The town was asleep, except for the rattle of milk-carts, the banging of
shutters, and the hum of a street-car, and Crittenden moved through
empty streets to the broad smooth turnpike on the south, where Raincrow
shook his head, settled his haunches, and broke into the swinging trot
peculiar to his breed--for home.

Spring in the Bluegrass! The earth spiritual as it never is except under
new-fallen snow--in the first shy green. The leaves, a floating mist of
green, so buoyant that, if loosed, they must, it seemed, have floated
upward--never to know the blight of frost or the droop of age. The air,
rich with the smell of new earth and sprouting grass, the long, low
skies newly washed and, through radiant distances, clouds light as
thistledown and white as snow. And the birds! Wrens in the hedges,
sparrows by the wayside and on fence-rails, starlings poised over
meadows brilliant with glistening dew, larks in the pastures--all
singing as they sang at the first dawn, and the mood of nature that
perfect blending of earth and heaven that is given her children but
rarely to know. It was good to be alive at the breaking of such a
day--good to be young and strong, and eager and unafraid, when the
nation called for its young men and red Mars was the morning star. The
blood of dead fighters began to leap again in his veins. His nostrils
dilated and his chin was raised proudly--a racial chord touched within
him that had been dumb a long while. And that was all it was--the blood
of his fathers; for it was honor and not love that bound him to his own
flag. He was his mother's son, and the unspoken bitterness that lurked
in her heart lurked, likewise, on her account, in his.