“Lige,” he said, “Lige, it has come.”

In answer the Captain pressed the Judge’s hand, nodding vigorously to hide his rising emotion.  There was a pause.

“And you, Lige?” said Mr. Whipple, presently.

“My God!” cried the Captain, “I wish I knew.”

“Lige,” said the Judge, gravely, “you’re too good a man to be for Soothing Syrup.”

The Captain choked.

“You’re too smart to be fooled, Lige,” he said, with a note near to pleading.  “The time has come when you Bell people and the Douglas people have got to decide.  Never in my life did I know it to do good to dodge a question.  We’ve got to be white or black, Lige.  Nobody’s got much use for the grays.  And don’t let yourself be fooled with Constitutional Union Meetings, and compromises.  The time is almost here, Lige, when it will take a rascal to steer a middle course.”

Captain Lige listened, and he shifted from one foot to the other, and rubbed his hands, which were red.  Some odd trick of the mind had put into his head two people—­Eliphalet Hopper and Jacob Cluyme.  Was he like them?

“Lige, you’ve got to decide.  Do you love your country, sir?  Can you look on while our own states defy us, and not lift a hand?  Can you sit still while the Governor and all the secessionists in this state are plotting to take Missouri, too, out of the Union?  The militia is riddled with rebels, and the rest are forming companies of minute men.”

“And you Black Republicans,” the Captain cried “have organized your Dutch Wideawakes, and are arming them to resist Americans born.”

“They are Americans by our Constitution, sir, which the South pretends to revere,” cried the Judge.  “And they are showing themselves better Americans than many who have been on the soil for generations.”

“My sympathies are with the South,” said the Captain, doggedly, “and my love is for the South.”

“And your conscience?” said the Judge.

There was no answer.  Both men raised their eyes to the house of him whose loving hospitality had been a light in the lives of both.  When at last the Captain spoke, his voice was rent with feeling.

“Judge,” he began, “when I was a poor young man on the old ‘Vicksburg’, second officer under old Stetson, Colonel Carvel used to take me up to his house on Fourth Street to dinner.  And he gave me the clothes on my back, so that I might not be ashamed before the fashion which came there.  He treated me like a son, sir.  One day the sheriff sold the Vicksburg.  You remember it.  That left me high and dry in the mud.  Who bought her, sir?  Colonel Carvel.  And he says to me, ’Lige, you’re captain now, the youngest captain on the river.  And she’s your boat.  You can pay me principal and interest when you get ready.’

“Judge Whipple, I never had any other home than right in, this house.  I never had any other pleasure than bringing Jinny presents, and tryin’ to show ’em gratitude.  He took me into his house and cared for me at a time when I wanted to go to the devil along with the stevedores when I was a wanderer he kept me out of the streets, and out of temptation.  Judge, I’d a heap rather go down and jump off the stern of my boat than step in here and tell him I’d fight for the North.”