If there was war? He had lain awake in his berth a long while, looking
out the window and wondering. He had been born among the bleeding
memories of one war. The tales of his nursery had been tales of war. And
though there had been talk of war through the land for weeks before he
left home, it had no more seemed possible that in his lifetime could
come another war than that he should live to see any other myth of his
childhood come true.
Now, it was daybreak on the edge of the Bluegrass, and, like a dark
truth from a white light, three tall letters leaped from the paper in
his hand--War! There was a token in the very dawn, a sword-like flame
flashing upward. The man in the White House had called for willing
hands by the thousands to wield it, and the Kentucky Legion, that had
fought in Mexico, had split in twain to fight for the North and for the
South, and had come shoulder to shoulder when the breach was closed--the
Legion of his own loved State--was the first body of volunteers to reach
for the hilt. Regulars were gathering from the four winds to an old
Southern battlefield. Already the Legion was on its way to camp in the
Bluegrass. His town was making ready to welcome it, and among the names
of the speakers who were to voice the welcome, he saw his own--Clay
Crittenden.