Grace said no more, but she determined to have that book; she wanted to see what made it so terrible. The first time she had leave to go downtown she made an excuse to go into a book store and purchase a copy. She concealed it in her clothes and then made a few other purchases. "Why, Grace, what made you so long?" asked the monitor in charge of the girls when she returned. "Couldn't get waited on before," answered Grace demurely. That evening Grace swore her room-mate to eternal secrecy, and then showed her the book. The girl was horrified. "What made you buy it?" she wailed. "Why, if I should take that book home I would be arrested and sent to prison." "I am determined to see what kind of a book it is," answered Grace, doggedly. "When I see, I can burn it up if I don't like it." "I wouldn't touch it for the whole world," exclaimed her room-mate. "Burn it up. Burn it up now, Grace. What if the girls found it out! We would be disgraced, ostracized, perhaps expelled!" "If you don't tell, I will take care that no one else sees it," said Grace. The next day Grace feigned a headache, and remained in her room to read the book. That evening her room-mate asked about it. "You will never see it," replied Grace. "I looked into it and concluded you were right; it would never do for that book to be found in our room. I have destroyed it." "Grace Chittenden," cried the girl, "I believe you pretended to have a headache so you could stay in our room and read that book! I have a mind to report you. What kind of a book was it? Tell me." "Do you want me to corrupt you too, Mabel?" laughed Grace. "No; the book is destroyed, and that ends it. It is not the kind of a book I thought it was--not so horrid; but it makes one think. I am almost sorry I read it." That night Grace lay awake a long time thinking of Uncle Tom and Little Eva, and more than once she sighed, "Tilly is right. Slavery is wicked--wicked!" Grace had been in school two years when the war opened. Even the seclusion of a girl's boarding school could not help being penetrated by the fierce excitement which swept through the whole country. The streets were filled with marching troops. Many of the girls had brothers in Frost's militia. Then Camp Jackson was taken. Grace heard the distant firing, saw the surging mob in the streets, but in the midst of the excitement her father came. He had hurried to the city to take her home--to take her to the heart of the Ozarks, where he hoped the red waves of war would never come. Marion Chittenden was by nature fierce and combative, but the horror from which he had fled had so changed him that it was only when some great excitement moved him that his passions were aroused. He was a strong partisan of the South and believed the North wholly wrong. It was only his age and an injury that forbade protracted riding on horseback that kept him from offering his services to the State.