"Will you be my trustee?"
"Yes."
"God bless you!"
The angry, crushed, and outraged man broke into tears as he shook the hand he held.
There was an hour or two of close consultation, and then Hesden Le Moyne looked thoughtfully after this earnest and well-meaning man, who was compelled to flee from the land for which he had fought, simply because he had adopted the policy and principles which the conquering power had thrust into the fundamental law, and endeavored to carry them out in good faith. Like the fugitive from slavery in the olden time, he had started toward the North Pole on the quest for liberty.
CHAPTER XLVI.
BACKWARD AND FORWARD.
The task which Hesden Le Moyne undertook when he assumed the care and protection of Eliab Hill, was no trivial one, as he well understood.
He realized as fully as did Nimbus the necessity of absolute concealment, for he was well aware that the blaze of excitement which would sweep over Horsford, when the events that had occurred at Red Wing should become known, would spare no one who should harbor or conceal any of the recognized leaders of the colored men. He knew that not only that organization which had just shown its existence in the county, but the vast majority of all the white inhabitants as well, would look upon this affair as indubitable evidence of the irrepressible conflict of races, in which they all believed most devoutly.
He had looked forward to this time with great apprehension. Although he had scrupulously refrained from active participation in political life, it was not from any lack of interest in the political situation of the country. He had not only the ordinary instinct of the educated Southern man for political thought—an instinct which makes every man in that section first of all things a partisan, and constitutes politics the first and most important business of life—but besides this general interest in public affairs he had also an inherited bias of hostility to the right of secession, as well as to its policy. His father had been what was termed a "Douglas Democrat," and the son had absorbed his views. With that belief in a father's infallibility which is so general in that part of the country, Hesden, despite his own part in the war and the chagrin which defeat had brought, had looked only for evil results to come out of the present struggle, which he believed to have been uselessly precipitated.