“I did well, then, not to ask you,” resumed the young girl, with a firmer voice.
The Captain crossed his arms, walked round his cabin, and then came back.
“What is your name?” said he.
“Jenny Halliburtt.”
“Your father, if I remember rightly the address on the letters, is he not from Boston?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And a Northerner is thus in a southern town in the thickest of the war?”
“My father is a prisoner; he was at Charleston when the first shot of the Civil War was fired, and the troops of the Union driven from Fort Sumter by the Confederates. My father’s opinions exposed him to the hatred of the Slavist part, and by the order of General Beauregard he was imprisoned. I was then in England, living with a relation who has just died, and left alone with no help but that of Crockston, our faithful servant, I wished to go to my father and share his prison with him.”
“What was Mr. Halliburtt, then?” asked James Playfair.
“A loyal and brave journalist,” replied Jenny proudly, one of the noblest editors of the “Tribune,” and the one who was the boldest in defending the cause of the negroes.