True To His Colors. Castlemon Harry

business to which his correspondent referred was so very "private and particular," it would never do, he thought, to read the letter there in the post-office, while there were so many men standing around; so he straightway sought the privacy of his own dwelling – a little tumble-down log cabin with a dirt floor and stick chimney, which was situated in the outskirts of the town.

      "One of the most respected and prominent citizens of Barrington; that's what I be," muttered Bud Goble, as he stumbled along the dark road toward his domicile. "I always knowed it, but there's a heap of folks about here who have always been down on me, kase I haven't got any niggers of my own and have to work for a livin'; but I'm to the top of the heap now, an' what's more, I'll let some of 'em know it before I am many hours older. I wisht I knew what's into this letter, kase it's mighty hard work for me to read it. If it's anything about them babolitionists an' the doctering they're preachin' up among our niggers – Well, they'll not do it much longer, kase I am about ready to take some on 'em outen their beds at night an' lay the hickory over their backs. There's money into it, kase Mr. Riley an' the rest of the men that's onto the committee said so; an' I'm onto every job where there's an honest dollar to be made."

      Bud Goble was a fair type of that class of people who were known to those among whom they lived as "white trash." Even the negroes, particularly those who belonged to wealthy planters, looked upon them with contempt. Too lazy to work, they lived from hand to mouth; and not one out of ten of the many thousands of them who went into the Confederate Army knew what they were fighting for. To save his life Bud Goble could not have told what all this excitement was about. He had a dim notion that somebody wanted to free the slaves, and the idea of such a thing made him furious; although it is hard to explain why it should, for, as Dick Graham said, he had never owned the price of a pickaninny. He had got it into his head that if the negroes were made free he would be brought down to their level and compelled to go to work, and that was something he could not bear to think of.

      Bud Goble did not know what secession meant, but he was strongly in favor of it, because the majority of the wealthy and influential citizens in and around Barrington favored it; and taking his cue from them, he not only turned the cold shoulder upon those who were suspected of being on the side of the Union, but went further and became their deadly enemy. Mr. Riley and the other members of the Committee of Safety knew all this, and yet they employed him, the most vindictive and unreliable man in the neighborhood, to keep them posted in regard to what the Union men and free negroes were doing and saying. It is not to be supposed that men of their intelligence would put much faith in his reports, but they furnished an excuse for resorting to high-handed measures, and that was really what the committee wanted.

      Meanwhile Bud Goble was making the best of his way homeward, guided by the blaze from a light-wood fire on the hearth which shone through the open door. It was not such a home as the most of us would care to go to at night, for it was the most cheerless place in the country for miles around. Even the humblest cabin in Mr. Riley's negro quarter, half a mile away, was a more inviting spot. And as for the family who occupied it – well, a benighted traveler, no matter how tired and hungry he might be, would have gone farther and camped in the woods rather than ask supper and lodging of them.

      "Now, Susie," exclaimed Mr. Goble cheerfully, addressing a slouchy, unkempt woman who sat in front of the fire with her elbows resting on her knees and a dingy cob pipe between her teeth, "punch up the blaze an' dish up a supper while I read my letter an' see what's into it."

      "Who's been a-writin' a letter to you?" queried the woman, without changing her position.

      "That's what I don't know till I read it. It's something about them babolitionists that our gover'ment has ordered to get outen here, I reckon. But I'm powerful hungry. I aint had a bite to eat sense I left in the mornin'."

      "Well, then, where's the meal an' bacon I told you to fetch along when you come home?" inquired Mrs. Goble. "I told you plain as I could speak it that there wasn't a drop of anything to eat in the house; an' here's the young ones been a-howlin' for grub the whole day long."

      "Land sakes, if I didn't forget all about it," said Goble regretfully. "But how on earth am I goin' to get grub when I aint got no money to pay for it? Our committee didn't give me no money to-day kase I didn't have nothing to tell 'em. 'Pears like all the traitors keep mighty glum when I'm around. See two or three of 'em talkin' together, an' they shet up the minute I begin to sidle up to 'em."

      "You aint wuth shucks to work for that committee," replied his wife impatiently. "If I was a man an' had the job, I'd tell 'em something every hour in the day."

      "How could you when there wasn't nothing to tell, I'd like to know?"

      "I'd find plenty, I bet you. You haven't disremembered how them babolitionists an' the free niggers used to talk, about the time John Brown was makin' that raid of his'n, have you?"

      "'Course I aint; but them's old stories now. They've kept mighty still tongues in their heads sense that time."

      "No odds if they have. They was Union then, an' they're that same way of thinkin' now; an' the talk that would have hung 'em then, if our folks hadn't been jest the peaceablest people in the world, would get 'em into trouble now if it was brung up agin 'em."

      "An' would you tell them stories all over agin if you was me?" exclaimed

      Bud Goble.

      "I wouldn't do nothing else."

      "Jest as if they happened yisterday?"

      "Toby sure. You want money, don't you? an' that there committee of yourn won't give you none 'ceptin' you can tell 'em sunthin', will they?"

      "Now, that's an idee," exclaimed Mr. Goble, gazing admiringly at his wife. "I never onct thought of that way of doin'."

      "You never think of nothing till I tell you what to do," said Mrs. Goble sharply. "You've had no end of good jobs that you could have made money on if you'd only worked 'em right, but you won't listen to what I tell you. I don't reckon you see how you could make money two ways outen the job you've got now, do you? You might go to all the Union folks, niggers an' whites, an' tell 'em that if they don't give you some clothes for your fambly to wear, an' grub for 'em to eat, you will have that there committee of yourn after 'em, mightn't you?"