CHAPTER XX. THE CAMPAIGN ENDS

“If I am obliged to storm, you may depend upon such treatment as is

justly due to a murderer. And beware of destroying stores of any kind,

or any papers or letters that are in your possession; or of hurting one

house in the town. For, by Heaven! if you do, there shall be no mercy

shown you.

“To Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton.”

So read Colonel Clark, as he stood before the log fire in Monsieur

Bouton’s house at the back of the town, the captains grouped in front of

him.

“Is that strong enough, gentlemen?” he asked.

“To raise his hair,” said Captain Charleville.

Captain Bowman laughed loudly.

“I reckon the boys will see to that,” said he.

Colonel Clark folded the letter, addressed it, and turned gravely to

Monsieur Bouton.

“You will oblige me, sir,” said he, “by taking this to Governor

Hamilton. You will be provided with a flag of truce.”

Monsieur Bouton was a round little man, as his name suggested, and the

men cheered him as he strode soberly up the street, a piece of sheeting

tied to a sapling and flung over his shoulder. Through such humble

agencies are the ends of Providence accomplished. Monsieur Bouton walked

up to the gate, disappeared sidewise through the postern, and we sat

down to breakfast. In a very short time Monsieur Bouton was seen coming

back, and his face was not so impassive that the governor’s message

could not be read thereon.

“‘Tis not a love-letter he has, I’ll warrant,” said Terence, as the

little man disappeared into the house. So accurately had Monsieur

Bouton’s face betrayed the news that the men went back to their posts

without orders, some with half a breakfast in hand. And soon the rank

and file had the message.

“Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton begs leave to acquaint Colonel Clark that

he and his garrison are not disposed to be awed into any action unworthy

of British subjects.”

Our men had eaten, their enemy was within their grasp and Clark and

all his officers could scarce keep them from storming. Such was the

deadliness of their aim that scarce a shot came back, and time and again

I saw men fling themselves in front of the breastworks with a war-whoop,

wave their rifles in the air, and cry out that they would have the Ha’r

Buyer’s sculp before night should fall. It could not last. Not tuned to

the nicer courtesies of warfare, the memory of Hamilton’s war parties,

of blackened homes, of families dead and missing, raged unappeased.

These were not content to leave vengeance in the Lord’s hands, and when

a white flag peeped timorously above the gate a great yell of derision

went up from river-bank to river-bank. Out of the postern stepped the

officer with the faded scarlet coat, and in due time went back again,

haughtily, his head high, casting contempt right and left of him. Again

the postern opened, and this time there was a cheer at sight of a man

in hunting shirt and leggings and coonskin cap. After him came a certain

Major Hay, Indian-enticer of detested memory, the lieutenant of him who

followed--the Hair Buyer himself. A murmur of hatred arose from the men

stationed there, and many would have shot him where he stood but for

Clark.

“The devil has the grit,” said Cowan, though his eyes blazed.

It was the involuntary tribute. Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton stared

indifferently at the glowering backwoodsmen as he walked the few steps

to the church. Not so Major Hay. His eyes fell. There was Colonel Clark

waiting at the door through which the good Creoles had been wont to go

to worship, bowing somewhat ironically to the British General. It was a

strange meeting they had in St. Xavier’s, by the light of the candles

on the altar. Hot words passed in that house of peace, the General

demanding protection for all his men, and our Colonel replying that he

would do with the Indian partisans as he chose.

“And whom mean you by Indian partisans?” the undaunted governor had

demanded.

“I take Major Hay to be one of them,” our Colonel had answered.

It was soon a matter of common report how Clark had gazed fixedly at

the Major when he said this, and how the Major turned pale and

trembled. With our own eyes we saw them coming out, Major Hay as near

to staggering as a man could be, the governor blushing red for shame of

him. So they went sorrowfully back to the gate.

Colonel Clark stood at the steps of the church, looking after them.

“What was that firing?” he demanded sharply. “I gave orders for a

truce.”

We who stood by the church had indeed heard firing in the direction of

the hills east of the town, and had wondered thereat. Perceiving a

crowd gathered at the far end of the street, we all ran thither save the

Colonel, who directed to have the offenders brought to him at Monsieur

Bouton’s. We met the news halfway. A party of Canadians and Indians had

just returned from the Falls of the Ohio with scalps they had taken.

Captain Williams had gone out with his company to meet them, had lured

them on, and finally had killed a number and was returning with the

prisoners. Yes, here they were! Williams himself walked ahead with two

dishevelled and frightened coureurs du bois, twoscore at least of

the townspeople of Vincennes, friends and relatives of the prisoners,

pressing about and crying out to Williams to have mercy on them. As for

Williams, he took them in to the Colonel, the townspeople pressing into

the door-yard and banking in front of it on the street. Behind all a

tragedy impended, nor can I think of it now without sickening.

The frightened Creoles in the street gave back against the fence, and

from behind them, issuing as a storm-cloud, came the half of Williams’

company, yelling like madmen. Pushed and jostled ahead of them were four

Indians, decked and feathered, the half-dried scalps dangling from their

belts, impassive, true to their creed despite the indignity of jolts and

jars and blows. On and on pressed the mob, gathering recruits at every

corner, and when they reached St. Xavier’s before the fort half the

regiment was there. Others watched, too, from the stockade, and what

they saw made their knees smite together with fear. Here were four

bronzed statues in a row across the street, the space in front of them

clear that their partisans in the fort might look and consider. What was

passing in the savage mind no man might know. Not a lip trembled nor

an eye faltered when a backwoodsman, his memory aflame at sight of the

pitiful white scalps on their belts, thrust through the crowd to curse

them. Fletcher Blount, frenzied, snatched his tomahawk from his side.

“Sink, varmint!” he cried with a great oath. “By the etarnal! we’ll pay

the H’ar Buyer in his own coin. Sound your drums!” he shouted at the

fort. “Call the garrison fer the show.”

He had raised his arm and turned to strike when the savage put up his

hand, not in entreaty, but as one man demanding a right from another.

The cries, the curses, the murmurs even, were hushed. Throwing back

his head, arching his chest, the notes of a song rose in the heavy air.

Wild, strange notes they were, that struck vibrant chords in my own

quivering being, and the song was the death-song. Ay, and the life-song

of a soul which had come into the world even as mine own. And somewhere

there lay in the song, half revealed, the awful mystery of that Creator

Whom the soul leaped forth to meet: the myriad green of the sun playing

with the leaves, the fish swimming lazily in the brown pool, the doe

grazing in the thicket, and a naked boy as free from care as these; and

still the life grows brighter as strength comes, and stature, and power

over man and beast; and then, God knows what memories of fierce love

and fiercer wars and triumphs, of desires gained and enemies

conquered,--God, who has made all lives akin to something which He holds

in the hollow of His hand; and then--the rain beating on the forest

crown, beating, beating, beating.

The song ceased. The Indian knelt in the black mud, not at the feet of

Fletcher Blount, but on the threshold of the Great Spirit who ruleth

all things. The axe fell, yet he uttered no cry as he went before his

Master.

So the four sang, each in turn, and died in the sight of some who

pitied, and some who feared, and some who hated, for the sake of land

and women. So the four went beyond the power of gold and gewgaw, and

were dragged in the mire around the walls and flung into the yellow

waters of the river.

Through the dreary afternoon the men lounged about and cursed the

parley, and hearkened for the tattoo,--the signal agreed upon by the

leaders to begin the fighting. There had been no command against taunts

and jeers, and they gathered in groups under the walls to indulge

themselves, and even tried to bribe me as I sat braced against a house

with my drum between my knees and the sticks clutched tightly in my

hands.

“Here’s a Spanish dollar for a couple o’ taps, Davy,” shouted Jack

Terrell.

“Come on, ye pack of Rebel cutthroats!” yelled a man on the wall.

He was answered by a torrent of imprecations. And so they flung it

back and forth until nightfall, when out comes the same faded-scarlet

officer, holding a letter in his hand, and marches down the street to

Monsieur Bouton’s. There would be no storming now, nor any man suffered

to lay fingers on the Hair Buyer.

I remember, in particular, Hamilton the Hair Buyer. Not the fiend my

imagination had depicted (I have since learned that most villains do not

look the part), but a man with a great sorrow stamped upon his face. The

sun rose on that 25th of February, and the mud melted, and one of our

companies drew up on each side of the gate. Downward slid the lion of

England, the garrison drums beat a dirge, and the Hair Buyer marched out

at the head of his motley troops.

Then came my own greatest hour. All morning I had been polishing and

tightening the drum, and my pride was so great as we fell into line that

so much as a smile could not be got out of me. Picture it all: Vincennes

in black and white by reason of the bright day; eaves and gables,

stockade line and capped towers, sharply drawn, and straight above these

a stark flagstaff waiting for our colors; pigs and fowls straying hither

and thither, unmindful that this day is red on the calendar. Ah! here

is a bit of color, too,--the villagers on the side streets to see the

spectacle. Gay wools and gayer handkerchiefs there, amid the joyous,

cheering crowd of thrice-changed nationality.

“Vive les Bostonnais! Vive les Américains! Vive Monsieur le Colonel

Clark! Vive le petit tambour!”

“Vive le petit tambour!” That was the drummer boy, stepping proudly

behind the Colonel himself, with a soul lifted high above mire and

puddle into the blue above. There was laughter amongst the giants behind

me, and Cowan saying softly, as when we left Kaskaskia, “Go it, Davy,

my little gamecock!” And the whisper of it was repeated among the ranks

drawn up by the gate.

Yes, here was the gate, and now we were in the fort, and an empire was

gained, never to be lost again. The Stars and Stripes climbed the staff,

and the folds were caught by an eager breeze. Thirteen cannon thundered

from the blockhouses--one for each colony that had braved a king.

There, in the miry square within the Vincennes fort, thin and bronzed

and travel-stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest

mood. And yet none by himself would have done it--each had come here

compelled by a spirit stronger than his own, by a master mind that

laughed at the body and its ailments.

Colonel George Rogers Clark stood in the centre of the square, under

the flag to whose renown he had added three stars. Straight he was, and

square, and self-contained. No weakening tremor of exultation softened

his face as he looked upon the men by whose endurance he had been able

to do this thing. He waited until the white smoke of the last gun had

drifted away on the breeze, until the snapping of the flag and the

distant village sounds alone broke the stillness.

“We have not suffered all things for a reward,” he said, “but because

a righteous cause may grow. And though our names may be forgotten,

our deeds will be remembered. We have conquered a vast land that our

children and our children’s children may be freed from tyranny, and we

have brought a just vengeance upon our enemies. I thank you, one and

all, in the name of the Continental Congress and of that Commonwealth

of Virginia for which you have fought. You are no longer Virginians,

Kentuckians, Kaskaskians, and Cahokians--you are Americans.”

He paused, and we were silent. Though his words moved us strongly, they

were beyond us.

“I mention no deeds of heroism, of unselfishness, of lives saved at the

peril of others. But I am the debtor of every man here for the years to

come to see that he and his family have justice from the Commonwealth

and the nation.”

Again he stopped, and it seemed to us watching that he smiled a little.

“I shall name one,” he said, “one who never lagged, who never

complained, who starved that the weak might be fed and walk. David

Ritchie, come here.”

I trembled, my teeth chattered as the water had never made them chatter.

I believe I should have fallen but for Tom, who reached out from the

ranks. I stumbled forward in a daze to where the Colonel stood, and the

cheering from the ranks was a thing beyond me. The Colonel’s hand on my

head brought me to my senses.

“David Ritchie,” he said, “I give you publicly the thanks of the

regiment. The parade is dismissed.”

The next thing I knew I was on Cowan’s shoulders, and he was tearing

round and round the fort with two companies at his heels.

“The divil,” said Terence McCann, “he dhrummed us over the wather, an’

through the wather; and faix, he would have dhrummed the sculp from

Hamilton’s head and the Colonel had said the worrd.”

“By gar!” cried Antoine le Gris, “now he drum us on to Detroit.”

Out of the gate rushed Cowan, the frightened villagers scattering right

and left. Antoine had a friend who lived in this street, and in ten

minutes there was rum in the powder-horns, and the toast was “On to

Detroit!”

Colonel Clark was sitting alone in the commanding officer’s room of

the garrison. And the afternoon sun, slanting through the square of the

window, fell upon the maps and papers before him. He had sent for me. I

halted in sheer embarrassment on the threshold, looked up at his face,

and came on, troubled.

“Davy,” he said, “do you want to go back to Kentucky?”

“I should like to stay to the end, Colonel,” I answered.

“The end?” he said. “This is the end.”

“And Detroit, sir?” I returned.

“Detroit!” he cried bitterly, “a man of sense measures his force, and

does not try the impossible. I could as soon march against Philadelphia.

This is the end, I say; and the general must give way to the politician.

And may God have mercy on the politician who will try to keep a people’s

affection without money or help from Congress.”

He fell back wearily in his chair, while I stood astonished, wondering.

I had thought to find him elated with victory.

“Congress or Virginia,” said he, “will have to pay Monsieur Vigo, and

Father Gibault, and Monsieur Gratiot, and the other good people who have

trusted me. Do you think they will do so?”

“The Congress are far from here,” I said.

“Ay,” he answered, “too far to care about you and me, and what we have

suffered.”

He ended abruptly, and sat for a while staring out of the window at the

figures crossing and recrossing the muddy parade-ground.

“Tom McChesney goes to-night to Kentucky with letters to the county

lieutenant. You are to go with him, and then I shall have no one

to remind me when I am hungry, and bring me hominy. I shall have no

financier, no strategist for a tight place.” He smiled a little, sadly,

at my sorrowful look, and then drew me to him and patted my shoulder.

“It is no place for a young lad,--an idle garrison. I think,” he

continued presently, “I think you have a future, David, if you do not

lose your head. Kentucky will grow and conquer, and in twenty years be

a thriving community. And presently you will go to Virginia, and study

law, and come back again. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“And I would tell you one thing,” said he, with force; “serve the

people, as all true men should in a republic. But do not rely upon their

gratitude. You will remember that?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

A long time he paused, looking on me with a significance I did not

then understand. And when he spoke again his voice showed no trace of

emotion, save in the note of it.

“You have been a faithful friend, Davy, when I needed loyalty. Perhaps

the time may come again. Promise me that you will not forget me if I

am--unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate, sir!” I exclaimed.

“Good-by, Davy,” he said, “and God bless you. I have work to do.”

Still I hesitated. He stared at me, but with kindness.

“What is it, Davy?” he asked.

“Please, sir,” I said, “if I might take my drum?”

At that he laughed.

“You may,” said he, “you may. Perchance we may need it again.”

I went out from his presence, vaguely troubled, to find Tom. And before

the early sun had set we were gliding down the Wabash in a canoe, past

places forever dedicated to our agonies, towards Kentucky and Polly Ann.

“Davy,” said Tom, “I reckon she’ll be standin’ under the ‘simmon tree,

waitin’ fer us with the little shaver in her arms.”

And so she was.

BOOK II. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

CHAPTER I. IN THE CABIN

The Eden of one man may be the Inferno of his neighbor, and now I am to

throw to the winds, like leaves of a worthless manuscript, some years of

time, and introduce you to a new Kentucky,--a Kentucky that was not for

the pioneer. One page of this manuscript might have told of a fearful

winter, when the snow lay in great drifts in the bare woods, when Tom

and I fashioned canoes or noggins out of the great roots, when a new and

feminine bit of humanity cried in the bark cradle, and Polly Ann sewed

deer leather. Another page--nay, a dozen--could be filled with Indian

horrors, ambuscades and massacres. And also I might have told how there

drifted into this land, hitherto unsoiled, the refuse cast off by the

older colonies. I must add quickly that we got more than our share of

their best stock along with this.

No sooner had the sun begun to pit the snow hillocks than wild creatures

came in from the mountains, haggard with hunger and hardship. They

had left their homes in Virginia and the Carolinas in the autumn; an

unheralded winter of Arctic fierceness had caught them in its grip.

Bitter tales they told of wives and children buried among the rocks.

Fast on the heels of these wretched ones trooped the spring settlers in

droves; and I have seen whole churches march singing into the forts,

the preacher leading, and thanking God loudly that He had delivered

them from the wilderness and the savage. The little forts would not hold

them; and they went out to hew clearings from the forest, and to build

cabins and stockades. And our own people, starved and snowbound, went

out likewise,--Tom and Polly Ann and their little family and myself

to the farm at the river-side. And while the water flowed between the

stumps over the black land, we planted and ploughed and prayed, always

alert, watching north and south, against the coming of the Indians.

But Tom was no husbandman. He and his kind were the scouts, the advance

guard of civilization, not tillers of the soil or lovers of close

communities. Farther and farther they went afield for game, and always

they grumbled sorely against this horde which had driven the deer from

his cover and the buffalo from his wallow.

Looking back, I can recall one evening when the long summer twilight

lingered to a close. Tom was lounging lazily against the big persimmon

tree, smoking his pipe, the two children digging at the roots, and Polly

Ann, seated on the door-log, sewing. As I drew near, she looked up at

me from her work. She was a woman upon whose eternal freshness industry

made no mar.

“Davy,” she exclaimed, “how ye’ve growed! I thought ye’d be a wizened

little body, but this year ye’ve shot up like a cornstalk.”

“My father was six feet two inches in his moccasins,” I said.

“He’ll be wallopin’ me soon,” said Tom, with a grin. He took a long

whiff at his pipe, and added thoughtfully, “I reckon this ain’t no place

fer me now, with all the settler folks and land-grabbers comin’ through

the Gap.”

“Tom,” said I, “there’s a bit of a fall on the river here.”

“Ay,” he said, “and nary a fish left.”

“Something better,” I answered; “we’ll put a dam there and a mill and a

hominy pounder.”

“And make our fortune grinding corn for the settlers,” cried Polly Ann,

showing a line of very white teeth. “I always said ye’d be a rich man,

Davy.”

Tom was mildly interested, and went with us at daylight to measure the

fall. And he allowed that he would have the more time to hunt if the

mill were a success. For a month I had had the scheme in my mind, where

the dam was to be put, the race, and the wondrous wheel rimmed with cow

horns to dip the water. And fixed on the wheel there was to be a crank

that worked the pounder in the mortar. So we were to grind until I could

arrange with Mr. Scarlett, the new storekeeper in Harrodstown, to have

two grinding-stones fetched across the mountains.

While the corn ripened and the melons swelled and the flax flowered, our

axes rang by the river’s side; and sometimes, as we worked, Cowan

and Terrell and McCann and other Long Hunters would come and jeer

good-naturedly because we were turning civilized. Often they gave us a

lift.

It was September when the millstones arrived, and I spent a joyous

morning of final bargaining with Mr. Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett

was from Connecticut, had been a quartermaster in the army, and at

much risk brought ploughs and hardware, and scissors and buttons, and

broadcloth and corduroy, across the Alleghanies, and down the Ohio in

flatboats. These he sold at great profit. We had no money, not even

the worthless scrip that Congress issued; but a beaver skin was worth

eighteen shillings, a bearskin ten, and a fox or a deer or a wildcat

less. Half the village watched the barter. The rest lounged sullenly

about the land court.

The land court--curse of Kentucky! It was just a windowless log house

built outside the walls, our temple of avarice. The case was this:

Henderson (for whose company Daniel Boone cut the wilderness road)

believed that he had bought the country, and issued grants therefor. Tom

held one of these grants, alas, and many others whom I knew. Virginia

repudiated Henderson. Keen-faced speculators bought acre upon acre and

tract upon tract from the State, and crossed the mountains to extort.

Claims conflicted, titles lapped. There was the court set in the

sunlight in the midst of a fair land, held by the shameless, thronged

day after day by the homeless and the needy, jostling, quarrelling,

beseeching. Even as I looked upon this strife a man stood beside me.

“Drat ‘em,” said the stranger, as he watched a hawk-eyed extortioner in

drab, for these did not condescend to hunting shirts, “drat ‘em, ef I

had my way I’d wring the neck of every mother’s son of ‘em.”

I turned with a start, and there was Mr. Daniel Boone.

“Howdy, Davy,” he said; “ye’ve growed some sence ye’ve ben with Clark.”

He paused, and then continued in the same strain: “‘Tis the same

at Boonesboro and up thar at the Falls settlement. The critters

is everywhar, robbin’ men of their claims. Davy,” said Mr. Boone,

earnestly, “you know that I come into Kaintuckee when it waren’t nothin’

but wilderness, and resked my life time and again. Them varmints is

wuss’n redskins,--they’ve robbed me already of half my claims.”

“Robbed you!” I exclaimed, indignant that he, of all men, should suffer.

“Ay,” he said, “robbed me. They’ve took one claim after another, tracts

that I staked out long afore they heerd of Kaintuckee.” He rubbed his

rifle barrel with his buckskin sleeve. “I get a little for my skins,

and a little by surveyin’. But when the game goes I reckon I’ll go after

it.”

“Where, Mr. Boone?” I asked.

“Whar? whar the varmints cyant foller. Acrost the Mississippi into the

Spanish wilderness.”

“And leave Kentucky?” I cried.

“Davy,” he answered sadly, “you kin cope with ‘em. They tell me you’re

buildin’ a mill up at McChesney’s, and I reckon you’re as cute as any of

‘em. They beat me. I’m good for nothin’ but shootin’ and explorin’.”

We stood silent for a while, our attention caught by a quarrel which

had suddenly come out of the doorway. One of the men was Jim Willis,--my

friend of Clark’s campaign,--who had a Henderson claim near Shawanee

Springs. The other was the hawk-eyed man of whom Mr. Boone had spoken,

and fragments of their curses reached us where we stood. The hunting

shirts surged around them, alert now at the prospect of a fight; men

came running in from all directions, and shouts of “Hang him! Tomahawk

him!” were heard on every side. Mr. Boone did not move. It was a common

enough spectacle for him, and he was not excitable. Moreover, he knew

that the death of one extortioner more or less would have no effect on

the system. They had become as the fowls of the air.

“I was acrost the mountain last month,” said Mr. Boone, presently,

“and one of them skunks had stole Campbell’s silver spoons at Abingdon.

Campbell was out arter him for a week with a coil of rope on his saddle.

But the varmint got to cover.”

Mr. Boone wished me luck in my new enterprise, bade me good-by, and set

out for Redstone, where he was to measure a tract for a Revolutioner.

The speculator having been rescued from Jim Willis’s clutches by the

sheriff, the crowd good-naturedly helped us load our stones between

pack-horses, and some of them followed us all the way home that they

might see the grinding. Half of McAfee’s new station had heard the news,

and came over likewise. And from that day we ground as much corn as

could be brought to us from miles around.

Polly Ann and I ran the mill and kept the accounts. Often of a crisp

autumn morning we heard a gobble-gobble above the tumbling of the water

and found a wild turkey perched on top of the hopper, eating his fill.

Some of our meat we got that way. As for Tom, he was off and on. When

the roving spirit seized him he made journeys to the westward with Cowan

and Ray. Generally they returned with packs of skins. But sometimes

soberly, thanking Heaven that their hair was left growing on their

heads. This, and patrolling the Wilderness Road and other militia

duties, made up Tom’s life. No sooner was the mill fairly started than

off he went to the Cumberland. I mention this, not alone because I

remember well the day of his return, but because of a certain happening

then that had a heavy influence on my after life.

The episode deals with an easy-mannered gentleman named Potts, who was

the agent for a certain Major Colfax of Virginia. Tom owned under a

Henderson grant; the Major had been given this and other lands for his

services in the war. Mr. Potts arrived one rainy afternoon and found me

standing alone under the little lean-to that covered the hopper. How we

served him, with the aid of McCann and Cowan and other neighbors, and

how we were near getting into trouble because of the prank, will be seen

later. The next morning I rode into Harrodstown not wholly easy in my

mind concerning the wisdom of the thing I had done. There was no one to

advise me, for Colonel Clark was far away, building a fort on the banks

of the Mississippi. Tom had laughed at the consequences; he cared little

about his land, and was for moving into the Wilderness again. But

for Polly Ann’s sake I wished that we had treated the land agent less

cavalierly. I was soon distracted from these thoughts by the sight of

Harrodstown itself.

I had no sooner ridden out of the forest shade when I saw that the place

was in an uproar, men and women gathering in groups and running here

and there between the cabins. Urging on the mare, I cantered across the

fields, and the first person I met was James Ray.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Matter enough! An army of redskins has crossed the Ohio, and not a

man to take command. My God,” cried Ray, pointing angrily at the swarms

about the land office, “what trash we have got this last year! Kentucky

can go to the devil, half the stations be wiped out, and not a thrip do

they care.”

“Have you sent word to the Colonel?” I asked.

“If he was here,” said Ray, bitterly, “he’d have half of ‘em swinging

inside of an hour. I’ll warrant he’d send ‘em to the right-about.”

I rode on into the town, Potts gone out of my mind. Apart from the

land-office crowds, and looking on in silent rage, stood a group of the

old settlers,--tall, lean, powerful, yet impotent for lack of a leader.

A contrast they were, these buckskin-clad pioneers, to the ill-assorted

humanity they watched, absorbed in struggles for the very lands they had

won.

“By the eternal!” said Jack Terrell, “if the yea’th was ter swaller ‘em

up, they’d keep on a-dickerin’ in hell.”

“Something’s got to be done,” Captain Harrod put in gloomily; “the red

varmints ‘ll be on us in another day. In God’s name, whar is Clark?”

“Hold!” cried Fletcher Blount, “what’s that?”

The broiling about the land court, too, was suddenly hushed. Men stopped

in their tracks, staring fixedly at three forms which had come out of

the woods into the clearing.

“Redskins, or there’s no devil!” said Terrell.

Redskins they were, but not the blanketed kind that drifted every day

through the station. Their war-paint gleamed in the light, and the white

edges of the feathered head-dresses caught the sun. One held up in his

right hand a white belt,--token of peace on the frontier.

“Lord A’mighty!” said Fletcher Blount, “be they Cricks?”

“Chickasaws, by the headgear,” said Terrell. “Davy, you’ve got a hoss.

Ride out and look ‘em over.”

Nothing loath, I put the mare into a gallop, and I passed over the very

place where Polly Ann had picked me up and saved my life long since. The

Indians came on at a dog trot, but when they were within fifty paces of

me they halted abruptly. The chief waved the white belt around his head.

“Davy!” says he, and I trembled from head to foot. How well I knew that

voice!

“Colonel Clark!” I cried, and rode up to him. “Thank God you are come,

sir,” said I, “for the people here are land-mad, and the Northern

Indians are crossing the Ohio.”

He took my bridle, and, leading the horse, began to walk rapidly towards

the station.

“Ay,” he answered, “I know it. A runner came to me with the tidings,

where I was building a fort on the Mississippi, and I took Willis here

and Saunders, and came.”

I glanced at my old friends, who grinned at me through the berry-stain

on their faces. We reached a ditch through which the rain of the night

before was draining from the fields Clark dropped the bridle, stooped

down, and rubbed his face clean. Up he got again and flung the feathers

from his head, and I thought that his eyes twinkled despite the

sternness of his look.

“Davy, my lad,” said he, “you and I have seen some strange things

together. Perchance we shall see stranger to-day.”

A shout went up, for he had been recognized. And Captain Harrod and Ray

and Terrell and Cowan (who had just ridden in) ran up to greet him and

press his hand. He called them each by name, these men whose loyalty had

been proved, but said no word more nor paused in his stride until he had

reached the edge of the mob about the land court. There he stood for a

full minute, and we who knew him looked on silently and waited.

The turmoil had begun again, the speculators calling out in strident

tones, the settlers bargaining and pushing, and all clamoring to be

heard. While there was money to be made or land to be got they had no

ear for the public weal. A man shouldered his way through, roughly, and

they gave back, cursing, surprised. He reached the door, and, flinging

those who blocked it right and left, entered. There he was recognized,

and his name flew from mouth to mouth.

“Clark!”

He walked up to the table, strewn with books and deeds.

“Silence!” he thundered. But there was no need,--they were still for

once. “This court is closed,” he cried, “while Kentucky is in danger.

Not a deed shall be signed nor an acre granted until I come back from

the Ohio. Out you go!”

Out they went indeed, judge, brokers, speculators--the evicted and the

triumphant together. And when the place was empty Clark turned the key

and thrust it into his hunting shirt. He stood for a moment on the step,

and his eyes swept the crowd.

“Now,” he said, “there have been many to claim this land--who will

follow me to defend it?”

As I live, they cheered him. Hands were flung up that were past

counting, and men who were barely rested from the hardships of the

Wilderness Trail shouted their readiness to go. But others slunk away,

and were found that morning grumbling and cursing the chance that had

brought them to Kentucky. Within the hour the news had spread to the

farms, and men rode in to Harrodstown to tell the Colonel of many who

were leaving the plough in the furrow and the axe in the wood, and

starting off across the mountains in anger and fear. The Colonel turned

to me as he sat writing down the names of the volunteers.

“Davy,” said he, “when you are grown you shall not stay at home, I

promise you. Take your mare and ride as for your life to McChesney, and

tell him to choose ten men and go to the Crab Orchard on the Wilderness

Road. Tell him for me to turn back every man, woman, and child who tries

to leave Kentucky.”

I met Tom coming in from the field with his rawhide harness over his

shoulders. Polly Ann stood calling him in the door, and the squirrel

broth was steaming on the table. He did not wait for it. Kissing her, he

flung himself into the saddle I had left, and we watched him mutely as

he waved back to us from the edge of the woods.

In the night I found myself sitting up in bed, listening to a running

and stamping near the cabin.

Polly Ann was stirring. “Davy,” she whispered, “the stock is oneasy.”

We peered out of the loophole together and through the little orchard we

had planted. The moon flooded the fields, and beyond it the forest was

a dark blur. I can recall the scene now, the rude mill standing by the

water-side, the twisted rail fences, and the black silhouettes of the

horses and cattle as they stood bunched together. Behind us little Tom

stirred in his sleep and startled us. That very evening Polly Ann had

frightened him into obedience by telling him that the Shawanees would

get him.

What was there to do? McAfee’s Station was four miles away, and Ray’s

clearing two. Ray was gone with Tom. I could not leave Polly Ann alone.

There was nothing for it but to wait.

Silently, that the children might not be waked and lurking savage might

not hear, we put the powder and bullets in the middle of the room and

loaded the guns and pistols. For Polly Ann had learned to shoot. She

took the loopholes of two sides of the cabin, I of the other two, and

then began the fearful watching and waiting which the frontier knows

so well. Suddenly the cattle stirred again, and stampeded to the other

corner of the field. There came a whisper from Polly Ann.

“What is it?” I answered, running over to her.

“Look out,” she said; “what d’ye see near the mill?”

Her sharp eyes had not deceived her, for mine perceived plainly a dark

form skulking in the hickory grove. Next, a movement behind the rail

fence, and darting back to my side of the house I made out a long

black body wriggling at the edge of the withered corn-patch. They were

surrounding us. How I wished that Tom were home!

A stealthy sound began to intrude itself upon our ears. Listening

intently, I thought it came from the side of the cabin where the lean-to

was, where we stored our wood in winter. The black shadow fell on that

side, and into a patch of bushes; peering out of the loophole, I could

perceive nothing there. The noise went on at intervals. All at once

there grew on me, with horror, the discovery that there was digging

under the cabin.

How long the sound continued I know not,--it might have been an hour,

it might have been less. Now I thought I heard it under the wall, now

beneath the puncheons of the floor. The pitchy blackness within was such

that we could not see the boards moving, and therefore we must needs

kneel down and feel them from time to time. Yes, this one was lifting

from its bed on the hard earth beneath. I was sure of it. It rose an

inch--then an inch more. Gripping the handle of my tomahawk, I prayed

for guidance in my stroke, for the blade might go wild in the darkness.

Upward crept the board, and suddenly it was gone from the floor. I swung

a full circle--and to my horror I felt the axe plunging into soft flesh

and crunching on a bone. I had missed the head! A yell shattered the

night as the puncheon fell with a rattle on the boards, and my tomahawk

was gone from my hand. Without, the fierce war-cry of the Shawanees that

I knew so well echoed around the log walls, and the door trembled with a

blow. The children awoke, crying.

There was no time to think; my great fear was that the devil in the

cabin would kill Polly Ann. Just then I heard her calling out to me.

“Hide!” I cried, “hide under the shake-down! Has he got you?”

I heard her answer, and then the sound of a scuffle that maddened me.

Knife in hand, I crept slowly about, and put my fingers on a man’s neck

and side. Next Polly Ann careened against me, and I lost him again.

“Davy, Davy,” I heard her gasp, “look out fer the floor!”

It was too late. The puncheon rose under me, I stumbled, and it fell

again. Once more the awful changing notes of the war-whoop sounded

without. A body bumped on the boards, a white light rose before my eyes,

and a sharp pain leaped in my side. Then all was black again, but I had

my senses still, and my fingers closed around the knotted muscles of an

arm. I thrust the pistol in my hand against flesh, and fired. Two of us

fell together, but the thought of Polly Ann got me staggering to my feet

again, calling her name. By the grace of God I heard her answer.

“Are ye hurt, Davy?”

“No,” said I, “no. And you?”

We drifted together. ‘Twas she who had the presence of mind.

“The chest--quick, the chest!”

We stumbled over a body in reaching it. We seized the handles, and with

all our strength hauled it athwart the loose puncheon that seemed to be

lifting even then. A mighty splintering shook the door.

“To the ports!” cried Polly Ann, as our heads knocked together.

To find the rifles and prime them seemed to take an age. Next I was

staring through the loophole along a barrel, and beyond it were three

black forms in line on a long beam. I think we fired--Polly Ann and

I--at the same time. One fell. We saw a comedy of the beam dropping

heavily on the foot of another, and he limping off with a guttural howl

of rage and pain. I fired a pistol at him, but missed him, and then I

was ramming a powder charge down the long barrel of the rifle. Suddenly

there was silence,--even the children had ceased crying. Outside, in the

dooryard, a feathered figure writhed like a snake towards the fence. The

moon still etched the picture in black and white.

Shots awoke me, I think, distant shots. And they sounded like the

ripping and tearing of cloth for a wound. ‘Twas no new sound to me.

“Davy, dear,” said a voice, tenderly.

Out of the mist the tear-stained face of Polly Ann bent over me. I put

up my hand, and dropped it again with a cry. Then, my senses coming with

a rush, the familiar objects of the cabin outlined themselves: Tom’s

winter hunting shirt, Polly Ann’s woollen shift and sunbonnet on their

pegs; the big stone chimney, the ladder to the loft; the closed door,

with a long, jagged line across it where the wood was splintered; and,

dearest of all, the chubby forms of Peggy and little Tom playing on the

trundle-bed. Then my glance wandered to the floor, and on the puncheons

were three stains. I closed my eyes.

Again came a far-off rattle, like stones falling from a great height

down a rocky bluff.

“What’s that?” I whispered.

“They’re fighting at McAfee’s Station,” said Polly Ann. She put her cool

hand on my head, and little Tom climbed up on the bed and looked up into

my face, wistfully calling my name.

“Oh, Davy,” said his mother, “I thought ye were never coming back.”

“And the redskins?” I asked.

She drew the child away, lest he hurt me, and shuddered.

“I reckon ‘twas only a war-party,” she answered. “The rest is at

McAfee’s. And if they beat ‘em off--” she stopped abruptly.

“We shall be saved,” I said.

I shall never forget that day. Polly Ann left my side only to feed the

children and to keep watch out of the loopholes, and I lay on my back,

listening and listening to the shots. At last these became scattered.

Then, though we strained our ears, we heard them no more. Was the fort

taken? The sun slid across the heavens and shot narrow blades of light,

now through one loophole and now through another, until a ray slanted

from the western wall and rested upon the red-and-black paint of two

dead bodies in the corner. I stared with horror.

“I was afeard to open the door and throw ‘em out,” said Polly Ann,

apologetically.

Still I stared. One of them had a great cleft across his face.

“But I thought I hit him in the shoulder,” I exclaimed.

Polly Ann thrust her hand, gently, across my eyes. “Davy, ye mustn’t

talk,” she said; “that’s a dear.”

Drowsiness seized me. But I resisted.

“You killed him, Polly Ann,” I murmured, “you?”

“Hush,” said Polly Ann.

And I slept again.

CHAPTER II. “THE BEGGARS ARE COME TO TOWN”

“They was that destitute,” said Tom, “‘twas a pity to see ‘em.”

“And they be grand folks, ye say?” said Polly Ann.

“Grand folks, I reckon. And helpless as babes on the Wilderness Trail.

They had two niggers--his nigger an’ hers--and they was tuckered, too,

fer a fact.”

“Lawsy!” exclaimed Polly Ann. “Be still, honey!” Taking a piece of

corn-pone from the cupboard, she bent over and thrust it between little

Peggy’s chubby fingers “Be still, honey, and listen to what your Pa

says. Whar did ye find ‘em, Tom?”

“‘Twas Jim Ray found ‘em,” said Tom. “We went up to Crab Orchard,

accordin’ to the Colonel’s orders, and we was thar three days. Ye ought

to hev seen the trash we turned back, Polly Ann! Most of ‘em was scared

plum’ crazy, and they was fer gittin ‘out ‘n Kaintuckee at any cost.

Some was fer fightin’ their way through us.”

“The skulks!” exclaimed Polly Ann. “They tried to kill ye? What did ye

do?”

Tom grinned, his mouth full of bacon.

“Do?” says he; “we shot a couple of ‘em in the legs and arms, and bound

‘em up again. They was in a t’arin’ rage. I’m more afeard of a scar’t

man,--a real scar’t man--nor a rattler. They cussed us till they was

hoarse. Said they’d hev us hung, an’ Clark, too. Said they hed a right

to go back to Virginny if they hed a mind.”

“An’ what did ye say?” demanded Polly Ann, pausing in her work, her eyes

flashing with resentment. “Did ye tell ‘em they was cowards to want to

settle lands, and not fight for ‘em? Other folks’ lands, too.”

“We didn’t tell ‘em nothin’,” said Tom; “jest sent ‘em kitin’ back to

the stations whar they come from.”

“I reckon they won’t go foolin’ with Clark’s boys again,” said Polly

Ann, resuming a vigorous rubbing of the skillet. “Ye was tellin’ me

about these fine folks ye fetched home.” She tossed her head in the

direction of the open door, and I wondered if the fine folks were

outside.

“Oh, ay,” said Tom; “they was comin’ this way, from the Carolinys. Jim

Ray went out to look for a deer, and found ‘em off ‘n the trail. By the

etarnal, they was tuckered. He was the wust, Jim said, lyin’ down on a

bed of laurels she and the niggers made. She has sperrit, that woman.

Jim fed him, and he got up. She wouldn’t eat nothin’, and made Jim put

him on his hoss. She walked. I can’t mek out why them aristocrats wants

to come to Kaintuckee. They’re a sight too tender.”

“Pore things!” said Polly Ann, compassionately. “So ye fetched ‘em

home.”

“They hadn’t a place ter go,” said he, “and I reckoned ‘twould give ‘em

time ter ketch breath, an’ turn around. I told ‘em livin’ in Kaintuck

was kinder rough.”

“Mercy!” said Polly Ann, “ter think that they was use’ ter silver

spoons, and linen, and niggers ter wait on ‘em. Tom, ye must shoot

a turkey, and I’ll do my best to give ‘em a good supper.” Tom rose

obediently, and seized his coonskin hat. She stopped him with a word.

“Tom.”

“Ay?”

“Mayhap--mayhap Davy would know ‘em. He’s been to Charlestown with the

gentry there.”

“Mayhap,” agreed Tom. “Pore little deevil,” said he, “he’s hed a hard

time.”

“He’ll be right again soon,” said Polly Ann. “He’s been sleepin’

that way, off and on, fer a week.” Her voice faltered into a note of

tenderness as her eyes rested on me.

“I reckon we owe Davy a heap, Polly Ann,” said he.

I was about to interrupt, but Polly Ann’s next remark arrested me.

“Tom,” said she, “he oughter be eddicated.”

“Eddicated!” exclaimed Tom, with a kind of dismay.

“Yes, eddicated,” she repeated. “He ain’t like you and me. He’s

different. He oughter be a lawyer, or somethin’.”

Tom reflected.

“Ay,” he answered, “the Colonel says that same thing. He oughter be sent

over the mountain to git l’arnin’.”

“And we’ll be missing him sore,” said Polly Ann, with a sigh.

I wanted to speak then, but the words would not come.

“Whar hev they gone?” said Tom.

“To take a walk,” said Polly Ann, and laughed. “The gentry has sech

fancies as that. Tom, I reckon I’ll fly over to Mrs. McCann’s an’ beg

some of that prime bacon she has.”

Tom picked up his rifle, and they went out together. I lay for a long

time reflecting. To the strange guests whom Tom in the kindness of his

heart had brought back and befriended I gave little attention. I was

overwhelmed by the love which had just been revealed to me. And so I was

to be educated. It had been in my mind these many years, but I had never

spoken of it to Polly Ann. Dear Polly Ann! My eyes filled at the thought

that she herself had determined upon this sacrifice.

There were footsteps at the door, and these I heard, and heeded not.

Then there came a voice,--a woman’s voice, modulated and trained in the

perfections of speech and in the art of treating things lightly. At the

sound of that voice I caught my breath.

“What a pastoral! Harry, if we have sought for virtue in the wilderness,

we have found it.”

“When have we ever sought for virtue, Sarah?”

It was the man who answered and stirred another chord of my memory.

“When, indeed!” said the woman; “‘tis a luxury that is denied us, I fear

me.”

“Egad, we have run the gamut, all but that.”

I thought the woman sighed.

“Our hosts are gone out,” she said, “bless their simple souls! ‘Tis

Arcady, Harry, ‘where thieves do not break in and steal.’ That’s

Biblical, isn’t it?” She paused, and joined in the man’s laugh. “I

remember--” She stopped abruptly.

“Thieves!” said he, “not in our sense. And yet a fortnight ago this

sylvan retreat was the scene of murder and sudden death.”

“Yes, Indians,” said the woman; “but they are beaten off and forgotten.

Troubles do not last here. Did you see the boy? He’s in there, in the

corner, getting well of a fearful hacking. Mrs. McChesney says he saved

her and her brats.”

“Ay, McChesney told me,” said the man. “Let’s have a peep at him.”

In they came, and I looked on the woman, and would have leaped from

my bed had the strength been in me. Superb she was, though her

close-fitting travelling gown of green cloth was frayed and torn by the

briers, and the beauty of her face enhanced by the marks of I know not

what trials and emotions. Little, dark-pencilled lines under the eyes

were nigh robbing these of the haughtiness I had once seen and hated.

Set high on her hair was a curving, green hat with a feather, ill-suited

to the wilderness.

I looked on the man. He was as ill-equipped as she. A London tailor

must have cut his suit of gray. A single band of linen, soiled by the

journey, was wound about his throat, and I remember oddly the

buttons stuck on his knees and cuffs, and these silk-embroidered in a

criss-cross pattern of lighter gray. Some had been torn off. As for his

face, ‘twas as handsome as ever, for dissipation sat well upon it.

My thoughts flew back to that day long gone when a friendless boy rode

up a long drive to a pillared mansion. I saw again the picture. The

horse with the craning neck, the liveried servant at the bridle,

the listless young gentleman with the shiny boots reclining on the

horse-block, and above him, under the portico, the grand lady whose

laugh had made me sad. And I remembered, too, the wild, neglected lad

who had been to me as a brother, warm-hearted and generous, who had

shared what he had with a foundling, who had wept with me in my first

great sorrow. Where was he?

For I was face to face once more with Mrs. Temple and Mr. Harry Riddle!

The lady started as she gazed at me, and her tired eyes widened. She

clutched Mr. Riddle’s arm.

“Harry!” she cried, “Harry, he puts me in mind of--of some one--I cannot

think.”

Mr. Riddle laughed nervously.

“There, there, Sally,” says he, “all brats resemble somebody. I have

heard you say so a dozen times.”

She turned upon him an appealing glance.

“Oh!” she said, with a little catch of her breath, “is there no such

thing as oblivion? Is there a place in the world that is not haunted? I

am cursed with memory.”

“Or the lack of it,” answered Mr. Riddle, pulling out a silver snuff-box

from his pocket and staring at it ruefully. “Damme, the snuff I fetched

from Paris is gone, all but a pinch. Here is a real tragedy.”

“It was the same in Rome,” the lady continued, unheeding, “when we met

the Izards, and at Venice that nasty Colonel Tarleton saw us at the

opera. In London we must needs run into the Manners from Maryland. In

Paris--”

“In Paris we were safe enough,” Mr. Riddle threw in hastily.

“And why?” she flashed back at him.

He did not answer that.

“A truce with your fancies, madam,” said he. “Behold a soul of good

nature! I have followed you through half the civilized countries of

the globe--none of them are good enough. You must needs cross the ocean

again, and come to the wilds. We nearly die on the trail, are picked

up by a Samaritan in buckskin and taken into the bosom of his worthy

family. And forsooth, you look at a backwoods urchin, and are nigh to

swooning.”

“Hush, Harry,” she cried, starting forward and peering into my face; “he

will hear you.”

“Tut!” said Harry, “what if he does? London and Paris are words to

him. We might as well be speaking French. And I’ll take my oath he’s

sleeping.”

The corner where I lay was dark, for the cabin had no windows. And if my

life had depended upon speaking, I could have found no fit words then.

She turned from me, and her mood changed swiftly. For she laughed

lightly, musically, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Perchance I am ghost-ridden,” she said.

“They are not ghosts of a past happiness, at all events,” he answered.

She sat down on a stool before the hearth, and clasping her fingers upon

her knee looked thoughtfully into the embers of the fire. Presently she

began to speak in a low, even voice, he looking down at her, his feet

apart, his hand thrust backward towards the heat.

“Harry,” she said, “do you remember all our contrivances? How you used

to hold my hand in the garden under the table, while I talked brazenly

to Mr. Mason? And how jealous Jack Temple used to get?” She laughed

again, softly, always looking at the fire.

“Damnably jealous!” agreed Mr. Riddle, and yawned. “Served him devilish

right for marrying you. And he was a blind fool for five long years.”

“Yes, blind,” the lady agreed. “How could he have been so blind? How

well I recall the day he rode after us in the woods.”

“‘Twas the parson told, curse him!” said Mr. Riddle. “We should have

gone that night, if your courage had held.”

“My courage!” she cried, flashing a look upwards, “my foresight. A

pretty mess we had made of it without my inheritance. ‘Tis small enough,

the Lord knows. In Europe we should have been dregs. We should have

starved in the wilderness with you a-farming.”

He looked down at her curiously.

“Devilish queer talk,” said he, “but while we are in it, I wonder where

Temple is now. He got aboard the King’s frigate with a price on his

head. Williams told me he saw him in London, at White’s. Have--have you

ever heard, Sarah?”

She shook her head, her glance returning to the ashes.

“No,” she answered.

“Faith,” says Mr. Riddle, “he’ll scarce turn up here.”

She did not answer that, but sat motionless.

“He’ll scarce turn up here, in these wilds,” Mr. Riddle repeated, “and

what I am wondering, Sarah, is how the devil we are to live here.”

“How do these good people live, who helped us when we were starving?”

Mr. Riddle flung his hand eloquently around the cabin. There was

something of disgust in the gesture.

“You see!” he said, “love in a cottage.”

“But it is love,” said the lady, in a low tone.

He broke into laughter.

“Sally,” he cried, “I have visions of you gracing the board at which we

sat to-day, patting journey-cakes on the hearth, stewing squirrel broth

with the same pride that you once planned a rout. Cleaning the pots and

pans, and standing anxious at the doorway staring through a sunbonnet

for your lord and master.”

“My lord and master!” said the lady, and there was so much of scorn in

the words that Mr. Riddle winced.

“Come,” he said, “I grant now that you could make pans shine like

pier-glasses, that you could cook bacon to a turn--although I would have

laid an hundred guineas against it some years ago. What then? Are you to

be contented with four log walls? With the intellectual companionship of

the McChesneys and their friends? Are you to depend for excitement upon

the chances of having the hair neatly cut from your head by red fiends?

Come, we’ll go back to the Rue St. Dominique, to the suppers and the

card parties of the countess. We’ll be rid of regrets for a life upon

which we have turned our backs forever.”

She shook her head, sadly.

“It’s no use, Harry,” said she, “we’ll never be rid of regrets.”

“We’ll never have a barony like Temple Bow, and races every week, and

gentry round about. But, damn it, the Rebels have spoiled all that since

the war.”

“Those are not the regrets I mean,” answered Mrs. Temple.

“What then, in Heaven’s name?” he cried. “You were not wont to be thus.

But now I vow you go beyond me. What then?”

She did not answer, but sat leaning forward over the hearth, he staring

at her in angry perplexity. A sound broke the afternoon stillness,--the

pattering of small, bare feet on the puncheons. A tremor shook the

woman’s shoulders, and little Tom stood before her, a quaint figure in a

butternut smock, his blue eyes questioning. He laid a hand on her arm.

Then a strange thing happened. With a sudden impulse she turned and

flung her arms about the boy and strained him to her, and kissed his

brown hair. He struggled, but when she released him he sat very still

on her knee, looking into her face. For he was a solemn child. The lady

smiled at him, and there were two splashes like raindrops on her fair

cheeks.

As for Mr. Riddle, he went to the door, looked out, and took a last

pinch of snuff.

“Here is the mistress of the house coming back,” he cried, “and singing

like the shepherdess in the opera.”

It was Polly Ann indeed. At the sound of his mother’s voice, little Tom

jumped down from the lady’s lap and ran past Mr. Riddle at the door.

Mrs. Temple’s thoughts were gone across the mountains.

“And what is that you have under your arm?” said Mr. Riddle, as he gave

back.

“I’ve fetched some prime bacon fer your supper, sir,” said Polly Ann,

all rosy from her walk; “what I have ain’t fit to give ye.”

Mrs. Temple rose.

“My dear,” she said, “what you have is too good for us. And if you do

such a thing again, I shall be very angry.”

“Lord, ma’am,” exclaimed Polly Ann, “and you use’ ter dainties an’

silver an’ linen! Tom is gone to try to git a turkey for ye.” She

paused, and looked compassionately at the lady. “Bless ye, ma’am, ye’re

that tuckered from the mountains! ‘Tis a fearsome journey.”

“Yes,” said the lady, simply, “I am tired.”

“Small wonder!” exclaimed Polly Ann. “To think what ye’ve been

through--yere husband near to dyin’ afore yere eyes, and ye a-reskin’

yere own life to save him--so Tom tells me. When Tom goes out a-fightin’

redskins I’m that fidgety I can’t set still. I wouldn’t let him know

what I feel fer the world. But well ye know the pain of it, who love

yere husband like that.”

The lady would have smiled bravely, had the strength been given her. She

tried. And then, with a shudder, she hid her face in her hands.

“Oh, don’t!” she exclaimed, “don’t!”

Mr. Riddle went out.

“There, there, ma’am,” she said, “I hedn’t no right ter speak, and ye

fair worn out.” She drew her gently into a chair. “Set down, ma’am,

and don’t ye stir tell supper’s ready.” She brushed her eyes with her

sleeve, and, stepping briskly to my bed, bent over me. “Davy,” she said,

“Davy, how be ye?”

“Davy!”

It was the lady’s voice. She stood facing us, and never while I live

shall I forget that which I saw in her eyes. Some resemblance it bore

to the look of the hunted deer, but in the animal it is dumb,

appealing. Understanding made the look of the woman terrible to

behold,--understanding, ay, and courage. For she did not lack this last

quality. Polly Ann gave back in a kind of dismay, and I shivered.

“Yes,” I answered, “I am David Ritchie.”

“You--you dare to judge me!” she cried.

I knew not why she said this.

“To judge you?” I repeated.

“Yes, to judge me,” she answered. “I know you, David Ritchie, and the

blood that runs in you. Your mother was a foolish--saint” (she laughed),

“who lifted her eyebrows when I married her brother, John Temple. That

was her condemnation of me, and it stung me more than had a thousand

sermons. A doting saint, because she followed your father into the

mountain wilds to her death for a whim of his. And your father. A

Calvinist fanatic who had no mercy on sin, save for that particular

weakness of his own--”

“Stop, Mrs. Temple!” I cried, lifting up in bed. And to my astonishment

she was silenced, looking at me in amazement. “You had your vengeance

when I came to you, when you turned from me with a lift of your

shoulders at the news of my father’s death. And now--”

“And now?” she repeated questioningly.

“Now I thought you were changed,” I said slowly, for the excitement was

telling on me.

“You listened!” she said.

“I pitied you.”

“Oh, pity!” she cried. “My God, that you should pity me!” She

straightened, and summoned all the spirit that was in her. “I would

rather be called a name than have the pity of you and yours.”

“You cannot change it, Mrs. Temple,” I answered, and fell back on the

nettle-bark sheets. “You cannot change it,” I heard myself repeating,

as though it were another’s voice. And I knew that Polly Ann was bending

over me and calling me.

“Where did they go, Polly Ann?” I asked.

“Acrost the Mississippi, to the lands of the Spanish King,” said Polly

Ann.

“And where in those dominions?” I demanded.

“John Saunders took ‘em as far as the Falls,” Polly Ann answered. “He

‘lowed they was goin’ to St. Louis. But they never said a word. I reckon

they’ll be hunted as long as they live.”

I had thought of them much as I lay on my back recovering from the

fever,--the fever for which Mrs. Temple was to blame. Yet I bore her

no malice. And many other thoughts I had, probing back into childhood

memories for the solving of problems there.

“I knowed ye come of gentlefolks, Davy,” Polly Ann had said when we

talked together.

So I was first cousin to Nick, and nephew to that selfish gentleman, Mr.

Temple, in whose affectionate care I had been left in Charlestown by my

father. And my father? Who had he been? I remembered the speech that

he had used and taught me, and how his neighbors had dubbed him

“aristocrat.” But Mrs. Temple was gone, and it was not in likelihood

that I should ever see her more.

CHAPTER III. WE GO TO DANVILLE

Two years went by, two uneventful years for me, two mighty years for

Kentucky. Westward rolled the tide of emigrants to change her character,

but to swell her power. Towns and settlements sprang up in a season and

flourished, and a man could scarce keep pace with the growth of them.

Doctors came, and ministers, and lawyers; generals and majors, and

captains and subalterns of the Revolution, to till their grants and to

found families. There were gentry, too, from the tide-waters, come to

retrieve the fortunes which they had lost by their patriotism. There

were storekeepers like Mr. Scarlett, adventurers and ne’er-do-weels

who hoped to start with a clean slate, and a host of lazy vagrants who

thought to scratch the soil and find abundance.

I must not forget how, at the age of seventeen, I became a landowner,

thanks to my name being on the roll of Colonel Clark’s regiment. For,

in a spirit of munificence, the Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia

had awarded to every private in that regiment one hundred and eight

acres of land on the Ohio River, north of the Falls. Sergeant Thomas

McChesney, as a reward for his services in one of the severest campaigns

in history, received a grant of two hundred and sixteen acres! You who

will may look at the plat made by William Clark, Surveyor for the Board

of Commissioners, and find sixteen acres marked for Thomas McChesney in

Section 169, and two hundred more in Section 3. Section 3 fronted the

Ohio some distance above Bear Grass Creek, and was, of course, on the

Illinois shore. As for my own plots, some miles in the interior, I never

saw them. But I own them to this day.

I mention these things as bearing on the story of my life, with which I

must get on. And, therefore, I may not dwell upon this injustice to the

men who won an empire and were flung a bone long afterwards.

It was early autumn once more, and such a busy week we had had at the

mill, that Tom was perforce obliged to remain at home and help, though

he longed to be gone with Cowan and Ray a-hunting to the southwest. Up

rides a man named Jarrott, flings himself from his horse, passes the

time of day as he watches the grinding, helps Tom to tie up a sack or

two, and hands him a paper.

“What’s this?” says Tom, staring at it blankly.

“Ye won’t blame me, Mac,” answers Mr. Jarrott, somewhat ashamed of his

rôle of process-server. “‘Tain’t none of my doin’s.”

“Read it, Davy,” said Tom, giving it to me.

I stopped the mill, and, unfolding the paper, read. I remember not

the quaint wording of it, save that it was ill-spelled and ill-writ

generally. In short, it was a summons for Tom to appear before the court

at Danville on a certain day in the following week, and I made out that

a Mr. Neville Colfax was the plaintiff in the matter, and that the suit

had to do with land.

“Neville Colfax!” I exclaimed, “that’s the man for whom Mr. Potts was

agent.”

“Ay, ay,” said Tom, and sat him down on the meal-bags. “Drat the

varmint, he kin hev the land.”

“Hev the land?” cried Polly Ann, who had come in upon us. “Hev ye no

sperrit, Tom McChesney?”

“There’s no chance ag’in the law,” said Tom, hopelessly. “Thar’s Perkins

had his land tuck away last year, and Terrell’s moved out, and twenty

more I could name. And thar’s Dan’l Boone, himself. Most the rich bottom

he tuck up the critters hev got away from him.”

“Ye’ll go to Danville and take Davy with ye and fight it,” answered

Polly Ann, decidedly. “Davy has a word to say, I reckon. ‘Twas he made

the mill and scar’t that Mr. Potts away. I reckon he’ll git us out of

this fix.”

Mr. Jarrott applauded her courage.

“Ye have the grit, ma’am,” he said, as he mounted his horse again.

“Here’s luck to ye!”

The remembrance of Mr. Potts weighed heavily upon my mind during the

next week. Perchance Tom would have to pay for this prank likewise.

‘Twas indeed a foolish, childish thing to have done, and I might have

known that it would only have put off the evil day of reckoning. Since

then, by reason of the mill site and the business we got by it, the land

had become the most valuable in that part of the country. Had I known

Colonel Clark’s whereabouts, I should have gone to him for advice and

comfort. As it was, we were forced to await the issue without counsel.

Polly Ann and I talked it over many times while Tom sat, morose and

silent, in a corner. He was the pioneer pure and simple, afraid of no

man, red or white, in open combat, but defenceless in such matters as

this.

“‘Tis Davy will save us, Tom,” said Polly Ann, “with the l’arnin’ he’s

got while the corn was grindin’.”

I had, indeed, been reading at the mill while the hopper emptied itself,

such odd books as drifted into Harrodstown. One of these was called

“Bacon’s Abridgment”; it dealt with law and it puzzled me sorely.

“And the children,” Polly Ann continued,--“ye’ll not make me pick up the

four of ‘em, and pack it to Louisiana, because Mr. Colfax wants the land

we’ve made for ourselves.”

There were four of them now, indeed,--the youngest still in the bark

cradle in the corner. He bore a no less illustrious name than that of

the writer of these chronicles.

It would be hard to say which was the more troubled, Tom or I, that

windy morning we set out on the Danville trace. Polly Ann alone had been

serene,--ay, and smiling and hopeful. She had kissed us each good-by

impartially. And we left her, with a future governor of Kentucky on her

shoulder, tripping lightly down to the mill to grind the McGarrys’ corn.

When the forest was cleared at Danville, Justice was housed first.

She was not the serene, inexorable dame whom we have seen in pictures

holding her scales above the jars of earth. Justice at Danville was a

somewhat high-spirited, quarrelsome lady who decided matters oftenest

with the stroke of a sword. There was a certain dignity about her temple

withal,--for instance, if a judge wore linen, that linen must not

be soiled. Nor was it etiquette for a judge to lay his own hands in

chastisement on contemptuous persons, though Justice at Danville

had more compassion than her sisters in older communities upon human

failings.

There was a temple built to her “of hewed or sawed logs nine inches

thick”--so said the specifications. Within the temple was a rude

platform which served as a bar, and since Justice is supposed to carry

a torch in her hand, there were no windows,--nor any windows in the jail

next door, where some dozen offenders languished on the afternoon that

Tom and I rode into town.

There was nothing auspicious in the appearance of Danville, and no man

might have said then that the place was to be the scene of portentous

conventions which were to decide the destiny of a State. Here was a

sprinkling of log cabins, some in the building, and an inn, by courtesy

so called. Tom and I would have preferred to sleep in the woods near by,

with our feet to the blaze; this was partly from motives of economy,

and partly because Tom, in common with other pioneers, held an inn in

contempt. But to come back to our arrival.

It was a sunny and windy afternoon, and the leaves were flying in

the air. Around the court-house was a familiar, buzzing scene,--the

backwoodsmen, lounging against the wall or brawling over their claims,

the sleek agents and attorneys, and half a dozen of a newer type. These

were adventurous young gentlemen of family, some of them lawyers and

some of them late officers in the Continental army who had been rewarded

with grants of land. These were the patrons of the log tavern which

stood near by with the blackened stumps around it, where there was much

card-playing and roistering, ay, and even duelling, of nights.

“Thar’s Mac,” cried a backwoodsman who was sitting on the court-house

steps as we rode up. “Howdy, Mac; be they tryin’ to git your land, too?”

“Howdy, Mac,” said a dozen more, paying a tribute to Tom’s popularity.

And some of them greeted me.

“Is this whar they take a man’s land away?” says Tom, jerking his thumb

at the open door.

Tom had no intention of uttering a witticism, but his words were

followed by loud guffaws from all sides, even the lawyers joining in.

“I reckon this is the place, Tom,” came the answer.

“I reckon I’ll take a peep in thar,” said Tom, leaping off his horse and

shouldering his way to the door. I followed him, curious. The building

was half full. Two elderly gentlemen of grave demeanor sat on stools

behind a puncheon table, and near them a young man was writing. Behind

the young man was a young gentleman who was closing a speech as we

entered, and he had spoken with such vehemence that the perspiration

stood out on his brow. There was a murmur from those listening, and I

saw Tom pressing his way to the front.

“Hev any of ye seen a feller named Colfax?” cries Tom, in a loud voice.

“He says he owns the land I settled, and he ain’t ever seed it.”

There was a roar of laughter, and even the judges smiled.

“Whar is he?” cries Tom; “said he’d be here to-day.”

Another gust of laughter drowned his words, and then one of the judges

got up and rapped on the table. The gentleman who had just made the

speech glared mightily, and I supposed he had lost the effect of it.

“What do you mean by interrupting the court?” cried the judge. “Get out,

sir, or I’ll have you fined for contempt.”

Tom looked dazed. But at that moment a hand was laid on his shoulder,

and Tom turned.

“Why,” says he, “thar’s no devil if it ain’t the Colonel. Polly Ann told

me not to let ‘em scar’ me, Colonel.”

“And quite right, Tom,” Colonel Clark answered, smiling. He turned to

the judges. “If your Honors please,” said he, “this gentleman is an old

soldier of mine, and unused to the ways of court. I beg your Honors to

excuse him.”

The judges smiled back, and the Colonel led us out of the building.

“Now, Tom,” said he, after he had given me a nod and a kind word, “I

know this Mr. Colfax, and if you will come into the tavern this evening

after court, we’ll see what can be done. I have a case of my own at

present.”

Tom was very grateful. He spent the remainder of the daylight hours with

other friends of his, shooting at a mark near by, serenely confident

of the result of his case now that Colonel Clark had a hand in it. Tom

being one of the best shots in Kentucky, he had won two beaver skins

before the early autumn twilight fell. As for me, I had an afternoon of

excitement in the court, fascinated by the marvels of its procedures, by

the impassioned speeches of its advocates, by the gravity of its judges.

Ambition stirred within me.

The big room of the tavern was filled with men in heated talk over the

day’s doings, some calling out for black betty, some for rum, and some

demanding apple toddies. The landlord’s slovenly negro came in with

candles, their feeble rays reënforcing the firelight and revealing the

mud-chinked walls. Tom and I had barely sat ourselves down at a table in

a corner, when in came Colonel Clark. Beside him was a certain swarthy

gentleman whom I had noticed in the court, a man of some thirty-five

years, with a fine, fleshy face and coal-black hair. His expression was

not one to give us the hope of an amicable settlement,--in fact, he had

the scowl of a thundercloud. He was talking quite angrily, and seemed

not to heed those around him.

“Why the devil should I see the man, Clark?” he was saying.

The Colonel did not answer until they had stopped in front of us.

“Major Colfax,” said he, “this is Sergeant Tom McChesney, one of the

best friends I have in Kentucky. I think a vast deal of Tom, Major. He

was one of the few that never failed me in the Illinois campaign. He

is as honest as the day; you will find him plain-spoken if he speaks at

all, and I have great hopes that you will agree. Tom, the Major and

I are boyhood friends, and for the sake of that friendship he has

consented to this meeting.”

“I fear that your kind efforts will be useless, Colonel,” Major Colfax

put in, rather tartly. “Mr. McChesney not only ignores my rights, but

was near to hanging my agent.”

“What?” says Colonel Clark.

I glanced at Tom. However helpless he might be in a court, he could

be counted on to stand up stanchly in a personal argument. His retorts

would certainly not be brilliant, but they surely would be dogged. Major

Colfax had begun wrong.

“I reckon ye’ve got no rights that I know on,” said Tom. “I cleart the

land and settled it, and I have a better right to it nor any man. And

I’ve got a grant fer it.”

“A Henderson grant!” cried the Major; “‘tis so much worthless paper.”

“I reckon it’s good enough fer me,” answered Tom. “It come from those

who blazed their way out here and druv the redskins off. I don’t know

nothin’ about this newfangled law, but ‘tis a queer thing to my thinkin’

if them that fit fer a place ain’t got the fust right to it.”

Major Colfax turned to Colonel Clark with marked impatience.

“I told you it would be useless, Clark,” said he. “I care not a fig for

a few paltry acres, and as God hears me I’m a reasonable man.” (He did

not look it then.) “But I swear by the evangels I’ll let no squatter

have the better of me. I did not serve Virginia for gold or land, but I

lost my fortune in that service, and before I know it these backwoodsmen

will have every acre of my grant. It’s an old story,” said Mr. Colfax,

hotly, “and why the devil did we fight England if it wasn’t that every

man should have his rights? By God, I’ll not be frightened or wheedled

out of mine. I sent an agent to Kentucky to deal politely and reasonably

with these gentry. What did they do to him? Some of them threw him out

neck and crop. And if I am not mistaken,” said Major Colfax, fixing

a piercing eye upon Tom, “if I am not mistaken, it was this worthy

sergeant of yours who came near to hanging him, and made the poor devil

flee Kentucky for his life.”

This remark brought me near to an untimely laugh at the remembrance of

Mr. Potts, and this though I was far too sober over the outcome of the

conference. Colonel Clark seized hold of a chair and pushed it under

Major Colfax.

“Sit down, gentlemen, we are not so far apart,” said the Colonel,

coolly. The slovenly negro lad passing at that time, he caught him by

the sleeve. “Here, boy, a bowl of toddy, quick. And mind you brew it

strong. Now, Tom,” said he, “what is this fine tale about a hanging?”

“‘Twan’t nothin’,” said Tom.

“You tell me you didn’t try to hang Mr. Potts!” cried Major Colfax.

“I tell you nothin’,” said Tom, and his jaw was set more stubbornly than

ever.

Major Colfax glanced at Colonel Clark.

“You see!” he said a little triumphantly.

I could hold my tongue no longer.

“Major Colfax is unjust, sir,” I cried. “‘Twas Tom saved the man from

hanging.”

“Eh?” says Colonel Clark, turning to me sharply. “So you had a hand in

this, Davy. I might have guessed as much.”

“Who the devil is this?” says Mr. Colfax.

“A sort of ward of mine,” answers the Colonel. “Drummer boy, financier,

strategist, in my Illinois campaign. Allow me to present to you, Major,

Mr. David Ritchie. When my men objected to marching through ice-skimmed

water up to their necks, Mr. Ritchie showed them how.”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the Major, staring at me from under his

black eyebrows, “he was but a child.”

“With an old head on his shoulders,” said the Colonel, and his banter

made me flush.

The negro boy arriving with the toddy, Colonel Clark served out three

generous gourdfuls, a smaller one for me. “Your health, my friends, and

I drink to a peaceful settlement.”

“You may drink to the devil if you like,” says Major Colfax, glaring at

Tom.

“Come, Davy,” said Colonel Clark, when he had taken half the gourd,

“let’s have the tale. I’ll warrant you’re behind this.”

I flushed again, and began by stammering. For I had a great fear that

Major Colfax’s temper would fly into bits when he heard it.

“Well, sir,” said I, “I was grinding corn at the mill when the man

came. I thought him a smooth-mannered person, and he did not give his

business. He was just for wheedling me. ‘And was this McChesney’s mill?’

said he. ‘Ay,’ said I. ‘Thomas McChesney?’ ‘Ay,’ said I. Then he was all

for praise of Thomas McChesney. ‘Where is he?’ said he. ‘He is at the

far pasture,’ said I, ‘and may be looked for any moment.’ Whereupon

he sits down and tries to worm out of me the business of the mill, the

yield of the land. After that he begins to talk about the great people

he knows, Sevier and Shelby and Robertson and Boone and the like. Ay,

and his intimates, the Randolphs and the Popes and the Colfaxes

in Virginia. ‘Twas then I asked him if he knew Colonel Campbell of

Abingdon.”

“And what deviltry was that?” demanded the Colonel, as he dipped himself

more of the toddy.

“I’ll come to it, sir. Yes, Colonel Campbell was his intimate, and

ranted if he did not tarry a week with him at Abingdon on his journeys.

After that he follows me to the cabin, and sees Polly Ann and Tom

and the children on the floor poking a ‘possum. ‘Ah,’ says he, in his

softest voice, ‘a pleasant family scene. And this is Mr. McChesney?’

‘I’m your man,’ says Tom. Then he praised the mill site and the land all

over again. ‘‘Tis good enough for a farmer,’ says Tom. ‘Who holds under

Henderson’s grant,’ I cried. ‘‘Twas that you wished to say an hour ago,’

and I saw I had caught him fair.”

“By the eternal!” cried Colonel Clark, bringing down his fist upon the

table. “And what then?”

I glanced at Major Colfax, but for the life of me I could make nothing

of his look.

“And what did your man say?” said Colonel Clark.

“He called on the devil to bite me, sir,” I answered. The Colonel put

down his gourd and began to laugh. The Major was looking at me fixedly.

“And what then?” said the Colonel.

“It was then Polly Ann called him a thief to take away the land Tom

had fought for and paid for and tilled. The man was all politeness once

more, said that the matter was unfortunate, and that a new and good

title might be had for a few skins.”

“He said that?” interrupted Major Colfax, half rising in his chair. “He

was a damned scoundrel.”

“So I thought, sir,” I answered.

“The devil you did!” said the Major.

“Tut, Colfax,” said the Colonel, pulling him by the sleeve of his

greatcoat, “sit down and let the lad finish. And then?”

“Mr. Boone had told me of a land agent who had made off with Colonel

Campbell’s silver spoons from Abingdon, and how the Colonel had ridden

east and west after him for a week with a rope hanging on his saddle. I

began to tell this story, and instead of the description of Mr. Boone’s

man, I put in that of Mr. Potts,--in height some five feet nine, spare,

of sallow complexion and a green greatcoat.”

Major Colfax leaped up in his chair.

“Great Jehovah!” he shouted, “you described the wrong man.”

Colonel Clark roared with laughter, thereby spilling some of his toddy.

“I’ll warrant he did so,” he cried; “and I’ll warrant your agent went

white as birch bark. Go on, Davy.”

“There’s not a great deal more, sir,” I answered, looking apprehensively

at Major Colfax, who still stood. “The man vowed I lied, but Tom laid

hold of him and was for hurrying him off to Harrodstown at once.”

“Which would ill have suited your purpose,” put in the Colonel. “And

what did you do with him?”

“We put him in a loft, sir, and then I told Tom that he was not

Campbell’s thief at all. But I had a craving to scare the man out of

Kentucky. So I rode off to the neighbors and gave them the tale, and

bade them come after nightfall as though to hang Campbell’s thief, which

they did, and they were near to smashing the door trying to get in the

cabin. Tom told them the rascal had escaped, but they must needs come

in and have jigs and toddies until midnight. When they were gone, and we

called down the man from the loft, he was in such a state that he could

scarce find the rungs of the ladder with his feet. He rode away into

the night, and that was the last we heard of him. Tom was not to blame,

sir.”

Colonel Clark was speechless. And when for the moment he would conquer

his mirth, a glance at Major Colfax would set him off again in laughter.

I was puzzled. I thought my Colonel more human than of old.

“How now, Colfax?” he cried, giving a poke to the Major’s ribs; “you

hold the sequel to this farce.”

The Major’s face was purple,--with what emotion I could not say.

Suddenly he swung full at me.

“Do you mean to tell me that you were the general of this hoax--you?” he

demanded in a strange voice.

“The thing seemed an injustice to me, sir,” I replied in self-defence,

“and the man a rascal.”

“A rascal!” cried the Major, “a knave, a poltroon, a simpleton! And

he came to me with no tale of having been outwitted by a stripling.”

Whereupon Major Colfax began to shake, gently at first, and presently

he was in such a gale of laughter that I looked on him in amazement,

Colonel Clark joining in again. The Major’s eye rested at length upon

Tom, and gradually he grew calm.

“McChesney,” said he, “we’ll have no bickerings in court among soldiers.

The land is yours, and to-morrow my attorney shall give you a deed of

it. Your hand, McChesney.”

The stubbornness vanished from Tom’s face, and there came instead a

dazed expression as he thrust a great, hard hand into the Major’s.

“‘Twan’t the land, sir,” he stammered; “these varmints of settlers is

gittin’ thick as flies in July. ‘Twas Polly Ann. I reckon I’m obleeged

to ye, Major.”

“There, there,” said the Major, “I thank the Lord I came to Kentucky to

see for myself. Damn the land. I have plenty more,--and little else.” He

turned quizzically to Colonel Clark, revealing a line of strong, white

teeth. “Suppose we drink a health to your drummer boy,” said he, lifting

up his gourd.

CHAPTER IV. I CROSS THE MOUNTAINS ONCE MORE

“‘Tis what ye’ve a right to, Davy,” said Polly Ann, and she handed me a

little buckskin bag on which she had been sewing. I opened it with

trembling fingers, and poured out, chinking on the table, such a motley

collection of coins as was never seen,--Spanish milled dollars, English

sovereigns and crowns and shillings, paper issues of the Confederacy,

and I know not what else. Tom looked on with a grin, while little Tom

and Peggy reached out their hands in delight, their mother vigorously

blocking their intentions.

“Ye’ve earned it yerself,” said Polly Ann, forestalling my protest;

“‘tis what ye got by the mill, and I’ve laid it by bit by bit for yer

eddication.”

“And what do you get?” I cried, striving by feigned anger to keep the

tears back from my eyes. “Have you no family to support?”

“Faith,” she answered, “we have the mill that ye gave us, and the farm,

and Tom’s rifle. I reckon we’ll fare better than ye think, tho’ we’ll

miss ye sore about the place.”

I picked out two sovereigns from the heap, dropped them in the bag, and

thrust it into my hunting shirt.

“There,” said I, my voice having no great steadiness, “not a penny more.

I’ll keep the bag for your sake, Polly Ann, and I’ll take the mare for

Tom’s.”

She had had a song on her lips ever since our coming back from Danville,

seven days agone, a song on her lips and banter on her tongue, as she

made me a new hunting shirt and breeches for the journey across the

mountains. And now with a sudden movement she burst into tears and flung

her arms about my neck.

“Oh, Davy, ‘tis no time to be stubborn,” she sobbed, “and eddication

is a costly thing. Ever sence I found ye on the trace, years ago, I’ve

thought of ye one day as a great man. And when ye come back to us so big

and l’arned, I’d wish to be saying with pride that I helped ye.”

“And who else, Polly Ann?” I faltered, my heart racked with the parting.

“You found me a homeless waif, and you gave me a home and a father and

mother.”

“Davy, ye’ll not forget us when ye’re great, I know ye’ll not. ‘Tis not

in ye.”

She stood back and smiled at me through her tears. The light of heaven

was in that smile, and I have dreamed of it even since age has crept

upon me. Truly, God sets his own mark on the pure in heart, on the

unselfish.

I glanced for the last time around the rude cabin, every timber of which

was dedicated to our sacrifices and our love: the fireplace with its

rough stones, on the pegs the quaint butternut garments which Polly Ann

had stitched, the baby in his bark cradle, the rough bedstead and the

little trundle pushed under it,--and the very homely odor of the place

is dear to me yet. Despite the rigors and the dangers of my life here,

should I ever again find such happiness and peace in the world? The

children clung to my knees; and with a “God bless ye, Davy, and come

back to us,” Tom squeezed my hand until I winced with pain. I leaped on

the mare, and with blinded eyes rode down the familiar trail, past the

mill, to Harrodsburg.

There Mr. Neville Colfax was waiting to take me across the mountains.

There is a story in every man’s life, like the kernel in the shell of

a hickory nut. I am ill acquainted with the arts of a biographer, but

I seek to give in these pages little of the shell and the whole of the

kernel of mine. ‘Twould be unwise and tiresome to recount the journey

over the bare mountains with my new friend and benefactor. He was a

strange gentleman, now jolly enough to make me shake with laughter and

forget the sorrow of my parting, now moody for a night and a day; now

he was all sweetness, now all fire; now he was abstemious, now

self-indulgent and prodigal. He had a will like flint, and under it a

soft heart. Cross his moods, and he hated you. I never thought to cross

them, therefore he called me Davy, and his friendliness grew with

our journey. His anger turned against rocks and rivers, landlords and

emigrants, but never against me. And for this I was silently thankful.

And how had he come to take me over the mountains, and to put me in the

way of studying law? Mindful of the kernel of my story, I have shortened

the chapter to tell you out of the proper place. Major Colfax had made

Tom and me sup with himself and Colonel Clark at the inn in Danville.

And so pleased had the Major professed himself with my story of having

outwitted his agent, that he must needs have more of my adventures.

Colonel Clark gave him some, and Tom,--his tongue loosed by the

toddy,--others. And the Colonel added to the debt I owed him by

suggesting that Major Colfax take me to Virginia and recommend me to a

lawyer there.

“Nay,” cried the Major, “I will do more. I like the lad, for he

is modest despite the way you have paraded him. I have an uncle in

Richmond, Judge Wentworth, to whom I will take him in person. And when

the Judge has done with him, if he is not flayed and tattooed with

Blackstone, you may flay and tattoo me.”

Thus did I break through my environment. And it was settled that I

should meet the Major in seven days at Harrodstown.

Once in the journey did the Major make mention of a subject which had

troubled me.

“Davy,” said he, “Clark has changed. He is not the same man he was when

I saw him in Williamsburg demanding supplies for his campaign.”

“Virginia has used him shamefully, sir,” I answered, and suddenly there

came flooding to my mind things I had heard the Colonel say in the

campaign.

“Commonwealths have short memories,” said the Major; “they will accept

any sacrifice with a smile. Shakespeare, I believe, speaks of royal

ingratitude--he knew not commonwealths. Clark was close-lipped once, not

given to levity and--to toddy. There, there, he is my friend as well as

yours, and I will prove it by pushing his cause in Virginia. Is yours

Scotch anger? Then the devil fend me from it. A monarch would have

given him fifty thousand acres on the Wabash, a palace, and a sufficient

annuity. Virginia has given him a sword, eight thousand wild acres to be

sure, repudiated the debts of his army, and left him to starve. Is there

no room for a genius in our infant military establishment?”

At length, as Christmas drew near, we came to Major Colfax’s seat, some

forty miles out of the town of Richmond. It was called Neville’s Grange,

the Major’s grandfather having so named it when he came out from England

some sixty years before. It was a huge, rambling, draughty house of

wood,--mortgaged, so the Major cheerfully informed me, thanks to the

patriotism of the family. At Neville’s Grange the Major kept a somewhat

roisterous bachelor’s hall. The place was overrun with negroes and dogs,

and scarce a night went by that there was not merrymaking in the house

with the neighbors. The time passed pleasantly enough until one frosty

January morning Major Colfax had a twinge of remembrance, cried out for

horses, took me into Richmond, and presented me to that very learned and

decorous gentleman, Judge Wentworth.

My studies began within the hour of my arrival.

CHAPTER V. I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW

I shall burden no one with the dry chronicles of a law office. The

acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a

slower one in the telling. I lacked not application during the three

years of my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd

tasks as came my way.

The Judge resembled Major Colfax in but one trait: he was choleric. But

he was painstaking and cautious, and I soon found out that he looked

askance upon any one whom his nephew might recommend. He liked the

Major, but he vowed him to be a roisterer and spendthrift, and one day,

some months after my advent, the Judge asked me flatly how I came to

fall in with Major Colfax. I told him. At the end of this conversation

he took my breath away by bidding me come to live with him. Like many

lawyers of that time, he had a little house in one corner of his grounds

for his office. It stood under great spreading trees, and there I was

wont to sit through many a summer day wrestling with the authorities. In

the evenings we would have political arguments, for the Confederacy was

in a seething state between the Federalists and the Republicans over

the new Constitution, now ratified. Between the Federalists and the

Jacobins, I would better say, for the virulence of the French Revolution

was soon to be reflected among the parties on our side. Kentucky,

swelled into an unmanageable territory, was come near to rebellion

because the government was not strong enough to wrest from Spain the

free navigation of the Mississippi.

And yet I yearned to go back, and looked forward eagerly to the time

when I should have stored enough in my head to gain admission to the

bar. I was therefore greatly embarrassed, when my examinations came, by

an offer from Judge Wentworth to stay in Richmond and help him with his

practice. It was an offer not to be lightly set aside, and yet I had

made up my mind. He flew into a passion because of my desire to return

to a wild country of outlaws and vagabonds.

“Why, damme,” he cried, “Kentucky and this pretty State of Franklin

which desired to chip off from North Carolina are traitorous places.

Disloyal to Congress! Intriguing with a Spanish minister and the Spanish

governor of Louisiana to secede from their own people and join the

King of Spain. Bah!” he exclaimed, “if our new Federal Constitution

is adopted I would hang Jack Sevier of Franklin and your Kentuckian

Wilkinson to the highest trees west of the mountains.”

I can see the little gentleman as he spoke, his black broadcloth coat

and lace ruffles, his hand clutching the gold head of his cane, his face

screwed up with indignation under his white wig. It was on a Sunday, and

he was standing by the lilac bushes on the lawn in front of his square

brick house.

“David,” said he, more calmly, “I trust I have taught you something

besides the law. I trust I have taught you that a strong Federal

government alone will be the salvation of our country.”

“You cannot blame Kentucky greatly, sir,” said I, feeling that I must

stand up for my friends. “The Federal government has done little enough

for its people, and treated them to a deal of neglect. They won that

western country for themselves with no Federal nor Virginia or North

Carolina troops to help them. No man east of the mountains knows what

that fight has been. No man east of the mountains knows the horror of

that Indian warfare. This government gives them no protection now. Nay,

Congress cannot even procure for them an outlet for their commerce.

They must trade or perish. Spain closes the Mississippi, arrests our

merchants, seizes their goods, and often throws them into prison. No

wonder they scorn the Congress as weak and impotent.”

The Judge stared at me aghast. It was the first time I had dared oppose

him on this subject.

“What,” he sputtered, “what? You are a Separatist,--you whom I have

received into the bosom of my family!” Seizing the cane at the middle,

he brandished it in my face.

“Don’t misunderstand me, sir,” said I. “You have given me books to

read, and have taught me what may be the destiny of our nation on this

continent. But you must forgive a people whose lives have been spent in

a fierce struggle for their homes, whose families have nearly all lost

some member by massacre, who are separated by hundreds of miles of

wilderness from you.”

He looked at me speechless, and turned and walked into the house. I

thought I had sinned past forgiveness, and I was beyond description

uncomfortable, for he had been like a parent to me. But the next

morning, at half after seven, he walked into the little office and laid

down some gold pieces on my table. Gold was very scarce in those days.

“They are for your journey, David,” said he. “My only comfort in your

going back is that you may grow up to put some temperance into their

wild heads. I have a commission for you at Jonesboro, in what was once

the unspeakable State of Franklin. You can stop there on your way to

Kentucky.” He drew from his pocket a great bulky letter, addressed to

“Thomas Wright, Esquire, Barrister-at-law in Jonesboro, North Carolina.”

For the good gentleman could not bring himself to write Franklin.

It was late in September of the year 1788 when I set out on my homeward

way--for Kentucky was home to me. I was going back to Polly Ann and

Tom, and visions of that home-coming rose before my eyes as I rode. In

a packet in my saddle-bags were some dozen letters which Mr. Wrenn, the

schoolmaster at Harrodstown, had writ at Polly Ann’s bidding. I have the

letters yet. For Mr. Wrenn was plainly an artist, and had set down on

the paper the words just as they had flowed from her heart. Ay, and

there was news in the letters, though not surprising news among those

pioneer families whom God blessed so abundantly. Since David Ritchie

McChesney (I mention the name with pride) had risen above the

necessities of a bark cradle, two more had succeeded him, a brother

and a sister. I spurred my horse onward, and thought impatiently of the

weary leagues between my family and me.

I have often pictured myself on that journey. I was twenty-one years

of age, though one would have called me older. My looks were nothing to

boast of, and I was grown up tall and weedy, so that I must have made

quite a comical sight, with my long legs dangling on either side of the

pony. I wore a suit of gray homespun, and in my saddle-bags I carried

four precious law books, the stock in trade which my generous patron had

given me. But as I mounted the slopes of the mountains my spirits rose

too at the prospect of the life before me. The woods were all aflame

with color, with wine and amber and gold, and the hills wore the misty

mantle of shadowy blue so dear to my youthful memory. As I left the rude

taverns of a morning and jogged along the heights, I watched the vapors

rise and roll away from the valleys far beneath, and saw great flocks of

ducks and swans and cackling geese darkening the air in their southward

flight. Strange that I fell in with no company, for the trail leading

into the Tennessee country was widened and broadened beyond belief,

and everywhere I came upon blackened fires and abandoned lean-tos, and

refuse bones gnawed by the wolves and bleached by the weather. I slept

in some of these lean-tos, with my fire going brightly, indifferent to

the howl of wolves in chase or the scream of a panther pouncing on its

prey. For I was born of the wilderness. It had no terrors for me, nor

did I ever feel alone. The great cliffs with their clinging, gnarled

trees, the vast mountains clothed in the motley colors of the autumn,

the sweet and smoky smell of the Indian summer,--all were dear to me.

As I drew near to Jonesboro my thoughts began to dwell upon that strange

and fascinating man who had entertained Polly Ann and Tom and me so

lavishly on our way to Kentucky,--Captain John Sevier. For he had made

a great noise in the world since then, and the wrath of such men as my

late patron was heavy upon him. Yes, John Sevier, Nollichucky Jack, had

been a king in all but name since I had seen him, the head of such

a principality as stirred the blood to read about. It comprised the

Watauga settlement among the mountains of what is now Tennessee, and was

called prosaically (as is the wont of the Anglo-Saxon) the free State

of Franklin. There were certain conservative and unimaginative souls

in this mountain principality who for various reasons held their old

allegiance to the State of North Carolina. One Colonel Tipton led these

loyalist forces, and armed partisans of either side had for some years

ridden up and down the length of the land, burning and pillaging and

slaying. We in Virginia had heard of two sets of courts in Franklin, of

two sets of legislators. But of late the rumor had grown persistently

that Nollichucky Jack was now a kind of fugitive, and that he had

passed the summer pleasantly enough fighting Indians in the vicinity of

Nick-a-jack Cave.

It was court day as I rode into the little town of Jonesboro, the air

sparkling like a blue diamond over the mountain crests, and I drew deep

into my lungs once more the scent of the frontier life I had loved

so well. In the streets currents of excited men flowed and backed and

eddied, backwoodsmen and farmers in the familiar hunting shirts of hide

or homespun, and lawyers in dress less rude. A line of horses stood

kicking and switching their tails in front of the log tavern, rough

carts and wagons had been left here and there with their poles on the

ground, and between these, piles of skins were heaped up and bags of

corn and grain. The log meeting-house was deserted, but the court-house

was the centre of such a swirling crowd as I had often seen at

Harrodstown. Now there are brawls and brawls, and I should have thought

with shame of my Kentucky bringing-up had I not perceived that this was

no ordinary court day, and that an unusual excitement was in the wind.

Tying my horse, and making my way through the press in front of the

tavern door, I entered the common room, and found it stifling, brawling

and drinking going on apace. Scarce had I found a seat before the whole

room was emptied by one consent, all crowding out of the door after

two men who began a rough-and-tumble fight in the street. I had seen

rough-and-tumble fights in Kentucky, and if I have forborne to speak of

them it is because there always has been within me a loathing for them.

And so I sat quietly in the common room until the landlord came. I asked

him if he could direct me to Mr. Wright’s house, as I had a letter for

that gentleman. His answer was to grin at me incredulously.

“I reckoned you wah’nt from these parts,” said he. “Wright’s--out o’

town.”

“What is the excitement?” I demanded.

He stared at me.

“Nollichucky Jack’s been heah, in Jonesboro, young man,” said he.

“What,” I exclaimed, “Colonel Sevier?”

“Ay, Sevier,” he repeated. “With Martin and Tipton and all the Caroliny

men right heah, having a council of mility officers in the court-house,

in rides Jack with his frontier boys like a whirlwind. He bean’t afeard

of ‘em, and a bench warrant out ag’in him for high treason. Never seed

sech a recklessness. Never had sech a jamboree sence I kept the tavern.

They was in this here room most of the day, and they was five fights

before they set down to dinner.”

“And Colonel Tipton?” I said.

“Oh, Tipton,” said he, “he hain’t afeard neither, but he hain’t got men

enough.”

“And where is Sevier now?” I demanded.

“How long hev you ben in town?” was his answer.

I told him.

“Wal,” said he, shifting his tobacco from one sallow cheek to the other,

“I reckon he and his boys rud out just afore you come in. Mark me,” he

added, “when I tell ye there’ll be trouble yet. Tipton and Martin and

the Caroliny folks is burnin’ mad with Chucky Jack for the murder of

Corn Tassel and other peaceful chiefs. But Jack hez a wild lot with

him,--some of the Nollichucky Cave traders, and there’s one young lad

that looks like he was a gentleman once. I reckon Jack himself wouldn’t

like to get into a fight with him. He’s a wild one. Great Goliah,” he

exclaimed, running to the door, “ef thar ain’t a-goin’ to be another

fight! Never seed sech a day in Jonesboro.”

I likewise ran to the door, and this fight interested me. There was

a great, black-bearded mountaineer-farmer-desperado in the midst of a

circle, pouring out a torrent of abuse at a tall young man.

“That thar’s Hump Gibson,” said the landlord, genially pointing out the

black-bearded ruffian, “and the young lawyer feller hez git a jedgment

ag’in him. He’s got spunk, but I reckon Hump ‘ll t’ar the innards out’n

him ef he stands thar a great while.”

“Ye’ll git jedgment ag’in me, ye Caroliny splinter, will ye?” yelled Mr.

Gibson, with an oath. “I’ll pay Bill Wilder the skins when I git ready,

and all the pinhook lawyers in Washington County won’t budge me a mite.”

“You’ll pay Bill Wilder or go to jail, by the eternal,” cried the young

man, quite as angrily, whereupon I looked upon him with a mixture of

admiration and commiseration, with a gulping certainty in my throat that

I was about to see murder done. He was a strange young man, with the

rare marked look that would compel even a poor memory to pick him out

again. For example, he was very tall and very slim, with red hair blown

every which way over a high and towering forehead that seemed as long

as the face under it. The face, too, was long, and all freckled by the

weather. The blue eyes held me in wonder, and these blazed with such

prodigious wrath that, if a look could have killed, Hump Gibson would

have been stricken on the spot. Mr. Gibson was, however, very much

alive.

“Skin out o’ here afore I kill ye,” he shouted, and he charged at the

slim young man like a buffalo, while the crowd held its breath. I, who

had looked upon cruel sights in my day, was turning away with a kind

of sickening when I saw the slim young man dodge the rush. He did more.

With two strides of his long legs he reached the fence, ripped off the

topmost rail, and his huge antagonist, having changed his direction and

coming at him with a bellow, was met with the point of a scantling in

the pit of his stomach, and Mr. Gibson fell heavily to the ground. It

had all happened in a twinkling, and there was a moment’s lull while the

minds of the onlookers needed readjustment, and then they gave vent to

ecstasies of delight.

“Great Goliah!” cried the landlord, breathlessly, “he shet him up jest

like a jack-knife.”

Awe-struck, I looked at the tall young man, and he was the very essence

of wrath. Unmindful of the plaudits, he stood brandishing the fence-rail

over the great, writhing figure on the ground. And he was slobbering. I

recall that this fact gave a twinge to something in my memory.

“Come on, Hump Gibson,” he cried, “come on!”--at which the crowd went

wild with pure joy. Witticisms flew.

“Thought ye was goin’ to eat ‘im up, Hump?” said a friend.

“Ye ain’t hed yer meal yet, Hump,” reminded another.

Mr. Hump Gibson arose slowly out of the dust, yet he did not stand

straight.

“Come on, come on!” cried the young lawyer-fellow, and he thrust the

point of the rail within a foot of Mr. Gibson’s stomach.

“Come on, Hump!” howled the crowd, but Mr. Gibson stood irresolute. He

lacked the supreme test of courage which was demanded on this occasion.

Then he turned and walked away very slowly, as though his pace might

mitigate in some degree the shame of his retreat. The young man flung

away the fence-rail, and, thrusting aside the overzealous among his

admirers, he strode past me into the tavern, his anger still hot.

“Hooray fer Jackson!” they shouted. “Hooray fer Andy Jackson!”

Andy Jackson! Then I knew. Then I remembered a slim, wild, sandy-haired

boy digging his toes in the red mud long ago at the Waxhaws Settlement.

And I recalled with a smile my own fierce struggle at the schoolhouse

with the same boy, and how his slobbering had been my salvation. I

turned and went in after him with the landlord, who was rubbing his

hands with glee.

“I reckon Hump won’t come crowin’ round heah any more co’t days, Mr.

Jackson,” said our host.

But Mr. Jackson swept the room with his eyes and then glared at the

landlord so that he gave back.

“Where’s my man?” he demanded.

“Your man, Mr. Jackson?” stammered the host.

“Great Jehovah!” cried Mr. Jackson, “I believe he’s afraid to race. He

had a horse that could show heels to my Nancy, did he? And he’s gone,

you say?”

A light seemed to dawn on the landlord’s countenance.

“God bless ye, Mr. Jackson!” he cried, “ye don’t mean that young

daredevil that was with Sevier?”

“With Sevier?” says Jackson.

“Ay,” says the landlord; “he’s been a-fightin with Sevier all summer,

and I reckon he ain’t afeard of nothin’ any more than you. Wait--his

name was Temple--Nick Temple, they called him.”

“Nick Temple!” I cried, starting forward.

“Where’s he gone?” said Mr. Jackson. “He was going to bet me a six-forty

he has at Nashboro that his horse could beat mine on the Greasy Cove

track. Where’s he gone?”

“Gone!” said the landlord, apologetically, “Nollichucky Jack and his

boys left town an hour ago.”

“Is he a man of honor or isn’t he?” said Mr. Jackson, fiercely.

“Lord, sir, I only seen him once, but I’d stake my oath on it.”

“Do you mean to say Mr. Temple has been here--Nicholas Temple?” I said.

The bewildered landlord turned towards me helplessly.

“Who the devil are you, sir?” cried Mr. Jackson.

“Tell me what this Mr. Temple was like,” said I.

The landlord’s face lighted up.

“Faith, a thoroughbred hoss,” says he; “sech nostrils, and sech a gray

eye with the devil in it fer go--yellow ha’r, and ez tall ez Mr. Jackson

heah.”

“And you say he’s gone off again with Sevier?”

“They rud into town” (he lowered his voice, for the room was filling),

“snapped their fingers at Tipton and his warrant, and rud out ag’in. My

God, but that was like Nollichucky Jack. Say, stranger, when your Mr.

Temple smiled--”

“He is the man!” I cried; “tell me where to find him.”

Mr. Jackson, who had been divided between astonishment and impatience

and anger, burst out again.

“What the devil do you mean by interfering with my business, sir?”

“Because it is my business too,” I answered, quite as testily; “my claim

on Mr. Temple is greater than yours.”

“By Jehovah!” cried Jackson, “come outside, sir, come outside!”

The landlord backed away, and the men in the tavern began to press

around us expectantly.

“Gallop into him, Andy!” cried one.

“Don’t let him git near no fences, stranger,” said another.

Mr. Jackson turned on this man with such truculence that he edged away

to the rear of the room.

“Step out, sir,” said Mr. Jackson, starting for the door before I could

reply. I followed perforce, not without misgivings, the crowd pushing

eagerly after. Before we reached the dusty street Jackson began pulling

off his coat. In a trice the shouting onlookers had made a ring, and we

stood facing each other, he in his shirt-sleeves.

“We’ll fight fair,” said he, his lips wetting.

“Very good,” said I, “if you are still accustomed to this hasty manner.

You have not asked my name, my standing, nor my reasons for wanting Mr.

Temple.”

I know not whether it was what I said that made him stare, or how I said

it.

“Pistols, if you like,” said he.

“No,” said I; “I am in a hurry to find Mr. Temple. I fought you this way

once, and it’s quicker.”

“You fought me this way once?” he repeated. The noise of the crowd was

hushed, and they drew nearer to hear.

“Come, Mr. Jackson,” said I, “you are a lawyer and a gentleman, and so

am I. I do not care to be beaten to a pulp, but I am not afraid of

you. And I am in a hurry. If you will step back into the tavern, I will

explain to you my reasons for wishing to get to Mr. Temple.”

Mr. Jackson stared at me the more.

“By the eternal,” said he, “you are a cool man. Give me my coat,” he

shouted to the bystanders, and they helped him on with it. “Now,”

said he, as they made to follow him, “keep back. I would talk to this

gentleman. By the heavens,” he cried, when he had gained the room, “I

believe you are not afraid of me. I saw it in your eyes.”

Then I laughed.

“Mr. Jackson,” said I, “doubtless you do not remember a homeless boy

named David whom you took to your uncle’s house in the Waxhaws--”

“I do,” he exclaimed, “as I live I do. Why, we slept together.”

“And you stumped your toe getting into bed and swore,” said I.

At that he laughed so heartily that the landlord came running across the

room.

“And we fought together at the Old Fields School. Are you that boy?”

and he scanned me again. “By God, I believe you are.” Suddenly his face

clouded once more. “But what about Temple?” said he.

“Ah,” I answered, “I come to that quickly. Mr. Temple is my cousin.

After I left your uncle’s house my father took me to Charlestown.”

“Is he a Charlestown Temple?” demanded Mr. Jackson. “For I spent some

time gambling and horse-racing with the gentry there, and I know many of

them. I was a wild lad” (I repeat his exact words), “and I ran up a bill

in Charlestown that would have filled a folio volume. Faith, all I had

left me was the clothes on my back and a good horse. I made up my mind

one night that if I could pay my debts and get out of Charlestown I

would go into the back country and study law and sober down. There was

a Mr. Braiden in the ordinary who staked me two hundred dollars at

rattle-and-snap against my horse. Gad, sir, that was providence. I

won. I left Charlestown with honor, I studied law at Salisbury in North

Carolina, and I have come here to practise it.”

“You seem to have the talent,” said I, smiling at the remembrance of the

Hump Gibson incident.

“That is my history in a nutshell,” said Mr. Jackson. “And now,” he

added, “since you are Mr. Temple’s cousin and friend and an old

acquaintance of mine to boot, I will tell you where I think he is.”

“Where is that?” I asked eagerly.