Trouble not for the future, but leave it in the hand of Him Who shapes all futures. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. So He said. Accept the saying and be grateful. It is something to have gained the love of such a one as this Roman, for, unless the wisdom which I have gained through many years is at fault, he is true and honest; and that man must be good at heart who can be reared in Rome and in the worship of its gods and yet remain honest.

    This book is more than the moving story of a Kentucky mountain boy who fights to save the Union. Even the Civil War itself is but an epic stage for the novel's main business--the testing and maturation of a hero as American as Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer.

    The heroine of the battle--a young, spunky, and beautiful frontier girl--was Betty Zane