Abbie clutched her. “What, . . . what does that mean, Mary?”

“It means, . . .” Mary’s voice whispered it hoarsely, “Grandpa Deal says it means war.”

CHAPTER V

Yes, it meant war, with James leaving at the first call, and Belle’s young husband enlisting without her knowing his intentions. Abbie thought she could not stand it to see them go. It seemed that life was doing something to her which she could not countenance. She had a queer sensation of wind blowing past her,—of wind that she could not stop. She stood in front of the Seth Thomas clock on the shelf in her mother’s cabin and watched the hands moving above the little brown church painted on the glass of the door. Oh, stop Time for a few minutes until we can do something about the war.

But the winds blew past, and the clock hands went around, and James and Belle’s husband and several of the neighbor boys had gone to war.

And by 1862, when Lincoln’s call for additional volunteers came, Dennie, who was nineteen now, went into the Cedar Falls Reserves, a group of one hundred stalwart fellows. And Abbie again went all through the torn emotions of parting with Dennie and hating war.

And then she learned that there was one thing worse than going to war. And that was not going to war. Will Deal told her so. To be twenty-one and able-bodied, and see the Reserves entrain and not go! He was ashamed, and miserable. But his father, with his one arm, and in the Assembly as he was,—and no one to farm,—and Regina and Louise and his mother all depending on him,—he could not go. It seemed queer that of all the people in the community, Abbie Mackenzie, who was only sixteen, should be the one in whom Will Deal confided. And because Will Deal had done this, Abbie told him some things she had never told a soul,—that some day she was going to be a big person. She could feel it in her,—that she was going to do great things, sing before vast audiences, and paint lovely pictures in frames and write things in a book.

“You know, Will, I don’t want people to laugh at me,—and I don’t believe you would. But sometimes it all comes over me, that I can do these big things. It’s ahead of me, . . . kind-of like a light in the woods that shines and stays far away. And when I read verses, . . . or hear music, . . . or sing, . . . it beckons me on, . . . and my throat hurts with wanting to do something great.”

Will did not laugh at her, but instead, looked at her queerly for a moment, noticing for the first time that her skin was as creamy-white as the May-flowers that grew in the Big Woods, that her lips were of deep red tints and her eyes of deep brown ones, and that her mop of curly hair held them both,—the reds and the browns.