succeeding days after the news of actual war reached the North.

This terrible intelligence was unexpected to the owner of the yacht,
believing, as he had, in the impossibility of war; and it seemed to him
just as though he and his cherished brother were already arrayed against
each other on the battle-field.

The commotion between the two sections had begun before his departure
from home on the yacht cruise, but his brother, perhaps because he was
fully instructed in regard to the Union sentiment of Horatio, was
strangely reticent, and expressed no opinions of his own.

But Captain Passford, measuring his brother according to his own
standard, was fully persuaded that Homer was as sound on the great
question as he was himself, though the excitement and violence around
him might have caused him to maintain a neutral position.

Certainly if the Northern brother had anticipated that a terrible
war was impending, he would not have permitted his daughter Florence,
a beautiful young lady of seventeen, to reside during the winter in a
hot-bed of secession and disunion. The papers informed him what had been
done at the North and at the South to initiate the war; and the thought
that Florry was now in the midst of the enemies of her country was
agonizing to him.

Though he felt that his country demanded his best energies, and though
he was ready and willing to give himself and his son to her in her hour
of need, he felt that his first duty was to his own family, within
reasonable limits; and his earliest thoughts were directed to the safety
of his daughter, and then to the welfare of his brother and his family.