THE NIGHT EXPEDITION IN THE MAGNOLIA
Levi Bedford walked into the library not a little excited with curiosity; for Titus Lyon had spent the whole afternoon on the bridge with the planter, who had been closeted with the two boys for some time. It was evident to him that something unusual had occurred. Noah was seated in a great arm-chair which usually faced his desk, but he had turned it around. The overseer walked up to this chair, and planted himself in front of it with a respectful look of inquiry on his round face.
"I am in doubt, Levi, and I have sent for you," Mr. Lyon began. "As you are aware, I have never talked politics with you, and have not known to which party you belong."
"I don't belong to any party," replied Levi with a very broad smile on his face. "My party is the plantation and the family. I look out for them, and I don't bother my head much about anything else."
"I suppose you have relatives in Tennessee?" suggested the planter.
"Second or third cousins very likely; but I don't know anything about them, and I don't lie awake nights thinking of them. My father died before I was twenty-one; I had no sisters, and my only brother went to California twenty years ago, and I haven't heard from him in ten years."
"I don't mean to meddle with your affairs, Levi, but the time has come when every man, must declare himself."
"I should think it had, Mr. Lyon; and this afternoon I thought I was going to have a chance to strike for your side of the house. I was ready to do it, for two or three times I thought you were in peril. I don't know what you were talking about, only it was something very stirring," replied Levi with his usual smile.
"I don't think I was in any danger, but I am very much obliged to you for looking out for me. Now things have come to such a pass that I must put a direct question to you: Are you a Union man or a Secessionist?"
"I am a Union man now from the crown of my foot to the sole of my head," laughed Levi. "But it wouldn't be anything more than honest and square, Major Lyon, for me to say that I haven't been so many months. Colonel Lyon was a Union man; but he didn't have it half as bad as you have it. Some of his neighbors thought he was too tender with his people; but he and Colonel Cosgrove were pretty well matched on politics."