e fragrant
garden, he followed the fortunes of Tom Jones and Sophia; he wept over
the fate of Eugene Aram; he penetrated with Richard the Lion-heart into
Saladin's tent, with Gil Blas into the robbers' cave; he flew through
the air on the magic carpet or the enchanted horse, or tied with
Sindbad to the roc's leg. Sometimes he read or repeated the simpler
stories to his little sister, sitting wide-eyed by his side. When he
had read all the books,--indeed, long before he had read them all,--he
too had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: contentment took
its flight, and happiness lay far beyond the sphere where he was born.
The blood of his white fathers, the heirs of the ages, cried out for
its own, and after the manner of that blood set about getting the
object of its desire.

Near the corner of Mackenzie Street, just one block north of the
Patesville market-house, there had stood for many years before the war,
on the verge of the steep bank of Beaver Creek, a small frame office
building, the front of which was level with the street, while the rear
rested on long brick pillars founded on the solid rock at the edge of
the brawling stream below. Here, for nearly half a century, Archibald
Straight had transacted legal business for the best people of
Northumberland County. Full many a lawsuit had he won, lost, or
settled; many a spendthrift had he saved from ruin, and not a few
families from disgrace. Several times honored by election to the
bench, he had so dispensed justice tempered with mercy as to win the
hearts of all good citizens, and especially those of the poor, the
oppressed, and the socially disinherited. The rights of the humblest
negro, few as they might be, were as sacred to him as those of the
proudest aristocrat, and he had sentenced a man to be hanged for the
murder of his own slave. An old-fashioned man, tall and spare of
figure and bowed somewhat with age, he was always correctly clad in a
long frock coat of broadcloth, with a high collar and a black stock.
Courtly in address to his social equals (superiors he had none), he was
kind and considerate to those beneath him. He owned a few domestic
servants, no one of whom had ever felt the weight of his hand, and for
whose ultimate freedom he had provided in his will. In the
long-drawn-out slavery agitation he had taken a keen interest, rather
as observer than as participant. As the heat of controversy increased,
his lack of zeal for the p