It was a summer of unalloyed happiness to Hilland and his wife, and the major promised to renew his youth in the warm sunlight of his prosperity. The exciting presidential canvass afforded abundant theme for the daily discussions in his favorite corner of the piazza, where, surrounded by some veteran cronies whom he had known in former years, he joined them in predictions and ominous head-shakings over the monstrous evils that would follow the election of Mr. Lincoln. Hilland, sitting in the background with Grace, would listen and stroke his tawny beard as he glanced humorously at his wife, who knew that he was working, quietly out of deference to his father-in-law, but most effectively, in the Republican campaign. Although Southern born she had the sense to grant to men full liberty of personal opinion--a quality that it would be well for many of her sisterhood to imitate. Indeed, she would have despised a man who had not sufficient force to think for himself; and she loved her husband all the more because in some of his views he differed radically with her father and herself. Meantime the cloud gathering in the South grew darker and more portentous; and after the election of President Lincoln the lightning of hate and passion began to strike from it directly at the nation's life. The old major was both wrong and right in regard to the most prominent leaders of the day. Many whom he deemed the worst fanatics in the land were merely exponents of a public opinion that was rising like an irresistible tide from causes beyond human control--from the God-created conscience illumined by His own truth. In regard to the instigators of the Rebellion, he was right. Instead of representing their people, they deceived and misled them; and, with an astute understanding of the chivalrous, hasty Southern temper, they so wrought upon their pride of section by the false presentation of fancied and prospective wrongs, that loyalty to the old flag, which at heart they loved, was swept away by the madness which precedes destruction. Above all and directing all was the God of nations; and He had decreed that slavery, the gangrene in the body politic, must be cut out, even though it should be with the sword. The surgery was heroic, indeed; but as its result the slave, and especially the master and his posterity, will grow into a large, healthful, and prosperous life; and the evidences of such life are increasing daily. At the time of which I am writing, however, the future was not dreamed of by the sagacious Lincoln even, or his cabinet, much less was it foreseen by the humbler characters of my story. Hilland after reading his daily journal would sit silent for a long time with contracted brow. The white heat of anger was slowly kindling in his heart and in that of the loyal North; and the cloud in the South began to throw its shadow over the hearth of the happy wife.