aughty boy; but when you looked at his
broad forehead and truthful eyes, you felt that, back of all his faults,
there was nobleness in his boyish soul. His father often said, "He will
either make something or nothing;" and his mother answered, "Yes, there
never will be any half-way place for Horace."

[Illustration: MR. CLIFFORD AND HIS SON. _Page 27._]

Now that Mr. Clifford had really enlisted, everybody looked sad. Grace
was often in tears, and said,--

"We can't any of us live, if pa goes to the war."

But when Horace could not help crying, he always said it was because he
"had the earache," and perhaps he thought it was.

Mrs. Clifford tried to be cheerful, for she was a patriotic woman; but
she could not trust her voice to talk a great deal, or sing much to the
baby.

As for Barbara Kinckle, she scrubbed the floors, and scoured the tins,
harder than ever, looking all the while as if every one of her friends
was dead and buried. The family were to break up housekeeping, and
Barbara was very sorry. Now she would have to go to her home, a little
way back in the country, and work in the fields, as many German girls do
every summer.

"O, my heart is sore," said she, "every time I thinks of it. They will
in the cars go off, and whenever again I'll see the kliny (little)
childers I knows not."

It was a sad day when Mr. Clifford bade good by to his family. His last
words to Horace were these: "Always obey your mother, my boy, and
remember that God sees all you do."

He was now "Captain Clifford," and went away at the head of his company,
looking like, what he really was, a brave and noble gentleman.

Grace wondered if he ever thought of the bright new buttons on his coat;
and Horace walked about among his school-fellows with quite an air,
very proud of being the son of a man who either was now, or was going to
be, the greatest officer in Indiana!

If any body else had shown as much self-esteem as Horace did, the boys
would have said he had "the _big_ head." When Yankee children think a
playmate conceited, they call him "stuck up;" but Hoosier children say
he has "the _big_ head." No one spoke in this way of Horace, however,
for there was something about him which made everybody like him, in
spite of his faults.

He loved his play-fellows, and they loved him, and were sorry enough to
have him go away; though, perhaps, they did not shed so many tears as
Grace's little mates, who said, "they never'd have any