“I know the boys have gone,—boys whose fair, beardless faces should put to shame a strong, full-grown man like me. And another class, too, have gone, our laboring young men, leaving behind them poverty and little helpless children, whereas I have nothing of that kind for an excuse.” “Oh, I wish I had a dozen children, if that would keep you!” cried Rose, the insane idea flashing upon her that she would at once adopt a score or more of those she had seen playing in the muddy Hollow that afternoon. Mr. Mather smiled, and continued: “Suppose you try and accustom yourself to the idea of living a while without me. I shall not die until my appointed time, and shall undoubtedly come back again. Don’t you see?” No, Rose didn’t. Her heart was too full of pain to see how going to war was just as sure a method of prolonging one’s life as staying at home, and she sobbed passionately, one moment accusing her husband of not loving her as he used to, and the next begging of him to abandon his wild project. Mr. Mather was a man of firm decision, and long before he broached the subject to his wife, his mind had been made up that his country called for _him_,—not for somebody else,—but for _him_ personally; that if the rebellion were to be crushed out, men of wealth and influence must help to crush it, not alone by remaining at home and urging others on, though this were an important part, but by actually joining in the combat, and by their presence cheering and inspiring others. And Mr. Mather was going, too,—had, in fact, already made arrangements to that effect, and neither the tears nor entreaties of his young wife could avail to change his purpose. But he did not tell her so that night; he would rather come to it gradually, taking a different course from that which George Graham had pursued, for where George had left the decision wholly to his wife, Mr. Mather had taken it wholly upon himself, making it first and telling Rose afterwards. It was better so, he thought, and having said all to her that he wished to say on that occasion, he tried to divert her mind into another channel. But Rose was not to be diverted. It had come upon her like a thunderbolt,—the thing she so much dreaded,—and she wept bitterly, seeing in the future, which only a few hours before looked so bright and joyous, nothing but impenetrable gloom, for she could read her husband tolerably well, and she intuitively felt that she had lost him,—that he was going from her, never to come back, she knew. She should be a widow before she was nineteen, and the host of summer dresses she meant to buy when she went back to Boston, changed into a widow’s sombre weeds, as Rose saw herself arrayed in the habiliments of mourning. What a fright she looked to herself in the widow’s cap, with which her vivid imagination disfigured her chestnut hair, and she shuddered afresh as she thought how hideous she was in black.