the trial was near its close. At Salt Lake later telegrams told him of the acquittal, and his gratitude was boundless—so boundless, indeed, that sleep was driven from his eyes by the pleasurable excitement almost as effectually as preceding weeks of anxiety had done it. He shaped his course straight for Hawkeye, now, and his meeting with his mother and the rest of the household was joyful—albeit he had been away so long that he seemed almost a stranger in his own home.
But the greetings and congratulations were hardly finished when all the journals in the land clamored the news of Laura's miserable death. Mrs. Hawkins was prostrated by this last blow, and it was well that Clay was at her side to stay her with comforting words and take upon himself the ordering of the household with its burden of labors and cares.
Washington Hawkins had scarcely more than entered upon that decade which carries one to the full blossom of manhood which we term the beginning of middle age, and yet a brief sojourn at the capital of the nation had made him old. His hair was already turning gray when the late session of Congress began its sittings; it grew grayer still, and rapidly, after the memorable day that saw Laura proclaimed a murderess; it waxed grayer and still grayer during the lagging suspense that succeeded it and after the crash which ruined his last hope—the failure of his bill in the Senate and the destruction of its champion, Dilworthy. A few days later, when he stood uncovered while the last prayer was pronounced over Laura's grave, his hair was whiter and his face hardly less old than the venerable minister's whose words were sounding in his ears.
A week after this, he was sitting in a double-bedded room in a cheap boarding house in Washington, with Col. Sellers. The two had been living together lately, and this mutual cavern of theirs the Colonel sometimes referred to as their 'premises' and sometimes as their 'apartments'—more particularly when conversing with persons outside. A canvas-covered modern trunk, marked 'G. W. H.' stood on end by the door, strapped and ready for a journey; on it lay a small morocco satchel, also marked 'G. W. H.' There was another trunk close by—a worn, and scarred, and ancient hair relic, with 'B. S.' wrought in brass nails on its top; on it lay a pair of saddle-bags that probably knew more about the last century than they could tell. Washington got up and walked the floor a while in a restless sort of way, and finally was about to sit down on the hair trunk.
'Stop, don't sit down on that!' exclaimed the Colonel: 'There, now that's all right—the chair's better. I couldn't get another trunk like that—not another like it in America, I reckon.'
'I am afraid not,' said Washington, with a faint attempt at a smile.
'No indeed; the man is dead that made that trunk and that saddle-bags.'
'Are his great-grand-children still living?' said Washington, with levity only in the words, not in the tone.
'Well, I don't know—I hadn't thought of that—but anyway they can't make trunks and saddle-bags like that, if they are—no man can,' said the Colonel with honest simplicity. 'Wife didn't like to see me going off with that trunk—she said it was nearly certain to be stolen.'
'Why?'
'Why? Why, aren't trunks always being stolen?'
'Well, yes—some kinds of trunks are.'
'Very well, then; this is some kind of a trunk—and an almighty rare kind, too.'
'Yes, I believe it is.'
'Well, then, why shouldn't a man want to steal it if he got a chance?'
'Indeed I don't know.—Why should he?'
'Washington, I never heard anybody talk like you. Suppose you were a thief, and that trunk was lying around and nobody watching—wouldn't you steal it? Come, now, answer fair—wouldn't you steal it?
'Well, now, since you corner me, I would take it,—but I wouldn't consider it stealing.
'You wouldn't! Well, that beats me. Now what would you call stealing?'
'Why, taking property is stealing.'
'Property! Now what a way to talk that is: What do you suppose that trunk is worth?'
'Is it in good repair?'
'Perfect. Hair rubbed off a little, but the main structure is perfectly sound.'
'Does it leak anywhere?'
'Leak? Do you want to carry water in it? What do you mean by does it leak?'
'Why—a—do the clothes fall out of it when it is—when it is stationary?'
'Confound it, Washington, you are trying to make fun of me. I don't know what has got into you to-day; you act mighty curious. What is the matter with you?'
'Well, I'll tell you, old friend. I am almost happy. I am, indeed. It wasn't Clay's telegram that hurried me up so and got me ready to start with you. It was a letter from Louise.'
'Good! What is it? What does she say?'
'She says come home—her father has consented, at last.'
'My boy, I want to congratulate you; I want to shake you by the hand! It's a long turn that has no lane at the end of it, as the proverb says, or somehow that way. You'll be happy yet, and Beriah Sellers will be there to see, thank God!'
'I believe it. General Boswell is pretty nearly a poor man, now. The railroad that was going to build up Hawkeye made short work of him, along with the rest. He isn't so opposed to a son-in-law without a fortune, now.'
'Without a fortune, indeed! Why that Tennessee Land—'
'Never mind the Tennessee Land, Colonel. I am done with that, forever and forever—'
'Why no! You can't mean to say—'
'My father, away back yonder, years ago, bought it for a blessing for his children, and—'
'Indeed he did! Si Hawkins said to me—'
'It proved a curse to him as long as he lived, and never a curse like it was inflicted upon any man's heirs —'
'I'm bound to say there's more or less truth—'
'It began to curse me when I was a baby, and it has cursed every hour of my life to this day—'
'Lord, lord, but it's so! Time and again my wife—'
'I depended on it all through my boyhood and never tried to do an honest stroke of work for my living —'
'Right again—but then you—'
'I have chased it years and years as children chase butterflies. We might all have been prosperous, now; we might all have been happy, all these heart-breaking years, if we had accepted our poverty at first and gone contentedly to work and built up our own wealth by our own toil and sweat—'
'It's so, it's so; bless my soul, how often I've told Si Hawkins—'
'Instead of that, we have suffered more than the damned themselves suffer! I loved my father, and I honor his memory and recognize his good intentions; but I grieve for his mistaken ideas of conferring happiness upon his children. I am going to begin my life over again, and begin it and end it with good solid work! I'll leave my children no Tennessee Land!'
'Spoken like a man, sir, spoken like a man! Your hand, again my boy! And always remember that when a word of advice from Beriah Sellers can help, it is at your service. I'm going to begin again, too!'
'Indeed!'
'Yes, sir. I've seen enough to show me where my mistake was. The law is what I was born for. I shall begin the study of the law. Heavens and earth, but that Braham's a wonderful man—a wonderful man sir! Such a head! And such a way with him! But I could see that he was jealous of me. The little licks I got in in the course of my argument before the jury—'
'Your argument! Why, you were a witness.'
'Oh, yes, to the popular eye, to the popular eye—but I knew when I was dropping information and when I was letting drive at the court with an insidious argument. But the court knew it, bless you, and weakened every time! And Braham knew it. I just reminded him of it in a quiet way, and its final result, and he said in a whisper, 'You did it, Colonel, you did it, sir—but keep it mum for my sake; and I'll tell you what you do,' says he, 'you go into the law, Col. Sellers—go into the law, sir; that's your native element!' And into the law the subscriber is going. There's worlds of money in it!—whole worlds of money! Practice first in Hawkeye, then in Jefferson, then in St.
