And now the lights blazed up, illuminating an
historic stage.
The chief of the deliberations now became the host, and motioned
his guests to the corner of the apartments where stood a long
sideboard of dark mahogany, bearing different crystal decanters.
Himself refraining, as did one or two others, he passed glasses,
motioned to the ancient colored man, and, raising his own hand,
proposed them a toast.
"Gentlemen,--the Union!"
They bowed to him ceremoniously, each in his way, with reverence,
touching lips to his glass. As they parted, one for a moment stood
alone, the dark man who had sat at the speaker's right. For a
moment he paused, as though absorbed, as finally he set down his
glass, gazing steadily forward as though striving to read what lay
in the future.
"The Union!" he whispered, almost to himself.
It might have been the voice, as it was the thought of all those
who, now passing, brought to a close this extraordinary meeting.
The Union!
CHAPTER IX
TALLWOODS
Meantime, events which might have held interest in certain circles
in Washington had they been known, passed on their course, and
toward that very region which had half in jest been named as the
storm center of the day--the state of Missouri, anomalous,
inchoate, discordant, half North, half South, itself the birth of
compromise and sired by political jealousy; whither, against her
will, voyaged a woman, herself engine of turbulence, doubt and
strife, and in company now of a savage captor who contemplated
nothing but establishing her for his own use in his own home.
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