THE BROTHER AT THE SOUTH


Even five months before, when the Bellevite had sailed on her cruise,
the rumble of coming events had been heard in the United States; and it
had been an open question whether or not war would grow out of the
complications between the North and the South.

Only a few letters, and fewer newspapers, had reached the owner of
the yacht; and he and his family on board had been very indifferently
informed in regard to the progress of political events at home. Captain
Passford was one of those who confidently believed that no very serious
difficulty would result from the entanglements into which the country
had been plunged by the secession of the most of the Southern States.

He would not admit even to himself that war was possible; and before his
departure he had scouted the idea of a conflict with arms between the
brothers of the North and the brothers of the South, as he styled them.

Captain Passford had been the master of a ship in former times, though
he had accumulated his vast fortune after he abandoned the sea. His
father was an Englishman, who had come to the United States as a young
man, had married, raised his two sons, and died in the city of New York.

These two sons, Horatio and Homer, were respectively forty-five and
forty years of age. Both of them were married, and each of them had only
a son and a daughter. While Horatio had been remarkably successful in
his pursuit of wealth in the metropolis, he had kept himself clean and
honest, like so many of the wealthy men of the great city. When he
retired from active business, he settled at Bonnydale on the Hudson.