e recruits loitered about the wide, shaded
streets, waiting to be forwarded to the rendezvous.

"Don't be too sure of that. These young, boyish-looking fellows are just
the sort of men that met the British at Bunker Hill. They laughed too,
when they saw them; but they didn't laugh after they met them, nor will
your cavaliers," Jack cried, loftily.

"But there's not a full-grown man among all these I've seen. How do you
suppose they are to endure march and battle? None of them can ride. All
our young men ride, and cavalry is the main thing in modern armies."

In the Sprague parlors conversation of this risky sort was eschewed.
Mistress Sprague was anxious that the son of her oldest friend should
return to his mother with only the memory of amiable hospitality in his
heart to show that, although war raged between the people, families were
still friends. Vincent's mother had been one of Mistress Sprague's
bridesmaids, and it was her wish that the children might grow up in the
old kindly ties. So Vincent was made much of. There were companies every
night, and drives and boating in the afternoons, and such merry-making
as it was thought a lad of his years would enjoy. He was a very
entertaining guest; that all Acredale had known in the old vacations
when, with his sister, the pretty Rosa, he spent a summer with
the Spragues.

But, now that there was to be a separation involving the unknown in its
vaguest form, the lad was treated with a tenderness that made the swift
days very sweet to the young rebel. It was from Olympia that he met the
only distinct formality in the manners of his hosts. He had known and
adored her in a boyish way for years, and now, as he contemplated going,
he thought that she ought to exhibit something of the old-time warmth.
In other days she had ridden, walked, and flirted to his heart's desire.
Now she avoided him when Jack was not at hand, and when she talked it
was in a flippant vein that drove him wild with baffled hope. The day
before he was to bid the kind house adieu he had his wish. She was
riding with him over the shaded roadway that curves in bewildering
beauty toward the lake. She seemed in a gentler mood than he had lately
seen her. They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal
awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency.

"There's only one thing hateful to me in this war," he said, caressing
the arching neck of his horse, "and that is, the better we d