Colburne thought so too, but would not desert his friends; he shrugged his shoulders in spirit and resolved to endure what might come. The negroes were in a state of exquisite alarm. The entire black population of the Lafourche Interior was making for the swamps or other places of shelter; and only the love of the Ravenel gang for their good massa and beautiful missus kept them from being swept away by the contagious current. The horror with which they regarded the possibility of being returned into slavery delighted the Doctor, who, even in those circumstances, dilated enthusiastically upon it as a proof that the race was capable of high aspirations. "They have already acquired the love of individual liberty," said this amiable optimist. "The cognate love of liberty in the abstract, the liberty of all men, is not far ahead of them. How superior they already are to the white wretches who are fighting to send them back to slavery!--Shedding blood, their own and their brothers', for slavery! Is it not utterly amazing? Risking life and taking life to restore slavery! It is the foolishest, wickedest, most demoniacal infatuation that ever possessed humanity. The Inquisition, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, were common sense and evangelical mercy compared to this pro-slavery rebellion. And yet these imps of atrocity pretend to be Christians. They are the most orthodox creatures that ever served the devil. They rant and roar in the Methodist camp-meetings; they dogmatize on the doctrines in the Presbyterian church; they make the responses in the Episcopal liturgy. There is only one pinnacle of hypocrisy that they never have had the audacity to mount. They have not yet brought themselves to make the continuance and spread of slavery an object of prayer. It would be logical, you know; it would be just like their impudence. I have expected that they would come to it. I have looked forward to the time when their hypocritical priesthood would put up bloody hands in the face of an indignant Heaven, and say, 'O God of Justice! O Jesus, lover of the oppressed! bless, extend and perpetuate slavery; prosper us in selling the wife away from the husband, and the child away from the parent; enable us to convert the blood and tears of our fellow creatures into filthy lucre; help us to degrade man, who was made in Thine image; and to Father, Son and Spirit be all the Glory!'--Can you imagine anything more astoundingly wicked than such a petition? And yet I am positively astonished that they have not got up monthly concerts of prayer, and fabricated a liturgy, all pregnant with just such or similar blasphemies. But God would not wait for them to reach this acme of iniquity. His patience is exhausted, and He is even now bringing them to punishment." "They have some power left yet, as we feel to-night," said Colburne.