“Do you really hope that, Thaddeus?” his wife asked. She liked to sit in the garden till dark, but then, because she had taken over sole responsibility for the school, she would go to bed and leave the men to argue by candlelight.

“Of course I hope that,” Bird said. “No one in his right mind wants a battle.”

“Nate does,” Adam said teasingly.

“I said ‘in his right mind,’” Bird pounced. “I am careful to be precise with my words, perhaps because I never went to Yale. Do you really want to see battle, Starbuck?”

Starbuck half-smiled. “I want to see the elephant.”

“Unnecessarily large, gray, curiously wrinkled and with burdensome droppings,” Bird remarked.

“Thaddeus!” Priscilla laughed.

“I hope there’s peace,” Starbuck amended his wish, “but I am half-curious to see a battle.”

“Here!” Bird tossed a book across to Starbuck. “There’s an account of Waterloo in there, I think it begins on page sixty-eight. Read that, Starbuck, and you’ll be cured of your desire to see elephants.”

“You’re not curious, Thaddeus?” his wife charged him. She was sewing a flag together, one of the many banners that would be used to decorate the town on the Fourth of July, which was now just two days away and was to be marked by a great gala at Seven Springs. There would be a feast, a parade, fireworks and dancing, and everyone in town was expected to contribute something to the celebration.

“I’m a little curious, of course.” Bird paused to light one of the thin, malodorous cigars that he favored. “I have a curiosity about all the extremes of human existence because I am tempted to believe that truth is best manifested in such extremes, whether it be in the excesses of religion, violence, affection or greed. Battle is merely a symptom of one of those excesses.”

“I would much rather that you applied yourself to the study of excessive affection,” Priscilla said mildly, and the young men laughed. They were all fond of Priscilla and touched by the evident tenderness that she and Bird felt for each other.

The talk drifted on. The yard, which was supposed to supply the schoolmaster with vegetables, had become overgrown with black-eyed Susans and daisies, though Priscilla had made space for some herbs that were pungent in the evening warmth. The back of the yard was bounded by two apple trees and a broken fence beyond which was a meadow and a long view across the wooded foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a lovely peaceful place.

“Are you taking a servant, Starbuck?” Lieutenant Davies asked. “Because if so I have to put his name in the servants’ book.”

Starbuck had been daydreaming. “A servant?”

“The Colonel, in his wisdom,” Bird explained, “has decreed that officers may provide themselves with a servant, but only, mark this, if the man is black. No white servants allowed!”