Little Barbara looked up with consternation. She loved her father, but never before had she heard from his lips a decided expression of sympathy with the loyal cause. True, for the last six months he had said little on either side; but, from the absence of any controversy between him and her mother, Barbara imagined that their political sentiments were harmonious.
She made no reply to her father's remark, but kept up in that little brain of hers an amount of thinking that took away all her appetite for the dessert. Mrs. Dinwiddie entered before the table was cleared. Then there was a ring of the door-bell. It was the postman. Nero brought in a letter. Dinwiddie looked at the address.
"'T is a letter for Anjy," said he. "The handwriting looks like Culpepper's."
Anjy, or Angelina, was an old black cook, one of the few surviving representatives of the vanished glories of the old Culpepper estate. She had taken a lively interest in the course of Maryland towards freedom; and when at length that noble Commonwealth stripped off the last fetter from her limbs, and trampled it under her feet, Anjy was loudest among the colored people with her Hallelujahs. She was no longer a slave, thank the Lord! There was a future of justice, of self-respect, of freedom now dawning upon her abused race.
As Anjy could not read, Barbara had been duly authorized to open all her letters. She did so on this occasion, read, turned pale, and exclaimed,—
"Horrible! Oh, the villain!"
"What's the matter?" asked her father.
The letter was from his son, Culpepper, to the old family servant, and was in these words:—
"Dear Anjy,—I have very unpleasant news to tell you. Your son Tony has been shot by his master, Colonel Pegram, for refusing to fight against the Yankees, and trying to run away. Tony was much to blame. He had been a good boy till some confounded Abolitionists put it into his head that the Yankee scum were fighting the battles of the black man; when, as you well know, Anjy, the true friends of the black man are those who mean to keep him in that state of slavery for which the Lord plainly intended him. But Tony got this foolish notion of the Abolitionists into his head, and one day frankly told the Colonel that he wouldn't fire a gun at the Yankees to save his own life; whereupon the Colonel very properly had him whipped, and pretty badly, too. The next day Tony was caught trying to make his escape into the Yankee lines. He was brought before the Colonel, who told him, that, for your sake, Anjy, he would forgive him, if he would swear on the Bible not to do so again. Tony refused to swear this, began to rave about his rights, and finally declared that he was free, first under God's law, next under the laws of the United States, and finally under the laws of Maryland. There were other negroes, slaves of officers, near by, listening to all this wicked stuff, and Pegram felt the importance of making an example; so he drew his revolver and shot Tony through the heart. How could he help it, Anjy? You mustn't blame the Colonel. We all felt he couldn't have done otherwise, I saw Tony the minute after he was shot. He died easy. I emptied his pockets. There was nothing in them but a photograph of you, Anjy, a printed proclamation by the wretched Yankee tyrant, Abe Lincoln, and a handkerchief printed as an American flag. I'm very sorry at this affair; but you must seek comfort in religion, and pray that your poor deluded boy may be forgiven for his unfaithfulness and bad conduct. Affectionately,
"Culpepper."