The mother sank rapidly this winter; but the two children, accustomed to her illness, were blind to the change.
When the States one by one seceded during that winter and spring, and the country was rife with war and the terror of it, the Coldwater people fished on dully as ever. Joe brought home stories of "fighting beyond there," and of men he had met on the Sandusky wharf who had gone, and then whittled and whistled as usual: the tale sounding to the two women fearful and far-off, as if it had been in the Crimea. "Though I _had_ heard of the Virginians," said Ellen simply, when she told the story. "There was Mr. Barker, a Methodist preacher, told us once of the 'man-hunters,' as he called them, and how they chained their slaves and burned them alive, and hunted men with dogs. But I took him up wrong. I thought they all were black." Ellen's idea of them was as vague as ours is of the cannibals, and not very different, I suspect.
So far off did this country of the man-hunters seem, where "there was fighting," that, when Joe wandered about uneasily in one of his weekly visits, and told again and again, with furtive glances at his mother, how half the deckhands on the schooner had gone into a regiment forming in Sandusky, and how it was a good chance to see the world, Ellen sewed quietly on, scarcely looking up. That Joe could have any interest in this dim horror of a war never crossed her poor brain.
The next day after the schooner sailed her mother grew suddenly worse, and began to sink, going faster every day for a week. It was the first time Ellen had been left alone to face danger. "If Joe was here!" the two poor creatures cried, through all their fright and pain. If Joe were there, Ellen thought all would be well again. But Thursday, his usual day for coming, passed without him. That night the mother died. Two women of the village, hearing the story from the doctor, came to the house in time to make the body ready for burial,--the "natural," as they called Ellen, sitting quietly by the bed, her face hid, not answering when they spoke.
There was a letter brought to her that night from Joe, a few lines only, written to his mother, saying he had enlisted and would not come back to say good-bye; he was going to do better for her and Ellen than he ever had done before. "I do not remember about that time," Ellen said afterward, when questioned. "My trouble came back when Joe left me." It brought the wild, wandering look into her eyes, even to refer to it in this way, I do not know if I spoke of the curious affection between this brother and sister. Father and brothers and sister had watched and cared for the girl, because of the great trouble which God had sent to her; and now all the love and gratitude she had given to them all, when living, was centred on this boy Joe. Joe absorbed all the world which her weak mind knew,--just at the age, too, when women's hearts open and are filling with thoughts of love and marriage. No matter how long Ellen had lived, "my brother," as she gravely, respectfully called him, would have been all, I think, she would ever have loved, and he would have satisfied all her cravings.