Miss Ravenel was much spited in secret when she saw his advertisement; but she was too proud to expose her interest in the matter by opposition. What object had she in keeping him at home and out of danger? Moreover, after the fashion of most southern women, she believed in fighting, and respected a man the more for drawing the sword, no matter for which party. After a while, when his activity and cheerfulness of spirit had returned to him, she began to talk with her old freedom of expression, and indulged in playful prophecies about the Bull Runs he would fight, the masterly retreats he would accomplish, and the captivities he would undergo. "When you are a prisoner in Richmond," she said, "I'll write to my Louisiana friends in the southern army and tell them what a spiteful abolitionist you are. I'll get them to put a colored friend and brother into the same cell with you. You won't like it. You'll promise to go back to your law office, if they'll send that fellow to his plantation." The Doctor was all sympathy and interest, and brimmed over with prophecies of Colburne's success. He judged the people of Barataria by the people of Louisiana; the latter preferred gentlemen for officers, and so of course would the former. Notwithstanding his hatred of slavery he was still somewhat under the influence of its aristocratical glamour. He had not yet fully comprehended that the war was a struggle of the plain people against an oligarchy, and that the plain people had, not very understandingly but still very resolutely, determined to lead the fighting as well as to do it. He had not yet full faith that the northern working-man would beat the southern gentleman, without much guidance from the northern scholar. "Don't be discouraged," he said to Colburne. "I feel the utmost confidence in your prospects. As soon as it is generally understood who you are and what your character is, you will have recruits to give away. It is impossible that these bar-tenders and tinkers should raise good men as easily as a gentleman and a graduate of the university. They may get a run of ruff-scuff, but it won't last. I predict that your company will be completed sooner and composed of better material than any other in the regiment. I would no more give your chance for that of one of these tinkers than I would exchange a meteorite for its weight in old nails." The Doctor abounded in promising but unfruitful schemes for helping forward the Putnam Rangers. He proposed that Colburne should send a circular to all the clergymen and Sabbath-school superintendents of the county, calling upon each parish to furnish the subscriber with only one good recruit. "If they do that," said he, "as they unquestionably will when the case is properly presented to them, why the company is filled at once."