Terrible Fire from the Secessionists' Batteries Brilliant Defence of Maj. Anderson Reckless Bravery of the Confederate States Troops. And, scanning it to the end, cried out: "He hasn't hauled down his flag! What are you so excited about?" "I--I'm excited, of course! He can't possibly hold out with only eighty men and nothing to feed them on. Something's got to be done!" he added, walking up and down the room. "I've made fun of the militia--like everybody else--but Jimmy Lent is getting ready, and I'm doing nothing! Do you hear what I'm saying, Ailsa?" She looked up from the newspaper, sitting there cross-legged under the coverlet. "I hear you, Steve. I don't know what you mean by 'something's got to be done.' Major Anderson is doing what he can--bless him!" "That's all right, but the thing isn't going to stop there." "Stop where?" "At Sumter. They'll begin firing on Fortress Monroe and Pensacola--I--how do you know they're not already thinking about bombarding Washington? Virginia is going out of the Union; the entire South is out, or going. Yesterday, I didn't suppose there was any use in trying to get them back again. Father did, but I didn't. I think it's got to be done, now. And the question is, Ailsa, whose going to do it?" But she was fiercely absorbed again in the news, leaning close over the paper, tumbled dull-gold hair falling around her bare shoulders, breath coming faster and more irregularly as she read the incredible story and strove to comprehend its cataclysmic significance. "If others are going, I am," repeated her cousin sullenly. "Going where, Steve?--Oh------" She dropped the paper and looked up, startled; and he looked back at her, defiant, without a flicker in those characteristic family eyes of his, clear as azure, steady to punishment given or taken--good eyes for a boy to inherit. And he inherited them from his rebel mother. "Father can't keep me home if other people go," he said. "Wait until other people go." She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. "Things are happening too fast, Steve, too fast for everybody to quite understand just yet. Everybody will do what is the thing to do; the family will do what it ought to. . . . Has your mother seen this?" "Yes. Neither she nor father have dared speak about it before us--" He made a gesture of quick despair, walked to the window and back. "It's a terrible thing, Ailsa, to have mother feel as she does." "How could she feel otherwise?" "I've done my best to explain to her----" "O Steve! _You_!--when it's a matter between her soul and God!" He said, reddening: "It's a matter of common-sense--I don't mean to insult mother--but--good Lord, a nation is a nation, but a state is only a state! I--hang it all--what's the use of trying to explain what is born in one----" "The contrary was born in your mother, Steve. Don't ever talk to her this way. And--go out, please, I wish to dress."