"There was talk of war that night. Lincoln did not join in it, I remember, although I do not recall what he said. But when he rose to go I went with him. We walked down the street past dooryards where lilacs were blooming, keeping together till we crossed the river. There our ways parted. I told him a little of what Judge Adams had said of him. He laughed at the praise, waving it away from himself. 'It's a good thought, though,' he said, 'a great dream for others. But we need more than the dreaming, my friend. When the time comes, will you be ready?' "I held out my hand to him in pledge. "My way home that night took me past the armory where the Zouaves, the boys whom Ellsworth trained, were drilling. You remember Ellsworth's story, Peter? He was the first officer to die in the war." The boy nodded solemnly, and the man went on. "With Abraham Lincoln's voice ringing in my ears I enlisted. "Years afterward, when Abraham Lincoln was President, war came. I'd seen Lincoln often in the years between." James Thorold stopped his restless pacing and stood at the end of the table away from Peter, leaning over it slightly, as he seemed to keep up his story with difficulty. "He came often to Judge Adams's house. There were evenings when the three of us sat in the parlor with the dusk drifting in from the lake, and spoke of the future of the nation. Judge Adams thought war inevitable. Abraham Lincoln thought it could be averted. They both dreaded it. I was young, and I hoped for it. 'What'll you do, Jim, if war should come?' they asked me once. 'I'd go as a private,' I told them. "If the war had come then I should have gone with the first regiment out. But when the call sounded Ellsworth had gone to New York and the Zouaves had merged with another regiment. I didn't go with them in the beginning because I told myself that I wanted to be with the first troop that went from Illinois to the front. I didn't join until after Lincoln had sent out his call for volunteers. "You see," he explained to the silent boy, "I had left Judge Adams's office and struck out for myself. Chicago was showing me golden opportunities. Before me, if I stayed, stretched a wide road of success." "And you didn't go?" Peter interrupted his father for the first time. "I thought--" His voice broke. "I went," James Thorold said. "The regiment, the Nineteenth, was at the border when Lincoln gave the call. There was a bounty being offered to join it. I would have gone anyhow, but I thought that I might just as well take the money. I was giving up so much to go, I reasoned. And so I took the bounty. The provost marshal gave me the money in the office right across the square from the old court-house. I put it in the bank before I started south.