years, and looking through a wide window, saw on the blank wall of a
great hulk of a building half a mile away, the fine strong figure of a
man with black shaggy hair on his young leonine head rise and wave his
handkerchief to a woman with tears running down her face and anguish
in her eyes, standing in a swarm of children. What indeed are sordid
thorns when the "large white plumes are dancing"--what indeed?

That was a busy night in Sycamore Ridge--the night before the men
left for war in the summer of '61. And the busiest man in all the town
was Philemon R. Ward. Every man in the town was going, and most of the
men were going who lived in the county--an area as large as a New
England state, and yet when they were all gathered in Main Street,
there were less than fivescore of them. They had agreed to elect Ward
captain, Martin Culpepper first lieutenant, Jake Dolan second
lieutenant. It was one of the diversions of the occasion to call out
"Hello, Cap," when Ward hustled by a loitering crowd. But his pride
was in his work, and before sundown he had it done. The Yankee in him
gave him industry and method and foresight. At sunset the last of the
twenty teams and wagons he had ordered came rattling down the hill
west of town, driven by Gabriel Carnine of Minneola, with Mrs.
Lycurgus Mason sitting like a war goddess on the back seat holding
Lycurgus, a spoil of battle, while he held their daughter on his lap,
withal a martial family party. Mrs. Barclay and Miss Lucy went to the
aid store-room and worked the long night through, getting breakfast
for the men. Mary Murphy and Nellie Logan came from the Thayer House
to the aid room when the hotel dishes were washed, and helped with the
work. And while they were there the Culpeppers walked in, returning
from a neighbourly visit to Miss Hendricks; John Barclay in an apron,
stirring a boiling pot of dried apples, turned his back on the eyes
that charmed him, but when the women sent him for a bucket of water,