“Do you recall, Squire, what Thucydides said of the Greeks at the time of the Peloponnesian War?”

“I—­how the deuce should I?—­what did he say?”

“He said the Greeks did not understand each other any longer, although they spoke the same language.  The same words in Boston and in Charleston have different meanings.”

“But,” said Penhallow, “we never did understand one another.”

“No, never.  War—­even war—­is better than to keep up a partnership in slavery—­a sleeping partnership.  Oh, I would let them go—­or accept the gage of battle.”

“Pretty well that, for a clergyman, Mark.  As for me, having seen war, I want never to see it again.  This may please you.”  As he spoke, he extracted a slip of paper from his pocket-book, where to Leila’s amusement queer bits of all kinds of matters were collected.  Now it was verse.  “Read that.  You might have written it.  I kept it for you.  There is Ann on the porch.  Don’t read it now.”

Late that evening Rivers sat down to think over the sermon of the next Sunday.  The Squire had once said to him, “War brings out all that is best and all that is worst in a nation.”  He read the verses, and then read them aloud.

“They say that war is hell, the great accursed,
  The sin impossible to be forgiven;
Yet I can look beyond it at its worst
  And still find blue in Heaven.

“And as I note how nobly natures form
  Under the war’s red reign, I deem it true
That He who made the earthquake and the storm
  Perchance makes battles too.

“The life He loves is not the life of span
  Abbreviated by each passing breath;
It is the true humanity of man
  Victorious over death.”

“No great thing in the way of poetry—­but—­a thought—­a thought.  Oh, I should like to preach of men’s duty to their country just now.  I envy Grace his freedom.  If I preached as he does, people would say it was none of a preacher’s business to apply Christ’s creed of conduct to a question like slavery.  Mrs. Penhallow would walk out of the church.  But before long men will blame the preacher who does not say, ’Thou shalt love thy country as thyself’—­ah, and better, yes, and preach it too.”

During the early summer of 1860, James Penhallow guarded an awkward silence about politics.  Leila found that her uncle would not talk of what the closing months of Buchanan’s administration might contribute to insure peaceful settlement.  John Penhallow was as averse to answering her eager questions.  Their silence on matters which concerned a nation’s possible dismemberment and her aunt’s too evident distress weighed heavily upon Leila.  The newspapers bewildered her.  The Tribune was for peaceful separation, and then later was against it.  Uncle Jim had said he was too worried about the mills to talk politics, “Don’t ask me, Leila.”  At last, an errand to Dr. McGregor’s gave her the chance she desired.