"What, uncle, are you in that vein? Have your eyes been opened to the light at last?"
"Somewhat, Robert—but a truce to this for the present. Let us have your intelligence from Santee. They talk here of some risings in that quarter, but we have no particulars, and know nothing of the success of either party. There is also some story of approaching continentals. Has Congress really given us an army? and who is to command it? Speak, boy; out with your budget."
"Thank you, good mine uncle; but how know I that I unfold my budget to a friend, and not to an enemy ? What security do you give m that I talk not with a devout and loyal subject of his majesty—so very much a lover of the divine right of kings, that he would freely lend a hand to run up his own nephew to a swinging bough, the better to compel the same faith in others?"
"Pshaw! Robert, you speak idly: you mean not to suppose me a tory?"
The brow of Colonel Walton darkened awfully as he spoke.
"I have little faith in neutrals," was the calm reply; "I hold to the goodly whig proverb, 'He who is not for me, is against me.' Pardon me, therefore, uncle, if I prefer—I who am a whig—to speak to you, who are neither whig nor Englishman, after such a fashion as shall not make you the keeper of unnecessary secrets, and expose a good cause to overthrow, and its friends to injury."
The taunt thus uttered with a most provoking and biting dryness of phrase, operated strongly upon the mind of the colonel, already acted upon, in no small degree, by his own previous rebukings of conscience to the same effect. He exclaimed bitterly, as, rising from the supper-table, he strode away under the momentary impulse—
"Ay, by heaven! but your words are true. Who should esteem the neutral, when his country is in danger, and when her people are writhing under oppression? True, though bitter—more bitter, as it is too true. Robert Singleton, thou hast given me a keen stroke, boy, but I have deserved it. Thou hast spoken nothing but the truth."
"Now, indeed, uncle, I rejoice to see you, and in this humour. You have felt the stroke at last, but it is not my speech that has
