carryalls and buggies, and even barouches, weighted down with frying-pans and chairs and feather beds.  But we’ve got spirit, and we can whip Lyon’s Dutchmen and Yankees just as we are.  Spirit is what counts, and the Yankees haven’t got it, I was made to-day a Captain of Cavalry under Colonel Rives.  I ride a great, raw-boned horse like an elephant.  He jolts me until I am sore,—­not quite as easy as my thoroughbred, Jefferson.  Tell Jinny to care for him, and have him ready when we march into St. Louis.”

“Cowskinprairie, 9th July.

“We have whipped Sigel on the prairie by Coon Creek and killed—­we
don’t know how many.  Tell Maude that George distinguished himself
in the fight.  We cavalry did not get a chance.

“We have at last met McCulloch and his real soldiers.  We cheered until we cried when we saw their ranks of gray, with the gold buttons and the gold braid and the gold stars.  General McCulloch has taken me on his staff, and promised me a uniform.  But how to clothe and feed and arm our men!  We have only a few poor cattle, and no money.  But our men don’t complain.  We shall whip the Yankees before we starve.”

For many days Mrs. Colfax did not cease to bewail the hardship which her dear boy was forced to endure.  He, who was used to linen sheets and eider down, was without rough blanket or shelter; who was used to the best table in the state, was reduced to husks.

“But, Aunt Lillian,” cried Virginia, “he is fighting for the South.  If he were fed and clothed like the Yankees, we should not be half so proud of him.”

Why set down for colder gaze the burning words that Clarence wrote to Virginia.  How she pored over that letter, and folded it so that even the candle-droppings would not be creased and fall away!  He was happy, though wretched because he could not see her.  It was the life he had longed for.  At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness in this world.  He was no longer the mere idler whom she had chidden.

“Jinny, do you remember saying so many years ago that our ruin would come of our not being able to work?  How I wish you could see us felling trees to make bullet-moulds, and forging slugs for canister, and making cartridges at night with our bayonets as candlesticks.  Jinny dear, I know that you will keep up your courage.  I can see you sewing for us, I can hear you praying for us.”

It was, in truth, how Virginia learned to sew.  She had always detested it.  Her fingers were pricked and sore weeks after she began.  Sad to relate, her bandages, shirts, and havelocks never reached the front, —­those havelocks, to withstand the heat of the tropic sun, which were made in thousands by devoted Union women that first summer of the war, to be ridiculed as nightcaps by the soldiers.

“Why should not our soldiers have them, too?” said Virginia to the Russell girls.  They were never so happy as when sewing on them against the arrival of the Army of Liberation, which never came.