"And, oh, Cynthia! _What_ do you think it was? You'd never guess!-- You know, the Civil War had just broken out,--Fort Sumter had surrendered and Mrs. Collingwood was a South Carolina woman, and was heart and soul with the Confederacy. She had married a Northern man, and had lived ever since up here, but that didn't make any difference. And all the time war had been threatening, she had been planning to raise a company in South Carolina for her son Fairfax, and put him in command of it. They did those things at that time. Her son didn't know about it, however. She was keeping the news to surprise him. "And then, that day at luncheon, she received a telegram from him saying he had left college and enlisted--_in the Union army_--and was coming home at once to bid her good-bye before going to the front! The shock of it almost killed her! But later she thought that surely, when he came, she could persuade him out of it. "And he came that very afternoon. The ladies had met him walking up from the train. She would not tell Mrs. Durand just what happened, but intimated that they had had a dreadful scene. You see, the young fellow had been born and brought up in the North, and _his_ sympathies were all with _that_ side, and he was just as enthusiastic about it as his mother was about the other. And besides, she'd never talked to him much about the Southern cause, so he didn't realize how she felt. At last, when he wouldn't give in, she admitted to Mrs. Durand that she disowned him, and told him never to see her face again. "When he had gone to his room to pack his things, she went and dismissed her servants, and told them to go at once. Then she locked herself in her room till her boy went away. She never saw him again! After he had gone, that night, she collected all her silver and hid it, and partially packed her own things, and then decided she wouldn't take them with her. And when she had gone around shutting up the house, it was morning. As soon as it was daylight, she went out and got an old colored carpenter who lived nearby to come and board up the windows and doors. She had the boarding all in the cellar, for it had been made two years before when she went to Europe for six months. It took him nearly all day to finish the work, while she stood around and gave directions. I don't see how she had the strength to do it! When it was all done, she locked the door, walked to the station, took the train for New York, and came to Mrs. Durand." Joyce paused in her recital, from sheer lack of breath, and Cynthia took advantage of the silence. "So _that_ was the way of it! And _we_ thought it was her brother, and that he'd done something awful,--committed a robbery or forged something! I don't see why that young Fairfax should have been treated so! I think what he did was fine!"