THE MIDNIGHT RIDE.
It was half-a-dozen years before the war that Godfrey Brooks made a visit to his Cousin Sydney in Virginia. It was his first glimpse of plantation life, and he was not sparing of his questions or comments. Boys in a strange place find it hard to carry about with them the politeness or reticence which are such easy fitting garments at home.
The two boys were standing on the piazza one sunny morning looking down to the distant swamp.
"You mean to tell me," said Godfrey hotly, "that gentlemen hunted their runaway slaves out of the swamp with bloodhounds? Bloodhounds?"
"No, I don't. Gentlemen, of course, do no such dirty work. In the first place, our people (we don't call them slaves) never run away. Why, bless you, old Uncle Peter there, was a boy with my grandfather, and I'm sure I like him a deal better. Of all the hundreds of men and women my father owns, there's not one that don't respect and love him. But there's a class of whites who are not so respected, and when their people escape they bring them back—that's all."
"It's brutal," muttered Godfrey.
"A man has a right to reclaim his property," said Syd coolly.
Now neither of the boys knew much of the intrinsic merits of the question. They only echoed the words and arguments their elders threw back and forth unceasingly. When Syd began to give the details of the late hunt after a runaway horse-thief in the swamp, therefore, Godfrey's moral indignation cooled in the borrowed ardor of the chase.