He had met his grief and the darkness with a stoicism difficult to comprehend. He spent his days in calm unimbittered meditation, not gentle, but with flashes of his old spirit to attest his unchanged identity. Acclimated to sorrow, without hope, or fear, or anxiety, or participation in life, time could but pass him by, and youth seemed to abide with him. The old martial interest flared up when Ike told of his discovery on the ledge of Keedon Bluffs. “What kind o’ ball, Ike?” he demanded. But Ike had been born too late to be discerning as to warlike projectiles. “I wisht I could lay my hand on it!” said the blind artillery-man. “I’ll be bound I’d know, ef I jes’ could heft it wunst! Whar did it lodge, Ike? Could I make out ter git a-nigh it? Could ye an’ me git thar tergether?” “Ye ’pear b’reft, Abner!” aunt Jemima cried out angrily. “Ye mus’ hev los’ more ’n yer sight. Hev ye furgot how Keedon Bluffs look? Thar ain’t nobody sca’cely ez could keep foot-hold ’mongst them sheer cliffs. An’ ye oughtn’t ter be aggin’ on Ike ter climb sech places—git his neck bruk. Ye hain’t got no call, sure, ter set store on no mo’ cannon-balls, an’ artillery, an’ sech. I ’low ez ye’d hev hed enough o’ guns, an’ I wish ye’d never hed nuthin’ ter do with no rebels.” For this was one of the divided families so usual in East Tennessee, and while the elders had clung to the traditions of their fathers—the men fighting staunchly for the Union—the youngest had as a mere boy fled from his home to join the Confederate forces, and had stood by his gun through many a fiery hail of battle storms. But the bitterness of these differences was fast dying out. “I hev gin the word,” said Ike’s father, and grizzled, and stern, and gigantic, he looked eminently fitted to maintain his behests, “ez no mo’ politics air ter be talked roun’ this ha’th-stone, Jemimy.” “I ain’t talkin’ no politics,” retorted aunt Jemima, sharply. “But I ain’t goin’ ter hold my jaw tee-totally. I never kin git over hevin’ Ab settin’ up hyar plumb benighted! plumb benighted!—ez blind ez a mole!” She shook her head with a sort of acrimonious melancholy. “Yes,” drawlingly admitted the blind artillery-man, all unmoved by this uncheerful discourse. “Yes, that’s a true word.” He lifted his head suddenly and tossed back the gray hair from his boyish face. “But I _hev_ seen—sights!” Even less tolerated than politics were Ike’s repinings and longings for some flaunting military exploit. “Take yer axe,” his soldier-father said sternly, “an’ show what sort’n grit ye hev got at the wood-pile.” The blind man with a laugh more leniently suggested, “Ye wouldn’t hev been much use ter we-uns in our battery, Ike, throwin’ up a yearth-work ter pertect the guns an’ sech, seein’ the way ye fairly _de_-spise a spade.” Ike had yet to learn that it is the spirit in which a deed is done that dignifies and magnifies it.