Suddenly there came to their ears the same drum-beat which had sounded so like a funeral knell to Annie Graham. Isaac must go, but not till one act more was done. “Mother,” he whispered, half hesitatingly, “it will make me a better soldier if you say the Lord’s Prayer with me just as you used to do, with your hand upon my head. I’ll kneel down, if you like,” and the boy of eighteen, wearing a soldier’s dress, _did_ kneel down, nor felt shame as the shaky hand rested once more on his bowed head, while his mother said with him the prayer learned years ago, kneeling as he knelt now. Surely to the angels looking on there was charge given concerning that young boy,—charge to see that no murderous bullet came near him, even though they should fall round him thick and fast as summer hail. It would seem that some such thought as this intruded itself Upon the Widow Simms, for where the swelling pain had been there came a gentle peace. God would care for Isaac. He would send him home in safety, and so the bitterness of that parting was more than half taken away. Again the drum beat just as Annie heard it. Another pressure of the hand, another burning kiss, another “good-bye, mother, don’t fret too much about us,” and then the last of the widow’s boys was gone. Turn we now to the shanty-like building down by the mill, where the mother of Harry and Bill rocked to and fro upon the unmade bed, and rent the air with her dismal howls, hoping thus to win at least one tender word from the two youths, voraciously devouring the breakfast she, like Widow Simms, had been at so much pains to prepare, watching even through her tears to see “if they wan’t going to leave her one atom of the steak she had spent her yesterday’s earnings to buy.” No they didn’t. _Harry_ took the last piece, growling angrily at Bill, who, kinder hearted than his brother, suggested that “_Hal_ shouldn’t be a pig, but leave something for the old woman.” “Leave it yourself,” was Harry’s gruff response, and turning to his mother, he told her “not to make a fool of herself, when she knew she was glad to be rid of them. At any rate, if she were not, the whole village were;” adding, by way of consolation, that “he should probably end his days in State Prison if he staid at home, and he had better be shot in a fair fight, as there was some credit in that.”