The moments lapsed, and still she stood in the gateway, looking down the vacant road as if dazed.  Was it in truth awkward, bashful Zeb Jarvis who had just left her?  He seemed a new and distinct being in contrast to the youth whom she had smiled at and in a measure scoffed at.  The little Puritan maiden was not a reasoner, but a creature of impressions and swift intuitions.  Zeb had not set his teeth, faced his hard duty, and toiled that long summer in vain.  He had developed a manhood and a force which in one brief moment had enabled him to compel her recognition.

“He will face anything,” she murmured.  “He’s afraid of only God and me; what a strange thing to say—­afraid of me next to God!  Sounds kind of wicked.  What can he mean?  Zeke Watkins wasn’t a bit afraid of me.  As mother said, he was a little forward, and I was fool enough to take him at his own valuation.  Afraid of me!  How he stood with his cap off.  Do men ever love so?  Is there a kind of reverence in some men’s love?  How absurd that a great strong, brave man, ready to face cannons, can bow down to such a little—­” Her fragmentary exclamations ended in a peal of laughter, but tears dimmed her blue eyes.

Susie did visit Mrs. Jarvis, and although the reticent woman said little about her son, what she did say meant volumes to the girl who now had the right clew in interpreting his action and character.  She too was reticent.  New England girls rarely gushed in those days, so no one knew she was beginning to understand.  Her eyes, experienced in country work, were quick, and her mind active.  “It looks as if a giant had been wrestling with this stony farm,” she muttered.

Zeb received no ovations on his lonely tramp to the lines, and the vision of Susie Rolliffe waving her hand from the gateway would have blinded him to all the bright and admiring eyes in the world.  He was hospitably entertained, however, when there was occasion; but the advent of men bound for the army had become an old story.  Having at last inquired his way to the position occupied by the Connecticut troops, he was assigned to duty in the same company with Zeke Watkins, who gave him but a cool reception, and sought to overawe him by veteran-like airs.  At first poor Zeb was awkward enough in his unaccustomed duties, and no laugh was so scornful as that of his rival.  Young Jarvis, however, had not been many days in camp before he guessed that Zeke’s star was not in the ascendant.  There was but little fighting required, but much digging of intrenchments, drill, and monotonous picket duty.  Zeke did not take kindly to such tasks, and shirked them when possible.  He was becoming known as the champion grumbler in the mess, and no one escaped his criticism, not even “Old Put”—­as General Putnam, who commanded the Connecticut quota, was called.  Jarvis, on the other hand, performed his military duties as he had worked the farm, and rapidly acquired the bearing of a soldier.  Indomitable Putnam gave his men