But when the war closed, the great caravan that had lagged while the war was raging, began to trail itself steadily in front of Mrs.Barclay's door, through the streets of Sycamore Ridge and out over the western hills.

Soldiers with their families passed, going to the free homesteads, and the line of movers' wagons began with daybreak and rumbled by far into the night.

But hundreds of wagons stopped in Sycamore Ridge, and the stage came crowded every night.

Brick buildings, the town's mortal pride, began showing their fronts on Main Street, and other streets in the town began to assert themselves.

Mrs.Barclay's school grew from a score of children in 1864 to three rooms full in '65, and in '66 the whole town turned out to welcome General and Mrs.Ward, she that was Miss Lucy Barnes, and there was a reunion of "C" Company that night, and a camp-fire in Culpepper Hall, and the next day Lige Bemis was painting a sign which read "Philemon R.Ward, Attorney-at-Law, Pension Matters Promptly Attended To." And the first little Ward was born at the Thayer House and named Eli Thayer Ward.
The spring that found John Barclay sixteen years old found him a browned, gray-eyed, lumpy sort of a boy, big at the wrong places, and stunted at the wrong places, with a curious, uneven sort of an education.