CHAPTER XXXI.

PEACH BLUSH.

Judge Custis, whom we left riding out of Princess Anne on Sunday

afternoon, kept straight north, crossed the bottom of Delaware in the

early evening, and went to bed at Laurel, on Broad Creek, a few miles

south of Cannon's Ferry.

At daylight he was ahorse again, scarcely stiff from his exertion, and

feeling the rising joys of a stomach and brain becoming clearer than for

years, of all the forms of alcohol. His mind had been bathed in sleep

and temperance, the two great physicians, and wiped dry, like the feet

of the Prince of sufferers, with women's hairs. Exercise, natural to a

Virginian, awakened his flowing spirits again, and he fancied the air

grew purer as he advanced into the north, though there was hardly any

perceptible change of elevation. The country grew drier, however, as he

turned the head springs of the great cypress swamp--the counterbalance

of the Dismal Swamp of Virginia--receded from the Chesapeake waters, and

approached the tributaries of the Atlantic. At nine o'clock he entered

the court-house cluster of Georgetown, a little place of a few hundred

people, pitched nearly at the centre of the county one generation

before, or about ten years after the independence of the country.

It was a level place of shingle-boarded houses, assembled around a sandy

square, in which were both elm and Italian poplar trees; and a

double-storied wooden court-house was on the farther side, surrounded by

little cabins for the county officers, pitched here and there, and in

the rear was a jail of two stories, with family apartments below, and

the dungeon window, the debtors' room, and a family bedroom above; and

near the jail and court-house stood the whipping-post, like a dismantled

pump, with a pillory floor some feet above the ground.

Young maples, mulberry and tulip trees, and ailanthuses grew bravely to

make shade along the two streets which pierced the square, and the four

streets which were parallel to its sides--pretty lanes being inserted

between, to which the loamy gardens ran; and, as the Judge stopped at

the tavern near the court, he was told it was "returning day," and the

place 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?" asked

the 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 Bayard

and 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 he

whipped the British."

At breakfast Judge Custis recognized a gentleman opposite, wearing

smallclothes, and with his hair in a queue, who spoke without other than

a 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 were

those of stewardship, and whose nearly obsolete dress was the badge, not

of worldly pride, but of perished joys and contemporaries. His

unaffected countenance seemed to say: "I wear it because it is useless

to put off what no one else will wear, when presently I shall need

nothing but a shroud."

Judge Custis looked at the meek old gentleman closely, sitting at his

plate like a lay brother in some monastery or infirmary, indifferent to

talk or news or affairs; and the remembrance of what he had been--keen,

accumulative, with youthful passions long retained, and the man buoyant

under the judge's guard--impressed the Virginian to say to himself:

"What, then, is man! At last old age asserts itself, and bends the

brazen temple of his countenance, like Samson, in almost pious remorse.

There sits twenty-five years of equity administration; behind it, thirty

years of jocund and various life. No newspaper shall ever record it,

because none are printed here; he is indifferent to that forgetfulness

and to all others, because the springs of life are dry in his body, and

he no more enjoys."

"Are you travelling north, Judge Custis?" the old man asked, for

politeness' 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 of

your 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. I

have been a flatterer, too."

The Chancellor's black boy was put on the Judge's horse, and the two

men, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned the

court-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard the

sheriff 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 passing

chancellor, whose look of resignation only deepened and grew more

humble. The Judge had some vague recollection which moved him to change

the subject.

"We see each other but little, Chancellor, though we divide the same

little heritage of land. I suppose your people are all proud of

Delaware."

"Yes," said the old man; "being such a little adventurer, a mere

foundling in the band of states, our people have the pride of their

independence. The laws are administered, some more farms are opened in

the forest every year, blossoms come, and old men die and are buried on

their farms, and their bones respected a few years. Our history is so

pastoral that we must show some temper when it is assailed, or we might

let out our ignorance of it."

They rode in silence some hours through an older settled and more open

country, with some large mill-ponds and a better class of farm

improvements, and the sense of some large water near at hand was

mystically felt.

The Judge followed the old man's eyes at one place, seeing that they

were raised with an expression of tranquil satisfaction, like aged

piety, and a beautiful landscape of soft green marsh lay under their

gaze from a slight elevation they had reached, showing cattle and sheep

roving in it, tall groves where cows and horses found midday shade, and

winding creeks, carrying sails of hidden boats, as if in a magical

cruise upon the velvet verdure. Haystacks and farm settlements stood out

in the long levels, and sailing birds speckled the air. In the far

distance 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 a

large mill-pond, sawmills, several vessels building on the stocks, and

an air of superior vitality to anything Judge Custis had seen in

Delaware. Here the Chancellor pointed out the late home of Senator

Clayton's father, and, after the horses had been fed, they continued

still northward, passing another small town on a creek near the marshes,

and, a little beyond it, came to a venerable brick church, a little from

the road, in a grove of oaks and forest trees.

"Here is Barrett's chapel," said the Chancellor; "celebrated for the

plotting of the campaign between Wesley's native and English preachers

for 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 in

the gable, trim rows of arch-bricks over door and windows, and belt

masonry; and heard the tall trees hush it to sleep like a baby left to

them. Nearly fifty feet square, and probably fifty years old, it looked

to be good for another hundred years.

"My family in Accomac was harsh with the Methodists through a mistaken

conservatism," Judge Custis said. "They are a good people; they seem to

suit this peninsula like the peachtree."

A small funeral procession was turning into Barrett's chapel, and the

Chancellor interrogated one of the more indifferent followers as to the

dead person. Having mentioned the name, the citizen said:

"His death was mysterious. He was a Methodist and a good man, but it

seems that avarice was gnawing his principles away. A slave boy, soon to

become free by law, disappeared from his possession, and he gave it out

that the boy had run away. But suddenly our neighbor began to drink and

to display money, and they say he had the boy kidnapped. He died like

one with an attack of despair."

As they turned again northward, in the genial afternoon, Judge Custis

said:

"What a stigma on both sides, Chancellor, is this kidnapping!"

The old man meekly looked down and did not reply. Judge Custis, feeling

that there was some sensitiveness on this and kindred subjects, yet why

he could not recollect, continued, under the impulse of his feelings:

"The night before I left Princess Anne, Joe Johnson, one of your worst

kidnappers, boldly came to my house for lodging. Why I let him stay

there 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--the

name 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 this

state. This Brereton killed a slave-buyer for what he brought here upon

his person to buy the kidnapped free people and apprentice-slaves.

Brereton was the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, that infamous pander

between Delaware and the South."

The old Chancellor looked up.

"I wish to anticipate you," he said, "in what you might further say with

truth, but perhaps do not fully know. The murderer, Brereton, was the

son-in-law of Patty Cannon, it is true; but he was also the

brother-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 in

such a little state!"

It was in the middle of the afternoon that Judge Daniel Custis rode into

a small town on an undulating plain, around two sides of which, at

hardly 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 winding

through copse, splutter-dock, lotus-flower, and marsh to the Delaware

Bay.

At the centre of the town, on the swell or crest of alluvial soil, of a

light sandy loam foundation, an oblong public square, divided by a north

and south street, contained the principal dwellings of the place, one of

which was the Delaware State Capitol, a red-brick building, a little

older than the American Constitution, with a bell-crowned cupola above

its centre, and thence could be seen the Delaware Bay.

Near the state-house stood the whipping-post in the corner, humble as a

hitching-post, and the brick jail hid out of the way there also, like an

unpresentable servant ever cringing near his master's company. Various

buildings, generally antique, surrounded this prim, Quakerly square,

some brick, and with low portals, others smart, and remodelled to suit

the times; some were mere wooden offices or huts, with long dormers

falling from the roof-ridge nearly to the eaves, like a dingy feather

from a hat-crown, with a jewel in the end; and one was an old

steep-roofed hotel, painted yellow, with a long, lounging side.

At diagonal corners of this square, as far apart as its space would

permit, two venerable doctors' homes still stood, which had given more

repute to Delaware's little capital than its jurists or statesmen,--the

former residence of Sykes the surgeon and Miller the pathologist and

writer.

It was at the former of these houses, a many-windowed, tall,

side-fronting house of plastered brick, with side office and centre

door, that Judge Custis stopped and hitched his horse to a rack near the

state-house adjoining. The sound of twittering birds fell from the large

elms, willows, and maples on the square, and Custis could see the robins

running in the grass.

From the door of the two-storied side office the sound of a violin came

tenderly, and the Judge waited until the tune was done, when loud

exclamations of pleasure, the clapping of hands, and the stamping of

feet, showed that the fiddler was not alone.

Presenting himself at the door, Judge Custis was immediately confronted

by a large, tall man, fully six feet high, with a strong countenance and

sandy hair, who carried the fiddle and bow in his hand, and with the

other 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 expected

you on this simple occasion? Sit down there and take my own chair! Not

that little one--no, the big easy-chair for my old friend! Goy!"

As Judge Custis cast his eye around, to note the company, the

demonstrative 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; "I

reckon he is, by the lips and skin."

"Goy!" rapidly spoke the fiddler. "Friend Custis--I know my heart does

not deceive me!--let me introduce you to the very essence of grand old

little Delaware: here is Bob Frame, the ardent spirit of our bar; this

is James Bayard, our misguided Democratic favorite; here is Charley

Marim and Secretary Harrington, and my esteemed friend Senator Ridgely,

and my cousin, Chief-justice Clayton. We are all here, and all honored

by such a rare guest. Goy!"

As the Judge went through the hand-shaking process, the tall, well-fed

host stooped to the convivial person again, and, with his hand to the

side 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 do

our dear friends all get along in Somerset and Accomac? Where _do_ you

call home now, Friend Custis? How are our old friends Spence and

Upshur, and Polk and Franklin and Harry Wise? Goy! how I love our

neighbors below."

There was a strength of articulation and physical emphasis in the

speaker that the Judge noted at once, and it was attended with a beaming

of the eyes and a fine fortitude of the large jaws that made him nearly

magnetic.

"And this is John M. Clayton?" said the Judge. "We are not so far off

that we have not fully heard of you. And now, since I belong to a

numerous family, let me identify myself, Clayton, as Daniel Custis, late

Judge on the Eastern Shore."

"Judge Custis! Daniel Custis! Friends," looking around, "what an honor!

Think of it! The eminent American manufacturer! The creator of our

industries! The friend of Mr. Clay and the home policy! Bayard, you need

not shake your head! Ridgely, pardon my patriotic enthusiasm! Look at _a

man_, 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 ardent

spirit 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 to

the Judge--"how is the little river Wicomico--no, I mean Manokin--how

does it flow? Does it flow benevolently? Does it abound in the best

oysters 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, and

an old colored woman came in, closely followed by some of her

grandchildren, who stood, gazing, at the door. "Take this gentleman and

give 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, and

we'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 the

host; he hesitated, wandered in the eyes, and caught himself on the

words:

"No, give him the Speaker Chew room: that'll suit him best."

As the Judge followed the servant out, the young Senator emptied his

mouth of a large piece of tobacco into a monster spittoon that a blind

man could hardly miss, and, with a face still long and silent, and much

at 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 on

the 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 till

his hard, squarish head rested against the mantel, and he felt along the

strings 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, and

movement of his broad, athletic chest, as he continued the air, showed

that he was inwardly laboring with some strong emotion.

His cousin, the Chief-justice, made a signal with his hat, and one by

one the sitters stole out into the square noiselessly, and went their

ways, leaving the young man playing on, with the negro child at his

knee, leaning there as if to spy out the living voice in his violin.

Other children came to the door--white children from the square, black

children from the garden--and some ventured a little way in to hear the

tender wooing of the sympathetic strings. He moved his bow mechanically,

but the music sprang forth as if it knew its sister, Grief, was waiting

on the chords. At last a bolder child than the rest came and pushed his

elbow and said,

"Papa!"

"My boy, my dear boy!" the fiddler cried, as tears streamed down his

cheeks, and he lifted the lad to his heart and kissed him.

Judge Custis, though no word passed upon the subject, saw the solitary

canker at the Senator's heart--his wife's dead form in the old

Presbyterian kirk-yard.

It was soon apparent to Judge Custis, from this and other silent things,

that a light-hearted, affectionate, strong, yet womanly, engine of

energy constituted the young Delaware lawyer-politician. Keen, cunning,

impulsive, hopeful, his feet provincial, his head among the birds, he

combined facility and earnestness in almost mercurial relations to each

other, and the Judge saw that these must constitute a remarkable jury

lawyer.

His face was shaven smooth; his throat and chin showed an early tendency

to flesh; the poise of his head and thoughtful darting of his eyes and

slight aqualinity of his nose indicated one who loved mental action and

competition, yet drew that love from a great, healthy body that had to

be watched lest it relapse into indolence. The loss of his wife so soon

after marriage had been followed by nearly complete indifference to

women, and he had made politics his only consolation and mistress,

harnessing her like a young mare with his old roadster of the law, and

driving them together in the slender confines of his principality, and

then locking the law up among his office students to drive politics into

the national arena at Washington.

"You require to be very neighborly, Clayton, in a small bailiwick like

this?" the Judge inquired, as they strolled along the square in the soft

evening.

"We have the best people in the world in Delaware, friend Custis: few

traders, 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 'a

clever man.' You must stop, whatever be your errand, and smile and

inquire of every man at his gate for every individual member of his

household. The time lost in such kind, trifling intercourse is in the

aggregate 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 a

thick-set, sandy, uncertain-looking man who was about retreating into

the 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 of

yourself, 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 so

much 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 his

co-laborer, Joe Johnson--whom I sent to the post and then saved from

cropping--that he'll kill me. Goy!"--Mr. Clayton looked around a trifle

apprehensively--"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 Delaware

had to provide against it. Our laws have never permitted the domestic

slave-trade with other states."

The little place seemed to have a good society, and the beauty of the

young girls sitting at the doors or walking in the evening showed

something of the florid North Europe skins, Batavian eyes, and rotund

Dutch or Quaker figures.

As they returned to the public square, a room in the tavern, almost

brilliantly lighted for that day of candles, displayed its windows to

the gaze of Clayton, who exclaimed:

"Goy! that is surely John Randel, Junior."

"That distinguished engineer?" observed his visitor, who had been

waiting all the evening to broach the subject of his errand. "I have the

greatest 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; so

persistent 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 cloth

leggings, buttoned to above his knee, sat in a nearly naked, carpetless

room, writing, his table surrounded by burning wax candles, and his

countenance was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him and

seized his hand:

"How is my friend Randel? The indefatigable litigant, the brilliant

engineer, 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 is

he at?"

"Stand there," spoke the engineer, "and look at me while I read the

sentence I was finishing upon John Middleton Clayton of Delaware."

"Go it, Randel! Now, Custis, he'll put a wick in me and just set me

afire. Goy!"

"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to let

their judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or to

suppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence that

residue and fruit of all talents, the honest conviction of a man's

bravest sagacity, perishes in lawyers' souls ere half their powers are

fledged: they become the registers of other men, they think no more than

wax.'"

Here Mr. Randel blew out one of the candles. The illustration was

cogent. Mr. Clayton lighted it again with another candle.

"There's method in his madness, Custis," he said, with a wink. "Let me

introduce my great friend to you, Randel?"

"Stop there," the engineer repeated, sternly, "till I have read my

sentence. 'Seldom it is that a lawyer of useful parts, in a community as

detached and pastoral as the State of Delaware, has a cause appealing to

his manliness, his genius, and his avarice, like this of John Randel,

Junior, civil engineer! No equal public work will probably be built in

the State of Delaware during the lifetime of the said Clayton. No fee he

can earn in his native state will ever have been the reward of a lawyer

there like his who shall be successful with the suit of John Randel,

Junior, against the Canal Company. No principle is better worth a great

lawyer's vindication than that these corporations, in their infancy,

shall not trample upon the private rights of a gentleman, and treat his

scholarship and services like the labor of a slave.'"

"Well said and highly thought," interposed Judge Custis.

"'The said Clayton,'" continued John Randel, still reading, "'refuses

the aid of his abilities to a stranger and a gentleman inhospitably

treated in the State of Delaware.'"

"No, no," cried Clayton; "that is a charge against me I will not

permit."

"'The said Clayton,'" read Randel, inflexibly, "'with the possibilities

of light, riches, and honor for himself, and justice for a fellow-man,

chooses cowardice, mediocrity--and darkness. He extinguishes my hopes

and his.'"

With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his hands and waft of

his breath, put out all the candles at once and left the whole room in

darkness.

Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordinary

illustration:

"Clayton, I believe he has a good case."

"That is not the point now," Mr. Clayton said, with rising spirit and

emphasis. "The point now is, 'Am I guilty of inhospitality?' Goy! that

touches 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 an

introduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Seward, of New York,

who vouches for him. But the corporation he menaces is also entitled to

hospitality: 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 of

hospitality 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," said

John Randel, Junior, relighting the candles with his tinder-box.

"No lawyer ought to refuse the trial of such a public cause because of

any state scruples," Judge Custis put in, in his grandest way. "That is

not national; it is not Whig, Brother Clayton." The Judge here gave his

entire family power to his facial energy, and expressed the Virginian

and patrician in his treatment of the Delaware _bourgeois_ and plebeian.

"Granted that this corporation is young and untried: let it be

disciplined in time, that it may avoid more expensive mistakes in the

future. No cause, to a true lawyer, is like a human cause; the time may

come when the talent of the American bar will be the parasite of

corporations and monopolists, but it is too early for that degradation

for you and me, Senator Clayton. The rights of a man involve all

progress; progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As a son

of Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to me, I would not let

this 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 his

breath failed him; his hands became limp, and then hastily covered his

eyes, and he sank to the table with a groan, and put his head upon it

convulsively.

"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. Senator

Clayton, looking from one to the other in nervous indecision, seeing

Custis's dewy eyes, and Randel's proud breaking down, was himself

carried away, and shouted:

"I goy! This is a conspiracy. But, Randel, I'll take your case; I can't

see a man cry. Goy!"

As they all arose sympathetically and shook hands, a knock came on the

door, and there was a call for Mr. Clayton. He returned in a few

minutes, with a rather grim countenance, and said:

"Randel, I have just declined a big round retaining-fee to defend the

very suit your tears and Brother Custis's have persuaded me to

prosecute. 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; "five

minutes' delay would have been fatal."