And resuming his seat, to find his string and jack in cinders, he turned round astride his chair and commenced notching his initials into its back, with cautious glances at his aunt.

“That’s for little Jane to cry over after I’m gone,” said he.

“Ray—­How do you think Beltran will like it?”

“I can’t help what Beltran likes.  I shall be doing God’s work.”

“Beltran says God does His own work.  He only requires of us our duty.”

“That is my duty.”

“You feel, Ray, as if you were possessed by the holy ardor of another Sir Galahad!”

“I feel, Vivia, that I shall give what strength I have towards ridding the world of its foulest disease.”

“With what a good grace that comes from you!”

“With all the better grace.”

“The old Berserker rage over again!”

“Quite as fine as running amuck.”

“Ray, the race that does not rise for itself deserves its fate.”

“Vivia, no race deserves such a fate as this one has found.”

“Idle!  I have seen slavery; own slaves:  there is nothing monstrous in it.”

“In Maryland.”

“Anywhere.”

“Wailing children, sundered families, women under the lash”—­

“You know very well, Ray, that there is a law against the separation of families.”

“I never heard of it.”

“Audubon says there is.”

“A little bird told him,” interpolated Jane.

“But I’ve seen them separated.”

“I don’t believe,” urged Vivia, “but for exceptional abuses, there’s a system providing for a happier peasantry on the face of the earth.”

“It can’t be a good system that allows such abuses.”

“There are even abuses of the sacraments.”

“Pshaw, Vivia!”

“Well, Ray, I don’t believe in this pseudo-chivalry of yours, any more than Beltran does.”

“If Beltran said black was white, you’d think that true!”

“If Beltran said so, it would be true.”

“It’s no more likely that he should be right than that I should be.”

“You couldn’t have spoken so about Beltran once!”

“Well, black or white, slave or free, never think I shall sit by and see my country fall to ruins.”

“Your country?  Do you suppose you love it any more than I do?”

“You’re a woman.”

“Suppose I am a woman, you unkind boy”—­

“Well, you only love half of it,—­the Southern half.”

“I love my whole country!” cried Vivia, all aflame.  “I love these purple, rust-stained granites here, the great savannas there,—­the pine forests, the sea-like prairies,—­every river rolling down its rocky bed,—­every inch of its beautiful, glorious soil,—­all its proud, free people.  I love my whole country!”

“Only you hate some of its parasites.  But Beltran would tell you that you haven’t got any country.  You may love your native State.  As for country, it’s nothing but a—­what-you-may-call-it.”