Abbie had now passed her fourteenth birthday. On an April afternoon, with the river high and clods of snow still at the roots of trees, she went into the timber to look for anemones and Dutchmen’s breeches, for dog-toothed violets and the first signs of Mayflower buds. Coming out on her own particular grassy knoll in the clearing, she went up to the hillock, in one of those moments of desire to let out her feelings in song. To the squirrels she may have seemed an ordinary girl clothed in a green-checked ginghan dress, with reddish-brown curls twisted up into a snood but the squirrels were not seeing correctly. For Abbie knew that she had a dark velvet dress that swept around her feet, a string of pearls on her neck, and in her hand a hat with a sweeping plume. She was holding it carelessly at her side with her long, slender fingers that tapered at the ends.

At the top of the knoll she turned. A sea of white faces looked up at her. To the casual observer it might have seemed a mass of wild plum-blossoms. Even before she sang, the audience applauded vociferously and a few people stood up. An onlooker, who was not magic-eyed, might have thought the wind merely blew the blossoms. Abbie bowed, smiled,—waited for her accompaniment to begin. She fingered her pearls, and smiled at the girl at the reed-organ. All at once she realized that the girl at the organ was a talented orphan whom she had been befriending. It made her feel happy, light-hearted. She threw back her head and began singing:

“Oh! the Lady of the Lea,

Fair and young and gay was she,

Beautiful exceedingly,

The Lady of the Lea.”

The song embodied for her all the enchantment of the Arabian Nights. It opened a door to a magic castle. It smelled of perfume and spices. It stood for wonderful things in life to come.

“Many a wooer sought her hand,

For she had gold and she had land,”

Her voice rose melodiously high and sweet and true.

“Everything at her command,

The Lady of the Lea.”

Her heart seemed bursting with love of the trees, the sky, the melody.

“Oh, the Lady of the Lea,

Fair and young and gay was she,”

There seemed a gleam ahead of her,—a light that beckoned,—a little will-o’-the-wisp out there beyond the settlement in the Big Woods. It was something no one knew about,—Mother nor Mary nor Belle. Only for her it shone,—for her, and other lovely ladies.

“Fanciful exceedingly,

The Lady of the Lea.”

When the song had died away and Abbie was bowing to the invisible audience, she heard it, “Abbie, . . . oh, Abbie . . . hoo-hoo!” Mary’s voice was calling and crying in the distance. She slipped out of the clearing, climbed the stake-and-rider fence, and saw Mary coming,—calling and crying and coming toward her. “Abbie, they’ve just got word out from Dubuque that Fort Sumter was fired on.”