Though bitterly opposed to the Unionists, Arthur was truthful, almost to a fault, as some of his auditors thought to whom he was recounting the incidents of his prison life. Comfortable beds, decent bread, well-cooked meat, with plenty of pure air and water, _he_ had received from the hands of his enemies; and once, when for a few days he was sick, he had been fed with toast and jelly, and tea quite as good as Hetty could make, he said. And while he talked more than one present thought of the Southern prisons, where so many men were dying from starvation and neglect; and one young girl’s eyes flashed angrily, and her nostrils quivered with passion as she burst out with the exclamation: “That’s the story most of our prisoners tell when they come back to us. Think you a like report will be carried North, if the poor wretches ever live to get there! I think it a shame to allow such suffering in our midst.” This speech, which had in it the ring of Unionism, did not startle the hearers as much as might be expected. They were accustomed to Maude De Vere’s outspoken way, and they knew that when she first came among them she was on the Federal side, and had opposed the secession movement with all the force of her girl nature. As yet no harm had been threatened her, for Maude was one to whom all paid deference, and her clear arguments touching the right of secession had done much toward keeping alive a feeling of humanity for our prisoners in the family where for months she had been a guest. Squire Tunbridge—or Judge, as he was frequently called—was her near relative, and as his only daughter had died only two years before, and he was very lonely in his great house, he had invited Maude to visit him, and insisted upon her staying as long as possible. At first he had laughed at her Yankee preferences, but when the deaths at Salisbury and Andersonville increased so fast, he shook his head sadly and protested against the cruelty and neglect of the government. “He did not believe in killing men by inches,” he said; “better shoot them at once.” And still he would not willingly have harbored a runaway on his premises, for fear of the odium which would attach to him if the fact were known. And so, when late that night, while Tom lay sleeping in Hetty’s cabin, and Hetty, up at the big house, was waiting upon the guests and making secret signs to Maude De Vere, there came a band of men into the yard in pursuit of an escaped Yankee, the Squire roused at once, saying that no one could possibly be hidden on his plantation unless the blacks had secreted him. The negro houses were close by; they could look for themselves. He had supposed his servants loyal, but there was no telling in these perilous times; and the old man’s face flushed as his Southern blood fired his zeal for the Southern cause.