"Dear Ma I am going to war. Doan crye. Iff father was here he wood go;
so why should not I. I will be very caerfull not to get hurt & stay by
Cap Ward all the time. So godby yours truly J. Barclay Jr."

It was five hours after the soldiers had gone when Mrs. Barclay came
home from her work in the aid room, and the first thing that attracted
her attention was her son's letter, lying folded on the table. When
she read it, she ran with the open letter across the common to the
town. It was a woman's town that morning,--not a man was left in
it,--for Ezra Lane, the only old man living in the Ridge, had left
_Freedom's Banner_ to shift for itself while he rode to Leavenworth
with the soldiers to bring back the teams; and when Mrs. Barclay came
into the street, she found some small stir there, made by Miss
Hendricks--the only mother the Hendricks boys remembered--who was
inquiring for her lost boys. Mrs. Barclay displayed her note, and in a
moment the whole population of Sycamore Ridge, with hands under its
aprons, was standing in front of the post-office. Then Ellen Culpepper
found her tongue, and Mrs. Barclay began to look for a horse. Elmer
Hendricks' pony in the pasture was the only horse Ward had left within
twenty miles. When Ellen Culpepper and her little sister Molly came
back from the pasture and announced that Elmer's pony was gone also,
the women surmised that he had taken it with him, for they could not
know that after he was spanked from the provision wagon, he had
slipped out to the pasture and ridden by a circuitous route to the
main road.

It was Captain Ward, dismounting from his driver's seat on the
provision wagon at noon, who discovered two boys: a little boy eleven
years old in a dead faint, and a bigger boy panting with the heat.
They threw cold spring water on John Barclay's face, and finally his