“I suppose not.  There are some prophets of evil who tell us that the Union is going to dissolve.  But I know it would puzzle their brains to tell where the crack will begin.  I reckon we’ll continue to jog along as usual.  ‘Cotton fights, and cotton conquers for American slavery.’”

Even while Leroy dreamed of safety the earthquake was cradling its fire; the ground was growing hollow beneath his tread; but his ear was too dull to catch the sound; his vision too blurred to read the signs of the times.

“Marie,” said Leroy, taking up the thread of the discourse, “slavery is a sword that cuts both ways.  If it wrongs the negro, it also curses the white man.  But we are in it, and what can we do?”

“Get out of it as quickly as possible.”

“That is easier said than done.  I would willingly free every slave on my plantation if I could do so without expatriating them.  Some of them have wives and children on other plantations, and to free them is to separate them from their kith and kin.  To let them remain here as a free people is out of the question.  My hands are tied by law and custom.”

“Who tied them?” asked Marie.

“A public opinion, whose meshes I cannot break.  If the negro is the thrall of his master, we are just as much the thralls of public opinion.”

“Why do you not battle against public opinion, if you think it is wrong?”

“Because I have neither the courage of a martyr, nor the faith of a saint; and so I drift along, trying to make the condition of our slaves as comfortable as I possibly can.  I believe there are slaves on this plantation whom the most flattering offers of freedom would not entice away.”

“I do not think,” said Marie, “that some of you planters understand your own slaves.  Lying is said to be the vice of slaves.  The more intelligent of them have so learned to veil their feelings that you do not see the undercurrent of discontent beneath their apparent good humor and jollity.  The more discontented they are, the more I respect them.  To me a contented slave is an abject creature.  I hope that I shall see the day when there will not be a slave in the land.  I hate the whole thing from the bottom of my heart.”

“Marie, your Northern education has unfitted you for Southern life.  You are free, yourself, and so are our children.  Why not let well enough alone?”

“Because I love liberty, not only for myself but for every human being.  Think how dear these children are to me; and then for the thought to be forever haunting me, that if you were dead they could be turned out of doors and divided among your relatives.  I sometimes lie awake at night thinking of how there might be a screw loose somewhere, and, after all, the children and I might be reduced to slavery.”

“Marie, what in the world is the matter with you?  Have you had a presentiment of my death, or, as Uncle Jack says, ’hab you seed it in a vision?’”