Be sure and get yourself transferred to the East, Harry, where the great things are going to happen.

Friends are waiting for you here.

Colonel Talbot and Major St.Hilaire have a lot of power and they will use it for you." Harry was walking on the hills that look down on the Capitol, when he read the letter and its warm words made his pulses leap with pleasure.
He felt now the pull of opposing magnets.

He wanted to remain in Frankfort with his father and see the issue, and he also wanted to join those South Carolina comrades of his in the East, where the battle fronts now lowered so ominously.
He thought long over the letter, and, at last sat down by the monument to the Kentucky volunteers who fell at the battle of Buena Vista.
The pull of the East was gradually growing the stronger.

He did not see what he could do at Frankfort, and he wanted to be off there on the Virginia fields where the bayonets would soon meet.
The curious feeling that war could not come here in his own land persisted in Harry.