As he listened he leaned nearer the window and watched, half enviously, the
men he had once known. His old life had been a part of theirs and now,
looking in from the outside, it seemed very far away--the poetry of war
beside which the other was mere dull history in which no names were
written. He thought of Prince Rupert, and of his own joy in the saddle, and
the longing for the raid seized him like a heartache. Oh, to feel again the
edge of the keen wind in his teeth and to hear the silver ring of the hoofs
on the frozen road.
"Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cavalry,
If you want to have a good time jine the cavalry."
The words floated out to him, and he laughed aloud as if he had awakened
from a comic dream.
That was the romance of war, but, after all, he was only the man who bore
the musket.
VIII
THE ALTAR OF THE WAR GOD
With the opening spring Virginia went down to Richmond, where Jack Morson
had taken rooms for her in the house of an invalid widow whose three sons
were at the front. The town was filled to overflowing with refugees from
the North and representatives from the South, and as the girl drove through
the crowded streets, she exclaimed wonderingly at the festive air the
houses wore.
"Why, the doors are all open," she observed. "It looks like one big
family."
"That's about what it is," replied Jack. "The whole South is here and
there's not a room to be had for love or money.
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