ingle question for me to decide--my duty--"

A horseman dashed under the portico, threw his reins to Sam and entered
without announcement.

"Colonel Lee?" he asked.

"Yes."

He handed Lee a folded paper bearing the great seal of the State.

"A message, sir, from Richmond."

Lee's hand trembled as he broke the seal. He stared at its words as in a
dream.

"You have important news?" Blair asked.

"Most important. I am summoned to Richmond by the Governor in obedience
to a resolution of the Legislature."

Mrs. Marshall advanced on the dusty, young messenger, her eyes aflame
with anger.

"How dare you enter this house unannounced, sir?"

The boy did not answer. He turned away with a smile. She repented her
words immediately. They had sounded undignified, if not positively rude.
But she had been so sure that Blair could not fail. This call from
Richmond, coming in the moment of crisis, drove her to desperation. She
looked at Blair helplessly and he rallied to the attack with renewed
determination.

"A Nation is calling you. The Union your fathers created is calling you,
Colonel Lee!"

Lee's figure stiffened the least bit, though his words were uttered in
the friendliest tones.

"Virginia is also calling me, Mr. Blair. Your own State of Maryland has
not seceded. For that reason you cannot feel this tragedy as I feel it.
Put yourself in my place. I ask you the question, is not the command of
a State that of a mother to a child? We are citizens of the State, not
of the Union. There is no such thing as citizenship in the Union. We
vote only as citizens of a State. We enlist as soldiers by States. I was
sent to West Point as a cadet by the State of Virginia. Even President
Lincoln's proclamation calling for volunteers to coerce a State,
revolutionary as it is, is addressed, not to individual men, but to the
States. He must call on each to furnish her quota of soldiers--"

"Yet the call is to every citizen of the Nation!"

Lee's hand was raised in a gesture of imperious affirmation.

"There is no such thing as citizenship of the Nation! We don't pay taxes
to the Nation. We may yet become a Nation. We are as yet a Union of
Sovereign States. Virginia has refused to furnish the troops called for
by the President and has withdrawn from the Union. She reserved in her
vote to enter, the right to withdraw. I am a Virginian. What is my
duty?"

"To fight for the Union, Robert--always!" Mrs. Marshall answered.

"I l