“Yes, yes,” she said; “I know how you suffered,—we all suffered, we——” She turned away, sat down in a chair beside the table, leaned her head in her hands, and gave way to her emotions. “There has been nothing but suffering, suffering since this awful war began,” she murmured. “Mother,” said Wilfred abruptly, “I want to speak to you. You don’t like it, of course, but you have just got to listen this time.” Mrs. Varney lifted her head from her hands. Wilfred came nearer to her and dropped on his knees by her side. One hand she laid upon his shoulder, the other on his head. She stared down into his up-turned face. “I know—I know, my boy—what you want.” “I can’t stay here any longer,” said the youth; “it is worse than being shot to pieces. I just have to chain myself to the floor whenever I hear a cannon-shot or see a soldier. When can I go?” The woman stared at him. In him she saw faintly the face of the boy dying upstairs. In him she saw the white face of the boy who lay under the sun and dew, dead at Seven Pines. In him she saw all her kith and kin, who, true to the traditions of that house, had given up their lives for a cause now practically lost. She could not give up the last one. She drew him gently to her, but, boy-like, he disengaged himself and drew away with a shake of his head, not that he loved his mother the less, but honour—as he saw it—the more. “Why don’t you speak?” he whispered at last. “I don’t know what to say to you, Wilfred,” faltered his mother, although there was but one thing to say, and she knew that she must say it, yet she was fighting, woman-like, for time. “I will tell you what to say,” said the boy. “What?” “Say that you won’t mind if I go down to Petersburg and enlist.” “But that would not be true, Wilfred,” said his mother, smiling faintly. “True or not, mother, I can’t stay here.” “Oh, Wilfred, Russell has gone, and Howard is going, and now you want to go and get killed.” “I don’t want to be killed at all, mother.” “But you are so young, my boy.” “Not younger than Tom Kittridge,” answered the boy; “not younger than Ell Stuart or Cousin Steven or hundreds of other boys down there. See, mother—they have called for all over eighteen, weeks ago; the seventeen call may be out any moment; the next one after that takes me. Do you want me to stay here until I am ordered out! I should think not. Where’s your pride?” “My pride? Ah, my son, it is on the battlefield, over at Seven Pines, and upstairs with Howard.” “Well, I don’t care, mother,” he persisted obstinately. “I love you and all that, you know it,—but I can’t stand this. I’ve got to go. I must go.”