adosculation. Jack may have believed this himself, for he took no pains to disabuse the maidens as to the inefficacy of the rite, and bore with galliard fortitude the wear and tear of the nascent mustache, without which, to his mind, a soldier would figure very much as a monk without a shaven crown or a mandarin without a queue. And though presently big Tom Tooker, chief of the rival faction in Acredale, gave his name to the recruiting officer in Warchester, and a score more of Jack's rivals and cronies, he was the soldier of the village. For hadn't he given up the glory of graduation and the delights of "commencement" to take up his musket for the Union? And then the fife was heard in the village street—delicious airs from Arcady—and a great flag was flung out from the post-office, and Master Jack was installed recruiting sergeant for Colonel Ulrich Oswald's regiment, that was to be raised in Warchester County. For Colonel Oswald, having failed in a third nomination for Congress, had gallantly proffered his services to the Governor of the State, and, in consideration of his influence with his German compatriots, had been granted a commission, though with reluctance, as he had supported the Democratic party and was not yet trusted in the Republican councils.

CHAPTER II.

FLAG AND FAITH.

If Acredale had not been for a century the ancestral seat of the Spragues, and in its widest sense typical of the suburban Northern town, there would be merely an objective and extrinsic interest in portraying its sequestered life, its monotonous activities. But Acredale was not only a very complete reflex of Northern local sentiment; its war epoch represented the normal conduct of every hamlet in the land during the conflict with the South. Now that the war is becoming a memory, even to those who were actors in it, the facts distorted and the incidents warped to serve partisan ends or personal pique, the photograph of the time may have its value.

Made up of thriving farmers and semi-retired city men, Acredale mingled the simple conditions of a country village and the easy refinement of city life. The houses were large, the grounds ornate and ample, the society decorously convivial. People could be fine—at least they were thought very fine—without going to the British isles to recast their home manners or take hints for the fashioning of their grounds and mansions. There was what would be called to-day the English air about the place and some of the people; but it was an inheritance, not an imitation. Save in the bustling business segment, abutting the four corners, where the old United States road bore off westward to Bucephalo and the lakes, the few score houses were set far back from the highway in a wilderness of shrubbery, secluded by hedges and shaded by an almost primeval growth of elms or maples. The whole hamlet might be mistaken for a lordly park or an old-fashioned German Spa. Family marketing was mostly done in Warchester; hence the village shops were like Arabian bazaars, few but all-supplying. The most pregnant evidence of the approach of modern ways that tinged the primitive color of the village life, was the then new railway skirting furtively through the meadows on the northern limits, as if decently ashamed of intruding upon such idyllic tranquillity. The little Gothic station, cunningly hidden behind a clustering grove of oaks at a respectful distance from the Corners, like the lodge of a great estate, reconciled those who had at first fought the iron mischief-maker.

The public edifices of the town—the Episcopal church, the free academy, the bank, the young ladies' seminary—were very unlike such institutions in the bustling, treeless towns of to-day. Corinthian columns and Greek friezes adorned these architectural evidences of Acredale's affluence and taste. The village had grown up on private grounds, conceded to the public year by year as the children and dependents of the founders increased. The Spragues were the founders, and they had never been anxious to alienate their patrimony. Acredale is not now the sylvan sanctuary of rural simplicity it was thirty years ago—before the war. The febrile tentacles of Warchester had not yet reached out to make its vernal recesses the court quarter for the "new rich." In Jack Sprague's young warrior days the village was three miles from the most suburban limits of the city. There was not even a horse-car, or, as fashionable Warchesterians have it, a "tram," to remind the tranquil villagers that life had any need more pressing than a jaunt to the post twice a day. Some "city folks" did hold villas on the outskirts, but they used them only for short seasons in the late summer, when the air at the lake began to grow too sharp for outdoor pleasures.

Society in the place was patriarchal as an English shire town. The large Sprague mansion, about which the village clustered at a respectful distance, was the "Castle" of local phrase. Much of the glory of early days had departed, however, when the Senator—Jack's papa—died. The widow found herself unable to maintain the affluent state her lord had loved. His legal practice, rather than the wide acres of his domain, had supported a hospitality famous from Bucephalo to Washington. But with prudent management the family had abundance, and, as Jack often said, he was a fortune in himself. When the time came he would revive the splendors his father loved to associate with the home of his ancestors.

"But where are we to get this splendor now, Jack?" Olympia inquired, as the youth was dilating to his mother on the wonders to come. "Private soldiers get just thirteen dollars a month; and if you continue smoking—as I am informed all men do in the army—I expect to have to stint my pin-money expenses to eke out your tobacco bills."

"Oh, I'll bring home glory. Napoleon said that every soldier carried a marshal's bâton in his knapsack."

"I'm afraid you won't have room for it if you carry all the things that
I know of intended for you in this and other families."

"Yes; but, Polly, you know, or perhaps you don't know, a bâton is like a college love—no matter how full your heart is, you can always find room for another!"

"John," Mistress Sprague reproves mildly; "how can you? I don't like to hear my son talk like that even in jest. Don't get the idea that it is soldierly to treat sacred things with levity. Love is a very sacred thing; it ought to be part of a man's religion; it was of your father's."

"Then Jack must be a high priest, for there are a dozen girls here and in the city who believe themselves enshrined in that elastic heart."

"Olympia, you are a baleful influence on your brother. If anything could reconcile me to his going it is the thought that he will escape the extraordinary speech and manners you have brought back from New York. Do the Misses Pomfret graduate all their young ladies with such a tone and laxity of speech as you have lately shown? Strangers would naturally think that you had no training at home."

"Don't fear, mamma; strangers are not favored with my lighter vein; I assume that for you and Jack, to keep your minds from graver things. I preserve the senatorial suavity of speech and the Sprague austerity of manner 'before folks,' as Aunt Merry would say. Which reminds me, Jack, Kitty Moore declares that you are responsible for Barney's enlisting. The family look to you to bring him home safe—a colonel at least."

"Well, by George, I like that! Why, the beggar was bent on going long ago. He was the first to ask me to run away and enlist. The other day he wanted me to have him sworn in, and I told him to wait until—until I got a commission." Jack was going to say until he was older, but he suddenly recollected that Barney was his own