“This is my niece’s room, Maude De Vere,” Mr. Haverill explained, when they were alone, and Will was drying himself before the fire, kindled by the woman who had admitted them, and who, Will saw, was a mulatto. “My niece is not at home now,” he continued. “She is in South Carolina; has been gone several months on a visit to old Judge Tunbridge, her mother’s uncle. I’m her mother’s brother, and she and the boy Charlie have lived with me since the first year of the war. Their father was Captain De Vere, from North Carolina, and was killed at the first Bull Run. Nelly, their mother, never held up her head after that. I was with her when she died, and brought the children home. Maude is twenty now, and Charlie fourteen. I am their guardian. Maude is Union, Charlie secesh, but safe. They have a great deal of property here and there, though how it will come through the war, the Lord only knows.” Will was glad to see that his host was inclined to talk on without waiting for answers, and he kept quiet, while Mr. Haverill continued: “I dare say you wonder to find a chap like me among people who are so bitter against you Yankees, and I sometimes wonder at myself. I am South Carolina born, and ought to be foremost in the rebellion; but hanged if I can see that it is right. Why, _I_ might as well set up a government of my own, here on the Oak Plantation, and refuse to come under any civilized laws. Mind, though, I don’t think the South all wrong,—not a bit of it. The North _did_ bully us, and the election of Mr. Lincoln was particularly obnoxious to the majority here, but we had no right to secede, and you did your duty trying to drive us back. For a spell I kept quiet,—didn’t take either side; or if I did, I wanted the South to beat, as all my interests are here. But when our folks got to abusing their prisoners so shamefully, and told so many lies by way of deceiving us fellows who live among the hills and only get the news once or twice a week, I changed my politics, and after the day when I found one of my neighbors, and the best man that ever breathed, too, _hung_ to a tree like a dog, with the word ‘Abolitionist’ pinned to his coat, I made a vow that every energy I had should be given to caring for and helping; just such wretches as you, and if I’ve helped one I’ve helped a thousand. Why, at least a hundred have slept in this very room,—Maude’s room; for, as I told you, she is Union to the backbone, and led one chap across the mountain herself. She is a regular Di Vernon, and is not afraid of the very de’il. When she went away she bade me put them in here, as the room least liable to suspicion. To the folks around me I am the roughest kind of a Secessionist, and I suppose nobody can beat me swearing about the Yankees, just to hoodwink ’em, you know. I suppose that’s wrong; my wife would say so; she was a saint when she was here,—she is an angel now. She died five years ago,—before the war broke