“And what,—what,” said Onslow hesitatingly, “what did they do with my father?”
“They hung him on the same tree with your brother.”
“Yes,” said Onslow, with a calmness more terrible than a frantic grief. “Yes! Of course his gray hairs were no protection.”
There was a pause; and then, “What do you mean to do?” said Kenrick.
“Can you doubt?” exclaimed Onslow.
A servant knocked at the door and left a package. It contained a complimentary letter and a Colonel’s commission, signed by the Confederate authorities. “You see these,” said Onslow, handing them to Kenrick. Then, taking them, he contemptuously tore them, and madly threw the pieces on the floor.
“Yes, my father is right,” he cried. “It is Slavery that has done this horror. On the head of Slavery lies the guilt. O the blind fool, the abject fawner, that I’ve been! Instead of being by the side of my brave brother, here I was wearing the detested livery of the brutal Power that smote down a whole family because they would not kneel at its bloody footstool! Who ever heard of a man being harmed at the North for defending Slavery? No! ’t is a foul lie to say that aught but Slavery can prompt and lend itself to such barbarities! The cowardly butchers! O, damn them! damn them!”
And he tore from his shoulders the badges of his military rank, and, spurning them with his foot, continued: “My noble father! the good, the devout, the heroic old man! How, even under his mortal agony, his belief in God, in right, in immortality, shines forth! Did ever an outcast creature apply to him in vain for help? Quick to resent, how much quicker he was to forgive! The soul of rectitude and truth! Did you ever see his seal, Charles? A straight line, with the motto Omnium brevissima recta! But he could not bow to Slavery as the supreme good. For that he and his must be slaughtered! And William, the brave and gentle! And Emily, the tenderly-bred and beautiful! And my sainted—”
He knelt, and, raising both arms to heaven, cried: “Hear me, O God! Eternal Justice, hear me! If ever again, in thought or act, I show mercy to this merciless Slave Power,—if ever again I palliate its crimes or utter a word in extenuation of its horrors,—that moment annihilate me as a wretch unfit either for this world or any other!”
Then, rising, he said, “Kenrick, your hand!”