nd touching her wrist,
feeling for the pulse that was no longer there. The solemnity of his
face was louder than speech. It seemed to me that I heard his silent
demand that we should all hold our peace forever.

Grace Sheraton, her lips just parted in a little crooked smile, such as
she might have worn when she was a child, sat at a low dressing table,
staring directly into the wide mirror which swung before her at its
back. Her left arm lay at length along the table. Her right, with its
hand under her cheek and chin, supported her head, which leaned but
slightly to one side. She gazed into her own face, into her own heart,
into the mystery of human life and its double worlds, I doubt not. She
could not tell us what she had learned.

Her father stepped to her side, opposite the old doctor. I heard sobs as
they placed her upon her little white bed, still with that little
crooked smile upon her face, as though, she were young, very young
again.

I went to the window, and Harry, I think, was close behind me. Before me
lay the long reaches of our valley, shimmering in the midday autumn sun.
It seemed a scene of peace and not of tragedy.

But even as I looked, there came rolling up our valley, slowly, almost
as though visible, the low, deep boom of the signal gun from the village
below. It carried news, the news from America!

We started, all of us. I saw Colonel Sheraton half look up as he stood,
bent over the bed. Thus, stunned by horror as we were, we waited. It was
a long time, an interminable time, moments, minutes, it seemed to me,
until there must have been thrice time for the repetition of the signal,
if there was to be one.

There was no second sound. The signal was alone, single; ominous.

"Thank God! Thank God!" cried Colonel Sheraton; swinging his hands
aloft, tears rolling down his old gray cheeks. "_It is war_! Now we may
find forgetfulness!"

CHAPTER XLIII

THE RECKONING

So it was war. We drew apart into hostile camps. By midwinter South
Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, had
withdrawn from the Union. There arose two capitals, each claiming a
government, each planning war: Washington and Richmond.

As for me, I had seen the flag on our far frontiers, in wide, free
lands. It was a time when each must choose for himself. I knew with whom
my own lot must be cast. I pledged myself to follow the flag of the
frontier, wherever it might go.

During the winter