pened. From a farmhouse in the valley came the sound of a
bell. Allan straightened himself, lifting his arms from the grey old
rails. He spoke aloud.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead,--

The bell rang again, the rose suffused the sky to the zenith. The young
man drew a long breath, and, turning, began to descend the hill.

Before him, at a turn of the road and overhanging a precipitous hollow,
in the spring carpeted with bloodroot, but now thick with dead leaves,
lay a giant oak, long ago struck down by lightning. The branches had
been cut away, but the blackened trunk remained, and from it as vantage
point one received another great view of the rolling mountains and the
valleys between. Allan Gold, coming down the hill, became aware, first
of a horse fastened to a wayside sapling, then of a man seated upon the
fallen oak, his back to the road, his face to the darkening prospect.
Below him the winter wind made a rustling in the dead leaves. Evidently
another had paused to admire the view, or to collect and mould between
the hands of the soul the crowding impressions of a decisive day. It
was, apparently, the latter purpose; for as Allan approached the ravine
there came to him out of the dusk, in a controlled but vibrant voice,
the following statement, repeated three times: "We are going to have
war.--We are going to have war.--We are going to have war."

Allan sent his own voice before him. "I trust in God that's not
true!--It's Richard Cleave, there, isn't it?"

The figure on the oak, swinging itself around, sat outlined against the
violet sky. "Yes, Richard Cleave. It's a night to make one think,
Allan--to make one think--to make one think!" Laying his hand on the
trunk beside him, he sprang lightly down to the roadside, where he
proceeded to brush dead leaf and bark from his clothing with an old
gauntlet. When he spoke it was still in the same moved, vibrating voice.
"War's my _metier_. That's a curious thing to be said by a country
lawyer in peaceful old Virginia in this year of grace! But like many
another curious thing, it's true! I was never on a field of battle, but
I know all about a field of battle."

He shook his head, lifted his hand, and flung it out toward the
mountains. "I don't want war, mind you, Allan! That is, the great stream
at the bottom doesn't want it. War is a word that means agony to many
and a set-back to all. Reason tells me that, and my heart wishes the
world neith