rt made manifest, and suddenly think of a Somewhere to come,
where your hope waits for you with late fulfilment. Do not laugh at Ben,
then, if he dully told in his song the story of all he had lost, or gave
to his heaven a local habitation and a name.

From the place where he stood now, as his master and Dorr walked up and
down, he could see the purplish haze beyond which the sentry had told
him lay the North. The North! Just beyond the ridge. There was a pain
in his head, looking at it; his nerves grew cold and rigid, as yours do
when something wrings your heart sharply: for there are nerves in these
black carcasses, thicker, more quickly stung to madness than yours. Yet
if any savage longing, smouldering for years, was heating to madness now
in his brain, there was no sign of it in his face. Vapid, with sordid
content, the huge jaws munching tobacco slowly, only now and then the
beady eye shot a sharp glance after Dorr. The sentry had told him the
Northern army had come to set the slaves free; he watched the Federal
officer keenly.

"What ails you, Ben?" said his master. "Thinking over your friend's
sermon?"

Ben's stolid laugh was ready.

"Done forgot dat, Mars'. Wouldn't go, nohow. Since Mars' sold dat cussed
Joe, gorry good times 't home. Dam' Abolitioner say we ums all goin'
Norf,"--with a stealthy glance at Dorr.

"That's more than your philanthropy bargains for, Charley," laughed
Lamar.

The men stopped; the negro skulked nearer, his whole senses sharpened
into hearing. Dorr's clear face was clouded.

"This slave question must be kept out of the war. It puts a false face
on it."

"I thought one face was what it needed," said Lamar. "You have too many
slogans. Strong government, tariff, Sumter, a bit of bunting, eleven
dollars a month. It ought to be a vital truth that would give soul and
_vim_ to a body with the differing members of your army. You, with your
ideal theory, and Billy Wilson with his 'Blood and Baltimore!' Try human
freedom. That's high and sharp and broad."

Ben drew a step closer.

"You are shrewd, Lamar. I am to go below all constitutions or expediency
or existing rights, and tell Ben here that he is free? When once the
Government accepts that doctrine, you, as a Rebel, must be let alone."

The slave was hid back in the shade.

"Dorr," said Lamar, "you know I'm a groping, ignorant fellow, but it
seems to me that prating of constitutions and existing rights is surface
talk; there