“We may be conquered, but not subjugated. You can’t do that with all your countless hordes of men, and your millions of money. The North can never subjugate the South. We may lay down our arms because we have no other alternative, but we shall still think the same, and feel the same as we do now.”
Here was a curious study for Will Mather, who was surprised to find such maturity of thought and so strong determination in one so young and frail.
“No wonder it is hard to conquer a people composed of such elements,” he thought, and he was about to continue the conversation when he was startled by a loud blast from a horn among the hills.
“They’ve caught some one. They always do that as a kind of exultation,” the boy exclaimed, wringing his hands, and evincing as much distress as he had heretofore shown bitterness against the opposing party.
It was a poor refugee from a neighboring county, whom, in spite of Paul Haverill’s precautions, they had found in a hollow tree, and whom they brought more dead than alive down to the Oak Plantation, amid vociferous cries of “Tar and feather him!” “Hang him to a sour-apple tree!” “Give him a taste of the halter!” “Make him an example to all other sneaking Yankee sympathizers!”
With his face as white as marble, and his lips set firmly together, Paul Haverill stood in the midst of the noisy group which he tried to quiet.
“Let us try him by jury,” he said, and something in his voice reassured the frightened, haggard wretch, who had seen his house burned down and his son shot before his very eyes, and of course expected no mercy.
The trial by jury proved popular, and then Paul Haverill suggested that a judge be chosen in the person of some one who had lost a near friend in the war, and was of course competent to mete out full justice to the criminal—“Charlie, for instance,” and his eye fell on the boy, who had joined the crowd and was standing close by the prisoner. The boy caught his uncle’s meaning at once, and exclaimed:
“Yes, let me be the judge. My father was killed at Bull Run. My mother died of grief. Surely I may decide.”
Charlie De Vere was a favorite with the men, who knew how staunch a Confederate he was, and, waiving the trial for want of time, they said: