Kimball’s thin old hands were clenched together and his gray-bearded face was sad with the hopelessness of age. For thirty years he had been fighting with all his strength in the cause of the slave and he had seen the anti-slavery sentiment grow from the conviction of a mere handful of people to the determination of a mighty multitude. And now, when at last it seemed as if they had almost reached the point where at least the thing could be penned up in small space and its political power taken from it, now had come this deadly blow, to nullify every effort they could make. Rhoda knew what long years of endeavor and sacrifice he had spent in the anti-slavery cause and how ardent had been his hope that he might live to see slavery ended and the whole country made free. She watched him now, her cheeks flushing and her heart responding with full sympathy to the grief and despair that filled his breast. “If Congress,” he went on bitterly, “must recognize and defend the master’s right to his slave wherever he takes him, then there can be no hindrance to slavery in any part of this country, and Toombs and Davis and all the rest of them can yet call the roll of their slaves in the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, or any place else they wish. That, my friends, is what this decision means!” His voice trembled and Rhoda saw in his eyes the tears of an old man whose dearest hope had come to naught. She was conscious of a remorseful shame, as though she herself had been in some measure responsible for his grief and despair. For had she not, was her swift, self-accusing thought, been ready to compromise with this monster? “No, no, Mr. Kimball, you mustn’t give up like that,” Hardaker was exclaiming, “not while there’s one of us left to die fighting. And the election last fall showed that there are more than a million of us, who at least are ready to help. Rhoda’s got the right idea,” and he looked at her with smiling approval. Again she blushed and turned her eyes away, feeling acutely that she did not deserve this praise and miserably wondering if they would despise her were she to tell them that she had been willing, only an hour before, to become a slaveholder’s wife. “It seem to me,” Horace went on, “that we’ve got to go right on with the popular propaganda against slavery. Why, this very decision of Chief Justice Taney--it’s so atrocious and inhuman, it will be the best campaign document we’ve ever had. We ought to circulate it by the thousand! I’m not sure, friends, but it will be a good thing for us, in the long run!” Dr. Ware smiled slightly. He was accustomed to the enthusiasm with which Hardaker, in a dozen sentences, could convince himself of the truth of a proposition which, five minutes before, he would have flouted. Nevertheless, this idea appealed to him.