“There’s only two in the outfit,” I went on, “that have got any sprawl to them; and they are old Tom their bunged-up horse, and Rowena Fewkes.”

“Who is she?” inquired Virginia Royall.

“A girl about your age,” said I.  “She’s ragged and dirty, but she has a little gumption.”

And then she had skipped away, as I finally concluded, to keep Gowdy from seeing her in conversation with me.

3

I pulled out for Manchester with Nathaniel Vincent Creede, whom everybody calls just “N.V.,” riding in the spring seat with me, and his carpet-bag and his law library in the back of the wagon.

His library consisted of Blackstone’s Commentaries—­I saw them in his present library in Monterey Centre only yesterday—­Chitty on Pleading, the Code of Iowa of 1851, the Session Laws of the state so far as it had any session laws—­a few thin books bound in yellow and pink boards.  Even these few books made a pretty heavy bundle for a man to carry in one hand while he lugged all his other worldly goods in the other.

“Books are damned heavy, Mr. Vandemark,” said he; “law books are particularly heavy.  My library is small; but there is an adage in our profession which warns us to beware of the man of one book.  He’s always likely to know what’s in the damned thing, you know, Mr. Vandemark; and the truth being a seamless web, if a lawyer knows all about the law in one book, he’s prone to make a hell of a straight guess at what’s in the rest of ’em.  Hence beware of the man of one book.  I may safely lay claim to being that man—­in a figurative way; though there are half a dozen volumes or so back there—­the small pedestal on which I stand reaching up toward a place on the Supreme Bench of the United States.”

He had had a drink or two with Buckner Gowdy back there in the saloon, and this had taken the brakes off his tongue—­if there were any provided in his temperament.  So, aside from Buck Gowdy, I was the first of his fellow-citizens of Monterey County to become acquainted with N.V.  Creede.  He reminded me at first of Lawyer Jackway of Madison, the guardian ad litem who had sung the song that still recurred to me occasionally—­

“Sold again,
And got the tin,
And sucked another Dutchman in!”

But N.V. looked a little like Jackway from the fact only that he wore a long frock coat, originally black, a white shirt, and a black cravat.  He was very tall, and very erect, even while carrying those books and that bag.  He was smooth-shaven, and was the first man I ever saw who shaved every day, and could do the trick without a looking-glass.  His eyes were black and very piercing; and his voice rolled like thunder when he grew earnest—­which he was likely to do whenever he spoke.  He would begin to discuss my cows, the principles of farming, the sky, the birds of passage, the flowers, the sucking in of the Dutchman—­which I told him all about before we had gone five miles—­the mire-holes in the slews, anything at all—­and rising from a joke or a flighty notion which he earnestly advocated, he would lower his voice and elevate his language and utter a little gem of an oration.  After which he would be still and solemn for a while—­to let it sink in I thought.