"Hold your horses," interrupted his father. "What is the use of cutting off your nose to spite your face? Instead of giving aid and comfort to the Federals, he is working them so that they are giving much aid and comfort to him and a few others who are in the ring with him."
"And is it your desire to become one of that 'ring,' as you call it?" demanded his wife, pitching her voice in a little higher key than usual. "Would you collogue with the enemies of your country for the sake of making something out of them? Mr. Randolph—George—I am surprised to hear you hint at such baseness; and in the presence of a prominent State officer, too."
"Hold your horses," said Mr. Randolph again. "If I can make something to eat and wear by trading with the Yankees, who seem to have enough and to spare, it is to my interest and yours to do it, is it not? And through it all I can still be a good Confederate, can't I? Look here," he continued, walking up to the table and sinking his voice almost to a whisper. "I have 200 bales of cotton concealed in the swamp, and Gray has more than twice as much. And every bale of that cotton is worth sixty cents a pound in New York."
Mr. Randolph straightened up and looked at his wife and son as much as to say, "What do you think of that?" He expected them to be surprised, and certainly he was not disappointed. For a minute or two they were so amazed that they could not speak.
"Six—did I understand you to say sixty cents a pound?" Captain Tom managed to ask at last.
"Where did you hear that ridiculous story?" chimed in Mrs. Randolph. "I have read the papers very closely, and I didn't see anything of it."
"Do you for a moment imagine that our lying papers——"
"Mr. Randolph—George!"
"Hold your horses. I know what I am talking about. It is a fact that our papers conceal everything that goes against us, or make light of it, and of course they wouldn't say that cotton is bringing sixty cents in the North while in the Confederacy it is worth only seven. If our papers should publish such reports as that, don't you see that the Confederacy wouldn't get any more cotton? Every planter who owns a bale would make haste to run it into the swamp."