“Come in, Rhoda,” said Dr. Ware, as she hesitated at the door, “and hear the bad news.” “Bad news! Oh, father, what is it?” “The Supreme Court has decided the Dred Scott case and the result is even worse than we have feared. Chief Justice Taney has dragged his official robes through slavery filth and given to the pro-slaveryites everything they want!” “Oh, father--Horace! What does he say?” “The decision is,” answered Hardaker, “that a slave cannot be a citizen--practically, that a nigger has no rights a white man is bound to respect--that Congress has no right to prohibit slavery in the territories, and that therefore the Missouri Compromise is unconstitutional and void.” “It knocks the very breath out of the Republican party,” added Dr. Ware. “Its existence is based on the effort to get Congress to forbid slavery in the territories. So, now--where is it? Where are we?” “We are done for, all of us,” said Kimball, in hopeless tones. “It has knocked the footing from under the whole anti-slavery fight. It binds us hand and foot, and it looks now as if we might as well stop fighting.” “Oh, no, Mr. Kimball!” Rhoda exclaimed. “Don’t say that! We must keep on fighting as long as there’s one of us left!” “She’s right, Kimball!” said Dr. Ware, his glance resting for a moment upon his daughter’s face. She looked up in some confusion at having broken in so abruptly, and met his eyes. Cool and clear, they seemed to be looking into her very heart and down in their gray depths as they turned away she felt rather than saw a gleam of gratification. The hot blood flushed her face, and conscience, that had just now barely stirred under its rose-leaf coverlet, roused and began to tell her that she too must keep on fighting. Had her father guessed how near she had been to deserting their cause, she wondered. “Yet, she’s right,” Dr. Ware was repeating, with a thump of his fist on the table. “We’ve got to find standing ground somewhere, and somehow keep up the fight!” “Their next step will be to reopen the slave trade--they’re demanding that already,” Kimball went on. “And then we shall have once more all the horrors of the slave ships sheltered under the law and people taught to regard the traffic as right because it is legal.” “Yes,” broke in Hardaker, “that’s the worst of these legalized wrongs--the way they debauch the consciences of people. Look at the way the northern Democrats are defending the right of property in slaves! A few years ago they admitted slavery was wrong, but said it was here and so we must make the best of it. Now they say it is all right and must be protected and are tumbling over one another in their eagerness to give the South everything she wants!” “Well, this decision gives her everything she wants now, and opens the door for her to take anything else she may want later.”