As they returned to the village, all pleased with the happy result, Corporal Grimm, approaching the minister, said: "I shall always hereafter be a believer in the saving power of prayer. Praying often and praying _long_, does the work." CHAPTER XXIII. THE ABDUCTION. The Union forces stationed at Snagtown did not remain there many days after the event related in the last chapter. Diggs was paroled, and the regiments ordered into Winter quarters at the Junction. The retirement of the Union forces was followed by predatory incursions of the Confederates, who were encamped just across the Twin Mountains. Small parties on foraging expeditions frequently crossed the latter, and greatly harassed the citizens in and around Snagtown. Since the last battle of Snagtown and the Confederate defeat, the peace and quiet of the Tompkins mansion was broken. Mrs. Tompkins openly and warmly avowed her principles, and Mr. Tompkins, old as he was, had almost decided to enlist in the ranks of the Union army and fight for his country. Irene could range herself with neither party; her sympathies were too equally divided. "To think," said Mrs. Tompkins to Irene, in her husband's presence, "that the Yankees, not content with killing poor, harmless Joe, should attempt to murder Diggs in cold blood!" "How unfair it is," said Mr. Tompkins, "for you to charge the soldiers, who are fighting for our country, with what was purely a mistake in one case, and what, in the other, was the result of laws which have existed in all armies since military law was established." "Don't say _our_ country," said Mrs. Tompkins, bitterly. "They are fighting for your cold, frozen North, not for my sunny South, which they are trying to desolate and destroy. Sooner than see them victorious, I would willingly follow both my sons to the grave." Before Mr. Tompkins could reply, Irene interrupted the discussion. "Oh, father, mother, do not talk about this dreadful war. It has brought us misery enough; let it not ruin our home. It is all wrong--wrong on both sides--and the world will one day say so. The Nation is a great family, and if members of that family are in arms against each other, is it any credit to either--can it matter which side is defeated? I know nothing about either side, but I know it is nothing to take pride or pleasure in. Rather let us pray for its ending, than rejoice or sorrow over triumph or defeat." Mrs. Tompkins went sobbing from the room, and the planter went out and seated himself beneath his favorite maple, in his rustic chair. His face was clouded. A barrier was gradually rising between himself and his wife--the wife whose love had blessed his youth and his manhood, the wife whose estrangement he had never dreamed of, between whom and himself he had thought no obstacle, material or immaterial, could ever come.