“How was your conversion effected?” asked Onslow. “Did you fall in love with some Yankee schoolmistress? I wasn’t aware you’d been living at the North.” “I’ve never set foot in a Free State,” replied Kenrick. “My life has been passed here in Louisiana on my father’s plantation. I was bred a slaveholder, and lived one after the most straitest sect of our religion until about six months ago. See at the trunkmaker’s my learned papers in De Bow’s Review. They’re entitled ‘Slave Labor _versus_ Free.’ Unfortunately for my admirers and disciples, there was in my father’s library a little stray volume of Channing’s writings on slavery. I read it at first contemptuously, then attentively, then respectfully, and at last lovingly and prayerfully. The truth, almost insufferably radiant, poured in upon me. Convictions were heaved up in my mind like volcanic islands out of the sea. I was spiritually magnetized and possessed.” “What said your father?” “My father and I had always lived more as companions than as sire and son. There is only a difference of twenty-two years in our ages. My own mother, a very beautiful woman who died when I was five years old, was six years older than my father. From her I derived my intellectual peculiarities. Of course my father has cast me off,—disowned, disinherited me. He is sincere in his pro-slavery fanaticism. I wish I could say as much of all who fall in with the popular current.” “But what do you mean to do, Charles? ’T is unsafe for you to stay here in New Orleans, holding such sentiments.” “My plans are not yet matured,” replied Kenrick. “I shall stand by the old flag, you may be sure of that. And I shall liberate all the slaves I can, beginning with my father’s.” “You would not fight against your own State?” “Incontinently I would if my own State should persist in rebellion against the Union; and so I would fight against my own county should that rebel against the State.” “Well, schoolfellow,” said Onslow, with a fascinating frankness, “let us reserve our quarrels for the time when we shall cross swords in earnest. That time may come sooner than we dream of. The less can we afford to say bitter things to each other now. Come, and let me introduce you to a charming young lady. How long do you stay here?” “Perhaps a week; perhaps a month.” “I shall watch over you while you remain, for I do not fancy seeing my old crony hung.” “Better so than be false to the light within me. Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Onslow made no reply, but affectionately, almost compassionately, took Kenrick by the arm and led him away. Vance put down his newspaper, and then, immersed in meditation, slowly passed out of the dining-hall and up-stairs into his own room. CHAPTER XXI. A MONSTER OF INGRATITUDE. “Faint hearts are usually false hearts, choosing sin rather than suffering.”—_Argyle, before his execution._