"That's why I'm going to fight for them!" Ned's answer flashed. "They stand for a principle--their equal rights under the Republic their fathers created. They haven't paused to figure on success or failure. Five million freemen have drawn the sword against twenty millions because their rights have been invaded. Might has never yet made right. The South's daring is sublime and, by God, I stand with them!" His words had the ring of steel in their finality. The two men faced each other for a moment, tense, earnest, defiant. The younger extended his hand: "Good-bye, John." The handsome face of the older brother went suddenly white and he shook his head: "No. From to-day we are no longer brothers--we can't be friends!" Ned smiled, waved his hand and from the door firmly answered: "As you like--from to-day--foes----" He closed the door and with swift step turned his face toward the house of Senator Winter. CHAPTER VII LOVE AND DUTY The pretty Irish maid nodded and smiled with such a sympathetic look as she ushered Ned into the cosy back parlor, he wondered if it meant anything. Could she have guessed Betty's secret? She might give him a hint that would lift the fear from his heart. He smiled back into her laughing eyes and began awkwardly: "Oh, I say, Peggy----" She dropped a pretty courtesy: "Yiss-sor?" Somehow it wouldn't work. The words refused to come. Love was too big and sweet and sacred. It couldn't be hinted at to a third person. And so he merely stammered: "Will you--er--please--tell Miss Betty I'm here?" "Yiss-sor!" Peggy giggled. He was glad to be rid of her. He drew his handkerchief, mopped the perspiration from his brow and sat down by the open window to wait. His heart was pounding. He looked about the room with vague longing. He had spent many a swift hour of pain and joy in this room. The sight and sound of her had grown into his very life--he couldn't realize how intimately and how hopelessly until this moment of parting perhaps forever. The portrait of her mother hung over the mantel--a life-size oil painting by a noted French artist, the same brilliant laughing eyes, the same deep golden brown hair, its wayward ringlets playing loosely about her fine forehead and shell-like ears. Beyond a doubt this pretty mother with the sunshine of France in her blood had known how to flirt in her day--and her beautiful daughter was enough like that picture to have been her twin sister. On the mantel beneath this portrait sat photographs in solid silver frames, one of Wendell Phillips, one of William Lloyd Garrison and one of John C. Fremont, the first Republican candidate for President. Directly opposite on the wall hung an oil painting of John Brown. Ned caught the flash of the fanatic in the old madman's eye and was startled at the striking resemblance to Senator Winter. He had never thought of it before. Gilbert Winter might have been his brother in the flesh as he undoubtedly was in spirit.