Stephen Brice, with a pain over his heart and a lump in his throat, walked on the pavement beside his old company, but his look avoided their faces.  He wrung Richter’s hand on the landing-stage.  Richter was now a captain.  The good German’s eyes were filled as he said good-by.

“You will come, too, my friend, when the country needs you,” he said.  “Now” (and he shrugged his shoulders), “now have we many with no cares to go.  I have not even a father—­” And he turned to Judge Whipple, who was standing by, holding out a bony hand.

“God bless you, Carl,” said the Judge And Carl could scarce believe his ears.  He got aboard the boat, her decks already blue with troops, and as she backed out with her whistle screaming, the last objects he saw were the gaunt old man and the broad-shouldered young man side by side on the edge of the landing.

Stephen’s chest heaved, and as he walked back to the office with the Judge, he could not trust himself to speak.  Back to the silent office where the shelves mocked them.  The Judge closed the ground-glass door behind him, and Stephen sat until five o’clock over a book.  No, it was not Whittlesey, but Hardee’s “Tactics.”  He shut it with a slam, and went to Verandah Hall to drill recruits on a dusty floor,—­narrow-chested citizens in suspenders, who knew not the first motion in right about face.  For Stephen was an adjutant in the Home Guards—­what was left of them.

One we know of regarded the going of the troops and the coming of the wounded with an equanimity truly philosophical.  When the regiments passed Carvel & Company on their way riverward to embark, Mr. Hopper did not often take the trouble to rise from his chair, nor was he ever known to go to the door to bid them Godspeed.  This was all very well, because they were Union regiments.  But Mr. Hopper did not contribute a horse, nor even a saddle-blanket, to the young men who went away secretly in the night, without fathers or mothers or sisters to wave at them.  Mr. Hopper had better use for his money.

One scorching afternoon in July Colonel Carvel came into the office, too hurried to remark the pain in honest Ephum’s face as he watched his master.  The sure signs of a harassed man were on the Colonel.  Since May he had neglected his business affairs for others which he deemed public, and which were so mysterious that even Mr. Hopper could not get wind of them.  These matters had taken the Colonel out of town.  But now the necessity of a pass made that awkward, and he went no farther than Glencoe, where he spent an occasional Sunday.  Today Mr. Hopper rose from his chair when Mr. Carvel entered,—­a most unprecedented action.  The Colonel cleared his throat.  Sitting down at his desk, he drummed upon it uneasily.

“Mr. Hopper!” he said at length.

Eliphalet crossed the room quickly, and something that was very near a smile was on his face.  He sat down close to Mr. Carvel’s chair with a semi-confidential air,—­one wholly new, had the Colonel given it a thought.  He did not, but began to finger some printed slips of paper which had indorsements on their backs.  His fine lips were tightly closed, as if in pain.