urn down," he cried.

Stephen picked up the object on the floor, which had dropped from his
pocket, and handed it to him.

It was a revolver.

THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill

Volume 5.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GUNS OF SUMTER

Winter had vanished. Spring was come with a hush. Toward a little island
set in the blue waters of Charleston harbor anxious eyes were strained.

Was the flag still there?

God alone may count the wives and mothers who listened in the still hours
of the night for the guns of Sumter. One sultry night in April Stephen's
mother awoke with fear in her heart, for she had heard them. Hark! that
is the roar now, faint but sullen. That is the red flash far across the
black Southern sky. For in our beds are the terrors and cruelties of life
revealed to us. There is a demon to be faced, and nought alone.

Mrs. Brice was a brave woman. She walked that night with God.

Stephen, too, awoke. The lightning revealed her as she bent over him. On
the wings of memory be flew back to his childhood in the great Boston
house with the rounded front, and he saw the nursery with its high
windows looking out across the Common. Often in the dark had she come to
him thus, her gentle hand passing over aim to feel if he were covered.

"What is it, mother?" he said.

She said: "Stephen, I am afraid that the war has come."

He sat up, blindly. Even he did not guess the agony in her heart.

"You will have to go, Stephen."

It was long before his answer came.

"You know that I cannot, mother. We have nothing left but the little I
earn. And if I were--" He did not finish the sentence, for he felt her
trembling. But she said again, with that courage which seems woman's
alone:

"Remember Wilton Brice. Stephen--I can get along. I can sew."

It was the hour he had dreaded, stolen suddenly upon him out of the
night. How many times had he rehearsed this scene to himself! He, Stephen
Brice, who had preached and slaved and drilled for the Union, a renegade
to be shunned by friend and foe alike! He had talked for his country, but
he would not risk his life for it. He heard them repeating the charge. He
saw them passing him silently on the street. Shamefully he remembered the
time, five months agone, when he had worn the very uniform of his
Revolutionary ancestor. And high above the tier of his accusers he saw
one face, and the look of it stung to the very quick of his soul.

Before the storm he had fallen as