Mr. Onslow paced the deck for a moment, and then, returning, exclaimed: “O the unspeakable crimes, barbarities, and deviltries to which the system has educated men here at the South during the last thirty years! Educated not merely the poor and ignorant, but the rich and refined! The North knows hardly a tithe of the actual horrors. Worse than the wildest religious fanaticism, slavery sees men tortured, hung, mutilated, subjected to every conceivable indignity, cruelty, agony, simply because the victim is unsound, or suspected to be unsound, on the one supreme question. I myself have been often threatened, and sometimes the presentiment is strong upon me that my end will be a bloody one. I should not long be safe, were it not that in our region there are brave men who, like me, begin to question the divinity of the obscene old hag.” Mr. Onslow again walked away, and then, coming close up to Vance, said in low tones: “But retribution must come,—as sure as God lives, retribution must come, and that speedily! Slavery must die, in order that Freedom and Civilization may live. I see it in all the signs of the times, in all the straws that drift by me on the current of events. Retribution must come,—come with bloodshed, anguish, and desolation to both North and South,—to Slavery, with spasms of diabolical cruelty, violence, and unholy wrath, and to Freedom with trials long and doubtful, but awaking the persistent energy which a righteous cause will inspire, and leading ultimately to permanent triumph and to the annihilation on this continent of the foul power which has ruled us so long, and which shall dare to close in deadly combat with the young genius of universal Liberty.” Vance grasped Onslow by the hand, but seemed too excited to speak. Then, as if half ashamed of his emotion, he said, “Will there be men at the South, think you, to array themselves on the side of freedom, in the event of a collision?” “There will be such men, but, until the slave-power shall be annihilated forever, they will be a helpless minority. A few rich leaders control the masses which Slavery has herself first imbruted. Crush out slavery, and there will be regenerators of the land who will spring up by thousands to welcome their brethren of the North, whose interests, like theirs, lie in universal freedom and justice.” “You do not, then, believe those who tell us there is an eternal incompatibility between the people of the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States?”