"If Murdock cannot find her," he wrote, "I am convinced no one can, and
I leave the matter now to him, feeling that another duty calls me, the
duty of fighting for my country."
It was just after the disastrous battle of Bull Run, when people were
wild with excitement, and Hugh was thus borne with the tide, until at
last he found himself enrolled as a private in a regiment of cavalry
gathering in one of the Northern States. There had been an instant's
hesitation, a clinging of the heart to the dear old home at Spring Bank,
where his mother and Alice were; a thought of Irving Stanley, and then,
with an eagerness which made his whole frame tremble, he had seized the
pen and written down his name, amid deafening cheers for the brave
Kentuckian. This done, there was no turning back; nor did he desire it.
It seemed as if he were made for war, so eagerly he longed to join the
fray. Only one thing was wanting, and that was Rocket. He had tried the
"Yankee horses," as he called them, but found them far inferior to his
pet. Rocket he must have, and in his letter to his mother he made
arrangements for her to send him northward by a Versailles merchant,
who, he knew, was coming to New York.
Hugh and Rocket, they would make a splendid match, and so Alice thought,
as, on the day when Rocket was led away, she stood with her arms around
his graceful neck, whispering to him the words of love she would fain
have sent his master. She had recovered from the first shock of Hugh's
enlistment. She could think of him now calmly as a soldier; could pray
that God would keep him, and even feel a throb of pride that one who had
lived so many years in Kentucky, then poising almost equally in the
scale, should come out so bravely for the right, though by that act he
called down curses on his head from those at home who favored rebellion,
and who, if they fought at all, would cast in their lot with the
seceding States. She had written to Hugh a kind, sisterly letter,
telling him how proud she was of him, and how her sympathy and prayers
would follow him everywhere. "And if," she had added, in concluding,
"you are sick, or wounded, I will come to you as a sister might do. I
will find you wherever you are."
She had sent this letter to him three weeks before, and now she stood
caressing the beautiful Rocket, who sometimes proudly arched his long
neck, and then looked wistfully at the sad group gathered around him, as
if he knew that was no ordinary parting. Colonel Tiffton, who had heard
what was going on, had ridden over to expostulate with Mrs. Worthington
against sending Rocket North. "Better keep him at home," he said, "and
tell Hugh to come back, and let those who had raised the muss settle
their own difficulty."