"It will be all right, Mr. Doyle. Look after the sale of your things and
I'll find out the best way for you to get there and let you know."

He mounted his horse and rode away into the fading sunset as they
watched him through dimmed eyes.

CHAPTER VIII

Lee had promised Edmund Ruffin his answer early in the week. Ruffin had
just ridden up the hill and dismounted.

Mrs. Marshall, the Colonel's sister, on a visit from Baltimore, fled at
his approach.

"Excuse me, Mary," she cried to Mrs. Lee. "I just can't stand these
ranting fire-eating politicians. They make me ill. I'll go to my room."

She hurried up the stairway and left the frail mistress of the house to
meet her formidable guest.

Ruffin was the product of the fierce Abolition Crusade. Hot-tempered,
impulsive, intemperate in his emotions and their expression, he was the
perfect counterpart of the men who were working night and day in the
North to create a condition of mob feeling out of which a civil conflict
might grow. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had set him on fire with new hatreds.
His vocabulary of profanity had been enlarged by the addition of every
name in the novel. He had been compelled to invent new expressions to
fit these characters. He damned them individually and collectively. He
cursed each trait of each character, good and bad. He cursed the good
points with equal unction and equal emphasis. In fact the good traits in
Mrs. Stowe's people seemed to carry him to greater heights of wrath and
profanity than the bad ones. He dissected each part of each character's
anatomy, damned each part, put the parts together and damned the
collection. And then he damned the whole story, characters, plot and
scenes to the lowest pit and cursed the devil for not building a lower
one to which he might consign it. And in a final burst of passion he
always ended by damning himself for his utter inability to express
_anything_ which he really felt.

With all his ugly language, which he reserved for conversation with men,
he was the soul of consideration for a woman. Mrs. Lee had no fear of
any rude expression from his lips. She didn't like him because she felt
in his personality the touch of mob insanity which the Slavery question
had kindled. She dreaded this appeal to blind instinct and belief. With
a woman's intuition she felt the tragic possibility of such leadership
North and South.

She saw his leonine head and shaggy hair silhouetted against the red
glow