"I hope you'll all congratulate me," he began in a buoyant tone. "I've enlisted. I'm going to live up at the Fort and begin soldier life in earnest." "And I do most heartily wish you success," declared grandmere, her eyes lighting up with a kind of admiration at the manly face in the pride of youth. "We shall need soldiers many a day yet, though I hope the worst is over. Still the Indians are treacherous and stubborn." "And we may have another fight on our hands;" laughing. "For we are not going to be ridden over rough shod." "But you must belong to the government side now." "I suppose so;" flushing. The delinquent distillers had been summoned to Philadelphia and had refused to go. "This is our very living," declared grandad, who was one of the most fiery insurgents. "Then they will tax our grain, our crops of all kinds. A king could do no worse! What did I tell you about these men! Why, we'll have to emigrate t'other side of the Mississippi and start a new town. That's all we get for our labor and hard work." "I ought to have waited until this thing was settled," Ned said rather ruefully, studying Daffodil's face. "But I had hard work to coax father, and when he consented I rushed off at once. He thinks there's going to be fortunes in this iron business, and Archie won't be worth shucks at it. He hates it as much as I do, but he's all for books, and getting his living by his brains. Maybe he'll be a lawyer." Daffodil flushed. She held Archie's secret. "You don't like it," Ned began when he had persuaded her to walk a little way with him. "You said once you didn't like soldiering. Yet it is a noble profession, and I'm not going to stay down at the bottom of the line." "No," with a sweet reluctance as if she was sorry to admit it. "It seems cruel to me, why men should like to kill each other." "They don't like it in the way of enjoyment, but do their duty. And they are for the protection of the homes, the women and children. We may have another Indian raid; we have some"--then he paused, he was going to say, "some French to clear out," but refrained. The French still held some desirable western points. "Father talks of the war occasionally, and mother shivers and says--'My heart would have broken if I had known that!' And to be away three years or more, never knowing if one was alive!" No, she wouldn't do for a soldier's wife. And Archie had prefigured himself a bachelor; he really had nothing to fear there, only would she not take more interest in his brother? There were other young fellows in the town, but not many of her kind. Well, he would wait--she seemed quite like a child yet. Somehow she had not made the same impression as she had in Philadelphia. No one praised her hair or her beautiful complexion or her grace in dancing. It did not hurt her exactly, but she felt sorry she could not please as readily. Only--she did not care for that kind of florid approbation.