Hence the marvel of the instant fusion, the swift resolve of the Northern mind.  The battle was the sudden grapple of aggressive weakness—­catching the half-contemptuous strong man unaware and rolling him in the dust.  Brought to earth by this unlooked-for blow, the North arose with renewed force and the deathless determination that could have but one issue.  The people, when the benumbing force of the surprise was mastered, flew together with one mind, one voice, one impulse.  The churches, the public halls, the street corners, moving trains, and rushing steamers, were such hustings as the Athenian improvised in the porticoes, when her orators inflamed the heart of Greece to repel the barbarians, to die with Leonidas in the gorges of the Thermopylae.

Ah, what an imposing spectacle it was!  The blood of wrath leaped fiercely in the chilled veins of age; the ardor of youth became the delirium of the Crusaders, the lofty zeal of the Puritans, the chivalrous daring of Rupert’s troopers, and the Dutch devotees of Orange.  A half-million men had been called out; a million were waiting in passionate eagerness within a month; two hundred and fifty millions of money had been voted—­ten times that amount was offered in a day.  Every interest in life became suddenly centered in one duty—­war.  It touched the heart of the whole people, and for the time they arose, purified, contrite, as the armies of Moses under the chastening of the rod.

In Acredale there were sore hearts as the dreadful news became more and more definite.  For days the death lists were mere guess-work; but when the routed forces returned to their camps in Washington the awful gaps in the ranks were ascertained with certainty.  The Caribees were nearly obliterated.  Of the thousand men and over who had marched from Meridian Hill only four hundred were found ten days after the battle.  Elisha Boone had hurried at once to Washington, charged by all the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the regiment to make swift report of the absent darlings.  Kate was besieged in the grand house with tearful watchers, waiting in agonizing impatience for the fatal finality.  Olympia, to spare her mother the distress of the vague responses her telegrams brought from Washington, spent most of the time at the Boones’, where, thanks to the father’s high standing with the Administration, the earliest, most accurate information came.  Finally he wrote.  He had seen Nick Marsh, who gave the first coherent narrative of Jack, Barney, and Dick Perley.  They had been seen—­the first two in the last desperate conflict.  An officer (the hero whom Jack had so much admired, and who turned out to be Gouverneur K. Warren) had escaped from the forlorn hope left to dispute the rebel charge upon the flying columns.  He gave particulars that pointed with heart-breaking certainty to the death of the two boys.  Young Perley had been lost sight of since noon of the battle.  He had followed the path taken by Jack and his comrades across the