opper emptied itself,
such odd books as drifted into Harrodstown. One of these was called
"Bacon's Abridgment"; it dealt with law and it puzzled me sorely.

"And the children," Polly Ann continued,--"ye'll not make me pick up the
four of 'em, and pack it to Louisiana, because Mr. Colfax wants the land
we've made for ourselves."

There were four of them now, indeed,--the youngest still in the bark
cradle in the corner. He bore a no less illustrious name than that of
the writer of these chronicles.

It would be hard to say which was the more troubled, Tom or I, that
windy morning we set out on the Danville trace. Polly Ann alone had been
serene,--ay, and smiling and hopeful. She had kissed us each good-by
impartially. And we left her, with a future governor of Kentucky on her
shoulder, tripping lightly down to the mill to grind the McGarrys' corn.

When the forest was cleared at Danville, Justice was housed first.
She was not the serene, inexorable dame whom we have seen in pictures
holding her scales above the jars of earth. Justice at Danville was a
somewhat high-spirited, quarrelsome lady who decided matters oftenest
with the stroke of a sword. There was a certain dignity about her temple
withal,--for instance, if a judge wore linen, that linen must not
be soiled. Nor was it etiquette for a judge to lay his own hands in
chastisement on contemptuous persons, though Justice at Danville
had more compassion than her sisters in older communities upon human
failings.

There was a temple built to her "of hewed or sawed logs nine inches
thick"--so said the specifications. Within the temple was a rude
platform which served as a bar, and since Justice is supposed to carry
a torch in her hand, there were no windows,--nor any windows in the jail
next door, where some dozen offenders languished on the afternoon that
Tom and I rode into town.

There was nothing auspicious in the appearance of Danville, and no man
might have said then that the place was to be the scene of portentous
conventions which were to decide the destiny of a State. Here was a
sprinkling of log cabins, some in the building, and an inn, by courtesy
so called. Tom and I would have preferred to sleep in the woods near by,
with our feet to the blaze; this was partly from motives of economy,
and partly because Tom, in common with other pioneers, held an inn in
contempt. But to come back to our arrival.

It was a sunny and windy afternoon, and the leaves were