and their wives,—­going down to camp to bid their boys good-bye, devoted them to death with just as stern integrity, as partial a view of the right, as their ancestors did theirs at Naseby or Drumclog:  their religion loved its friends and hated its enemies just as bitterly as when it scowled at Monmouth; the “boys,” no doubt, would call themselves Roundheads, as they had done in the three months’ service.  Paul Blecker, who had seen a good many sides of the world, laughed to himself:  the very Captain here, good, anxious, innocent as a baby, as he was, looked at the world exactly through Balfour of Burley’s dead eyes, was going to cure the disease of it by the old pill of intolerance and bigotry.  No wonder Paul laughed.

The sobered Quaker evening was making ready for night:  the yellow warmth overhead thinning into tintless space; the low hills drawing farther off in the melancholy light; the sky sinking nearer; clouds, unsteady all day, softened at last into a thoughtful purple, and couching themselves slowly in the hollows of the horizon; the sweep of cornfields and woods and distant farms growing dim,—­daguerreotype-like; the tinkle of the sheep-bells on the meadows, the shouts of the boys in camp yonder, the bass drone of the frogs in the swamp dulling down into the remoteness of sleep.  The Doctor slackened his sharp, jerking stride, and fell into the monotonous gait of his companion, glancing up to him.  McKinstry, he thought, was going out to battle to-morrow with just as cool phlegm and childlike content as he would set out to buy his merino ewes; but he would receive no pay,—­meant to transfer it to his men.  And he would be in the thickest of the fight,—­you might bet on that.  Umph! his quick eyes darting over the big, leisurely frame, the neat yellow hair, and the blue eyes mildly peering through spectacles.  Then, having satisfactorily anatomized McKinstry, he turned to the evening again with open senses, the sensitive pulsing of his wide nostrils telling that even the milky scent of the full-uddered cows gave him keen enjoyment.  The cows were going home from pasture, up shady barn-lanes, into the grayer shadows about the houses on either side of the road, in whose windows lights were beginning to glimmer.  Solid old homesteads they were, stone or brick, never wood.  Out in these Western settlements, a hundred years ago, they built durable homes, curiously enough, more than in the Northern States; planted oaks about them, that bore the strength of the earth up to heaven in sturdy arms, shaming the graceful, uncertain elm of shallower soils.  Just such old farm-houses as those, Blecker thought, would turn out such old-time moulded men as McKinstry:  houses whose orchards still held on to the Waldower and Smoke-house apples; their gardens gay with hollyhocks and crimson prince’s-feather; on the book-shelves the “Spectator” and “Gentleman’s Magazine.”  The women of them kept up the old-fashioned knitting-parties, and a donation-visit to the pastor once a year; and