Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/134

 horse's head away from the centre of the town, out toward the open country.

For three days William Pratt bore himself like a man indifferent to the great events that mastered every heart. He lived apparently unmoved by the tremendous emotions that surged about him. His face was set and hard. His eye was dull. His neighbors, when they saw him pass, murmured to one another the fatal word, "Secesh," fancying that they had the key to that stony indifference. And all the while his mind was in a tumult.

It was an inner vision rather than a thought that occupied him. The singular, irresistible power of a symbol had laid hold upon him. It was not the country he thought of, not the cause. It was the flag, the Stars and Stripes, that he had loved unconsciously for forty years, that riveted his mind. He saw them floating over Fort Sumter, brave and proud as they had floated over the city when he drove across the bridge on that Saturday morning. He saw them lowered at the bidding of a hostile gun.

For on Sunday news came of the surrender of the fort. The announcement was made from the pulpit. Strong men were shaken with sobs. Women's faces blanched. A little child in the pew in front of him pulled at his father's hand which hid his father's face, saying: "Don't ee cry, Papa." All day long that childish voice haunted William in meaningless reiteration. Yet he sat with tearless eyes and firm-set lips, seem-