from the Ridge dared venture to the Barclay home. The boy saw his
mother lay the unconscious man on the floor, while she opened the back
door, and without saying a word, stepped to the spring, which was
hidden from the road. She put her knee, her broad chest, and her
strong red hand to the rock and shoved until her back bowed and the
cords stood out on her neck; then slowly the rock moved till she could
see inside the cave, could put her leg in, could squirm her body in.
The morning light flooded in after her, and in the instant that she
stood there she saw dimly a great room, through which the spring
trickled. There were hay inside, and candles and saddles; in another
minute she had the wounded man in the cave and was washing the dirt
from him. A bullet had ploughed its way along his scalp, his body was
pierced through the shoulder, and his leg was broken by a horse's
hoof. She did what she could while the shooting went on outside, and
then slipped out, tugged at the great rock again until it fell back in
its place, and knowing that Philemon Ward was safe from the
Missourians if they should win the day, she came into the house. Then
as the mocking clouds of the summer drouth rolled up at night, and
belched forth their thunder in a tempest of wind, the besiegers passed
as a dream in the night. And in the morning they were not.




CHAPTER II


And so on the night of the battle of Sycamore Ridge, John Barclay
closed the door of his childhood and became a boy. He did not remember
how Ward's wounds were dressed, nor how the town made a hero of the