“Then you did not meet him. He will be delighted to see you again; for really the boy is as fond of you as he is of his sister.”
Somers found himself unable to answer to the warm congratulations of the old man, or to enter into the spirit of the conversation. The staring, death-sealed eyes of Owen Raynes haunted him; and, when he attempted to reciprocate the friendly sentiments of the doting father, his heart seemed to rise up in his throat, and choke his utterance. The only consolation he could derive from the remembrance of the scene in the woods was in the fact that he had not taken the life of Owen Raynes himself. He wore his clothes, and had his diary and letters in his pocket.
“You are very sad, Allan! I should think you would be happy to escape from the Yankees. They would have starved you to death in time.”
“I think not, sir! They are not so cruel as that,” added Somers, who desired to remove such a reproach from the mind of the old man.
“Perhaps they would not willingly starve their prisoners; but I don’t see how they could avoid it. They say that the people of the North are suffering terribly for the want of food. In New York, the laboring classes have attacked the banks and the flour-stores, urged on by hunger. There will be terrible times in the North before many months have gone by. I pity the people there, though it is their own fault. I hope God will be merciful to them, and spare them from some of the consequences of their own folly. I am thankful that you have escaped from them.”
“I don’t think they are quite so badly off as you say,” answered Somers, provoked by this view of the condition and resources of the North. “I have talked with a great many Yankee soldiers, and they say that plenty abounds in all the Northern States.”
“They would tell you so. They are deceived by their officers.”
“That’s the way it is done,” added the rebel sergeant, who had been listening to the conversation.
“But I saw what rations these soldiers have. They live like lords.”
“That’s the very thing which will starve all the people in the North. Their big armies will eat them out of house and home in a few months, Allan.”