"All right," answered Mr. Lincoln, quietly.

"All right?" asked Mr. Medill, reflecting the sheer astonishment of the

others; "then why the devil are you wearing yourself out? And why are we

spending our time and money on you?"

Mr. Lincoln laid his hand on Medill's sleeve.

"Joe," said he, "a rat in the larder is easier to catch than a rat that

has the run of the cellar. You know, where to set your trap in the

larder. I'll tell you why I'm in this campaign: to catch Douglas now, and

keep him out of the White House in 1860. To save this country of ours,

Joe. She's sick."

There was a silence, broken by two exclamations.

"But see here, Abe," said Mr. Medill, as soon as ever he got his breath,

"what have we got to show for it? Where do you come in?"

Mr. Lincoln smiled wearily.

"Nowhere, I reckon," he answered simply.

"Good Lord!" said Mr. Judd.

Mr. Medill gulped.

"You mean to say, as the candidate of the Republican party, you don't

care whether you get to the Senate?"

"Not if I can send Steve Douglas there with his wings broken," was the

calm reply.

"Suppose he does answer yes, that slavery can be excluded?" said Mr.

Judd.

"Then," said Mr. Lincoln, "then Douglas loses the vote of the great

slave-holders, the vote of the solid South, that he has been fostering

ever since he has had the itch to be President. Without the solid South

the Little Giant will never live in the White House. And unless I'm

mightily mistaken, Steve Douglas has had his aye as far ahead as 1860 for

some time."

Another silence followed these words. There was a stout man standing in

the aisle, and he spat deftly out of the open window.

"You may wing Steve Douglas, Abe," said he, gloomily, "but the gun will

kick you over the bluff."

"Don't worry about me, Ed," said Mr. Lincoln. "I'm not worth it."

In a wave of comprehension the significance of all this was revealed to

Stephen Brice, The grim humor, the sagacious statesmanship, and (best of

all)--the superb self sacrifice of it, struck him suddenly. I think it

was in that hour that he realized the full extent of the wisdom he was

near, which was like unto Solomon's.

Shame surged in Stephen's face that he should have misjudged him. He had

come to patronize. He had remained to worship. And in after years, when

he thought of this new vital force which became part of him that day, it

was in the terms of Emerson: "Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates,

and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every

pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be

misunderstood."

How many have conversed with Lincoln before and since, and knew him not!

If an outward and visible sign of Mr. Lincoln's greatness were needed,

--he had chosen to speak to them in homely parables. The story of Farmer

Bell was plain as day. Jim Rickets, who had life all his own way, was

none other than Stephen A. Douglas, the easily successful. The ugly

galoot, who dared to raise his eyes only to the pear, was Mr. Lincoln

himself. And the pear was the Senatorship, which the galoot had denied

himself to save Susan from being Mr. Rickets' bride.

Stephen could understand likewise the vehemence of the Republican leaders

who crowded around their candidate and tried to get him to retract that

Question. He listened quietly, he answered with a patient smile. Now and

then he threw a story into the midst of this discussion which made them

laugh in spite of themselves. The hopelessness of the case was quite

plain to Mr. Hill, who smiled, and whispered in Stephen's ear: "He has

made up his mind. They will not budge him an inch, and they know it."

Finally Mr. Lincoln took the scrap of paper, which was even more dirty

and finger-marked by this time, and handed it to Mr. Hill. The train was

slowing down for Freeport. In the distance, bands could be heard playing,

and along the track, line upon line of men and women were cheering and

waving. It was ten o'clock, raw and cold for that time of the year, and

the sun was trying to come out.

"Bob," said Mr. Lincoln, "be sure you get that right in your notes. And,

Steve, you stick close to me, and you'll see the show. Why, boys," he

added, smiling, "there's the great man's private car, cannon and all."

All that Stephen saw was a regular day-car on a sidetrack. A brass cannon

was on the tender hitched behind it.

CHAPTER V

THE CRISIS

Stephen A. Douglas, called the Little Giant on account of his intellect,

was a type of man of which our race has had some notable examples,

although they are not characteristic. Capable of sacrifice to their

country, personal ambition is, nevertheless, the mainspring of their

actions. They must either be before the public, or else unhappy. This

trait gives them a large theatrical strain, and sometimes brands them as

adventurers. Their ability saves them from being demagogues.

In the case of Douglas, he had deliberately renewed some years before the

agitation on the spread of slavery, by setting forth a doctrine of

extreme cleverness. This doctrine, like many others of its kind, seemed

at first sight to be the balm it pretended, instead of an irritant, as it

really was. It was calculated to deceive all except thinking men, and to

silence all save a merciless logician. And this merciless logician, who

was heaven-sent in time of need, was Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Douglas was a juggler, a political prestidigitateur. He did things

before the eyes of the Senate and the nation. His balm for the healing of

the nation's wounds was a patent medicine so cleverly concocted that

experts alone could show what was in it. So abstruse and twisted were

some of Mr. Douglas's doctrines that a genius alone might put them into

simple words, for the common people.

The great panacea for the slavery trouble put forth by Mr. Douglas at

that time was briefly this: that the people of the new territories should

decide for themselves, subject to the Constitution, whether they should

have slavery or not, and also decide for themselves all other questions

under the Constitution. Unhappily for Mr. Douglas, there was the famous

Dred Scott decision, which had set the South wild with joy the year

before, and had cast a gloom over the North. The Chief Justice of the

United States had declared that under the Constitution slaves were

property,--and as such every American citizen owning slaves could carry

them about with him wherever he went. Therefore the territorial

legislatures might pass laws until they were dumb, and yet their settlers

might bring with them all the slaves they pleased.

And yet we must love the Judge. He was a gentleman, a strong man, and a

patriot. He was magnanimous, and to his immortal honor be it said that

he, in the end, won the greatest of all struggles. He conquered himself.

He put down that mightiest thing that was in him,--his ambition for

himself. And he set up, instead, his ambition for his country. He bore no

ill-will toward the man whose fate was so strangely linked to his, and

who finally came to that high seat of honor and of martyrdom which he

coveted. We shall love the Judge, and speak of him with reverence, for

that sublime act of kindness before the Capitol in 1861.

Abraham Lincoln might have prayed on that day of the Freeport debate:

"Forgive him, Lord. He knows not what he does." Lincoln descried the

danger afar, and threw his body into the breach.

That which passed before Stephen's eyes, and to which his ears listened

at Freeport, was the Great Republic pressing westward to the Pacific. He

wondered whether some of his Eastern friends who pursed their lips when

the Wrest was mentioned would have sneered or prayed. A young English

nobleman who was there that day did not sneer. He was filled instead with

something like awe at the vigor of this nation which was sprung from the

loins of his own. Crudeness he saw, vulgarity he heard, but Force he

felt, and marvelled.

America was in Freeport that day, the rush of her people and the surprise

of her climate. The rain had ceased, and quickly was come out of the

northwest a boisterous wind, chilled by the lakes and scented by the

hemlocks of the Minnesota forests. The sun smiled and frowned Clouds

hurried in the sky, mocking the human hubbub below. Cheering thousands

pressed about the station as Mr. Lincoln's train arrived. They hemmed him

in his triumphal passage under the great arching trees to the new

Brewster House. The Chief Marshal and his aides, great men before, were

suddenly immortal. The county delegations fell into their proper

precedence like ministers at a state dinner. "We have faith in Abraham,

Yet another County for the Rail-sputter, Abe the Giant-killer,"--so the

banners read. Here, much bedecked, was the Galena Lincoln Club, part of

Joe Davies's shipment. Fifes skirled, and drums throbbed, and the stars

and stripes snapped in the breeze. And here was a delegation headed by

fifty sturdy ladies on horseback, at whom Stephen gaped like a

countryman. Then came carryalls of all ages and degrees, wagons from this

county and that county, giddily draped, drawn by horses from one to six,

or by mules, their inscriptions addressing their senatorial candidate in

all degrees of familiarity, but not contempt. What they seemed proudest

of was that he had been a rail-splitter, for nearly all bore a

fence-rail.

But stay, what is this wagon with the high sapling flagstaff in the

middle, and the leaves still on it?

"Westward the Star of Empire takes its way.

The girls link on to Lincoln; their mothers were for Clay."

Here was glory to blind you,--two and thirty maids in red sashes and blue

liberty caps with white stars. Each was a state of the Union, and every

one of them was for Abraham, who called them his "Basket of Flowers."

Behind them, most touching of all, sat a thirty-third shackled in chains.

That was Kansas. Alas, the men of Kansas was far from being as sorrowful

as the part demanded,--in spite of her instructions she would smile at

the boys. But the appealing inscription she bore, "Set me free" was

greeted with storms of laughter, the boldest of the young men shouting

that she was too beautiful to be free, and some of the old men, to their

shame be it said likewise shouted. No false embarrassment troubled

Kansas. She was openly pleased. But the young men who had brought their

sweethearts to town, and were standing hand in hand with them, for

obvious reasons saw nothing: They scarcely dared to look at Kansas, and

those who did were so loudly rebuked that they turned down the side

streets.

During this part of the day these loving couples, whose devotion was so

patent to the whole world, were by far the most absorbing to Stephen. He

watched them having their fortunes told, the young women blushing and

crying, "Say!" and "Ain't he wicked?" and the young men getting their

ears boxed for certain remarks. He watched them standing open-mouthed at

the booths and side shows with hands still locked, or again they were

chewing cream candy in unison. Or he glanced sidewise at them, seated in

the open places with the world so far below them that even the insistent

sound of the fifes and drums rose but faintly to their ears.

And perhaps,--we shall not say positively,--perhaps Mr. Brice's thoughts

went something like this, "O that love were so simple a matter to all!"

But graven on his face was what is called the "Boston scorn." And no

scorn has been known like unto it since the days of Athens.

So Stephen made the best of his way to the Brewster House, the elegance

and newness of which the citizens of Freeport openly boasted. Mr. Lincoln

had preceded him, and was even then listening to a few remarks of burning

praise by an honorable gentleman. Mr. Lincoln himself made a few remarks,

which seemed so simple and rang so true, and were so free from political

rococo and decoration generally, that even the young men forgot their

sweethearts to listen. Then Mr. Lincoln went into the hotel, and the sun

slipped under a black cloud.

The lobby was full, and rather dirty, since the supply of spittoons was

so far behind the demand. Like the firmament, it was divided into little

bodies which revolved about larger bodies. But there lacked not here

supporters of the Little Giant, and discreet farmers of influence in

their own counties who waited to hear the afternoon's debate before

deciding. These and others did not hesitate to tell of the magnificence

of the Little Giant's torchlight procession the previous evening. Every

Dred-Scottite had carried a torch, and many transparencies, so that the

very glory of it had turned night into day. The Chief Lictor had

distributed these torches with an unheard-of liberality. But there lacked

not detractors who swore that John Dibble and other Lincolnites had

applied for torches for the mere pleasure of carrying them. Since dawn

the delegations had been heralded from the house-tops, and wagered on

while they were yet as worms far out or the prairie. All the morning

these continued to came in, and form in line to march past their

particular candidate. The second great event of the day was the event of

the special over the Galena roar, of sixteen cars and more than a

thousand pairs of sovereign lungs. With military precision they repaired

to the Brewster House, and ahead of then a banner was flung: "Winnebago

County for the Tall Sucker." And the Tall Sucker was on the steps to

receive them.

But Mr. Douglas, who had arrived the evening before to the booming of two

and thirty guns, had his banners end his bunting, too. The neighborhood

of Freeport was stronghold of Northern Democrats, ardent supporters of

the Little Giant if once they could believe that he did not intend to

betray them.

Stephen felt in his bones the coming of a struggle, and was thrilled.

Once he smiled at the thought that he had become an active partisan--nay,

a worshipper--of the uncouth Lincoln. Terrible suspicion for a

Bostonian,--had he been carried away? Was his hero, after all, a homespun

demagogue? Had he been wise in deciding before he had taught a glimpse of

the accomplished Douglas, whose name end fame filled the land? Stephen

did not waver in his allegiance. But in his heart there lurked a fear of

the sophisticated Judge and Senator and man of the world whom he had not

yet seen. In his notebook he had made a, copy of the Question, and young

Mr. Hill discovered him pondering in a corner of the lobby at dinnertime.

After dinner they went together to their candidate's room. They found the

doors open and the place packed, and there was Mr. Lincoln's very tall

hat towering above those of the other politicians pressed around him. Mr.

Lincoln took three strides in Stephen's direction and seized him by the

shoulder.

"Why, Steve," said he, "I thought you had got away again." Turning to a

big burly man with a good-natures face, who was standing by, he added.

"Jim, I want you to look out for this young man. Get him a seat on the

stands where he can hear."

Stephen stuck close to Jim. He never knew what the gentleman's last name

was, or whether he had any. It was but a few minutes' walk to the grove

where the speaking was to be. And as they made their way thither Mr.

Lincoln passed them in a Conestoga wagon drawn by six milk-white horses.

Jim informed Stephen that the Little Giant had had a six-horse coach. The

grove was black with people. Hovering about the hem of the crowd were the

sunburned young men in their Sunday best, still clinging fast to the

hands of the young women. Bands blared "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean."

Fakirs planted their stands in the way, selling pain-killers and ague

cures, watermelons and lemonade, Jugglers juggled, and beggars begged.

Jim said that there were sixteen thousand people in that grove. And he

told the truth.

Stephen now trembled for his champion. He tried to think of himself as

fifty years old, with the courage to address sixteen thousand people on

such a day, and quailed. What a man of affairs it must take to do that!

Sixteen thousand people, into each of whose breasts God had put different

emotions and convictions. He had never even imagined such a crowd as this

assembles merely to listen to a political debate. But then he remembered,

as they dodged from in front of the horses, what it was not merely a

political debate: The pulse of nation was here, a great nation stricken

with approaching fever. It was not now a case of excise, but of

existence.

This son of toil who had driven his family thirty miles across the

prairie, blanketed his tired horses and slept on the ground the night

before, who was willing to stand all through the afternoon and listen

with pathetic eagerness to this debate, must be moved by a patriotism

divine. In the breast of that farmer, in the breast of his tired wife who

held her child by the hand, had been instilled from birth that sublime

fervor which is part of their life who inherit the Declaration of

Independence. Instinctively these men who had fought and won the West had

scented the danger. With the spirit of their ancestors who had left their

farms to die on the bridge at Concord, or follow Ethan Allen into

Ticonderoga, these had come to Freeport. What were three days of bodily

discomfort! What even the loss of part of a cherished crop, if the

nation's existence were at stake and their votes might save it!

In the midst of that heaving human sea rose the bulwarks of a wooden

stand. But how to reach it? Jim was evidently a personage. The rough

farmers commonly squeezed a way for him. And when they did not, he made

it with his big body. As they drew near their haven, a great surging as

of a tidal wave swept them off their feet. There was a deafening shout,

and the stand rocked on its foundations. Before Stephen could collect his

wits, a fierce battle was raging about him. Abolitionist and Democrat,

Free Soiler and Squatter Sov, defaced one another in a rush for the

platform. The committeemen and reporters on top of it rose to its

defence. Well for Stephen that his companion was along. Jim was

recognized and hauled bodily into the fort, and Stephen after him. The

populace were driven off, and when the excitement died down again, he

found himself in the row behind the reporters. Young Mr. Hill paused

while sharpening his pencil to wave him a friendly greeting.

Stephen, craning in his seat, caught sight of Mr. Lincoln slouched into

one of his favorite attitudes, his chin resting in his hand.

But who is this, erect, compact, aggressive, searching with a confident

eye the wilderness of upturned faces? A personage, truly, to be

questioned timidly, to be approached advisedly. Here indeed was a lion,

by the very look of him, master of himself and of others. By reason of

its regularity and masculine strength, a handsome face. A man of the

world to the cut of the coat across the broad shoulders. Here was one to

lift a youngster into the realm of emulation, like a character in a play,

to arouse dreams of Washington and its senators and great men. For this

was one to be consulted by the great alone. A figure of dignity and

power, with magnetism to compel moods. Since, when he smiled, you warmed

in spite of yourself, and when he frowned the world looked grave.

The inevitable comparison was come, and Stephen's hero was shrunk once

more. He drew a deep breath, searched for the word, and gulped. There was

but the one word. How country Abraham Lincoln looked beside Stephen

Arnold Douglas!

Had the Lord ever before made and set over against each other two such

different men? Yes, for such are the ways of the Lord.

........................

The preliminary speaking was in progress, but Stephen neither heard nor

saw until he felt the heavy hand of his companion on his knee.

"There's something mighty strange, like fate, between them two," he was

saying. "I recklect twenty-five years ago when they was first in the

Legislatur' together. A man told me that they was both admitted to

practice in the S'preme Court in '39, on the same day, sir. Then you know

they was nip an' tuck after the same young lady. Abe got her. They've

been in Congress together, the Little Giant in the Senate, and now, here

they be in the greatest set of debates the people of this state ever

heard; Young man, the hand of fate is in this here, mark my words--"

There was a hush, and the waves of that vast human sea were stilled. A

man, lean, angular, with coat-tail: flapping-unfolded like a grotesque

figure at a side-show.

No confidence was there. Stooping forward, Abraham Lincoln began to

speak, and Stephen Brice hung his head and shuddered. Could this shrill

falsetto be the same voice to which he had listened only that morning?

Could this awkward, yellow man with his hands behind his back be he whom

he had worshipped? Ripples of derisive laughter rose here and there, on

the stand and from the crowd. Thrice distilled was the agony of those

moments!

But what was this feeling that gradually crept over him? Surprise?

Cautiously he raised his eyes. The hands were coming around to the front.

Suddenly one of them was thrown sharply back, with a determined gesture,

the head was raised,--and.--and his shame was for gotten. In its stead

wonder was come. But soon he lost even that, for his mind was gone on a

journey. And when again he came to himself and looked upon Abraham

Lincoln, this was a man transformed. The voice was no longer shrill. Nay,

it was now a powerful instrument which played strangely on those who

heard. Now it rose, and again it fell into tones so low as to start a

stir which spread and spread, like a ripple in a pond, until it broke on

the very edge of that vast audience.

"Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way,

against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude

slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State

Constitution?"

It was out, at last, irrevocably writ in the recording book of History,

for better, for worse. Beyond the reach of politician, committee, or

caucus. But what man amongst those who heard and stirred might say that

these minutes even now basting into eternity held the Crisis of a nation

that is the hope of the world? Not you, Judge Douglas who sit there

smiling. Consternation is a stranger in your heart,--but answer the

question if you can. Yes, your nimble wit has helped you out of many a

tight corner. You do not feel the noose--as yet. You do not guess that

your reply will make or mar the fortunes of your country. It is not you

who can look ahead two short years and see the ship of Democracy

splitting on the rocks at Charleston and at Baltimore, when the power of

your name might have steered her safely.

But see! what is this man about whom you despise? One by one he is taking

the screws out of the engine which you have invented to run your ship.

Look, he holds them in his hands without mixing them, and shows the false

construction of its secret parts.

For Abraham Lincoln dealt with abstruse questions in language so limpid

that many a farmer, dulled by toil, heard and understood and marvelled.

The simplicity of the Bible dwells in those speeches, and they are now

classics in our literature. And the wonder in Stephen's mind was that

this man who could be a buffoon, whose speech was coarse and whose person

unkempt, could prove himself a tower of morality and truth. That has

troubled many another, before and since the debate at Freeport.

That short hour came all too quickly to an end. And as the Moderator gave

the signal for Mr. Lincoln, it was Stephen's big companion who snapped

the strain, and voiced the sentiment of those about him.

"By Gosh!" he cried, "he baffles Steve. I didn't think Abe had it in

him."

The Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, however, seemed anything but baffled as

he rose to reply. As he waited for the cheers which greeted him to die

out, his attitude was easy and indifferent, as a public man's should be.

The question seemed not to trouble him in the least. But for Stephen

Brice the Judge stood there stripped of the glamour that made him, even

as Abraham Lincoln had stripped his doctrine of its paint and colors, and

left it punily naked.

Standing up, the very person of the Little Giant was contradictory, as

was the man himself. His height was insignificant. But he had the head

and shoulders of a lion, and even the lion's roar. What at contrast the

ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's opening

words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly

disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people

how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by putting

things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his mouth:

But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that the Judge

was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might lead one to

expect. Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at Freeport? And yet

it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his hearers "Black

Republicans." "Not black," came from the crowd again and again, and once

a man: shouted, "Couldn't you modify it and call it brown?" "Not a whit!"

cried the Judge, and dubbed them "Yankees," although himself a Vermonter

by birth. He implied that most of these Black Republicans desired negro

wives.

But quick,--to the Question, How was the Little Giant, artful in debate

as he was, to get over that without offence to the great South? Very

skillfully the judge disposed of the first of the interrogations. And

then, save for the gusts of wind rustling the trees, the grove might have

been empty of its thousands, such was the silence that fell. But tighter

and tighter they pressed against the stand, until it trembled.

Oh, Judge, the time of all artful men will come at length. How were you

to foresee a certain day under the White Dome of the Capitol? Had your

sight been long, you would have paused before your answer. Had your sight

been long, you would have seen this ugly Lincoln bareheaded before the

Nation, and you are holding his hat. Judge Douglas, this act alone has

redeemed your faults. It has given you a nobility of which we did not

suspect you. At the end God gave you strength to be humble, and so you

left the name of a patriot.

Judge, you thought there was a passage between Scylla and Charybdis which

your craftiness might overcome.

"It matters not," you cried when you answered the Question, "it matters

not which way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract

question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the

Constitution. The people have the lawful means to introduce or to exclude

it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an

hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations."

Judge Douglas, uneasy will you lie to-night, for you have uttered the

Freeport Heresy.

It only remains to be told how Stephen Brice, coming to the Brewster

House after the debate, found Mr. Lincoln. On his knee, in transports of

delight, was a small boy, and Mr. Lincoln was serenely playing on the

child's Jew's-harp. Standing beside him was a proud father who had

dragged his son across two counties in a farm wagon, and who was to

return on the morrow to enter this event in the family Bible. In a corner

of the room were several impatient gentlemen of influence who wished to

talk about the Question.

But when he saw Stephen, Mr. Lincoln looked up with a smile of welcome

that is still, and ever will be, remembered and cherished.

"Tell Judge Whipple that I have attended to that little matter, Steve," he

said.

"Why, Mr. Lincoln," he exclaimed, "you have had no time."

"I have taken the time," Mr. Lincoln replied, "and I think that I am well

repaid. Steve," said he, "unless I'm mightily mistaken, you know a little

more than you did yesterday."

"Yes, sir! I do," said Stephen.

"Come, Steve," said Mr. Lincoln, "be honest. Didn't you feel sorry for me

last night?"

Stephen flushed scarlet.

"I never shall again, sir," he said.

The wonderful smile, so ready to come and go, flickered and went out. In

its stead on the strange face was ineffable sadness,--the sadness of the

world's tragedies, of Stephen stoned, of Christ crucified.

"Pray God that you may feel sorry for me again," he said.

Awed, the child on his lap was still. The politician had left the room.

Mr. Lincoln had kept Stephen's hand in his own.

"I have hopes of you, Stephen," he said. "Do not forget me."

Stephen Brice never has. Why was it that he walked to the station with a

heavy heart? It was a sense of the man he had left, who had been and was

to be. This Lincoln of the black loam, who built his neighbor's cabin and

hoed his neighbor's corn, who had been storekeeper and postmaster and

flat-boatman. Who had followed a rough judge dealing a rough justice

around a rough circuit; who had rolled a local bully in the dirt; rescued

women from insult; tended the bedside of many a sick coward who feared

the Judgment; told coarse stories on barrels by candlelight (but these

are pure beside the vice of great cities); who addressed political mobs

in the raw, swooping down from the stump and flinging embroilers east and

west. This physician who was one day to tend the sickbed of the Nation in

her agony; whose large hand was to be on her feeble pulse, and whose

knowledge almost divine was to perform the miracle of her healing. So was

it that, the Physician Himself performed His cures, and when work was

done, died a martyr.

Abraham Lincoln died in His name

CHAPTER VI

It was nearly noon when Stephen walked into the office the next day,

dusty and travel-worn and perspiring. He had come straight from the

ferry, without going home. And he had visions of a quiet dinner with

Richter under the trees at the beer-garden, where he could talk about

Abraham Lincoln. Had Richter ever heard of Lincoln?

But the young German met him at the top of the stair--and his face was

more serious than usual, although he showed his magnificent teeth in a

smile of welcome.

"You are a little behind your time, my friend," said he, "What has

happened you?"

"Didn't the Judge get Mr, Lincoln's message?" asked Stephen, with

anxiety.

The German shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, I know not," he answered, "He has gone is Glencoe. The Judge is ill,

Stephen. Doctor Polk says that he has worked all his life too hard. The

Doctor and Colonel Carvel tried to get him to go to Glencoe. But he would

not budge until Miss Carvel herself comes all the way from the country

yesterday, and orders him. Ach!" exclaimed Richter, impulsively, "what

wonderful women you have in America! I could lose my head when I think of

Miss Carvel."

"Miss Carvel was here, you say?" Stephen repeated, in a tone of inquiry.

"Donner!" said Richter, disgusted, "you don't care."

Stephen laughed, in spite of himself.

"Why should I?" he answered. And becoming grave again, added: "Except on

Judge Whipple's account. Have you heard from him to-day, Carl?"

"This morning one of Colonel Carvel's servants came for his letters. He

must be feeling better. I--I pray that he is better," said Richter, his

voice breaking. "He has been very good to me."

Stephen said nothing. But he had been conscious all at once of an

affection for the Judge of which he had not suspected himself. That

afternoon, on his way home, he stopped at Carvel & Company's to inquire.

Mr. Whipple was better, so Mr. Hopper said, and added that he "presumed

likely the Colonel would not be in for a week." It was then Saturday.

Eliphalet was actually in the Colonel's sanctum behind the partition,

giving orders to several clerks at the time. He was so prosperous and

important that he could scarce spare a moment to answer Stephen, who went

away wondering whether he had been wise to choose the law.

On Monday, when Stephen called at Carvel & Company's, Eliphalet was too

busy to see him. But Ephum, who went out to Glencoe every night with

orders, told him that the "Jedge was wuss, suh." On Wednesday, there

being little change, Mrs. Brice ventured to despatch a jelly by Ephum. On

Friday afternoon, when Stephen was deep in Whittlesey and the New Code,

he became aware of Ephum standing beside him. In reply to his anxious

question Ephum answered:

"I reckon he better, suh. He an' de Colonel done commence wrastlin' 'bout

a man name o' Linkum. De Colonel done wrote you dis note, suh."

It was a very polite note, containing the Colonel's compliments, asking

Mr. Brice to Glencoe that afternoon with whatever papers or letters the

Judge might wish to see. And since there was no convenient train in the

evening, Colonel Carvel would feel honored if Mr. Brice would spend the

night. The Colonel mentioned the train on which Mr. Brice was expected.

The Missouri side of the Mississippi is a very different country from the

hot and treeless prairies of Illinois. As Stephen alighted at the little

station at Glencoe and was driven away by Ned in the Colonel's buggy, he

drew in deep breaths of the sweet air of the Meramec Valley.

There had been a shower, and the sun glistened on the drops on grass and

flowers, and the great trees hung heavy over the clay road. At last they

came to a white gate in the picket fence, in sight of a rambling wooden

house with a veranda in front covered with honeysuckle. And then he saw

the Colonel, in white marseilles, smoking a cigar. This, indeed, was real

country.

As Stephen trod the rough flags between the high grass which led toward

the house, Colonel Carvel rose to his full height and greeted him.

"You are very welcome, sir," he said gravely. "The Judge is asleep now,"

he added. "I regret to say that we had a little argument this morning,

and my daughter tells me it will be well not to excite him again to-day.

Jinny is reading to him now, or she would be here to entertain you, Mr.

Brice. Jackson!" cried Mr. Carvel, "show Mr. Brice to his room."

Jackson appeared hurriedly, seized Stephen's bag, and led the way

upstairs through the cool and darkened house to a pretty little room on

the south side, with matting, and roses on the simple dressing-table.

After he had sat awhile staring at these, and at the wet flower-garden

from between the slats of his shutters, he removed the signs of the

railroad upon him, and descended. The Colonel was still on the porch, in

his easy-chair. He had lighted another, cigar, and on the stand beside

him stood two tall glasses, green with the fresh mint. Colonel Carvel

rose, and with his own hand offered one to Stephen.

"Your health, Mr. Brice," he said, "and I hope you will feel at home

here, sir. Jackson will bring you anything you desire, and should you

wish to drive, I shall be delighted to show you the country."

Stephen drank that julep with reverence, and then the Colonel gave him a

cigar. He was quite overcome by this treatment of a penniless young

Yankee. The Colonel did not talk politics--such was not his notion of

hospitality to a stranger. He talked horse, and no great discernment on

Stephen's part was needed to perceive that this was Mr. Carvel's hobby.

"I used to have a stable, Mr. Brice, before they ruined gentleman's sport

with these trotters ten years ago. Yes sir, we used to be at Lexington

one week, and Louisville the next, and over here on the Ames track after

that. Did you ever hear of Water Witch and Netty Boone?"

Yes, Stephen had, from Mr. Jack Brinsmade.

The Colonel's face beamed.

"Why, sir," he cried, "that very nigger, Ned, who drove you here from the

cars-he used to ride Netty Boone. Would you believe that, Mr. Brice? He

was the best jockey ever strode a horse on the Elleardsville track here.

He wore my yellow and green, sir, until he got to weigh one hundred and a

quarter. And I kept him down to that weight a whole year, Mr. Brice. Yes,

sirree, a whole year."

"Kept him down!" said Stephen.

"Why, yes, sir. I had him wrapped in blankets and set in a chair with

holes bored in the seat. Then we lighted a spirit lamp under him. Many a

time I took off ten pounds that way. It needs fire to get flesh off a

nigger, sir."

He didn't notice his guest's amazement.

"Then, sir," he continued, "they introduced these damned trotting races;

trotting races are for white trash, Mr. Brice."

"Pa!"

The Colonel stopped short. Stephen was already on his feet. I wish you

could have seen Miss Virginia Carvel as he saw her then. She wore a white

lawn dress. A tea-tray was in her hand, and her head was tilted back, as

women are apt to do when they carry a burden. It was so that these

Southern families, who were so bitter against Abolitionists and Yankees,

entertained them when they were poor, and nursed them when they were ill.

Stephen, for his life, could not utter a word. But Virginia turned to him

with perfect self-possession.

"He has been boring you with his horses, Mr. Brice," she said. "Has he

told you what a jockey Ned used to be before he weighed one hundred and a

quarter?" (A laugh.) "Has he given you the points of Water Witch and

Netty Boone?" (More laughter, increasing embarrassment for Stephen.) "Pa,

I tell you once more that you will drive every guest from this house.

Your jockey talk is intolerable."

O that you might have a notion of the way in which Virginia pronounced

intolerable.

Mr. Carvel reached for another cigar asked, "My dear," he asked, "how is

the Judge?"

"My dear," said Virginia, smiling, "he is asleep. Mammy Easter is with

him, trying to make out what he is saying. He talks in his sleep, just as

you do--"

"And what is he saying?" demanded the Colonel, interested.

Virginia set down the tray.

"'A house divided against itself,'" said Miss Carvel, with a sweep of her

arm, "'cannot stand. I believe that this Government cannot endure

permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to

dissolve--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do expect it will

cease to be divided.' Would you like any more?" added Miss Virginia.

"No," cried the Colonel, and banged his fist down on the table. "Why,"

said he, thoughtfully, stroking the white goatee on his chin, "cuss me if

that ain't from the speech that country bumpkin, Lincoln, made in June

last before the Black Republican convention in Illinois."

Virginia broke again into laughter. And Stephen was very near it, for he

loved the Colonel. That gentleman suddenly checked himself in his tirade,

and turned to him.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said; "I reckon that you have the same

political sentiments as the Judge. Believe me, sir, I would not willingly

offend a guest."

Stephen smiled. "I am not offended, sir," he said. A speech which caused

Mr. Carvel to bestow a quick glance upon him. But Stephen did not see it.

He was looking at Virginia.

The Colonel rose.

"You will pardon my absence for a while, sir," he said.

"My daughter will entertain you."

In silence they watched him as he strode off under the trees through tall

grass, a yellow setter at his heels. A strange peace was over Stephen.

The shadows of the walnuts and hickories were growing long, and a rich

country was giving up its scent to the evening air. From a cabin behind

the house was wafted the melody of a plantation song. To the young man,

after the burnt city, this was paradise. And then he remembered his

mother as she must be sitting on the tiny porch in town, and sighed. Only

two years ago she had been at their own place at Westbury.

He looked up, and saw the girl watching him. He dared not think that the

expression he caught was one of sympathy, for it changed instantly.

"I am afraid you are the silent kind, Mr. Brice," said she; "I believe it

is a Yankee trait."

Stephen laughed.

"I have known a great many who were not," said he, "When they are

garrulous, they are very much so."

"I should prefer a garrulous one," said Virginia.

"I should think a Yankee were bad enough, but a noisy Yankee not to be

put up with," he ventured.

Virginia did not deign a direct reply to this, save by the corners of her

mouth.

"I wonder," said she, thoughtfully, "whether it is strength of mind or a

lack of ideas that makes them silent."

"It is mostly prudence," said Mr. Brice. "Prudence is our dominant

trait."

Virginia fidgeted. Usually she had an easier time.

"You have not always shown it," she said, with an innocence which in

women is often charged with meaning.

Stephen started. Her antagonism was still there. He would have liked

greatly to know whether she referred to his hasty purchase of Hester, or

to his rashness in dancing with her at her party the winter before.

"We have something left to be thankful for," he answered. "We are still

capable of action."

"On occasions it is violence," said Virginia, desperately. This man must

not get ahead of her.

"It is just as violent," said he, "as the repressed feeling which prompts

it."

This was a new kind of conversation to Virginia. Of all the young men she

knew, not one had ever ventured into anything of the sort. They were

either flippant, or sentimental, or both. She was at once flattered and

annoyed, flattered, because, as a woman, Stephen had conceded her a mind.

Many of the young men she knew had minds, but deemed that these were

wasted on women, whose language was generally supposed to be a kind of

childish twaddle. Even Jack Brinsmade rarely risked his dignity and

reputation at an intellectual tilt. This was one of Virginia's

grievances. She often argued with her father, and, if the truth were

told, had had more than one victory over Judge Whipple.

Virginia's annoyance came from the fact that she perceived in Stephen a

natural and merciless logic,--a faculty for getting at the bottom of

things. His brain did not seem to be thrown out of gear by local magnetic

influences,--by beauty, for instance. He did not lose his head, as did

some others she knew, at the approach of feminine charms. Here was a

grand subject, then, to try the mettle of any woman. One with less mettle

would have given it up. But Virginia thought it would be delightful to

bring this particular Yankee to his knees; and--and leave him there.

"Mr. Brice," she said, "I have not spoken to you since the night of my

party. I believe we danced together."

"Yes, we did," said he, "and I called, but was unfortunate."

"You called?"

Ah, Virginia!

"They did not tell you!" cried Stephen.

Now Miss Carvel was complacency itself.

"Jackson is so careless with cards," said she, "and very often I do not

take the trouble to read them."

"I am sorry," said he, "as I wished for the opportunity to tell you how

much I enjoyed myself. I have found everybody in St. Louis very kind to

strangers."

Virginia was nearly disarmed. She remembered how, she had opposed his

coning. But honesty as well as something else prompted her to say: "It

was my father who invited you."

Stephen did not reveal the shock his vanity had received.

"At least you were good enough to dance with me."

"I could scarcely refuse a guest," she replied.

He held up his head.

"Had I thought it would have given you annoyance," he said quietly, "I

should not have asked you."

"Which would have been a lack of good manners," said Virginia, biting her

lips.

Stephen answered nothing, but wished himself in St. Louis. He could not

comprehend her cruelty. But, just then, the bell rang for supper, and the

Colonel appeared around the end of the house.

It was one of those suppers for which the South is renowned. And when at

length he could induce Stephen to eat no more, Colonel Carvel reached for

his broad-brimmed felt bat, and sat smoking, with his feet against the

mantle. Virginia, who had talked but little, disappeared with a tray on

which she had placed with her own hands some dainties to tempt the Judge.

The Colonel regaled Stephen, when she was gone, with the pedigree and

performance of every horse he had had in his stable. And this was a

relief, as it gave him an opportunity to think without interruption upon

Virginia's pronounced attitude of dislike. To him it was inconceivable

that a young woman of such qualities as she appeared to have, should

assail him so persistently for freeing a negress, and so depriving her of

a maid she had set her heart upon. There were other New England young men

in society. Mr. Weston and Mr. Carpenter, and more. They were not her

particular friends, to be sure. But they called on her and danced with

her, and she had shown them not the least antipathy. But it was to

Stephen's credit that he did not analyze her further.

He was reflecting on these things when he got to his room, when there

came a knock at the door. It was Mammy Easter, in bright turban and

apron,--was hospitality and comfort in the flesh.

"Is you got all you need, suh?" she inquired.

Stephen replied that he had. But Mammy showed no inclination to go, and

he was too polite to shut the door:

"How you like Glencoe, Mistah Bride?"

He was charmed with it.

"We has some of de fust fam'lies out heah in de summer," said she. "But

de Colonel, he a'n't much on a gran' place laik in Kaintuck. Shucks, no,

suh, dis ain't much of a 'stablishment! Young Massa won't have no lawns,

no greenhouses, no nothin'. He say he laik it wil' and simple. He on'y

come out fo' two months, mebbe. But Miss Jinny, she make it lively. Las'

week, until the Jedge come we hab dis house chuck full, two-three young

ladies in a room, an' five young gemmen on trunnle beds."

"Until the Judge came?" echoed Stephen.

"Yassuh. Den Miss Jinny low dey all hatter go. She say she a'n't gwineter

have 'em noun' 'sturbin' a sick man. De Colonel 'monstrated. He done give

the Judge his big room, and he say he and de young men gwine ober to

Mista, Catherwood's. You a'n't never seen Miss Jinny rise up, suh! She

des swep' 'em all out" (Mammy emphasized this by rolling her hands) "an'

declah she gwine ten' to the Jedge herself. She a'n't never let me bring

up one of his meals, suh." And so she left Stephen with some food for

reflection.

Virginia was very gay at breakfast, and said that the Judge would see

Stephen; so he and the Colonel, that gentleman with his hat on, went up

to his room. The shutters were thrown open, and the morning sunlight

filtered through the leaves and fell on the four-poster where the Judge

sat up, gaunt and grizzled as ever. He smiled at his host, and then tried

to destroy immediately the effect of the smile.

"Well, Judge," cried the Colonel, taking his hand, "I reckon we talked

too much."

"No such thing, Carvel," said the Judge, forcibly, "if you hadn't left

the room, your popular sovereignty would have been in rags in two

minutes."

Stephen sat down in a corner, unobserved, in expectation of a renewal.

But at this moment Miss Virginia swept into the room, very cool in a pink

muslin.

"Colonel Carvel," said she, sternly, "I am the doctor's deputy here. I

was told to keep the peace at any cost. And if you answer back, out you

go, like that!" and she snapped her fingers.

The Colonel laughed. But the Judge, whose mind was on the argument,

continued to mutter defiantly until his eye fell upon Stephen.

"Well, sir, well, sir," he said, "you've turned up at last, have you? I

send you off with papers for a man, and I get back a piece of yellow

paper saying that he's borrowed you. What did he do with you, Mr. Brice?"

"He took me to Freeport, sir, where I listened to the most remarkable

speech I ever expect to hear."

"What!" cried the Judge, "so far from Boston?"

Stephen hesitated, uncertain whether to laugh, until he chanced to look

at Virginia. She had pursed her lips.

"I was very much surprised, sir," he said.

"Humph!" grunted Mr. Whipple, "and what did you chink of that ruffian,

Lincoln?"

"He is the most remarkable man that I have ever met, sir," answered

Stephen, with emphasis.

"Humph!"

It seemed as if the grunt this time had in it something of approval.

Stephen had doubt as to the propriety of discussing Mr. Lincoln there,

and he reddened. Virginia's expression bore a trace of defiance, and Mr.

Carvel stood with his feet apart, thoughtfully stroking his goatee. But

Mr. Whipple seemed to have no scruples.

"So you admired Lincoln, Mr. Brice?" he went on. "You must agree with

that laudatory estimation of him which I read in the Missouri Democrat."

Stephen fidgeted.

"I do, sir, most decidedly," he answered.

"I should hardly expect a conservative Bostonian, of the class which

respects property, to have said that. It might possibly be a good thing

if more from your town could hear those debates."

"They will read them, sir; I feel confident of it."

At this point the Colonel could contain himself no longer.

"I reckon I might tell the man who wrote that Democrat article a few

things, if I could find out who he is," said he.

"Pa!" said Virginia, warningly.

But Stephen had turned a fiery red, "I wrote it, Colonel Carvel," he

said.

For a dubious instant of silence Colonel Carvel stared. Then--then he

slapped his knees, broke into a storm of laughter, and went out of the

room. He left Stephen in a moist state of discomfiture.

The Judge had bolted upright from the pillows.

"You have been neglecting your law, sir," he cried.

"I wrote the article at night," said Stephen, indignantly.

"Then it must have been Sunday night, Mr. Brice."

At this point Virginia hid her face in her handkerchief which trembled

visibly. Being a woman, whose ways are unaccountable, the older man took

no notice of her. But being a young woman, and a pretty one, Stephen was

angry.

"I don't see what right you have to ask me that sir," he said.

"The question is withdrawn, Mr. Brice," said the Judge, "Virginia, you

may strike it from the records. And now, sir, tell me something about

your trip."

Virginia departed.

An hour later Stephen descended to the veranda, and it was with

apprehension that he discerned Mr. Carvel seated under the vines at the

far end. Virginia was perched on the railing.

To Stephen's surprise the Colonel rose, and, coming toward him, laid a

kindly hand on his shoulder.

"Stephen," said he, "there will be no law until Monday you must stay with

us until then. A little rest will do you good."

Stephen was greatly touched.

"Thank you, sir," he said. "I should like to very much. But I can't."

"Nonsense," said the Colonel. "I won't let the Judge interfere."

"It isn't that, sir. I shall have to go by the two o'clock train, I

fear."

The Colonel turned to Virginia, who, meanwhile, had sat silently by.

"Jinny," he said, "we must contrive to keep him."

She slid off the railing.

"I'm afraid he is determined, Pa," she answered. "But perhaps Mr. Brice

would like to see a little of the place before he goes. It is very

primitive," she explained, "not much like yours in the East."

Stephen thanked her, and bowed to the Colonel. And so she led him past

the low, crooked outbuildings at the back, where he saw old Uncle Ben

busy over the preparation of his dinner, and frisky Rosetta, his

daughter, playing with one of the Colonel's setters. Then Virginia took a

well-worn path, on each side of which the high grass bent with its load

of seed, which entered the wood. Oaks and hickories and walnuts and

persimmons spread out in a glade, and the wild grape twisted

fantastically around the trunks. All this beauty seemed but a fit setting

to the strong girlish figure in the pink frock before him. So absorbed

was he in contemplation of this, and in wondering whether indeed she were

to marry her cousin, Clarence Colfax, that he did not see the wonders of

view unrolling in front of him. She stopped at length beside a great

patch of wild race bushes. They were on the edge of the bluff, and in

front of them a little rustic summer-house, with seats on its five sides.

Here Virginia sat down. But Stephen, going to the edge, stood and

marvelled. Far, far below him, down the wooded steep, shot the crystal

Meramec, chafing over the shallow gravel beds and tearing headlong at the

deep passes.

Beyond, the dimpled green hills rose and fell, and the stream ran indigo

and silver. A hawk soared over the, water, the only living creature in

all that wilderness.

The glory of the place stirred his blood. And when at length he turned,

he saw that the girl was watching him.

"It is very beautiful," he said.

Virginia had taken other young men here, and they had looked only upon

her. And yet she was not offended. This sincerity now was as new to her

as that with which he had surprised her in the Judge's room.

And she was not quite at her ease. A reply to those simple words of his

was impossible. At honest Tom Catherwood in the same situation she would

have laughed, Clarence never so much as glanced at scenery. Her replies

to him were either flippant, or else maternal, as to a child.

A breeze laden with the sweet abundance of that valley stirred her hair.

And with that womanly gesture which has been the same through the ages

she put up her hand; deftly tucking in the stray wisp behind.

She glanced at the New Englander, against whom she had been in strange

rebellion since she had first seen him. His face, thinned by the summer

in town, was of the sternness of the Puritan. Stephen's features were

sharply marked for his age. The will to conquer was there. Yet justice

was in the mouth, and greatness of heart. Conscience was graven on the

broad forehead. The eyes were the blue gray of the flint, kindly yet

imperishable. The face was not handsome.

Struggling, then yielding to the impulse, Virginia let herself be led on

into the years. Sanity was the word that best described him. She saw him

trusted of men, honored of women, feared by the false. She saw him in

high places, simple, reserved, poised evenly as he was now.

"Why do you go in this afternoon?" she asked abruptly.

He started at the change in her tone.

"I wish that I might stay," he said regretfully. "But I cannot, Miss

Carvel."

He gave no reason. And she was too proud to ask it. Never before had she

stooped to urge young men to stay. The difficulty had always been to get

them to go. It was natural, perhaps, that her vanity was wounded. But it

hurt her to think that she had made the overture, had tried to conquer

whatever it was that set her against him, and had failed through him.

"You must find the city attractive. Perhaps," she added, with a little

laugh, "perhaps it is Bellefontaine Road."

"No," he answered, smiling.

"Then" (with a touch of derision), "then it is because you cannot miss an

afternoon's work. You are that kind."

"I was not always that kind," he answered. "I did not work at Harvard.

But now I have to or--or starve," he said.

For the second time his complete simplicity had disarmed her. He had not

appealed to her sympathy, nor had he hinted at the luxury in which he was

brought up. She would have liked to question Stephen on this former life.

But she changed the subject suddenly.

"What did you really think of Mr. Lincoln?" she asked.

"I thought him the ugliest man I ever saw, and the handsomest as well."

"But you admired him?"

"Yes," said Stephen, gravely.

"You believe with him that this government cannot exist half slave and

half free. Then a day will come, Mr. Brice, when you and I shall be

foreigners one to the other."

"You have forgotten," he said eagerly, "you have forgotten the rest of

the quotation. 'I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not

expect the house to fall--but cease to be divided.' It will become all

one thing or all the other."

Virginia laughed. "That seemed to me very equivocal," said she. "Your

rail-sputter is well named."

"Will you read the rest of that speech?" he asked

"Judge Whipple is very clever. He has made a convert of you," she

answered.

"The Judge has had nothing to do with it," cried Stephen. "He is not

given to discussion with me, and until I went to Springfield had never

mentioned Lincoln's name to me."

Glancing at her, he surprised a sparkle of amusement in her eyes. Then

she laughed openly.

"Why do you suppose that you were sent to Springfield?" she asked.

"With an important communication for Mr. Lincoln," he answered.

"And that most important communication was--your self. There, now, I have

told you," said Virginia.

"Was myself? I don't understand."

Virginia puckered her lips.

"Then you haven't the sense I thought you had," she replied impatiently.

"Do you know what was in that note? No? Well, a year ago last June this

Black Republican lawyer whom you are all talking of made a speech before

a convention in Illinois. Judge Whipple has been crazy on the subject

ever since--he talks of Lincoln in his sleep; he went to Springfield and

spent two days with him, and now he can't rest until you have seen and

known and heard him. So he writes a note to Lincoln and asks him to take

you to the debate--"

She paused again to laugh at his amazement.

"But he told me to go to Springfield!" he exclaimed.

"He told you to find Lincoln. He knew that you would obey his orders, I

suppose."

"But I didn't know--" Stephen began, trying to come pass within an

instant the memory of his year's experience with Mr. Whipple.

"You didn't know that he thought anything about you," said Virginia.

"That is his way, Mr. Brice. He has more private charities on his list

than any man in the city except Mr. Brinsmade. Very few know it. He

thinks a great deal of you. But there," she added, suddenly blushing

crimson, "I am sorry I told you."

"Why?" he asked.

She did not answer, but sat tapping the seat with her fingers. And when

she ventured to look at him, he had fallen into thought.

"I think it must be time for dinner," said Virginia, "if you really wish

to catch the train."

The coldness in her voice, rather than her words, aroused him. He rose,

took one lingering look at the river, and followed her to the house.

At dinner, when not talking about his mare, the Colonel was trying to

persuade Stephen to remain. Virginia did not join in this, and her father

thought the young man's refusal sprang from her lack of cordiality.

Colonel Carvel himself drove to the station.

When he returned, he found his daughter sitting idly on the porch.

"I like that young man, if he is a Yankee," he declared.

"I don't," said Virginia, promptly.

"My dear," said her father, voicing the hospitality of the Carvels, "I am

surprised at you. One should never show one's feelings toward a guest. As

mistress of this house it was your duty to press him to stay."

"He did not want to stay."

"Do you know why he went, my dear," asked the Colonel.

"No," said Virginia.

"I asked him," said the Colonel.

"Pa! I did not think it of you!" she cried. And then, "What was it?" she

demanded.

"He said that his mother was alone in town, and needed him."

Virginia got up without a word, and went into Judge Whipple's room. And

there the Colonel found her some hours later, reading aloud from a

scrap-book certain speeches of Mr. Lincoln's which Judge Whipple had cut

from newspapers. And the Judge, lying back with his eyes half closed, was

listening in pure delight. Little did he guess at Virginia's penance!

THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill

Volume 4.

CHAPTER VII

AN EXCURSION

I am going ahead two years. Two years during which a nation struggled in

agony with sickness, and even the great strength with which she was

endowed at birth was not equal to the task of throwing it off. In 1620 a

Dutch ship had brought from Guinea to his Majesty's Colony of Virginia

the germs of that disease for which the Nation's blood was to be let so

freely. During these years signs of dissolution, of death, were not

wanting.

In the city by the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women

were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be

left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new

monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again

the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a

power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had

wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat

among the highest, to share with them the responsibilities of manhood.

Meanwhile, Stephen Brice had been given permission to practise law in the

sovereign state of Missouri. Stephen understood Judge Whipple better. It

cannot be said that he was intimate with that rather formidable

personage, although the Judge, being a man of habits, had formed that of

taking tea at least once a week with Mrs. Brice. Stephen had learned to

love the Judge, and he had never ceased to be grateful to him for a

knowledge of that man who had had the most influence upon his life,

--Abraham Lincoln.

For the seed, sowed in wisdom and self-denial, was bearing fruit. The

sound of gathering conventions was in the land, and the Freeport Heresy

was not for gotten.

We shall not mention the number of clients thronging to Mr. Whipple's

office to consult Mr. Brice. These things are humiliating. Some of

Stephen's income came from articles in the newspapers of that day. What

funny newspapers they were, the size of a blanket! No startling headlines

such as we see now, but a continued novel among the advertisements on the

front page and verses from some gifted lady of the town, signed Electra.

And often a story of pure love, but more frequently of ghosts or other

eerie phenomena taken from a magazine, or an anecdote of a cat or a

chicken. There were letters from citizens who had the mania of print,

bulletins of different ages from all parts of the Union, clippings out of

day-before-yesterday's newspaper of Chicago or Cincinnati to three-weeks

letters from San Francisco, come by the pony post to Lexington and then

down the swift Missouri. Of course, there was news by telegraph, but that

was precious as fine gold,--not to be lightly read and cast aside.

In the autumn of '59, through the kindness of Mr. Brinsmade, Stephen had

gone on a steamboat up the river to a great convention in Iowa. On this

excursion was much of St. Louis's bluest blood. He widened his circle of

acquaintances, and spent much of his time walking the guards between Miss

Anne Brinsmade and Miss Puss Russell. Perhaps it is unfair to these young

ladies to repeat what they said about Stephen in the privacy of their

staterooms, gentle Anne remonstrating that they should not gossip, and

listening eagerly the while, and laughing at Miss Puss, whose mimicry of

Stephen's severe ways brought tears to her eyes.

Mr. Clarence Colfax was likewise on the boat, and passing Stephen on the

guards, bowed distantly. But once, on the return trip, when Stephen had a

writing pad on his knee, the young Southerner came up to him in his

frankest manner and with an expression of the gray eyes which was not to

be withstood.

"Making a case, Brice?" he said. "I hear you are the kind that cannot be

idle even on a holiday."

"Not as bad as all that," replied Stephen, smiling at him.

"Reckon you keep a diary, then," said Clarence, leaning against the rail.

He made a remarkably graceful figure, Stephen thought. He was tall, and

his movements had what might be called a commanding indolence. Stephen,

while he smiled, could not but admire the tone and gesture with which

Colfax bade a passing negro to get him a handkerchief from his cabin. The

alacrity of the black to do the errand was amusing enough. Stephen well

knew it had not been such if he wanted a handkerchief.

Stephen said it was not a diary. Mr. Colfax was too well bred to inquire

further; so he never found out that Mr. Brice was writing an account of

the Convention and the speechmaking for the Missouri Democrat.

"Brice," said the Southerner, "I want to apologize for things I've done

to you and said about you. I hated you for a long time after you beat me

out of Hester, and--" he hesitated.

Stephen looked up. For the first time he actually liked Colfax. He had

been long enough among Colfax's people to understand how difficult it was

for him to say the thing he wished.

"You may remember a night at my uncle's, Colonel Carvel's, on the

occasion of my cousin's birthday?"

"Yes," said Stephen, in surprise.

"Well," blurted Clarence, boyishly, "I was rude to you in my uncle's

house, and I have since been sorry."

"He held out his hand, and Stephen took it warmly.

"I was younger then, Mr. Colfax," he said, "and I didn't understand your

point of view as well as I do now. Not that I have changed my ideas," he

added quickly, "but the notion of the girl's going South angered me. I

was bidding against the dealer rather than against you. Had I then known

Miss Carvel--" he stopped abruptly.

The winning expression died from the face of the other.

He turned away, and leaning across the rail, stared at the high bluffs,

red-bronzed by the autumn sun. A score of miles beyond that precipice was

a long low building of stone, surrounded by spreading trees,--the school

for young ladies, celebrated throughout the West, where our mothers and

grandmothers were taught,--Monticello. Hither Miss Virginia Carvel had

gone, some thirty days since, for her second winter.

Perhaps Stephen guessed the thought in the mind of his companion, for he

stared also. The music in the cabin came to an abrupt pause, and only the

tumbling of waters through the planks of the great wheels broke the

silence. They were both startled by laughter at their shoulders. There

stood Miss Russell, the picture of merriment, her arm locked in Anne

Brinsmade's.

"It is the hour when all devout worshippers turn towards the East," she

said. "The goddess is enshrined at Monticello."

Both young men, as they got to their feet, were crimson. Whereupon Miss

Russell laughed again. Anne, however, blushed for them. But this was not

the first time Miss Russell had gone too far. Young Mr. Colfax, with the

excess of manner which was his at such times, excused himself and left

abruptly. This to the further embarrassment of Stephen and Anne, and the

keener enjoyment of Miss Russell.

"Was I not right, Mr. Brice?" she demanded. "Why, you are even writing

verses to her!"

"I scarcely know Miss Carvel," he said, recovering. "And as for writing

verse--"

"You never did such a thing in your life! I can well believe it."

Miss Russell made a face in the direction Colfax had taken.

"He always acts like that when you mention her," she said.

"But you are so cruel, Puss," said Anne. "You can't blame him."

"Hairpins!" said Miss Russell.

"Isn't she to marry him?" said Stephen, in his natural voice.

He remembered his pronouns too late.

"That has been the way of the world ever since Adam and Eve," remarked

Puss. "I suppose you meant to ask: Mr. Brice, whether Clarence is to

marry Virginia Carvel."

Anne nudged her.

"My dear, what will Mr. Brice think of us?"

"Listen, Mr. Brice," Puss continued, undaunted. "I shall tell you some

gossip. Virginia was sent to Monticello, and went with her father to

Kentucky and Pennsylvania this summer, that she might be away from

Clarence. Colfax."

"Oh, Puss!" cried Anne.

Miss Russell paid not the slightest heed.

"Colonel Carvel is right," she went on. "I should do the same thing. They

are first cousins, and the Colonel doesn't like that. I am fond of

Clarence. But he isn't good for anything in the world except horse racing

and--and fighting. He wanted to help drive the Black Republican emigrants

out of Kansas, and his mother had to put a collar and chain on him. He

wanted to go filibustering with Walker, and she had to get down on her

knees. And yet," she cried, "if you Yankees push us as far as war, Mr.

Brice, just look out for him."

"But--" Anne interposed.

"Oh, I know what you are going to say,--that Clarence has money."

"Puss!" cried Anne, outraged. "How dare you!"

Miss Russell slipped an arm around her waist.

"Come, Anne," she said, "we mustn't interrupt the Senator any longer. He

is preparing his maiden speech."

That was the way in which Stephen got his nickname. It is scarcely

necessary to add that he wrote no more until he reached his little room

in the house on Olive Street.

They had passed Alton, and the black cloud that hung in the still autumn

air over the city was in sight. It was dusk when the 'Jackson' pushed her

nose into the levee, and the song of the negro stevedores rose from below

as they pulled the gang-plank on to the landing-stage. Stephen stood

apart on the hurricane deck, gazing at the dark line of sooty warehouses.

How many young men with their way to make have felt the same as he did

after some pleasant excursion. The presence of a tall form beside him

shook him from his revery, and he looked up to recognize the benevolent

face of Mr. Brinsmade.

"Mrs. Brice may be anxious, Stephen, at the late hour," said he. "My

carriage is here, and it will give me great pleasure to convey you to

your door."

Dear Mr. Brinsmade! He is in heaven now, and knows at last the good he

wrought upon earth. Of the many thoughtful charities which Stephen

received from him, this one sticks firmest in his remembrance: A

stranger, tired and lonely, and apart from the gay young men and women

who stepped from the boat, he had been sought out by this gentleman, to

whom had been given the divine gift of forgetting none.

"Oh, Puss," cried Anne, that evening, for Miss Russell had come to spend

the night, "how could you have talked to him so? He scarcely spoke on the

way up in the carriage. You have offended him."

"Why should I set him upon a pedestal?" said Puss, with a thread in her

mouth; "why should you all set him upon a pedestal? He is only a Yankee,"

said Puss, tossing her head, "and not so very wonderful."

"I did not say he was wonderful," replied Anne, with dignity.

"But you girls think him so. Emily and Eugenie and Maude. He had better

marry Belle Cluyme. A great man, he may give some decision to that

family. Anne!"

"Yes."

"Shall I tell you a secret?"

"Yes," said Anne. She was human, and she was feminine.

"Then--Virginia Carvel is in love with him."

"With Mr. Brice!" cried astonished Anne. "She hates him!"

"She thinks she hates him," said Miss Russell, calmly.

Anne looked up at her companion admiringly. Her two heroines were Puss

and Virginia. Both had the same kind of daring, but in Puss the trait had

developed into a somewhat disagreeable outspokenness which made many

people dislike her. Her judgments were usually well founded, and her

prophecies had so often come to pass that Anne often believed in them for

no other reason.

"How do you know?" said Anne, incredulously.

"Do you remember that September, a year ago, when we were all out at

Glencoe, and Judge Whipple was ill, and Virginia sent us all away and

nursed him herself?"

"Yes," said Anne.

"And did you know that Mr. Brice had gone out, with letters, when the

Judge was better?"

"Yes," said Anne, breathless.

"It was a Saturday afternoon that he left, although they had begged him

to stay over Sunday. Virginia had written for me to come back, and I

arrived in the evening. I asked Easter where Jinny was, and I found her

--"

"You found her--?" said Anne.

Sitting alone in the summer-house over the river. Easter said she had

been there for two hours. And I have never known Jinny to be such

miserable company as she was that night."

"Did she mention Stephen?" asked Anne.

"No."

"But you did," said Anne, with conviction.

Miss Russell's reply was not as direct as usual.

"You know Virginia never confides unless she wants to," she said.

Anne considered.

"Virginia has scarcely seen him since then," she said. "You know that I

was her room-mate at Monticello last year, and I think I should have

discovered it."

"Did she speak of him?" demanded Miss Russell.

"Only when the subject was mentioned. I heard her repeat once what Judge

Whipple told her father of him; that he had a fine legal mind. He was

often in my letters from home, because they have taken Pa's house next

door, and because Pa likes them. I used to read those letters to Jinny,"

said Anne, "but she never expressed any desire to hear them."

"I, too, used to write Jinny about him," confessed Puss.

"Did she answer your letter?"

"No," replied Miss Puss,--"but that was just before the holidays, you

remember. And then the Colonel hurried her off to see her Pennsylvania

relatives, and I believe they went to Annapolis, too, where the Carvels

come from."

Stephen, sitting in the next house, writing out his account, little

dreamed that he was the subject of a conference in the third story front

of the Brinsmades'. Later, when the young ladies were asleep, he carried

his manuscript to the Democrat office, and delivered it into the hands of

his friend, the night editor, who was awaiting it.

Toward the end of that week, Miss Virginia Carvel was sitting with her

back to one of the great trees at Monticello reading a letter. Every once

in a while she tucked it under her cloak and glanced hastily around. It

was from Miss Anne Brinsmade.

"I have told you all about the excursion, my dear, and how we missed you.

You may remember" (ah, Anne, the guile there is in the best of us), "you

may remember Mr. Stephen Brice, whom we used to speak of. Pa and Ma take

a great interest in him, and Pa had him invited on the excursion. He is

more serious than ever, since he has become a full-fledged lawyer. But he

has a dry humor which comes out when you know him well, of which I did

not suspect him. His mother is the dearest lady I have ever known, so

quiet, so dignified, and so well bred. They come in to supper very often.

And the other night Mr. Brice told Pa so many things about the people

south of Market Street, the Germans, which he did not know; that Pa was

astonished. He told all about German history, and how they were

persecuted at home, and why they came here. Pa was surprised to hear that

many of them were University men, and that they were already organizing

to defend the Union. I heard Pa say, 'That is what Mr. Blair meant when

he assured me that we need not fear for the city.'

"Jinny dear, I ought not to have written you this, because you are for

Secession, and in your heart you think Pa a traitor, because he comes

from a slave state and has slaves of his own. But I shall not tear it up.

"It is sad to think how rich Mrs. Brice lived in Boston, and what she has

had to come to. One servant and a little house, and no place to go to in

the summer, when they used to have such a large one. I often go in to sew

with her, but she has never once mentioned her past to me.

"Your father has no doubt sent you the Democrat with the account of the

Convention. It is the fullest published, by far, and was so much admired

that Pa asked the editor who wrote it. Who do you think, but Stephen

Brice! So now Pa knows why Mr. Brice hesitated when Pa asked him to go up

the river, and then consented. This is not the end. Yesterday, when I

went in to see Mrs. Brice, a new black silk was on her bed, and as long

as I live I shall never forget how sweet was her voice when she said, 'It

is a surprise from my son, my dear. I did not expect ever to have

another.' Jinny, I just know he bought it with the money he got for the

article. That was what he was writing on the boat when Clarence Colfax

interrupted him. Puss accused him of writing verses to you."

At this point Miss Virginia Carvel stopped reading. Whether she had read

that part before, who shall say? But she took Anne's letter between her

fingers and tore it into bits and flung the bits into the wind, so that

they were tossed about and lost among the dead leaves under the great

trees. And when she reached her room, there was the hated Missouri

Democrat lying, still open, on her table. A little later a great black

piece of it came tossing out of the chimney above, to the affright of

little Miss Brown, teacher of Literature, who was walking in the grounds,

and who ran to the principal's room with the story that the chimney was

afire.

CHAPTER VIII

THE COLONEL IS WARNED

It is difficult to refrain from mention of the leave-taking of Miss

Virginia Carvel from the Monticello "Female Seminary," so called in the

'Democrat'. Most young ladies did not graduate in those days. There were

exercises. Stephen chanced to read in the 'Republican' about these

ceremonies, which mentioned that Miss Virginia Carvel, "Daughter of

Colonel Comyn Carvel, was without doubt the beauty of the day. She wore

--" but why destroy the picture? I have the costumes under my hand. The

words are meaningless to all males, and young women might laugh at a

critical time. Miss Emily Russell performed upon "that most superb of all

musical instruments the human voice." Was it 'Auld Robin Gray' that she

sang? I am sure it was Miss Maude Catherwood who recited 'To My Mother',

with such effect. Miss Carvel, so Stephen learned with alarm, was to read

a poem by Mrs. Browning, but was "unavoidably prevented." The truth was,

as he heard afterward from Miss Puss Russell, that Miss Jinny had refused

point blank. So the Lady Principal, to save her reputation for

discipline, had been forced to deceive the press.

There was another who read the account of the exercises with intense

interest, a gentleman of whom we have lately forborne to speak. This is

Mr. Eliphalet Hopper. Eliphalet has prospered. It is to be doubted if

that somewhat easy-going gentleman, Colonel Carvel, realized the full

importance of Eliphalet to Carvel & Company. Mr. Hood had been

superseded. Ephum still opened the store in the mornings, but Mr. Hopper

was within the ground-glass office before the place was warm, and through

warerooms and shipping rooms, rubbing his hands, to see if any were late.

Many of the old force were missed, and a new and greater force were come

in. These feared Eliphalet as they did the devil, and worked the harder

to please him, because Eliphalet had hired that kind. To them the Colonel

was lifted high above the sordid affairs of the world. He was at the

store every day in the winter, and Mr. Hopper always followed him

obsequiously into the ground-glass office, called in the book-keeper, and

showed him the books and the increased earnings.

The Colonel thought of Mr. Hood and his slovenly management, and sighed,

in spite of his doubled income. Mr. Hopper had added to the Company's

list of customers whole districts in the growing Southwest, and yet the

honest Colonel did not like him. Mr. Hopper, by a gradual process, had

taken upon his own shoulders, and consequently off the Colonel's,

responsibility after responsibility. There were some painful scenes, of

course, such as the departure of Mr. Hood, which never would have

occurred had not Eliphalet proved without question the incapacity of the

ancient manager. Mr. Hopper only narrowed his lids when the Colonel

pensioned Mr. Hood. But the Colonel had a will before which, when roused,

even Mr. Hopper trembled. So that Eliphalet was always polite to Ephum,

and careful never to say anything in the darkey's presence against

incompetent clerks or favorite customers, who, by the charity of the

Colonel, remained on his books.

One spring day, after the sober home-coming of Colonel Carvel from the

Democratic Convention at Charleston, Ephum accosted his master as he came

into the store of a morning. Ephum's face was working with excitement.

"What's the matter with you, Ephum?" asked the Colonel, kindly. "You

haven't been yourself lately."

"No, Marsa, I ain't 'zactly."

Ephum put down the duster, peered out of the door of the private office,

and closed it softly.

"Marse Comyn?"

"Yes?"

"Marse Comyn, I ain't got no use fo' dat Misteh Hoppa', Ise kinder

sup'stitious 'bout him, Marsa."

The Colonel put down his newspaper.

"Has he treated you badly, Ephum?" he asked quietly.

The faithful negro saw another question in his master's face. He well

knew that Colonel Carvel would not descend to ask an inferior concerning

the conduct of a superior.

"Oh no, suh. And I ain't sayin' nuthin' gin his honesty. He straight, but

he powerful sharp, Marse Comyn. An' he jus' mussiless down to a cent."

The Colonel sighed. He realized that which was beyond the grasp of the

negro's mind. New and thriftier methods of trade from New England were

fast replacing the old open-handedness of the large houses. Competition

had begun, and competition is cruel. Edwards, James, & Company had taken

a Yankee into the firm. They were now Edwards, James, & Doddington, and

Mr. Edwards's coolness towards the Colonel was manifest since the rise of

Eliphalet. They were rivals now instead of friends. But Colonel Carvel

did not know until after years that Mr. Hopper had been offered the place

which Mr. Doddington filled later.

As for Mr. Hopper, increase of salary had not changed him. He still lived

in the same humble way, in a single room in Miss Crane's boarding-house,

and he paid very little more for his board than he had that first week in

which he swept out Colonel Carvel's store. He was superintendent, now, of

Mr. Davitt's Sunday School, and a church officer. At night, when he came

home from business, he would read the widow's evening paper, and the

Colonel's morning paper at the office. Of true Puritan abstemiousness,

his only indulgence was chewing tobacco. It was as early as 1859 that the

teller of the Boatman's Bank began to point out Mr. Hopper's back to

casual customers, and he was more than once seen to enter the president's

room, which had carpet on the floor.

Eliphalet's suavity with certain delinquent customers from the Southwest

was A wording to Scripture. When they were profane, and invited him into

the street, he reminded them that the city had a police force and a jail.

While still a young man, he had a manner of folding his hands and smiling

which is peculiar to capitalists, and he knew the laws concerning

mortgages in several different states.

But Eliphalet was content still to remain in the sphere in which

Providence had placed him, and so to be an example for many of us. He did

not buy, or even hire, an evening suit. He was pleased to superintend

some of the details for a dance at Christmas-time before Virginia left

Monticello, but he sat as usual on the stair-landing. There Mr. Jacob

Cluyme (who had been that day in conversation with the teller of the

Boatman's Bank) chanced upon him. Mr. Cluyme was so charmed at the

facility with which Eliphalet recounted the rise and fall of sugar and

cotton and wheat that he invited Mr. Hopper to dinner. And from this meal

may be reckoned the first appearance of the family of which Eliphalet

Hopper was the head into polite society. If the Cluyme household was not

polite, it was nothing. Eliphalet sat next to Miss Belle, and heard the

private history of many old families, which he cherished for future use.

Mrs. Cluyme apologized for the dinner, which (if the truth were told)

needed an apology. All of which is significant, but sordid and

uninteresting. Jacob Cluyme usually bought stocks before a rise.

There was only one person who really bothered Eliphalet as he rose into

prominence, and that person was Captain Elijah Brent. If, upon entering

the ground-glass office, he found Eliphalet without the Colonel, Captain

Lige would walk out again just as if the office were empty. The inquiries

he made were addressed always to Ephum. Once, when Mr. Hopper had bidden

him good morning and pushed a chair toward him, the honest Captain had

turned his back and marched straight to the house or Tenth Street, where

he found the Colonel alone at breakfast. The Captain sat down opposite.

"Colonel," said he, without an introduction. "I don't like this here

business of letting Hopper run your store. He's a fish, I tell you."

The Colonel drank his coffee in silence.

"Lige," he said gently, "he's nearly doubled my income. It isn't the old

times, when we all went our own way and kept our old customers year in

and year out. You know that."

The Captain took a deep draught of the coffee which Jackson had laid

before him.

"Colonel Carvel," he said emphatically, "the fellow's a damned rascal,

and will ruin you yet if you don't take advice."

The Colonel shifted uneasily.

"The books show that he's honest, Lige."

"Yes," cried Lige, with his fist on the table. "Honest to a mill. But if

that fellow ever gets on top of you, or any one else, he'll grind you

into dust."

"He isn't likely to get on top of me, Lige. I know the business, and keep

watch. And now that Jinny's coming home from Monticello, I feel that I

can pay more attention to her--kind of take her mother's place," said the

Colonel, putting on his felt hat and tipping his chair. "Lige, I want

that girl to have every advantage. She ought to go to Europe and see the

world. That trip East last summer did her a heap of good. When we were at

Calvert House, Dan read her something that my grandfather had written

about London, and she was regularly fired. First I must take her to the

Eastern Shore to see Carvel Hall. Dan still owns it. Now it's London and

Paris."

The Captain walked over to the window, and said nothing. He did not see

the searching gray eyes of his old friend upon him.

"Lige!" said the Colonel.

The Captain turned.

"Lige, why don't you give up steamboating and come along to Europe?

You're not forty yet, and you have a heap of money laid by."

The Captain shook his head with the vigor that characterized him.

"This ain't no time for me to leave," he said. "Colonel; I tell you

there's a storm comin'."

The Colonel pulled his goatee uneasily. Here, at last, was a man in whom

there was no guile.

"Lige," he said, "isn't it about time you got married?"

Upon which the Captain shook his head again, even with more vigor. He

could not trust himself to speak. After the Christmas holidays he had

driven Virginia across the frozen river, all the way to Monticello, in a

sleigh. It was night when they had reached the school, the light of its

many windows casting long streaks on the snow under the trees. He had

helped her out, and had taken her hand as she stood on the step.

"Be good, Jinny," he had said. "Remember what a short time it will be

until June. And your Pa will come over to see you."

She had seized him by the buttons of his great coat, and said tearfully:

"O Captain Lige! I shall be so lonely when you are away. Aren't you going

to kiss me?"

He had put his lips to her forehead, driven madly back to Alton, and

spent the night. The first thing he did the next day when he reached St.

Louis was to go straight to the Colonel and tell him bluntly of the

circumstance.

"Lige, I'd hate to give her up," Mr. Carvel said; "but I'd rather you'd

marry her than any man I can think of."

CHAPTER IX

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In that spring of 1860 the time was come for the South to make her final

stand. And as the noise of gathering conventions shook the ground,

Stephen Brice was not the only one who thought of the Question at

Freeport. The hour was now at hand for it to bear fruit.

Meanwhile, his hero, the hewer of rails and forger of homely speech,

Abraham Lincoln, had made a little tour eastward the year before, and had

startled Cooper Union with a new logic and a new eloquence. They were the

same logic and the same eloquence which had startled Stephen.

Even as he predicted who had given it birth, the Question destroyed the

great Democratic Party. Colonel Carvel travelled to the convention in

historic Charleston soberly and fearing God, as many another Southern

gentleman. In old Saint Michael's they knelt to pray for harmony, for

peace; for a front bold and undismayed toward those who wronged them. All

through the week chosen orators wrestled in vain. Judge Douglas, you

flattered yourself that you had evaded the Question. Do you see the

Southern delegates rising in their seats? Alabama leaves the hall,

followed by her sister stakes. The South has not forgotten your Freeport

Heresy. Once she loved you now she will have none of you.

Gloomily, indeed, did Colonel Carvel return home. He loved the Union and

the flag for which his grandfather Richard had fought so bravely. That

flag was his inheritance. So the Judge, laying his hand upon the knee of

his friend, reminded him gravely. But the Colonel shook his head. The

very calmness of their argument had been portentous.

"No, Whipple," said he. "You are a straightforward man. You can't

disguise it. You of the North are bent upon taking away from us the

rights we had when our fathers framed the Constitution. However the

nigger got to this country, sir, in your Bristol and Newport traders, as

well as in our Virginia and Maryland ships, he is here, and he was here

when the Constitution was written. He is happier in slavery than are your

factory hands in New England; and he is no more fit to exercise the

solemn rights of citizenship, I say, than the halfbreeds in the South

American states."

The Judge attempted to interrupt, but Mr. Carvel stopped him.

"Suppose you deprive me of my few slaves, you do not ruin me. Yet you do

me as great a wrong as you do my friend Samuels, of Louisiana, who

depends on the labor of five hundred. Shall I stand by selfishly and see

him ruined, and thousands of others like him?"

Profoundly depressed, Colonel Carvel did not attend the adjourned

Convention at Baltimore, which split once more on Mason and Dixon's line.

The Democrats of the young Northwest stood for Douglas and Johnson, and

the solid South, in another hall, nominated Breckenridge and Lane. This,

of course, became the Colonel's ticket.

What a Babel of voices was raised that summer! Each with its cure for

existing ills. Between the extremes of the Black Republican Negro

Worshippers and the Southern Rights party of Breckenridge, your

conservative had the choice of two candidates,--of Judge Douglas or

Senator Bell. A most respectable but practically extinct body of

gentlemen in ruffled shirts, the Old Line Whigs, had likewise met in

Baltimore. A new name being necessary, they called themselves

Constitutional Unionists Senator Bell was their candidate, and they

proposed to give the Nation soothing-syrup. So said Judge Whipple, with a

grunt of contempt, to Mr. Cluyme, who was then a prominent Constitutional

Unionist. Other and most estimable gentlemen were also Constitutional

Unionists, notably Mr. Calvin Brinsmade. Far be it from any one to cast

disrespect upon the reputable members of this party, whose broad wings

sheltered likewise so many weak brethren.

One Sunday evening in May, the Judge was taking tea with Mrs. Brice. The

occasion was memorable for more than one event--which was that he

addressed Stephen by his first name for the first time.

"You're an admirer of Abraham Lincoln," he had said.

Stephen, used to Mr. Whipple's ways, smiled quietly at his mother. He had

never dared mention to the Judge his suspicions concerning his journey to

Springfield and Freeport.

"Stephen," said the Judge (here the surprise came in), "Stephen, what do

you think of Mr. Lincoln's chances for the Republican nomination?"

"We hear of no name but Seward's, sir," said Stephen, When he had

recovered.

The Judge grunted.

"Do you think that Lincoln would make a good President?" he added.

"I have thought so, sir, ever since you were good enough to give me the

opportunity of knowing him."

It was a bold speech--the Judge drew his great eyebrows together, but he

spoke to Mrs. Brice.

"I'm not as strong as I was once, ma'am," said he. "And yet I am going to

that Chicago convention."

Mrs. Brice remonstrated mildly, to the effect that he had done his share

of political work. He scarcely waited for her to finish.

"I shall take a younger man with me, in case anything happens. In fact,

ma'am, I had thought of taking your son, if you can spare him."

And so it was that Stephen went to that most dramatic of political

gatherings,--in the historic Wigwam. It was so that his eyes were opened

to the view of the monster which maims the vitality of the Republic,

--the political machine. Mr. Seward had brought his machine from New York,

--a legion prepared to fill the Wigwam with their bodies, and to drown

with their cries all names save that of their master.

Stephen indeed had his eyes opened. Through the kindness of Judge Whipple

he heard many quiet talks between that gentleman and delegates from other

states--Pennsylvania and Illinois and Indiana and elsewhere. He perceived

that the Judge was no nonentity in this new party. Mr. Whipple sat in his

own room, and the delegates came and ranged themselves along the bed.

Late one night, when the delegates were gone, Stephen ventured to speak

what was in his mind.

"Mr. Lincoln did not strike me as the kind of man, sir; who would permit

a bargain."

"Mr. Lincoln's at home playing barn-ball," said the Judge, curtly. "He

doesn't expect the nomination."

"Then," said Stephen, rather hotly, "I think you are unfair to him."

You are expecting the Judge to thunder. Sometimes he liked this kind of

speech.

"Stephen, I hope that politics may be a little cleaner when you become a

delegate," he answered, with just the suspicion of a smile. "Supposing

you are convinced that Abraham Lincoln is the only man who can save the

Union, and supposing that the one way to get him nominated is to meet

Seward's gang with their own methods, what would you do, sir? I want a

practical proposition, sir," said Mr. Whipple, "one that we can use

to-night. It is now one 'clock."

As Stephen was silent, the Judge advised him to go to bed. And the next

morning, while Mr. Seward's henchmen, confident and uproarious, were

parading the streets of Chicago with their bands and their bunting, the

vast Wigwam was quietly filling up with bony Westerners whose ally was

none other than the state of Pennsylvania. These gentlemen possessed wind

which they had not wasted in processions. And the Lord delivered Seward

and all that was his into their hands.

How the light of Mr. Seward's hope went out after the first ballot, and

how some of the gentlemen attached to his person wept; and how the voices

shook the Wigwam, and the thunder of the guns rolled over the tossing

water of the lake, many now living remember. That day a name was

delivered to the world through the mouths political schemers which was

destined to enter history that of the saviour of the Nation.

Down in little Springfield, on a vacant lot near the station, a tall man

in his shirt sleeves was playing barn-ball with some boys. The game

finished, he had put on his black coat and was starting homeward under

the tree--when a fleet youngster darted after him with a telegram. The

tall man read it, and continued on his walk his head bent and his feet

taking long strides, Later in the day he was met by a friend.

"Abe," said the friend, "I'm almighty glad there somebody in this town's

got notorious at last."

In the early morning of their return from Chicago Judge Whipple and

Stephen were standing in the front of a ferry-boat crossing the

Mississippi. The sun was behind them. The Judge had taken off his hat,

and his gray hair was stirred by the river breeze. Illness had set a

yellow seal on the face, but the younger man remarked it not. For

Stephen, staring at the black blur of the city outline, was filled with a

strange exaltation which might have belonged to his Puritan forefathers.

Now at length was come his chance to be of use in life,--to dedicate the

labor of his hands and of his brains to Abraham Lincoln uncouth prophet

of the West. With all his might he would work to save the city for the

man who was the hope of the Union.

The bell rang. The great paddles scattered the brow waters with white

foam, and the Judge voiced his thoughts.

"Stephen," said he, "I guess we'll have to put on shoulders to the wheel

this summer. If Lincoln is not elected I have lived my sixty-five years

for nothing."

As he descended the plank, he laid a hand on Stephen's arm, and tottered.

The big Louisiana, Captain Brent's boat, just in from New Orleans, was

blowing off her steam as with slow steps they climbed the levee and the

steep pitch of the street beyond it. The clatter of hooves and the crack

of whips reached their ears, and, like many others before them and since,

they stepped into Carvel & Company's. On the inside of the glass

partition of the private office, a voice of great suavity was heard. It

was Eliphalet Hopper's.

"If you will give me the numbers of the bales, Captain Brent, I'll send a

dray down to your boat and get them."

It was a very decisive voice that answered.

"No, sir, I prefer to do business with my friend, Colonel Carvel. I guess

I can wait."

"I could sell the goods to Texas buyers who are here in the store right

now."

"Until I get instructions from one of the concern," vowed Captain Lige,

"I shall do as I always have done, sir. What is your position here, Mr.

Hopper?"

"I am manager, I callate."

The Captain's fist was heard to come down on the desk.

"You don't manage me," he said, "and I reckon you don't manage the

Colonel."

Mr. Hopper's face was not pleasant to see as he emerged. But at sight of

Judge Whipple on the steps his suavity returned.

"The Colonel will be in any minute, sir," said he.

But the Judge walked past him without reply, and into the office. Captain

Brent, seeing him; sprang to his feet.

"Well, well, Judge," said he, heartily, "you fellows have done it now,

sure. I'll say this for you, you've picked a smart man."

"Better vote for him, Lige," said the Judge, setting down.

The Captain smiled at Stephen.

"A man's got a lot of choice this year;" said he. "Two governments,

thirty-three governments, one government patched up for a year ox two."

"Or no government," finished the Judge. "Lige, you're not such a fool as

to vote against the Union?"

"Judge," said the Captain, instantly, "I'm not the only one in this town

who will have to decide whether my sympathies are wrong. My sympathies

are with the South."

"It's not a question of sympathy, Captain," answered the Judge, dryly.

"Abraham Lincoln himself was born in Kentucky."

They had not heard a step without.

"Gentlemen, mark my words. If Abraham Lincoln is elected, the South

leaves this Union."

The Judge started, and looked up. The speaker was Colonel Carvel himself.

"Then, sir," Mr. Whipple cried hotly, "then you will be chastised and

brought back. For at last we have chosen a man who is strong enough,

--who does not fear your fire-eaters,--whose electors depend on Northern

votes alone."

Stephen rose apprehensively, So did Captain Lige The Colonel had taken a

step forward, and a fire was quick to kindle in his gray eyes. It was as

quick to die. Judge Whipple, deathly pale, staggered and fell into

Stephen' arms. But it was the Colonel who laid him on the horsehair sofa.

"Silas!" he said, "Silas!"

Nor could the two who listened sound the depth of the pathos the Colonel

put into those two words.

But the Judge had not fainted. And the brusqueness in his weakened voice

was even more pathetic-- "Tut, tut," said he. "A little heat, and no

breakfast."

The Colonel already had a bottle of the famous Bourbon day his hand, and

Captain Lige brought a glass of muddy iced water. Mr. Carvel made an

injudicious mixture of the two, and held it to the lips of his friend. He

was pushed away.

"Come, Silas," he said.

"No!" cried the Judge, and with this effort he slipped back again. Those

who stood there thought that the stamp of death was already on Judge

Whipple's face.

But the lips were firmly closed, bidding defiance, as ever, to the world.

The Colonel, stroking his goatee, regarded him curiously.

"Silas," he said slowly, "if you won't drink it for me, perhaps you will

drink it--for--Abraham--Lincoln."

The two who watched that scene have never forgotten it. Outside, in the

great cool store, the rattle of the trucks was heard, and Mr. Hopper

giving commands. Within was silence. The straight figure of the Colonel

towered above the sofa while he waited. A full minute passed. Once Judge

Whipple's bony hand opened and shut, and once his features worked. Then,

without warning, he sat up.

"Colonel," said he, "I reckon I wouldn't be much use to Abe if I took

that. But if you'll send Ephum after, cup of coffee--"

Mr. Carvel set the glass down. In two strides he had reached the door and

given the order. Then he came hack and seated himself on the sofa.

Stephen found his mother at breakfast. He had forgotten the convention He

told her what had happened at Mr. Carvel's store, and how the Colonel had

tried to persuade Judge Whipple to take the Glencoe house while he was in

Europe, and how the Judge had refused. Tears were in the widow's eyes

when Stephen finished.

"And he means to stay here in the heat and go through, the campaign?" she

asked.

"He says that he will not stir."

"It will kill him, Stephen," Mrs. Brice faltered.

"So the Colonel told him. And he said that he would die willingly--after

Abraham Lincoln was elected. He had nothing to live for but to fight for

that. He had never understood the world, and had quarrelled with at all

his life."

'He said that to Colonel Carvel?"

"Yes."

"Stephen!"

He didn't dare to look at his mother, nor she at him. And when he reached

the office, half an hour later, Mr. Whipple was seated in his chair,

defiant and unapproachable. Stephen sighed as he settled down to his

work. The thought of one who might have accomplished what her father

could not was in his head. She was at Monticello.

Some three weeks later Mr. Brinsmade's buggy drew up at Mrs. Brice's

door. The Brinsmade family had been for some time in the country. And

frequently, when that gentleman was detained in town by business, he

would stop at the little home for tea. The secret of the good man's visit

came out as he sat with them on the front steps afterward.

"I fear that it will be a hot summer, ma'am," he had said to Mrs. Brice.

"You should go to the country."

"The heat agrees with me remarkably, Mr. Brinsmade," said the lady,

smiling.

"I have heard that Colonel Carvel wishes to rent his house at Glencoe,"

Mr. Brinsmade continued, "The figure is not high." He mentioned it. And

it was, indeed nominal. "It struck me that a change of air would do you

good, Mrs. Brice, and Stephen. Knowing that you shared in our uneasiness

concerning Judge Whipple, I thought--"

He stopped, and looked at her. It was a hard task even for that best and

roost tactful of gentlemen, Mr. Brinsmade. He too had misjudged this calm

woman.

"I understand you, Mr. Brinsmade," she said. She saw, as did Stephen, the

kindness behind the offer--Colonel Carvel's kindness and his own. The

gentleman's benevolent face brightened:

"And, my dear Madam, do not let the thought of this little house trouble

you. It was never my expectation to have it occupied in the summer. If we

could induce the Judge to go to Glencoe with you for the summer; I am

sure it would be a relief for us all."

He did not press the matter; but begged Stephen to call on him in a day

or two, at the bank.

"What do you think, Stephen," asked his mother, when Mr. Brinsmade was

gone, Stephen did not reply at once. What, indeed, could he say? The

vision of that proud figure of Miss Virginia was before him, and he

revolted. What was kindness from Colonel Carvel and Mr. Brinsmade was

charity from her. He could not bear the thought of living in a house

haunted by her. And yet why should he let his pride and his feelings

stand in the way of the health--perhaps of the life--of Judge Whipple?

It was characteristic of his mothers strength of mind not to mention the

subject again that evening. Stephen did not sleep in the hot night. But

when he rose in the morning he had made up his mind. After breakfast he

went straight to the Colonel's store, and fortunately found. Mr. Carvel

at his desk, winding up his affairs.

The next morning, when the train for the East pulled out of Illinoistown,

Miss Jinny Carvel stood on the plat form tearfully waving good-by to a

knot of friends. She was leaving for Europe. Presently she went into the

sleeping-car to join the Colonel, who wore a gray liners duster. For a

long time she sat gazing at the young, corn waving on the prairie,

fingering the bunch of June roses on her lap. Clarence had picked them

only a few hours ago, in the dew at Bellegarde. She saw her cousin

standing disconsolate under the train sheds, just as she had left him.

She pictured him riding out the Bellefontaine Road that afternoon, alone.

Now that the ocean was to be between them, was it love that she felt for

Clarence at last? She glanced at her father. Once or twice she had

suspected him of wishing to separate them. Her Aunt Lillian, indeed, had

said as much, and Virginia had silenced her. But when she had asked the

Colonel to take Clarence to Europe, he had refused. And yet she knew that

he had begged Captain Lige to go.

Virginia had been at home but a week. She had seen the change in Clarence

and exulted. The very first day she had surprised him on the porch at

Bellegarde with "Hardee's tactics". From a boy Clarence had suddenly

become a man with a Purpose,--and that was the Purpose of the South.

"They have dared to nominate that dirty Lincoln," he said.--"Do you think

that we will submit to nigger equality rule? Never! never!" he cried. "If

they elect him, I will stand and fight them until my legs are shot from

under me, and then I will shoot down the Yankees from the ground."

Virginia's heart had leaped within her at the words, and into her eyes

had flashed once more the look for which the boy had waited and hoped in

vain. He had the carriage of a soldier, the animation and endurance of

the thoroughbred when roused. He was of the stuff that made the

resistance of the South the marvel of the world. And well we know,

whatever the sound of it, that his speech was not heroics. Nor was it

love for his cousin that inspired it, save in this: he had apotheosized

Virginia. To him she was the inspired goddess of the South--his country.

His admiration and affection had of late been laid upon an altar. Her

ambition for him he felt was likewise the South's ambition for him.

His mother, Virginia's aunt, felt this too, and strove against it with

her feeble might. She never had had power over her son; nor over any man,

save the temporal power of beauty. And to her mortification she found

herself actually in fear of this girl who might have been her daughter.

So in Virginia's presence she became more trivial and petty than ever. It

was her one defence.

It had of course been a foregone conclusion that Clarence should join

Company A. Few young men of family did not. And now he ran to his room to

don for Virginia that glorious but useless full dress,--the high bearskin

rat, the red pigeon-tailed coat, the light blue trousers, and the

gorgeous, priceless shackle. Indeed, the boy looked stunning. He held his

big rifle like a veteran, and his face was set with a high resolve there

was no mistaking. The high color of her pride was on the cheek of the

girl as he brought his piece to the salute of her, his mistress. And yet,

when he was gone, and she sat alone amid the roses awaiting him, came

wilfully before her another face that was relentless determination,--the

face of Stephen Brice, as he had stood before her in the summer house at

Glencoe. Strive as she might against the thought, deny it to herself and

others, to Virginia Carvel his way become the face of the North. Her

patriotism and all that was in her of race rebelled. To conquer that face

she would have given her own soul, and Clarence's. Angrily she had arisen

and paced the garden walks, and cried out aloud that it was not

inflexible.

And now, by the car window, looking out over the endless roll of the

prairie, the memory of this was bitter within her.

Suddenly she turned to her father.

"Did you rent our house at Glencoe?" she asked.

"No, Jinny."

"I suppose Mr. Brice was too proud to accept it at your charitable rent,

even to save Mr, Whipple's life."

The Colonel turned to his daughter in mild surprise. She was leaning back

on the seat, her eyes half closed.

"Once you dislike a person, Jinny, you never get over it. I always had a

fancy for the young man, and now I have a better opinion of him than ever

before. It was I who insulted them by naming that rent."

"What did he do?" Virginia demanded.

"He came to my office yesterday morning. 'Colonel Carvel,' said he, 'I

hear you wish to rent your house.' I said yes. 'You rented it once

before, sir,' said he. 'Yes,' said I. 'May I ask you what price you got

for it?' said he."

"And what did you say?" she asked, leaning forward.

"I told him," said the Colonel, smiling. "But I explained that I could

not expect to command that price now on short notice. He replied that

they would pay it, or not consider the place."

Virginia turned her head away and stared out over the fields.

"How could they afford it!" she murmured.

"Mr. Brinsmade tells me that young Brice won rather a remarkable case

last winter, and since then has had some practice. And that he writes for

the newspapers. I believe he declined some sort of an editorial position,

preferring to remain at the law."

"And so they are going into the house?" she asked presently.

"No," said the Colonel. "Whipple refused point-blank to go to the

country. He said that he would be shirking the only work of his life

likely to be worth anything. So the Brices remain in town."

Colonel Carvel sighed. But Virginia said nothing.

CHAPTER X.

RICHTER'S SCAR

This was the summer when Mr. Stephen Brice began to make his appearance

in public. The very first was rather encouraging than otherwise, although

they were not all so. It was at a little town on the outskirts of the

city where those who had come to scoff and jeer remained to listen.

In writing that speech Stephen had striven to bear in mind a piece of

advice which Mr. Lincoln had given him. "Speak so that the lowest may

understand, and the rest will have no trouble." And it had worked. At the

halting lameness of the beginning an egg was thrown,--fortunately wide of

the mark. After this incident Stephen fairly astonished his audience,

--especially an elderly gentleman who sat on a cracker-box in the rear, out

of sight of the stand. This may have been Judge Whipple, although we have

no proof of the fact.

Stephen himself would not have claimed originality for that speech. He

laughs now when it is spoken of, and calls it a boyish effort, which it

was. I have no doubt that many of the master's phrases slipped in, as

young Mr. Brice could repeat most of the Debates, and the Cooper Union

speech by heart. He had caught more than the phrasing, however. So imbued

was he with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln that his hearers caught it; and

that was the end of the rotten eggs and the cabbages. The event is to be

especially noted because they crowded around him afterward to ask

questions. For one thing, he had not mentioned abolition. Wasn't it true,

then, that this Lincoln wished to tear the negro from his master, give

him a vote and a subsidy, and set him up as the equal of the man that

owned him? "Slavery may stay where it is," cried the young orator. "If it

is content there, so are we content. What we say is that it shall not go

one step farther. No, not one inch into a northern territory."

On the next occasion Mr. Brice was one of the orators at a much larger

meeting in a garden in South St. Louis. The audience was mostly German.

And this was even a happier event, inasmuch as Mr. Brice was able to

trace with some skill the history of the Fatherland from the Napoleonic

wars to its Revolution. Incidentally he told them why they had emigrated

to this great and free country. And when in an inspired moment he coupled

the names of Abraham Lincoln and Father Jahn, the very leaves of the

trees above them trembled at their cheers.

And afterwards there was a long-remembered supper in the moonlit grove

with Richter and a party of his college friends from Jena. There was Herr

Tiefel with the little Dresden-blue eyes, red and round and jolly; and

Hauptmann, long and thin and sallow; and Korner, redbearded and

ponderous; and Konig, a little clean-cut man with a blond mustache that

pointed upward. They clattered their steins on the table and sang

wonderful Jena songs, while Stephen was lifted up and his soul carried

off to far-away Saxony,--to the clean little University town with its

towers and crooked streets. And when they sang the Trolksmelodie,

"Bemooster Bursche zieh' ich aus,--Ade!" a big tear rolled down the scar

on Richter's cheek.

"Fahrt wohl, ihr Strassen grad and krumm

Ich zieh' nicht mehr in euch herum,

Durchton euch nicht mehr mit Gesang,

Mit Larm nicht mehr and Sporenklang."

As the deep tones died away, the soft night was steeped in the sadness of

that farewell song. It was Richter who brought the full force of it home

to Stephen.

"Do you recall the day you left your Harvard, and your Boston, my

friend?" he asked.

Stephen only nodded. He had never spoken of the bitterness of that, even

to his mother. And here was the difference between the Saxon and the

Anglo-Saxon.

Richter smoked his pipe 'mid dreamy silence, the tear still wet upon his

face.

"Tiefel and I were at the University together," he said at length. "He

remembers the day I left Jena for good and all. Ah, Stephen, that is the

most pathetic thing in life, next to leaving the Fatherland. We dine with

our student club for the last time at the Burg Keller, a dingy little

tavern under a grim old house, but very dear to us. We swear for the last

time to be clean and honorable and patriotic, and to die for the

Fatherland, if God so wills. And then we march at the head of a slow

procession out of the old West Gate, two and two, old members first, then

the fox major and the foxes."

"The foxes?" Stephen interrupted.

"The youngsters--the freshmen, you call them," answered Richter, smiling.

"And after the foxes," said Herr Tiefel, taking up the story, "after the

foxes comes the empty carriage, with its gay postilion and four. It is

like a long funeral. And every man is chanting that song. And so we go

slowly until we; come to the Oil Mill Tavern, where we have had many a

schlager-bout with the aristocrats. And the president of our society

makes his farewell speech under the vines, and we drink to you with all

the honors. And we drank to you, Carl, renowned swordsman!" And Herr

Tiefel, carried away by the recollection, rose to his feet.

The others caught fire, and stood up with their mugs high in the air,

shouting:

"Lebe wohl, Carl! Lebe wohl! Salamander, salamander, salamander! Ein ist

ein, zwei ist zwei, drei ist drei! Lebe wohl!"

And so they toasted every man present, even Stephen himself, whom they

complimented on his speech. And he soon learned to cry Salamander, and to

rub his mug on the table, German fashion. He was not long in discovering

that Richter was not merely a prime favorite with his companions, but

likewise a person of some political importance in South St. Louis. In the

very midst of their merriment an elderly man whom Stephen recognized as

one of the German leaders (he afterwards became a United States general)

came and stood smiling by the table and joined in the singing. But

presently he carried Richter away with him.

"What a patriot he would have made, had our country been spared to us!"

exclaimed Herr Konig. "I think he was the best man with the Schlager that

Jena ever saw. Even Korner likes not to stand against him in mask and

fencing hat, all padded. Eh, Rudolph?"

Herr Korner gave a good-natured growl of assent.

"I have still a welt that he gave me a month since," he said. "He has

left his mark on many an aristocrat."

"And why did you always fight the aristocrats?" Stephen asked.

They all tried to tell him at once, but Tiefel prevailed.

"Because they were for making our country Austrian, my friend," he cried.

"Because they were overbearing, and ground the poor. Because the most of

them were immoral like the French, and we knew that it must be by

morality and pure living that our 'Vaterland' was to be rescued. And so

we formed our guilds in opposition to theirs. We swore to live by the

standards of the great Jahn, of whom you spoke. We swore to strive for

the freedom of Germany with manly courage. And when we were not duelling

with the nobles, we had Schlager-bouts among ourselves."

"Broadswords?" exclaimed Stephen, in amazement.