onel pulled his goatee uneasily. Here, at last, was a man in whom
there was no guile.

"Lige," he said, "isn't it about time you got married?"

Upon which the Captain shook his head again, even with more vigor. He
could not trust himself to speak. After the Christmas holidays he had
driven Virginia across the frozen river, all the way to Monticello, in a
sleigh. It was night when they had reached the school, the light of its
many windows casting long streaks on the snow under the trees. He had
helped her out, and had taken her hand as she stood on the step.

"Be good, Jinny," he had said. "Remember what a short time it will be
until June. And your Pa will come over to see you."

She had seized him by the buttons of his great coat, and said tearfully:
"O Captain Lige! I shall be so lonely when you are away. Aren't you going
to kiss me?"

He had put his lips to her forehead, driven madly back to Alton, and
spent the night. The first thing he did the next day when he reached St.
Louis was to go straight to the Colonel and tell him bluntly of the
circumstance.

"Lige, I'd hate to give her up," Mr. Carvel said; "but I'd rather you'd
marry her than any man I can think of."

CHAPTER IX

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In that spring of 1860 the time was come for the South to make her final
stand. And as the noise of gathering conventions shook the ground,
Stephen Brice was not the only one who thought of the Question at
Freeport. The hour was now at hand for it to bear fruit.

Meanwhile, his hero, the hewer of rails and forger of homely speech,
Abraham Lincoln, had made a little tour eastward the year before, and had
startled Cooper Union with a new logic and a new eloquence. They were the
same logic and the same eloquence which had startled Stephen.

Even as he predicted who had given it birth, the Question destroyed the
great Democratic Party. Colonel Carvel travelled to the convention in
historic Charleston soberly and fearing God, as many another Southern
gentleman. In old Saint Michael's they knelt to pray for harmony, for
peace; for a front bold and undismayed toward those who wronged them. All
through the week chosen orators wrestled in vain. Judge Douglas, you
flattered yourself that you had evaded the Question. Do you see the
Southern delegates rising in their seats? Alabama leaves the hall,
followed by her sister stakes. The South has not forgotten your Freeport
Heresy. Once she loved you now she will have non