wrie is telling all over town that he has bought you, and that the
_Visiter_ is to support Buchanan!"

"It is true," was the astounding answer, when he said bad words, rushed
from the room and slammed the door. Then followed ten days, the only
ones since he became my brother when he would not call me "Sis."
Elizabeth said:

"I would have seen Lowrie and his money in the bottom of the sea, first!
What would mother say?"

The next issue of the _Visiter_ made no allusion to its change of base,
and there was plenty of time to discuss the question. Those who knew my
record refused to believe I had sold out, and took bets on it. However,
the next number contained an editorial which relieved the minds of
friends, but which created the gravest apprehension. It stated that the
_Visiter_ would, in future, support Buchanan's administration, and went
on to state the objects of that administration as being the entire
subversion of Freedom and the planting of Slavery in every State and
Territory, so that Toombs could realize his boast, and call the roll of
his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill. It reminded its readers that John
Randolph had said in the United States Senate when speaking to Northern
men:

"We have driven you to the wall, and will drive you there again, and
next time we will keep you there and nail you to the counter like base
money."

Mr. Buchanan, a Northern man, had fulfilled the prediction. Henry Clay
had said that Northern workingmen were "mudsills, greasy mechanics and
small-fisted farmers." These mudsills had been talking of voting
themselves farms; but it would be much more appropriate if they would
vote themselves masters. Southern laborers were blessed with kind
masters, and Mr. Buchanan and the St. Cloud _Visiter_ were most anxious
that Northern laborers should be equally well provided for.

When the paper was read, there was a cry of "Sold! Sold! Lowrie had sold
himself instead of buying the _Visiter_." At first there was a laugh,
then a dead stillness of dread, and men looked at me as one doomed.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

BORDER RUFFIANISM.

In Lowrie's first ebulition of wrath, he vowed vengeance, but an
intimate friend of his, who had been a Democrat in Pittsburg, begged him
to do nothing and said:

"Let her alone, for God's sake! Let her alone, or she will kill you. I
know her, and you do not. She has killed every man she ever touched. Let
her alone!"

But Lowrie knew it was too late for l