“But they banished you for that?”

“Yes, that’s why they put me out of Washington, I suppose.  I’ve been twice banished.  That is why I came here to this country.  Maybe, Sir, that is why I came to you, here!  Who shall say as to these things?  If only I could feel your faith, your beliefs to be the same as mine, I’d go away happy, for then I’d know it had been a plan, somehow, somewhere—­for us, maybe.”

His throat worked strongly.  There was some struggle in the man.  At last he spoke, and quietly.  “I see what separates us now.  It is the wall of our convictions.  You are specifically an abolitionist, just as you are in general a revolutionist.  I’m on the other side.  That’s between us, then?  An abstraction!”

“I don’t think so.  There are three walls between us.  The first you put up when you first met me.  The second is what you call your traditions, your belief in wasting human life.  The third—­it’s this thing of which you must not speak.  Why should I ponder as to that last wall, when two others, insurmountable, lie between?”

“Visionary, subjective!”

“Then let us be concrete if you like.  Take the case of the girl Lily.  She was the actual cause of your getting hurt, of many men being killed.  Why?”

“Because she was a runaway slave.  The law has to be enforced, property must be protected, even if it costs life sometimes.  There’d be no government otherwise.  We men have to take our chances in a time like that.  The duty is plain.”

“How utterly you fail of the truth!  That’s not why there was blood spilled over her.  Do you know who she is?”

“No,” he said.

“She is the daughter of your friend, Judge Clayton, of the bench of justice in your commonwealth. That is why she wants to run away!  Her father does not know he is her father.  God has His own way of righting such things.”

“There are things we must not talk about in this slavery question.  Stop!  I did not, of course, know this.  And Clayton did not know!”

“There are things which ought not to be; but if you vote for oppression, if you vote yonder in your legislature for the protection of this institution, if you must some day vote yonder in Congress for its extension, for the right to carry it into other lands—­the same lands where now the feet of freedom-seekers are hurrying from all over the world, so strangely, so wonderfully—­then you vote for a compromise that God never intended to go through or to endure.  Is that your vote?  Come now, I will tell you something.”

“You are telling me much.”

“I will tell you—­that night, when Carlisle would have killed you in your room there, when I afterward put you all on parole—­”

“Yes, yes.”

“I saved you then; and sent them away.  Do you know why?”

“I suppose it was horror of more blood.”

“I don’t think so.  I believe it was just for this—­for this very talk I’m having now with you.  I saved you then so that some day I might demand you as hostage.