e active in order to cope with the enemy's own
scouts and spies. I shall return early to-morrow morning."

Colonel Woodville waved his hand and Slade, bowing, withdrew.

"Why was he so persistent, Uncle Charles?" asked Victor. "He seemed to
have some underlying motive."

"He always has such a motive, Victor. He is a man who suspects everybody
because he knows everybody has a right to suspect him. He may even have
been suspecting me, his old, and, I fear, too generous employer. He has
a mania about a spy hidden somewhere in Vicksburg."

Young Victor Woodville laughed gayly.

"What folly," he said, "for your old overseer, a man of Northern origin
to boot, to suspect you, of all men, of helping a Yankee in any way.
Why, Uncle Charles, everybody knows that you'd annihilate 'em if you
could, and that you were making good progress with the task until you
got that wound."

Colonel Woodville drew his great, white eyebrows together in his
characteristic way.

"I admit, Victor, that I'm the prince of Yankee haters," he said.
"They've ruined me, and if they succeed they'll ruin our state and the
whole South, too. We've fled for refuge to a hole in the ground, and yet
they come thundering at the door of so poor an abode. Listen!"

They heard plainly the far rumble of the cannon. The intensity of the
fire increased with the growing day. Shells and bombs were falling
rapidly on Vicksburg. The face of Colonel Woodville darkened and the
eyes under the white thatch burned.

"Nevertheless, Victor," he said, "hate the Yankees as I do, and I hate
them with all my heart and soul, there are some things a gentleman
cannot do."

"What for instance, Uncle?"

"He cannot break faith. He cannot do evil to those who have done good to
him. He must repay benefits with benefits. He cannot permit the burden
of obligation to remain upon him. Go to the door, Victor, and see if any
one is lurking there."

Young Woodville went to the entrance and returned with word that no one
was near.

"Victor," resumed Colonel Woodville, "this man Slade, who was so
preposterously wrong, this common overseer from the hostile section
which seeks with force to put us down, this miserable fellow who had
the presumption to suspect me, lying here with a wound, received in the
defense of the Confederacy, was nevertheless right."

Victor stared, not understanding, and Colonel Woodville raised himself a
little higher on his pillows.

"Since when," he asked of