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 upon any subject, or it would not be deserving the name of a Republic," quietly, but firmly responded Walter, eyeing his opponent.

"I challenge you," said the latter, doubling his fists, and assuming a defiant attitude, "in the name and honor of our darling institution that you have insulted."

"I fight no duels," calmly replied Walter, "the cause that descends to such low means for its defence shows the most convincing proof of its own weakness."

A tumultuous roar of voices now succeeded. The slave traders who had resorted thither after the auction, inflamed with whiskey, made use of the most obscene language that ever greeted his ears, independent of the epithets applied to himself.

"Set him on a rail and give him a right smart treat of our hospitality," drawled out a thick set, low-browed, savage looking, tobacco chewing representative of the "sacred" soil of Virginia, who, no doubt, would faithfully execute any deed of that nature imposed upon him.

"He prates about Washington as if that was any thing to us. He was an old fool that he didn't get his old woman from your cussed North, instead of humoring their spleen. That's where he missed it, and made us a heap o' trouble, that he didn't make them understand in the beginning what's what. Made 'em know that they'd got to obey the laws, and stop this old confounded prattle about human rights and the nigger, but we shall have 'em yet tighter 'n