'Twould be unwise and tiresome to recount the journey over the bare mountains with my new friend and benefactor.He was a strange gentleman, now jolly enough to make me shake with laughter and forget the sorrow of my parting, now moody for a night and a day; now he was all sweetness, now all fire; now he was abstemious, now self-indulgent and prodigal.He had a will like flint, and under it a soft heart.Cross his moods, and he hated you.I never thought to cross them, therefore he called me Davy, and his friendliness grew with our journey.
His anger turned against rocks and rivers, landlords and emigrants, but never against me.And for this I was silently thankful.
And how had he come to take me over the mountains, and to put me in the way of studying law? Mindful of the kernel of my story, I have shortened the chapter to tell you out of the proper place.Major Colfax had made Tom and me sup with himself and Colonel Clark at the inn in Danville.And so pleased had the Major professed himself with my story of having outwitted his agent, that he must needs have more of my adventures.Colonel Clark gave him some, and Tom,--his tongue loosed by the toddy,--others.And the Colonel added to the debt I owed him by suggesting that Major Colfax take me to Virginia and recommend me to a lawyer there.
``Nay,'' cried the Major, ``I will do more.I like the lad, for he is modest despite the way you have paraded him.I have an uncle in Richmond, Judge Wentworth, to whom I will take him in person.And when the Judge has done with him, if he is not flayed and tattooed with Blackstone, you may flay and tattoo me.''
Thus did I break through my environment.And it was settled that I should meet the Major in seven days at Harrodstown.
Once in the journey did the Major make mention of a subject which had troubled me.
``Davy,'' said he, ``Clark has changed.He is not the same man he was when I saw him in Williamsburg demanding supplies for his campaign.''
``Virginia has used him shamefully, sir,'' I answered, and suddenly there came flooding to my mind things Ihad heard the Colonel say in the campaign.
``Commonwealths have short memories,'' said the Major, ``they will accept any sacrifice with a smile.Shakespeare, I believe, speaks of royal ingratitude--he knew not commonwealths.Clark was close-lipped once, not given to levity and--to toddy.There, there, he is my friend as well as yours, and I will prove it by pushing his cause in Virginia.Is yours Scotch anger? Then the devil fend me from it.A monarch would have given him fifty thousand acres on the Wabash, a palace, and a sufficient annuity.Virginia has given him a sword, eight thousand wild acres to be sure, repudiated the debts of his army, and left him to starve.Is there no room for a genius in our infant military establishment?''
At length, as Christmas drew near, we came to Major Colfax's seat, some forty miles out of the town of Richmond.It was called Neville's Grange, the Major's grandfather having so named it when he came out from England some sixty years before.It was a huge, rambling, draughty house of wood,--mortgaged, so the Major cheerfully informed me, thanks to the patriotism of the family.At Neville's Grange the Major kept a somewhat roisterous bachelor's hall.The place was overrun with negroes and dogs, and scarce a night went by that there was not merrymaking in the house with the neighbors.The time passed pleasantly enough until one frosty January morning Major Colfax had a twinge of remembrance, cried out for horses, took me into Richmond, and presented me to that very learned and decorous gentleman, Judge Wentworth.
My studies began within the hour of my arrival.