e right side. 'Break every
yoke, and let the oppressed go free.' That is my maxim, Daisy."

I pondered this matter by turns more and more. By and by there began
to be audible mutterings of a storm in the air around me. The first I
heard was when we were all together in the evening with our work, the
half hour before tea.

"Lincoln is elected," whispered one of the girls to another.

"Who cares?" the other said aloud.

"What if he is?" asked a third.

"Then," said a gentle, graceful-looking girl, spreading her embroidery
out on her lap with her slim white fingers--"_then_ there'll be
fighting."

It was given, this announcement, with the coolest matter-of-fact
assurance.

"Who is going to fight?" was the next question.

The former speaker gave a glance up to see if her audience was safe,
and then replied, as coolly as before,--

"My brother, for one."

"What for, Sally?"

"Do you think we are going to have these vulgar Northerners rule over
_us_? My cousin Marshall is coming back from Europe on purpose that he
may be here and be ready. I know my aunt wrote him word that she would
disinherit him if he did not."

"Daisy Randolph--you are a Southerner," said one of the girls.

"Of course, she is a Southerner," said Sally, going on with her
embroidery. "She is safe."

But if I was safe, I was very uncomfortable. I hardly knew why I was
so uncomfortable. Only, I wished ardently that troubles might not
break out between the two quarters of the country. I had a sense that
the storm would come near home. I could not recollect my mother and my
father, without a dread that there would be opposing electricities
between them and me.

I began to study the daily news more constantly and carefully. I had
still the liberty of Madame's library, and the papers were always
there. I could give to them only a few minutes now and then; but I
felt that the growl of the storm was coming nearer and growing more
threatening. Extracts from Southern papers seemed to my mind very
violent and very wrong-headed; at the same time, I knew that my mother
would endorse and Preston echo them. Then South Carolina passed the
ordinance of secession. Six days after, Major Anderson took possession
of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour, and immediately the fort he had
left and Castle Pinckney were garrisoned by the South Carolinians in
opposition. I could not tell how much all this signified; but my heart
began to give a premonitory beat somet