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+Project Gutenberg's Colonel Carter of Cartersville, by F. Hopkinson Smith
+#8 in our series by F. Hopkinson Smith
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+Title: Colonel Carter of Cartersville
+
+Author: F. Hopkinson Smith
+
+Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6743]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 20, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLONEL CARTER OF CARTERSVILLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Phil McLaury, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL CARTER OF CARTERSVILLE
+
+BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
+
+
+
+I dedicate this book to the memory of my counselor and my
+friend,--that most delightful of story-tellers, that most charming of
+comrades,--my dear old Mother; whose early life was spent near
+the shade of the Colonel's porch, and whose keen enjoyment of the
+stories between these covers--stories we have so often laughed over
+together--is still among my pleasantest recollections.
+
+F. H. S.
+
+New York, May, 1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS AND LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+    "My fire is my friend."
+
+I. THE COLONEL'S HOUSE IN BEDFORD PLACE.
+
+    The Street Entrance.
+
+    Chad "dishin' the Dinner."
+
+    "Gentlemen, a true Southern lady."
+
+    Fitz.
+
+II. THE GARDEN SPOT OF VIRGINIA SEEKS AN OUTLET TO THE SEA.
+
+    "Chad was groaning under a square wicker basket."
+
+    "The little negroes around the door."
+
+III. AN OLD FAMILY SERVANT.
+
+    "Who's that?"
+
+    The old Clock Tower.
+
+    Mister Grocerman.
+
+IV. THE ARRIVAL OF A TRUE SOUTHERN LADY.
+
+V. AN ALLUSION TO A YELLOW DOG.
+
+    The Colonel's Office.
+
+    The Advance Agent.
+
+    The Nervous Man.
+
+VI. CERTAIN IMPORTANT LETTERS.
+
+    "Like an ebony Statue of Liberty."
+
+VII. THE OUTCOME OF A COUNCIL OF WAR.
+
+    "Down a flight of stone steps."
+
+
+VIII. A HIGH SENSE OF HONOR.
+
+    "Klutchem looked at him in perfect astonishment."
+
+IX. A VISIT OF CEREMONY.
+
+    The Colonel's Door.
+
+X. CHAD IN SEARCH OF A COAL-FIELD.
+
+XI. CHAD ON HIS OWN CABIN FLOOR.
+
+    Polishing the Parlor Floor.
+
+    Henny.
+
+    Some Stray Pickaninnies.
+
+XII. The ENGLISHMAN'S CHECK.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_The Colonel's House in Bedford Place_
+
+The dinner was at the colonel's--an old-fashioned, partly furnished,
+two-story house nearly a century old which crouches down behind a
+larger and more modern dwelling fronting on Bedford Place within a
+stone's throw of the tall clock tower of Jefferson Market.
+
+The street entrance to this curious abode is marked by a swinging
+wooden gate opening into a narrow tunnel which dodges under the front
+house. It is an uncanny sort of passageway, mouldy and wet from a
+long-neglected leak overhead, and is lighted at night by a rusty lantern
+with dingy glass sides.
+
+On sunny days this gruesome tunnel frames from the street a delightful
+picture of a bit of the yard beyond, with the quaint colonial door and
+its three steps let down in a welcoming way.
+
+Its retired location and shabby entrance brought it quite within the
+colonel's income, and as the rent was not payable in advance, and the
+landlord patient, he had surrounded himself not only with all the
+comforts but with many of the luxuries of a more pretentious home. In
+this he was assisted by his negro servant Chad,--an abbreviation of
+Nebuchadnezzar,--who was chambermaid, cook, butler, body-servant, and
+boots, and who by his marvelous tales of the magnificence of "de old
+fambly place in Caartersville" had established a credit among the
+shopkeepers on the avenue which would have been denied a much more
+solvent customer.
+
+To this hospitable retreat I wended my way in obedience to one of the
+colonel's characteristic notes:--
+
+No. 51 BEDFORD PLACE
+_Friday._
+
+Everything is booming--Fitz says the scheme will take like the
+measles--dinner tomorrow at six--don't be late.
+
+CARTER.
+
+The colonel had written several similar notes that week,--I lived but
+a few streets away,--all on the spur of the moment, and all expressive
+of his varying moods and wants; the former suggested by his unbounded
+enthusiasm over his new railroad scheme, and the latter by such requests
+as these: "Will you lend me half a dozen napkins--mine are all in the
+wash, and I want enough to carry me over Sunday. Chad will bring, with
+your permission, the extra pair of andirons you spoke of." Or, "Kindly
+hand Chad the two magazines and a corkscrew."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Of course Chad always tucked them under his arm, and carried them away,
+for nobody ever refused the colonel anything--nobody who loved him.
+As for himself, he would have been equally generous in return, and
+have emptied his house, and even his pocketbook, in my behalf, had
+that latter receptacle been capable of further effort. Should this
+have been temporarily overstrained,--and it generally was,--he would
+have promptly borrowed the amount of the nearest friend, and then have
+rubbed his hands and glowed all day with delight at being able to
+relieve my necessity.
+
+"I am a Virginian, suh. Command me," was his way of putting it.
+
+So to-night I pushed open the swinging door, felt my way along the
+dark passage, and crossed the small yard choked with snow at the precise
+minute when the two hands of the great clock in the tall tower pointed
+to six.
+
+The door was opened by Chad.
+
+"Walk right in, suh; de colonel's in de dinin'-room."
+
+Chad was wrong. The colonel was at that moment finishing his toilet
+upstairs, in what he was pleased to call his "dressing-room," his
+cheery voice announcing that fact over the balusters as soon as he
+heard my own, coupled with the additional information that he would
+be down in five minutes.
+
+What a cosy charming interior, this dining-room of the colonel's! It
+had once been two rooms, and two very small ones at that, divided by
+folding doors. From out the rear one there had opened a smaller room
+answering to the space occupied by the narrow hall and staircase in
+front. All the interior partitions and doors dividing these three rooms
+had been knocked away at some time in its history, leaving an L interior
+having two windows in front and three in the rear.
+
+Some one of its former occupants, more luxurious than the others, had
+paneled the walls of this now irregular-shaped apartment with a dark
+wood running half way to the low ceiling badly smoked and blackened
+by time, and had built two fireplaces--an open wood fire which laughed
+at me from behind my own andirons, and an old-fashioned English grate
+set into the chimney with wide hobs--convenient and necessary for the
+various brews and mixtures for which the colonel was famous.
+
+Midway, equally warmed by both fires, stood the table, its centre
+freshened by a great dish of celery white and crisp, with covers for
+three on a snow-white cloth resplendent in old India blue, while at
+each end shone a pair of silver coasters,--heirlooms from Carter
+Hall,--one holding a cut-glass decanter of Madeira, the other awaiting
+its customary bottle of claret.
+
+On the hearth before the wood fire rested a pile of plates, also
+Indiablue, and on the mantel over the grate stood a row of bottles
+adapting
+themselves, like all good foreigners, to the rigors of our climate.
+Add a pair of silver candelabra with candles,--the colonel despised
+gas,--dark red curtains drawn close, three or four easy chairs, a few
+etchings and sketches loaned from my studio, together with a modest
+sideboard at the end of the L, and you have the salient features of
+a room so inviting and restful that you wanted life made up of one
+long dinner, continually served within its hospitable walls.
+
+But I hear the colonel calling down the back stairs:--
+
+"Not a minute over eighteen, Chad. You ruined those ducks last Sunday."
+
+The next moment he had me by both hands.
+
+"My dear Major, I am pa'alized to think I kep' you waitin'. Just up
+from my office. Been workin' like a slave, suh. Only five minutes to
+dress befo' dinner. Have a drop of sherry and a dash of bitters, or
+shall we wait for Fitzpatrick? No? All right! He should have been here
+befo' this. You don't know Fitz? Most extraord'nary man; a great mind,
+suh; literature, science, politics, finance, everything at his fingers'
+ends. He has been of the greatest service to me since I have been in
+New York in this railroad enterprise, which I am happy to say is now
+reachin' a culmination. You shall hear all about it after dinner. Put
+yo' body in that chair and yo' feet on the fender--my fire and yo'
+fender! No, Fitz's fender and yo' andirons! Charmin' combination!"
+
+It is always one of my delights to watch the colonel as he busies
+himself about the room, warming a big chair for his guests, punching
+the fire, brushing the sparks from the pile of plates, and testing the
+temperature of the claret lovingly with the palms of his hands.
+
+He is perhaps fifty years of age, tall and slightly built. His iron
+gray hair is brushed straight back from his forehead, overlapping his
+collar behind. His eyes are deep-set and twinkling; nose prominent;
+cheeks slightly sunken; brow wide and high; and chin and jaw strong
+and marked. His moustache droops over a firm, well-cut mouth and unites
+at its ends with a gray goatee which rests on his shirt front.
+
+Like most Southerners living away from great cities his voice is soft
+and low, and tempered with a cadence that is delicious.
+
+He wears a black broadcloth coat,--a double-breasted garment,--with
+similar colored waistcoat and trousers, a turn-down collar, a shirt
+of many plaits which is under-starched and over-wrinkled but always
+clean, large cuffs very much frayed, a narrow black or white tie, and
+low shoes with white cotton stockings.
+
+This black broadcloth coat, by the way, is quite the most interesting
+feature of the colonel's costume. So many changes are constantly made
+in its general make-up that you never quite believe it is the same
+ill-buttoned, shiny garment until you become familiar with its
+possibilities.
+
+When the colonel has a funeral or other serious matter on his mind,
+this coat is buttoned close up under his chin showing only the upper
+edge of his white collar, his gaunt throat and the stray end of a black
+cravat. When he is invited to dinner he buttons it lower down, revealing
+as well a bit of his plaited shirt, and when it is a wedding this old
+stand-by is thrown wide open discovering a stiff, starched, white
+waistcoat with ivory buttons and snowy neck-cloth.
+
+These several make-ups used once to surprise me, and I often found
+myself insisting that the looseness and grace with which this garment
+flapped about the colonel's thin legs was only possible in a brand-new
+coat having all the spring and lightness of youth in its seams. I was
+always mistaken. I had only to look at the mis-mated buttons and the
+raveled edge of the lining fringing the tails. It was the same coat.
+
+The colonel wore to-night the lower-button style with the white tie.
+It was indeed the adjustment of this necessary article which had
+consumed the five minutes passed in his dressing-room, slightly
+lengthened by the time necessary to trim his cuffs--a little nicety
+which he rarely overlooked and which it mortified him to forget.
+
+What a frank, generous, tender-hearted fellow he is: happy as a boy;
+hospitable to the verge of beggary; enthusiastic as he is visionary;
+simple as he is genuine. A Virginian of good birth, fair education,
+and limited knowledge of the world and of men, proud of his ancestry,
+proud of his State, and proud of himself; believing in states' rights,
+slavery, and the Confederacy; and away down in the bottom of his soul
+still clinging to the belief that the poor white trash of the earth
+includes about everybody outside of Fairfax County.
+
+With these antecedents it is easy to see that his "reconstruction" is
+as hopeless as that of the famous Greek frieze, outwardly whole andyet
+always a patchwork. So he chafes continually under what he believes
+to be the tyranny and despotism of an undefined autocracy, which, in
+a general way, he calls "the Government," but which really refers to
+the distribution of certain local offices in his own immediate vicinity.
+
+When he hands you his card it bears this unabridged inscription:--
+
+    Colonel George Fairfax Carter,
+    of Carter Hall,
+    Cartersville, Virginia.
+
+He omits "United States of America," simply because it would add nothing
+to his identity or his dignity.
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+"There's Fitz," said the colonel as a sharp double knock sounded at
+the outer gate; and the next instant a stout, thick-set, round-faced
+man of forty, with merry, bead-like eyes protected by big-bowed
+spectacles, pushed open the door, and peered in good-humoredly.
+
+The colonel sprang forward and seized him by both shoulders.
+
+"What the devil do you mean, Fitz, by comin' ten minutes late? Don't
+you know, suh, that the burnin' of a canvasback is a crime?
+
+"Stuck in the snow? Well, I'll forgive you this once, but Chad won't.
+Give me yo' coat--bless me! it is as wet as a setter dog. Now put yo'
+belated carcass into this chair which I have been warmin' for you,
+right next to my dearest old friend, the Major. Major, Fitz!--Fitz,
+the Major! Take hold of each other. Does my heart good to get you both
+together. Have you brought a copy of the prospectus of our railroad?
+You know I want the Major in with us on the groun' flo'. But after
+dinner--not a word befo'."
+
+This railroad was the colonel's only hope for the impoverished acres
+of Carter Hall, but lately saved from foreclosure by the generosity
+of his aunt, Miss Nancy Carter, who had redeemed it with almost all
+her savings, the house and half of the outlying lands being, thereupon,
+deeded to her. The other half reverted to the colonel.
+
+I explained to Fitz immediately after his hearty greeting that I was
+a humble landscape painter, and not a major at all, having not the
+remotest connection with any military organization whatever; but that
+the colonel always insisted upon surrounding himself with a staff, and
+that my promotion was in conformity with this habit.
+
+The colonel laughed, seized the poker, and rapped three times on the
+floor. A voice from the kitchen rumbled up:--
+
+"Comin', sah!"
+
+It was Chad "dishin' the dinner" below, his explanations increasing
+in distinctness as he pushed the rear door open with his foot,--both
+hands being occupied with the soup tureen which he bore aloft and
+placed at the head of the table.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In a moment more he retired to the outer hall and reappeared brilliant
+in white jacket and apron. Then he ranged himself behind the colonel's
+chair and with great dignity announced that dinner was served.
+
+"Come, Major! Fitz, sit where you can warm yo' back--you are not thawed
+out yet. One minute, gentlemen,--an old custom of my ancestors which
+I never omit."
+
+The blessing was asked with becoming reverence; there was a slight
+pause, and then the colonel lifted the cover of the tureen and sent
+a savory cloud of incense to the ceiling.
+
+The soup was a cream of something with baby crabs. There was also a
+fish,--boiled,--with slices of hard boiled eggs fringing the dish,
+ovaled by a hedge of parsley and supplemented by a pyramid of potatoes
+with their jackets ragged as tramps. Then a ham, brown and crisp, and
+bristling all over with cloves.
+
+Then the ducks!
+
+It was beautiful to see the colonel's face when Chad, with a bow like
+a folding jack-knife, held this dish before him.
+
+"Lay 'em here, Chad--right under my nose. Now hand me that pile of
+plates sizzlin' hot, and give that carvin' knife a turn or two across
+the hearth. Major, dip a bit of celery in the salt and follow it with
+a mou'ful of claret. It will prepare yo' palate for the kind of food
+we raise gentlemen on down my way. See that red blood, suh, followin'
+the knife!"
+
+"Suit you, marsa?" Chad never forgot his slave days.
+"To a turn, Chad,--I wouldn't take a thousand dollars for you," replied
+the colonel, relapsing as unconsciously into an old habit.
+
+It was not to be wondered at that the colonel loved a good dinner. To
+dine well was with him an inherited instinct; one of the necessary
+preliminaries to all the important duties in life. To share with you
+his last crust was a part of his religion; to eat alone, a crime.
+
+"There, Major," said the colonel as Chad laid the smoking plate before
+me, "is the breast of a bird that fo' days ago was divin' for wild
+celery within fo'ty miles of Caarter Hall. My dear old aunt Nancy sends
+me a pair every week, bless her sweet soul! Fill yo' glasses and let
+us drink to her health and happiness." Here the colonel rose from his
+chair: "Gentlemen, the best thing on this earth--a true Southern lady!
+
+"Now, Chad, the red pepper."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"No jelly, Colonel?" said Fitz, with an eye on the sideboard.
+
+"Jelly? No, suh; not a suspicion of it. A pinch of salt, a dust
+ofcayenne, then shut yo' eyes and mouth, and don't open them 'cept for
+a drop of good red wine. It is the salt marsh in the early mornin'
+that you are tastin', suh,--not molasses candy. You Nawtherners don't
+really treat a canvasback with any degree of respect. You ought never
+to come into his presence when he lies in state without takin' off yo'
+hats. That may be one reason why he skips over the Nawthern States
+when he takes his annual fall outin'." And he laughed heartily.
+
+"But you use it on venison?" argued Fitz.
+
+"Venison is diff'ent, suh. That game lives on moose buds, the soft
+inner bark of the sugar maple, and the tufts of sweet grass. There is
+a propriety and justice in his endin' his days smothered in sweets; but
+the wild duck, suh, is bawn of the salt ice, braves the storm, and
+lives a life of peyil and hardship. You don't degrade a' oyster, a
+soft shell crab, or a clam with confectionery; why a canvasback duck?
+
+"Now, Chad, serve coffee."
+
+The colonel pushed back his chair, and opened a drawer in a table on
+his right, producing three small clay pipes with reed stems and a
+buckskin bag of tobacco. This he poured out on a plate, breaking the
+coarser grains with the palms of his hands, and filling the pipes with
+the greatest care.
+
+Fitz watched him curiously, and when he reached for the third pipe,
+said:--
+
+"No, Colonel, none for me; smoke a cigar--got a pocketful."
+
+"Smoke yo' own cigars, will you, and in the presence of a Virginian?
+I don't believe you have got a drop of Irish blood left in yo' veins,
+or you would take this pipe."
+
+"Too strong for me," remonstrated Fitz.
+
+"Throw that villainous device away, I say, Fitz, and surprise yo'
+nostrils with a whiff of this. Virginia tobacco, suh,--raised at
+Cartersville,--cured by my own servants. No? Well, you will, Major.
+Here, try that; every breath of it is a nosegay," said the colonel,
+turning to me.
+
+"But, Colonel," continued Fitz, with a sly twinkle in his eye, "your
+tobacco pays no tax. With a debt like ours it is the duty of every
+good citizen to pay his share of it. Half the cost of this cigar goes
+to the Government."
+
+It was a red flag to the colonel, and he laid down his pipe and faced
+Fitz squarely.
+
+"Tax! On our own productions, suh! Raised on our own land! Are you
+again forgettin' that you are an Irishman and becomin' one of these
+money-makin' Yankees? Haven't we suffe'd enough--robbed of our
+property, our lands confiscated, our slaves torn from us; nothin' left
+but our honor and the shoes we stand in!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The colonel on cross-examination could not locate any particular
+wholesale robbery, but it did not check the flow of his indignation.
+
+"Take, for instance, the town of Caartersville: look at that peaceful
+village which for mo' than a hundred years has enjoyed the privileges
+of free government; and not only Caartersville, but all our section
+of the State."
+
+"Well, what's the matter with Cartersville?" asked Fitz, lighting his
+cigar.
+
+"Mattah, suh! Just look at the degradation it fell into hardly ten
+years ago. A Yankee jedge jurisdictin' our laws, a Yankee sheriff
+enfo'cin' 'em, and a Yankee postmaster distributin' letters and sellin'
+postage stamps."
+
+"But they were elected all right, Colonel, and represented the will
+of the people."
+
+"What people? Yo' people, not mine. No, my dear Fitz; the Administration
+succeeding the war treated us shamefully, and will go down to postehity
+as infamous."
+
+The colonel here left his chair and began pacing the floor, his
+indignation rising at every step.
+
+"To give you an idea, suh," he continued, "of what we Southern people
+suffe'd immediately after the fall of the Confederacy, let me state
+a case that came under my own observation.
+
+"Colonel Temple Talcott of F'okeer County, Virginia, came into
+Talcottville one mornin', suh,--a town settled by his ancestors,--ridin'
+upon his horse--or rather a mule belongin' to his overseer. Colonel
+Talcott, suh, belonged to one of the vehy fust families in Virginia.
+He was a son of Jedge Thaxton Talcott, and grandson of General Snowden
+Stafford Talcott of the Revolutionary War. Now, suh, let me tell you
+right here that the Talcott blood is as blue as the sky, and that every
+gentleman bearin' the name is known all over the county as a man whose
+honor is dearer to him than his life, and whose word is as good as his
+bond. Well, suh, on this mornin' Colonel Talcott left his plantation
+in charge of his overseer,--he was workin' it on shares,--and rode
+through his estates to his ancestral town, some five miles distant.
+It is true, suh, these estates were no longer in his name, but that
+had no bearin' on the events that followed; he ought to have owned
+them, and would have done so but for some vehy ungentlemanly fo'closure
+proceedin's which occurred immediately after the war.
+
+"On arriving at Talcottville the colonel dismounted, handed the reins
+to his servant,--or perhaps one of the niggers around the do',--and
+entered the post-office. Now, suh, let me tell you that one month
+befo', the Government, contrary to the express wishes of a great many
+of our leadin' citizens, had sent a Yankee postmaster to Talcottville
+to administer the postal affairs of that town. No sooner had this man
+taken possession than he began to be exclusive, suh, and to put on
+airs. The vehy fust air he put on was to build a fence in his office
+and compel our people to transact their business through a hole. This
+in itself was vehy gallin', suh, for up to that time the mail had
+always been dumped out on the table in the stage office and every
+gentleman had he'ped himself. The next thing was the closin' of his
+mail bags at a' hour fixed by himself. This became a great inconvenience
+to our citizens, who were often late in finishin' their correspondence,
+and who had always found our former postmaster willin' either to hold
+the bag over until the next day, or to send it across to Drummondtown
+by a boy to catch a later train.
+
+"Well, suh, Colonel Talcott's mission to the post-office was to mail
+a letter to his factor in Richmond, Virginia, on business of the utmost
+importance to himself,--namely, the raisin' of a small loan upon his
+share of the crop. Not the crop that was planted, suh, but the crop
+that he expected to plant.
+"Colonel Talcott approached the hole, and with that Chesterfieldian
+manner which has distinguished the Talcotts for mo' than two centuries
+asked the postmaster for the loan of a three-cent postage stamp.
+
+"To his astonishment, suh, he was refused.
+
+"Think of a Talcott in his own county town bein' refused a three-cent
+postage stamp by a low-lived Yankee, who had never known a gentleman
+in his life! The colonel's first impulse was to haul the scoundrel
+through the hole and caarve him; but then he remembered that he was
+a Talcott and could not demean himself, and drawin' himself up again
+with that manner which was grace itself he requested the loan of a
+three-cent postage stamp until he should communicate with his factor
+in Richmond, Virginia; and again he was refused. Well, suh, what was
+there left for a high-toned Southern gentleman to do? Colonel Talcott
+drew his revolver and shot that Yankee scoundrel through the heart,
+and killed him on the spot.
+
+"And now, suh, comes the most remarkable part of this story. If it had
+not been for Major Tom Yancey, Jedge Kerfoot, and myself there would
+have been a lawsuit."
+
+Fitz lay back in his chair and roared.
+
+"And they did not hang the colonel?"
+
+"Hang a Talcott! No, suh; we don't hang gentlemen down our way. Jedge
+Kerfoot vehy properly charged the coroner's jury that it was a matter
+of self-defense, and Colonel Talcott was not detained mo' than haalf
+an hour."
+
+The colonel stopped, unlocked a closet in the sideboard, and produced
+a black bottle labeled in ink, "Old Cherry Bounce, 1848."
+
+"You must excuse me, gentlemen, but the discussion of these topics has
+quite unnerved me. Allow me to share with you a thimbleful." Fitz
+drained his glass, cast his eyes upward, and said solemnly, "To the
+repose of the postmaster's soul."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_The Garden Spot of Virginia seeks an Outlet to the Sea_
+
+
+Chad was just entering the small gate which shut off the underground
+passage when I arrived opposite the colonel's cozy quarters. I had
+come to listen to the details of that booming enterprise with the
+epidemic proclivities, the discussion of which had been cut short by
+the length of time it had taken to kill the postmaster the night before.
+
+It was quite evident that the colonel expected guests, for Chad was
+groaning under a square wicker basket, containing, among other luxuries
+and necessities, half a dozen bottles of claret, a segment of cheese,
+and some heads of lettuce; the whole surmounted by a clean
+leather-covered pass-book inscribed with the name and avenue number
+of the confiding and accommodating grocer who supplied the colonel's
+daily wants.
+
+"De colonel an' Misser Fizpat'ic bofe waitin' for you, sah," said that
+obsequious darky, preceding me through the dark passage. I followed,
+mounted the old-fashioned wooden steps, and fell into the outstretched
+arms of the colonel before I could touch the knocker.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Here he is, Fitz!" and the next instant I was sharing with that genial
+gentleman the warmth of the colonel's fire.
+
+"Now then, Chad," called out the colonel, "take this lettuce and give
+it a dip in the snow for five minutes; and here, Chad, befo' you go
+hand me that claret. Bless my soul! it is as cold as a dog's nose;
+Fitz, set it on the mantel. And hurry down to that mutton, Chad. Never
+mind the basket. Leave it where it is."
+
+Chad chuckled out to me as he closed the door: "'Spec' I know mo' 'bout
+dat saddle den de colonel. It ain't a-burnin' none." And the colonel,
+satisfied now that Chad's hand had reached the oven door below, made
+a vigorous attack on the blazing logs with the tongs, and sent a flight
+of sparks scurrying up the chimney.
+
+There was always a glow and breeze and sparkle about the colonel's
+fire that I found nowhere else. It partook to a certain extent of his
+personality--open, bright, and with a great draft of enthusiasm always
+rushing up a chimney of difficulties, buoyed up with the hope of the
+broad clear of the heaven of success above.
+
+"My fire," he once said to me, "is my friend; and sometimes, my dear
+boy, when you are all away and Chad is out, it seems my only friend.
+After it talks to me for hours we both get sleepy together, and I cover
+it up with its gray blanket of ashes and then go to bed myself. Ah,
+Major! when you are gettin' old and have no wife to love you and no
+children to make yo' heart glad, a wood fire full of honest old logs,
+every one of which is doing its best to please you, is a great comfort."
+
+"Draw closer, Major; vehy cold night, gentlemen. We do not have any
+such weather in my State. Fitz, have you thawed out yet?"
+
+Fitz looked up from a pile of documents spread out on his lap, his
+round face aglow with the firelight, and compared himself to half a
+slice of toast well browned on both sides.
+
+"I am glad of it. I was worried about you when you came in. You were
+chilled through."
+
+Then turning to me: "Fact is, Fitz is a little overworked. Enormous
+strain, suh, on a man solving the vast commercial problems that he is
+called upon to do every day."
+
+After which outburst the colonel crossed the room and finished unpacking
+the basket, placing the cheese in one of the empty plates on the table,
+and the various other commodities on the sideboard. When he reached
+the pass-book he straightened himself up, held it off admiringly,
+turned the leaves slowly, his face lighting up at the goodly number
+of clean pages still between its covers, and said thoughtfully:--
+
+"Very beautiful custom, this pass-book system, gentlemen, and quite
+new to me. One of the most co'teous attentions I have received since
+I have taken up my residence Nawth. See how simple it is. I send my
+servant to the sto' for my supplies. He returns in haalf an hour with
+everything I need, and brings back this book which I keep,--remember,
+gentlemen, which I _keep_,--a mark of confidence which in this
+degen'rate age is refreshin'. No vulgar bargaining suh; no disagreeable
+remarks about any former unsettled account. It certainly is delightful."
+"When are the accounts under this system generally paid, Colonel,"
+asked Fitz.
+
+With the exception of a slight tremor around the corners of his mouth
+Fitz's face expressed nothing but the idlest interest.
+
+"I have never inquired, suh, and would not hurt the gentleman's feelin's
+by doin' so for the world," he replied with dignity. "I presume, when
+the book is full."
+
+Whatever might have been Fitz's mental workings, there was no mistaking
+the colonel's. He believed every word he said.
+
+"What a dear old trump the colonel is," said Fitz, turning to me, his
+face wrinkling all over with suppressed laughter.
+
+All this time Chad was passing in and out, bearing dishes and viands,
+and when all was ready and the table candles were lighted, he announced
+that fact softly to his master and took his customary place behind his
+chair.
+
+The colonel was as delightful as ever, his talk ranging from politics
+and family blood to possum hunts and modern literature, while the
+mutton and its accessories did full credit to Chad's culinary skill.
+
+In fact the head of the colonel's table was his throne. Nowhere else
+was he so charming, and nowhere else did the many sides to his
+delightful nature give out such varied hues.
+
+Fitz, practical business man as he was, would listen to his many schemes
+by the hour, charmed into silence and attentive appreciation by the
+sublime faith that sustained his host, and the perfect honesty and
+sincerity underlying everything he did. But it was not until the cheese
+had completely lost its geometrical form, the coffee served, and the
+pipes lighted, that the subject which of all others absorbed him was
+broached. Indeed, it was a rule of the colonel's, never infringed upon,
+that, no matter how urgent the business, the dinner-hour was to be
+kept sacred.
+
+"Salt yo' food, suh, with humor," he would say. "Season it with wit,
+and sprinkle it all over with the charm of good-fellowship, but never
+poison it with the cares of yo' life. It is an insult to yo' digestion,
+besides bein', suh, a mark of bad breedin'."
+
+"Now, Major," began the colonel, turning to me, loosening the string
+around a package of papers, and spreading them out like a game of
+solitaire, "draw yo' chair closer. Fitz, hand me the map."
+
+A diligent search revealed the fact that the map had been left at the
+office, and so the colonel proceeded without it, appealing now and
+then to Fitz, who leaned over his chair, his arm on the table.
+
+"Befo' I touch upon the financial part of this enterprise, Major, let
+me show you where this road runs," said the colonel, reaching for the
+casters. "I am sorry I haven't the map, but we can get along very well
+with this;" and he unloaded the cruets.
+
+"This mustard-pot, here, is Caartersville, the startin'-point of our
+system. This town, suh, has now a population of mo' than fo' thousand
+people; in five years it will have fo'ty thousand. From this point the
+line follows the bank of the Big Tench River--marked by this
+caarvin'-knife--to this salt-cellar, where it crosses its waters by
+an iron bridge of two spans, each of two hundred and fifty feet. Then,
+suh, it takes a sharp bend to the southard and stops at my estate, the
+roadbed skirtin' within a convenient distance of Caarter Hall.
+
+"Please move yo' arm, Fitz. I haven't room enough to lay out the city
+of Fairfax. Thank you.
+
+"Just here," continued the colonel, utilizing the remains of the cheese,
+"is to be the future city of Fairfax, named after my ancestor, suh,
+General Thomas Wilmot Fairfax of Somerset, England, who settled here
+in 1680. From here we take a course due nawth, stopping at Talcottville
+eight miles, and thence nawthwesterly to Warrentown and the broad
+Atlantic; in all fifty miles."
+
+"Any connecting road at Warrentown?" I asked.
+
+"No, suh, nor anywhere else along the line. It is absolutely virgin
+country, and this is one of the strong points of the scheme, for there
+can be no competition;" and the colonel leaned back in his chair, and
+looked at me with the air of a man who had just informed me of a legacy
+of half a million of dollars and was watching the effect of the news.
+
+I preserved my gravity, and followed the imaginary line with my eye,
+bounding from the mustard-pot along the carving-knife to the salt-cellar
+and back in a loop to the cheese, and then asked if the Big Tench could
+not be crossed higher up, and if so why was it necessary to build
+twelve additional miles of road.
+
+"To reach Carter Hall," said Fitz quietly.
+
+"Any advantage?" I asked in perfect good faith.
+
+The colonel was on his feet in a moment.
+
+"Any advantage? Major, I am surprised at you! A place settled mo' than
+one hundred years ago, belongin' to one of the vehy fust fam'lies of
+Virginia, not to be of any advantage to a new enterprise like this!
+Why, suh, it will give an air of respectability to the whole thing
+that nothin' else could ever do. Leave out Caarter Hall, suh, and you
+pa'alize the whole scheme. Am I not right, Fitz?"
+
+"Unquestionably, Colonel. It is really all the life it has," replied
+Fitz, solemn as a graven image, blowing a cloud of smoke through his
+nose.
+
+"And then, suh," continued the colonel with increasing enthusiasm,
+oblivious to the point of Fitz's remark, "see the improvements. Right
+here to the eastward of this cheese we shall build a round-house marked
+by this napkin-ring, which will accommodate twelve locomotives,
+construct extensive shops for repairs, and erect large foundries and
+caar-shops. Altogether, suh, we shall expend at this point mo' than--
+mo' than--one million of dollars;" and the colonel threw back his head
+and gazed at the ceiling, his lips computing imaginary sums.
+
+"Befo' these improvements are complete it will be necessary, of course,
+to take care of the enormous crowds that will flock in for a
+restin'-place. So to the left of this napkin-ring, on a slightly risin'
+ground,--just here where I raise the cloth,--is where the homes of
+the people will be erected. I have the refusal"--here the colonel
+lowered his voice--"of two thousand acres of the best private-residence
+land in the county, contiguous to this very spot, which I can buy for
+fo' dollars an acre. It is worth fo' dollars a square foot if it is
+worth a penny. But, suh, it would be little short of highway rob'ry
+to take this property at that figger, and I shall arrange with Fitz
+to include in his prospectus the payment of one hundred dollars an
+acre for this land, payable either in the common stock of our road or
+in the notes of the company, as the owners may elect."
+
+"But, Colonel," said I, with a sincere desire to get at the facts,
+"where is the Golconda--the gold mine? Where do I come in?"
+
+"Patience, my dear Major; I am coming to that.
+
+"Fitz, read that prospectus."
+
+"I have," said Fitz, turning to the colonel, "somewhat modified your
+rough draft, to meet the requirements of our market; but not materially.
+Of course I cannot commit myself to any fixed earning capacity until
+I go over the ground, which we will do together shortly. But"--raising
+the candle to the level of his nose--"this is as near as I can come
+to your ideas with any hopes of putting the loan through here. I have,
+as you will see, left the title of the bond as you wished, although
+the issue is a novel one to our Exchange." Then turning to me: "This
+of course is only a preliminary announcement."
+
+    THE CARTERSVILLE AND WARRENTOWN
+    AIR LINE RAILROAD.
+
+    THE GARDEN SPOT OF VIRGINIA SEEKS AN OUTLET
+    TO THE SEA.
+
+    CAPITAL ONE MILLION OF DOLLARS, DIVIDED
+    INTO
+
+    50,000 Founders' shares at .... $1000. each
+    5,000 Ordinary     "     " ....  100.00 "
+
+  BONDED DEBT FOR PURPOSES OF CONSTRUCTION ONLY.
+
+    ONE MILLION OF DOLLARS
+    IN
+    1,000 FIRST MORTGAGE BONDS OF $1000.00 EACH.
+
+  FULL PROTECTION GUARANTEED.
+
+The undersigned, Messrs. . . . . offer for sale $500,000.00 of the 6%
+Deferred Debenture Bonds of the C.& W. Air Line Railroad at par and
+accrued interest, together with a limited amount of the ordinary shares
+at 50%.
+
+Subscription books close. . . . . Promoters reserve the right to advance
+prices without further notice.
+
+"There, Major, is a prospectus that caarries conviction on its vehy
+face," said the colonel, reaching for the document.
+
+I complimented the eminent financier on his skill, and was about to
+ask him what it all meant, when the colonel, who had been studying it
+carefully, broke in with:--
+
+"Fitz, there is one thing you left out."
+
+"Yes, I know, the name of the banker; I haven't found him yet."
+
+"No, Fitz; but the words, '_Subscriptions opened Simultaneously in
+New York, London, Richmond_,' and"--
+
+"Cartersville?" suggested Fitz.
+
+"Certainly, suh."
+
+"Any money in Cartersville?"
+
+"No, suh, not much; but we can _subscribe_, can't we? The name
+and influence of our leadin' citizens would give tone and dignity to
+any subscription list. Think of this, suh!" and the colonel traced
+imaginary inscriptions on the back of Fitz's prospectus with his
+forefinger, voicing them as he went on:--
+
+    The Hon. JOHN PAGE LOWNES,    Member of the State Legislature..
+1,000 shares
+    The Hon. I.B. KERFOOT,
+    Jedge of the District Court of
+    Fairfax County....... 1,000 shares
+    Major THOMAS C. YANCEY,
+    Late of the Confederate Army... 500 shares
+
+"These gentlemen are my friends, suh, and would do anythin' to oblige
+me."
+
+Fitz sharpened a lead pencil and without a word inserted the desired
+amendment.
+
+The colonel studied the document for another brief moment and struck
+another snag.
+
+"And, Fitz, what do you mean, by 'full protection guaranteed'?"
+
+"To the bondholder, of course,--the man who pays the money."
+
+"What kind of protection?"
+
+"Why, the right to foreclose the mortgage when the interest is not
+paid, of course," said Fitz, with a surprised look.
+
+"Put yo' pencil through that line, quick--none of that for me. This
+fo'closure business has ruined haalf the gentlemen in our county, suh.
+But for that foolishness two thirds of our fust families would still
+be livin' in their homes. No, suh, strike it out!"
+
+"But, my dear Colonel, without that protecting clause you couldn't get
+a banker to touch your bonds with a pair of tongs. What recourse have
+they?"
+
+"What reco'se? Reorganization, suh! A boilin'-down process which will
+make the stock--which we practically give away at fifty cents on the
+dollar--twice as valuable. I appreciate, my dear Fitz, the effo'ts
+which you are makin' to dispose of these secu'ities, but you must
+remember that this plan is _mine_.
+
+"Now Major," locking his arm in mine, "listen; for I want you both to
+understand exactly the way in which I propose to forward this
+enterprise. Chad, bring me three wine-glasses and put that Madeira on
+the table--don't disturb that railroad!--so.
+
+"My idea, gentlemen," continued the colonel, filling the glasses
+himself, "is to start this scheme honestly in the beginnin', and avoid
+all dissatisfaction on the part of these vehy bondholders thereafter.
+
+"Now, suh, in my experience I have always discovered that a vehy general
+dissatisfaction is sure to manifest itself if the coupons on secu'ities
+of this class are not paid when they become due. As a gen'ral rule
+this interest money is never earned for the fust two years, and the
+money to pay it with is inva'ably stolen from the principal. All this
+dishonesty I avoid, suh, by the issue of my Deferred Debenture Bonds."
+
+"How?" I asked, seeing the colonel pause for a reply.
+
+"By cuttin' off the fust fo' coupons. Then everybody knows exactly
+where they stand. They don't expect anythin' and they never get it."
+
+Fitz gave one of his characteristic roars and asked if the fifth would
+ever be paid.
+
+"I can't at this moment answer, but we hope it will."
+
+"It is immaterial," said Fitz, wiping his eyes. "This class of
+purchasers are all speculators, and like excitement. The very
+uncertainty as to this fifth coupon gives interest to the investment,
+if not to the investor."
+
+"None of yo' Irish impudence, suh. No, gentlemen, the plan is not only
+fair, but reasonable. Two years is not a long period of time in which
+to foster a great enterprise like the C.& W.A.L.R.R., and it is for
+this purpose that I issue the Deferred Debentures. Deferred--put off;
+Debenture--owed. What we owe we put off. Simple, easily understood,
+and honest.
+
+"Now, suh," turning to Fitz, "if after this frank statement any graspin'
+banker seeks to trammel this enterprise by any fo'closure clauses, he
+sha'n't have a bond, suh. I'll take them all myself fust."
+
+Fitz agreed to the striking out of all such harassing clauses, and the
+colonel continued his inspection.
+
+"One mo' and I am done, Fitz. What do you mean by Founders' shares?"
+"Shares for the promoters and the first subscribers. They cost one
+tenth of the ordinary shares and draw five times as much dividend. It
+is quite a popular form of investment. They, of course, are not sold
+until all the bonds are disposed of."
+
+"How many of these Founders' shares are there?"
+
+"Fifty thousand at ten dollars each."
+
+The colonel paused a moment and communed inwardly with himself.
+
+"Put me down for twenty-five thousand, Fitz. Part cash, and the balance
+in such po'tion of my estate as will be required for the purposes of
+the road."
+
+The colonel did not specify the proportions, but Fitz made a pencil
+memorandum on the margin of the prospectus with the same sort of
+respectful silence he would have shown the Rothschilds in a similar
+transaction, while the colonel refilled his glass and held it between
+his nose and the candle.
+
+"And now, Major, what shall we reserve for you?" said he, laying his
+hand on my shoulder. Before I could reply Fitz raised his finger,
+looked at me significantly over the rims of his spectacles, and said:--
+
+"With your permission, Colonel, the Major and I will divide the
+remaining twenty-five thousand between ourselves."
+
+Then seeing my startled look, "I will give you ample notice, Major,
+before the first partial payment is called in."
+
+"You overwhelm me, gentlemen," said the colonel, rising from his seat
+and seizing us by the hands. "It has been the dream of my life to have
+you both with me in this enterprise, but I had no idea it would be
+realized so soon. Fill yo' glasses and join me in a sentiment that is
+dear to me as my life,--'The Garden Spot of Virginia in search of an
+Outlet to the Sea.'"
+
+Nothing could have been more exhilarating than the colonel's manner
+after this. His enthusiasm became so contagious that I began to feel
+something like a millionaire myself, and to wonder whether this were
+not the opportunity of my life. Fitz was so far affected that he
+recanted to a certain extent his disbelief in the omission of the
+foreclosure clause, and even expressed himself as being hopeful of
+getting around it in some way.
+
+As for the colonel, the railroad was to him already a fixed fact. He
+could really shut his eyes at any time and hear the whistle of the
+down train nearing the bridge over the Tench. Such trifling details
+as the finding of a banker who would attempt to negotiate the loan,
+the subsequent selling of the securities, and the minor items of right
+of way, construction, etc., were matters so light and trivial as not
+to cause him a moment's uneasiness. Cartersville was to him the centre
+of the earth, hampered and held back by lack of proper connections
+with the outlying portions of the universe. What mattered the rest?
+
+"Make a memorandum, Fitz, to have me send for a bridge engineer fust
+thing after I get to my office in the mornin'. There will be some
+difficulty in gettin' a proper foundation for the centre-pier of that
+bridge, and some one should be sent at once to make a survey. We can't
+be delayed at this point a day. And, Fitz, while I think of it, there
+should be a wagon bridge at or near this iron structure, and the timber
+might as well be gotten out now. It will facilitate haulin' supplies
+into Fairfax city."
+
+Fitz thought so too, and made a second memorandum to that effect,
+recording the suggestion very much as a private secretary would an
+order from his railroad magnate.
+
+The colonel gave this last order with coat thrown open,--thumbs in his
+vest,--back to the fire,--an attitude never indulged in except on
+rare occasions, and then only when the very weight of the problem
+necessitated a corresponding bracing up, and more breathing room.
+
+These attitudes, by the way, were very suggestive of the colonel's
+varying moods. Sometimes, when he came home, tired out with the hard
+pavements of the city, so different from the soft earth of his native
+roads, I would find him bunched up in his chair in the twilight; face
+in hands, elbows on knees, crooning over the fire, the silver streaks
+in his hair glistening in the flickering firelight, building castles
+in the glowing coals,--the old manor house restored and the barns
+rebuilt, the gates rehung, the old quarters repaired, the little negroes
+again around the doors; and he once more catching the sound of the
+yellow-painted coach on the gravel, with Chad helping the dear old
+aunt down the porch steps. This, deep down in the bottom of his soul,
+was really the dream and purpose of his life.
+
+It never seemed nearer of realization than now. The very thought
+suffused his whole being with a suppressed joy, visible in his face
+even when he began loosening the two lower buttons of his old threadbare
+coat, throwing back the lapels and slowly extending his fingers fan-like
+over his dilating chest.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I always knew what suddenly sweetened his smile from one of triumphant
+pride to one of tenderness.
+
+"And the old home, Fitz, something must be done there; we must receive
+our friends properly."
+
+Fitz agreed to everything, offering an amendment here, and a suggestion
+there, until our host's enthusiasm reached fever heat.
+
+It was nearly midnight before the colonel had confided to Fitz all the
+pressing necessities of the coming day. Even then he followed us both
+to the door, with parting instructions to Fitz, saying over and over
+again that it had been the happiest night of his life. And he would
+have gone bare-headed to the outer gate had not Chad caught him half
+way down the steps, thrown a coat over his head and shoulders, and
+gently led him back with:--
+
+"'Clar to goodness, Marsa George, what kind foolishness dis yer? Is
+you tryin' to ketch yo' death?"
+
+Once on the outside and the gate shut, Fitz's whole manner changed.
+He became suddenly thoughtful, and did not speak until we reached the
+tall clock tower with its full moon of a face shining high up against
+the black winter night.
+
+Then he stood still, looked out over the white street, dotted here and
+there with belated wayfarers trudging home through the snow, and said
+with a tremor in his voice which startled me:--
+
+"I couldn't raise a dollar in a lunatic asylum full of millionaires
+on a scheme like the colonel's, and yet I keep on lying to the dear
+old fellow day after day, hoping that something will turn up by which
+I can help him out."
+
+"Then tell him so."
+
+Fitz laid his hand on my shoulder, looked me straight in the face, and
+said:--
+
+"I cannot. It would break his heart."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_An Old Family Servant_
+
+
+The colonel's front yard, while as quaint and old-fashioned as his
+house, was not--if I may be allowed--quite so well bred.
+
+This came partly from the outdoor life it had always led and from its
+close association with other yards that had lost all semblance of
+respectability, and partly from the fact that it had never felt the
+refining influences of the friends of the house; for nobody ever
+lingered in the front yard who by any possibility could get into the
+front door--nobody, except perhaps now and then a stray tramp, who
+felt at home at once and went to sleep on the steps.
+
+That all this told upon its character and appearance was shown in the
+remnants of whitewash on the high wall, scaling off in discolored
+patches; in the stagger of the tall fence opposite, drooping like a
+drunkard between two policemen of posts; and in the unkempt, bulging
+rear of the third wall,--the front house,--stuffed with rags and tied
+up with clothes-lines.
+
+If in the purity of its youth it had ever seen better days as a
+garden--but then no possible stretch of imagination, however brilliant,
+could ever convert this miserable quadrangle into a garden.
+
+It contained, of course, as all such yards do, one lone plant,--this
+time a honeysuckle,--which had clambered over the front door and there
+rested as if content to stay; but which later on, frightened at the
+surroundings, had with one great spring cleared the slippery wall
+between, reached the rain-spout above, and by its helping arm had thus
+escaped to the roof and the sunlight.
+
+It is also true that high up on this same wall there still clung the
+remains of a criss-cross wooden trellis supporting the shivering
+branches of an old vine, which had spent its whole life trying to grow
+high enough to look over the tall fence into the yard beyond; but this
+was so long ago that not even the landlord remembered the color of its
+blossoms.
+
+Then there was an old-fashioned hydrant, with a half-spiral crank of
+a handle on its top and the curved end of a lead pipe always aleak
+thrust through its rotten side, with its little statues of ice all
+winter and its spattering slop all summer.
+Besides all this there were some broken flower-pots in a heap in one
+corner,--suicides from the window-sills above,--and some sagging
+clothes-lines, and a battered watering-pot, and a box or two that might
+once have held flowers; and yet with all this circumstantial evidence
+against me I cannot conscientiously believe that this forlorn courtyard
+ever could have risen to the dignity of a garden.
+
+But of course nothing of all this can be seen at night. At night one
+sees only the tall clock tower of Jefferson Market with its one blazing
+eye glaring high up over the fence, the little lantern hung in the
+tunnel, and the glow through the curtains shading the old-fashioned
+windows of the house itself, telling of warmth and comfort within.
+
+To-night when I pushed open the swinging door--the door of the tunnel
+entering from the street--the lantern was gone, and in its stead there
+was only the glimmer of a mysterious light moving about the yard,--a
+light that fell now on the bare wall, now on the front steps, making
+threads of gold of the twisted iron railings, then on the posts of the
+leaning fence, against which hung three feathery objects,--grotesque
+and curious in the changing shadows,--and again on some barrels and
+boxes surrounded by loose straw.
+
+Following this light, in fact, guiding it, was a noiseless, crouching
+figure peering under the open steps, groping around the front door,
+creeping beneath the windows; moving uneasily with a burglar-like
+tread.
+
+I grasped my umbrella, advanced to the edge of the tunnel, and called
+out:--
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+The figure stopped, straightened up, held a lantern high over its head,
+and peered into the darkness.
+
+There was no mistaking that face.
+
+"Oh, that's you, Chad, is it? What the devil are you doing?"
+"Lookin' for one ob dese yer tar'pins Miss Nancy sent de colonel. Dey
+was seben ob 'em in dis box, an' now dey ain't but six. Hole dis light,
+Major, an' lemme fumble round dis rain-spout."
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+Chad handed me the lantern, fell on his knees, and began crawling
+around the small yard like an old dog hunting for a possum, feeling
+in among the roots of the honeysuckle, between the barrels that had
+brought the colonel's china from Carter Hall, under the steps, way
+back where Chad kept his wood ashes--but no "brer tar'pin."
+
+"Well, if dat don't beat de lan'! Dey was two ba'els--one had dat wild
+turkey an' de pair o' geese you see hangin' on de fence dar, an' de
+udder ba'el I jest ca'aed down de cellar full er oishters. De tar'pins
+was in dis box--seben ob 'em. Spec' dat rapscallion crawled ober de
+fence?" And Chad picked up the basket with the remaining half dozen,
+and descended the basement steps on his way through the kitchen to the
+front door above. Before he reached the bottom step I heard him break
+out with:--
+
+"Oh, yer you is, you black debbil! Tryin' to git in de door, is ye?
+De pot is whar you'll git!"
+
+At the foot of the short steps, flat on his back, head and legs
+wriggling like an overturned roach, lay the missing terrapin. It had
+crawled to the edge of the opening and had fallen down in the darkness.
+
+Chad picked him up and kept on grumbling, shaking his finger at the
+motionless terrapin, whose head and legs were now tight drawn between
+its shells.
+
+"Gre't mine to squash ye! Wearin' out my old knees lookin' for ye.
+Nebber mine, I'm gwine to bile ye fust an' de longest--hear dat?--de
+longest!" Then looking up at me, "I got him, Major--try dat do'. Spec'
+it's open. Colonel ain't yer yit. Reckon some ob dem moonshiners is
+keepin' him down town. 'Fo' I forgit it, dar's a letter for ye hangin'
+to de mantelpiece."
+
+The door and the letter were both open, the latter being half a sheet
+of paper impaled by a pin, which alone saved it from the roaring fire
+that Chad had just replenished.
+
+I held it to the light and learned, to my disappointment, that business
+of enormous importance to the C. & W. A. L. R. R. might preclude the
+possibility of the colonel's leaving his office until late. If such
+a calamity overtook him, would I forgive him and take possession of
+his house and cellar and make myself as comfortable as I could with
+my best friend away? This postscript followed:--
+
+"Open the new Madeira; Chad has the key."
+
+Chad wreaked his vengeance upon the absconding terrapin by plunging
+him, with all his sins upon him, headlong into the boiling pot, and
+half an hour later was engaged at a side table in removing, with the
+help of an iron fork, the upper shell of the steaming vagabond, for
+my special comfort and sustenance.
+
+"Tar'pin jes like a crab, Major, on'y got mo' meat to 'em. But you got
+to know 'em fust to eat 'em. Now dis yer shell is de hot plate, an'
+ye do all yo' eatin' right inside it," said Chad, dropping a spoonful
+of butter, the juice of a lemon, and a pinch of salt into the impromptu
+dish.
+
+"Now, Major, take yo' fork an' pick out all dat black meat an' dip it
+in de sauce, an' wid ebery mou'ful take one o' dem little yaller eggs.
+Dat's de way _we_ eat tar'pin. Dis yer stewin' him up in pote
+wine is scand'lous. Can't taste nuffin' but de wine. But dat's
+_tar'pin._"
+
+I followed Chad's directions to the word, picking the terrapin as I
+would a crab and smothering the dainty bits in the hot sauce, until
+only two empty shells and a heap of little bones were left to tell the
+tale of my appetite.
+
+"Gwine to crawl ober de fence, was ye?" I heard him say with a chuckle
+as he bore away the debris. "What I tell ye? Whar am ye now?"
+
+"Did Miss Nancy send those terrapin?" I asked, watching the old darky
+drawing the cork of the new Madeira referred to in the colonel's note.
+
+"Ob co'se, Major; Miss Nancy gibs de colonel eberytin'. Didn't ye know
+dat? She's de on'y one what's got anythin' to gib, an' she wouldn't
+hab dat on'y frough de war her money was in de bank in Baltimo'. I
+know, 'cause I went dar once to git some for her. De Yankee soldiers
+searched me; but some possums got two holes."
+
+"And did she send him the Madeira too?"
+
+"No, sah; Mister Grocerman gib him dat."
+
+As he pronounced this name his voice fell, and for some time thereafter
+he kept silent, brushing the crumbs away, replacing a plate or two,
+or filling my wine-glass, until at last he took his place behind my
+chair as was his custom with his master. It was easy to see that Chad
+had something on his mind.
+
+Every now and then a sigh escaped him, which he tried to conceal by
+some irrelevant remark, as if his sorrow were his own and not to be
+shared with a stranger. Finally he gave an uneasy glance around, and,
+looking into my face with an expression of positive pain, said:--
+
+"Don't tell de colonel I axed, but when is dis yer railroad gwineter
+fotch some money in?"
+
+"Why?' said I, wondering what extravagance the old man had fallen into.
+
+"Nuffin', sah; but if it don't putty quick dar's gwineter be trouble.
+Dese yer gemmen on de av'nue is gittin' ugly. When I got dar Madary
+de udder day de tall one warn't gwineter gib it to me, pass-book or
+no pass-book. On'y de young one say he'd seen de colonel, an' he was
+a gemmen an" all right, I wouldn't 'a' got it at all. De tall gemmen
+was comin' right around hisself--what he wanted to see, he said, was
+de color ob de colonel's money. Been mo' den two months, an' not a cent.
+
+"Co'se I tole same as I been tellin' him, dat de colonel's folks is
+quality folks; but he say dat don't pay de bills."
+
+"Did you tell the colonel?"
+
+"No, sah; ain't no use tellin' de colonel; on'y worry him. He's got
+de passbook, but I ain't yerd him say nuffin' yit 'bout payin' him.
+I been spectin' Miss Nancy up here, an' de colonel says she's comin'
+putty soon. She'll fix 'em; but dey ain't no time to waste."
+
+While he spoke there came a loud knock at the door, and Chad returned
+trembling with fear, his face the very picture of despair.
+
+"Dat's de tall man hisself, sah, an' his dander's up. I knowed dese
+Yankees in de war, an' I don't like 'em when dey's ris'. When I tole
+him de colonel ain't home he look at me pizen-like, same as I was
+a-lyin'; an' den he stop an' listen an' say he come back to-night.
+Trouble comin'; old coon smells de dog. Wish we was home an' out ob
+dis!"
+
+I tried to divert his attention into other channels and to calm his
+fears, assuring him that the colonel would come out all right; that
+these enterprises were slow, etc.; but the old man only shook his head.
+
+"You know, Major, same as me, dat de colonel ain't nuffin' but a chile,
+an' about his bills he's _wuss_. But I'm yer, an' I'm 'sponsible.
+'Chad,' he says, 'go out an' git six mo' bottles of dat old Madary;'
+an' 'Chad, don't forgit de sweet ile;' an' 'Chad, is we got claret
+enough to last ober Sunday?'--an' not a cent in de house. I ain't slep'
+none for two nights, worritin' ober dis business, an' I'm mos' crazy."
+I laid down my knife and fork and looked up. The old man's lip was
+quivering, and something very like a tear stood in each eye.
+
+"I can't hab nuffin' happen to de fambly, Major. You know our folks
+is quality, an' always was, an' I dassent look my mistress in de face
+if anythin' teches Marsa George." Then bending down he said in a hoarse
+whisper: "See dat old clock out dar wid his eye wide open? Know what's
+down below dat in de cellar? De jail!" And two tears rolled down his
+cheeks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was some time before I could quiet the old man's anxieties and coax
+him back into his usual good humor, and then only when I began to ask
+him of the old plantation days.
+
+Then he fell to talking about the colonel's father, General John Carter,
+and the high days at Carter Hall when Miss Nancy was a young lady and
+the colonel a boy home from the university.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Dem was high times. We ain't neber seed no time like dat since de
+war. Git up in de mawnin' an' look out ober de lawn, an' yer come
+fo'teen or fifteen couples ob de fustest quality folks, all on horseback
+ridin' in de gate. Den such a scufflin' round! Old marsa an' missis
+out on de po'ch, an' de little pickaninnies runnin' from de quarters,
+an' all hands helpin' 'em off de horses, an' dey all smokin' hot wid
+de gallop up de lane.
+
+"An' den sich a breakfast an' sich dancin' an' co'tin': ladies all out
+on de lawn in der white dresses, an' de gemmen in fair-top boots, an'
+Mammy Jane runnin' round same as a chicken wid its head off,--an' der
+heads was off befo' dey knowed it, an' dey a-br'ilin' on de gridiron.
+
+"Dat would go on a week or mo', an' den up dey'll all git an' away
+dey'd go to de nex' plantation, an' take Miss Nancy along wid 'em on
+her little sorrel mare, an' I on Marsa John's black horse, to take
+care bofe of 'em. Dem _was_ times!
+
+"My old marsa,"--and his eyes glistened,--"my old Marsa John was a
+gem-man, sah, like dey don't see nowadays. Tall, sah, an' straight as
+a cornstalk; hair white an' silky as de tassel; an' a voice like de
+birds was singin', it was dat sweet.
+
+"'Chad,' he use' ter say,--you know I was young den, an' I was his
+body servant,--'Chad, come yer till I bre'k yo' head;' an' den when
+I come he'd laugh fit to kill hisself. Dat's when you do right. But
+when you was a low-down nigger an' got de debbil in yer, an' ole marsa
+hear it an' send de oberseer to de quarters for you to come to de
+little room in de big house whar de walls was all books an' whar his
+desk was, 't wa'n't no birds about his voice den,--mo' like de thunder."
+
+"Did he whip his negroes?"
+
+"No, sah; don't reckelmember a single lick laid on airy nigger dat de
+marsa knowed of; but when dey got so bad--an' some niggers is dat
+way--den dey was sold to de swamp lan's. He wouldn't hab 'em round
+'ruptin' his niggers, he use' ter say.
+
+"Hab coffee, sah? Won't take I a minute to bile it. Colonel ain't been
+drinkin' none lately, an' so I don't make none."
+
+I nodded my head, and Chad closed the door softly, taking with him a
+small cup and saucer, and returning in a few minutes followed by that
+most delicious of all aromas, the savory steam of boiling coffee.
+
+"My Marsa John," he continued, filling the cup with the smoking
+beverage, "never drank nuffin' but tea, eben at de big dinners when
+all de gemmen had coffee in de little cups--dat's one ob 'em you's
+drink-in' out ob now; dey ain't mo' dan fo' on 'em left. Old marsa
+would have his pot ob tea: Henny use' ter make it for him; makes it
+now for Miss Nancy.
+
+"Henny was a young gal den, long 'fo' we was married. Henny b'longed
+to Colonel Lloyd Barbour, on de next plantation to ourn.
+
+"Mo' coffee, Major?" I handed Chad the empty cup. He refilled it,
+andwent straight on without drawing breath.
+
+"Wust scrape I eber got into wid old Marsa John was ober Henny. I tell
+ye she was a harricane in dem days. She come into de kitchen one time
+where I was helpin' git de dinner ready an' de cook had gone to de
+spring house, an' she says:--
+
+"'Chad, what ye cookin' dat smells so nice?'
+
+"'Dat's a goose,' I says, 'cookin' for Marsa John's dinner. We got
+quality,' says I, pointin' to de dinin'-room do'.
+
+"'Quality!' she says. 'Spec' I know what de quality is. Dat's for you
+an' de cook.'
+
+"Wid dat she grabs a caarvin' knife from de table, opens de do' ob de
+big oven, cuts off a leg ob de goose, an' dis'pears round de kitchen
+corner wid de leg in her mouf.
+
+"'Fo' I knowed whar I was Marsa John come to de kitchen do' an' says,
+'Gittin' late, Chad; bring in de dinner.' You see, Major, dey ain't
+no up an' down stairs in de big house, like it is yer; kitchen an'
+dinin'-room all on de same flo'.
+
+"Well, sah, I was scared to def, but I tuk dat goose an' laid him wid
+de cut side down on de bottom of de pan 'fo' de cook got back, put
+some dressin' an' stuffin' ober him, an' shet de stove do'. Den I tuk
+de sweet potatoes an' de hominy an' put 'em on de table, an' den I
+went back in de kitchen to git de baked ham. I put on de ham an' some
+mo' dishes, an' marsa says, lookin' up:--
+
+"'I t'ought dere was a roast goose, Chad?'
+
+"'I ain't yerd nothin' 'bout no goose,' I says. 'I'll ask de cook.'
+
+"Next minute I yerd old marsa a-hollerin':--
+
+"'Mammy Jane, ain't we got a goose?'
+
+"'Lord-a-massy! yes, marsa. Chad, you wu'thless nigger, ain't you tuk
+dat goose out yit?'
+
+"'Is we got a goose?' said I.
+
+"'_Is we got a goose_? Didn't you help pick it?'
+
+"I see whar my hair was short, an' I snatched up a hot dish from de
+hearth, opened de oven do', an' slide de goose in jes as he was, an'
+lay him down befo' Marsa John.
+
+"'Now see what de ladies'll have for dinner,' says old marsa, pickin'
+up his caarvin' knife.
+
+"'What'll you take for dinner, miss?' says I. 'Baked ham?'
+
+"'No,' she says, lookin' up to whar Marsa John sat; 'I think I'll take
+a leg ob dat goose'--jes so.
+
+"Well, marsa cut off de leg an' put a little stuffin' an' gravy on wid
+a spoon, an' says to me, 'Chad, see what dat gemman'll have.'
+
+"'What'll you take for dinner, sah?' says I. 'Nice breast o' goose,
+or slice o' ham?'
+
+"'No; I think I'll take a leg of dat goose,' he says.
+
+"I didn't say nuffin', but I knowed bery well he wa'n't a-gwine to git
+it.
+
+"But, Major, you oughter seen ole marsa lookin' for der udder leg ob
+dat goose! He rolled him ober on de dish, dis way an' dat way, an' den
+he jabbed dat ole bone-handled caarvin' fork in him an' hel' him up
+ober de dish an' looked under him an' on top ob him, an' den he says,
+kinder sad like:--
+
+"'Chad, whar is de udder leg ob dat goose?'
+
+"'It didn't hab none,' says I.
+
+"'You mean ter say, Chad, dat de gooses on my plantation on'y got one
+leg?'
+
+"'Some ob 'em has an' some ob 'em ain't. You see, marsa, we got two
+kinds in de pond, an' we was a little boddered today, so Mammy Jane
+cooked dis one 'cause I cotched it fust.'
+
+"'Well,' said he, lookin' like he look when he send for you in de
+little room, 'I'll settle wid ye after dinner.'
+
+"Well, dar I was shiverin' an' shakin' in my shoes, an' droppin' gravy
+an' spillin' de wine on de table-cloth, I was dat shuck up; an' when
+de dinner was ober he calls all de ladies an' gemmen, an' says, 'Now
+come down to de duck pond. I'm gwineter show dis nigger dat all de
+gooses on my plantation got mo' den one leg.'
+
+"I followed 'long, trapesin' after de whole kit an' b'ilin', an' when
+we got to de pond"--here Chad nearly went into a convulsion with
+suppressed laughter--"dar was de gooses sittin' on a log in de middle
+of dat ole green goose-pond wid one leg stuck down--so--an' de udder
+tucked under de wing."
+
+Chad was now on one leg, balancing himself by my chair, the tears
+running down his cheeks.
+
+"'Dar, marsa,' says I, 'don't ye see? Look at dat ole gray goose! Dat's
+de berry match ob de one we had to-day.'
+
+"Den de ladies all hollered an' de gemmen laughed so loud dey yerd 'em
+at de big house.
+
+"'Stop, you black scoun'rel!' Marsa John says, his face gittin' white
+an' he a-jerkin' his handkerchief from his pocket. 'Shoo!'
+
+"Major, I hope to have my brains kicked out by a lame grasshopper if
+ebery one ob dem gooses didn't put down de udder leg!
+
+"'Now, you lyin' nigger,' he says, raisin' his cane ober my head, 'I'll
+show you'--
+
+'"Stop, Marsa John!' I hollered; ''t ain't fair, 't ain't fair.'
+
+"'Why ain't it fair?' says he.
+
+"''Cause,' says I, 'you didn't say "Shoo!" to de goose what was on de
+table.'" [Footnote: This story, and the story of the "Postmaster" in
+a preceding chapter, I have told for so many years and to so many
+people, and with such varied amplifications, that I have long since
+persuaded myself that they are creations of my own. I surmise, however,
+that the basis of the "Postmaster" can be found in the corner of some
+forgotten newspaper, and I know that the "One-Legged Goose" is as old
+as the "Decameron".]
+
+Chad laughed until he choked.
+
+"And did he thrash you?"
+
+"Marsa John? No, sah. He laughed loud as anybody; an' den dat night
+he says to me as I was puttin' some wood on de fire:--
+
+"'Chad, where did dat leg go?' An' so I ups an' tells him all about
+Henny, an' how I was lyin' 'cause I was 'feared de gal would git hurt,
+an' how she was on'y a-foolin', thinkin' it was my goose; an' den de
+ole marsa look in de fire for a long time, an' den he says:--
+
+"'Dat's Colonel Barbour's Henny, ain't it, Chad?'
+
+"'Yes,' marsa, says I.
+
+"Well, de next mawnin' he had his black horse saddled, an' I held the
+stirrup for him to git on, an' he rode ober to de Barbour plantation,
+an' didn't come back till plumb black night. When he come up I held
+de lantern so I could see his face, for I wa'n't easy in my mine all
+day. But it was all bright an' shinin' same as a' angel's.
+
+"'Chad,' he says, handin' me de reins, 'I bought yo' Henny dis arternoon
+from Colonel Barbour, an' she's comin' ober tomorrow, an' you can bofe
+git married next Sunday.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A cheerful voice at the yard door, and the next moment the colonel was
+stamping his feet on the hall mat, his first word to Chad an inquiry
+after my comfort, and his second an apology to me for what he called
+his brutal want of hospitality.
+
+"But I couldn't help it, Major. I had some letters, suh, that could
+not be postponed. Has Chad taken good care of you? No dinner, Chad;
+I dined down town. How is the Madeira, Major?"
+
+I expressed my entire approbation of the wine, and was about to fill
+the colonel's glass when Chad leaned over with the same anxious look
+in his face.
+"De grocerman was here, Colonel, an' lef' word dat he was comin' agin
+later."
+
+"You don't say so, Chad, and I was out: most unfortunate occurrence!
+When he calls again show him in at once. It will give me great pleasure
+to see him."
+
+Then turning to me, his mind on the passbook and its empty pages,--"I'll
+lay a wager, Major, that man's father was a gentleman. The fact is,
+I have not treated him with proper respect. He has shown me every
+courtesy since I have been here, and I am ashamed to say that I have
+not once entered his doors. His calling twice in one evening touches
+me deeply. I did not expect to find yo' tradespeople so polite."
+
+Chad's face was a study while his master spoke, but he was too well
+trained, and still too anxious over the outcome of the expected
+interview, to do more than bow obsequiously to the colonel,--his
+invariable custom when receiving an order,--and to close the door
+behind him.
+
+"That old servant," continued the colonel, watching Chad leave the
+room, and drawing his chair nearer the fire, "has been in my fam'ly
+ever since he was bawn. But for him and his old wife, Mammy Henny, I
+would be homeless to-night." And then the colonel, with that soft
+cadence in his voice which I always noticed when he spoke of something
+that touched his heart, told me with evident feeling how, in every
+crisis of fire, pillage, and raid, these two faithful souls had kept
+unceasing watch about the old house; refastening the wrenched doors,
+replacing the shattered shutters, or extinguishing the embers of
+abandoned bivouac fires. Indeed, for months at a time they were its
+only occupants, outside of strolling marauders and bands of foragers,
+and but for their untiring devotion its tall chimneys would long since
+have stood like tombstones over the grave of its ashes. Then he added,
+with a break in his voice that told how deeply he felt it:--
+
+"Do you know, Major, that when I was a prisoner at City Point that
+darky tramped a hundred miles through the coast swamps to reach me,
+crossed both lines twice, hung around for three months for his chance,
+and has carried in his leg ever since the ball intended for me the
+night I escaped in his clothes, and he was shot in mine.
+
+"I tell you, suh, the color of a man's skin don't make much diffe'ence
+sometimes. Chad was bawn a gentleman, and he'll never get over it."
+
+As he was speaking, the object of his eulogy opened the hall door, and
+the next instant a tall, red-headed man with closely trimmed
+side-whiskers, and wearing a brown check suit and a blue necktie, ran
+the gauntlet of Chad's profound but anxious bow, and advanced towards
+the colonel, hat in hand.
+
+"Which is Mr. Carter?"
+
+The colonel arose gracefully. "I am Colonel Carter, suh, and I presume
+you are the gentleman to whom I am indebted for so many courtesies.
+My servant tells me that you called earlier in the evenin'. I regret,
+suh, that I was detained so late at my office, and I have to thank you
+for perseve'in' the second time. I assure you, suh, that I esteem it
+a special honor."
+
+The tall gentleman with the auburn whiskers wiped his face with a
+handkerchief, which he took from his hat, and stated with some timidity
+that he hoped he did not intrude at that late hour. He had sent his
+pass-book, and--
+
+"I have looked it over, suh, repeatedly, with the greatest pleasure.
+It is a custom new to us in my county, but it meets with my hearty
+approval. Give yo' hat to my servant, suh, and take this seat by the
+fire."
+
+The proprietor of the hat after some protestations suffered Chad to
+bear away that grateful protection to his slightly bald head,--retaining
+his handkerchief, which he finally rolled up into a little wad and
+kept tightly clenched in the perspiring palm of his left hand,--and
+then threw out the additional hope that everything was satisfactory.
+
+"Delicious, suh; I have not tasted such Madeira since the wah. In my
+cellar at home, suh, I once had some old Madeira of '28 that was given
+to my father, the late General John Caarter, by old Judge Thornton.
+You, of course, know that wine, suh. Ah! I see that you do."
+
+And then followed one of the colonel's delightful monologues descriptive
+of all the vintages of that year, the colonel constantly appealing to
+the dazed and delighted grocerman to be set right in minor technical
+matters,--the grocer understanding them as little as he did the Aztec
+dialects,--the colonel himself supplying the needed data and then
+thanking the auburn gentleman for the information so charmingly that
+for the moment that worthy tradesman began to wonder why he had not
+long before risen from the commonplace level of canned vegetables to
+the more sublime plane of wines in the wood.
+
+"Now the Madeira you sent me this mornin', suh, is a trifle too fruity
+for my taste. Chad, open a fresh bottle."
+
+The owner of the pass-book instantly detected a very decided fruity
+flavor, but thought he had another wine, which he would send in the
+morning, that might suit the colonel's palate better.
+
+The colonel thanked him, and then drifted into the wider field of
+domestic delicacies,--the preserving of fruits, the making of pickles
+as practiced on the plantations by the old Virginia cooks,--the colonel
+waxing eloquent over each production, and the future wine merchant
+becoming more and more enchanted as the colonel flowed on.
+
+When he rose to go the grocer had a mental list of the things he would
+send the colonel in the morning all arranged in his commercial head,
+and so great was his delight that, after shaking hands with me once
+and with the colonel three times, he would also have extended that
+courtesy to Chad had not that perfectly trained servant checkmated him
+by filling his extended palm with the rim of his own hat.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When Chad returned from bowing him through the tunnel, the lines in
+his face a tangle of emotions, the colonel was standing on the mat,
+in his favorite attitude--back to the fire, coat thrown open, thumbs
+in his armholes, his outstretched fingers beating woodpecker tattoos
+on his vest.
+
+Somehow the visit of the grocer had lifted him out of the cares of the
+day. How, he could not tell. Perhaps it was the fragrance of the
+Madeira; perhaps the respectful, overawed bow,--the bow of the tradesman
+the world over to the landed proprietor,--restoring to him for one
+brief moment that old feudal supremacy which above all else his soul
+loved. Perhaps it was only the warmth and cheer and comfort of it all.
+
+Whatever it was, it buoyed and strengthened him. He was again in the
+old dining-hall at home: the servants moving noiselessly about; the
+cut-glass decanters reflected in the polished mahogany; the candles
+lighted; his old, white-haired father, in his high-backed chair, sipping
+his wine from the slender glass.
+
+Ah, the proud estate of the old plantation days! Would they ever be
+his again?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_The Arrival of a True Southern Lady_
+
+
+"Mistress yer, sah! Come yistidd'y mawnin'."
+
+How Chad beamed all over when this simple statement fell from his lips!
+I had not seen him since the night when he stood behind my chair and
+with bated breath whispered his anxieties lest the second advent of
+"de grocerman" should bring dire destruction to the colonel's household.
+
+To-day he looked ten years younger. His kinky gray hair, generally
+knotted into little wads, was now divided by a well-defined path
+starting from the great wrinkle in his forehead and ending in a dense
+tangle of underbrush that no comb dared penetrate. His face glistened
+all over. His mouth was wide open, showing a great cavity in which
+each tooth seemed to dance with delight. His jacket was as white and
+stiff as soap and starch could make it, while a cast-off cravat of the
+colonel's--double starched to suit Chad's own ideas of propriety--was
+tied in a single knot, the two ends reaching to the very edge of each
+ear. To crown all, a red carnation flamed away on the lapel of his
+jacket, just above an outside pocket, which held in check a pair of
+white cotton gloves bulging with importance and eager for use. Every
+time he bowed he touched with a sweep both sides of the narrow hall.
+
+It was the first time in some weeks that I had seen the interior of
+the colonel's cozy dining-room by daylight. Of late my visits had been
+made after dark, with drawn curtains, lighted candles, and roaring
+wood fires. But this time it was in the morning,--and a bright, sunny,
+lovely spring morning at that,--with one window open in the L and the
+curtains drawn back from the other; with the honeysuckle beginning to
+bud, its long runners twisting themselves inquiringly through the
+half-closed shutters as if anxious to discover what all this bustle
+inside was about.
+
+It was easy to see that some other touch besides that of the colonel
+and his faithful man-of-all-work had left its impress in the bachelor
+apartment. There was a general air of order apparent. The irregular
+line of foot gear which decorated the washboard of one wall, beginning
+with a pair of worsted slippers and ending with a wooden bootjack, was
+gone. Whisk-brooms and dusters that had never known a restful nail
+since they entered the colonel's service were now suspended peacefully
+on convenient hooks. Dainty white curtains, gathered like a child's
+frock, flapped lazily against the broken green blinds, while some
+sprays of arbutus, plucked by Miss Nancy on her way to the railroad
+station, drooped about a tall glass on the mantel.
+
+Chad had solved the mystery,--Aunt Nancy came yesterday.
+
+I found the table set for four, its chief feature being a tray bearing
+a heap of eggshell cups and saucers I had not seen before, and an
+old-fashioned tea-urn humming a tune all to itself.
+
+"De colonel's out, but he comin' back d'rektly," Chad said eagerly,
+all out of breath with excitement. Then followed the information that
+Mr. Fitzpatrick was coming to breakfast, and that he was to tell Miss
+Nancy the moment we arrived. He then reduced the bulge in his outside
+pocket by thrusting his big hands into his white gloves, gave a sidelong
+glance at the flower in his buttonhole, and bore my card aloft with
+the air of a cupbearer serving a princess.
+
+A soft step on the stair, the rustle of silk, a warning word outside:
+"Look out for dat lower step, mistress--dat's it;" and Miss Nancy
+entered the room.
+
+No, I am wrong. She became a part of it; as much so as the old andirons
+and the easy chairs and the old-fashioned mantelpieces, the snowy
+curtains and the trailing vine. More so when she gave me the slightest
+dip of a courtesy and laid her dainty, wrinkled little hand in mine,
+and said in the sweetest possible voice how glad she was to see me
+after so many years, and how grateful she felt for all my kindness to
+the dear colonel. Then she sank into a quaint rocking-chair that Chad
+had brought down behind her, rested her feet on a low stool that
+mysteriously appeared from under the table, and took her knitting from
+her reticule.
+
+She had changed somewhat since I last saw her, but only as would an
+old bit of precious stuff that grew the more mellow and harmonious in
+tone as it grew the older. She had the same silky gray hair--a trifle
+whiter, perhaps; the same frank, tender mouth, winning wherever she
+smiled; the same slight, graceful figure; and the same manner--its
+very simplicity a reflex of that refined and quiet life she had always
+led. For hers had been an isolated life, buried since her girlhood in
+a great house far away from the broadening influences of a city, and
+saddened by the daily witness of a slow decay of all she had been
+taught to revere. But it had been a life so filled with the largeness
+of generous deeds that its returns had brought her the love and
+reverence of every living soul she knew.
+
+While she sat and talked to me of her journey I had time to enjoy again
+the quaintness of her dress,--the quaintness of forty years before.
+There was the same old-fashioned, soft gray silk with up-and-down
+stripes spotted with sprigs of flowers, the lace cap with its frill
+of narrow pink ribbons and two wide pink strings that fell over the
+shoulders, and the handkerchief of India mull folded across the breast
+and fastened with an amethyst pin. Her little bits of feet--they were
+literally so--were incased in white stockings and heelless morocco
+slippers bound with braid.
+
+But her dress was never sombre. She always seemed to remember, even
+in her bright ribbons and silks, the days of her girlhood, when half
+the young men in the county were wild about her. When she moved she
+wafted towards you a perfume of sweet lavender--the very smell that
+you remember came from your own mother's old-fashioned bureau drawer
+when she let you stand on tiptoe to see her pretty things. When you
+kissed her--and once I did--her cheek was as soft as a child's and
+fragrant with rose-water.
+
+But I hear the colonel's voice outside, laughing with Fitz.
+
+"Come in, suh, and see the dearest woman in the world."
+
+The next instant he burst in dressed in his gala combination,--white
+waistcoat and cravat, the old coat thrown wide open as if to welcome
+the world, and a bunch of red roses in his hand.
+
+"Nancy, here's my dear friend Fitz, whom I have told you about,--the
+most extraord'nary man of modern times. Ah, Major! you here? Came in
+early, did you, so as to have aunt Nancy all to yo'self? Sit down,
+Fitz, right alongside of her." And he kissed her hand gallantly. "Isn't
+she the most delightful bit of old porcelain you ever saw in all yo'
+bawn days?"
+
+Miss Nancy rose, made another of her graceful courtesies, and begged
+that neither of us would mind the colonel's raillery; she never could
+keep him in order. And she laughed softly as she gave her hand to Fitz,
+who touched it very much as if he quite believed the colonel's reference
+to the porcelain to be true.
+
+"There you go, Nancy, 'busin' me like a dog, and here I've been
+a-trampin' the streets for a' hour lookin' for flowers for you! You
+are breakin' my heart, Miss Caarter, with yo' coldness and contempt.
+Another word and you shall not have a single bud." And the colonel
+gayly tucked a rose under her chin with a loving stroke of his hand,
+and threw the others in a heap on her lap.
+
+"Breakfast sarved, mistress," said Chad in a low voice.
+
+The colonel gave his arm to his aunt with the air of a courtier; Fitz
+and I disposed ourselves on each side; Chad, with reverential mien,
+screwed his eyes up tight; and the colonel said grace with an increased
+fervor in his voice, no doubt remembering in his heart the blessing
+of the last arrival.
+
+Throughout the entire repast the colonel was in his gayest mood,
+brimming over with anecdotes and personal reminiscences and full of
+his rose-colored plans for the future.
+
+Many things had combined to produce this happy frame of mind. There
+was first the Scheme, which had languished for weeks owing to the
+vise-like condition of the money market,--another of Fitz's mendacious
+excuses,--and which had now been suddenly galvanized into temporary
+life by an inquiry made by certain bankers who were seeking an outlet
+for English capital, and who had expressed a desire to investigate the
+"Garden Spot of Virginia." Only an "inquiry," but to the colonel the
+papers were already signed. Then there was the arrival of his
+distinguished guest, whom he loved devotedly and with a certain
+old-school gallantry and tenderness as picturesque as it was
+interesting. Last of all there was that important episode of the bills.
+For Miss Nancy, the night she arrived, had collected all the household
+accounts, including the highly esteemed pass-book,--they were all of
+the one kind, unpaid,--and had dispatched Chad early in the morning
+to the several creditors with his pocket full of crisp bank-notes.
+
+Chad had returned from this liquidating tour, and the full meaning of
+that trusty agent's mission had dawned upon the colonel. He buttoned
+his coat tightly over his chest, straightened himself up, sought out
+his aunt, and said, with some dignity and a slightly injured air:--
+
+"Nancy, yo' interfe'ence in my household affairs this mornin' was vehy
+creditable to yo' heart, and deeply touches me; but if I thought you
+regarded it in any other light except as a short tempo'ary loan, it
+would offend me keenly. Within a few days, however, I shall receive
+a vehy large amount of secu'ities from an English syndicate that
+isinvestigatin' my railroad. I shall then return the amount to you with
+interest, together with that other sum which you loaned me when I left
+Caarter Hall."
+
+The little lady's only reply was to slip her hand into his and kisshim
+on the forehead.
+
+And yet that very morning he had turned his pockets inside out for the
+remains of the last dollar of the money she had given him when he left
+home. When it had all been raked together, and its pitiable
+insufficiency had become apparent, this dialogue took place:--
+
+"Chad, did you find any money on the flo' when you breshed my clothes?"
+
+"No, Colonel."
+
+"Look round on the mantelpiece; perhaps I left some bills under the
+clock."
+
+"Ain't none dar, sah."
+
+Then Chad, with that same anxious look suddenly revived in his face,
+went below into the kitchen, mounted a chair, took down an old broken
+tea-cup from the top shelf, and poured out into his wrinkled palm a
+handful of small silver coin--his entire collection of tips, and all
+the money he had. This he carried to the colonel, with a lie in his
+mouth that the recording angel blotted out the moment it fell from his
+lips.
+
+"Here's some change, Marsa George, I forgot to gib ye; been left ober
+from de marketin'."
+
+And the colonel gathered it all in, and went out and spent every penny
+of it on roses for "dear Nancy!"
+
+All of these things, as I have said, had acted like a tonic on the
+colonel, bracing him up to renewed efforts, and reacting on his guests,
+who in return did their best to make the breakfast a merry one.
+
+Fitz, always delightful, was more brilliant than ever, his native wit,
+expressed in a brogue with verbal shadings so slight that it is hardly
+possible to give it in print, keeping the table in a roar; while Miss
+Nancy, encouraged by the ease and freedom of everybody about her,
+forgot for a time her quiet reserve, and was charming in the way she
+turned over the leaves of her own youthful experiences.
+
+And so the talk went on until, with a smile to everybody, the little
+lady rose, called Chad, who stood ready with shawl and cushion, and,
+saying she would retire to her room until the gentlemen had finished
+smoking, disappeared through the doorway.
+
+The talk had evidently aroused some memory long buried in the colonel's
+mind; for when Fitz had gone the dear old fellow picked up the glass
+holding the roses which he had given his aunt in the morning, and,
+while repeating her name softly to himself, buried his face in their
+fragrance. Something, perhaps, in their perfume stirred that haunting
+memory the deeper, for he suddenly raised his head and burst out:--
+"Ah, Major, you ought to have seen that woman forty years ago! Why,
+suh, she was just a rose herself!"
+
+And then followed in disconnected scraps, as if he were recalling it
+to himself, with long pauses between, that story which I had heard
+hinted at before. A story never told the children, and never even
+whispered in aunt Nancy's presence,--the one love affair of her life.
+
+She and Robert had grown up together,--he a tall, brown-eyed young
+fellow just out of the university, and she a fair-haired, joyous girl
+with half the county at her feet. Nancy had not loved him at first,
+nor ever did until the day he had saved her life in that wild dash
+across country when her horse took fright, and he, riding neck and
+neck, had lifted her clear of her saddle. After that there had been
+but one pair of eyes and arms for her in the wide world. All of that
+spring and summer, as the colonel put it, she was like a bird pouring
+out her soul in one continuous song. Then there had come a night in
+Richmond,--the night of the ball,--followed by her sudden return home,
+hollow-eyed and white, and the mysterious postponement of the wedding
+for a year.
+
+Everybody wondered, but no one knew, and only as the months went by
+did her spirits gain a little, and she begin to sing once more.
+
+It was at a great party on a neighboring estate, amid the swim of the
+music and the whirl of soft lace. Suddenly loud voices and threats,
+a shower of cards flung at a man's face, an uplifted arm caught by the
+host. Then a hall door thrust open and a half-frenzied man with
+disordered dress staggering out. Then the startled face of a young
+girl all in white and a cry no one ever forgot:--
+
+"Oh, Robert! Not again?"
+
+Her long ride home in the dead of the night, Nancy alone in the coach,
+her escort--a distant cousin--on horseback behind. Then the pursuit.
+The steady rise and fall of the hoof-beats back in the forest; the
+reining in of Robert's panting horse covered with foam; his command
+to halt; a flash, and then that sweet face stretched out in the road
+in the moonlight by the side of the overturned coach, the cousin bending
+over her with a bullet hole in his hat, and Robert, ghastly white and
+sobered, with the smoking pistol in his hand.
+
+Then the long, halting procession homeward in the gray dawn.
+
+It was not so easy after this to keep the secret shut away; so one
+day, when the shock had passed,--her arms about her uncle's neck,--the
+whole story came out. She told of that other night there in Richmond,
+with Robert reeling and half crazed; of his promise of reform, and the
+postponement of the wedding, while she waited and trusted: so sad a
+story that the old uncle forgot all the traditions that bound Southern
+families, and sustained her in her determination never to see Robert
+again.
+
+For days the broken-hearted lover haunted the place, while an out-bound
+ship waited in Norfolk harbor.
+
+Even Robert's father, crushed and humiliated by it all, had made no
+intercession for him. But now, he begged, would she see his son for
+the last time, only that he might touch her hand and say good-by?
+
+That last good-by lasted an hour, Chad walking his horse all the while
+before the porch door, until that tottering figure, holding to the
+railings and steadying itself, came down the steps.
+
+A shutter thrown back, and Nancy at the open window watching him mount.
+
+As he wheels he raises his hat. She pushes aside the climbing roses.
+
+In an instant he has cleared the garden beds, and has reined in his
+horse just below her window-sill. Looking up into her face:--
+
+"Nancy, for the last time, shall I stay?"
+
+She only shakes her head.
+
+"Then look, Nancy, look! This is your work!"
+
+A gleam of steel in a clenched hand, a burst of smoke, and before Chad
+can reach him Nancy's lover lies dead in the flowers at her feet.
+
+It had not been an easy story for the colonel. When he ceased he passed
+his hand across his forehead as if the air of the room stifled him.
+Then laying down his pipe, he bent once more over the slender vase,
+his face in the roses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+In an instant the colonel's old manner returned.
+
+"May you come in, Nancy? Why, you dear woman, if you had stayed away
+five minutes longer I should have gone for you myself. What! Another
+skein of yarn?"
+
+"Yes," she said, seating herself. "Hold out your hands."
+
+The loop slipped so easily over the colonel's arms that it was quite
+evident that the role was not new to him.
+
+"Befo' I forget it, Nancy, Mr. Fitzpatrick was called suddenly away
+to attend to some business connected with my railroad, and left his
+vehy kindest regards for you, and his apologies for not seein' you
+befo' he left."
+
+Fitz had said nothing that resembled this, so far as my memory served
+me, but it was what he ought to have done, and the colonel always
+corrected such little slips of courtesy by supplying them himself.
+
+"Politeness," he would sometimes say, "is becomin' rarer every day.
+I tell you, suh, the disease of bad manners is mo' contagious than the
+small-pox."
+
+So the deception was quite pardonable in him.
+
+"And what does Mr. Fitzpatrick think of the success of your enterprise,
+George?"
+
+The colonel sailed away as usual with all his balloon topsails set,
+his sea-room limited only by the skein, while his aunt wound her yarn
+silently, and listened with a face expressive at once of deep interest
+and hope, mingled with a certain undefined doubt.
+
+As the ball grew in size, she turned to me, and, with a penetration
+and practical insight into affairs for which I had not given her credit,
+began to dissect the scheme in detail. She had heard, she said, that
+there was lack of connecting lines and consequent absence of freight,
+as well as insufficient harbor facilities at Warrentown.
+
+I parried the questions as well as I could, begging off on the plea
+that I was only a poor devil of a painter with a minimum knowledge
+ofsuch matters, and ended by referring her to Fitz.
+
+The colonel, much to my surprise, listened to every word without opening
+his lips--a silence encouraged at first by his pride that she could
+talk so well, and maintained thereafter because of certain misgivings
+awakened in his mind as to the ultimate success of his pet enterprise.
+
+When she had punctured the last of his little balloons, he laid his
+hand on her shoulder, and, looking into her face, said:--
+
+"Nancy, you really don't mean that my railroad will _never_ be built?"
+
+"No, George; but suppose it should not earn its expenses?"
+
+Her thoughts were new to the colonel. Nobody except a few foolish
+people in the Street, anxious to sell less valuable securities, and
+utterly unable to grasp the great merits of the Cartersville and
+Warrentown Air Line Railroad plan, had ever before advanced any such
+ideas in his presence. He loosened his hands from the yarn, and took
+a seat by the window. His aunt's misgivings had evidently so thoroughly
+disturbed him that for an instant I could see traces of a certain
+offended dignity, coupled with a nervous anxiety lest her inquiries
+had shaken my own confidence in his scheme.
+
+He began at once to reassure me. There was nothing to be uneasy about.
+Look at the bonds! Note the perfect safety of the plan of finance--the
+earlier coupons omitted, the subsequent peace of the investor! The
+peculiar location of the road, with the ancestral estates dotted along
+its line! The dignity of the several stations! He could hear them now
+in his mind called out as they whistled down brakes: "Carter Hall!
+Barboursville! Talcott!" No; there was nothing about the road that
+should disturb his aunt. For all that a still more anxious look came
+into his face. He began pacing the floor, buried in deep thought, his
+thumbs hooked behind his back. At last he stopped and took her hand.
+
+"Dear Nancy, if anything should happen to you it would break my heart.
+Don't be angry, it is only the major; but yo' talk with him has so
+disturbed me that I am determined to secure you against personal loss."
+
+Miss Nancy raised her eyes wonderingly. She evidently did not catch
+his meaning.
+
+"You have been good enough, my dear, to advance me certain sums of
+money which I still owe. I want to pay these now."
+
+"But, George, you"--
+
+"My dearest Nancy,"--and he stooped down, and kissed her cheek,--"I
+will have my way. Of co'se you didn't mean anything, only I cannot let
+another hour pass with these accounts unsettled. Think, Nancy; it is
+my right. The delay affects my honor."
+
+The little lady dropped her knitting on the floor, and looked at me
+in a helpless way.
+
+The colonel opened the table drawer, and handed me pen and ink.
+
+"Now, Major, take this sheet of paper and draw a note of hand."
+
+I looked at his aunt inquiringly. She nodded her head in assent.
+
+"Yes, if it pleases George."
+
+I began with the usual form, entering the words "I promise to pay,"
+and stopped for instructions.
+
+"Payable when, Colonel?" I asked.
+
+"As soon as I get the money, suh."
+
+"But you will do that anyhow, George."
+
+"Yes, I know, Nancy; but I want to settle it in some safe way."
+
+Then he gazed at the ceiling in deep thought.
+
+"I have it, Major!" And the colonel seized the pen. The note read as
+follows:--
+
+On demand I promise to pay Ann Carter the sum of six hundred dollars,
+value received, with interest at the rate of six per cent, from January
+1st.
+
+Payable as soon as possible.
+
+GEORGE FAIRFAX CARTER.
+
+I looked to see what effect this unexpected influx of wealth would
+produce on the dear lady; but the trustful smile never wavered.
+
+She read to the very end the modest scrap of paper so suddenly enriched
+by the colonel's signature, repeated in a whisper to herself "Payable
+as soon as possible," folded it with as much care as if it had been
+a Bank of England note, then thanked the colonel graciously, and tucked
+it in her reticule.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_An Allusion to a Yellow Dog_
+
+
+The colonel's office, like many other of his valued possessions, was
+in fact the property of somebody else.
+
+It really belonged to a friend of Fitzpatrick, who had become so
+impressed by the Virginian's largeness of manner and buoyancy of
+enthusiasm that he had whispered to Fitz to bring him in at once and
+give him any desk in the place; adding that "in a sagging market the
+colonel would be better than a war boom."
+
+So the colonel moved in--not a very complicated operation in his case;
+his effects being confined to an old leather portfolio and a bundle
+of quill pens tied up with a bit of Aunt Nancy's white yarn. The
+following day he had nailed his visiting card above the firm's name
+in the corridor, hung his hat and coat on the proprietor's peg, selected
+a desk nearest the light, and was as much at home in five minutes as
+if he owned the whole building.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There was no price agreed upon. Once, when Fitz delicately suggested
+that all such rents were generally payable monthly, the colonel, after
+some difficulty in grasping the idea, had said:--
+
+"I could not offer it, suh. These gentlemen have treated me with a
+hospitality so generous that its memory will never fade from my mind.
+I cannot bring our relations down to the level of bargain and sale,suh;
+it would be vulgar."
+
+The colonel was perfectly sincere. As for himself he would have put
+every room in his own Carter Hall at their service for any purpose or
+for any length of time, and have slept in the woodshed himself; and
+he would as soon have demanded the value of the bottle of wine on his
+own table as ask pay for such trivial courtesies.
+
+Nor did he stop at the rent. The free use of stamps, envelopes, paper,
+messenger service, and clerks were to him only evidences of a lordly
+sort of hospitality which endeared the real proprietor of the office
+all the more to him, because it recalled the lavish display of the
+golden days of Carter Hall.
+
+"Permit a guest to stamp his own letters, suh? Never! Our servants
+attended to that."
+
+Really he owed his host nothing. No office of its size in the Street
+made so much money for its customers in a bull market. Nobody lost
+heart in a tumble and was sold out--that is, nobody to whom the colonel
+talked. Once convince the enthusiastic Virginian that the scheme was
+feasible,--and how little eloquence was needed for that!--and the
+dear old fellow took hold with as much gusto as if it had been his own.
+
+The vein in the copper mine was always going to widen out into a
+six-foot lead; never by any possibility could it grow any smaller. The
+trust shares were going up--"not a point or two at a time, gentlemen,
+but with the spring of a panther, suh." Of course the railroad earnings
+were a little off this month, but wait until the spring opened; "then,
+suh, you will see a revival that will sweep you off yo' feet."
+
+Whether it was good luck, or the good heart that the colonel put into
+his friend's customers, the results were always the same. Singular as
+it may seem, his cheery word just at the right time tided over
+the critical moment many an uncertain watcher at the "ticker," often
+to an enlargement of his bank account. Nor would he allow any one to
+pay him for any service of this kind, even though he had spent days
+engrossed in their affairs.
+
+"Take money, suh, for helpin' a friend out of a hole? My dear suh, I
+see you do not intend to be disco'teous; but look at me, suh! There's
+my hand; never refer to it again." And then he would offer the offender
+his card in the hope, perhaps, that its ample record might furnish
+some further slight suggestion as to who he really was.
+
+His popularity, therefore, was not to be wondered at. Everybody regarded
+him kindly, total stranger as he was, and although few of them believed
+to any extent in his "Garden Spot of Virginia," as his pet enterprise
+soon came to be known around the Street, everybody wished it well, and
+not a few would have started it with a considerable subscription could
+the colonel have managed the additional thousands required to set it
+on its financial legs.
+
+Fitz never lost heart in the scheme,--that is, never when the colonel
+was about. As the weeks rolled by and one combination after the other
+failed, and the well-thumbed bundle of papers in the big blue envelope
+was returned with various comments. "In view of our present financial
+engagements we are unable to undertake your very attractive railroad
+scheme," or the more curt "Not suited to our line of customers," he
+would watch the colonel's face anxiously, and rack his brain for some
+additional excuse.
+
+He always found one. Tight money, or news from Europe, or an overissue
+of similar bonds; next week it would be better. And the colonel always
+believed him. Fitz was his guiding star, and would lead him to some
+safe haven yet. This faith was his stronghold, and his only one.
+
+This morning, however, there was a touch of genuine enthusiasm about
+Fitz. He rushed into the office, caught up the blue bundle and the
+map, nearly upsetting the colonel, who was balanced back in his chair
+with his long legs over the desk,--a favorite attitude when down
+town,--rushed out, and returned in half an hour with a fat body
+surmounted by a bald head fringed about with gray curls.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He was the advance agent of that mysterious combination known to the
+financial world as an "English syndicate," an elusive sort of commercial
+sea-serpent with its head in London and its tail around the globe. The
+"inquiry" which had so gladdened the colonel's heart the morning ofthe
+breakfast with aunt Nancy had proceeded from this rotund negotiator.
+
+The colonel had, as usual, started the road at Cartersville, and had
+gotten as far as the double-span iron bridge over the Tench when the
+rotund gentleman asked abruptly,--
+
+"How far are you from a coal-field?"
+
+The colonel lifted the point of his pen, adjusted his glasses, and
+punched a hole in the rumpled map within a hair's breadth of a black
+dot labeled "Cartersville."
+
+"Right there, suh. Within a stone's throw of our locomotives."
+
+Fitz looked into the hole with as much astonishment as if it were the
+open mouth of the mine itself.
+
+"Hard or soft?" said the stout man.
+
+"Soft, suh, and fairly good coal, I understand, although I have never
+used it, suh; my ancestors always burned wood."
+
+Fitz heard the statement in undisguised wonder. In all his intercourse
+with the colonel he had never before known him to depart so much as
+a razor's edge from the truth.
+
+The fat man communed with himself a moment, and then said suddenly,
+"I'll take the papers and give you an answer in a week," and hurried
+away.
+
+"Do you really mean, Colonel," said Fitz, determined to pin him down,
+"that there is a single pound of coal in Cartersville?"
+
+"Do I mean it, Fitz? Don't it crop out in half a dozen spots right on
+our own place? One haalf of my estate, suh, is a coal-field."
+
+"You never told me a word about it."
+
+"I don't know that I did, Fitz. But it has never been of any use to
+me. Besides, suh, we have plenty of wood. We never burn coal at Caarter
+Hall."
+
+Fitz did not take that view of it. He went into an exhaustive
+cross-examination of the colonel on the coal question: who had tested
+it, the character of the soil, width of the vein, and dip of the land.
+This information he carefully recorded in a small book which he took
+from his inside pocket.
+
+Loosened from Fitz's pinioning grasp, the colonel, entirely oblivious
+to his friend's sudden interest in the coal-field, and slightly
+impatient at the delay, bounded like a balloon with its anchors cut.
+
+"An answer from the syndicate within a week! My dear Fitz, I see yo'
+drift. You have kept the Garden Spots for the foreign investors. That
+man is impressed, suh; I saw it in his eye."
+
+The room began filling up with the various customers and loungers
+common to such offices: the debonair gentleman in check trousers and
+silk hat, with a rose in his button-hole, who dusts his trousers
+broadside with his cane--short of one hundred shares with thirty per
+cent. margin; the shabby old man with a solemn face who watches the
+ticker a moment and then wanders aimlessly out, looking more like an
+underpaid clerk in a law office than the president of a crosstown
+railroad--long of one thousand shares with no margin at all; the nervous
+man who stops the messenger boys and devours the sales' lists before
+they can be skewered on the files,--not a dollar's interest either
+way; and, last of all, the brokers with little pads and nimble pencils.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The news that the great English syndicate was looking into the C. &
+W. A. L R. R. was soon around the office, and each _habitue_ had
+a bright word for the colonel, congratulating him on the favorable
+turn his affairs had taken.
+
+All but old Klutchem, a broker in unlisted securities, who had been
+trying for weeks to get a Denver land scheme before the same syndicate,
+and had failed.
+
+"Garden Spot bonds! Bosh! Road begins nowhere and ends nowhere. If any
+set of fools built it, the only freight it would get, outside of peanuts
+and sweet potatoes, would be razor-back hogs and niggers. I wouldn't
+give a yellow dog for enough of those securities to paper a church."
+
+The colonel was on his feet in an instant.
+"Mr. Klutchem, I cannot permit you, suh, to use such language in my
+presence unrebuked; you"--
+
+"Now, see here, old Garden Spot, you know"--
+
+The familiarity angered the colonel even more than the outburst.
+
+"Caarter, suh,--George Fairfax Caarter," said the colonel with dignity.
+
+"Well, Caarter, then," mimicking him, perhaps unconsciously. "You
+know"--
+
+The intonation was the last straw. The colonel lost all control of
+himself. No man had ever thus dared before.
+
+"Stop, Mr. Klutchem! What I know, suh, I decline to discuss with you.
+Yo' statements are false, and yo' manner of expressin' them quite in
+keepin' with the evident vulga'ity of yo' mind. If I can ascertain
+that you have ever had any claim to be considered a gentleman you will
+hear from me ag'in. If not, I shall rate you as rankin' with yo' yallar
+dog; and if you ever speak to me ag'in I will strike you, suh, with
+my cane."
+
+And the colonel, his eyes flashing, strode into the private office
+with the air of a field marshal, and shut the door.
+
+Klutchem looked around the room and into the startled faces of the
+clerks and bystanders, burst into a loud laugh, and left the office.
+On reaching the street he met Fitz coming in.
+
+"Better look after old Garden Spot, Fitzpatrick. I poked holes in his
+road, and he wanted to swallow me alive."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_Certain Important Letters_
+
+
+When I reached my lodgings that night I found this note, marked in the
+left-hand corner "Important," and in the right-hand corner "In haste."
+A boy had left it half an hour before.
+
+Be at my house at six, prepared to leave town at an hour's notice.
+
+CARTER.
+
+I hurried to Bedford Place, dived through the tunnel, and found
+Fitzpatrick with his hand on the knocker. I followed him through the
+narrow hall and into the dining-room. He had a duplicate, also marked
+"Important" and "In haste," with this additional postscript: "Bring
+address of a prudent doctor."
+
+"What does all this mean, Fitz?" I asked, spreading my letter out.
+
+"I give it up, Major. The last I saw of the colonel was at two o'clock.
+He was then in the private office writing. That old wind-bag Klutchem
+had been worrying him, I heard, and the colonel sat down on him hard.
+But he had forgotten all about it when I talked to him, for he was as
+calm as a clock. But what the devil, Major, does he want with a doctor?
+Chad!"
+
+"Yes, sah!"
+
+"Was the colonel sick this morning?"
+
+"No, sah. Eat two b'iled eggs, and a dish ob ham half as big as yo'
+han'. He wa'n't sick, 'cause I yerd him singin' to hisself all fru de
+tunnel cl'ar out to de street."
+
+We sat down and looked at each other. Could anybody else be sick?
+Perhaps aunt Nancy had been taken ill on her way home to Virginia, and
+the doctor was for the dear lady. But why a "prudent doctor," and why
+both of us to go?
+
+Fitz paced up and down the room, and I sat by the open window, and
+looked out into the dreary yard. The hands of the clock in the tall
+tower outlined against the evening sky were past the hour, long past,
+and yet no colonel.
+
+Suppose he had been suddenly stricken down himself! Suppose--
+
+The slamming of the outer gate, followed by a sentry-like tread in the
+tunnel, cut short our quandary, and the colonel's tall figure emerged
+from the archway, and mounted the steps.
+
+"What has happened?" we both blurted out, opening the door for him.
+"Who's sick? Where are we going?"
+
+The colonel's only reply was a pressure of our hands. Then, placing
+his hat with great deliberation on the hall table, he drew off his
+gloves, waved us before him, and took his seat at the dining-room
+table.
+
+Fitz and I, now thoroughly alarmed, and quite prepared for the worst,
+stood on each side.
+
+The colonel dropped his hand into his inside pocket, and drew forth
+three letters.
+
+"Gentlemen, you see befo' you a man on the verge of one of the great
+crises of his life. You heard, Fitz, of what occurred in my office
+this mornin'? You know how brutally I was assaulted, and how entirely
+without provocation on my part? I am a Caarter, suh, and a gentleman.
+No man can throw discredit on an enterprise bearin' my name without
+bein' answerable to me."
+
+And the colonel with great dignity opened one of the letters, and read
+as follows:--
+
+51 BEDFORD PLACE. _Tuesday._
+
+P. A. KLUTCHEM. _Sir_,--You took occasion this morning, in the
+presence of a number of my friends, to make use of certain offensive
+remarks reflecting upon a great commercial enterprise to which I have
+lent my name. This was accompanied by a familiarity as coarse as it
+was unwarranted. The laws of hospitality, which your own lack of good
+breeding violated, forbade my having you ejected from my office on the
+spot.
+
+I now demand that satisfaction to which I am entitled, and I herewith
+inform you that I am ready at an hour's notice to meet you at any point
+outside the city most convenient to yourself.
+
+Immediately upon your reply my friend Mr. T. B. Fitzpatrick will wait
+upon you and arrange the details. I name Major Thos. C. Yancey of
+Virginia as my second in the field.
+
+I have the honor to remain
+     Your obedient servant,
+       GEORGE FAIRFAX CARTER, _Late Colonel C. S. A._
+
+"Suffering Moses!" cried out Fitz. "You are not going to send that?"
+
+"It is sent, my dear Fitz. Mailed from my office this afternoon. This
+is a copy." Fitz sank into a chair with both hands to his head.
+
+"My object in sendin' for you both," the colonel continued, "was to
+be fully prepared should my antagonist select some early hour in the
+mornin'. In that case, Fitz, I shall have to rely on you alone, as
+Major Yancey cannot reach here until the followin' day. That was why
+a prudent doctor might be necessary at once."
+
+Fitz's only reply was to thump his own head, as if the situation was
+too overpowering for words.
+
+The colonel, with the same deliberation, opened the second letter. It
+was addressed to Judge Kerfoot, informing him of the nature of the
+"crisis," and notifying him of his (the colonel's) intention to appoint
+him sole executor of his estate should fate provide that vacancy.
+
+The third was a telegram to Major Yancey summoning him at once "to
+duty on the field in an affair of honor."
+
+"I am aware, Fitz, that some secrecy must be preserved in an affair
+of this kind Nawth--quite diffe'ent from our own county, and"--
+
+"Secrecy! Secrecy! With that bellowing Klutchem? Don't you know that
+that idiot will have it all over the Street by nine o'clock to-morrow,
+unless he is ass enough to get scared, get out a warrant, and clap you
+into the Tombs before breakfast? O Colonel! How _could_ you do a thing
+like this without letting us know?"
+
+The colonel never changed a muscle in his face. He was courteous, even
+patient with Fitz, now really alarmed over the consequences of what
+he considered a most stupendous piece of folly. He could not, he said,
+sit in judgment on other gentlemen. If Fitz felt that way, it was
+doubtless due to his education. As for himself, he must follow the
+traditions of his ancestors.
+
+"But at all events, my friends, my dear friends,"--and he extended
+both hands,--"we must not let this affair spoil our ap'tites. Nothing
+can now occur until the mornin', and we have ample time befo' daylight
+to make our preparations. Major, kindly touch the bell. Thank you!
+Chad, serve the soup."
+
+So short a time elapsed between the sound of the bell and the thrusting
+in of Chad's head that it was quite evident the darky had been listening
+on the outside.
+
+If, however, that worthy guardian of the honor and dignity of the
+Carter family was at all disturbed by what he had heard, there was
+nothing in his face to indicate it. On the contrary, every wrinkle was
+twisted into curls and curves of hilarity. He even went so far during
+dinner as to correct his master in so slight a detail as to where
+Captain Loynes was hit in the famous duel between the colonel's father
+and that distinguished Virginian.
+
+"Are you shore, Chad, it was in the leg?"
+
+"Yes, sah, berry sho. You don't reckel-member, Colonel; but I had Marsa
+John's coat, an' I wrop it round Cap'in Loynes when he was ca'aied to
+his ca'aige. Yes, sah, jes above de knee. Marsa John picked him de
+fust shot."
+
+"I remember now. Yes, you are right. The captain always walked a little
+lame."
+
+"But, gentlemen,"--still with great dignity, but yet with an air as
+if he desired to relieve our minds from any anxiety concerning
+himself,--"by far the most interesting affair of honor of my time was
+the one in which I met Major Howard, a prominent member of the Fairfax
+County bar. Some words in the heat of debate led to a blow, and the
+next mornin' the handkerchief was dropped at the edge of a wood near
+the cote-house just as the sun rose over the hill. As I fired, the
+light blinded me, and my ball passed through his left arm. I escaped
+with a hole in my sleeve."
+
+"Living yet?" said Fitz, repressing a smile.
+
+"Certainly, suh, and one of the fo'most lawyers of our State. Vehy
+good friend of mine. Saw him on'y the week befo' I left home."
+
+When dinner was served, I could detect no falling off in the colonel's
+appetite. With the exception of a certain nervous expectance,
+intensified when there was a rap at the front door, followed by a
+certain consequent disappointment when Chad announced the return of
+a pair of shoes--out to be half-soled--instead of the long-delayed
+reply from the offending broker, he was as calm and collected as ever.
+
+It was only when he took from his table drawer some sheets of foolscap,
+spread the nib of a quill pen on his thumb nail, and beckoned Fitz to
+his side, that I noticed any difference even in his voice.
+
+"You know, Fitz, that my hand is not so steady as it was, and if I
+should fall, there are some things that must be attended to. Sit here
+and write these memoranda at my dictation."
+
+Fitz drew nearer, and bent his ear in attention.
+
+"I, George Fairfax Caarter of Caarter Hall, Caartersville, Virginia,
+bein' of sound mind"--
+
+The pen scratched away.
+
+"Everything down but the sound mind," said Fitz; "but go on."
+
+"Do hereby," continued the colonel.
+
+"What's all this for--another challenge?" said Fitz, looking up.
+
+"No, Fitz,"--the colonel did not like his tone,--"but a few partin'
+instructions which will answer in place of a more formally drawn will."
+
+Fitz scratched on until the preamble was finished, and the unincumbered
+half of Carter Hall had been bequeathed to "my ever valued aunt Ann
+Carter, spinster," and he had reached a new paragraph beginning with,
+"All bonds, stocks, and shares, whether founders', preferred, or common,
+of the corporation known as the Cartersville and Warrentown Air Line
+Railroad, particularly the sum of 25,000 shares of said company
+subscribed for by the undersigned, I hereby bequeath," when Fitz stopped
+and laid down his pen.
+
+"You can't leave that stock. Not transferred to you yet."
+
+"I know it, Fitz; but I have pledged my word to take it, and so far
+as I am concerned, it is mine."
+
+Fitz looked over his glasses at me, and completed the sentence by which
+this also became "the exclusive property of Ann Carter, spinster."
+Then followed a clause giving his clothes to Chad, his seal and chain
+to Fitz, and his fowling-piece to me.
+
+When the document was finished, the colonel signed it in a bold, round
+hand, and attested it by a burning puddle of red wax into which he
+plunged the old family seal. Fitz and I duly witnessed it, and then
+the colonel, with the air of a man whose mind had been suddenly relieved
+of some great pressure, locked the important document in his drawer,
+and handed the key to Fitz.
+
+The change now in the colonel's manner was quite in keeping with the
+expression of his face. All his severe dignity, all the excess of
+responsibility and apparent studied calmness, were gone. He even became
+buoyant enough to light a pipe.
+
+Presently he gave a little start as if suddenly remembering something
+until that moment overlooked, then he lighted a candle, and mounted
+the stairs to his bedroom. In a few minutes he returned, carrying in
+both hands a mysterious-looking box. This he placed with great care
+on the table, and proceeded to unlock with a miniature key attached
+to a bunch which he invariably carried in his trousers pocket.
+
+It was a square box made of mahogany, bound at each corner with brass,
+and bearing in the centre of the top a lozenge-shaped silver tablet
+engraved with a Carter coat of arms, the letters "G. F. C." being
+beneath.
+
+The colonel raised the lid and uncovered the weapons that had defended
+the honor of the Carter family for two generations. They were the old
+fashioned single-barrel kind, with butts like those of the pirates in
+a play, and they lay in a bed of faded red velvet surrounded by ramrods,
+bullet-moulds, a green pill-box labeled "G. D. Gun Caps," some scraps
+of wash leather, together with a copper powder-flask and a spoonful
+of bullets. The nipples were protected by little patches cut from an
+old kid glove.
+
+The colonel showed with great pride a dent on one side of the barrel
+where a ball had glanced, saving some ancestor's life; then he rang
+the bell for Chad, and consigned the case to that hilarious darky very
+much as the knight of a castle would place his trusty blade in the
+hands of his chief armorer.
+
+"Want a tech o' ile in dese baals, Colonel," said Chad, examining them
+critically. "Got to keep dere moufs clean if you want dese dogs to
+bark right;" and he bore away the battery, followed by the colonel,
+who went down into the kitchen to see if the fire was hot enough to
+cast a few extra bullets.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Fitz and I, being more concerned about devising some method to prevent
+the consequences of the colonel's rash act than in increasing the
+facilities for bloodshed, remained where we were and discussed the
+possible outcome of the situation.
+
+We had about agreed that should Klutchem demand protection of the
+police, and the colonel be hauled up for violating the law of the
+State, I should go bail and Fitz employ the lawyer, when we were
+startled by a sound like the snap of a percussion-cap, followed by
+loud talking in the front yard.
+
+First came a voice in a commanding tone: "Stand where you are! Drop
+yo' hand!"
+
+Then Chad's "Don't shoot yit, Colonel."
+
+Fitz and I started for the front door on a run, threw it open, and ran
+against Chad standing on the top step with his back to the panels.
+Over his head he held the stub of a candle flickering in the night
+wind. This he moved up and down in obedience to certain mysterious
+sounds which came rumbling out of the tunnel. Beside him on the stone
+step lay the brass-cornered mahogany dueling case with both weapons
+gone.
+
+The only other light visible was the glowing eye of the tall tower.
+
+"Where's the colonel?" we both asked in a breath.
+
+Chad kept the light aloft with one hand like an ebony Statue of Liberty,
+and pointed straight ahead into the tunnel with the other.
+
+"Mo' to the left," came the voice.
+
+Chad swayed the candle towards the broken-down fence, and sent his
+magnified shadow scurrying up the measly wall and halfway over to the
+next house.
+"So! Now steady."
+
+The darky stood like the Sphinx, the light streaming atop of the tall
+candlestick, and then said from out one side of his mouth, "Spec' you
+gemmen better squat; she's gwineter bite."
+
+Fitz peered into the tunnel, caught the gleam of a pistol held in a
+shadowy hand, made a clear leap, and landed out of range among the
+broken flower-pots. I sprang behind the hydrant, and at the same instant
+another cap snapped.
+
+"Ah, gentlemen," said the voice emerging from the tunnel. "Had I been
+quite sure of myself I should have sent for you. I used to snuff a
+candle at fo'ty yards, and but that my powder is a little old I could
+do it ag'in."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_The Outcome of a Council of War_
+
+
+When early the next morning, Fitz and I arrived at the colonel's office
+he was already on hand and in a state of high nervous excitement. His
+coat, which, so far as a coat might, always expressed in its various
+combinations the condition of his mind, was buttoned close up under
+his chin, giving to his slender figure quite a military air. He was
+pacing the floor with measured tread; one hand thrust into his bosom,
+senator fashion, the other held behind his back.
+
+"Not a line, suh; not the scrape of a pen. If his purpose, suh, is to
+ignore me altogether, I shall horsewhip him on sight."
+
+"Have you looked through the firm's mail?" said Fitz, glad of the
+respite.
+
+"Eve'ywhere, suh--not a scrap."
+
+"I will hunt him up;" and Fitz hurried down to Klutchem's office in
+the hope of either intercepting the challenge or of pacifying the
+object of the colonel's wrath, if by any good chance the letter should
+have been delayed until the morning.
+
+In ten minutes he returned with the mystifying news that Mr. Klutchem's
+letters had been sent to his apartment the night before, and that a
+telegram had just been received notifying his clerks that he would not
+be down that day.
+
+"Escaped, suh, has he? Run like a dog! Like a yaller dog as he is!
+Where has he gone?"
+
+"After a policeman, I guess," said Fitz.
+
+The colonel stopped, and an expression of profound contempt overspread
+his face.
+
+"If the gentleman has fallen so low, suh, that he proposes to go about
+with a constable taggin' after his heels, you can tell him, suh, that
+he is safe even from my boot."
+
+Then he shut the door of the private office in undisguised disgust,
+leaving Fitz and me on the outside.
+
+"What are we going to do, Major?" said Fitz, now really anxious. "I
+am positive that old Klutchem has either left town or is at this moment
+at police headquarters. If so, the dear old fellow will be locked up
+before sundown. Klutchem got that letter last night."
+
+It was at once decided to head off the broker, Fitz keeping an eye on
+his office every half hour in the hope that he might turn up, and I
+completing the arrangements for the colonel's bail so as to forestall
+the possibility of his remaining in custody overnight.
+
+Fitz spent the day in efforts to lay hands on Klutchem in order to
+prevent the law performing the same service for the colonel. My own
+arrangements were more easily completed, a friend properly possessed
+of sufficient real estate to make good his bond being in readiness for
+any emergency. One o'clock came, then three, then five; the colonelall
+the time keeping to the seclusion of his private office, Fitz
+watching for Klutchem, and I waiting in the larger office for the
+arrival of one of those clean-shaven, thick-set young men, in a Derby
+hat and sack-coat, the unexpected pair of handcuffs in his outside
+pocket.
+
+The morning of the second day the situation remained still unchanged;
+Fitz had been unable to find Klutchem either at his office or at his
+lodgings, the colonel was still without any reply from his antagonist,
+and no young man answering to my fears had put in any appearance
+whatever.
+
+The only new features were a telegram from Tom Yancey to the effect
+that he and Judge Kerfoot would arrive about noon, and another from
+the judge himself begging a postponement until they could reach the
+field.
+
+Fitz read both dispatches in a corner by himself, with a face expressive
+of the effect these combined troubles were making upon his otherwise
+happy countenance. He then crumpled them up in his hand and slid them
+into his pocket.
+
+Up to this time not a soul in the office except the colonel, Fitz, and
+I had the faintest hint of the impending tragedy, it being one of the
+colonel's maxims that all affairs of honor demanded absolute silence.
+
+"If yo' enemy falls," he would say, "it is mo' co'teous to say nothin'
+but good of the dead; and when you cannot say that, better keep still.
+If he is alive let him do the talkin'--he will soon kill himself."
+
+Fitz kept still because he felt sure if he could get hold of Klutchem
+the whole affair--either outcome powder or law--could be prevented.
+
+"Just as I had got the syndicate to look into the coal land," said
+Fitz, "which is the only thing the colonel's got worth talking about,
+here he goes and gets into a first-class cast-iron scrape like this.
+What a lovely old idiot he is! But I tell you, Major, something has
+got to be done about this shooting business right away! Here I have
+arranged for a meeting at the colonel's house on Saturday to discuss
+this new coal development, and the syndicate's agent is coming, and
+yet we can't for the life of us tell whether the colonel will be on
+his way home in a pine box or locked up here for trying to murder that
+old windbag. It's horrible!
+
+"And to cap the climax,"--and he pulled out the crumpled
+telegrams,--"here come a gang of fire-eaters who will make it twice
+as difficult for me to settle anything. I wish I could find Klutchem!"
+
+While he spoke the office door opened, ushering in a stout man with
+a red face, accompanied by an elderly white-haired gentleman, in a
+butternut suit. The red-faced man was carrying a carpet bag--not the
+Northern variety of wagon-curtain canvas, but the old-fashioned carpet
+kind with leather handles and a mouth like a catfish. The snuff-colored
+gentleman's only charge was a heavy hickory cane and an umbrella with
+a waist like a market-woman's.
+
+The red-faced man took off a wide straw hat and uncovered a head
+slightly bald and reeking with perspiration.
+
+"I'm lookin' fur Colonel Caarter, suh. Is he in?"
+
+Fitz pointed to the door of the private office, and the elderly man
+drew his cane and rapped twice. The colonel must have recognized the
+signal as familiar, for the door opened with a spring, and the next
+moment he had them both by the hands.
+
+"Why, Jedge, this is indeed an honor--and Tom! Of co'se I knew you
+would come, Tom; but the Jedge I did not expec' until I got yo'
+telegram. Give me yo' bag, and put yo' umbrella in the corner.
+
+"Here Fitz, Major; both of you come in here at once.
+
+"Jedge Kerfoot, gentlemen, of the district co'te of Fairfax County.
+Major Tom Yancey, of the army."
+
+The civilities over, extra chairs were brought in, the door again
+closed, and a council of war was held.
+
+Major Yancey's first word--but I must describe Yancey. Imagine a short,
+oily skinned, perpetually perspiring sort of man of forty, with a
+decollete collar, a double-breasted waistcoat with glass buttons, and
+skin-tight light trousers held down to a pair of high-heeled boots by
+leather straps. The space between his waistband and his waistcoat was
+made good by certain puckerings of his shirt anxious to escape the
+thralldom of his suspenders. His paunch began and ended so suddenly
+that he constantly reminded you of a man who had swallowed a toy
+balloon.
+
+Yancey's first word was an anxious inquiry as to whether he was late,
+adding, "I came ez soon ez I could settle some business mattahs." He
+had borrowed his traveling expenses from Kerfoot, who in turn had
+borrowed them from Miss Nancy, keeping the impending duel carefully
+concealed from that dear lady, and reading only such part of the
+colonel's letter as referred to the drawing up of some important papers
+in which he was to figure as chief executor.
+
+"Late? No, Tom," said the colonel; "but the scoundrel has run to cover.
+We are watchin' his hole."
+
+"You sholy don't tell me he's got away, Colonel?" replied Major Yanccy.
+
+"What could I do, Yancey? He hasn't had the decency to answer my
+letter."
+
+Yancey, however, on hearing more fully the facts, clung to the hope
+that the Yankee would yet be smoked out.
+
+"I of co'se am not familiar with the code as practiced Nawth--perhaps
+these delays are permis'ble; but in my county a challenge is a ball,
+and a man is killed or wounded ez soon ez the ink is dry on the papah.
+The time he has to live is only a mattah of muddy roads or convenience
+of seconds. Is there no way in which this can be fixed? I doan't like
+to return home without an effo't bein' made."
+
+The colonel, anxious to place the exact situation before Major Yancey
+so that he might go back fully assured that everything that a Carter
+could do had been done, read the copy of the challenge, gave the details
+of Fitz's efforts to find Klutchem, the repeated visits to his office,
+and finally the call at his apartments.
+
+The major listened attentively, consulted aside with the judge, and
+then in an authoritative tone, made the more impressive by the decided
+way with which he hitched up his trousers, said:--
+
+"You have done all that a high-toned Southern gemman could do, Colonel.
+Yo' honor, suh, is without a stain."
+
+In which opinion he was sustained by Kerfoot, who proved to be a
+ponderous sort of old-fashioned county judge, and who accentuated his
+decision by bringing down his cane with a bang.
+
+While all this was going on in the private office under cover of
+profound secrecy, another sort of consultation of a much more public
+character was being held in the office outside.
+
+A very bright young man--one of the clerks--held in his hand a large
+envelope, bearing on one end the printed address of the firm whose
+private office the colonel was at that moment occupying as a council
+chamber. It was addressed in the colonel's well-known round hand. This
+was not the fact, however, which excited interest; for the colonel
+never used any other envelopes than those of the firm.
+
+The postman, who had just taken it from his bag, wanted to deliver it
+at its destination. The proprietor wanted to throw it back into the
+box for remailing, believing it to be a Garden Spot circular, and so
+of no especial importance. The bright young man wanted to return it
+to the colonel.
+
+The bright young man prevailed, rapped at the door, and laid the letter
+under the colonel's nose. It bore this address:--
+
+P. A. KLUTCHEM, ESQ.,
+Room 21, Star Building, Wall Street,
+_Immediate._ New York.
+
+The colonel turned pale and broke the seal. Out dropped his challenge!
+
+"Where did you get this?" he asked, aghast.
+
+"From the carrier. It was held for postage."
+
+Had a bombshell been exploded the effect could not have been more
+startling.
+
+Yancey was the first man on his feet.
+
+"And the scoundrel never got it! Here, Colonel, give me the letter.
+I'll go through this town like a fine-tooth comb but what I'll find
+him. He will never escape me. My name is Yancey, suh!"
+
+The judge was more conservative. He had grave doubts as to whether a
+second challenge, after a delay of two days and two nights, could be
+sent at all. The traditions of the Carter family were a word and a
+blow, not a blow and a word in two days. To intrust the letter to the
+United States mail was a grave mistake; the colonel might have known
+that it would miscarry.
+
+Fitz said grimly that letters always did, without stamps. The Government
+was running the post-office on a business basis, not for its health.
+
+Yancey looked at Fitz as if the interruption wearied him, then, turning
+to the colonel, said that he was dumbfounded that a man who had been
+raised as Colonel Carter could have violated so plain a rule of the
+code. A challenge should always be delivered by the hand of the
+challenger's friend. It should never be mailed.
+
+The poor colonel, who since the discovery of the unstamped letter had
+sat in a heap buried in his coat collar,--the military button having
+given way,--now gave his version of the miscarriage.
+
+He began by saying that when his friend Major Yancey became conversant
+with all the facts he would be more lenient with him. He had, he said,
+found the proprietor's drawer locked, and, not having a stamp about
+him, had dropped the document into the mail-box with the firm's letters,
+presuming that the clerks would affix the tax the Government imposed.
+That the document had reached the post-office was evidenced by the
+date-stamp on the envelope. It seemed to him a picayune piece of
+business on the part of the authorities to detain it, and all for the
+paltry sum of two cents.
+
+Major Yancey conferred with the judge for a moment, and then said that
+the colonel's explanation had relieved him of all responsibility. He
+owed him a humble apology, and he shook his hand. Colonel Carter had
+done all that a high-bred gentleman could do. The letter was intrusted
+to the care of Mr. Klutchem's own government, the post-office as now
+conducted being peculiarly a Yankee institution.
+
+"If Mr. Klutchem's own government, gemmen,"--and he repeated it with
+a rising voice,--"if Mr. Klutchem's own government does not trust him
+enough to deliver to him a letter in advance of a payment of two cents,
+such action, while highly discreditable to Mr. Klutchem, certainly
+does not relieve that gemman from the responsibility of answerin'
+Colonel Caarter."
+
+The colonel said the point was well taken, and the judge sustained him.
+
+Yancey looked around with the air of a country lawyer who had tripped
+up a witness, decorated a corner of the carpet, and continued:--
+
+"My idee, suh, now that I am on the ground, is for me to wait upon the
+gemman at once, hand him the orig'nal challenge, and demand an immediate
+answer. That is, "turning to Fitz, "unless he is in hidin'."
+
+Fitz replied that it was pretty clear to him that a man could not hide
+from a challenge he had never received. It was quite evident that
+Klutchem was detained somewhere.
+
+The colonel coincided, and said in justice to his antagonist that he
+would have to acquit him of this charge. He did not now believe that
+Mr. Klutchem had run away.
+Fitz, who up to this time had enjoyed every turn in the discussion,
+and who had listened to Yancey with a face like a stone god, his knees
+shaking with laughter, now threw another bombshell almost as disastrous
+as the first.
+
+"Besides, gentlemen, I don't think Mr. Klutchem's remarks were
+insulting."
+
+The colonel's head rose out of his collar with a jerk, and the forelegs
+of Yancey's chair struck the floor with a thump. Both sprang to their
+feet. The judge and I remained quiet. "Not insultin', suh, to call a
+gemman a--a--Colonel, what did the scoundrel call you?"
+
+"It was mo' his manner," replied the colonel. "He was familiar, suh,
+and presumin' and offensive."
+
+Yancey broke away again, but Fitz sidetracked him with a gesture, and
+asked the colonel to repeat Klutchem's exact words.
+
+The colonel gazed at the ceiling a moment, and replied:--
+
+"Mr. Klutchem said that, outside of peanuts and sweet potatoes, all
+my road would git for freight would be niggers and razor-back hogs."
+
+"Mr. Klutchem was right, Colonel," said Fitz. "Very sensible man. They
+will form a very large part of our freight. Anything offensive in that
+remark of Klutchem's, Major Yancey?"
+
+The major conferred with the judge, and said reluctantly that there
+was not.
+
+"Go on, Colonel," continued Fitz.
+
+"Then, suh, he said he wouldn't trade a yaller dog for enough of our
+bonds to papah a meetin'-house."
+
+"Did he call you a yaller dog?" said Yancey searchingly, and
+straightening himself up.
+
+"No."
+
+"Call anybody connected with you a yaller dog?"
+
+"Can't say that he did."
+
+"Call yo' railroad a yaller dog?"
+
+"No, don't think so," said the colonel, now thoroughly confused and
+adrift.
+
+Yancey consulted with the judge a moment in one corner, and then said
+gravely:--
+
+"Unless some mo' direct insult is stated, Colonel, we must agree with
+yo' friend Mr. Fitzpatrick, and consider yo' action hasty. Now, if you
+had pressed the gemman, and he had called _you_ a yaller dog or a liar,
+somethin' might be done. Why didn't you press him?"
+
+"I did, suh. I told him his statements were false and his manners
+vulgar."
+
+"And he did not talk back?"
+
+"No, suh; on'y laughed."
+
+"Sneeringly, and in a way that sounded like 'Yo' 're another'?"
+
+The colonel could not remember that it was.
+
+Yancey ruminated, and Fitz now took a hand.
+
+"On the contrary, Major Yancey, Mr. Klutchem's laugh was a very jolly
+laugh; and, under the circumstances, a laugh very creditable to his
+good nature. You are young and impetuous, but I know my learned friend,
+Judge Kerfoot, will agree with me"--here Yancey patted his toy balloon
+complacently, and the judge leaned forward with rapt attention--"when
+I say that if any apologies are in order they should not come from Mr.
+Klutchem."
+
+It was delicious to note how easily Fitz fell into the oratorical
+method of his hearers.
+
+"Here is a man immersed in stocks, and totally ignorant of the boundless
+resources of your State, who limits the freight of our road to four
+staples,--peanuts, hogs, sweet potatoes, and niggers. As a further
+exhibition of his ignorance he estimates the value of a large block
+of our securities as far below the price set upon a light, tan-colored
+canine, a very inexpensive animal; or, as he puts it, and perhaps too
+coarsely,--a yellow dog. For the expression of these financial opinions
+in an open office during business hours he is set upon, threatened
+with expulsion, and finally challenged to a mortal duel. I ask you,
+as chivalric Virginians, is this right?"
+
+Yancey was about to answer, when the judge raised his hand impressively.
+
+"The co'te, not being familiar with the practice of this section, can
+on'y decide the question in acco'dance with the practice of his own
+county. The language used is not objectionable, either under the law
+or by the code. The prisoner, Klutchem, is discharged with a reprimand,
+and the plaintiff, Caarter, leaves the co'te room without a stain on
+his cha'acter. The co'te will now take a recess."
+
+Fitz listened with great gravity to the decision of the learned judge,
+bowed to him with the pleased deference of the winning attorney, grasped
+the colonel's hand, and congratulated him warmly on his acquittal.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Then, locking his arm through Yancey's, he conducted that pugnacious
+but parched Virginian, together with the overworked judge, out into
+the street, down a flight of stone steps, and into an underground
+apartment; from which they emerged later with that satisfied, cheerful
+air peculiar to a group of men who have slaked their thirst.
+
+The colonel and I remained behind. He was in no mood for such frivolity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_A High Sense of Honor_
+
+
+While the judge's decision had relieved the colonel of all
+responsibility so far as Yancey and Cartersville were concerned,--and
+Yancey would be Cartersville when he was back at the tavern
+stove,--there was one person it had not satisfied, and that was the
+colonel himself.
+
+He began pacing the floor, recounting for my benefit the various
+courtesies he had received since he had lived at the North,--not only
+from the proprietors of the office, but from every one of its
+frequenters. And yet after all these civilities he had so far forgotten
+himself as to challenge a friend of his host, a very worthy gentleman,
+who, although a trifle brusque in his way of putting things, was still
+an open-hearted man. And all because he differed with him on a matter
+of finance.
+
+"The mo' I think of it, Major, the mo' I am overwhelmed by my action.
+It was inconsiderate, suh. It was uncalled for, suh; and I am
+afraid"--and here he lowered his voice--"it was ill-bred and vulgar.
+What could those gentlemen who stood by have thought? They have all
+been so good to me, Major. I have betrayed their hospitality. I have
+forgotten my blood, suh. There is certainly an apology due Mr.
+Klutchem."
+
+At this juncture Fitz returned, followed by Yancey, who was beaming
+all over, the judge bringing up the rear.
+
+All three listened attentively.
+
+"Who's goin' to apologize?" said Yancey, shifting his thumbs from his
+armholes to the side pockets of his vest, from which he pinched up
+some shreds of tobacco.
+
+"I am, suh!" replied the colonel.
+
+"What for, Colonel?" The doctrine was new to Yancey.
+
+"For my own sense of honor, suh!"
+
+"But he never got the challenge."
+
+"That makes no diffence, suh. I wrote it." And the colonel threw his
+head up, and looked Major Yancey straight in the eye.
+
+"But, Colonel, we've got the letter. Klutchem don't know a word about
+it."
+
+"But I do, Major Yancey; and so do you and Fitz, and the jedge and the
+major here. We all know it. Do you suppose, suh, for one instant, that
+I am cowardly enough to stab a man in the back this way and give him
+no chance of defendin' himself? It is monst'ous, suh! Why, suh, it's
+no better than insultin' a deaf man, and then tryin' to escape because
+he did not hear you. I tell you, suh, I shall apologize. Fitz, kindly
+inquire outside if there is any news of Mr. Klutchem."
+
+Fitz opened the door, and sent the inquiry ringing through the office.
+
+"Yes!" came a voice from around the "ticker." "Went to the races two
+days ago, got soaking wet, and has been laid up ever since at a friend's
+house with the worst attack of gout he ever had in his life."
+
+The colonel started as if he had been stung, put on his hat, and with
+a determined air buttoned his coat over his chest. Then, charging
+Yancey and the judge not to leave the office until he returned, he
+beckoned Fitz to him, and said:--
+
+"We have not a moment to lose. Get Mr. Klutchem's address, and order
+a caarriage."
+
+It was the custom with Fitz never to cross the colonel in any one of
+his sudden whims. Whether this was because he liked to indulge him,
+or because it gave him an opportunity to study a type of man entirely
+new to him, the result was always the same,--the colonel had his way.
+Had the Virginian insisted upon waiting on the offending broker in a
+palanquin or upon the top of a four-in-hand, Fitz would have found the
+vehicle somehow, and have crawled in or on top beside him with as much
+complacency as if he had spent his whole life with palanquins and
+coaches, and had had no other interests. So when the order came for
+the carriage, Fitz winked at me with his left eye, walked to the
+sidewalk, whistled to a string of cabs, and the next instant we were
+all three whirling up the crowded street in search of the bedridden
+broker.
+
+The longer the colonel brooded over the situation the more he was
+satisfied with the idea of the apology. Indeed, before he had turned
+down the side street leading to the temporary hospital of the suffering
+man, he had arranged in his mind just where the ceremony would take
+place, and just how he would frame his opening sentence. He was glad,
+too, that Klutchem had been discovered so soon--while Yancey and Kerfoot
+were still in town.
+
+The colonel alighted first, ran up the steps, pulled the bell with the
+air of a doctor called to an important case, and sent his card to the
+first floor back.
+
+"Mr. Klutchem says, 'Walk up,'" said the maid.
+
+The broker was in an armchair with his back to the door, only the top
+of his bald head being visible as we entered. On a stool in front
+rested a foot of enormous size swathed in bandages. Leaning against
+his chair were a pair of crutches. He was somewhat startled at the
+invasion, made as it was in the busiest part of the day.
+
+"What's up? Anybody busted?"
+
+Fitz assured him that the Street was in a mood of the greatest
+tranquillity; that the visit was purely personal, and made for the
+express purpose of offering Colonel Carter an opportunity of relieving
+his mind of a pressure which at the precise moment was greater than
+he could bear.
+
+"Out with it, old Garden--Colonel," broke out Klutchem, catching himself
+in time, and apparently greatly relieved that the situation was no
+worse.
+
+The colonel, who remained standing, bowed courteously, drew himself
+up with a dress-parade gesture, and recounted slowly and succinctly
+the incidents of the preceding three days.
+
+When he arrived at the drawing-up of the challenge, Klutchem looked
+around curiously, gathered in his crutches with his well leg,--prepared
+for escape or defense,--and remained thus equipped until the colonel
+reached the secret consultation in the private office and the return
+of the unstamped letter. Then he toppled his supports over on the
+floor, and laughed until the pain in his elephantine foot bent him
+double.
+
+The colonel paused until Klutchem had recovered himself, and then
+continued, his face still serene, and still expressive of a purpose
+so lofty that it excluded every other emotion.
+
+"The return of my challenge unopened, suh, coupled with the broad views
+of my distinguished friends Mr. Fitzpatrick and the major,--both
+personal friends of yo' own, I believe,--and the calmer reflection of
+my own mind, have convinced me, Mr. Klutchem, that I have been hasty
+and have done you a wrong; and, suh, rememberin' my blood, I have left
+the cares of my office for a brief moment to call upon you at once,
+and tell you so. I regret, suh, that you have not the use of both yo'
+legs, but I have anticipated that difficulty. My caarriage is outside."
+
+"Don't mention it, Colonel. You never grazed me. If you want to plaster
+that syndicate all over with Garden Spots, go ahead. I won't say a
+word. There's my hand."
+
+The colonel never altered a line in his face nor moved a muscle of his
+body. Mr. Klutchem's hand remained suspended in mid air.
+
+"Yo' action is creditable to yo' heart, suh, but you know, of course,
+that I cannot take yo' hand here. I insulted you in a public office,
+and in the presence of yo' friends and of mine, some of whom are at
+this moment awaitin' our return. I feel assured, suh, that under the
+circumstances you will make an effort, however painful it may be to
+you, to relieve me from this stain on my cha'acter. Allow me to offer
+you my arm, and help you to my caarriage, suh. I will not detain you
+mo' than an hour."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Klutchem looked at him in perfect astonishment.
+
+"What for?"
+
+The colonel's color rose.
+
+"That this matter may be settled properly, suh. I insulted you publicly
+in my office. I wish to apologize in the same way. It is my right,
+suh."
+
+"But I can't walk. Look at that foot,--big as a hatbox."
+
+"My friends will assist you, suh. I will carry yo' crutches myself.
+Consider my situation. You surely, as a man of honor, will not refuse
+me this, Mr. Klutchem?"
+
+The colonel's eyes began to snap, and Fitz edged round to pour oil
+when the wind freshened. Klutchem's temper was also on the move.
+
+"Get out of this chair with that mush poultice," pointing to his foot,
+"and have you cart me down to Wall Street to tell me you are sorry you
+didn't murder me! What do you take me for?"
+
+The colonel's eyes now fairly blazed, and his voice trembled with
+suppressed anger.
+
+"I did take you, suh, for a gentleman. I find I am mistaken. And you
+refuse to go, and"--
+
+"Yes!" roared Klutchem, his voice splitting the air like a tomahawk.
+
+"Then, suh, let me tell you right here that if you do not get up now
+and get into my caarriage, whenever you _can_ stand on yo' wuthless
+legs, I will thresh you so, suh, that you will never get up any mo'."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_A Visit of Ceremony_
+
+
+The Honorable I. B. Kerfoot, presiding judge of the district court of
+Fairfax County, Virginia, and the gallant Major Thomas C. Yancey, late
+of the Confederate army, had been the colonel's guests at his hospitable
+house in Bedford Place for a period of six days and six nights, when
+my cards--two--were given to Chad, together with my verbal hopes that
+both gentlemen were within.
+
+My visit was made in conformity with one of the colonel's inflexible
+rules,--every guest under his roof, within one week of his arrival,
+was to be honored by a personal call from every friend within reach.
+
+No excuse would have sufficed on the ground of flying visits. And
+indeed, so far as these particular birds of passage were concerned,
+the occupation was permanent, the judge having taken possession of the
+only shake-down sofa on the lower floor, and the warlike major having
+plumped himself into the middle of the colonel's own bed not ten minutes
+after his arrival. Even to the casual Northern eye, unaccustomed to
+the prolonged sedentary life of the average Virginian when a guest,
+there was every indication that these had come to stay.
+
+Chad laid both of my cards on the table, and indulged in a pantomime
+more graphic than spoken word. He shut his eyes, laid his cheek on one
+hand, and gave a groan of intense disgust, followed by certain gleeful
+chuckles, made the more expressive by the sly jerking of his thumb
+towards the dining room door and the bobbing up and down of his
+fore-finger in the direction of the bedroom above.
+
+"Bofe in. Yes, sah! Bofe in, an' bofe abed. Last I yeard from em' dey
+was hollerin' for juleps."
+
+I entered the dining-room and stopped short. On a low sofa at the far
+end of the room lay a man of more than ordinary girth, with coat, vest,
+and shoes off, his face concealed by a newspaper. From beneath this
+sheet came, at regular intervals, a long-drawn sound like the subdued
+puff of a tired locomotive at rest on a side-track. Beside him was an
+empty tumbler, decorated with a broken straw and a spray of withered
+mint.
+
+The summer air fanned through the closed blinds of the darkened room,
+and played with the silvery locks that straggled over the white pillow;
+the paper rose and fell with a crinkling noise, keeping time to the
+rhythm of the exhaust. Beyond this there was no movement. The Hon. I.
+B. Kerfoot was asleep.
+
+I watched the slowly heaving figure for a moment, picked up a chair,
+and gently closed the door. I could now look the colonel in the face
+so far as the judge was concerned. My account with the colonel was
+settled.
+
+Retiring to the yard outside, which was cool and shady, and, despite
+its dilapidated appearance, a grateful relief from the glare of the
+street, I tilted my chair against the dissipated wall, with its damaged
+complexion of scaling white-wash, and sat down to await the colonel's
+return.
+
+Meanwhile Chad busied himself about the kitchen, moving in and out the
+basement door, and at last brought up a great tin pan, seated himself
+on the lower step, and proceeded to shell pease, indulging all the
+while in a running commentary on the events of the preceding week.
+
+One charm in Chad's conversation was its clearness. You always absorbed
+his meaning. Another was its reliability. When he finished you had the
+situation in full.
+
+First came the duel.
+
+"So dat Ketchem man done got away? Doan' dat beat all! An' de colonel
+a-mak-in' his will an' a-rubbin' up his old barkers. Can't have no fun
+yer naaway; sumpin' allers spiles it. But yer oughter seen de colonel
+dat day w'en he come home! Sakes alive, warn't he b'ilin'! Much as
+Jedge Keerfoot could do to keep him from killin' dat Yankee on de
+street."
+
+Chad's long brown fingers fumbled among the green pea-shells, which
+he heaped up on one side of the pan, and the conversation soon changed
+to his master's "second in the field." I encouraged this divergence,
+for I had been charged by Fitz to find out when these two recent
+additions to the household in Bedford Place intended returning to their
+native clime; that loyal friend of the colonel being somewhat disturbed
+over their preparations for what promised to be a lengthy stay.
+
+"'Fo' de Lawd, I doan' know! Tom Yancey nebber go s'long as de mint
+patch hol' out, an' de colonel bought putty near a ba'el ob it dis
+mawnin', an' anudder dimi-john from Mister Grocerman. Makes my blood
+bile to see dese Yanceys, anyhow. See dat carpet bag w'at he fotch wid
+him? Knowed w'at he had in it w'en he opened its mouf an' de jedge tuk
+his own clo'es outen it? A pair ob carpet slippers, two collars, an'
+a lot ob chicken fixin's. Not a shirt to his back 'cept de one, he had
+on! Had to stay abed yisteddy till I i'oned it. Dar's one ob his collars
+on de line now. Dese yer Yanceys no 'count no way. Beats de lan' how
+de colonel can put up wid 'em, 'cept his faader was quality. You know
+de old gineral married twice, de las' time his oberseer's daughter.
+Dat's her chile--Tom Yancey--'sleep now on de colonel's bed upstairs
+wid a straw in his mouf like a shote. But de colonel say 'tain't Tom's
+fault dat he takes after his mammy; he's a Yancey, anyhow. But I tell
+you, Major, Miss Nancy doan' hab nuffin' much to do wid 'im,--she can't
+abide 'im."
+
+"How long are they going to stay, Chad?" I asked, wishing to make a
+definite report to Fitz.
+
+"Doan' know. Ole groun'-hog mighty comf'ble in de hole." And he heaped
+up another pile of shells.
+
+"Fust night de jedge come he tol' de colonel dat Miss Nancy say we all
+got to come home when de month's up, railroad or no railroad. Dat was
+a week ago. Den de jedge tasted dat Madary Mister Grocerman sent, an'
+I ain't yerd nuffin' 'bout goin' home since. Is you yerd, Major?"
+
+Before I could answer, a shutter opened overhead and a voice came
+sifting down.
+
+"O Chad! Mix me a julep. And, Chad, bring an extra one for the colonel.
+I reckon he'll be yer d'reckly."
+
+"Yes, sah," replied Chad, without lifting his eyes from the pan.
+
+Then glancing up and finding the blind closed again, he said to me in
+a half-whisper:--
+
+"Colonel get his julep when he ax fur it. I ain't caayin' no double
+drinks to nobody. Dis ain't no camp-meetin' bar."
+
+But Chad's training had been too thorough to permit of his refusing
+sustenance or attention to any guest of his master's, no matter how
+unworthy, and it was not many minutes before he was picking over "de
+ba'el" containing that peculiar pungent variety of plant so common to
+the graveyards of Virginia.
+
+Before the cooling beverage had been surmounted by its delicate
+mouthpiece the street gate opened and the colonel walked briskly in.
+
+"Ah, Major! You here? Jes the vehy man we wanted, suh! Fitz and the
+English agent are comin' to dinner. You have heard the news, of co'se?
+No? Not about the great syndicate absorbin' the Garden Spots? My dear
+suh, she's floated! The C. & W. A. L. R. R. is afloat, suh! Proudly
+ridin' the waves of prosperity, suh. Wafted on by the breeze of
+success."
+
+"What, bought the bonds?" I said, jumping up.
+"Well, not exactly bought them outright, for these gigantic operations
+are not conducted in that way; but next to it, suh. To-day,"--and he
+brought his hand down softly on my shoulder,--"to-day, suh, they have
+cabled their agent--the same gentleman, suh, you saw in my office some
+time ago--to make a searchin' investigation into the mineral and
+agricultural resources of that section of my State, with a view to
+extendin' its railroad system. I quote, suh, the exact words: 'extendin'
+its railroad system.' Think, my dear Major, of the effect that a
+colossal financial concern like the great British syndicate would
+produce upon Fairfax County, backed as it is, suh, by untold millions
+of stagnant capital absolutely rottin' in English banks! The road is
+built!" And the colonel in his excitement opened his waistcoat, and
+began pacing the yard, fanning himself vigorously with his hat.
+
+Chad substituted a palm-leaf fan from the hall table, and, producing
+a small tray, picked up the frosted tumbler and mounted the three steps
+to relieve the thirsty guest on the floor above.
+
+As he reached the last step a hand stretched out, and a voice said:--
+
+"Jes what I wanted."
+
+"Dis julep, Jedge, is Major Yancey's."
+
+"All the better." And nodding to the colonel and bowing gravely to me,
+the Hon. I. B. Kerfoot settled himself on the top of the front steps
+with very much the same air with which he would have occupied his own
+judicial bench.
+
+With the exception that this julep was just begun and tile other just
+ended, his Honor presented precisely the same outward appearance as
+when I discovered him asleep on the sofa.
+
+His was, in fact, the extremest limit of dishabille permissible even
+on the hottest of summer afternoons in the most retired of back
+yards,--no coat, no vest, no shoes. In one hand he held a crumpled
+collar and a high, black silk stock; with the other he grasped the
+julep. His hair was tousled, his face shriveled up and pinched by his
+heavy nap, his eyes watery and vague. He reminded me of the man one
+sometimes meets in the aisle of a sleeping-car when one boards the
+train at a way station in the night.
+
+"I hope you have had a refreshin' sleep, Jedge," said the colonel. "My
+friend the major here did himself and me the honor of callin' upon
+you, but findin' that you were restin', suh, he sought the cool of my
+co'teyard until you should awake."
+
+His Honor looked at me over the edge of his tumbler and bowed feebly.
+The straw remained glued to his mouth.
+
+"I have been tellin' him, suh, of the extr'o'd'nary boom to-day in
+Garden Spots, as some of my young friends call the secu'ities of my
+new road, work upon which will be begun next week."
+
+The announcement made no impression upon the judge, his face remaining
+sleepily stolid until that peculiar gurgling sound, the death-rattle
+of a dying julep, caused a shade of sadness to pass over it.
+
+At that instant the shutter again opened overhead.
+
+"Hello, Colonel! Home, are you? Chad, where's my julep? Ah, Major,
+hope I see you vehy well, suh. Where's Kerfoot?"
+
+That legal luminary craned his head forward as far as it would go
+without necessitating any additional movement of his body, caught
+Yancey's eye as he leaned out of the window, and held up the empty
+glass.
+
+When everybody had stopped laughing the colonel made a critical but
+silent examination of the judge, called to Yancey, and said:--
+
+"Gentlemen, we do not dine until seven. You will both have ample time
+to dress."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_Chad in Search of a Coal-Field_
+
+
+The colonel was the first man downstairs. When he entered I saw at a
+glance that it was one of his gala nights, for he wore the ceremonial
+white waistcoat and cravat, and had thrown the accommodating coat wide
+open. His hair, too, was brushed back from his broad forehead with
+more than usual care, each silver thread keeping its proper place in
+the general scheme of iron-gray; while his goatee was twisted to so
+fine a point that it curled upward like a fishhook. He had also changed
+his shoes, his white stockings now being incased in low prunellas tied
+with a fresh ribbon, which hung over the toes like the drooping ears
+of a lapdog.
+
+The attention which the colonel paid to these particular details was
+due, as he frequently said, to his belief that a man would always be
+well dressed who looked after his extremities.
+
+"I can inva'iably, suh, detect the gentleman under the shabbiest suit
+of clothes, if his collar and stockings are clean. When, besides this,
+he brushes his hat and blacks his shoes, you may safely invite him to
+dinner."
+
+Something like this was evidently passing in his mind as he stood
+waiting for his guests, his back to the empty grate; for he examined
+his hands critically, glanced at his shoes, and then excusing himself,
+turned his face, and taking a pair of scissors from his pocket proceeded
+leisurely to trim his cuffs.
+
+"These duties of the dressin'-room, my dear Major, should have been
+attended to in their proper place; but the fact is the jedge is makin'
+rather an elaborate toilet in honor of our guest, and as Yancey occupies
+my bedroom, and the jedge is also dressin' there, my own accommodations
+are limited. I feel sure you will excuse me."
+
+While he spoke the door opened, and his Honor entered in a William
+Penn style of make-up, ruffled shirt and all. He really was not unlike
+that distinguished peacemaker, especially when he carried one of the
+colonel's long pipes in his mouth. He had, I am happy to say, since
+leaving the front steps, accumulated an increased amount of clothing.
+The upper half of the familiar butternut suit--the coat--still clung
+to him, but the middle and lower half had been supplanted by another
+waistcoat and trousers of faded nankeen, the first corrugated into
+wrinkles and the second flapping about his ankles.
+
+The colonel absorbed him at a glance, and with a satisfied air placed
+a chair for him near the window and handed him a palm-leaf fan.
+
+Last of all came Yancey in a flaming red necktie, the only new addition
+to his costume--a part, no doubt, of the "chicken fixin's" found by
+Chad in the carpet bag.
+
+The breezy ex-major, as he entered, seized my hand with the warmth of
+a lifelong friend; then moving over and encircling with his arm the
+colonel's coat collar, he lowered his voice to a confidential whisper
+and inquired about the market of the day with as much solicitude as
+though his last million had been filched from him on insufficient
+security.
+
+When, a few minutes later, the round-faced man, the agent of the great
+English syndicate, walked in, preceded by Fitz, nothing could have
+been more courtly than the way the colonel presented him to his
+guests--pausing at every name to recount some slight biographical
+detail complimentary to each, and ending by announcing with great
+dignity that his honored guest was none other than the very confidential
+agent and adviser of a group of moneyed magnates whose influence
+extended to the uttermost parts of the earth.
+
+The agent, like many other sensible Englishmen, was a bluff, hearty
+sort of man, with a keen eye for the practical side of life and an
+equally keen enjoyment of every other, and it was not five minutes
+before he had located in his round head the precise standing and
+qualifications of every man in the room.
+
+While Yancey amused him greatly as a type quite new to him, the colonel
+filled him with delight. "So frank, so courteous, so hospitable; quite
+the air of a country squire of the old school," he told Fitz afterward.
+
+As a host that night, the colonel was in his happiest vein, and by the
+time the coffee was served, had succeeded not only in entertaining the
+table in his own inimitable way, but he had drawn out from each one
+of his guests, not excepting the reticent Fitz, some anecdote or
+incident of his life, bringing into stronger relief the finer qualities
+of him who told it.
+
+Kerfoot in a ponderous way gave the details of a murder case, tried
+before him many years ago, in which the judge's charge so influenced
+the jury that the man was acquitted, and justly so, as was afterward
+proved. Yancey related an incident of the war, where he, only a drummer
+boy at the time, assisted, at great risk, in carrying a wounded comrade
+from the field. And Fitz was forced to admit that one of the largest
+financial operations of the day would have been a failure had he not
+stepped in at the critical moment and saved it.
+
+Up to this point in the dinner not the slightest reference had been
+made to the railroad or its interests except by the impetuous Yancey,
+who asked Fitz what the bonds would probably be worth, and who was
+promptly silenced by the colonel with the suggestive remark that none
+were for sale, especially at this time.
+
+When, however, by the direction of the colonel, the cloth was removed
+and the old mahogany table that Chad rubbed down every morning with
+a cork was left with only the glasses, a pair of coasters and their
+decanters,--the Madeira within reach of the judge's hand,--the colonel
+rose from his chair and spread out on the polished surface a stained
+and ragged map, labeled in one corner in quaint letters, "Lands of
+John Carter, Esquire, of Carter Hall." Only then was the colonel ready
+for business.
+
+"This is the correct survey, I believe, Jedge," said the colonel.
+
+The judge emptied his glass, felt all over his person for his
+spectacles, found them in the inside pocket of his nankeen waistcoat,
+and, perching them on the extreme end of his nose, looked over their
+rims and remarked that the original deeds of the colonel's estate had
+been based upon this map, and that, so far as he knew, it was correct.
+Then he added:--
+
+"The partition line that was made immejitly aafter the war, dividin'
+the estate between Miss Ann Caarter and yo'self, Colonel, was also tuk
+from this survey."
+
+Fitz conferred with the agent for a moment and then asked the colonel
+where lay the deposit of coal of which he had spoken.
+
+"In a moment, my dear Fitz," said the colonel, deprecatingly, and
+turning to the agent:--
+
+"The city of Fairfax, suh, that we discussed this mornin', will be
+located to the right of this section; the Tench runs here; the iron
+bridge, suh, should cross at this point," marking it with his thumb
+nail. "Or perhaps you gentlemen will decide to have it nearer the Hall.
+It is immaterial to me."
+Then looking at Fitz: "I can't locate the coal, my dear Fitz; but I
+think it is up here on the hill at the foot of the range."
+
+The agent lost interest immediately in the iron bridge over the Tench,
+and asked a variety of questions about the deposit, all of which the
+colonel answered courteously and patiently, but evidently with a desire
+to change the subject as soon as possible.
+
+The Englishman, however, was persistent, while the judge's last
+sententious remark regarding the recent subdivision of the estate
+awakened a new interest in Fitz.
+
+What if this coal should not be on the colonel's land at all! He caught
+his breath at the thought.
+
+It was Fitz's only chance to restore the colonel's fortunes; and
+although for obvious reasons he dared not tell him so, it was really
+the only interest the Englishman had in the scheme at all.
+
+Indeed, the agent had frankly said so to Fitz, adding that he was
+anxious to locate a deposit of coal somewhere in the vicinity of the
+line of the colonel's proposed road; because the extension of certain
+railroads in which the syndicate was interested--not the C. & W. A.
+L. R. R., however--depended almost entirely upon the purchase of this
+vital commodity.
+
+Full of these instructions the agent, after listening to a panegyric
+upon the resources of Fairfax County, interrupted rather curtly a
+glowing statement of the colonel's concerning the enormous value of
+the Garden Spot securities by asking this question:--
+"Are the coal lands for sale?"
+Fitz shivered at its directness, fearing that the colonel would catch
+the drift affairs were taking and become alarmed. His fears were
+groundless; the shot had gone over his head.
+
+"No, suh! My purpose is to use it to supply our shops and motive power."
+
+"If you should decide to sell the lands I would make an investigation
+at once," replied the agent, quietly, but with meaning in his voice.
+
+The colonel looked at him eagerly.
+
+"Would you at the same time consider the purchase of our securities?"
+
+"I might."
+
+"When would you go?"
+
+"To-morrow night, or not at all. I return to England in a week."
+
+Yancey and the judge looked at each other inquiringly with a certain
+anxious expression suggestive of some impending trouble. The judge
+recovered himself first, and quickly filled his glass, leaving but one
+more measure in the decanter. This measure Yancey immediately emptied
+into his own person, as perhaps the only place where it would be
+entirely safe from the treacherous thirst of the judge.
+
+Fitz read in their faces these mental processes, and was more determined
+than ever to break up at once what he called "the settlement."
+
+"Are you sho', Colonel," inquired Ker-foot, catching at straws, "that
+the coal lands lie entirely on yo' father's property? Does not the
+Barbour lan' jine yo's on the hill?"
+
+"I am not positively sho', suh, but I have always understood that what
+we call the coal hills belonged to my father. You see," said the
+colonel, turning to the agent, "this grade of wild lan' is never
+considered of much value with us, and a few hundred acres mo' or less
+is never insisted on among old families of our standin' whose estates
+jine."
+
+Yancey expanded his vest, and said authoritatively that he was quite
+sure the coal hills were on the Barbour property. He had shot partridges
+over that land many a time.
+
+The agent, who had listened calmly to the discussion, remarked dryly
+that until the colonel definitely ascertained whether he had any lands
+to sell it would be a useless waste of time to make the trip.
+
+"Quite so," said Kerfoot, raising the emptied decanter to his eye, and
+replacing it again with a look at Yancey expressive of the contempt
+in which he held a man who could commit so mean an act.
+
+"But, Colonel," said Fitz, "can't you telegraph to-morrow and find
+out?"
+
+"To whom, my clear Fitz? It would take a week to get the clerk of the
+co'te to look through the records. Nobody at Bar-hour's knows."
+
+"Does Miss Nancy know?"
+The colonel shook his head dubiously.
+
+Fitz's face suddenly lighted up as he started from his seat, and caught
+the colonel by the arm.
+
+"Does Chad?"
+
+"Chad! Yes, Chad might."
+
+Fitz nearly overturned his chair in his eagerness to reach the top ofthe
+kitchen stairs.
+
+"Come up here, Chad, quick as your legs can carry you--two steps at
+a time!"
+
+Chad hurried into the room with the face of a man sent for to put out
+a fire.
+
+"Chad," said the colonel, "you know the big hill as you go up from the
+marsh at home?"
+
+"Yes, sah."
+
+"Whose lan' is the coal on, mine or Jedge Barbour's?"
+
+The old darky's face changed from an expression of the deepest anxiety
+to an effort at the deepest thought. The change was so sudden that the
+wrinkles got tangled up in the attempt, resulting in an expression of
+vague uncertainty.
+
+"You mean, Colonel, de hill whar we cotch de big coon?"
+
+"Yes," said the colonel encouragingly, ignorant of the coon, but knowing
+that there was only one hill.
+
+"Well, Jedge Barbour's niggers always said dat de coon was dere coon,
+'ca'se he was treed on dere lan', and we 'sputed dat it was our coon,
+'ca'se it was on our lan'."
+
+"Who got de coon?" asked Fitz.
+
+"Oh, _we_ got the coon!" And Chad's eyes twinkled.
+
+"That settles it. It's your land, Colonel," said Fitz, with one of his
+sudden roars, in which everybody joined but Chad and the judge.
+
+"But den, gemmen,"--Chad was a little uncomfortable at the
+merriment,--"it was our coon for sho. I knowed whar de line went,
+'ca'se I he'p Marsa John caarry de spy-glass when he sold de woodlan's
+to Jedge Barbour, an' de coon was on our side ob dat line."
+
+If Chad's first statement caused nothing but laughter, the second
+produced nothing but the profoundest interest.
+Here was the surveyor himself!
+
+The colonel turned the map to Chad's side of the table. Every man in
+the room stood up and craned his head forward.
+
+"Now, Chad," said the colonel, "this map is a plan of our lan'--same
+as if you were lookin' down on it. Here is the road to Caartersville.
+See that square, black mark? That's Caarter Hall. This is the marsh,
+and that is the coal hill. Now, standin' here in the marsh,--this is
+where our line begins, Fitz,--standin' here, Chad, in the marsh, which
+side of the line is that hill on? Mine or Jedge Barbour's?"
+
+The old man bent over the table, and scanned the plan closely.
+
+"Wat's dis blue wiggle lookin' like a big fish-wum?"
+
+"That's the Tench River."
+
+Chad continued his search, his wrinkled brown hand, with its extended
+forefinger capped by its stumpy nail, looking for all the world like
+a mud turtle with head out crawling over the crumpled surface of the
+map.
+
+"Scuse me till I run down to de kitchen an' git my spec's. I can't see
+like"--
+
+"Here, take mine!" said Fitz, handing him his gold ones. He would have
+lent him his eyes if he could have found that coal-field the sooner.
+
+The turtle crawled slowly up, its head thrust out inquiringly, inched
+along the margin of the map, and backed carefully down again, pausing
+for such running commentaries as "Dis yer's de ribber;" "Dat's de
+road;" "Dis de ma'sh."
+
+The group was now a compact mass, every eye watching Chad's finger as
+though it were a divining rod--Fitz full of smothered fears lest after
+all the prize should slip from his grasp; the agent anxious but
+reserved; Yancey and the judge hovering between hope and despair, with
+eyes on the empty decanter; and last of all the colonel, on the outside,
+holding a candle himself, so that his guests might see the better--the
+least interested man in the room.
+
+Presently the finger stopped, and Chad looked up into his master's
+face.
+
+"If I was down dar, Marsa George, jes a minute, I could tole ye, 'ca'se
+I reckelmember de berry tree whar Marsa John had de spyglass sot on
+its legs. I held de pole on de rock way up yander on de hill, an' in
+dat berry rock Marsa John done cut a crotch."
+
+"And which way is the crotch in the rock from the marsh here?" asked
+Fitz eagerly.
+
+Chad stood up, looked at the plan glistening under the candlelight,
+paused an instant, then took off the gold-rimmed glasses, and handed
+them with great deference to Fitz.
+
+"'T ain't no use, Marsa George. I kin go frough dat ma'sh blindfolded
+in de night an' cotch a possum airy time along airy one ob dem
+fences;but dis yer foolin' wid lan's on paper is too much for Chad. 'Fo'
+Gawd,
+I doan' know!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_Chad on his own Cabin Floor_
+
+
+The night after the eventful dinner in Bedford Place, the colonel,
+accompanied by his guests, had alighted at a dreary way station, crawled
+into a lumbering country stage, and with Chad on the box as pilot, had
+stopped before a great house with ghostly trailing vines and tall
+chimneys outlined against the sky.
+
+When I left my room on the following morning the sunlight was pouring
+through the big colonial window, and the breath of the delicious day,
+laden with the sweet smell of bending blossoms, floated in through the
+open blinds.
+
+Descending the great spiral staircase with its slender mahogany
+balusters,--here and there a break,--I caught sight of the entrance
+hall below with its hanging glass lantern, quaint haircloth sofas
+lining the white walls, and half-oval tables heaped with flowers, and
+so on through the wide-open door leading out upon a vine-covered porch.
+This had high pillars and low railings against which stood some broad
+settles--all white.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The colonel, Fitz, and the English agent were still in their
+rooms,--three pairs of polished shoes outside their several doors
+bearing silent witness to the fact,--and the only person stirring was
+a pleasant-faced negro woman with white apron and gay-colored bandana,
+who was polishing the parlor floor with a long brush, her little
+pickaninny astraddle on the broom end for weight.
+
+I pushed aside the hanging vines, sat down on one of the wooden benches,
+and looked about me. This, then, was Carter Hall!
+
+The house itself bore evidence of having once been a stately home. It
+was of plaster stucco, yellow washed, peeled and broken in places,
+with large dormer windows and sloping roof, one end of which was
+smothered in a tangle of Virginia creeper and trumpet vine climbing
+to the very chimney-top.
+
+In front there stretched away what had once been a well-kept lawn, now
+a wild of coarse grass broken only by the curving line of the driveway
+and bordered by a row of Lombardy poplars with here and there a
+gap,--bitten out by hungry camp-fires.
+
+To the right rose a line of hills increasing in height as they melted
+into the morning haze, and to the left lay an old-fashioned garden,--one
+great sweep of bloom. With the wind over it, and blowing your way, you
+were steeped in roses.
+
+I began unconsciously to recall to myself all the traditions of this
+once famous house.
+
+Yes, there must be the window where Nancy waved good-by to her lover,
+and there were the flower-beds into which he had fallen headlong from
+his horse,--only a desolate corner now with the grass and tall weeds
+grown quite up to the scaling wall, and the wooden shutters tightly
+closed. I wondered whether they had ever been opened since.
+
+And there under my eyes stood the very step where Chad had helped his
+old master from his horse the day his sweetheart Henny had been
+purchased from Judge Barbour, and close to the garden gate were the
+negro quarters where they had begun their housekeeping. I thought I
+knew the very cabin.
+
+And that line of silver glistening in the morning light must be the
+river Tench, and the bend near the willows the spot where the colonel
+would build the iron bridge with the double span, and across and beyond
+on the plateau, backed by the hills, the site of the future city of
+Fairfax.
+
+I left my seat, strolled out into the garden, crossed the grass jeweled
+with dew, and filled my lungs with the odor of the sweet box bordering
+the beds,--a rare delight in these days of modern gardens. Suddenly
+I came upon a wide straw hat and a broad back bending among the bushes.
+It was Chad.
+
+"Mawnin', Major; fust fox out de hole, is yer? Lawd a massey, ain't
+I glad ter git back to my ole mist'ess! Lan' sakes alive! I ain't slep'
+none all night a-thinkin' ober it. You ain't seen my Henny? Dat was
+her sister's chile rubbin' down de flo'. She come ober dis mawnin' ter
+help, so many folks here. Wait till I git a basket ob dese yer ole
+pink rose-water roses. See how I snip 'em short? Know what I'm gwineter
+do wid 'em? Sprinkle 'em all ober de tablecloth. I lay dey ain't nobody
+done dat for my mist'ess since I been gone. But, Major,"--here Chad
+laid down the basket on the garden walk and looked at me with a serious
+air,--"I done got dat coal lan' business down to a fine p'int. I was
+up dis mawnin' 'fo' daylight, an' I foun' dat rock, an' de crotch is
+dar yit; I scrape de moss offen it myself; an' I foun' de tree too.
+I ain't sayin' nuffin', but jes you wait till after breakfas' an' dey
+all go out lookin' for de coal! Jes you wait, dat's all! Chad's on his
+own cabin flo' now. Can't fool dis chile no mo'."
+
+This was good news so far as it went. Our sudden exodus from Bedford
+Place had been determined upon immediately after Chad's dismal failure
+to locate the coal-field: Fitz having carried the day against Yancey,
+Kerfoot, and even the agent himself, who was beginning to waver under
+the accumulation of uncertainties.
+
+"Dat's enough roses to bury up de dishes. Rub yo' nose down in 'em.
+Ain't dey sweet! Now, come along wid me, Major. I done tole Henny 'bout
+you an' de tar'pins an' de times de gemmen had. Dis way, Major; won't
+take a minute, an' ef ye all go back to-night,--an' I yerd Mister
+Englishman say _he_ got to go,--you mightn't hab anudder chance.
+Henny's cookin', ye know. Dis way. Step underdat honeysuckle!"
+I looked through an open door and into a dingy, smoke-dried interior,
+ceiled with heavy rafters, and hung with herbs, red peppers, onions,
+and the like. This was lighted by three small windows, and furnished
+with a row of dressers filled with crockery and kitchen ware, and
+permeated by that savory smell which presages a generous breakfast On
+one side of the fireplace rested the great hominy mortar, cut from a
+tree trunk, found in all Virginia kitchens, and on the other the
+universal brick oven with its iron doors,--the very doors, I thought,
+that had closed over Chad's goose when Henny was a girl. Between the
+mortar and the oven opened, or rather caverned, a fireplace as wide
+as the colonel's hospitality, and high and deep enough to turn a coach
+in. It really covered one end of the room.
+
+Bending over the swinging crane hung with pots and fringed with
+hooks,--baited so often with good dinners,--stood an old woman with
+bent back, her gray head bound up with a yellow handkerchief.
+
+"Henny, de major made a special p'int o' cumin' to see ye 'fo' he gits
+his break-fas'."
+
+She looked up and dropped me a curtsey.
+
+"Mawnin', marsa. I ain't much ter see, I'm so ole an' mizzble wid dese
+yer cricks in my back an' sich a passel o' white folks. How did my
+Chad git along up dar 'mong de Yankees?"
+[Illustration]
+
+I gave Chad so good a character that every tooth in his head came out
+on dress parade, and was about to draw from Henny some of her own
+experiences,--this loyal old servant whose life from her girlhood to
+her old age had been one of the romantic traditions of the roof that
+sheltered her,--when Chad, who had gone out with the roses, returned
+with the news that the colonel and his guests were breathing the morning
+air on the front porch, and were much disturbed over my prolonged
+absence.
+
+The colonel caught sight of me as I rounded the corner, Fitz and the
+agent joining in his outburst of hilarious welcome, intoxicated as
+they all were with the elixir of that most exhilarating of all
+hours--the hour before breakfast of a summer morning in the country.
+
+"Welcome, my dear Major," called the colonel; "a hearty welcome to
+Caarter Hall! Come up here where you can get a view of Fairfax, suh!"
+and by the time I had mounted the steps he was leaning over the railing,
+with Fitz on the one side and the agent on the other, sweeping the
+horizon with his index finger and drawing imaginary curves and building
+bridges and locating railroad stations in the air with as much
+confidence and hope as if he really saw the gangs of laborers at work
+across the fields, their shovels glinting in the dazzling sunlight.
+
+"Jes cast yo' eyes, suh,"--this to the agent,--"and tell me, suh, if
+you have ever in yo' world-wide experience seen such a location for
+a great city. Level as a flo', watered by the Tench, and sheltered by
+a line of hills that are beauty itself--it is made for it, suh!"
+
+The agent did full justice to the natural advantages and then asked:--
+
+"Is the coal in that range?"
+
+"No, suh; the coal is behind us on an outlyin' spur. I will take you
+there after breakfast."
+
+And then followed a brief description of the changes the war had made
+in the homestead, the burning of the barns, the abandonment of the
+quarters, the destruction of the lawns--"A yard for their damnable
+wagons, suh;" the colonel pointing out with great delight the very
+dent in the ridge where General Early had ridden through and captured
+the whole detachment without the loss of a man.
+
+While we were talking that same rustling of silk that I had learned
+to know so well in Bedford Place was heard in the hall, then a sweet,
+cheery voice giving some directions to Chad, and the next instant dear
+aunt Nancy--Fitz and I had long since dared to call her so--floated
+(she never seemed to walk) out upon the porch with a word and a curtsey
+to the agent, a hand each to Fitz and me, and a kiss for the colonel.
+
+Then came the breakfast, and such a breakfast! The outpourings of a
+Virginia kitchen, with the table showered with roses, and the great
+urn shining and smoking, and the relays of waffles and corn-bread and
+broiled chicken; all in the old-fashioned dining-room, with its high
+wainscoting, spindle--legged sideboards, and deep window seats; the
+long moon-faced clock in the corner-and the rest of it! After that the
+quiet smoke under the vine-covered end of the portico with the view
+towards Cartersville.
+
+"There comes the jedge," said the colonel, pointing to a cloud of dust
+following a two-wheel gig, "and Major Yancey behind on horseback."
+(They had both been dropped outside their respective garden gates the
+night before.) "Now, gentlemen, as soon as my attorney arrives with
+the surveys and deeds we will adjourn to my library and locate this
+coal-field."
+
+Yancey's horse proved, on closer inspection, to be the remnant of an
+army mule with a moth-eaten mane and a polished tail bare of hair--worn
+off, no doubt, in a lifelong struggle with the Fairfax County fly. The
+major was without the luxury of a saddle, some one having borrowed the
+only one the owner of the mule possessed, and his breeches, in
+consequence, were half way up his knees. The judge arrived in better
+shape, the gig being his own and fairly comfortable,--the same he rode
+to circuit, a yellow-painted vehicle washed only when it rained,--and
+the horse the property of the village livery man, who had a yearly
+contract with his Honor for its use.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Chad was waiting on the flagstones surrounded by some stray pickaninnies
+when the procession stopped, and assisted the major to alight, with
+as much form and ceremony as if he had been the best mounted gentleman
+in the land. The saddleless fragment was then led to a supporting
+fence. The judicial equipage was accorded the luxury of a shed, where
+the annual contract was served with a full measure of oats--Chad's
+recognition of his more exalted station.
+
+The judge bowed gracefully and with great dignity, and with the air
+of a chief justice entering the court room; then preceding the colonel
+and his guests,--without a word having fallen from his lips,--he
+entered a small room opening into the parlor. There he placed upon a
+chair certain mysterious-looking packages, long and otherwise, one a
+tin case, which he uncapped, spreading its contents upon a table.
+
+It proved to be another and larger map than the one Chad had pored
+over, and showed distinctly the boundary lines between two dots marked
+"Oak" and "Rock" dividing the Carter and Barbour estates.
+
+Up to this time Fitz and the agent had preserved the outward appearance
+of two idle gentlemen visiting a friend in the country, with no interest
+beyond the fresh air and the environments of a charming hospitality.
+With the unrolling of this map, however, and the discovery of the very
+boundary points insisted on by Chad in Bedford Place, their excitement
+could hardly be suppressed. The agent broke loose first.
+
+"Before we find out, Colonel Carter, to whom this coal belongs, which
+may take some valuable time, I want to examine the quality of the vein
+itself. I would like to go now."
+
+"By all means, suh; and my people shall go with us," said the colonel,
+turning to Kerfoot with instructions to bring Chad and all the maps
+later.--Yancey excused himself on the ground of the heat. Then donning
+a wide straw hat and picking up a cane,--something he never used in
+New York,--the colonel led the way through the rear door, across a
+stone wall, and up a hill covered with a second growth of timber.
+
+The experienced eye of the Englishman took in the lay of the land at
+a glance, and beckoning Fitz to one side he stooped and picked something
+from the ground which he examined carefully with a magnifying glass.
+Then they both disappeared hurriedly over the hill.
+
+When they returned, half an hour later, the perspiration was rolling
+from the agent, and Fitz's eyes were blazing. Both were loaded down
+with bundles of broken bits of rock, tied up in their several
+handkerchiefs, large enough to start a geological collection in a
+country museum.
+
+"What is it, Fitz--diamonds?" I said, laughing.
+
+"Yes; black ones at that." He was almost breathless. "Solid bed of
+bituminous! Clear down to China! Don't breathe a word yet, for your
+life!"
+
+The agent was calmer. The coal-bed, he said, seemed to be of more than
+ordinary richness, and as far as he could judge lay in a vein of
+generous width. He was ready for the survey, and would like the boundary
+points located at once.
+
+The next instant Chad's head peered through the tangled underbrush.
+He carried the roll of maps, the judge, who followed, contenting himself
+with a package tied with red tape.
+
+The old darky's face was one broad grin from ear to ear.
+
+The judge unrolled a map and placed it on a flat rock with a stone at
+each corner. Then he untied the package, selected an ink-stained and
+faded document marked "Deed--John Carter to E. A. Barbour," and ran
+his eye along the quaint page, reading as he went:--
+
+Starting from an oak, blazed diamond C, along a line S. E. to a rock
+marked C cross B, C+B, in all a distance of 1437 linear feet.
+
+"Now, Chad, we will fust find the tree," said the judge, looking around
+for his map-bearer. "Where's that nigger? Chad!"
+
+The old man had disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed
+him up. The next minute we heard a faint halloo below us near the edge
+of a small swamp. A man was waving his hat and shouting:--
+
+"Eve'ybody come yer!"
+
+Fitz started on a run, and the agent and I followed on the double-quick.
+At the end of a crooked stone wall, half surrounded by water, was a
+great spreading oak, its branches reaching half way across the narrow
+marsh. Within touching distance of the yielding ground stood Chad
+pointing to a smooth blaze, stained and overgrown with lichen.
+
+It bore this mark, [C in a diamond]!
+
+"It tallies to a dot. Now, Chad, the rock! the rock!" said Fitz, hardly
+able to contain himself.
+
+The darky pointed straight up the hill, the sky line of which could
+be seen entire from where we stood, and indicated an isolated rock
+jutting out above the tree-tops.
+
+I thought Fitz would have hugged him.
+
+"How do you know it is the rock with the crotch in it? Speak, you
+grinning lunatic!"
+
+"I was dar dis mawnin' by daylight."
+
+"What's it marked?" said Fitz, catching him by both shoulders. "What's
+it marked? Quick!"
+
+"Wid a C an' a cross an' a B--so." And the old man traced it with his
+finger in the mud.
+
+"Every pound of coal on the colonel's land!" said Fitz, with a yell
+that brought his host and Kerfoot as fast as their legs could carry
+them.
+
+"Stop!" said Kerfoot. "This only settles the Caarter and Barbour
+division. There was another division here a year ago between Miss Ann
+Caarter and the colonel. With that I am mo' familiar, for I drew the
+deeds, which are here," holding up a bundle; "and I was also present
+with the surveyor. You are wrong, Mr. Fitzpatrick; this entire hill
+outside the Barbour division is Miss Ann Caarter's, and the coal is
+on her land. The colonel's portion is back there along the Tench."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_The Englishman's Check_
+
+
+An hour later I found Fitz flat on the grass under one of the
+apple-trees behind the house, completely broken up by the discoveries
+of the morning.
+
+After all his work, here was the colonel worse off than ever. Nobody
+could tell what a woman would do. Aunt Nancy was better than the average
+(Fitz was a bachelor), but then she had peculiar old family notions
+about selling land, and ten chances to one she would not sell a foot
+of it, and there right in the house sat a man with his pocket full of
+blank checks, any one of which was good for a million of pounds
+sterling. Even if she did sell it, she would pension the dear old
+fellow off on a stipend instead of an establishment. He wanted somebody
+to dig a hole and cover Fitzpatrick up. Anybody could see that the
+railroad scheme was deader than a last year's pass, the farm hopeless,
+and the house fast becoming a ruin. It was enough to make a man jump
+off a dock.
+
+Fitz's tirade was interrupted by Chad, who appeared with a message.
+The colonel wanted everybody in the library.
+
+When we entered, the judge occupied the head of the table, surrounded
+by law papers, all of which were opened. The agent was bending over
+him, reading attentively, and entering extracts in his notebook. Every
+one became seated.
+
+"Mr. Fitzpatrick," said the agent, "I have spent an hour with Judge
+Kerfoot going over the title of this property, and I am prepared to
+make a proposition for its purchase. I have reduced it to
+writing,"--picking up a half-sheet of foolscap from the table,--"and
+I submit it to the owners through you."
+
+Fitz read it without changing a muscle, and handed it to the colonel.
+Yancey and the judge craned forward to catch the first syllables.
+
+The colonel read it to the end, getting paler and paler as its meaning
+became clear, and then, with a certain pathos in his voice that was
+childlike, it was so genuine, said:--
+
+"If this is accepted, I presume, suh, you will not look any further
+into my road?"
+
+"You are right. My instructions cover only the purchase of this deposit.
+I have room for only one operation."
+
+The colonel rose from his chair, steadied himself on the low
+window-sill, and looked out across the Tench. The silence was
+oppressive--only the ticking of the clock in the next room and the
+bees among the flowers outside.
+
+"Wait until I return," he said, crumpling the paper.
+
+In a moment he was back, leading in his aunt by the hand. Miss Nancy
+entered with a half-puzzled look on her face, which deepened into
+certain anxiety as she began to realize the pronounced formality of
+the proceedings. The colonel cleared his throat impressively.
+
+"Nancy, an investigation begun in New York by my dear friend Fitz, and
+completed here to-day, results in the discov'ry that what you have
+always considered as slight outcroppin's of coal, and wuthless, is
+really of vehy great value." The colonel here unbuttoned his coat, and
+threw out his chest. "A syndicate of English capitalists have, through
+our guest, offered you the sum of one hundred thousand dollars for the
+coal-hill, with a royalty of ten cents per ton for every ton mined
+over a certain amount, one thousand dollars to be paid now and the
+balance on the search of title and signin' of the contract. I believe
+I have stated it correctly, suh?"
+
+The agent bowed his head, and scrutinized Miss Nancy's face with the
+eye of a hawk.
+
+The dear lady sank into a chair. For a moment she lost her breath.
+Yancey handed her a fan with a quickness of movement never seen in him
+before, and the colonel continued:--
+
+"This will of course still leave you, Nancy, this house and about half
+of the farm property transferred to you by me at the fo'closure sale."
+
+The little woman looked from one to the other in a dazed sort of way,
+and her eye rested on Fitz.
+
+"What shall I do, Mr. Fitzpatrick? It seems to me a grave step to sell
+any part of the estate."
+
+Fitz blushed at the mark of her confidence, and said that with the
+royalty clause he thought the proposition a favorable one.
+
+"And you, George?" turning to the colonel.
+
+The colonel bowed his head. He must advise its acceptance.
+
+"When do you want an answer, sir?"
+
+"To-day, Madam," said the Englishman, who had not taken his eyes from
+her face.
+
+"You shall have it in half an hour," she said gently, then rose hastily,
+and left the room.
+
+I looked at the colonel. Whatever great wave of disappointment had
+swept over him when his own idol was broken, there was no trace of it
+in his face. Even the change this sudden influx of wealth into the
+family might make in his own condition never seemed to have crossed
+his mind. He did not follow her. He simply waited. Between his own
+plans and his aunt's good fortune there was but one course for him.
+
+The room took on the whispered silence of a court awaiting an overdue
+jury. Fitz was still incredulous and still anxious, saying to me in
+an undertone that he felt sure she would either refuse it altogether
+or couple it with some conditions that the agent could not accept;
+either would be fatal. Yancey and the judge, who had been partly
+paralyzed at the rapidity of the transaction, conferred in a corner,
+while the agent proceeded to make a copy of the proposition with as
+much composure as if he bought a coal-mine every day. The colonel sat
+by himself, his chair tilted back, his eyes half closed.
+
+In the midst of this uncertainty Chad entered with a message. "Miss
+Nancy wants de colonel." In five minutes more he entered with another.
+Miss Nancy wanted Fitz and me.
+
+We followed the old servant up the winding staircase and down the long
+hall, past the old-fashioned wardrobe and the great chintz-covered
+lounge, waited until Chad knocked gently, and entered the dear lady's
+bedroom.
+She sat near the window by the side of the high post bedstead, rocking
+gently to and fro. The colonel was standing with his back to the light,
+coat open, thumbs in his armholes, face beaming.
+
+"I sent for you," she began, "because I want you both to hear my answer
+before I inform the agent. The land only was mine, and but for your
+love and devotion to the colonel would still be a wild hill. The coal,
+therefore, belongs to him. Go and tell the Englishman I accept his
+offer. The land and all the coal I give to George."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+When, an hour later, the transaction was complete, the receipts and
+preliminary contracts signed, and the small, modest-looking check--the
+first instalment--had been transferred from the plethoric bank-book
+of the agent to the narrow, poverty-stricken pocket of the colonel,
+and the fact began to dawn simultaneously upon everybody that at last
+the dear old colonel was independent, an enthusiasm took possession
+of the room that soon became uncontrollable.
+
+Fitz caught him in his arms, and began hugging him in a way that
+endangered every rib in his body, calling out all the time that he had
+never felt so good in all the days of his life. Yancey and Kerfoot,
+who had stood one side appalled by the magnitude of the sum paid, and
+who during the signing of the papers had looked at the colonel with
+the same sort of silent awe with which they would have regarded any
+other potentate rolling in estates, mines, and millions, broke through
+the enforced reserve, and exclaimed, with an outburst, that the South
+was looking up, and that a true Southern gentleman had come into his
+own, the judge adding with emphasis that the colonel had never looked
+so much like his noble father as when he stooped over and signed that
+receipt. Even the Englishman, hard, practical fellow that he was,
+congratulated him on his good fortune in a few short words that jumped
+out hot from his heart.
+
+With this atmosphere about him it is not to be wondered that the colonel
+lost the true inwardness of the situation. The fact that his aunt's
+boundary line included every acre of valuable land on the plantation,
+while his own poor portion only bordered the Tench, was to him simply
+one of those trifling errors which sometimes occur in the partition
+of vast landed estates. And although when the gift was made he felt
+more than ever her loving-kindness, he could not now, on more mature
+reflection and after hearing the encomiums of his friends, really see
+how she could have pursued any other course.
+
+And yet, with the sale accomplished and he rich beyond his wildest
+dreams, he was precisely the same man in bearing, manner, and speech
+that he had been in his impecunious days in Bedford Place. He was rich
+then--in hopes, in plans, in the reality of his dreamland. He was no
+richer now. The check in his pocket made no difference.
+
+The only perceptible change was when he recounted to me his plans for
+the restoration of the homestead and the comfort of its inmates. "I
+shall rebuild the barns and cabins, and lay out a new lawn. The
+po'ch"--looking up--"needs some repairs, and the ca'iage-house must
+be enlarged. The coaching days are not over yet, Major; Nancy must
+have"--
+
+Chad, entering with a luncheon for the exhausted circle, diverted the
+colonel's train of thought, cutting short his summary. For a moment
+he watched his old servant musingly, then following him into the next
+room he called him to one side, and with marked tenderness in his
+manner unfolded the Englishman's check.
+
+The old servant put down the empty tray, adjusted his spectacles, and
+examined it carefully.
+
+"What's dis, Marsa George?"
+
+"A thousand dollars, Chad."
+
+"Golly! Monst'ous quare kind o' money. Jes a scrap. Ain't big enough
+to wad a gun, is she? An' Misser Englishman gib ye dis for dat ole
+brier patch?"
+
+Chad was trembling all over, full to the very eyelids.
+
+The colonel held out his hand. The old servant bent his head, his
+master's hand fast in his. Then their eyes met.
+
+"Yes, Chad, for you and me. There's no hard work for you any mo', old
+man. Go and tell Henny."
+
+That night at dinner, Fitz on the colonel's right, the Englishman next
+to aunt Nancy, Kerfoot, Yancey, and I disposed in regular order, Chad
+noiseless and attentive, the colonel arose in his chair, radiant to
+the very tip ends of his cravat, and, in a voice which trembled as it
+rose, said:--
+
+"Gentlemen, the events of the day have unexpectedly brought me an
+influx of wealth far beyond my brightest anticipations. This is due
+in great measure to the untirin' brain and vast commercial resources
+of my dear friend Mr. Fitzpatrick, who has labored with me durin' my
+sojourn Nawth in the development of these properties, and who now,
+with that unselfishness which characterizes his life, refuses to accept
+any share in the result.
+
+"They have also strengthened the tie existin' between my old friend
+the major on my left, who oftentimes when the day was darkest has
+cheered me by his counsel and companionship.
+"But, gentlemen, they have done mo'." The colonel's feet now barely
+touched the floor. "They have enabled me to provide for one of the
+loveliest of her sex,--she who graces our boa'd,--and to enrich her
+declinin' days not only with all the comforts, but with many of the
+luxuries she was bawn to enjoy.
+
+"Fill yo' glasses, gentlemen, and drink to the health of that greatest
+of all blessings,--a true Southern lady!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Colonel Carter of Cartersville
+by F. Hopkinson Smith
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