"Am I different, dear? Well, Mother Mercy, yonder, is looking mystified and troubled. She doesn't half like my prophetic moods, I know. I merely came, for Gaspar, to inquire about the miller. But I like your own idea of the new tavern, and you should begin it right away. Gaspar will lend you the money if you need it; and if you have time for more sheets than these, Mercy dear, I'll send you over some pieces of finer muslin and you might begin on a lot for our hospital." "Your hospital? 'Tain't even begun nor planned." "Oh, yes, it is planned. From my own experience and from books I can guess what we will need. But there are doctors and nurses coming after a time--There, there, dear. I will stop. I won't look ahead another step while I'm here. But--it's coming--all of it!" she finished gayly, as she turned from the doorway and passed down the forlorn little street. Was it "in the air," as the Sun Maid protested, that indomitable courage and faith to do and dare, to plan, to begin, and to achieve? Certain it is that in five years from that morning when Kitty Keith had lingered in Mercy's doorway foretelling the future some, at least, of her prophecies had materialized. Where then had been but two hundred citizens were now more than twenty times that number. The "crowding" had begun; and there followed years upon years of wonderful growth; wherein Gaspar's cool head and shrewd business tact and ever-deepening purse were always to the fore, at the demand of all who needed either. In an unswerving singleness of purpose, he devoted his energy and his ambition toward making his beloved home, as far as in him lay, the leading home and mart of all the civilized world. And the Sun Maid walked steadfastly by his side, adding to his efforts and ambitions the sympathy of her great heart and cultured, ever-broadening womanhood. Thus passed almost a quarter-century of years so full and peaceful that nothing can be written of them save the one word--happy. Yet at the end of this long time, wherein Abel and Mercy had quietly fallen on sleep and "Kit's little tackers" had grown up to be themselves fathers and mothers, the Sun Maid's joy was rudely broken. Not only hers, but many another's; for a drumbeat echoed through the land, and the sound was as a death-knell. Kitty looked into her husband's face and shivered. For the first time in all his memory of her the Unafraid grew timid. "Oh, Gaspar! War? Civil War! A family quarrel, of all quarrels the most bitter and deadly. God help us!" CHAPTER XXIII. HEROES. The Sun Maid's gaze into her husband's face was a prolonged and questioning one. Before it was withdrawn she had found her answer. There was still a silence between them, which she broke at last, and it touched him to see how pale she had become and yet how calm. "You are going, Gaspar?" "Yes, my love; I am going. Already I have pledged my word, as my arm and my purse."