“I’d rather die young than be this cold every day.” Starbuck scrambled up the bank and lay on the grass under the warm sun.

Adam joined him. “So what happened on the raid?”

Starbuck told him, though leaving out the details of Washington Faulconer’s moroseness on the return ride. Instead he made the foray into something comical, a chapter of errors in which no one was hurt and no one offended. He finished by saying he did not think the war would get any more serious than the raid had been. “No one wants a real war, Adam. This is America!”

Adam shrugged. “The North isn’t going to release us, Nate. The Union’s too important to them.” He paused. “And to me.”

Starbuck did not reply. Across the river a herd of cows grazed, and in the silence the sound of their teeth tearing at the grass was surprisingly loud. Their cowbells were plangent, matching Adam’s suddenly ominous mood. “Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers,” he said.

“I heard.”

“And the northern papers say that three times that many will be ready by June.”

“You’re frightened of numbers?” Starbuck asked unfairly.

“No. I’m frightened of what the numbers mean, Nate. I’m frightened of seeing America struck down into barbarism. I’m frightened of seeing fools ride yelling into battle just for the joy of it. I’m frightened of seeing our classmen become the Gadarene swine of the nineteenth century.” Adam squinted across the river to where the distant hills were bright with blossoms and new leaf. “Life is so good!” he said after a while, though with a sad intensity.

“People fight to make it better,” Starbuck said.

Adam laughed. “Don’t be absurd, Nate.”

“Why else do they fight?” Starbuck bridled.

Adam spread his hands, as if to suggest there could be a thousand answers, and none of them significant. “Men fight because they’re too proud and too stupid to admit they’re wrong,” he finally said. “I don’t care what it takes, Nate, but we’ve got to sit down, call a convention, talk the whole thing out! It doesn’t matter if it takes a year, two years, five years! Talk must be better than war. And what’s Europe going to think of us? For years we’ve been saying that America is the noblest, best experiment of history, and now we’re going to tear it apart! For what? For states’ rights? To keep slavery?”

“Your father doesn’t see it as you do,” Starbuck said.

“You know Father,” Adam said fondly. “He’s always seen life as a game. Mother says he’s never really grown up.”

“And you grew up before your time?” Starbuck suggested.