“These are Seth’s very words. I got ’em by heart, and I said them so much that I began to wonder if freedom wasn’t better than slavery. But, bless you, my niggers was about all I had. I couldn’t give ’em up, though I used to go out to Seth’s grave and think how he hugged the papers to the last, and wonder if the clause ‘all men are born free and equal,’ didn’t mean the blacks. But the pesky war broke out, and drove all this from my head. I hate the Yankees,—I hate Lincoln. I hate the whole Union army, though I’ll be blamed if I can hate _you_. Got a wife, hey?” He turned abruptly to his guest, who had listened with so breathless interest to the story of poor Seth, that he did not see Maude De Vere, her eyes shining, and her cheeks flushed, as if she were under some strong excitement. Between herself and Arthur there had been a long conversation concerning Captain Tom Carleton, and other matters of greater interest to Maude. The “John Camp” ruse had succeeded well, and Maude had a fancy for making it do still more, by taking her patient in safety as far as her Uncle Haverill’s. She had received several letters from her uncle, urging her to come home, and in a week at most she was going. As one who had been expressly sent as her escort, Mr. Carleton would of course go with her, and in order to make the journey with perfect safety she would have Arthur go too, and it was of this that she had spoken to him that morning when she found him in a little summer-house at the rear of the long garden. There was a dark shadow on Arthur’s face, as he listened to Maude’s proposition, and when she had finished speaking, he replied: “I intend to go with you, provided I am not ordered back to the army, but, Maude, I will not have that Yankee soldier hanging on to us. We have done that for him which imperils our lives, and now that he is able to go on, let him take his chance alone. If he is one half as keen as Yankees think themselves to be, he will get through unharmed. No, I won’t have him in our way.” “But think of the dangers to be encountered, the hordes of guerrillas which infest the mountains,” Maude pleaded, and in her earnestness she laid both her hands on Arthur’s shoulder, and stood leaning over him. “Maude De Vere,” and Arthur spoke very decidedly, “_why_ are you so much interested in this man? Tell me, and tell me truly, too,—have you learned to care for _him_ more than you would for a _common soldier_, had such a one come to you as a runaway Yankee? If you have, Maude,” and Arthur’s face was white with determination, “if you have, by the heavens above us, I’ll put a bullet through him myself, or worse than that, send him back to where he came from.” “That would be an act worthy of a Tunbridge and a Southern gentleman,” Maude said, bitterly, and something in her tone warned Arthur that he had gone too far, so changing his tactics, he said more gently: