As usual, she hung on the main point.  “But tell me!” she demanded of him presently, a little added color coming into her cheeks.  “Do you mean to say to me that you really remember what we talked about—­that you really—­”

He nodded, smiling.  “Don’t you remember we talked about faith, and how to get hold of it?  And I said I couldn’t find it?  Well, I have no apologies and no explanations.  All I have to say is that I fought it out, threshed it all over, and then somehow, I don’t know how,—­well, faith came to me,—­that is all.  I waked up one night, and I—­well, I just knew.  That is all.  Then I knew I had been wrong.”

“And it cost you everything.”

“Just about everything in the world, I reckon, so far as worldly goods go.  I suppose you know what you and your little colonization scheme have done to me?”

“But you—­what do you mean?”

“Why, didn’t you know that?  Weren’t Carlisle and Kammerer your agents; and didn’t Lily, our late disappearing slave and also late lecturing fugitive yonder, represent them?  Don’t you really know about that?”

“No, I had nothing to do with their operations.”

“Do you mean to tell me that it was—­Oh, I am glad you do not know about it,” he said soberly, “although I don’t understand that part of it.”

“Won’t you explain?” she besought him.

“Now, the truth is—­and that is the main reason of all this popular feeling against me here—­that Lily, or these men, or people like them, took away every solitary negro from my plantation, as well as from two or three others neighboring me!  They didn’t stop to buy my property—­they just took it!  You see, Madam,”—­he smiled rather grimly,—­“these northern abolitionists remain in the belief that they have all the virtue and all the fair dealing in the world.  It has been a little hard on my cotton crop.  I will not have any crop this fall.  I had no labor.  I will not have any crop next summer.  With money at twelve per cent. and no munificent state salary coming in,—­that means rather more than I care to talk about.”

“And it was I—­I who did that for you!  Believe, believe me, I was wholly innocent of it!  I did not know!—­I did not!  I did not!  I would not have done that to my worst enemy!”

“No, I suppose not; but here is where we come again to the real heart of all of these questions which so many of us feel able to solve offhand.  What difference should you make between me and another?  If it is right for the North to free all these slaves without paying for them, why should there be anything in my favor, over any one of my neighbors?  And, most of all, why should you not be overjoyed at punishing me?  Why am I not your worst enemy?  I differed from you,—­I wronged you,—­I harmed you,—­I did everything in the world I could to injure you.  At least you have played even with me.  I got you Lily to take along.  And I even once went so far as to tell you my own notion, that the blacks ought to be deported.  Well, you got mine!”