The man paused.  The strange power of the eyes spoke to them in this moment of silence.  “Oh!  I said the cause was sacred—­an unbroken land. He gave you that, just for wide-world uses.  Keep it!  Guard it!—­with all that Union of the States meant and still means to-day. You are not to blame for this necessity—­war.  The man who bends unpaid over the master’s cotton-field is the innocent cause of all this bloodshed.  If there were no slavery, there would have been no war.  But let there be no hatred in the brave hearts you carry.  God did not slay Saul, the earnest—­I might say—­the honest persecutor.  He made him blind for a time.  The awful charity of God is nowhere else so wonderful.  These gallant people you are going to meet will some day see that God was opening their eyes to better days and nobler ways.  They too are honest in the belief that God is on their side.  Therefore, let there be no bitterness.

“Some of you are what we call religious.  Do not be ashamed of it.  The hardest fighters the world has known were men who went to battle with arms invisible to man.  A word more and I have done.  I have the hope—­indeed the certainty—­that I shall be sent to the field on errands of mercy and helpfulness.  We may meet again.  And now, take with you the earnest will to render unto God what things He gave for His highest uses.  Now let us offer the prayer for the volunteers our great Bishop desires the Church to use.  Let us pray.”

In unusual silence the congregation moved away, a silence shared by Leila and her uncle.  At last she said, “Uncle Jim, I wish Aunt Ann could have heard that sermon—­it could not have hurt her.”

“Perhaps not.”

“I wonder why she has so great a respect for him, so real a friendship.  He thinks slavery the sin of sins.  He has very little charity about it—­oh, none—­and Aunt Ann is as sure it is a divinely appointed relation.”

“They fought it out, my dear, in his early days at Westways, and when they both found that they were clad in the armour of changeless beliefs no arguments could penetrate, they gave up and took of two fine natures what was left for life’s uses and became friends.  At least, that is how McGregor put it.  He sometimes states things well.”

“I see,” said Leila thoughtfully, and set herself to thinking whether if she had radical differences of opinion with some one, she could settle into a condition of armed neutrality.  Then she wondered if war made changes in the character of a man.

Presently she asked, “Why, Uncle Jim, are you suddenly in such haste to go?”

“There is need of haste.  I could not tell Ann; I can tell you.  We were never worse off since the war began.  The Governor asks me to meet him in Harrisburg.  What he fears is that in September Lee will cross the Potomac, with the hope of Maryland rising.  Our Governor will call out fifty thousand militia.  He wants me to take a command; I shall take it, but Lee’s veterans would brush our militia away like summer flies.  If he finds the Army of the Potomac before him, there may be a different story.  I hope, please God, to be with it.  There you have all I know, but it is for you alone.  My regiment will go to the front before the end of the month.”