Rhoda mused for a moment “Father!” she exclaimed suddenly, and in both voice and manner he was aware of some new feeling and access of energy that seemed full of significance. “What do you think? Is this awful thing always going to divide the North from the South? Are we always going to hate each other like this? Is there any help for it?” “I don’t know, Rhoda. Sometimes, when I see how the North is forever knuckling under to the South, giving up political supremacy and getting more and more craven every year, I pretty nearly lose all hope. I’m convinced that there’s only one way out of it--we’ve got to fight. And when we do fight the North will win, because we’ve got more men and more money. The sooner it comes the better, and I’m glad to see every new insult the South piles on us, for if we’ve got any spirit at all up here we’ve got to resent it some day.” Rhoda looked at him with intent eyes. His tall, angular figure was full of energy, his eyes sparkled and in his face shone the liveliest conviction. “War, father! That would be so horrible!” “Yes, of course it would. But it would end the business. And slavery is one long, unending horror.” “Yes, that is just what it is,” she assented earnestly. “It is too horrible to think of!” Again he gazed at her sharply, wondering through what upheaval of emotion she had gone that morning that had landed her so suddenly just where he wished her to stand, when he had begun to fear that her face would be turned the other way. “That nigger this morning,” she went on hurriedly, “he was a mulatto, said that he--he--was Jeff’s brother! Only think of it, father! What sort of an effect can slavery have upon a man to make him willing to hold his brother as a slave, a beast to be bought and sold! It’s too horrible!” Dr. Ware began to understand. Her lover had fallen from her ideal of him and she was casting the blame not upon him but back upon the institution for which he stood. It was significant of the complexity of his nature that, as he looked upon her pale face, shining eyes and curling lip, something akin to compassion for the absent lover stirred within him, notwithstanding the bitterness of his own feeling against slavery and all it meant. “Such things happen down south. I’ve known some instances that were certainly true. But it’s possible that sometimes the niggers boast when they have no right to. As long as you have only the runaway’s word for it, Delavan ought to have the benefit of the doubt. The Lord knows he, or any slaveholder, has enough to answer for, anyway.” Rhoda scarcely seemed to hear him. She sat silent for a moment and the animation faded from her face. “The man had a pistol,” she presently went on “and if Jeff--if Mr. Delavan--had found him I’m sure he would have shot--to kill, rather than be taken. He said he would.”