Gloomily, indeed, did Colonel Carvel return home.  He loved the Union and the flag for which his grandfather Richard had fought so bravely.  That flag was his inheritance.  So the Judge, laying his hand upon the knee of his friend, reminded him gravely.  But the Colonel shook his head.  The very calmness of their argument had been portentous.

“No, Whipple,” said he.  “You are a straightforward man.  You can’t disguise it.  You of the North are bent upon taking away from us the rights we had when our fathers framed the Constitution.  However the nigger got to this country, sir, in your Bristol and Newport traders, as well as in our Virginia and Maryland ships, he is here, and he was here when the Constitution was written.  He is happier in slavery than are your factory hands in New England; and he is no more fit to exercise the solemn rights of citizenship, I say, than the halfbreeds in the South American states.”

The Judge attempted to interrupt, but Mr. Carvel stopped him.

“Suppose you deprive me of my few slaves, you do not ruin me.  Yet you do me as great a wrong as you do my friend Samuels, of Louisiana, who depends on the labor of five hundred.  Shall I stand by selfishly and see him ruined, and thousands of others like him?”

Profoundly depressed, Colonel Carvel did not attend the adjourned Convention at Baltimore, which split once more on Mason and Dixon’s line.  The Democrats of the young Northwest stood for Douglas and Johnson, and the solid South, in another hall, nominated Breckenridge and Lane.  This, of course, became the Colonel’s ticket.

What a Babel of voices was raised that summer!  Each with its cure for existing ills.  Between the extremes of the Black Republican Negro Worshippers and the Southern Rights party of Breckenridge, your conservative had the choice of two candidates,—­of Judge Douglas or Senator Bell.  A most respectable but practically extinct body of gentlemen in ruffled shirts, the Old Line Whigs, had likewise met in Baltimore.  A new name being necessary, they called themselves Constitutional Unionists Senator Bell was their candidate, and they proposed to give the Nation soothing-syrup.  So said Judge Whipple, with a grunt of contempt, to Mr. Cluyme, who was then a prominent Constitutional Unionist.  Other and most estimable gentlemen were also Constitutional Unionists, notably Mr. Calvin Brinsmade.  Far be it from any one to cast disrespect upon the reputable members of this party, whose broad wings sheltered likewise so many weak brethren.

One Sunday evening in May, the Judge was taking tea with Mrs. Brice.  The occasion was memorable for more than one event—­which was that he addressed Stephen by his first name for the first time.

“You’re an admirer of Abraham Lincoln,” he had said.

Stephen, used to Mr. Whipple’s ways, smiled quietly at his mother.  He had never dared mention to the Judge his suspicions concerning his journey to Springfield and Freeport.