“Polly, you should have been the first-born of the house of Sprague; you have twice the sense that I have.”

“It isn’t sense that wins in war; it is daring and resolution, and you have all that.”

When Jack had cautiously laid the situation before his young Patroclus, that precocious warrior at once justified the confidence reposed in him.

“Rosa has promised to marry me as soon as the war is over.  She can’t expect me to hang around here like a peg-top on a string.  Besides, I wouldn’t stay where you are not, Jacko, even if I lost my sweetheart for good and all.”

There was a piteous quaver in the treble voice, and, forgetting that he was no longer a school-boy, he brushed his eyes furtively with his coat-sleeve, as Jack pretended preoccupation with his shoe-string.

“You’re a brick, Dick.  I think I have confided that to you before—­but you are a brick, made of the best straw in the field of life, and you shall be a general one of these days—­your shrill voice shall let slip the dogs of war and cry havoc to the enemy.  You shall return to Acredale—­proud Acredale—­your brows bound with victorious wreaths, and all the small boys perched on the spreading oaks to salute you.”

“I think I have heard something like that before, my blarneying Plantagenet.  You shall be the Percy of the North, and command the great battle.  You shall meet and vanquish fifty Harrys, and cry, ’God for Union, liberty, and the laws.’”

“Bravo!  You know your Shakespeare if you don’t know prudence.  However, we’re plotters now, and you must take on your wisest humor.  You must not breathe a word to Rosa.  Love is a freebooter in confidences.  It has no conscience, as it has no law.  It is an immense friction on the sober relations of life.  It is cousin to the god of lies—­Mercury.  So be warned that while your heart is Rosa’s your reason’s your country’s, your friends’, and you have a chance now to employ it to the profit of both!  You must be ready to evade Rosa’s infinite questioning with innocent plausibilities, for you must bear in mind that, however much she may love you, she, like you, loves her cause, her people—­more, in fact, for you have seen that these passionate Southerners have made a religion of the war, and, like all enthusiasts, they will go any lengths, deny all ties; glory, faith, in personal sacrifices and heart-wrenchings, to make the South triumph.  So, without being false to your love, you must deceive, to be true to your country; for to lull love’s suspicions a man must regulate the two currents of his life, the heart and brain.  Keep the heart in check and let the brain rule in such affairs as we have on hand.”

“Phew Jack! you talk like a college professor.  You’re deeper than a well; and what was the other thing Mercutio said?”

“Ah!  Mercutio said so much that Shakespeare got frightened and let Tybalt kill him.  So beware of saying too much.  That’s your great danger, Dick; your tongue is terrible—­mostly to your friends.”