dfather,
"if we bring it down to its primal cause, Mary is right; for the cause
being iniquitous, of course, the war is the same."

"What is 'primal cause,' grandfather?" asked Betty.

"The thing that began it all," said grandfather, regarding her
quizzically.

"I don't agree with your conclusion," said Bertrand, pausing to put
sirup on Jamie's cakes, after repeated demands therefor. "If the cause
be evil, it follows that to annihilate the cause--wipe it out of
existence--must be righteous."

"In God's good time," said grandmother Clide, quietly.

"God's good time, in my opinion, seems to be when we are forced to a
thing." Grandfather lifted one shaggy eyebrow in her direction.

"At any rate, and whatever happens," said Bertrand, "the Union must be
preserved, a nation, whole and undivided. My father left England for
love of its magnificent ideals of government by the people. Here is to
be the vast open ground where all nations may come and realize their
highest possibilities, and consequently this nation must be held
together and developed as a whole in all its resources, and not cut up
into small, ineffective, quarrelsome factions. To allow that would
mean the ruin of a colossal scheme for universal progress."

Mary brought her husband's coffee and put it beside his plate, as he
was too absorbed to take it, and as she did so placed her hand on his
shoulder with gentle pressure and their eyes met for an instant. Then
grandfather Clide took up the thread.

"Speaking of your father makes me think of my father, your old
grandfather Clide, Mary. He fought with his father in the Revolutionary
War when he was a lad no more than Peter Junior's age--or less. He lived
through it and came to be a judge of the supreme court of New York, and
helped to frame the constitution of that State, too. I used to hear
him say, when I was a mere boy,--and he would bring his fist down on
the table with an emphasis that made the dishes rattle, for all he
averred that he never used gesticulation to aid his oratory,--he used to
say,--I remember his words, as if it were but yesterday,--'Slavery is a
crime which we, the whole nation, are accountable for, and for which we
will be held accountable. If we as a nation will not do away with it by
legislation or mutual compact justly, then the Lord will take it into
his own hands and wipe it out with blood. He may be patient for a long
while, and give us a good chance, but if we wait too long,--