He had begun to feel bored by the conversation, and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head of thick white hair.

Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that this sunshine spot was a white bird's-next and, and he had a momentary half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier cap on its head.

The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a sound in the boy's ears.
"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and never doubted.

We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been building up just to be wasted.

But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the long run, over armies that fought for what they considered their rights.
"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew.