when it became a question of go or stay, Mr. Brinsmade's unfaltering love
for the Union had kept him in. He had voted for Mr. Bell, and later had
presided at Crittenden Compromise meetings. In short, as a man of peace,
he would have been willing to sacrifice much for peace. And now that it
was to be war, and he had taken his stand uncompromisingly with the
Union, the neighbors whom he had befriended for so many years could not
bring themselves to regard him as an enemy. He never hurt their feelings;
and almost as soon as the war began he set about that work which has been
done by self-denying Christians of all ages,--the relief of suffering. He
visited with comfort the widow and the fatherless, and many a night in
the hospital he sat through beside the dying, Yankee and Rebel alike, and
wrote their last letters home.

And Yankee and Rebel alike sought his help and counsel in time of
perplexity or trouble, rather than hotheaded advice from their own
leaders.

Mr. Brinsmade's own carriage was drawn up at his door; and that gentleman
himself standing on the threshold. He came down his steps bareheaded in
the wet to hand Virginia from her carriage.

Courteous and kind as ever, he asked for her father and her aunt as he
led her into the house. However such men may try to hide their own trials
under a cheerful mien, they do not succeed with spirits of a kindred
nature. With the others, who are less generous, it matters not. Virginia
was not so thoughtless nor so selfish that she could not perceive that a
trouble had come to this good man. Absorbed as she was in her own
affairs, she forgot some of them in his presence. The fire left her
tongue, and to him she could not have spoken harshly even of an enemy.
Such was her state of mind, when she was led into the drawing-room. From