Before he
reached the bottom a stronger arm had seize his own, and was helping him.

The Judge brushed his eyes with his sleeve, and turned a defiant face
upon Captain Elijah Brent--then his voice broke. His anger was suddenly
gone, and his thought had flown back to the Colonel's thousand charities.

"Lige," he said, "Lige, it has come."

In answer the Captain pressed the Judge's hand, nodding vigorously to
hide his rising emotion. There was a pause.

"And you, Lige?" said Mr. Whipple, presently.

"My God!" cried the Captain, "I wish I knew."

"Lige," said the Judge, gravely, "you're too good a man to be for
Soothing Syrup."

The Captain choked.

"You're too smart to be fooled, Lige," he said, with a note near to
pleading. "The time has come when you Bell people and the Douglas people
have got to decide. Never in my life did I know it to do good to dodge a
question. We've got to be white or black, Lige. Nobody's got much use for
the grays. And don't let yourself be fooled with Constitutional Union
Meetings, and compromises. The time is almost here, Lige, when it will
take a rascal to steer a middle course."

Captain Lige listened, and he shifted from one foot to the other, and
rubbed his hands, which were red. Some odd trick of the mind had put into
his head two people--Eliphalet Hopper and Jacob Cluyme. Was he like them?

"Lige, you've got to decide. Do you love your country, sir? Can you look
on while our own states defy us, and not lift a hand? Can you sit still
while the Governor and all the secessionists in this state are plotting
to take Missouri, too, out of the Union? The militia is riddled with
rebels, and the rest are forming companies of minute men."

"And you Black Republicans," the Captain cried "have organized your Dutch
Wideawakes, and are arming them to resist Americans born."

"They are Americans by our Constitution, sir, which the South pretends to
revere," cried the Judge. "And they are showing themselves better
Americans than many who have been on the soil for generations."

"My sympathies are with the South," said the Captain, doggedly, "and my
love is for the South."

"And your conscience?" said the Judge.

There was no answer. Both men raised their eyes to the house of him whose
loving hospitality had been a light in the lives of both. When at last
the Captain spoke, his voice was rent with feeling.

"Judge," he began, "when I was a poor young man on the old 'Vicksburg',
second