Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/135

 ingly shut out alike from the terror and the exaltation of the hour.

When the service was ended, and he stepped out into the sunshine, his wife and children stayed behind while he walked home alone.

On Tuesday William Pratt did a startlingly inconsistent thing. He deliberately enrolled his name among the defenders of that cause about which he had been so stubbornly sceptical.

When he came home from the recruiting office in the afternoon, he found his brother Ben sitting with his wife. It was just at dusk and the gas had not yet been lighted. William came in with a muttered greeting and took his seat in a large arm-chair where he leaned back heavily.

"Well, Ben," said he, "I'm glad to find you here. I suppose you'll be surprised to know that I've enlisted."

"Enlisted!"

"Enlisted!"

Edna's voice was sharp and high, Ben's low with consternation. There was a dead silence before Ben spoke again with a somewhat unsteady accent.

"Why, Bill," he said, "I don't understand. I thought you didn't believe in the cause."

"You always sided with the South!" Edna urged, with feeble remonstrance.

"That was before they fired on the flag," her husband answered, in a tone of voice that she had never heard before.