Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/75

WHO WAS LUCAS MALLORY? the Underground—doing everything you can against it."

"What," I asks, "shall I make the Unions do? I'm Union, you know! You want me to help the rebels."

"Make Abe Lincoln let the South go her way. She deserves it. She'll go, anyhow. She's stronger than the North. Why shouldn't she? If you want to leave me, have I a right to pin you to your chair and keep you?"

"But you wouldn't rather have twenty or thirty little tomcat governments, none of 'em having any power or dignity, than this one great, grand, glorious Union?" says I.

"If the people want it that way—yes," says Ben, violent. "It's their country, not Abe Lincoln's."

"You can bet," says I, "that they'd be cutting down each other's trees then to beat the band!"

Ben flares up entirely unaccountable, and says: 59