th.

My studies began within the hour of my arrival.

CHAPTER V

I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW

I shall burden no one with the dry chronicles of a law office. The
acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a slower
one in the telling. I lacked not application during the three years of
my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd tasks as
came my way.

The Judge resembled Major Colfax in but one trait: he was choleric. But
he was painstaking and cautious, and I soon found out that he looked
askance upon any one whom his nephew might recommend. He liked the
Major, but he vowed him to be a roisterer and spendthrift, and one day,
some months after my advent, the Judge asked me flatly how I came to fall
in with Major Colfax. I told him. At the end of this conversation he
took my breath away by bidding me come to live with him. Like many
lawyers of that time, he had a little house in one corner of his grounds
for his office. It stood under great spreading trees, and there I was
wont to sit through many a summer day wrestling with the authorities.
In the evenings we would have political arguments, for the Confederacy
was in a seething state between the Federalists and the Republicans over
the new Constitution, now ratified. Between the Federalists and the
Jacobins, I would better say, for the virulence of the French Revolution
was soon to be reflected among the parties on our side. Kentucky,
swelled into an unmanageable territory, was come near to rebellion
because the government was not strong enough to wrest from Spain the free
navigation of the Mississippi.

And yet I yearned to go back, and looked forward eagerly to the time when
I should have stored enough in my head to gain admission to the bar. I
was therefore greatly embarrassed, when my examinations came, by an offer
from Judge Wentworth to stay in Richmond and help him with his practice.
It was an offer not to be lightly set aside, and yet I had made up my
mind. He flew into a passion because of my desire to return to a wild
country of outlaws and vagabonds.

"Why, damme," he cried, "Kentucky and this pretty State of Franklin which
desired to chip off from North Carolina are traitorous places. Disloyal
to Congress! Intriguing with a Spanish minister and the Spanish governor
of Louisiana to secede from their own people and join the King of Spain.
Bah!" he exclaimed, "if our new Federal Constitution is adopted I would
han