The man they called master actually moved among them, a minister of love and mercy. He advised the negroes about the care of their families in his long absence. He talked as a Hebrew Patriarch to his children. He urged the younger men and women to look after the old and helpless. He was particularly solicitous about Bob, the oldest man on the place. Over and over again he enumerated the comforts he thought he might need and made provision to supply them. He sent him enough cochineal flannel for his rheumatism to wrap him four-ply deep. For Rhinah, his wife, he ordered enough flannel blankets for two families. "Is there anything else you can think of, Uncle Bob?" he asked kindly. The old man scratched his gray head and hesitated, looked into his master's face, smiled and said: "I _would_ like one er dem rockin' cheers outen de big house, Marse Jeff.--yassah!" "Of course, you shall have it. Come right up, you and Rhinah, and pick out the two you like best." With suppressed laughter Socola watched the old negroes try each chair in the hallway and finally select the two best rockers in the house. The Southern leader was obviously careworn and unhappy. Socola found his heart unconsciously going out to him in sympathy. Assuming carefully his attitude of foreign detached interest, the young man sought to draw him out. "You have given up all hope of adjustment and reunion with the North?" he asked. "No," was the thoughtful reply, "not until the first blood is spilled." "Your people must see, Senator, that secession will imperil the existence of their three thousand millions of dollars invested in slaves?" "Certainly they see it," was the quick answer. "Slavery can never survive the first shot of war, no matter which side wins. If the North wins, we must free them, or else maintain a standing army on our borders for all time. It would be unthinkable. Rivers are bad boundaries. We could have no others. Fools have said and will continue to say that we are fighting to establish a slave empire. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are seeking to find that peace and tranquillity outside the Union we have not been able to enjoy for the past forty years inside. If the Southern States enact a Constitution of their own, they will merely reaffirm the Constitution of their fathers with no essential change. The North is leading a revolution, not the South. "Not one man in twenty down here owns a slave. The South would never fight to maintain Slavery. We know that it is doomed. We simply demand as the sons of the men who created this Republic, equal rights under its laws. If we fight, it will be for our independence as freemen that we may maintain those rights." "I must confess, sir," Socola replied with carefully modulated voice, "that I fail to see as a student from without, why, if Slavery is doomed and your leaders realize that fact, a compromise without bloodshed would not be possible?"