The poor old man was in part proud of this and in part grieved.
“I have a son a general in each army,” he said to a stranger who came to his house in those days; “but what strength is there in a fagot when it is separated? Of what use is a house that is divided against itself? The boys would kill each other if they met.”
“It is very sad,” said the stranger.
“Sad!” said the old man. “It is as though the devil were let loose upon the earth;—and so he is; so he is.”
The family came to understand that General Tom was with the Confederate army which was confronting the Federal army of the Potomac and defending Richmond; whereas it was well known that Frank was in Kentucky with the army on the Green River, which was hoping to make its way into Tennessee, and which did so early in the following year. It must be understood that Kentucky, though a slave state, had never seceded, and that therefore it was divided off from the Southern States, such as Tennessee and that part of Virginia which had seceded, by a cordon of pickets; so that there was no coming up from the Confederate army to Frankfort, in Kentucky. There could, at any rate, be no easy or safe coming up for such a one as General Tom, seeing that being a soldier he would be regarded as a spy, and certainly treated as a prisoner if found within the Northern lines. Nevertheless, general as he was, he kept his engagement with Ada, and made his way into the gardens of his father’s house on the night of Christmas-eve. And Ada was the first who knew that he was there. Her ear first caught the sound of his footsteps, and her hand raised for him the latch of the garden door.
“Oh, Tom, it is not you?”
“But it is though, Ada, my darling!” Then there was a little pause in his speech. “Did I not tell you that I should see you today?”
“Hush. Do you know who is here? Your brother came across to us from the Green River yesterday.”
“The mischief he did! Then I shall never find my way back again. If you knew what I have gone through for this!”
Ada immediately stepped out through the door and on to the snow, standing close up against him as she whispered to him, “I don’t think Frank would betray you,” she said. “I don’t think he would.”
“I doubt him—doubt him hugely. But I suppose I must trust him. I got through the pickets close to Cumberland Gap, and I left my horse at Stoneley’s halfway between this and Lexington. I cannot go back tonight now that I have come so far!”
“Wait, Tom; wait a minute, and I will go in and tell your mother. But you must be hungry. Shall I bring you food?”
“Hungry enough, but I will not eat my father’s victuals out here in the snow.”
“Wait a moment, dearest, till I speak to my aunt.”
Then Ada slipped back into the house and soon managed to get Mrs. Reckenthorpe away from the room in which the major and his second son were sitting.
“Tom is here,” she said, “in the garden. He had encountered all this danger to pay us a visit because it is Christmas. Oh, aunt, what are we to do? He says that Frank would certainly give him up!”
Mrs. Reckenthorpe was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, but even with this advantage on her side Ada’s tidings were almost too much for her. She, however, at last managed to consult the major, and he resolved upon appealing to the generosity of his younger son. By this time the Confederate general was warming himself in the kitchen, having declared that his brother might do as he pleased;—he would not skulk away from his father’s house in the night.
“Frank,” said the father, as his younger son sat silently thinking of what had been told him, “it cannot be your duty to be false to your father in his own house.”
“It is not always easy, Sir, for a man to see what is his duty. I wish that either he or I had not come here.”
“But he is here; and you, his brother, would not take advantage of his coming to his father’s house?” said the old man.
“Do you remember, Sir, how he told me last year that if ever he met me on the field he would shoot me like a dog?”
“But, Frank, you know that he is the last man in the world to carry out such a threat. Now he has come here with great danger.”
“And I have come with none; but I do not see that that makes any difference.”
“He has put up with it all that he may see the girl he loves.”
“Psha!” said Frank, rising up from his chair. “When a man has work to do, he is a fool to give way to play. The girl he loves! Does he not know that it is impossible that she should ever marry him? Father, I ought to insist that he should leave this house as a prisoner. I know that that would be my duty.”
“You would have, Sir, to bear my curse.”
“I should not the less have done my duty. But, father, independently of your threat, I will neglect that duty. I cannot bring myself to break your heart and my mother’s. But I will not see him. Goodbye, Sir. I will go up to the hotel, and will leave the place before daybreak tomorrow.”
After some few further words Frank Reckenthorpe left the house without encountering his brother. He also had not seen Ada Forster since that former Christmas when they had all been together, and he had now left his camp
