you all
had but your pride I never could find out; and what were you proud of?
Of a dozen or two old family nig--nig--niggers, that were only a bill of
expense to that pompous old cove, your father."

Mrs. Dinwiddie began to grow livid with exasperation. Her husband had
touched her on a tender point.

"Go on, Sir," said she; "I see your drift. I have suspected for some
time that you were going to play the renegade; to desert your order; to
prove false to the South; to cooperate with miscreant Yankees in
overturning our sacred institutions."

"Confound your sacred institutions, Madam! Slavery is played out."

"Played out, you monstrous blasphemer? An institution for which
Scripture vouches; an institution which the Reverend Dr. Palmer says
comes right down to us from heaven! Played out? Monster! I thank the
Lord my two children have not been corrupted by these detestable Yankee
notions that are upsetting all our old landmarks in this once noble city
of Baltimore."

"Noble? Ah, yes,--noble, I suppose, when it allowed its ruffians to
shoot down a band of Northern soldiers who were marching to the support
of Government!"

"You yourself said at the time, Mr. Dinwiddie, that it served them
right."

Dinwiddie winced, for this was a blow square on his forehead between his
two eyes. He paused, and then, without knowing it, translated the words
of a Latin moralist, and replied,--

"Times change, and we change with them."

"You will find, Sir, that a Culpepper doesn't change," said Madam; and,
with a gesture of queenly scorn, she swept with expansive crinoline out
of the room.

"So the ice is broken at last," muttered Dinwiddie. "I wouldn't have
believed I could have faced her so well. After all, I'm not sure that
the military is not my true sphere."

His soliloquy was interrupted by the ring of muskets on the sidewalk in
front, of his house, and he jumped with a nervous horror. Looking from
the window, he saw a file of soldiers, and an officer in the United
States uniform, with one arm in a sling, and the hand of the other
holding a drawn sword. He was a pale, but handsome youth, and looked up
as if to read the name on the door. Then, followed by a sergeant, he
ascended the steps and rang the bell.

"What the Deuse is all this for. I wonder?" exclaimed Dinwiddie; and in
his curiosity he opened the outside door, anticipating the negro
footman, Nero, who exchanged a glance of intelligence with the military
man.