for them you like? Why,
I knowed a gal, an' a mighty fine one she was, who knit socks for a
feller she had took a fancy to. The feller died, but she went right
ahead wi' her knittin' just the same. Now, that didn't do the feller a
mite of good, but it holp the gal up might'ly."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

_Gabriel as an Orator_

The _Malvern Recorder_ was very kind to Gabriel, and said nothing in
regard to his escape. This was due to a timely suggestion on the part of
Colonel Tom Vardeman, who rightly guessed that the Government
authorities would be more willing to permit the affair to blow over,
provided the details were not made notorious in the newspapers. As the
result of the Colonel's discretion, there was not a hint in the public
press that one of the prisoners had eluded the vigilance of those who
had charge of him. There was a paragraph or two in the _Recorder_,
stating that the Shady Dale prisoners--"the victims of Federal
tyranny"--had passed through the city on their way to Atlanta, and a
long account was given of their sufferings in Fort Pulaski. The facts
were supplied by Gabriel, but the printed account went far beyond
anything he had said. "They are not the first martyrs that have suffered
in the cause of liberty," said the editor of the _Recorder_, in
commenting on the account in the local columns, "and they will not be
the last. Let the radicals do their worst; on the old red hills of
Georgia, the camp-fires of Democracy have been kindled, and they will
continue to burn and blaze long after the tyrants and corruptionists
have been driven from power."

Gabriel read this eloquent declaration somewhat uneasily. There was
something in it, and something in the exaggeration of the facts that he
had given to the representative of the paper that jarred upon him. He
had already in his own mind separated the Government and its real
interests from the selfish aims and desires of those who were
temporarily clothed with authority, and he had begun to suspect that
there might also be something selfish behind the utterances of those who
made such vigorous protests against tyranny. The matter is hardly worth
referring to in these days when shams and humbugs appear before the
public in all their nakedness; but it was worth a great deal to Gabriel
to be able to suspect that the champions of constitutional liberty, and
the defenders of popular rights, in the great majority of instances had
their eyes on the flesh