earing out great oaks and sending them swirling
and plunging, in its swiftest currents. It found the soft, uncertain
places underneath its burden of waters and with its millions of unseen
hands it digged and scooped and shaped the thing anew. When at last the
waters were all gone down toward the sea and our own beautiful river was
itself again, singing its happy song on sunny sands and in purple
shadows, the valley contour was much changed. To the boys who had known
it, foot by foot, the differences would have been most marked.
Especially would we have noted the change about the Hermit's Cave, had
not that Maytime brought its burden of strife to us all.

That was the black year of the Civil War, with Murfreesboro,
Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chattanooga and Chickamauga all on its
record. Here in Kansas the minor tragedies are lost in the great horror
of the Quantrill raid at Lawrence. But the constant menace of danger,
and the strain of the thousand ties binding us to those from every part
of the North who had gone out to battle, filled every day with its own
care. When the news of Chancellorsville reached us, Cam Gentry sat on
the tavern veranda and wept.

"An' to think of me, strong, an' able, an' longin' to fight for the
Union, shut out because I can only see so far."

"But Uncle Cam," Dr. Hemingway urged, "Stonewall Jackson was killed by
his own men just when victory was lost to us. You might do the same
thing,--kill some man the country needs. And I believe, too, you are
kept here for a purpose. Who knows how soon we may need strong men in
this town, men who can do the short-range work? The Lord can use us all,
and your place is here. Isn't that true, Brother Dodd?"

I was one of the group on the veranda steps that evening where the men
were gathered in eager discussion of the news of the great Union loss at
Chancellorsville, brought that afternoon by the stage from Topeka. I
glanced across at Dodd, pastor of the Methodist Church South. A small,
secretive, unsatisfactory man, he seemed to dole out the gospel
grudgingly always, and never to any outside his own denomination.

He made no reply and Dr. Hemingway went on: "We have Philip here, and
I'd count on him and his crowd against the worst set of outlaws that
ever rode across the border. Yet they need your head, Uncle Cam,
although their arms are strong."

He patted my shoulder kindly.

"We need you, too," he continued, "to keep us cheered up. When the Lo