kson was soon convinced that villainy
was afoot. The upshot of the dispute was that the American governor put
the Spanish governor in jail; and when the United States judge of West
Florida, a curious character named Fromentin, tried to mend the matter
with a writ of habeas corpus, he fared little better than Judge Hall of
New Orleans had fared before him.

Mr. Parton's laborious investigation of this comical affair enables him
to show that the estate over which the trouble arose was of no value
whatever, and that Jackson's chivalrous impulse to defend a family he
thought wronged led him into a very arbitrary and indefensible action.
As usual, his motives were good, but his temper was not improved by his
illness or by the fact that Callava, who seems to have been a worthy
gentleman, was a Spaniard, and had been governor of Florida. Jackson had
a rooted dislike of Spanish governors, and doubtless congratulated
himself and the country that there would be no more of them in Florida,
when, for the last time, he turned northward from Pensacola to seek The
Hermitage and the rest which his diseased body sorely needed.

The Hermitage was by this time a good place to rest in, for it had grown
to be a Southern plantation home, quite unlike the bare homes which
sheltered the first settlers of that neighborhood, and it had its full
share of the charm that belonged to that old Southern life. It was the
seat of an abundant hospitality. The fame of its master drew thither
interesting men from a distance. His benevolence, and the homely charity
of his wife, made it a resort for many of the neighborhood whom they two
had befriended, for young people fond of the simple amusements of those
days, and for ministers of the Gospel, whom Mrs. Jackson, an extremely
pious woman, liked especially to have about her. For his wife's sake,
the general built a tiny church on the estate, and always treated with
profound respect the religion which he himself had not professed, but
which he honored because Mrs. Jackson was a Christian. Indeed, there is
nothing in the man's whole life more honorable than his perfect loyalty
to her. She was a simple, uncultivated, kind-hearted frontier woman, no
longer attractive in person, and a great contrast to the courtly figure
by her side when she and the general were in company. It is certainly
true that the two used to smoke their reed pipes together before the
fire after dinner, and that custom, to one ignorant of