CHAPTER II.
O change!—stupendous change!There lies the soulless clod;The sun eternal breaks—The new immortal wakes—Wakes with his God.Mrs. Southey.
O change!—stupendous change!There lies the soulless clod;The sun eternal breaks—The new immortal wakes—Wakes with his God.Mrs. Southey.
O change!—stupendous change!There lies the soulless clod;The sun eternal breaks—The new immortal wakes—Wakes with his God.Mrs. Southey.
O change!—stupendous change!
There lies the soulless clod;
The sun eternal breaks—
The new immortal wakes—
Wakes with his God.
Mrs. Southey.
As Dr. McBrain entered the room, the two young men and Sarah, after saluting him like very familiar acquaintances, passed out into what the niece called her “garden.” Here she immediately set her scissors at work in clipping roses, violets, and other early flowers, to make bouquets for her companions. That of Michael was much the largest and most tasteful; but this her brother did not remark, as he was in a brown study, reflecting on the singularity of the circumstance that the Constitution of the United States should not be the “palladium of his political and religious liberties.” Jack saw, for the first time in his life, that a true knowledge of the constitution was not to be found floating about in society, and that “there was more in the nature of the great national compact than was dreamt of in his philosophy.”
“Well, Ned,” said the lawyer, holding out his hand kindly but not rising from his chair, “what has brought you here so early? Has old Martha spoilt your tea?”
“Not at all; I have paid this visit, as it might be, professionally.”
“Professionally! I never was better in my life; and set youdown as a false prophet, or no doctor, if you like that better, for the gout has not even given a premonitory hint, this spring; and I hope, now I have given up Sauterne altogether, and take but four glasses of Madeira at dinner——”
“Two, too many.”
“I’ll engage to drink nothing but sherry, Ned, if you’ll consent to four, and that without any of those forbidding looks.”
“Agreed; sherry has less acidity, and consequently less gout, than Madeira. But my business here this morning, though professional, does not relate to my craft, but to yourown.”own.”
“To the law? Now I take another look at you, I do see trouble in your physiognomy; am I not to draw the marriage settlements, after all?”
“There are to be none. The new law gives a woman the entire control of all her property, they tell me, and I suppose she will not expect the control of mine.”
“Umph! Yes, she ought to be satisfied with things as they are, for she will remain mistress of all her cups and saucers, even,—ay, and of her houses and lands, in the bargain. Hang me, if I would ever marry, when the contract is so one-sided.”
“You never did, when the contract was t’other-sided. For my part, Tom, I’m disposed to leave a woman mistress of her own. The experiment is worth the trial, if it be only to see the use she will make of her money.”
“You are always experimenting among the women, and are about to try a third wife. Thank Heaven, I’ve got on sixty years, quite comfortably, without even one.”
“You have only half lived your life. No old bachelor—meaning a man after forty—knows anything of real happiness. It is necessary to be married, in order to be truly happy.”
“I wonder you did not add, ‘two or three times.’ But you may make this new contract with greater confidence than eitherof the others. I suppose you have seen this new divorce project that is, or has been, before the legislature?”
“Divorce! I trust no such foolish law will pass. This calling marriage a ‘contract,’ too, is what I never liked. It is something far more than a ‘contract,’ in my view of the matter.”
“Still, that is what the law considers it to be. Get out of this new scrape, Ned, if you can with any honour, and remain an independent freeman for the rest of your days. I dare say the widow could soon find some other amorous youth to place her affections on. It matters not much whom a woman loves, provided she love. Of this, I’m certain, from seeing the sort of animals so manydolove.”
“Nonsense; a bachelor talking of love, or matrimony, usually makes a zany of himself. It isterra incognitato you, my boy, and the less you say about it, the better. You are the only human being, Tom, I ever met with, who has not, some time or other, been in love. I really believe you never knew what the passion is”
“I fell in love, early in life, with a certain my lord Coke, and have remained true to my first attachment. Besides, I saw I had an intimate friend who would do all the marrying that was necessary for two, or even for three; so I determined, from the first, to remain single. A man has only to be firm, and he may set Cupid at defiance. It is not so with women, I do believe; it is part of their nature to love, else would no woman admire you, at your time of life.”
“I don’t know that—I am by no means sure of that. Each time I had the misfortune to become a widower, I was just as determined to pass the remainder of my days in reflecting on the worth of her I had lost, as you can be to remain a bachelor; but somehow or other, I don’t pretend to account for it, not a year passed before I have found inducements to enter into new engagements.It is a blessed thing, is matrimony, and I am resolved not to continue single an hour longer than is necessary.”
Dunscomb laughed out, at the earnest manner in which his friend spoke, though conversations, like this we have been relating, were of frequent occurrence between them.
“The same old sixpence, Ned! A Benedict as a boy, a Benedict as a man, and a Benedict as a dotard——”
“Dotard! My good fellow, let me tell you——”
“Poh! I don’t desire to hear it. But as you came on business connected with the law, and that business is not a marriage-settlement, what is it? Does old Kingsborough maintain his right to the Harlem lot?”
“No, he has given the claim up, at last. My business, Tom, is of a very different nature. What are we coming to, and what is to be the end of it all!”
As the doctor looked far more than he expressed, Dunscomb was struck with his manner. The Siamese twins scarce understand each other’s impulses and wishes better than these two men comprehended each other’s feelings; and Tom saw at once that Ned was now very much in earnest.
“Coming to?” repeated Dunscomb. “Do you mean the new code, or the ‘Woman-hold-the-Purse Law,’ as I call it? I don’t believe you look far enough ahead to foresee all the damnable consequences of an elective judiciary.”
“It is not that—this, or that—I do not mean codes, constitutions, or pin-money. What is thecountrycoming to, Tom Dunscomb—that is the question, I ask.”
“Well, and has the country nothing to do with constitutions, codes, and elective judges? I can tell you, Master Ned McBrain, M. D., that if the patient is to be saved at all, it must be by means of the judiciary, and I do not like the advice that has just been called in.”
“You are a croaker. They tell me the new judges are reasonably good.”
“‘Reasonably’ is an expressive word. The new judges areoldjudges, in part, and in so much they do pretty well, by chance. Some of the new judges are excellent—but one of the very best men on the whole bench was run against one of the worst men who could have been put in his place. At the next heat I fear the bad fellow will get the track. If you do not mean what I have mentioned, what do you mean?”
“I mean the increase of crime—the murders, arsons, robberies, and other abominations that seem to take root among us, like so many exotics transplanted to a genial soil.”
“‘Exotics’ and ‘genial’ be hanged! Men are alike everywhere. No one but a fool ever supposed that a republic is to stand, or fall, by its virtue.”
“Yet, the common opinion is that such must be the final test of our institutions.”
“Jack has just been talking nonsense on this subject, and nowyoumust come to aid him. But, what has your business with me, this morning, to do with the general depreciation in morals?”
“A great deal, as you will allow, when you come to hear my story.”
Dr. McBrain then proceeded forthwith to deliver himself of the matter which weighed so heavily on his mind. He was the owner of a small place in an adjoining county, where it was his custom to pass as much time, during the pleasant months, as a very extensive practice in town would allow. This was not much, it is true, though the worthy physician so contrived matters, that his visits to Timbully, as the place was called, if not long, were tolerably numerous. A kind-hearted, as well as a reasonably-affluent man, he never denied his professional services to his country neighbours, who eagerly asked his advicewhenever there was need of it. This portion of the doctor’s practice flourished on two accounts,—one being his known skill, and the other his known generosity. In a word, Dr. McBrain never received any compensation for his advice, from any in the immediate neighbourhood of his country residence. This rendered him exceedingly popular; and he might have been sent to Albany, but for a little cold water that was thrown on the project by a shrewd patriot, who suggested that while the physician was attending to affairs of state, he could not be administering to the ailings of his Timbully neighbours. This may have checked the doctor’s advancement, but it did not impair his popularity.
Now, it happened that the bridegroom-expectant had been out to Timbully, a distance of less than fifteen miles from his house in Bleecker street, with a view to order matters for the reception of the bride, it being the intention of the couple that were soon to be united to pass a few days there, immediately after the ceremony was performed. It was while at his place, attending to this most important duty, that an express came from the county town, requiring his presence before the coroner, where he was expected to give his evidence as a medical man. It seems that a house had been burned, and its owners, an aged couple, had been burnt in it. The remains of the bodies had been found, and an inquest was about to be held on them. This was pretty much all that the messenger could tell, though he rather thought that it was suspected the house had been set on fire, and the old people, consequently, murdered.
As a matter of course, Dr. McBrain obeyed the summons. A county town, in America, is often little more than a hamlet, though in New York they are usually places of some greater pretensions. The state has now near a dozen incorporated cities, with their mayors and aldermen, and with one exception, we believe these are all county towns. Then come the incorporatedvillages, in which New York is fast getting to be rich, places containing from one to six or seven thousand souls, and which, as a rule, are steadily growing into respectable provincial towns. The largest of these usually contain “the county buildings,” as it is the custom to express it. But, in the older counties, immediately around the great commercial capital of the entire republic, these large villages do not always exist; or when they do exist, are not sufficiently central to meet the transcendental justice of democratic equality—a quality that is sometimes of as exacting pretension, as of real imbecility; as witness the remarks of Mr Dunscomb, in our opening chapter.
The county buildings of —— happen to stand in a small village, or what is considered a small village, in the lower part of the state. As the events of this tale are so recent, and the localities so familiar to many persons, we choose to call this village “Biberry,” and the county “Dukes.” Such was once the name of a New York county, though the appellation has been dropped, and this not from any particular distaste for the strawberry leaves; “Kings,” “Queens,” and “Duchess” having been wisely retained—wisely, as names should be as rarely changed as public convenience will allow.
Dr. McBrain found the village of Biberry in a high state of excitement; one, indeed, of so intense a nature as to be far from favourable to the judicial enquiry that was then going on in the court-house. The old couple who were the sufferers in this affair had been much respected by all who knew them; he as a common-place, well-meaning man, of no particular capacity, and she as a managing, discreet, pious woman, whose greatest failing was a neatness that was carried somewhat too near to ferocity. Nevertheless, Mrs. Goodwin was, generally, even more respected than her husband, for she had the most mind, transacted most of the business of the family, and was habitually kind and attentive to every one who entered her dwelling; provided, always, that theywiped their feet on her mats, of which it was necessary to pass no less than six, before the little parlour was reached, and did not spit on her carpet, or did not want any of her money. This popularity added greatly to the excitement; men, and women also, commonly feeling a stronger desire to investigate wrongs done to those they esteem, than to investigate wrongs done to those concerning whom they are indifferent.
Doctor McBrain found the charred remains of this unfortunate couple laid on a table in the court-house, the coroner in attendance, and a jury empanelled. Much of the evidence concerning the discovery of the fire had been gone through with, and was of a very simple character. Some one who was stirring earlier than common had seen the house in a bright blaze, had given the alarm, and had preceded the crowd from the village, on the road to the burning dwelling. The Goodwins had resided in a neat, retired cottage, at the distance of near two miles from Biberry, though in sight from the village; and by the time the first man from the latter reached the spot, the roof had fallen in, and the materials were mostly consumed. A dozen, or more, of the nearest neighbours were collected around the ruins, and some articles of household furniture had been saved; but, on the whole, it was regarded as one of the most sudden and destructive fires ever known in that part of the country. When the engine arrived from the village, it played briskly on the fire, and was the means of soon reducing all within the outer walls, which were of stone, to a pile of blackened and smouldering wood. It was owing to this circumstance that any portion of the remains of the late owners of the house had been found, as was done in the manner thus described, in his testimony, by Peter Bacon, the person who had first given the alarm in Biberry.
“As soon as ever I seed it was Peter Goodwin’s house that made the light,” continued this intelligent witness, in the course of his examination,—“I guv’ the alarm, and started off on therun, to see what I could do. By the time I got to the top of Brudler’s Hill, I was fairly out of breath, I can tell you, Mr. Coroner and Gentlemen of the Jury, and so I was obliged to pull up a bit. This guv’ the fire a so much better sweep, and when I reached the spot, there was little chance for doing much good. We got out a chest of drawers, and the young woman who boarded with the Goodwins was helped down out of the window, and most of her clothes, I b’lieve, was saved, so far as I know.”
“Stop,” interrupted the coroner; “there was a young woman in the house, you say.”
“Yes; what I call a young woman, or a gal like; though other some calls her a young woman. Waal, she was got out; and her clothes was got out; but nobody could get out the old folks. As soon as the ingyne come up we turned on the water, and that put out the fire about the quickest. Arter that we went to diggin’, and soon found what folks call the remains, though to my notion there is little enough on ’em that is left.”
“You dug out the remains,” said the coroner, writing; “in what state did you find them?”
“In what I call a pretty poor state; much as you see ’em there, on the table.”
“What has become of the youngladyyou have mentioned?” enquired the coroner, who, as a public functionary, deemed it prudent to put all of the sex into the same general category.
“I can’t tell you, ’squire; I never see’d her arter she was got out of the window.”
“Do you mean that she was the hired-girl of the family,—or had the old lady no help?”
“I kinder think she was a boarder, like; one that paid her keepin’,” answered the witness, who was not a person to draw very nice distinctions, as the reader will have no difficulty in conceiving, from his dialect. “It seems to me I heer’n tell ofanother help in the Goodwin family—a sorter Jarman, or Irish lady.”
“Was any such woman seen about the house this morning, when the ruins were searched?”
“Not asI’ner. We turned over the brands and sticks, until we come across the old folks; then everybody seemed to think the work was pretty much done.”
“In what state, or situation, were these remains found?”
“Burnt to a crisp, just as you see ’em, ’squire, as I said afore; a pretty poor state for human beings to be in.”
“But where were they lying, and were they near each other?”
“Close together. Their heads, if a body can call them black lookin’ skulls heads, at all, almost touched, if they didn’t quite touch, each other; their feet lay further apart.”
“Do you think you could place the skeletons in the same manner, as respects each other, as they were when you first saw them? But let me first enquire, if any other person is present, who saw these remains before they had been removed?”
Several men, and one or two women, who were in attendance to be examined, now came forward, and stated that they had seen the remains in the condition in which they had been originally found. Selecting the most intelligent of the party, after questioning them all round, the coroner desired that the skeletons might be laid, as near as might be, in the same relative positions as those in which they had been found. There was a difference of opinion among the witnesses, as to several of the minor particulars, though all admitted that the bodies, or what remained of them, had been found quite close together; their heads touching, and their feet some little distance apart. In this manner then, were the skeletons now disposed; the arrangement being completed just as Dr. McBrain entered the court-room. The coroner immediately directed the witnesses to stand aside, while the physician made an examination of the crisped bones.
“This looks like foul play!” exclaimed the doctor, almost as soon as his examination commenced. “The skulls of both these persons have been fractured; and, if this be anything near the positions in which the skeletons were found, as it would seem, by the same blow.”
He then pointed out to the coroner and jury, a small fracture in the frontal bone of each skull, and so nearly in a line as to render his conjecture highly probable. This discovery gave an entirely new colouring to the whole occurrence, and every one present began to speculate on the probability of arson and murder being connected with the unfortunate affair. The Goodwins were known to have lived at their ease, and the good woman, in particular, had the reputation of being a little miserly. As everything like order vanished temporarily from the court-room, and tongues were going in all directions, many things were related that were really of a suspicious character, especially by the women. The coroner adjourned the investigation for the convenience of irregular conversation, in order to obtain useful clues to the succeeding enquiries.
“You say that old Mrs. Goodwin had a good deal of specie?” enquired that functionary of a certain Mrs. Pope, a widow woman who had been free with her communications, and who very well might know more than the rest of the neighbours, from a very active propensity she had ever manifested, to look into the affairs of all around her. “Did I understand you, that you had seen this money yourself.”
“Yes, sir; often and often. She kept it in a stocking of the old gentleman’s, that was nothing but darns; so darny, like, that nobody could wearit.it.Miss Goodwin wasn’t a woman to put away anything that was of use. A clusser body wasn’t to be found, anywhere near Biberry.”
“And some of this money was gold, I think I heard you say. A stocking pretty well filled with gold and silver.”
“The foot was cramming full, when I saw it, and that wasn’t three months since. I can’t say there was any great matter in the leg. Yes, there was gold in it, too. She showed me the stocking the last time I saw it, on purpose to ask me what might be the valie of a piece of gold that was almost as big as half a dollar.”
“Should you know that piece of gold, were you to see it, again?”
“That I should. I didn’t know its name, or its valie, for I never seed so big a piece afore, but I told Miss Goodwin I thought it must be ra’al Californy. Them’s about now, they tell me, and I hope poor folks will come in for their share. Old as I am—that is, not so very old neither—but such as I am, I never had a piece of gold in my life.”
“You cannot tell, then, the name of this particular coin?”
“I couldn’t; if I was to have it for the telling, I couldn’t. It wasn’t a five dollar piece; that I know, for the old lady had a good many ofthem, and this was much larger, and yellower, too; better gold, I conclude.”
The coroner was accustomed to garrulous, sight-seeing females, and knew how to humour them.
“Where did Mrs. Goodwin keep her specie?” he enquired. “If you saw her put the stocking away, you must know its usual place of deposit.”
“In her chest of drawers,” answered the woman eagerly. “That very chest of drawers which was got out of the house, as sound as the day it went into it, and has been brought down into the village for safe keeping.”
All this was so, and measures were taken to push the investigation further, and in that direction. Three or four young men, willing volunteers in such a cause, brought the bureau into the court-room, and the coroner directed that each of the drawers should be publicly opened, in the presence of the jurors. Thewidow was first sworn, however, and testified regularly to the matter of the stocking, the money, and the place of usual deposit.
“Ah! you’ll not find it there,” observed Mrs. Pope, as the village cabinet-maker applied a key, the wards of which happened to fit those of the locks in question. “She kept her money in the lowest draw of all. I’ve seen her take the stocking out, first and last, at least a dozen times.”
The lower draw was opened, accordingly. It contained female apparel, and a goodly store of such articles as were suited to the wants of a respectable woman in the fourth or fifth of the gradations into which all society so naturally, and unavoidably, divides itself. But there was no stocking full of darns, no silver, no gold. Mrs. Pope’s busy and nimble fingers were thrust hastily into an inner corner of the drawer, and a silk dress was unceremoniously opened, that having been the precise receptacle of the treasure as she had seen it last bestowed.
“It’s gone!” exclaimed the woman. “Somebody must have taken it!”
A great deal was now thought to be established. The broken skulls, and the missing money, went near to establish a case of murder and robbery, in addition to the high crime of arson. Men, who had worn solemn and grave countenances all that morning, now looked excited and earnest. The desire for a requiting justice was general and active, and the dead became doubly dear, by means of their wrongs.
All this time Dr. McBrain had been attending, exclusively, to the part of the subject that most referred to his own profession. Of the fractures in the two skulls, he was well assured, though the appearance of the remains was such as almost to baffle investigation. Of another important fact he was less certain. While all he heard prepared him to meet with the skeletons of a man and his wife, so far as he could judge, in the imperfect state in which they were laid before him, the bones were those of two females.
“Did you know this Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Coroner?” enquired the physician, breaking into the more regular examination with very little ceremony; “or was he well known to any here?”
The coroner had no very accurate knowledge of the deceased, though every one of the jurors had been well acquainted with him. Several had known him all their lives.
“Was he a man of ordinary size?” asked the doctor.
“Very small. Not taller than his wife, who might be set down as quite a tall old lady.”
It often happens in Europe, especially in England, that the man and his wife are so nearly of a height as to leave very little sensible difference in their statures; but it is a rare occurrence in this country. In America, the female is usually delicate, and of a comparatively small frame, while the average height of man is something beyond that of the European standard. It was a little out of the common way, therefore, to meet with a couple so nearly of a size, as these remains would make Goodwin and his wife to have been.
“These skeletons are very nearly of the same length,” resumed the doctor, after measuring them for the fifth time. “The man could not have been much, if any, taller than his wife.”
“He was not,” answered a juror. “Old Peter Goodwin could not have been more than five feet five, and Dorothy was all of that, I should think. When they came to meeting together, they looked much of a muchness.”
Now, there is nothing on which a prudent and regular physician is more cautious than in committing himself on unknown and uncertain ground. He has his theories, and his standard of opinions, usually well settled in his mind, and he is ever on the alert to protect and bolster them; seldom making any admission that may contravene either. He is apt to denounce the water cure, however surprising may have been its effects; and there is commonly but one of the “opathies” to which he is inthe least disposed to defer, and that is the particular “opathy” on which he has moulded his practice. As for Dr. McBrain, he belonged strictly to the alapathic school, and might be termed almost an ultra in his adherence to its laws, while the number of the new schools that were springing up around him, taught him caution, as well as great prudence, in the expression of hisopinions.opinions.Give him a patient, and he went to work boldly, and with the decision and nerve of a physician accustomed to practise in an exaggerated climate; but place him before the public, as a theoretical man, and he was timid and wary. His friend Dunscomb had observed this peculiarity, thirty years before the commencement of our tale, and had quite recently told him, “You are bold in the only thing in which I am timid, Ned, and that is in making up to the women. If Mrs. Updyke were a newfangled theory, now, instead of an old-fashioned widow, as she is, hang me if I think you would have ever had the spirit to propose.” This peculiarity of temperament, and, perhaps, we might add of character, rendered Dr. McBrain, now, very averse to saying, in the face of so much probability, and the statements of so many witnesses, that the mutilated and charred skeletons that lay on the court-house table were those of two females, and not those of a man and his wife. It was certainly possible he might be mistaken; for the conflagration had made sad work of these poor emblems of mortality; but science has a clear eye, and the doctor was a skilful and practised anatomist. In his own mind, there were very few doubts on the subject.
As soon as the thoughtful physician found time to turn his attention on the countenances of those who composed the crowd in the court-room, he observed that nearly all eyes were bent on the person of one particular female, who sat apart, and was seemingly labouring under a shock of some sort or other, that materially affected her nerves. McBrain saw, at a glance, that this person belonged to a class every way superior to that ofeven the highest of those who pressed around the table. The face was concealed in a handkerchief, but the form was not only youthful but highly attractive. Small, delicate hands and feet could be seen; such hands and feet as we are all accustomed to see in an American girl, who has been delicately brought up. Her dress was simple, and of studied modesty; but there was an air aboutthat, which a little surprised the kind-hearted individual, who was now so closely observing her.
The doctor had little difficulty in learning from those near him that this “young woman,” so all in the crowd styledher, though it was their practice to term most girls, however humble their condition, “ladies,” had been residing with the Goodwins for a few weeks, in the character of a boarder, as some asserted, while others affirmed it was as afriend. At all events, there was a mystery about her; and most of the girls of Biberry had called her proud, because she did not join in their frivolities, flirtations and visits. It was true, no one had ever thought of discharging the duties of social life by calling onher, or in making the advances usual to well-bred people; but this makes little difference where there is a secret consciousness of inferiority, and of an inferiority that is felt, while it is denied. Such things are of every-day occurrence, in country-life in particular, while American town-life is far from being exempt from the weakness. In older countries, the laws of society are better respected.
It was now plain that the blight of suspicion had fallen on this unknown, and seemingly friendless girl. If the fire had been communicated intentionally, who so likely to be guilty as she? if the money was gone, who had so many means of securing it as herself? These were questions that passed from one to another, until distrust gathered so much head, that the coroner deemed it expedient to adjourn the inquest, while the proof might be collected, and offered in proper form.
Dr. McBrain was, by nature, kind-hearted; then he could noteasily get over that stubborn scientific fact, of both the skeletons having belonged to females. It is true that, admitting this to be the case, it threw very little light on the matter, and in no degree lessened any grounds of suspicion that might properly rest on the “young woman”; but it separated him from the throng, and placed his mind in a sort of middle condition, in which he fancied it might be prudent, as well as charitable, to doubt. Perceiving that the crowd was dispersing, though not without much animated discussion in under tones, and that the subject of all this conversation still remained in her solitary corner, apparently unconscious of what was going on, the worthy doctor approached the immovable figure, and spoke.
“You have come here as a witness, I presume,” he said, in a gentle tone; “if so, your attendance just now will no longer be necessary, the coroner having adjourned the inquest until to-morrow afternoon.”
At the first sound of his voice, the solitary female removed a fine cambric handkerchief from her face, and permitted her new companion to look upon it. We shall say nothing, here, touching that countenance or any other personal peculiarity, as a sufficiently minute description will be given in the next chapter, through the communications made by Dr. McBrain to Dunscomb. Thanking her informant for his information, and exchanging a few brief sentences on the melancholy business which had brought both there, the young woman arose, made a slight but very graceful inclination of her body, and withdrew.
Dr. McBrain’s purpose was made up on the spot. He saw very plainly that a fierce current of suspicion was setting against this pleasing, and, as it seemed to him, friendless young creature; and he determined at once to hasten back to town, and get his friend to go out to Biberry, without a moment’s delay, that he might appear there that very afternoon in the character of counsel to the helpless.