, Joe Johnson--whom I sent to the post and then saved from
cropping--that he'll kill me. Goy!"--Mr. Clayton looked around a trifle
apprehensively--"I'm ready for him."

"Delaware kidnapping is a great institution," Custis said.

"It has an antiquity and extent you would hardly believe, friend Custis.
Long before our independence, in the year 1760, the statutes of Delaware
had to provide against it. Our laws have never permitted the domestic
slave-trade with other states."

The little place seemed to have a good society, and the beauty of the
young girls sitting at the doors or walking in the evening showed
something of the florid North Europe skins, Batavian eyes, and rotund
Dutch or Quaker figures.

As they returned to the public square, a room in the tavern, almost
brilliantly lighted for that day of candles, displayed its windows to
the gaze of Clayton, who exclaimed:

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

"That distinguished engineer?" observed his visitor, who had been
waiting all the evening to broach the subject of his errand. "I have the
greatest admiration of him. Shall we call on him?"

"Why, yes, yes," answered Clayton, dubiously; "I'm not afraid of him.
I--goy! I owe him nothing. He is such a litigious fellow, though; so
persistent with it; _barratry_, _champetry_, mad incorrigibility:
he's the wildest man of genius alive. But come on!"

Knocking at a door on the second floor, a sharp, prompt reply came out:

"Come!"

A middle-sized man, with a large head and broad shoulders, and cloth
leggings, buttoned to above his knee, sat in a nearly naked, carpetless
room, writing, his table surrounded by burning wax candles, and his
countenance was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him and
seized his hand:

"How is my friend Randel? The indefatigable litigant, the brilliant
engineer, to whom ideas, goy! are like persimmons on the tree, abundant,
but seldom ripe, and only good when frosted. How is he now and what is
he at?"

"Stand there," spoke the engineer, "and look at me while I read the
sentence I was finishing upon John Middleton Clayton of Delaware."

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

"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to let
their judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or to
suppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence that
residue and fruit of all talents, the hon