he said to Langdon.
"Here, give it to me. I've had none."

Langdon obeyed and St. Clair drank thirstily. Then he took from the
inside pocket of his coat a newspaper which he unfolded deliberately.

"This came from Montgomery," he said. "I heard you two quoting poetry,
and I thought I'd come over and read some to you. What do you think of
this? It was written by a fellow in Boston named Holmes and published
when he heard that South Carolina had seceded. He calls it: 'Brother
Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline.'"

"Read it!" exclaimed the others.

"Here goes:

"She has gone--she has left us in passion and pride,
Our stormy-browed sister so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe.

"O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun,
We can never forget that our hearts have been one,
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name
From the fountain of blood with the fingers of flame."

St. Clair read well in a full, round voice, and when he stopped with the
second verse Harry said:

"It sounds well. I like particularly that expression, 'the fingers of
flame.' After all, there's some grief in parting company, breaking up
the family, so to speak."

"But he's wrong when he says we left in passion and pride," exclaimed
Langdon. "In pride, yes, but not in passion. We may be children of
the sun, too, but I've felt some mighty cold winds sweeping down from
the Carolina hills, cold enough to make fur-lined overcoats welcome.
But we'll forget about cold winds and everything else unpleasant,
before such a jolly fire as this."

They finished an abundant supper, and soon relapsed into silence.
The flames threw out such a generous heat that they were content to rest
their backs against the log, and gaze sleepily into the coals. Beyond
the fire, in the shadow, they saw the sentinels walking up and down.
Harry felt for the first time that he was really within the iron bands
of military discipline. He might choose to leave the camp and go into
Montgomery, but he would choose and nothing more. He could not go.
Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St. Hilaire were friends,
but they were masters also, and he was recognizing sooner than some of
the youths around him that it was not merely play and spectacle that
awaited them.

CHAPTER V

THE NEW PRESIDENT

Their great day came. Clear sunlight shon