Jacquelin looked at her long and seriously, and that moment a new idea seemed to him to enter his mind: that, after all, it might be as brave to do a dangerous thing which you are afraid to do, as if you are not at all afraid. “Blair, you are a brick,” he said; “you are braver than any boy I know—as brave as Steve. As brave as Marshal Turenne.” Which was sweet enough to Blair to make amends for all her bruises and scratches. From that time Jacquelin made up his mind that he would never try to stump her again, but would guard her, and this sweetened to him the bitterness of having to confess when he got to the house. He did it like a man, going to his father, of whom, at heart, he was mightily afraid, and telling him the whole story alone without the least reference to Blair’s part in it, taking the entire blame on himself; and it was only after he had received the punishment which was deemed due him that Blair’s joint responsibility was known from her own lips. This escapade, however, proved a little too much for the elders, and Jacquelin was sent off to school, to the Academy at Brutusville, under the learned Doctor Maule, where, still emulating Steve, who was the leader in most of the mischief that went on at that famous institution of learning, he made more reputation by the way he constructed a trap to catch one of the masters, Mr. Eliphalet Bush, than in construing the ancient language which was that gentleman’s particular department. CHAPTER II IN WHICH TWO STRANGERS VISIT RED ROCK AND ARE INVITED TO COME AGAIN Everyone knows what a seething ferment there was for some time before the great explosion in the beginning of the Sixties—that strange decade that changed the civilization of the country. Red Rock, like the rest of the land, was turned from a haunt of peace into a forum. Politics were rampant; every meeting was a lyceum; boys became orators; young girls wore partisan badges; children used party-catchwords, which they did not understand—except one thing: that they represented “their side.” There existed an irreconcilable difference between the two sections of the country. It could not be crushed. Hydra-headed, it appeared after every extirpation. One side held slavery right under the double title of the Bible and of the Constitution. The leader of the other side said, “If it was not wrong, then nothing was wrong”; but declared that he would not interfere with it. “Bosh!” said Major Legaie. “That is not a man to condone what he thinks wrong. If he is elected, it means the end of slavery.” And so said many others. Most of them, rather than yield, were for War. To them War was only an episode: a pageant: a threshold to glory. Dr. Cary, who was a Whig, was opposed to it; he had seen it, and he took the stump in opposition to Major Legaie. “We could whip them with pop-guns,” said the fire-eaters. Fordyce Lambly and Hurlbut Bail were two of them.