e to prove it
thoroughly. The Government is growing restive over the claims of
Southerners, and there is bitter opposition to be overcome."

"Yes. Lyman nearly lost his last election because he had favoured a
Southern claim in his previous term. His constituents are country
patriots, and they said they weren't sending a man to Congress to vote
for Rebs."

"That's the trouble. When men's votes are endangered by a course of
action they grow ultra-conservative. A vote's a vote."

That was the difficulty, as Tom found. A vote was a vote. The bitterness
of war had not yet receded far enough into the past to allow of
unprejudiced judgment. Members of political parties were still enemies,
wrongs still rankled, graves were yet new, wounds still ached and burned.
Men who had found it to their interest to keep at fever heat the fierce
spirit of the past four years of struggle and bloodshed, were not willing
to relinquish the tactics which had brought fortunes to them. The
higher-minded were determined that where justice was done it should be
done where it was justice alone, clearly proved to be so. There had been
too many false and idle claims brought forward to admit of the true ones
being accepted without investigation and delay. In the days when old
Judge De Willoughby had walked through the streets of Delisleville,
ostracized and almost hooted as he passed among those who had once been
his friends, it would not have been difficult to prove that he was loyal
to the detested Government, but in these later times, when the old man
lay quiet in what his few remaining contemporaries still chose to
consider a dishonoured grave, undeniable proof of a loyalty which now
would tend to the honour and advantage of those who were of his blood was
not easy to produce.

"The man lived and died in the Confederacy," was said by those who were
in power in Washington.

"He was constructively a rebel. We want proof--proof."

Most of those who might have furnished it if they would, were either
scattered as to the four winds of the earth, or were determined to give
no aid in the matter.

"A Southerner who deserted the South in its desperate struggle for life
need not come to Southern gentlemen to ask them to help him to claim the
price of his infamy." That was the Delisleville point of view, and it was
difficult to cope with. If Tom had been a rich man and could have
journeyed between Delisleville and the Capital, or wheresoever the
demand