“Most unfortunate affair! Strange, too, that the man should have been killed just when the children needed him most. If he had lived, Thomson, in all probability, would not have recovered his property.” He paused with a keen glance in Warren’s quiet face, but it told nothing. His voice, too, was calm and even as he inquired:
“Then Mr. Thomson was the owner of the unfortunate children?”
“Yes,” returned Thomson, “I’d been hunting them gals and their mother for nigh fifteen years, an’ it was just luck and chance my meeting up with them young ones.”
Warren puffed away at his cigar as though it were his only object in life.
“Fine cigar,” he observed, at length.
“Particularly fine. The tobacco was raised by my own hands right over there for my private use,” said the Colonel.
“What do you think of our institutions, Mr. Maxwell?” asked Thomson, nonchalantly. “They’ve made this country. ’Spose you have some compunctions of conscience over us, eh? Most Englishmen do at first. But, man, look at the advantage it gives, the prosperity it brings, the prestige it gives our fine gentry all over the world. You must confess that we are a grand people.”
“Yet you complained of a tea tax, and fought a ‘liberty fight’ on that pretext,” observed Warren drily.
“Jes’ so, jes’ so! But see what we’ve done for the Africans, given them the advantages of Christian training, and a chance to mingle, although but servants, in the best circles of the country. The niggers have decidedly the best of it. The masters suffer from their ignorance and incompetency.”
“How do you think the excitement over the Kansas-Nebraska matter will end?” questioned Maxwell, avoiding a statement of his own opinions.