``You're gonna get caught,'' she heard Joel say to Uncle Randolph by the pump one morning.

``Not this old fox,'' chuckled Uncle Randolph. ``Everybody knows I'm just a harmless, deaf old man who takes to drink. I aim to keep a little whisky still back in the ridge for my pleasure.''

``Whisky still, my foot,'' said Joel. ``You're back there riding with the guerrillas, the Moccasin Rangers.''

``Hush,'' said Uncle Randolph, smiling, ``or I'll give you another black eye.'' He patted the eye Joel had had blackened in a fight over being Rebel at the crossroads some days back.

Kate had no idea what they were talking of, although she had seen the blue lights and strange fires burning and winking on the ridges at night, had heard horsemen on the River Road and hill trails through the nights till dawn. Stranger, Uncle Randolph began riding home nights with a jug strapped to his saddle, drunkenly singing ``Old Dan Tucker'' at the top of his voice. Hearing his voice ring raucously up from the road, Kate would await him anxiously and watch perplexed as he walked into the house, cold sober. What he was about became clear to her with the circulation of another broadside proclamation by General McClellan, threatening reprisals against Rebel guerrillas. She was taken up in worry for the reckless old man.

Kate drew more and more on her affection for Joel through the hot days of summer work. She had taken him out of the schoolhouse and closed the school for the summer, after she saw Miss Snow crack Joel across the face with a ruler for letting a snake loose in the schoolroom. Kate had walked past the school on her morning chores and had seen the whole incident, had seen Joel's burning humiliation before Miss Snow's cold, bespectacled wrath. He had the hardest pains of growing before him now, as he approached twelve. These would be his hardest years, she knew, and he missed his father desperately.