outhern States are
mustering and sending their forces; we must meet them, or give up the
whole question; that is, give up the country."

"And what is it that _they_ will try to do?" said Miss Cardigan. "It
is a mystery to me what they want; but I suppose I know; only bad men
are a mystery to me always."

"They will try to defy the laws," said Thorold. "We will try to see
them executed."

"They seem very fierce," said Miss Cardigan; "to judge by what they
say."

"And do," added Thorold. "I think there is a sort of madness in
Southern blood."

He spoke with a manner of disgustful emphasis. I looked up at him to
see an expression quite in keeping with his words. Miss Cardigan cried
out--

"Hey, lad! ye're confident, surely, to venture your opinions so
plainly and so soon!"

His face changed, as if sunlight had been suddenly poured over it. He
came kneeling on one knee before me, taking my hand and kissing it,
and laughing.

"And I see ye're not confident without reason!" added Miss Cardigan.
"Daisy'll just let ye say your mind, and no punish you for it."

"But it is _true_, Miss Cardigan," I said, turning to her. I wished I
had held my tongue the next minute, for the words were taken off my
lips, as it were. It is something quite different from eating your own
words, which I have heard of as not being pleasant; mine seemed to be
devoured by somebody else.

"But is it true they are coming to attack Washington?" Miss Cardigan
went on, when we had all done laughing. "I read it in the prints; and
it seems to me I read every other thing there."

"I am afraid you read too many prints," said Thorold. "You are
thinking of 'hear both sides,' Aunt Catherine? You must know there is
but one side to this matter. There never are two sides to treason."

"That's true," said Miss Cardigan. "But about Washington, lad? I saw
an extract from a letter written from that city, by a lady, and she
said the place was in a terror; she said the President sleeps with a
hundred men, armed, in the east room, to protect him from the Southern
army; and keeps a sentinel before his bedroom door; and often goes
clean out of the White House and sleeps somewhere else, in his fear."

I had never seen Thorold laugh as he did then. And he asked his aunt
"where she had seen that extract?"

"It was in one of the papers--it was in an extract itself, I'm
thinking."

"From a Southern paper," said Thorold.

"Well, I believe it was."

"I have se