But Tilden, at mention of her name, half-started from his chair and would have risen to his feet had not the officer laid his hand upon him.
He seemed on the point of making some protest which the action of the officer alone restrained.
Cartwright, after the oath had been administered, began in a voice so low that the jury stretched their necks to listen:
"Miss Moore, do you know the prisoner?"
"Yes, sir, I know Bud." She had one end of the shawl between her fingers and was twisting it aimlessly. Every eye in the room was fastened upon her.
"How long have you known him?"
There was a pause, and then she said in a faint voice:
"Ever since he and me growed up."
"Ever since you and he grew up, eh?" This repetition was in a loud voice, so that any juryman dull of hearing might catch it. "Was he at your house on the night of the robbery?"
"Yes, sir."
"At what time?"
"'Bout ten o'clock." This was again repeated.
"How long did he stay?"
"Not more'n ten minutes."
"Where did he go then?"
"He said he was goin' home."
"How far is it to his home from your house?"
"'Bout ten minutes' walk."
"That will do, Miss Moore," said Cartwright, and took his seat.
The Government prosecutor, who had sat with shoulders hunched up, his wings pulled in, rose to his feet with the aid of a chair-back, stretched his long arms above his head, and then, lowering one hand level with the girl's face, said, as he thrust one sharp, skinny finger toward her:
"Did anybody else come to see you the next night after the robbery?"
There was a pause, during which Cartwright busied himself with his papers. One of his methods was never to seem interested in the cross-examination of any one of his witnesses.
The girl's face flushed, and she began to fumble the shawl nervously with her fingers.
"Yes, Hank Halliday," she murmured, in a low voice.
"Mr. Halliday, who has testified here?"
"Yes, sir."
"What did he want?"
"He wanted to know if I'd got a letter he'd writ me day before. And I tol' him I hadn't. Then he 'lowed he'd a-brought it to me himself if he'd knowed Bud was goin' to turn thief and hold up the mail-man. I hadn't heard nothin' 'bout it and nobody else had till he began to talk. I opened the door then and tol' him to walk out; that I wouldn't hear nobody speak that way 'bout Bud Tilden. That was 'fore they'd 'rested Bud."
"Have you got that letter now?"
"No, sir."
"Did you ever get it?"
"No, sir."
"Did you ever see it?"
"No, and I don't think it was ever writ."
"But hehaswritten you letters before?"
"He used to; he don't now."
"That will do."
The girl took her place again behind the old man.
Cartwright rose to his feet with great dignity, walked to the chair on which rested his hat, took from it the package of papers to serve as an orator's roll—he did not open it, and they evidently had no bearing on the case—and addressed the Judge, the package held aloft in his hand:
"Your Honor, there's not been a particle of evidence so far produced in this court to convict this man of this crime. I have not conferred with him, and therefore do not know what answers he has to make to this infamous charge. I am convinced, however, that his own statement under oath will clear up at once any doubt remaining in the minds of this honorable jury of his innocence."
This was said with a certain ill-concealed triumph in his voice. I saw now why he had taken the case, and saw, too, the drift of his defence—everything thus far pointed to the old hackneyed plea of an alibi. He had evidently determined on this course of action when he sat listening to the stories Bud's father and the girl had told him as he sat beside them on the bench near the door. Their testimony, taken in connection with the uncertain testimony of the Government's principal witness, the mail-carrier, as to the exact time of the assault, together with the prisoner's testimony stoutly denying the crime, would insure either an acquittal or a disagreement. The first would result in his fees being paid by the court, the second would add to this amount whatever Bud's friends could scrape together to induce him to go on with the second trial. In either case his masterly defence was good for an additional number of clients and perhaps—of votes. It is humiliating to think that any successor of Choate, Webster, or Evarts should earn his bread in this way, but it is true all the same.
"The prisoner will take the stand!" cried Cartwright, in a firm voice.
As the words left his mouth, the noise of shuffling feet and the shifting of positions for a bettor view of the prisoner became so loud that the Judge rapped for order, the clerk repeating it with the end of his ruler.
Bud lifted himself to his feet slowly (his being called was evidently as much of a surprise to him as it was to the crowded room), looked about him carelessly, his glance resting first on the girl's face and then on the deputy beside him. He stepped clumsily down from the raised platform and shouldered his way to the witness-chair. The prosecuting attorney had evidently been amazed at the flank movement of his opponent, for he moved his position so he could look squarely in Bud's face. As the prisoner sank into his seat, the room became hushed in silence.
Bud kissed the book mechanically, hooked his feet together and, clasping his big hands across his waist-line, settled his great body between the arms of the chair, with his chin resting on his shirt-front. Cartwright, in his most impressive manner, stepped a foot closer to Bud's chair.
"Mr. Tilden, you have heard the testimony of the mail-carrier; now be good enough to tell the jury where you were on the night of the robbery—how many miles from thismail-sack?" and he waved his hand contemptuously toward the bag. It was probably the first time in all his life that Bud had heard any man dignify his personality with any such title.
In recognition of the compliment, Bud raised his chin slightly and fixed his eyes more intently on his questioner. Up to this time he had not taken the slightest notice of him.
"'Bout as close's I could git to it—'bout three feet, I should say—maybe less."
Cartwright gave a slight start and bit his lip. Evidently the prisoner had misunderstood him. The silence continued.
"I don't meanhere, Mr. Tilden;" and he pointed to the bag. "I mean the night of the so-called robbery."
"That's what I said; 'bout as close's I could git."
"Well, did you rob the mail?" This was asked uneasily, but with a half-concealed laugh in his voice as if the joke would appear in a minute.
"No."
"No, of course not." The tone of relief was apparent.
"Well, do you know anything about the cutting of the bag?"
"Yes."
"Who did it?"
"Me."
"You?"The surprise was now an angry one.
"Yes, me."
At this unexpected reply the Judge pushed his glasses high up on his forehead with a quick motion and leaned over his bench, his eyes on the prisoner. The jury looked at each other with amazement; such scenes were rare in their experience. The prosecuting attorney smiled grimly. Cartwright looked as if someone had struck him a sudden blow in the face.
"What for?" he stammered. It was evidently the only question left for him to ask. All his self-control was gone now, his face livid, an angry look in his eyes. That any man with State's prison yawning before him could make such a fool of himself seemed to astound him.
Bud turned slowly and, pointing his finger at Halliday, said between his closed teeth:
"Ask Hank Halliday; he knows."
The buzzard sprang to his feet. There was the scent of carrion in the air now; I saw it in his eyes.
"We don't want to ask Mr. Halliday; we want to ask you. Mr. Halliday is not on trial, and we want the truth if you can tell it."
The irregularity of the proceeding was unnoticed in the tense excitement.
Bud looked at him as a big mastiff looks at a snarling cur with a look more of pity than contempt. Then he said slowly, accentuating each word:
"Keep yer shirt on. You'll git the truth—git the whole of it. Git what you ain't lookin' for. There ain't no liars up in our mountains 'cept them skunks in Gov'ment pay you fellers send up to us, and things like Hank Halliday. He's wuss nor any skunk. A skunk's a varmint that don't stink tell ye meddle with him, but Hank Halliday stinks all the time. He's one o' them fellers that goes 'round with books in their pockets with picters in 'em that no girl oughter see and no white man oughter read. He gits 'em down to Louisville. There ain't a man in Pondville won't tell ye it's true. He shoved one in my outside pocket over to Pondville when I warn't lookin', the day 'fore I held up this man Bowditch, and went and told the fellers 'round the tavern that I had it. They come and pulled it out and had the laugh on me, and then he began to talk and said he'd write to Jennetta and send her one o' the picters by mail and tell her he'd got it out o' my coat, and he did. Sam Kellers seen Halliday with the letter and told me after Bowditch had got it in his bag. I laid for Bowditch at Pondville Corners, but he got past somehow, and I struck in behind Bill Somers's mill, and crossed the mountain and caught up with him as he was ridin' through the piece o' woods near the clearin'. I didn't know but he'd try to shoot, and I didn't want to hurt him, so I crep' up behind and threw him in the bushes, cut a hole in the bag, and got the letter. That's the only one I wanted and that's the only one I took. I didn't rob no mail, but I warn't goin' to hev an honest, decent girl like Jennetta git that letter, and there warn't no other way."
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The stillness that followed was broken only by the Judge's voice.
"What became of that letter?"
"I got it. Want to see it?"
"Yes."
Bud felt in his pockets as if looking for something, and then, with an expression as if he had suddenly remembered, remarked:
"No, I ain't got none. They stole my knife when they 'rested me." Then facing the courtroom, he added: "Somebody lend me a knife, and pass me my hat over there 'longside them sheriffs."
The court-crier took the hat from one of the deputies, and the clerk, in answer to a nod of assent from the Judge, passed Bud an ink-eraser with a steel blade in one end.
The audience now had the appearance of one watching a juggler perform a trick. Bud grasped the hat in one hand, turned back the brim, inserted the point of the knife between the hat lining and the hat itself and drew out a yellow envelope stained with dirt and perspiration.
"Here it is. I ain't opened it, and what's more, they didn't find it when they searched me;" and he looked again toward the deputies.
The Judge leaned forward in his seat and said:
"Hand me the letter."
The letter was passed up by the court-crier, every eye following it. His Honor examined the envelope, and, beckoning to Halliday, said:
"Is this your letter?"
Halliday stepped to the side of the Judge, fingered the letter closely, and said: "Looks like my writin'."
"Open it and see."
Halliday broke the seal with his thumb-nail, and took out half a sheet of note-paper closely written on one side, wrapped about a small picture-card.
"Yes, it's my letter;" and he glanced sheepishly around the room and hung his head, his face scarlet.
The Judge leaned back in his chair, raised his hand impressively, and said gravely:
"This case is adjourned until ten o'clock tomorrow."
Two days later I again met the Warden as he was entering the main door of the jail. He had been over to the Court-house, he said, helping the deputy along with a new "batch of moonshiners."
"What became of Bud Tilden?" I asked.
"Oh, he got it in the neck for robbin' the mails, just's I told you he would. Peached on himself like a d—— fool and give everything dead away. He left for Kansas this morning. Judge give him twenty years."
He is still in the lock-step at Leavenworth prison. He has kept it up now for two years. His hair is short, his figure bent, his step sluggish. The law is slowly making an animal of him—that wise, righteous law which is no respecter of persons.
It was a feeble old man of seventy-two this time who sat facing the jury, an old man with bent back, scant gray hair, and wistful, pleading eyes.
He had been arrested in the mountains of Kentucky and had been brought to Covington for trial, chained to another outlaw, one of those "moonshiners" who rob the great distilleries of part of their profits and the richest and most humane Government on earth of part of its revenue.
For eleven months and ten days he had been penned up in one of the steel cages of Covington jail.
I recognized him the moment I saw him.
He was the old fellow who spoke to me from between the bars of his den on my visit the week before to the inferno—the day I found Samanthy North and her baby—and who told me then he was charged with "sellin'" and that he "reckoned" he was the oldest of all the prisoners about him. He had on the same suit of coarse, homespun clothes—the trousers hiked up toward one shoulder from the strain of a single suspender; the waistcoat held by one button; the shirt open at the neck, showing the wrinkled throat, wrinkled as an old saddle-bag, and brown, hairy chest.
Pie still carried his big slouch hat, dust-begrimed and frayed at the edges. It hung over one knee now, a red cotton handkerchief tucked under its brim. He was superstitious about it, no doubt; he would wear it when he walked out a free man, and wanted it always within reach. Hooked in its band was a trout-fly, a red ibis, some souvenir, perhaps, of the cool woods that he loved, and which brought back to him the clearer the happy, careless days which might never be his again.
The trout-fly settled all doubts in my mind as to his origin and his identity. He was not a "moonshiner"; he was my old trout fisherman, Jonathan Gordon, come back to life, even to his streaming, unkempt beard, leathery skin, thin, peaked nose, and deep, searching eyes. That the daisies which Jonathan loved were at that very moment blooming over his grave up in his New Hampshire hills, and had been for years back, made no difference to me. I could not be mistaken. The feeble old man sitting within ten feet of me, fidgeting about in his chair, the glare of the big windows flooding his face with light, his long legs tucked under him, his bony hands clasped together, the scanty gray hair adrift over his forehead, his slouch hat hooked over his knee, was my own Jonathan come back to life. His dog, George, too, was somewhere within reach, and so were his fishing-pole and creel, with its leather shoulder-band polished like a razor-strop. You who read this never saw Jonathan, perhaps, but you can easily carry his picture in your mind by remembering some one of the other old fellows you used to see on Sunday mornings hitching their horses to the fence outside of the country church, or sauntering through the woods with a fish-pole over their shoulders and a creel by their sides, or with their heads together on the porch of some cross-roads store, bartering eggs and butter for cotton cloth and brown sugar. All these simple-minded, open-aired, out-of-doors old fellows, with the bark on them, are very much alike.
The only difference between the two men lay in the expression of the two faces. Jonathan always looked straight at you when he talked, so that you could fathom his eyes as you would fathom a deep pool that mirrored the stars. This old man's eyes wavered from one to another, lighting first on the jury, then on the buzzard of a District Attorney, and then on the Judge, with whom rested the freedom which meant life or which meant imprisonment: at his age—death. This wavering look was the look of a dog who had been an outcast for weeks, or who had been shut up with a chain about his throat; one who had received only kicks and cuffs for pats of tenderness—a cringing, pleading look ready to crouch beneath some fresh cruelty.
This look, as the trial went on and the buzzard of an attorney flapped out his denunciations, deepened to an expression of abject fear. In trying to answer the questions hurled at him, he would stroke his parched throat mechanically with his long fingers as if to help the syllables free themselves. In listening to the witnesses he would curve his body forward, one skinny hand cupped behind his ear, his jaw dropping slowly, revealing the white line of the lips above the straggling beard. Now and then as he searched the eyes of the jury there would flash out from his own the same baffled, anxious look that comes into dear old Joe Jefferson's face when he stops half-way up the mountain and peers anxiously into the eyes of the gnomes who have stolen out of the darkness and are grouping themselves silently about him—a look expressing one moment his desire to please and the next his anxiety to escape.
There was no doubt about the old man's crime, not the slightest. It had been only the tweedledum and tweedledee of the law that had saved him the first time. They would not serve him now. The evidence was too conclusive, the facts too plain. The "deadwood," as such evidence is called by the initiated, lay in heaps—more than enough to send him to State prison for the balance of his natural life. The buzzard of a District Attorney who had first scented out his body with an indictment, and who all these eleven months and ten days had sat with folded wings and hunched-up shoulders, waiting for his final meal—I had begun to dislike him in the Bud Tilden trial, but I hated him now (a foolish, illogical prejudice, for he was only doing his duty as he saw it)—had full control of all the "deadwood"; had it with him, in fact. There were not only some teaspoonfuls of the identical whiskey which this law-breaker had sold, all in an eight-ounce vial properly corked and labelled, but there was also the identical silver dime which had been paid for it. One of the jury was smelling this whiskey when I entered the court-room; another was fingering the dime. It was a good dime, and bore the stamp of the best and greatest nation on the earth. On one side was the head of the Goddess of Liberty and on the other was the wreath of plenty: some stalks of corn and the bursting heads of wheat, with one or two ivy leaves twisted together, suggesting honor and glory and achievement. The "deadwood"—the evidence—was all right. All that remained was for the buzzard to flap his wings once or twice in a speech; then the jury would hold a short consultation, a few words would follow from the presiding Judge, and the carcass would be ready for the official undertaker, the prison Warden.
How wonderful the system, how mighty the results!
One is often filled with admiration and astonishment at the perfect working of this mighty engine, the law. Properly adjusted, it rests on the bedplate of equal rights to all men; is set in motion by the hot breath of the people—superheated often by popular clamor; is kept safe by the valve of a grand jury; is governed in its speed by the wise and prudent Judge, and regulated in its output by a jury of twelve men.
Sometimes in the application of its force this machine, being man-made, like all machines, and thus without a soul, gets out of order, loosens a cog or bolt perhaps, throwing the mechanism "out of gear," as it is called. When this happens, the engine resting on its bed-plate still keeps its foundation, but some lesser part, the loom or lathe or driving-wheel, which is another way of saying the arrest, the trial or the conviction, goes awry. Sometimes the power-belt is purposely thrown off, the machinery stopped, and a consultation takes place, resulting in a disagreement or a new trial. When the machine is started again, it is started more carefully, with the first experience remembered. Sometimes the rightful material—the criminal, or the material from which the criminal is made—to feed this loom or lathe or driving-wheel, is replaced by some unsuitable material like the girl whose hair became entangled in a flying-belt and whose body was snatched up and whirled mercilessly about. Only then is the engine working on its bed-plate brought to a standstill. The steam of the boiler, the breath of the people, keeps up, but it is withheld from the engine until the mistake can be rectified and the girl rescued. The law of mercy, the divine law, now asserts itself. This law, being the law of God, is higher than the law of man. Some of those who believe in the man-law and who stand over the mangled body of the victim, or who sit beside her bed, bringing her slowly back to life, affirm that the girl was careless and deserved her fate. Others, who believe in the God-law, maintain that the engine is run not to kill but to protect, not to maim but to educate, and that the fault lies in the wrong application of the force, not in the force itself.
So it was with this old man. Eleven months and ten days before this day of his second trial (eleven months and three days when I first saw him), a flying-belt set in motion up in his own mountain-home had caught and crushed him. To-day he was still in the maw of the machinery, his courage gone, his spirit broken, his heart torn. The group about his body, not being a sympathetic group, were insisting that the engine could do no wrong; that the victim was not a victim at all, but lawful material to be ground up. This theory was sustained by the District Attorney. Every day he must have fresh materials. The engine must run. The machinery must be fed.
And his record?
Ah, how often is this so in the law!—his record must be kept good.
After the whiskey had been held up to the light and the dime fingered, the old man's attorney—a young lawyer from the old man's own town, a smooth-faced young fellow who had the gentle look of a hospital nurse and who was doing his best to bring the broken body back to life and freedom—put the victim on the stand.
"Tell the jury exactly how it all happened," he said, "and in your own way, just as you told it to me."
"I'll try, sir; I'll do my best." It was Rip's voice, only fainter. He tugged at his collar as if to breathe the easier, cleared his throat and began again. "I ain't never been in a place like this but once before, and I hope you'll forgive me if I make any mistakes," and he looked about the room, a flickering, half-burnt-out smile trembling on his lips.
"Well, I got a piece of land 'bout two miles back of my place that belongs to my wife, and I ain't never fenced it in, for I ain't never had no time somehow to cut the timber to do it, she's been so sickly lately. 'Bout a year ago I was goin' 'long toward Hi Stephens's mill a-lookin' for muskrats when I heard some feller's axe a-workin' away, and I says to Hi, 'Hi, ain't that choppin' goin' on on the wife's land?' and he said it was, and that Luke Shanders and his boys had been drawin' out cross-ties for the new railroad; thought I knowed it.
"Well, I kep' 'long up and come on Luke jes's he was throwin' the las' stick onto his wagon. He kinder started when he see me, jumped on and begin to drive off. I says to him, 'Luke,' I says, 'I ain't got no objection to you havin' a load of wood; there's plenty of it; but it don't seem right for you to take it 'thout askin', 'specially since the wife's kind o' peaked and it's her land and not yourn.' He hauled the team back on their hind legs, and he says:
"'When I see fit to ask you or your old woman's leave to cut timber on my own land, I will. Me and Lawyer Fillmore has been a-lookin' into them deeds, and this timber is mine;' and he driv off.
"I come along home and studied 'bout it a bit, and me and the wife talked it over. We didn't want to make no fuss, but we knowed he was alyin', but that ain't no unusual thing for Luke Shanders.
"Well, the nex' mornin' I got into Pondville 'bout eight o'clock and set a-waitin' till Lawyer Fillmore come in. He looked kind o' shamefaced when he see me, and I says, 'What's this Luke Shanders's been a-tellin' me 'bout your sayin' my wife's timberland is hisn?'
"Then he began 'splainin' that the 'riginal lines was drawed wrong and that old man Shanders's land, Luke's father, run to the brook and took in all the white oak on the wife's lot and——"
The buzzard sprang to his feet and shrieked out:
"Your Honor, I object to this rigmarole. Tell the jury right away"—and he faced the prisoner—"what you know about this glass of whiskey. Get right down to the facts; we're not cutting cross-ties in this court."
The old man caught his breath, placed his fingers suddenly to his lips as if to choke back the forbidden words, and, in an apologetic voice, murmured:
"I'm gettin' there's fast's I kin, sir, 'deed I am; I ain't hidin' nothin'."
He wasn't. Anyone could see it in his face.
"Better let him go on in his own way," remarked the Judge, indifferently. His Honor was looking over some papers, and the monotonous tones of the witness diverted attention. Most of the jury, too, had already lost interest in the story. One of the younger members had settled himself in his chair, thrust his hands into his pockets, stretched out his legs, and had shut his eyes as if to take a nap. Nothing so far had implicated either the whiskey or the dime; when it did he would wake up.
The old man turned a grateful glance toward the Judge, leaned forward in his chair, and with bent head looked about him on the floor as if trying to pick up the lost end of his story. The young attorney, in an encouraging tone, helped him find it with a question:
"When did you next see Mr. Fillmore and Luke Shanders?"
"When the trial come off," answered the old man, raising his head again. "Course we couldn't lose the land. 'Twarn't worth much till the new railroad come through; then the oak come handy for cross-ties. That's what set Fillmore and Luke Shanders onto it.
"When the case was tried, the Judge seed they couldn't bring no 'riginal deed 'cept one showin' that Luke Shanders and Fillmore was partners in the steal, and the Judge 'lowed they'd have to pay for the timber they cut and hauled away.
"They went round then a-sayin' they'd get even, though wife and I 'lowed we'd take anything reasonable for what hurt they done us. And that went on till one day 'bout a year ago Luke come into my place and said he and Lawyer Fillmore would be over the next day; that they was tired o' fightin', and that if I was willin' to settle they was.
"One o' the new Gov'ment dep'ties was sittin' in my room at the time. He was goin' 'long up to town-court, he said, and had jest drapped in to pass the time o' day. There he is sittin' over there," and he pointed to his captor.
"I hadn't never seen him before, though I know a good many of 'em, but he showed me his badge, and I knowed who he was.
"The nex' mornin' Lawyer Fillmore and Luke stopped outside and hollered for me to come out. I wanted 'em to come in. Wife had baked some biscuit and we was determined to be sociable-like, now that they was willin' to do what was fair, and I 'lowed they must drive up and git out. They said that that's what they come for, only that they had to go a piece down the road, and they'd be back agin in a half-hour with the money.
"Then Luke Shanders 'lowed he was cold, and asked if I had a drap o' whiskey."
At mention of the all-important word a visible stir took place in the court-room. The young man with the closed eyes opened them and sat up in his chair. The jury ceased whispering to one another; the Judge pushed his spectacles back on his forehead and moved his papers aside; the buzzard stretched his long neck an inch farther out of his shirt-collar and lowered his head in attention. The spigot, which up to this time had run only "emptyings," was now giving out the clear juice of the wine-vat. Each man bent his tin cup of an ear to catch it. The old man noticed the movement and looked about him anxiously, as if dreading another rebuff. He started to speak, cleared his throat, pulled nervously at his beard for a moment, glancing furtively about the room, and in a lower tone repeated the words:
"Asked if I had a drap o' whiskey. Well, I always take a dram when I want it, and I had some prime stuff my son Ned had sent me over from Frankfort, so I went hack and poured out 'bout four fingers in a glass, and took it out to him.
"After he drunk it he handed me back the glass and driv off, sayin' he'd be round later. I took the glass into the house agin and sot it 'longside the bottle on the mantel, and when I turned round there sot the Gov'ment dep'ty. He'd come in, wife said, while I was talkin' with Luke in the road. When he see the glass he asked if I had a license, and I told him I didn't sell no liquor, and he asked me what that was, and I told him it was whiskey, and then he got the bottle and took a smell of it, and then he held up the glass and turned it upside down and out drapped a ten-cent piece. Then he 'rested me!"
The jury was all attention now; the several exhibits were coming into view. One fat, red-faced juror, who had a dyed mustache and looked like a sporting man, would have laughed outright had not the Judge checked him with a stern look.
"You didn't put the dime there, did you?" the young attorney asked, in a tone that implied a negative answer.
"No, sir; I don't take no money for what I give a man." This came with a slight touch of indignation.
"Do you know who put it there?"
"Well, there warn't nobody but Luke Shanders could 'a' done it, 'cause nobody had the glass but him. I heard since that it was all a put-up job, that they had swore I kep' a roadside, and they had sot the dep'ty onto me; but I don't like to think men kin be so mean, and I ain't a-sayin' it now. If they knew what I've suffered for what they done to me, they couldn't help but feel sorry for me if they're human."
He stopped and passed his hands wearily over his forehead. The jury sat still, their eyes riveted on the speaker. Even the red-faced man was listening now.
For an instant there was a pause. Then the old man reached forward in his seat, his elbows on his knees, his hands held out as if in appeal, and in a low, pleading tone addressed the jury. Strange to say, neither the buzzard nor the Judge interrupted the unusual proceeding:
"Men, I hope you will let me go home now; won't you, please? I ain't never been 'customed all my life to bein' shut up, and it comes purty hard, not bein' so young as I was. I ain't findin' no fault, but it don't seem to me I ever done anythin' to deserve all that's come to me lately. I got 'long best way I could over there"—and he pointed in the direction of the steel cages—"till las' week, when Sam Jelliff come down to see his boy and told me the wife was took sick bad, worse than she's been yet. She ain't used to bein' alone; you'd know that if you could see her. The neighbors is purty good to her, I hear, but nobody don't understand her like me, she and me bein' so long together—mos' fifty years now. You'll let me go home, won't you, men? I git so tired, so tired; please let me go."
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The buzzard was on his feet now, his arms sawing the air, his strident voice filling the courtroom.
He pleaded for the machine—for the safety of the community, for the majesty of the law. He demanded instant conviction for this trickster, this Fagin among men, this hoary-headed old scoundrel who had insulted the intelligence of twelve of the most upright men he had ever seen in a jury-box, insulted them with a tale that even a child would laugh at. When at last he folded his wings, hunched up his shoulders and sat down, and the echoes of his harsh voice had died away, it seemed to me that I could hear vibrating through the room, as one hears the murmur of a brook after a storm, the tender tones of the old man pleading as if for his life.
The jury had listened to the buzzard's harangue, with their eyes, not with their ears. Down in their hearts there still rang the piteous words. The man-made machine was breaking down; its mechanism out of "gear"; the law that governed it defective. The God-law, the law of mercy, was being set in motion.
The voice of the Judge trembled a little as he delivered his charge, as if somehow a stray tear had clogged the passage from his heart to his lips. In low, earnest tones that every man strained his ear to catch, he reviewed the testimony of the witnesses, those I had not heard; took up the uncontradicted statement of the Deputy Marshal as evidenced by the exhibits before them; passed to the motive behind the alleged conspiracy; dwelt for a moment on the age and long confinement of the accused, and ended with the remark that if they believed his story to be an explanation of the facts, they must acquit him.
They never left their seats. Even the red-faced man voted out of turn in his eagerness. The God-law had triumphed! The old man was free.
The throng in the court-room rose and made their way to the doors, the old man going first, escorted by an officer to see him safely outside. The Judge disappeared through a door; the clerk lifted the lid of his desk and stowed beneath it the greasy, ragged Bible, stained with the lies of a thousand lips. The buzzard crammed his hat over his eyes, turned, and without a word to anyone, stalked out of the room.
I mingled with the motley throng, my ears alert for any spoken opinions. I had seen the flying-belt thrown from the machine and the stoppage of the engine. I wanted now to learn something of the hot breath of the people who had set it in motion eleven months and ten days before.
"Reckon he'll cut a blue streak for home now," muttered a court-lounger, buttoning up his coat; "that is, if he's got one. You'll never catch him sellin' any more moonshine."
"Been me, I'd soaked him," blurted out a corner-loafer. "If you can't convict one of these clay-eaters when you've got him dead to rights, ain't no use havin' no justice."
"I thought Tom [the buzzard] would land him," said a stout, gray-whiskered lawyer who was gathering up his papers. "First case Tom's lost this week. Goes pretty hard with him, you know, when he loses a case."
"It would have been an outrage, sir, if he had won it," broke in a stranger. "The arrest of an old man like that on such a charge, and his confinement for nearly a year in a hole like that one across the street, is a disgrace. Something is rotten in the way the laws are administered in the mountains of Kentucky, or outrages like this couldn't occur."
"He wouldn't thank you, sir, for interfering," remarked a bystander. "Being shut up isn't to him what it is to you and me. He's been taken care of for a year, hasn't he? Warmed and fed, and got his three meals a day. That's a blamed sight more than he gets at home. They're only half-human, these mountaineers, anyway. Don't worry; he's all right."
"You've struck it first time," retorted the Deputy Marshal who had smelled the whiskey, found the dime, and slipped the handcuffs on the old man's withered wrists. "Go slow, will you?" and he faced the stranger. "We got to do our duty, ain't we? That's the law, and there ain't no way gittin' round it. And if we make mistakes, what of it? We've got to make mistakes sometimes, or we wouldn't catch half of 'em. The old skeesiks ought to be glad to git free. See?"
Suddenly there came to my mind the realization of the days that were to follow and all that they would bring to him of shame. I thought of the cold glance of his neighbors, the frightened stare of the children ready to run at the approach of the old jail-bird, the coarse familiarity of the tavern lounger. Then the cruelty of it all rose before me. Who would recompense him for the indignities he had suffered—the deadly chill of the steel clamps; the long days of suspense; the bitterness of the first disagreement; the foul air of the inferno, made doubly foul by close crowding of filthy bodies, inexpressibly horrible to one who had breathed all his life the cool, pure air of the open with only the big clean trees for his comrades?
And if at last his neighbors should take pity upon him and drive out the men who had wrecked his old age, and he should wander once more up the brook with his rod over his shoulder, the faithful dog at his heels, and a line of the old song still alive in his heart, what about those eleven months and ten days of which the man-law had robbed him?
O mighty machine! O benign, munificent law! Law of a people who boast of mercy and truth and equal rights and justice to all. Law of a land with rivers of gold and mountains of silver, the sum of its wealth astounding the world.
What's to be done about it?
Nothing.
Better drag a dozen helpless Samanthy Norths from their homes, their suckling babes in their arms, and any number of gray-haired old men from their cabins, than waive one jot or tittle of so just a code; and lose—the tax on whiskey.
Captain Bob Brandt dropped in to-day, looking brown and ruddy, and filling my office with, a breeze and freshness that seemed to have followed him all the way in from the sea.
"Just in, Captain?" I cried, springing to my feet, my fingers closing round his—no more welcome visitor than Captain Bob ever pushes open my office door.
"Yes—Teutonic."
"Where did you pick her up—Fire Island?"
"No; 'bout hundred miles off Montauk."
Captain Bob has been a Sandy Hook pilot for some years back.
"How was the weather?" I had a chair ready for him now and was lifting the lid of my desk in search of a box of cigars.
"Pretty dirty. Nasty swell on, and so thick you could hack holes in it. Come pretty nigh missin' her"—and the Captain opened his big storm-coat, hooked his cloth cap with its ear-tabs on one prong of the back of one office-chair, stretched his length in another, and, bending forward, reached out his long, brawny arm for the cigar I was extending toward him.
I have described this sea-dog before—as a younger sea-dog—twenty years younger, in fact, he was in my employ then—he and his sloop Screamer. Every big foundation stone that Caleb set in Shark Ledge Light—the one off Keyport harbor—can tell you about them both.
In those light-house days this Captain Bob was "a tall, straight, blue-eyed young fellow of twenty-two, with a face like an open book—one of those perfectly simple, absolutely fearless, alert men found so often on the New England coast, with legs and arms of steel, body of hickory, and hands of whalebone; cabin boy at twelve, common sailor at sixteen, first mate at twenty, and full captain the year he voted."
He is precisely the same kind of man to-day, plus twenty years of experience. The figure is still the figure of his youth, the hickory a little better seasoned, perhaps, and the steel and whalebone a little harder, but they have lost none of their spring and vitality. The ratio of promotion has also been kept up. That he should now rank as the most expert pilot on the station was quite to be expected. He could have filled as well a commander's place on the bridge, had he chosen to work along those lines.
And the modesty of the man!
Nothing that he has done, or can still do, has ever stretched his hat measure or swelled any part of his thinking apparatus. The old pilot-cap is still number seven, and the sensible head beneath it number seven, too. It could be number eight, or nine, or even ten, if it had expanded in proportion to the heroic quality of many of his deeds. During the light-house days, for instance, when some sudden, shift of wind would churn the long rollers into bobbles and then into frenzied seas that smothered the Ledge in white suds, if a life-boat was to be launched in the boiling surf, the last man to jump aboard, after a mighty push with his long hindmost leg, was sure to be this same bundle of whalebone and hickory. And should this boat, a few minutes later, go whirling along in the "Race," bottom side up, with every worker safe astride her keel, principally because of Captain Bob's coolness and skill in hauling them out of the water, again the last man to crawl beside the rescued crew would be this same long-legged, long armed skipper.
Or should a guy-rope snap with a sound like a pistol-shot, and a great stone swung to a boom and weighing tons should begin running amuck through piles of cement, machinery, and men, and some one of the working gang, seeing the danger, should, with the quickness and sureness of a mountain-goat, spring straight for the stone, clutching the end of the guy and bounding off again, twisting the bight round some improvised snubbing-post thus checking its mad career, you would not have had to ask his name twice.
"Cap'n Bob stopped it, sir," was sure to have been the proffered reply.
So, too, in his present occupation of pilot. It was only a few years ago that I stood on the deck of an incoming steamer, straining my eyes across a heaving sea, the horizon lost in the dull haze of countless froth-caps; we had slowed for a pilot, so the word came down the deck. Suddenly, against the murky sky-line, with mainsail double-reefed and jib close-hauled, loomed a light craft plunging bows under at every lurch. Then a chip the size of your hand broke away from the frail vessel, and a big wave lying around for such prey, sprang upon it with wide-open mouth. The tiny bit dodged and slipped out of sight into a mighty ravine, then mounted high in air, upborne in the teeth of another great monster, and again was lost to view. Soon the chip became a bit of driftwood manned by two toy men working two toy oars like mad and bearing at one end a yellow dot.
Then the first officer walked down the deck to where I stood, followed by a huddle of seamen who began unrolling a rope ladder.
"You're right," I heard an officer answer a passenger. "It's no fit weather to take a pilot. Captain wouldn't have stopped for any other boat but No. 11. But those fellows out there don't know what weather is."
The bit of driftwood now developed into a yawl. The yellow dot broadened and lengthened to the semblance of a man standing erect and unbuttoning his oil-skins as he looked straight at the steamer rolling port-holes under, the rope ladder flopping against her side. Then came a quick twist of the oars, a sudden lull as the yawl shot within a boat's length of the rope ladder, and with the spring of a cat the man in oil-skins landed with both feet on its lower rung, and the next instant he was over the steamer's rail and on her deck beside me.
I thought I knew that spring, even before I saw his face or got hold of his hand.
It was Captain Bob.
As I look at him now, sitting in my office-chair, the smoke of the cigar curling about his bronzed, weather-tanned face, my eye taking in his slim waist, slender thighs, and long, sinewy arms and hands that have served him so well all his life, I can hardly believe that twenty years have passed over his head since we worked together on Shark Ledge. But for the marks chalked on his temples by the Old Man with the Hour-glass and the few tally-scores of hard work crossing the corners of his mouth and eyes, he has the same external appearance as in the old days. Even these indexes of advancing years are lost when he throws his head up and laughs one of his spontaneous, ringing laughs that fills my office full of sunshine, illumining it for hours after he has gone.
"This pilotin' 's pretty rough sometimes," Captain Bob continued between the puffs of smoke, "but it ain't nothin' to the old days. When I look back on it all, seems to me as if we was out o' our heads most o' the time. I didn't know it then, but 'twas true all the same. Think now o' layin' the Screamer broadside on that stone pile at Shark Ledge, unloadin' them stone with nothin' but a couple o' spar buoys to keep 'er off. Wonder I didn't leave 'er bones there. Would if I hadn't knowed every stick o' timber in 'er and jest what she could stagger under."
"But she was a good sea-boat," I interpolated. "The Screamer was always the pride of the work."
"None better. You'd a-thought so if you'd been with us that night off Hatteras; we layin' to, hatches battened down. I never see it blow wuss. It came out o' the nor'west 'bout dark, and 'fore mornin' I tell ye it was a-humpin' things. We started with a pretty decent set o' sails, new eyelets rove in and new clew lines, but, Lord love ye, we hadn't taken old Hatteras into consideration. Bill Nevins, my engineer, and a landsman who was to work the h'istin' engine, looked kind 'er peaked when what was left of the jib come rattlin' down on his fo'c's'le hatch, but I says to him, 'the Screamer's all right, Billy, so she don't strike nothin' and so long's we can keep the water out 'er. Can't sink 'er any more'n an empty five-gallon ker'sene can with the cork in. We'll lay 'round here till mornin' and then set a signal. Something'll come along pretty soon.' Sure 'nough, 'long come a coaler bound for Charleston. She see us a-wallowin' in the trough and our mast thrashin' for all it was worth.
"'What d'ye want?' the skipper says, when he got within hail.
"'Some sail-needles and a ball o' twine,' I hollered back; 'we got everything else.' You should just a-heard him cuss—" and one of Captain Bob's laughs rang through the room. "Them's two things I'd forgot—didn't think o' them in fact till the mainsheet give 'way.
"Well, he chucked 'em aboard with another cuss. I hadn't no money to pay no salvage. All we wanted was them needles and a little elbow-grease and gumption. So we started in, and 'fore night, she still a-thrashin', I'd fixed up the sails, patched the eyelets with a pair o' boot-legs, and was off again."
"What were you doing off Hatteras, Captain Bob?" I asked. I was leading him on, professing ignorance of minor details, so that I could again enjoy the delight of hearing him tell it.
"Oh, that was another one o' them crazy jobs I used to take when I didn't know no better. Why, I guess you remember 'bout that wreckin' job off Hamilton, Bermuda?"
He was settled in his chair now, his legs crossed, his head down between his shoulders.
"You see, after I quit work on the 'ledge,' I was put to 't for a job, and there come along a feller by the name of Lamson—the agent of an insurance company, who wanted me to go to Bermuda and git up some forty-two pieces o' white I-talian marble that had been wrecked three years before off the harbor of Hamilton. They ran from three to twenty-one tons each, he said. So off I started with the Screamer. He didn't say, though, that the wreck lay on a coral reef eight miles from land, or I'd stayed to home in New Bedford.
"When I got to where the wreck lay you couldn't see a thing 'bove water. So I got into an old divin' dress we had aboard—one we used on the Ledge—oiled up the pump and went down to look her over, and by Jimmy Criminy, not a scrap o' that wreck was left 'cept the rusty iron work and that part o' the bottom plankin' of the vessel that lay under the stones! Everything else was eaten up with the worms! Funniest-lookin' place you ever see. The water was just as clear as air, and I could see every one o' them stone plain as daylight—looked like so many big lumps o' white sugar scattered 'round—and theywerebig! One of 'em weighed twenty-one tons, and none on 'em weighed less'n five. Of course I knew how big they were 'fore I started, and I'd fitted up the Screamer special to h'ist 'em, but I didn't know I'd have to handle 'em twice; once from where they laid on that coral reef in twenty-eight feet o' water and then unload 'em on the Navy Yard dock, above Hamilton, and then pick 'em up agin, load 'em 'board the Screamer, and unload 'em once more 'board a Boston brig they'd sent down for 'em—one o' them high-waisted things 'bout sixteen feet from the water-line to the rail. That was the wust part of it."
Captain Bob stopped, felt in his pocket for a match, found it empty, rose from his chair, picked one from a match-safe on my desk, lighted his cigar, and resumed his seat again. I have found it wisest to let him have his own way in times like these. If I interrupt the flow of his talk it may stop for the day, and I lose the best part of the enjoyment of having him with me.
"Pretty decent chaps, them Englishmen"—puff-puff—the volume of smoke was all right once more. "One Monday morning I ran out of the Navy Yard dock within sight of the wreck. I had been layin' up over Sunday to get out of the way of a norther, when I luffed a little too soon, and bang went my bowsprit and scraped off about three feet of red paint from the end of the dock. One of the watchmen was on the string-piece, and saw the whole thing. 'Come ashore,' he says, 'and go and see the Admiral; you can't scrape no paint off this dock withmypermission.'
"Well, I waited four hours for his nibs. When he come to his office quarters he was 'bout up to my arms, red as a can-buoy, and white hair stickin' up straight as a shoe-brush on his head. He looked cross enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two.
"'Ran into the dock, did ye—ran into Her Majesty's dock, and ye had room enough to turn a fleet in! Do you think we paint these docks for the fun of havin' you lubbers scrape it off? You'll pay for paintin' it over, sir—that's what you'll do, or I'll libel your boat, and send a file of marines down and tie her up,' and away he went up the dock to his office again.
"'Gosh!' I said to myself. 'Guess I'm in a fix,' The boys stood around and heard every word, and I tell ye it warn't no joke. As to money, there warn't a ten-dollar bill in the crew. I'd spent every cent I could rake and scrape to fit the Screamer out, and the boys were workin' on shares, and nobody was to get any money until the last stone—that big twenty-one-ton feller—was 'board the brig. Then I could go to the agents in Hamilton and draw two-thirds of my contract. That twenty-one-ton chunk, I forgot to tell ye, I had picked up the day before, and it was then aboard the Screamer, and we was on our way down to Hamilton, where the brig lay, when her nose scraped off the Admiral's paint.
"It did look kind o' nasty for us, and no mistake. One day more, and we'd 'a' been through and had our money.
"'Go up and see him,' said the watchman. 'He gits cool sometimes as sudden as he gits hot.' So Bill Nevins, my engineer, who was workin' the h'ister, and I went up. The old feller was sittin' on the piazza in a big rattan chair.
"'Come aboard,' he hollered, soon's he see Bill and me a-standin' in the garden-path with our hats off, lookin' like two jailbirds about to be sentenced. Well, we got up on the porch, and he looked us all over, and said:
"'Have you got that money with you?' 'No,' I said, 'I haven't,' and I ups and tells him just how we was fixed, and how we had worked, and how short we was of grub and clothes and money, and then I said, 'an' now I come to tell ye that I hit the dock fair and square, and it was all my fault, and that I'll pay whatever you say is right when I put this stone 'board and get my pay.'
"He looked me all over—I tell you I was pretty ragged; nothin' but a shirt and pants on, and they was almighty tore up, especially where most everybody wants to be covered—and Bill was no better. We'd 'bout used up our clo'es so that sail-needles nor nothin' else wouldn't a-done us no good, and we had no time nor no spare cash to go ashore and get others.
"While I was a-talkin', the old feller's eyes was a-borin' into mine—then he roared out, 'No, sir; you won't!—you won't pay one d—d shillin', sir. You'll go back to your work, and if there's anything you want in the way of grub or supplies send here for it and you shall have it. Good-day.' I tell ye he was a rum one."
"Was that the last time you saw him?" I asked.
"Not much. When we got 'longside the brig the next day, her Cap'n see that twenty-one-ton stone settin' up on the deck of the Screamer, lookin' like a big white church, and he got so scared he went ashore and started a yarn that we couldn't lift that stone sixteen feet in the air, and over her rail and down into the hold, and that we'd smash his brig, and it got to the Admiral's ears, and down come two English engineers, in cork helmets and white jackets and gold buttons, spic' an' span as if they'd stepped out of the chart-room of a yacht. One was a colonel and the other was a major. They were both just back from India, and natty-lookin' chaps as you ever saw. And clear stuff all the way through—you could tell that before they opened their mouths.
"I was on the deck of the Screamer, overhaulin' the fall, surrounded by most of the crew, gettin' ready to h'ist the stone, when I first saw 'em. They and the Cap'n were away up above me, leanin' over the rail, lookin' at the stone church that some o' the boys was puttin' the chains 'round. Bill Nevins was down in the fo'c's'le, firin' up, with the safety-valve set at 125 pounds. He had half a keg o' rosin and a can o' kerosene to help out with in case we wanted a few pounds extry in the middle of the tea-party. Pretty soon I heard one of 'em holler:
"'Ahoy! Is the Captain aboard?'
"'He is,' I said, steppin' out. 'Who wants him?'
"'Colonel Throckmorton,' he says, 'and Major Severn.'
"'Come aboard, gentlemen,' I says.
"So down they come, the Colonel first, one foot at a time touchin' the ladder, the Major following. When he reached the deck and wheeled around to look at me you just ought to have seen his face.
"'Are you the Captain?' he says, and he looked me over 'bout as the admiral had done.
"'I be,' I said, 'Captain Robert Brandt, of Pigeon Cove, Cape Ann, master and owner of the sloop Screamer, at your service'—I kep' front side to him. 'What can I do for you?'
"'Well, Captain,' he began, 'perhaps it is none of our business, but the Captain of the brig here,' and he pointed up above him, 'has asked us to look over your tackle and see whether it is safe enough to lift this stone. He's afraid you'll drop it and smash his deck in. Since I've seen it, and what you propose to lift it with, I've told him there's no danger, for you'll never get it off the deck. We are both officers of the Engineering Corps, and it is our business to know about such things.'
"'What makes you think the Screamer won't lift it?' I asked.
"'Well,' says the Colonel, looking aloft, 'her boom ain't big enough, and that Manila rope is too light. I should think it wasn't over three and three-quarter-inch rope. We all know fifteen tons is enough weight for that size rope, even with a fourfold purchase, and we understand you say this stone weighs twenty-one.'
"'I'm sorry, gentlemen,' I said, 'and if you are worried about it you'd better go 'board the brig, for I'm about ready to pick the stone up and land her.'
"Well, the Major said he guessed he would, if I was determined to pull the mast out of my sloop, but the Colonel said he'd stay by and see it out.
"Just then Bill Nevins stuck his head out of the fo'c's'le. He was blacker than I was; all smeared with grease and stripped to his waist. It was hot enough anywhere, but it was sizzlin' down where he was.
"'All ready, Cap'n,' he says. 'She's got every pound she can carry.'
"I looked everything over—saw the butt of the boom was playin' free in the wooden socket, chucked in a lot of tallow so it could move easy, give an extra twist to the end of the guy, and hollered to Bill to go ahead. She went chuckety-chuck, chuckety-chuck for half a dozen turns; then she slowed down soon as she struck the full weight, and began to pant like an old horse climbin' a hill. All this time the Colonel was callin' out from where he stood near the tiller: 'She'll never lift it, Captain—she'll never lift it.'
"Next come a scrapin' 'long the deck, and the big stone swung clear with a foot o' daylight 'tween it and the deck. Then up she went, crawlin' slowly inch by inch, till she reached the height of the brig's rail.
"Now come the wust part. I knew that when I gave orders to slack away the guy-rope so as to swing the stone aboard the brig, the Screamer would list over and dip her rail in the water. So I made a jump for the rope ladder and shinned up the brig's side so as to take a hand in landin' the stone properly on the brig's deck so as to save her beams and break the jar when I lowered the stone down. I had one eye now on the stone and the other on the water, which was curling over the Screamer's rail and makin' for the fo'c's'le hatch. Should the water pour down this hatch, out would go my fires and maybe up would come her b'iler.
"'Ease away on that guy and lower away easy,' I hollered to Bill. The stone dropped to within two feet of the brig's deck and swung back and for'ards. Then I heard Bill yell. I was expectin' it.
"'Water's comin' in!'
"I leaned over the brig's rail and could see the slop of the sea combin' over the Screamer's fo'c's'le hatch. Bill's fireswouldbe out the next minute. There was just two feet now 'tween the stone and the deck where I stood—too much to drop; but there was nothing else to do, and I hollered:
"'All gone.'
"Down she come with a run, struck the big timbers on the deck, and by Jiminy! ye could a-heard that old brig groan from stem to stern.
"I jumped on top of the stone and threw off the shackles, and the Screamer came up on an even keel as easy as a duck ridin' the water.
"You just oughter seen the Colonel when the old boat righted herself, and he had climbed up and stood 'longside the Major a-talkin' it over.
"Pretty soon he came up to where I was a-gettin' the tackle ready to lower the stone in the hold, and he says:
"'Well, you made your word good, Cap'n, but I want to tell you that nobody but an American could a-done it. It would cost me my commission if I should try to do what you have done.'
"'Well, gentlemen,' I says, 'what was wrong about it? What's the matter with the Screamer's rig?'
"'Well, the size of the rope for one thing,' says the Colonel, 'and the boom.'
"'Well, p'haps you ain't looked it over,' I says, and I began unravelling an end that stuck out near the shackle. 'If you'll look close here'—and I held the end of the rope up—'you'll see that every stran' of that rope is made of the best Manila yarn, and laid as smooth as silk. I stood over that rope myself when it was put together. Old Sam Hanson of New Bedford laid up that rope, and there ain't no better nowhere. I knew what it had to do, and I warn't goin' to take no chances of its not doin' it right. As to that boom, I want to tell ye that I picked that boom out o' about two hundred sticks in Tom Carlin's shipyard, in Stonington, and had it scraped and ironed just to please me. There ain't a rotten knot in it from butt to finish, and mighty few of any other kind. That stick'sgrowed right—that's what's the matter with it; and it bellies out in the middle, just where it ought to be thickest.'
"Well, they didn't say nothin' for a while, 'cept to walk round the stone once or twice and slap it with their hands, as if they wanted to make sure it was all there. My men were all over it now, and we was gettin' things in shape to finish up. I tell ye the boys were mighty glad, and so was I. It had been a long pull of six months' work, and we were out of most everything, and as soon as the big stone was down in the brig's hold, and warped back and stowed with the others—and that wouldn't take but a day or two more—we would clean up, get our money, and light out for home.
"All this time the Colonel and the Major were buzzin' each other off by the other rail. Pretty soon they both come over to where I stood, and the Colonel reached out his hand.
"'Cap'n Brandt,' he says—and he had a look in his face as if he meant it—and he did, every word of it—'it would give Major Severn and myself great pleasure if you would dine with us to-night at the Canteen. The Admiral is coming, and some brother officers who would be pleased to know you.'
"Well, I was struck all of a heap for a minute, knowing what kind of clo'es I had to go in, and so I says:
"'Well, gentlemen, that's very nice of you, and I see you mean it, and if I had anything fittin' to wear there's nothin' I would like better; but ye see how I'm fixed,' and I lifted my arms so he could see a few holes that he might a-missed before, and I motioned to some other parts of my get-up that needed repairs.
"'That don't make no difference, Cap'n, what kind of clo'es you come in. We dine at eight o'clock.'
"Of course I knew I couldn't go, and I didn't want 'em to think I intended to go when I didn't, so I says, rather positive-like:
"'Very much obliged, gentlemen, but I guess I'll have to get you to count me out this time.' I knowed I warn't fittin' to sit at anybody's table, especially if that old Admiral was comin'.
"The Colonel see I was in earnest, and he stepped up, quick-like, and laid his hand on my shoulder.
"'Captain Brandt,' he says, 'we ain't worryin' 'bout your clo'es, and don't you worry. You can come in your shirt, you can come in your socks, or you can come without one damned rag—only come!'"
The Captain stopped, shook the ashes from his cigar, slowly raised himself to his feet, and reached for his hat.
"Did you go, Captain?" I asked.
The Captain looked at me for a moment with one of those quizzical glances which so often light up his face when something amuses him, and said, as he blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling:
"Well, I didn't forget my manners. When it got dark—dark, mind ye—I went up and sat on the piazza and had a smoke with 'em—Admiral and all. But I didn't go to dinner—not in them pants."