the prairie streams, and the men sang
and wondered what they were doing at home, and Philemon Ward took John
Barclay out into the silence of the woods and made him say his
prayers. And Ward would look toward the west and say, "Well,
Johnnie,--there's home," and once they stood in an open place in the
timber, and Ward gazed at a bright star sinking in the west, and said,
"I guess that's about over Sycamore Ridge." They went on, and the boy,
looking back to see why the man had stopped, caught him throwing a
kiss at the star. And they could not know, as they walked back
together through the woods abashed, that two women sitting before a
cabin door under a sycamore tree were looking at an eastern star, and
one threw kisses at it unashamed while the other wept. And on other
nights, many other nights, the two, Miss Lucy and Mrs. Barclay, sat
looking at their star while the terror in their hearts made their lips
mute. God makes men brave who stand where bullets fly, yet always they
can run away. But God seems to give no alternative to women at home
who have to wait and dread.

Forty years later John Barclay took from a box in a safety vault back
of his office in the city a newspaper. It was the Sycamore Ridge
_Banner_, yellow and creased and pungent with age. "This," he said to
Senator Myton, spreading the wrinkled sheet out on the mahogany table,
"this is my enlistment paper." He smiled as he read aloud:--

"At noon of our first day out we came across two stowaways. Hendricks,
aged twelve, son of our well-known and popular Mayor, and J. Barclay,
aged eleven, son of Mrs. M. Barclay, who, owing to the suddenness of
the departure of our troops for the seat of war in Missouri, and
certain business delays made necessary in ye editor's return, were
slipped out with our company rather than left in the rough and
uncertain city of Leavenworth. They are called by the boys of 'C'
company respectively 'the little sergeant and the little corporal,
Good Luck boys.'"

A little farther down the column was this paragraph:

"Aug. 2nd we went into camp on Sugar Creek, and some sport was had by
the men who went in bathing, taking the horses with them."

"Ever go in swimming with the horses, Senator?" asked Barclay. The
senator shook his head doubtfully.

"Well--you haven't. For if you had you'd remember it," answered
Barclay, and a hundred naked young men and two skinny, bony boys
splashed and yelled and ducked and wrestled and locked the