Ann said, “Go to the village and find out what that idiot meant.”

In a half hour Leila came back.  “Well, what is it?”

“The Charleston troops have fired on Fort Sumter—­My God!  Aunt Ann—­on the flag—­our flag!”

Ann rose, gathered up her work, hesitated a moment, and saying, “That is bad news, indeed,” went into the house.

Leila sat down on the step of the porch and broke into a passion of tears, as James Penhallow coming through the woods dismounted at her side.  “What is the matter, my dear child?”

“They have fired on the flag at Sumter—­it is an insult!”

“Yes, my child, that—­and much more.  A blunder too!  Mr. Lincoln should thank God to-day.  He will have with him now the North as one man.  Colonel Anderson must surrender; he will be helpless.  Alas for his wife, a Georgia woman!—­and my Ann, my dear Ann.”

There are few alive to-day who recall the effect caused in the States of the North by what thousands of men and women, rich and poor, felt to be an insult, and for the hour, far more to them than the material consequences which were to follow.

When Rivers saw the working people of the little town passionately enraged, the women in tears, he read in this outbreak of a class not given to sentimental emotion what was felt when the fatal news came home to lonely farms or great cities over all the North and West.

Memorable events followed in bewildering succession during the early spring and summer of 1861.  John wrote that Beauregard and all but a score of Southern cadets had left the Point.  Robert Lee’s decision to resign from the army was to the Squire far more sorrowfully important.

When Lincoln’s call to arms was followed in July by the defeat of Bull Run, James Penhallow wrote to his nephew: 

“My Dear John:  Your aunt is beyond measure disturbed.  I have been more at ease now that this terrible decision as to whether we are to be one or God knows how many is to be settled by the ordeal of battle.  I am amazed that no one has dwelt upon what would have followed accepted secession.  We should have had a long frontier of custom houses, endless rows over escaping slaves, and the outlet of the Mississippi in the possession of a foreign country.  Within ten years war would have followed; better let it come now.

“I am offered a regiment by Governor Curtin.  To accept would be fatal to our interests in the mills.  It may become an imperative duty to accept; but this war will last long, or I much underestimate the difficulties of overcoming a gallant people waging a defensive war in a country where every road and creek is familiar.

“Yours, in haste,

“JAMES PENHALLOW.”

John wrote later: 

“MY DEAR UNCLE:  Here is news for you!  All of my class are ordered to Washington.  I shall be in the engineer corps.  I see General McClellan is put in command of the army.  I will write again from Washington.”