e difference? Nothing matters now.'
It isn't like her."

"I'm sure I don't care, Uncle Jim."

"Don't talk nonsense. In a month we shall know if we are bankrupt. I did
not mean to trouble you. I did mean to tell you that to my relief John is
out of Washington and ordered to report to General Grant at Cairo. See,
dear, there is a pin marking it on the map."

"Do you know this General?"

"Yes. He took no special rank at the Point, but--who can tell! Generals
are born, not made. I saw a beautiful water-colour by him at the Point.
That's all I know of him. Now, go to bed--and don't take with you my
worries and fight battles in your dreams."

There was in fact no one on whom he could willingly unload all of his
burdens. The need to relieve the hands out of work--two-thirds of his
force--was growing less of late, as men drifted off into the State force
which the able Governor Curtin was sending to McClellan. Penhallow's
friends in Pittsburgh had been able to secure a mortgage on Grey Pine,
and thus aided by his partners he won a little relief, while Rivers
watched him with increasing anxiety.

On the 17th of January, 1862, he walked into McGregor's office and said
to his stout friend, "McGregor, I am in the utmost distress about my
wife. Inside my home and at the mills I am beset with enough difficulties
to drive a man wild. We have a meeting in half an hour to decide what we
shall do. I used to talk to Ann of my affairs. No one has or had a
clearer head. Now, I can't."

"Why not, my friend?"

"She will not talk. Henry Grey is in the Confederate service; Charles is
out and out for the Union; we have no later news of John. We miserably
sit and eat and manufacture feeble talk at table. It is pitiful. Her
duties she does, as you may know, but comes home worn out and goes to bed
at nine. Even the village people see it and ask me about her. If it were
not for Leila, I should have no one to talk to."

A boy came in. "You are wanted, sir, at the mill office."

"Say I will come at once. I'll see you after the meeting, McGregor."

"One moment, Squire. Here's a bit of good news for you. Cameron has
resigned, and Edwin Stanton is Secretary of War."

"Stanton! Indeed! Thank Heaven for that. Now things will move, I am
sure."

The Squire found in his office Sibley, one of his partners, a heavy old
man, who carried the indifferent manners of a farmer's son into a middle
age of successful business. He sat with his chair tilted