er of morality and truth. That
has troubled many another, before and since the debate at Freeport.

That short hour came all too quickly to an end. And as the Moderator
gave the signal for Mr. Lincoln, it was Stephen's big companion who
snapped the strain, and voiced the sentiment of those about him.

"By Gosh!" he cried, "he baffles Steve. I didn't think Abe had it in
him."

The Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, however, seemed anything but baffled
as he rose to reply. As he waited for the cheers which greeted him to
die out, his attitude was easy and indifferent, as a public man's should
be. The question seemed not to trouble him in the least. But for Stephen
Brice the Judge stood there stripped of the glamour that made him, even
as Abraham Lincoln had stripped his doctrine of its paint and colors,
and left it punily naked.

Standing up, the very person of the Little Giant was contradictory, as
was the man himself. His height was insignificant. But he had the head
and shoulders of a lion, and even the lion's roar. What at contrast the
ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's
opening words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly
disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people
how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by
putting things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his
mouth: But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that
the Judge was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might
lead one to expect. Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at
Freeport? And yet it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his
hearers "Black Republicans." "Not black," came from the crowd again
and again, and once a man: shouted, "Couldn't you modify it and call
it brown?" "Not a whit!" cried the Judge, and dubbed them "Yankees,"
although himself a Vermonter by birth. He implied that most of these
Black Republicans desired negro wives.

But quick,--to the Question, How was the Little Giant, artful in debate
as he was, to get over that without offence to the great South? Very
skillfully the judge disposed of the first of the interrogations. And
then, save for the gusts of wind rustling the trees, the grove might
have been empty of its thousands, such was the silence that fell. But
tighter and tighter they pressed against the stand, until it trembled.

Oh, Judge, the time of all artful men will come a