For despite the solemn stillness that brooded in the similitude of the deepest peace upon the scene, war was still rife in the land. The theater of action was far from this sequestered region, but there had been times when the piny gorges were full of the more prickly growth of bayonets. The echoing crags were taught the thrilling eloquence of the bugle, and the mountains reverberated with the oratory of the cannon--for the artillery learned to climb the deer-paths. There was a fine panorama once in the twilight when a battery on the heights shelled the woods in the valley, and tiny white clouds with hearts of darting fire described swift aerial curves, the fuses burning brightly against the bland blue sky, ere that supreme moment of explosion when the bursting fragments hurtled wildly through the air. Occasionally a cluster of white tents would spring up like mushrooms at the base of a mountain spur--gone as suddenly as they had come, leaving a bed of embers where the camp-fires had been, a vague wreath of smoke and little trace besides, for the felled trees cut for fuel made scant impression upon the densities of the wilderness, and the rocks were immutable. And then for months a primeval silence and loneliness might enfold the mountains. “Ef they kem agin, ef ever they kem agin, I’ll jine ’em--I’ll jine ’em,” cried Hilary out of a full heart as he stood and gazed. And this was the reason he watched daily and sometimes deep into the night, lest coming under cover of the darkness they might depart before the dawn, leaving only the embers of their camp-fires to tell of their vanished presence. The prospect stirred the boy’s heart. He longed to be in the midst of action, to take a man’s part in the great struggle, to live the life and do the faithful devoir of a soldier. He was young but he was strong, and he felt that here he was biding at home as if he were no more fit for the military duty he yearned to assume than was the miller’s daughter, Delia Noakes. “I tole Dely yesterday ez I’d git her ter l’arn me ter spin ef ye kep’ me hyar much longer,” he said one day petulantly to his mother. “I’ll jes’ set an’ spin like a sure-enough gal ef ye won’t let me go an’ jine the army like a boy.”