“It was the most solemn scene that could be imagined,” he said. “After four days of secret session, in which we wrestled together like gladiators, the striking of the clock told us that the hour had come. When the presiding officer’s gavel fell and he asked, ‘Shall this ordinance pass?’ there was not a dry eye in the assemblage. I felt the tears warm upon my face and was ashamed of my weakness, thinking that I was acting the boy after all among those graybeards. Then suddenly I looked up; the presiding officer was in tears and made no secret of it. The clerk who called the roll, an old man with long white hair, could not control the trembling of his voice. As each name was spoken I saw a strange sight, a man unable to give his vote without tears upon his face. It was the most moving, the most extraordinary sight ever witnessed in the legislative body. Not a sound was heard except the calling of the roll and the ‘aye’ or the ‘no’ which answered. There were fifty-five ‘noes.’ When my name was reached I meant to shout out the ‘aye’ but I couldn’t; all was too deathlike, too solemn. At last the final vote was recorded and then it was as if a cable had snapped; it was like the change from the funeral dirge to the quick step of a march past. A great shout went up--I found my voice then. I couldn’t think as wisely as some of those old men, but I could cheer louder than any of them. I wish I could make you see and feel the solemnity, the strangeness, the intoxication of that hour. Our vote didn’t take us into the Confederacy, although it severed us from the Union. We stood midway between them ready, like Quintus Curtius, to leap into the abyss. Oh, how great a thing it is to live in this time!” Lyddon’s eye left for a moment Richard’s eloquent face and traveled round the hall. At the doors dark faces were peering in. The negroes were listening breathlessly to that which meant as much to them as to the race which mastered them. “As soon as an adjournment was reached,” Richard continued, “I asked for a week’s leave and got it. I wanted to be the first man in Virginia to enlist in the army and I believe I can make it. By the way, I hear from Philip Isabey that he was the first man to enlist in Louisiana and has been elected captain of the first battery of artillery raised in the State.” So far not one word had been spoken of Neville. Richard, looking about him, suddenly realized this and then in a cool voice asked, “What news is there from my brother?” There was a silence for a moment or two and then Colonel Tremaine said tremulously, “There is no news from your brother.”