Captain Penrose; "and I need not ask if you, Miss
Dinwiddie, also consent."

"I do, Sir; and I thank you for your consideration," said Barbara.

"I don't--don't--don't!" stormed the elderly lady, quivering in every
limb, like a blown ribbon.

It was strange that Captain Penrose did not hear the exclamation, loud
and emphatic as it was; but he simply bowed and quitted the room,
followed by Dinwiddie, Nero, and Sergeant MacFuse.

No sooner had the military men quitted the house than the dinner-bell
rang. Madam refused to make her appearance. Barbara came down and
presided. Boys in the street were crying the news of Sherman's capture
of Savannah.

"Good for Sherman!" said Dinwiddie. "I'm devilish glad of it."

Little Barbara looked up with consternation. She loved her father, but
never before had she heard from his lips a decided expression of
sympathy with the loyal cause. True, for the last six months he had said
little on either side; but, from the absence of any controversy between
him and her mother, Barbara imagined that their political sentiments
were harmonious.

She made no reply to her father's remark, but kept up in that little
brain of hers an amount of thinking that took away all her appetite for
the dessert. Mrs. Dinwiddie entered before the table was cleared. Then
there was a ring of the door-bell. It was the postman. Nero brought in a
letter. Dinwiddie looked at the address.

"'T is a letter for Anjy," said he. "The handwriting looks like
Culpepper's."

Anjy, or Angelina, was an old black cook, one of the few surviving
representatives of the vanished glories of the old Culpepper estate. She
had taken a lively interest in the course of Maryland towards freedom;
and when at length that noble Commonwealth stripped off the last fetter
from her limbs, and trampled it under her feet, Anjy was loudest among
the colored people with her Hallelujahs. She was no longer a slave,
thank the Lord! There was a future of justice, of self-respect, of
freedom now dawning upon her abused race.

As Anjy could not read, Barbara had been duly authorized to open all her
letters. She did so on this occasion, read, turned pale, and
exclaimed,--

"Horrible! Oh, the villain!"

"What's the matter?" asked her father.

The letter was from his son, Culpepper, to the old family servant, and
was in these words:--

"DEAR ANJY,--I have very unpleasant news to tell you. Your
son Tony has been shot by his master, C