CHAPTER XXXI.
PEACH BLUSH.
Judge Custis, whom we left riding out of Princess Anne on Sundayafternoon, kept straight north, crossed the bottom of Delaware in theearly evening, and went to bed at Laurel, on Broad Creek, a few milessouth of Cannon's Ferry.
At daylight he was ahorse again, scarcely stiff from his exertion, andfeeling the rising joys of a stomach and brain becoming clearer than foryears, of all the forms of alcohol. His mind had been bathed in sleepand temperance, the two great physicians, and wiped dry, like the feetof the Prince of sufferers, with women's hairs. Exercise, natural to aVirginian, awakened his flowing spirits again, and he fancied the airgrew purer as he advanced into the north, though there was hardly anyperceptible change of elevation. The country grew drier, however, as heturned the head springs of the great cypress swamp--the counterbalanceof the Dismal Swamp of Virginia--receded from the Chesapeake waters, andapproached the tributaries of the Atlantic. At nine o'clock he enteredthe court-house cluster of Georgetown, a little place of a few hundredpeople, pitched nearly at the centre of the county one generationbefore, or about ten years after the independence of the country.
It was a level place of shingle-boarded houses, assembled around a sandysquare, in which were both elm and Italian poplar trees; and adouble-storied wooden court-house was on the farther side, surrounded bylittle cabins for the county officers, pitched here and there, and inthe rear was a jail of two stories, with family apartments below, andthe dungeon window, the debtors' room, and a family bedroom above; andnear the jail and court-house stood the whipping-post, like a dismantledpump, with a pillory floor some feet above the ground.
Young maples, mulberry and tulip trees, and ailanthuses grew bravely tomake shade along the two streets which pierced the square, and the fourstreets which were parallel to its sides--pretty lanes being insertedbetween, to which the loamy gardens ran; and, as the Judge stopped atthe tavern near the court, he was told it was "returning day," and theplace would soon be filled with constituents assembling to hear how"she'd gone"--_she_, as the Judge knew well, meaning Sussex County, and"gone" intimating her decision expressed at the polls.
"She's gone for Adams an' Clayton, ain't she, Jonathan Torbert?" askedthe innkeeper.
"Yes," spoke a plain, religious-looking man, the teller of the bank;"Johnny Clayton's kept Sussex and Kent in line for Adams; Jeems Bayardand the McLanes have captured Newcastle: Clayton goes to the senate,Louis McLane to the cabinet, the country to the alligators."
"Hurrah for Jackson!" answered the host; "he suits me ever since hewhipped the British."
At breakfast Judge Custis recognized a gentleman opposite, wearingsmallclothes, and with his hair in a queue, who spoke without other thana passively kind expression:
"Judge."
"Ah! Chancellor!"
The Chancellor was nearly seventy years old, wearing an humble,meditative, yet gracious look, as one whose relations to this world werethose of stewardship, and whose nearly obsolete dress was the badge, notof worldly pride, but of perished joys and contemporaries. Hisunaffected countenance seemed to say: "I wear it because it is uselessto put off what no one else will wear, when presently I shall neednothing but a shroud."
Judge Custis looked at the meek old gentleman closely, sitting at hisplate like a lay brother in some monastery or infirmary, indifferent totalk or news or affairs; and the remembrance of what he had been--keen,accumulative, with youthful passions long retained, and the man buoyantunder the judge's guard--impressed the Virginian to say to himself:
"What, then, is man! At last old age asserts itself, and bends thebrazen temple of his countenance, like Samson, in almost pious remorse.There sits twenty-five years of equity administration; behind it, thirtyyears of jocund and various life. No newspaper shall ever record it,because none are printed here; he is indifferent to that forgetfulnessand to all others, because the springs of life are dry in his body, andhe no more enjoys."
"Are you travelling north, Judge Custis?" the old man asked, forpoliteness' sake.
"Yes, to Dover."
"There is a seat in my carriage; you are welcome to it."
"I will take it a part of the way, at least, to feel the privilege ofyour society, Chancellor."
The old man gave a slow, sidewise shake of his head.
"Too late, too late," he said, "to flatter me. I was fond of it once. Ihave been a flatterer, too."
The Chancellor's black boy was put on the Judge's horse, and the twomen, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned thecourt-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard thesheriff knock off two slaves to a purchaser, crying:
"Your property, sir, till they are twenty-five years of age."
"Ha, ha!" laughed, in a great horse laugh, a nearly chinless villager;"say till ole Patty Cannon can git 'em!"
The purchaser gave a cunning, self-convicted smile at the passingchancellor, whose look of resignation only deepened and grew morehumble. The Judge had some vague recollection which moved him to changethe subject.
"We see each other but little, Chancellor, though we divide the samelittle heritage of land. I suppose your people are all proud ofDelaware."
"Yes," said the old man; "being such a little adventurer, a merefoundling in the band of states, our people have the pride of theirindependence. The laws are administered, some more farms are opened inthe forest every year, blossoms come, and old men die and are buried ontheir farms, and their bones respected a few years. Our history is sopastoral that we must show some temper when it is assailed, or we mightlet out our ignorance of it."
They rode in silence some hours through an older settled and more opencountry, with some large mill-ponds and a better class of farmimprovements, and the sense of some large water near at hand wasmystically felt.
The Judge followed the old man's eyes at one place, seeing that theywere raised with an expression of tranquil satisfaction, like agedpiety, and a beautiful landscape of soft green marsh lay under theirgaze from a slight elevation they had reached, showing cattle and sheeproving in it, tall groves where cows and horses found midday shade, andwinding creeks, carrying sails of hidden boats, as if in a magicalcruise upon the velvet verdure. Haystacks and farm settlements stood outin the long levels, and sailing birds speckled the air. In the fardistance lay something like more marsh, yet also like the clouds.
"It is the Delaware Bay," the Chancellor said.
They soon entered a well-built little town on a navigable creek, with alarge mill-pond, sawmills, several vessels building on the stocks, andan air of superior vitality to anything Judge Custis had seen inDelaware. Here the Chancellor pointed out the late home of SenatorClayton's father, and, after the horses had been fed, they continuedstill northward, passing another small town on a creek near the marshes,and, a little beyond it, came to a venerable brick church, a little fromthe road, in a grove of oaks and forest trees.
"Here is Barrett's chapel," said the Chancellor; "celebrated for theplotting of the campaign between Wesley's native and English preachersfor the conquest of America as soon as the crown had lost it."
They looked up over the broad-gabled, Quakerly edifice, with its broad,low door, high roof, double stories of windows, and a higher window inthe gable, trim rows of arch-bricks over door and windows, and beltmasonry; and heard the tall trees hush it to sleep like a baby left tothem. Nearly fifty feet square, and probably fifty years old, it lookedto be good for another hundred years.
"My family in Accomac was harsh with the Methodists through a mistakenconservatism," Judge Custis said. "They are a good people; they seem tosuit this peninsula like the peachtree."
A small funeral procession was turning into Barrett's chapel, and theChancellor interrogated one of the more indifferent followers as to thedead person. Having mentioned the name, the citizen said:
"His death was mysterious. He was a Methodist and a good man, but itseems that avarice was gnawing his principles away. A slave boy, soon tobecome f
ree by law, disappeared from his possession, and he gave it outthat the boy had run away. But suddenly our neighbor began to drink andto display money, and they say he had the boy kidnapped. He died likeone with an attack of despair."
As they turned again northward, in the genial afternoon, Judge Custissaid:
"What a stigma on both sides, Chancellor, is this kidnapping!"
The old man meekly looked down and did not reply. Judge Custis, feelingthat there was some sensitiveness on this and kindred subjects, yet whyhe could not recollect, continued, under the impulse of his feelings:
"The night before I left Princess Anne, Joe Johnson, one of your worstkidnappers, boldly came to my house for lodging. Why I let him staythere is a subject of wonder and contempt to myself. But there he was,perhaps when I came away."
"Not a prudent thing to permit," the old man groaned.
"I knew his wife was the widow of a gallows' bird, one Brereton--thename is Yankee. He was hanged for highway robbery."
A muffled sound escaped the sober old gentleman of Delaware.
"_You_ should remember the murder, Chancellor. It happened in thisstate. This Brereton killed a slave-buyer for what he brought here uponhis person to buy the kidnapped free people and apprentice-slaves.Brereton was the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, that infamous panderbetween Delaware and the South."
The old Chancellor looked up.
"I wish to anticipate you," he said, "in what you might further say withtruth, but perhaps do not fully know. The murderer, Brereton, was theson-in-law of Patty Cannon, it is true; but he was also thebrother-in-law of myself."
"Impossible!" Judge Custis said.
"Yes, sir; I married his sister."
The old Chancellor again turned his eyes to the ground.
"Great heavens!" exclaimed the Judge; "how many curious things can be insuch a little state!"
It was in the middle of the afternoon that Judge Daniel Custis rode intoa small town on an undulating plain, around two sides of which, athardly half a mile distance, ran a creek through a pretty wooded valley,and a third side was bounded by a branch of the same creek, all windingthrough copse, splutter-dock, lotus-flower, and marsh to the DelawareBay.
At the centre of the town, on the swell or crest of alluvial soil, of alight sandy loam foundation, an oblong public square, divided by a northand south street, contained the principal dwellings of the place, one ofwhich was the Delaware State Capitol, a red-brick building, a littleolder than the American Constitution, with a bell-crowned cupola aboveits centre, and thence could be seen the Delaware Bay.
Near the state-house stood the whipping-post in the corner, humble as ahitching-post, and the brick jail hid out of the way there also, like anunpresentable servant ever cringing near his master's company. Variousbuildings, generally antique, surrounded this prim, Quakerly square,some brick, and with low portals, others smart, and remodelled to suitthe times; some were mere wooden offices or huts, with long dormersfalling from the roof-ridge nearly to the eaves, like a dingy featherfrom a hat-crown, with a jewel in the end; and one was an oldsteep-roofed hotel, painted yellow, with a long, lounging side.
At diagonal corners of this square, as far apart as its space wouldpermit, two venerable doctors' homes still stood, which had given morerepute to Delaware's little capital than its jurists or statesmen,--theformer residence of Sykes the surgeon and Miller the pathologist andwriter.
It was at the former of these houses, a many-windowed, tall,side-fronting house of plastered brick, with side office and centredoor, that Judge Custis stopped and hitched his horse to a rack near thestate-house adjoining. The sound of twittering birds fell from the largeelms, willows, and maples on the square, and Custis could see the robinsrunning in the grass.
From the door of the two-storied side office the sound of a violin cametenderly, and the Judge waited until the tune was done, when loudexclamations of pleasure, the clapping of hands, and the stamping offeet, showed that the fiddler was not alone.
Presenting himself at the door, Judge Custis was immediately confrontedby a large, tall man, fully six feet high, with a strong countenance andsandy hair, who carried the fiddle and bow in his hand, and with theother hand seized Judge Custis almost affectionately, and drew him in,crying:
"Why, how is my old friend? Goy! how does he do? Who could have expectedyou on this simple occasion? Sit down there and take my own chair! Notthat little one--no, the big easy-chair for my old friend! Goy!"
As Judge Custis cast his eye around, to note the company, thedemonstrative host, with a flash of his gray-blue eyes, whispered,
"Who is he? who is he?"
"A Custis," whispered a person hardly the better off for his drams; "Ireckon he is, by the lips and skin."
"Goy!" rapidly spoke the fiddler. "Friend Custis--I know my heart doesnot deceive me!--let me introduce you to the very essence of grand oldlittle Delaware: here is Bob Frame, the ardent spirit of our bar; thisis James Bayard, our misguided Democratic favorite; here is CharleyMarim and Secretary Harrington, and my esteemed friend Senator Ridgely,and my cousin, Chief-justice Clayton. We are all here, and all honoredby such a rare guest. Goy!"
As the Judge went through the hand-shaking process, the tall, well-fedhost stooped to the convivial person again, and, with his hand to theside of his mouth, and an air of solemn cunning, whispered:
"Where from?"
"Accomac, or Somerset, I reckon," muttered the other.
"Now," exclaimed the host, taking both of Judge Custis's hands, "how doour dear friends all get along in Somerset and Accomac? Where _do_ youcall home now, Friend Custis? How are our old friends Spence andUpshur, and Polk and Franklin and Harry Wise? Goy! how I love ourneighbors below."
There was a strength of articulation and physical emphasis in thespeaker that the Judge noted at once, and it was attended with a beamingof the eyes and a fine fortitude of the large jaws that made him nearlymagnetic.
"And this is John M. Clayton?" said the Judge. "We are not so far offthat we have not fully heard of you. And now, since I belong to anumerous family, let me identify myself, Clayton, as Daniel Custis, lateJudge on the Eastern Shore."
"Judge Custis! Daniel Custis! Friends," looking around, "what an honor!Think of it! The eminent American manufacturer! The creator of ourindustries! The friend of Mr. Clay and the home policy! Bayard, you neednot shake your head! Ridgely, pardon my patriotic enthusiasm! Look at _aman_, my friends, at last! Goy!"
As the Judge listened to various affirmations of welcome, Mr. Clayton,with one eye winked and the other resting on Lawyer Frame, the ardentspirit of the bar, made the motion with his lips:
"Cambridge?"
"No; Princess Anne."
"And dear old Princess Anne, how does she fare?"--he had again turned tothe Judge--"how is the little river Wicomico--no, I mean Manokin--howdoes it flow? Does it flow benevolently? Does it abound in the bestoysters I ever tasted? in _tar_rapin, too? How is she now? Goy!"
"Are you on your way north, Brother Custis, or going home?" the keen,black-eyed Chief-justice asked.
"No, my journey is ended. I came to Dover to be acquainted with Mr.Clayton."
"_Aunt Braner. Hyo! Come yer, Aunt Braner_!" the host cried loudly, andan old colored woman came in, closely followed by some of hergrandchildren, who stood, gazing, at the door. "Take this gentleman andgive him the best room in my house. The best ain't good enough for him!Take him right up and give him water and make your son bresh him, andwe'll send him the best julep in Kent County. Goy!"
"De bes' room was Miss Sally's, Mr. Clayton," the old woman answered.
A sudden change came over the highly prompt and sanguine face of thehost; he hesitated, wandered in the eyes, and caught himself on thewords:
"No, give him the Speaker Chew room: that'll suit him best."
As the Judge followed the servant out, the young Senator emptied hismouth of a large piece of tobacco into a monster spittoon that a blindman could hardly miss, and, with a face still long and sile
nt, and muchat variance with his previous spontaneity, he absently inquired:
"What can he want? what can he want?"
One of the small negro children had meantime toddled in at the door,and, with large, liquid eyes in its solemn, desirous face, laid hands onthe fiddle and looked up at Mr. Clayton.
"Bless the little child!" he suddenly said. "Wants a tune? Well!"
Placing himself in a large chair, the young Senator tilted it back tillhis hard, squarish head rested against the mantel, and he felt along thestrings almost purposelessly, till the plaintive air came forth:
"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon! How can ye bloom so fair? How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I so full of care?
Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird, That sings beside thy mate; For so I sat, and so I sang, And wist not of my fate."
He closed his eyes on the strains, and a thickening at his throat, andmovement of his broad, athletic chest, as he continued the air, showedthat he was inwardly laboring with some strong emotion.
His cousin, the Chief-justice, made a signal with his hat, and one byone the sitters stole out into the square noiselessly, and went theirways, leaving the young man playing on, with the negro child at hisknee, leaning there as if to spy out the living voice in his violin.
Other children came to the door--white children from the square, blackchildren from the garden--and some ventured a little way in to hear thetender wooing of the sympathetic strings. He moved his bow mechanically,but the music sprang forth as if it knew its sister, Grief, was waitingon the chords. At last a bolder child than the rest came and pushed hiselbow and said,
"Papa!"
"My boy, my dear boy!" the fiddler cried, as tears streamed down hischeeks, and he lifted the lad to his heart and kissed him.
Judge Custis, though no word passed upon the subject, saw the solitarycanker at the Senator's heart--his wife's dead form in the oldPresbyterian kirk-yard.
It was soon apparent to Judge Custis, from this and other silent things,that a light-hearted, affectionate, strong, yet womanly, engine ofenergy constituted the young Delaware lawyer-politician. Keen, cunning,impulsive, hopeful, his feet provincial, his head among the birds, hecombined facility and earnestness in almost mercurial relations to eachother, and the Judge saw that these must constitute a remarkable jurylawyer.
His face was shaven smooth; his throat and chin showed an early tendencyto flesh; the poise of his head and thoughtful darting of his eyes andslight aqualinity of his nose indicated one who loved mental action andcompetition, yet drew that love from a great, healthy body that had tobe watched lest it relapse into indolence. The loss of his wife so soonafter marriage had been followed by nearly complete indifference towomen, and he had made politics his only consolation and mistress,harnessing her like a young mare with his old roadster of the law, anddriving them together in the slender confines of his principality, andthen locking the law up among his office students to drive politics intothe national arena at Washington.
"You require to be very neighborly, Clayton, in a small bailiwick likethis?" the Judge inquired, as they strolled along the square in the softevening.
"We have the best people in the world in Delaware, friend Custis: fewtraders, little law, scarcely any violence, and they are easy to please;but it is a high offence in this state not to be what is called 'aclever man.' You must stop, whatever be your errand, and smile andinquire of every man at his gate for every individual member of hishousehold. The time lost in such kind, trifling intercourse is in theaggregate immense. But, Goy! I do love these people."
"It seems to me that you encourage that exaction."
"Well, I do. As an electioneerer, I can get away with any of 'em. Goy!Why, Jim Whitecar, Lord bless your dear soul!"--this addressed to athick-set, sandy, uncertain-looking man who was about retreating intothe Capitol Tavern--"what brings you to town, Jim?"
"It's a free country, I reckon," exclaimed the suspicious-looking man.
"Goy! that's so, Jimmy. We're all glad to see you in Dover behaving ofyourself, Jim. Now don't give me any trouble this year, friend Jimmy.Behave yourself, and be an honor to your good parents that I think somuch of. Oblige me, now!"
As they turned to cross the middle of the square, Clayton said:
"I'll have him at that whipping-post, hugging of it, one of these days."
"What is he?"
"A kidnapper down here in Sockum, and a bad one: a dangerous fellow,too. I hear he says if I ever push him to the extremity of hisco-laborer, Joe Johnson--whom I sent to the post and then saved fromcropping--that he'll kill me. Goy!"--Mr. Clayton looked around a trifleapprehensively--"I'm ready for him."
"Delaware kidnapping is a great institution," Custis said.
"It has an antiquity and extent you would hardly believe, friend Custis.Long before our independence, in the year 1760, the statutes of Delawarehad to provide against it. Our laws have never permitted the domesticslave-trade with other states."
The little place seemed to have a good society, and the beauty of theyoung girls sitting at the doors or walking in the evening showedsomething of the florid North Europe skins, Batavian eyes, and rotundDutch or Quaker figures.
As they returned to the public square, a room in the tavern, almostbrilliantly lighted for that day of candles, displayed its windows tothe gaze of Clayton, who exclaimed:
"Goy! that is surely John Randel, Junior."
"That distinguished engineer?" observed his visitor, who had beenwaiting all the evening to broach the subject of his errand. "I have thegreatest admiration of him. Shall we call on him?"
"Why, yes, yes," answered Clayton, dubiously; "I'm not afraid of him.I--goy! I owe him nothing. He is such a litigious fellow, though; sopersistent with it; _barratry_, _champetry_, mad incorrigibility:he's the wildest man of genius alive. But come on!"
Knocking at a door on the second floor, a sharp, prompt reply came out:
"Come!"
A middle-sized man, with a large head and broad shoulders, and clothleggings, buttoned to above his knee, sat in a nearly naked, carpetlessroom, writing, his table surrounded by burning wax candles, and hiscountenance was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him andseized his hand:
"How is my friend Randel? The indefatigable litigant, the brilliantengineer, to whom ideas, goy! are like persimmons on the tree, abundant,but seldom ripe, and only good when frosted. How is he now and what ishe at?"
"Stand there," spoke the engineer, "and look at me while I read thesentence I was finishing upon John Middleton Clayton of Delaware."
"Go it, Randel! Now, Custis, he'll put a wick in me and just set meafire. Goy!"
"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to lettheir judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or tosuppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence thatresidue and fruit of all talents, the honest conviction of a man'sbravest sagacity, perishes in lawyers' souls ere half their powers arefledged: they become the registers of other men, they think no more thanwax.'"
Here Mr. Randel blew out one of the candles. The illustration wascogent. Mr. Clayton lighted it again with another candle.
"There's method in his madness, Custis," he said, with a wink. "Let meintroduce my great friend to you, Randel?"
"Stop there," the engineer repeated, sternly, "till I have read mysentence. 'Seldom it is that a lawyer of useful parts, in a community asdetached and pastoral as the State of Delaware, has a cause appealing tohis manliness, his genius, and his avarice, like this of John Randel,Junior, civil engineer! No equal public work will probably be built inthe State of Delaware during the lifetime of the said Clayton. No fee hecan earn in his native state will ever have been the reward of a lawyerthere like his who shall be successful with the suit of John Randel,Junior, against the Canal Company. No principle is better worth a greatlawyer's vindication than that these corporations, in their infancy,shall not trample upon the private rights of a gentleman, and tre
at hisscholarship and services like the labor of a slave.'"
"Well said and highly thought," interposed Judge Custis.
"'The said Clayton,'" continued John Randel, still reading, "'refusesthe aid of his abilities to a stranger and a gentleman inhospitablytreated in the State of Delaware.'"
"No, no," cried Clayton; "that is a charge against me I will notpermit."
"'The said Clayton,'" read Randel, inflexibly, "'with the possibilitiesof light, riches, and honor for himself, and justice for a fellow-man,chooses cowardice, mediocrity--and darkness. He extinguishes my hopesand his.'"
With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his hands and waft ofhis breath, put out all the candles at once and left the whole room indarkness.
Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordinaryillustration:
"Clayton, I believe he has a good case."
"That is not the point now," Mr. Clayton said, with rising spirit andemphasis. "The point now is, 'Am I guilty of inhospitality?' Goy! thattouches me as a Delawarean, and is a high offence in this little state.It is true that this suitor is a stranger. He comes to me with anintroduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Seward, of New York,who vouches for him. But the corporation he menaces is also entitled tohospitality: it is, in the main, Philadelphia capital. Girard himself,that frugal yet useful citizen, is one of its promoters. My own state,and Maryland, too, have interests in this work. Is it the part ofhospitality to be taking advantage of our small interposing geography,and laying by the heels, through our local courts, a young, struggling,and, indeed, national undertaking?"
"Let the courts of your state, which are pure, decide between us," saidJohn Randel, Junior, relighting the candles with his tinder-box.
"No lawyer ought to refuse the trial of such a public cause because ofany state scruples," Judge Custis put in, in his grandest way. "That isnot national; it is not Whig, Brother Clayton." The Judge here gave hisentire family power to his facial energy, and expressed the Virginianand patrician in his treatment of the Delaware _bourgeois_ and plebeian."Granted that this corporation is young and untried: let it bedisciplined in time, that it may avoid more expensive mistakes in thefuture. No cause, to a true lawyer, is like a human cause; the time maycome when the talent of the American bar will be the parasite ofcorporations and monopolists, but it is too early for that degradationfor you and me, Senator Clayton. The rights of a man involve allprogress; progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As a sonof Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to me, I would not letthis gentleman be sacrificed."
"If I were a rich man, Clayton would take my case," the engineer said;"my poverty is my disqualification in his eyes."
He again essayed, in a dramatic way, to fan out the candles, but hisbreath failed him; his hands became limp, and then hastily covered hiseyes, and he sank to the table with a groan, and put his head upon itconvulsively.
"Gentlemen," he uttered, in a voice touching by its distress, "oh!gentlemen, professional life--my art--is, indeed, a tragedy."
The easy sensibilities of Judge Custis were at once moved. SenatorClayton, looking from one to the other in nervous indecision, seeingCustis's dewy eyes, and Randel's proud breaking down, was himselfcarried away, and shouted:
"I goy! This is a conspiracy. But, Randel, I'll take your case; I can'tsee a man cry. Goy!"
As they all arose sympathetically and shook hands, a knock came on thedoor, and there was a call for Mr. Clayton. He returned in a fewminutes, with a rather grim countenance, and said:
"Randel, I have just declined a big round retaining-fee to defend thevery suit your tears and Brother Custis's have persuaded me toprosecute. But, goy! a tear always robbed me of a dollar."
"This sympathy to-day will make you an independent man for life,"exclaimed the engineer.
"I have done Milburn's first errand right," Judge Custis thought; "fiveminutes' delay would have been fatal."