His father had been a Whig, and a non-slaveholder; and while he
had gone with the South in the civil war so far as a man of peace could
go, he had not done so for love of slavery.
As the day wore on, Ellis's personal responsibility for the intended
_auto-da-fe_ bore more heavily upon him. Suppose he had been wrong? He
had seen the accused negro; he had recognized him by his clothes, his
whiskers, his spectacles, and his walk; but he had also seen another
man, who resembled Sandy so closely that but for the difference in their
clothes, he was forced to acknowledge, he could not have told them
apart. Had he not seen the first man, he would have sworn with even
greater confidence that the second was Sandy. There had been, he
recalled, about one of the men--he had not been then nor was he now able
to tell which--something vaguely familiar, and yet seemingly discordant
to whichever of the two it was, or, as it seemed to him now, to any man
of that race. His mind reverted to the place where he had last seen
Sandy, and then a sudden wave of illumination swept over him, and filled
him with a thrill of horror. The cakewalk,--the dancing,--the
speech,--they were not Sandy's at all, nor any negro's! It was a white
man who had stood in the light of the street lamp, so that the casual
passer-by might see and recognize in him old Mr. Delamere's servant. The
scheme was a dastardly one, and worthy of a heart that was something
worse than weak and vicious.
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