At first Arthur had kept aloof from Tom, but as the latter grew better, he yielded to Maude’s entreaties and went in to see him, feeling intuitively that he was in the presence of a gentleman as well as of a superior. He could not dislike him, for there was something about Tom Carleton which disarmed him of all prejudice, and many a quiet, friendly talk the two had together on the all-absorbing topic of the day. “He is a splendid fellow, if he is a Yankee,” was Arthur’s mental verdict, “and fine looking, too,—finer a hundred times than I,” and then there crept into his heart a fear lest Maude should think as he did, and ere he was aware of it, he found himself fiercely jealous of one who was at his mercy, and whom, if he chose, he might have removed so easily. CHAPTER XXX. ARTHUR AND MAUDE. Tom Carleton was able to start on his journey westward. Twice he had left his room and joined the family below, making himself so agreeable, and adapting himself so nicely to all the Judge’s crotchets that the old man confessed to a genuine liking for the _Yankee rascal_, and expressed himself as unwilling to part with him. He had inquired into his family history, and, to his infinite delight, found that the elder Carleton, Tom’s father, was the very lawyer whose speech years ago, had been instrumental in sending back to bondage the Judge’s runaway negro, Hetty’s husband, whose grave was out by the garden wall, and whose wife and sons had rendered so different a service to the lawyer’s son. Tom’s face was scarlet when he thought of the difference, and remembered how his father had worked to prove that the master was entitled to his property wherever it was found. The Judge suspected the nature of his thoughts, and with a forced laugh, said, goodhumoredly: “You are more of an abolitionist than your father was, I see. Well, well, young man, times change, and we change with them. Old man Carleton did me a good turn, for Seth was worth two thousand dollars. I never abused him, nor gave him a blow when I got him back. I only asked him how he liked freedom as far as he had gone, and he didn’t answer. He seemed broke down like, and in less than a year he died. He was the best hand I ever had, more’n half white. I cried when he died. I’ll be hanged if I didn’t. I told him to live and I’d set him free, and when I see how his eyes lighted up I made out his papers on the spot, and brought ’em to him, and he died with ’em in his hand, held so tight we could scarcely get ’em out, and I had ’em buried with him in his coffin. “‘Thank you, mars’r, God bless you for letting me die free, but it’s come too late. I would worked for you, mars’r, all the same, if you’d done this before. I wanted to be a _man_, and not a _thing_, a brute. You have been kind to me mars’r; thank you, thank you for liberty.’