shotgun an' pap has
grandpap's flintlock, but Billy didn't have a gun. He said he'd take one
from the Yanks."

"Sho!" exclaimed Sairy. "Didn't he have no weapon at all?"

"He had a hunting-knife that was grandpap's. An' the blacksmith made him
what he called a spear-head. He took a bit o' rawhide and tied it to an
oak staff, an' he went down the mountain _so_!" Her drawling voice died,
then rose again. "I'll miss Billy--I surely will!" It failed again, and
the heartsease at her feet ran together into a litt