She curled herself up on the long sofa, and her needles went click,
click! Unity lifted the music from the piano lid, drew off the velvet
cover, and began to fold it. Muttering and shaking his head, Julius left
the room. Miss Lucy went over and stood before the portrait of her
mother. "Unity," she said, "would you send the great coffee urn to
Richmond for the Gunboat Fair, or would you send lace?"

Unity pondered the question. "The lace would be easier to send, but
maybe they would rather have the silver. I don't see who is to buy at
the Fair--every one is _giving_. Oh, I wish we had a thousand gunboats
and a hundred _Virginias_--"

A door banged in the distance and the windows of the parlour rattled.
The room grew darker. "I knew we should have a storm!" said Miss Lucy.
"If it lightens, put by your needles."

Judith came in suddenly. "There's going to be a great storm! The wind is
blowing the elms almost to the ground! There are black clouds in the
east. I hope that there are clouds over the ocean, and over Chesapeake,
and over Hampton Roads--except where the Merrimac lies! I hope that
there it is still and sunny. Clouds, and a wind like a hurricane, a wind
that will make high waves and drive the ships--and drive the Monitor!
There will be a great storm. If the elms break, masts would break, too!
Oh, if this night the Federal fleet would only go to the bottom of the
sea!"

She crossed the room, opened the French window, and stood, a hand on
either side of the window frame, facing the darkened sky and the
wind-tossed oaks. Behind her, in the large old parlour, there was an
instant's silence. Molly broke it with a shocked cry, "Judith Jacqueline
Cary!"

Judith did not answer. She stood with her hair lifted by the wind, her
hands wide, touching the window sides, her dark eyes upon the bending
oaks. In the room behind her Miss Lucy spoke. "It is they or us, Molly!
They or all we love. The sooner they suffer the sooner they will let us
alone. They have shut up all our ports. God forgive me, but I am blithe
when I hear of their ships gone down at sea!"

"Yes," said Judith, without turning. "Not stranded as they were before
Roanoke Island, but wrecked and sunken. Come, look, Unity, at the wild
storm!"

Unity came and stood beside her. The oaks outside, like the elms at the
back of the house, were moving in the blast. Over them hurried the
clouds, black, large, and low. Down the driveway the yellow forsythias,
the r