"Has not the sad experience of many others inspired our fears? Neither has the end come with us yet. You said that the main Northern force would come this way tomorrow. We do not fear you and those whom you control, but how about those who are to come?" "I can speak only for the class to which I belong--the genuine soldiers who are animated by as single and unfaltering a spirit as the best in your armies. If a Confederate column were going through the North you could not answer for the conduct of every lawless, depraved man in such a force. Still, I admit with you that war is essentially cruel, and that the aim ever must be to inflict as much injury as possible on one's adversaries." "But how can you take part in such a war?" Mrs. Whately asked. "All we asked was to be let alone." "Yes, sir," added Mr. Baron, "how can you justify these ruthless invasions, this breaking up of our domestic institutions, this despoiling of our property and rights by force?" and there was a tremor of suppressed excitement in his voice. Scoville glanced at Miss Lou to see how far she sympathized with her kindred. He observed that her face was somewhat stern in its expression, yet full of intelligent interest. It was not the index of mere prejudice and hate. "Yes," he thought, "she is capable of giving me a fair hearing; the others are not. Mr. Baron," he said, "your views are natural, perhaps, if not just. I know it is asking much of human nature when you are suffering and must suffer so much, to form what will become the historical judgment on the questions at issue. The law under which the North is fighting is the supreme one--that of self-preservation. Even if we had let you alone--permitted you to separate and become independent without a blow, war would have come soon. You would not and could not have let us alone. Consider but one point: your slaves would merely have to pass the long boundary line stretching nearly across the continent, in order to be on free soil. You could compel their return only by conquering and almost annihilating the North. You will say that we should think as you do on the subject, and I must answer that it is every man and woman's right to think according to individual conscience, according to the light within. Deny this right, and you put no bounds to human slavery. Pardon me, but looking in your eyes and those of these ladies, I can see that I should become a slave instantly if you had your way. Unconsciously and inevitably you would make me one, for it is your strongest impulse to make me agree with you, to see things exactly as you do. The fact that you sincerely believe you are right would make no difference if I just as sincerely believed you were wrong. If I could not think and act for myself I should be a slave. You might say, 'We KNOW we are right, that what we believe has the Divine sanction.' That is what the tormentors of the Inquisition said and believed; that is what my