"One of the most respected and prominent citizens of Barrington; that's what I be," muttered Bud Goble, as he stumbled along the dark road toward his domicile. "I always knowed it, but there's a heap of folks about here who have always been down on me, kase I haven't got any niggers of my own and have to work for a livin'; but I'm to the top of the heap now, an' what's more, I'll let some of 'em know it before I am many hours older. I wisht I knew what's into this letter, kase it's mighty hard work for me to read it. If it's anything about them babolitionists an' the doctering they're preachin' up among our niggers--Well, they'll not do it much longer, kase I am about ready to take some on 'em outen their beds at night an' lay the hickory over their backs. There's money into it, kase Mr. Riley an' the rest of the men that's onto the committee said so; an' I'm onto every job where there's an honest dollar to be made." Bud Goble was a fair type of that class of people who were known to those among whom they lived as "white trash." Even the negroes, particularly those who belonged to wealthy planters, looked upon them with contempt. Too lazy to work, they lived from hand to mouth; and not one out of ten of the many thousands of them who went into the Confederate Army knew what they were fighting for. To save his life Bud Goble could not have told what all this excitement was about. He had a dim notion that somebody wanted to free the slaves, and the idea of such a thing made him furious; although it is hard to explain why it should, for, as Dick Graham said, he had never owned the price of a pickaninny. He had got it into his head that if the negroes were made free he would be brought down to their level and compelled to go to work, and that was something he could not bear to think of. Bud Goble did not know what secession meant, but he was strongly in favor of it, because the majority of the wealthy and influential citizens in and around Barrington favored it; and taking his cue from them, he not only turned the cold shoulder upon those who were suspected of being on the side of the Union, but went further and became their deadly enemy. Mr. Riley and the other members of the Committee of Safety knew all this, and yet they employed him, the most vindictive and unreliable man in the neighborhood, to keep them posted in regard to what the Union men and free negroes were doing and saying. It is not to be supposed that men of their intelligence would put much faith in his reports, but they furnished an excuse for resorting to high-handed measures, and that was really what the committee wanted.