Vincent didn’t leave next day, nor for a good many days.  He seemed to get a good deal of “aid and comfort” from those who should have been his enemies.  Mistress Sprague found that he was not in a fit state to travel; that he needed nursing to prepare him for his journey, and that no place was so fit as the great guest-chamber in the baronial Sprague mansion, near his friend Jack.  Strange to say, Vincent’s eagerness to get to Richmond and his shoulder-straps were forgotten in the agreeable pastimes of the big house, where he spent hours enlightening Olympia on the wonders the Southern soldiers were to perform and the glory that he (Vincent) was to win.  He went of a morning to the post-office, where Jack was installed recruiting-agent for Acredale township, and made very merry over the homespun stuff enrolled in defense of the Union.

“Our strapping cavaliers will make short work of your gawky bumpkins;” he remarked to Jack as the recruits loitered about the wide, shaded streets, waiting to be forwarded to the rendezvous.

“Don’t be too sure of that.  These young, boyish-looking fellows are just the sort of men that met the British at Bunker Hill.  They laughed too, when they saw them; but they didn’t laugh after they met them, nor will your cavaliers,” Jack cried, loftily.

“But there’s not a full-grown man among all these I’ve seen.  How do you suppose they are to endure march and battle?  None of them can ride.  All our young men ride, and cavalry is the main thing in modern armies.”

In the Sprague parlors conversation of this risky sort was eschewed.  Mistress Sprague was anxious that the son of her oldest friend should return to his mother with only the memory of amiable hospitality in his heart to show that, although war raged between the people, families were still friends.  Vincent’s mother had been one of Mistress Sprague’s bridesmaids, and it was her wish that the children might grow up in the old kindly ties.  So Vincent was made much of.  There were companies every night, and drives and boating in the afternoons, and such merry-making as it was thought a lad of his years would enjoy.  He was a very entertaining guest; that all Acredale had known in the old vacations when, with his sister, the pretty Rosa, he spent a summer with the Spragues.

But, now that there was to be a separation involving the unknown in its vaguest form, the lad was treated with a tenderness that made the swift days very sweet to the young rebel.  It was from Olympia that he met the only distinct formality in the manners of his hosts.  He had known and adored her in a boyish way for years, and now, as he contemplated going, he thought that she ought to exhibit something of the old-time warmth.  In other days she had ridden, walked, and flirted to his heart’s desire.  Now she avoided him when Jack was not at hand, and when she talked it was in a flippant vein that drove him wild with baffled hope.  The day before he was to bid the kind house adieu he had his wish.  She was riding with him over the shaded roadway that curves in bewildering beauty toward the lake.  She seemed in a gentler mood than he had lately seen her.  They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency.