"Don't be bitter, Harry," he said. "It's going to be a fair fight.""Well, I hope so, here in this little town as well as on the greater field of the country. Are you staying long in Frankfort, Dick?""Only today. I'm going back tomorrow to Camp Dick Robinson.""Well, don't you make friends with that fellow Skelly, even if he is on the same side you are.""I won't, Harry, have no fear of that."
The two went together to the hotel, and found Colonel Kenton at breakfast. He welcomed his nephew with great affection, and made him sit by him until he had finished his breakfast. While he was drinking his coffee Harry told him of Skelly's presence. The Colonel frowned, but merely uttered three words about him.
"We'll watch him," he said.
Then the three went out and saw the little town grow into life and seethe with the heat of the spirit. Although actual skirmishing had taken place already in the state there was no violence here, except of speech. All the members of the House and Senate were gathered, and so far as Harry could observe the Southerners were in the majority.
Others thought so, too. Bertrand was sanguine. His eyes burned with the fire of enthusiasm, lighting up his olive face.
"We'll win. We'll surely win!" he said. "This state which we need so much will be out of the Union inside of two weeks."But Senator Culver was more guarded in his opinion, or at least in the expression of it.
"It's going to be a mighty hot fight," he said.
Harry and Dick together watched the convening of the Legislature, having chosen seats in the upper lobby of the House. Harry looked for Skelly, but not seeing him he inferred that the mountaineer's leave of absence was short and that he had gone back to camp.
Dick himself left the next morning for Camp Dick Robinson, and Harry shook his hand over and over again as he departed. The feeling between the cousins was strong and it had been renewed by their meeting under such circumstances.
"I may go east," said Dick, as he mounted his horse. "The big things are going to happen there first."Harry watched him as he rode away and he wondered when they would meet again. Like Colonel Leonidas Talbot he felt now that this was going to be a great war, wide in its sweep.
Harry returned to his hotel, very thoughtful. The second parting with his cousin, who had been his playmate all his life, was painful, and he realized that while he was wondering when and where they would meet again it might never occur at all. He found his father and his friends holding a close conference in his room at the hotel. Senator Culver, Mr. Bracken, Gardner, the editor, and others yet higher in the councils of the Confederacy, were there. Bertrand sat in a corner, saying little, but watching everything with ardent, burning eyes.
Letters had come from the chief Southern leaders. There was one from Jefferson Davis, himself, another from the astute Benjamin, another from Toombs, bold and brusque as befitted his temperament, and yet more from Stephens and Slidell and Yancey and others. Colonel Kenton read them one by one to the twenty men who were crowded into the room. They were appealing, insistent, urgent. Their tone might vary, but the tenor was the same. They must take Kentucky out of the Union and take her out at once. In the West the line of attack upon the South would lead through Kentucky. But if the state threw in her fortunes with the South, the advance of Lincoln's troops would be blocked. The force of example would be immense, and a hundred thousand valiant Kentuckians could easily turn the scale in favor of the Confederacy.
Harry listened to them a long time, but growing tired at last, went out again into the fresh air. Young though he was, he realized that it was one thing for the Southern leaders to ask, but it was another thing for the Kentuckians to deliver. He saw all about him the signs of a powerful opposition, and he saw, too, that these forces, scattered at first, were consolidating fast, presenting a formidable front.
The struggle began and it was waged for days in the picturesque old Capitol. There was no violence, but feeling deepened. Men put restraint upon their words, but their hearts behind them were full of bitterness, bitterness on one side because the Northern sympathizers were so stubborn, and bitterness on the other, because the Southern sympathizers showed the same stubbornness. Friends of a lifetime used but cold words to each other and saw widening between then, a gulf which none could cross. Supporters of either cause poured into the little capital. Tremendous pressure was brought to bear upon House and Senate.
Members were compelled to strive with every kind of emotion or appeal, love of the Union, cool judgment in the midst of alarms, state patriotism, kinship, and all the conflicting ties which pull at those who stand upon the border line on the eve of a great civil war. And yet they could come to no decision. Day after day they fought back and forth over points of order and resolutions and the result was always the same. North and South were locked fast within the two rooms of one little Capitol.
They were rimmed around meanwhile by a fiery horizon that steadily came closer and closer. The guns reducing Sumter had been a sufficient signal. North and South were sharply arrayed against each other.
The Southern volunteers, full of ardor and fire, continued to pour to their standards. The North, larger and heavier, moved more slowly, but it moved. The whole land swayed under an intense agitation.
The news of skirmishes along the border came, magnified and colored in the telling. Men's minds were inflamed more every day.
When Harry had been in Frankfort about a week he received a letter from St. Clair, written from Richmond, urging him, if he could, to get an assignment to the East, and to come to that city, which was to be the permanent capital of the South.
