“But how came this great change about, my father?”
“Who can tell that? Perhaps your tears that ever fell, your prayers that ever rose for him, were effective! Perhaps your devotion to the sufferers by this war brought a blessing on your head, and grace to him, so that he was cured of his hallucination; for it was hallucination with him. The wisest and best of mortal men, Erminie, are subject to be hallucinated by some master passion. With one man it may be love; with another jealousy, hatred or revenge; with still another, avarice; and with the nobler sort of man it is, too often, ambition! With Eastworth it was ambition that warped his reason and silenced his conscience. And this was not a narrow, personal desire for his own individual aggrandizement, but a comparatively broad, unselfish aspiration, for the establishment of his own section of the country into a nation, as opposed to the whole country. In this he forgot, for a time, the interests of humanity, the interests of posterity, all bound up in the preservation, intact, of this Union.”
“But he remembers this now?”
“He remembers this now! Let me be just to Eastworth! It is not, I say, the failure of the cause that has brought about this change in him. I have seen a great deal of him in the last two years. This change has been gradually coming over him in all that time.”
“But, father, dear father, he has laid himself liable to heavy penalties of I know not what weight.”
“He has, my dear; but he is prepared to meet them like a man.”
“His property, his liberty, even his life is forfeit to the country, is it not?” inquired Erminie, growing pale, as for the first time she remembered his danger.
“My child, perhaps so, according to the strict letter of the law! But I do not think the people of this country will have it so! There is no reason on earth why we, the free and enlightened people of America should follow the precedent afforded us by the mingled fear and cruelty of the old world monarchies. We are too brave and strong to be vindictive and despotic.”
“But what will Eastworth do, father?”
“In the first place he will not expatriate himself. Be sure of that. He will trust himself to his country as a son to his mother.”