“But, Celia, the cannon can’t!  The same flag belongs to us both.”

“Not when it flies over Sumter, Honey-bird.”  There came a subtle ringing sound in Celia Craig’s voice; she leaned forward, taking the newspaper from Ailsa’s idle fingers: 

“Try to be fair,” she said in unsteady tones.  “God knows I am not trying to teach you secession, but suppose the guns on Governor’s Island were suddenly swung round and pointed at this street?  Would you care ve’y much what flag happened to be flying over Castle William?  Listen to another warning from this stainless poet of the South.”  She opened the newspaper feverishly, glanced quickly down the columns, and holding it high under the chandelier, read in a hushed but distinct voice, picking out a verse here and there at random: 

  “Calm as that second summer which precedes
    The first fall of the snow,
  In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds
    A city bides her foe.

  “As yet, behind high ramparts stem and proud
    Where bolted thunders sleep,
  Dark Sumter like a battlemented cloud
    Towers o’er the solemn deep.

  “But still along the dim Atlantic’s line
    The only hostile smoke
  Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine
    From some frail floating oak.

  “And still through streets re-echoing with trade
    Walk grave and thoughtful men
  Whose hands may one day wield the patriot’s blade
    As lightly as the pen.

  “And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim
    Over a wounded hound
  Seem each one to have caught the strength of him
    Whose sword-knot she hath hound.

  “Thus, girt without and garrisoned at home,
    Day patient following day,
  Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome
    Across her tranquil bay.

  “Shall the spring dawn, and she, still clad in steel,
    And with an unscathed brow,
  Watch o’er a sea unvexed by hostile keel
    As fair and free as now?

  “We know not.  In the Temples of the Fates
    God has inscribed her doom;
  And, all untroubled in her faith she waits
    Her triumph or her tomb!”

The hushed charm of their mother’s voice fascinated the children.  Troubled, uncertain, Ailsa rose, took a few irresolute steps toward the extension where her brother-in-law still paced to and fro in the darkness, the tip of his cigar aglow.  Then she turned suddenly.

“Can’t you understand, Ailsa?” asked her sister-in-law wistfully.

“Celia—­dearest,” she stammered, “I simply can’t understand. . . .  I thought the nation was greater than all——­”

“The State is greater, dear.  Good men will realise that when they see a sovereign people standing all alone for human truth and justice—­standing with book and sword under God’s favour, as sturdily as ever Israel stood in battle fo’ the right!—­I don’t mean to be disloyal to my husband in saying this befo’ my children.  But you ask me, and I must tell the truth if I answer at all.”