“Why,” says he, “thar’s no devil if it ain’t the Colonel.  Polly Ann told me not to let ’em scar’ me, Colonel.”

“And quite right, Tom,” Colonel Clark answered, smiling.  He turned to the judges.  “If your Honors please,” said he, “this gentleman is an old soldier of mine, and unused to the ways of court.  I beg your Honors to excuse him.”

The judges smiled back, and the Colonel led us out of the building.

“Now, Tom,” said he, after he had given me a nod and a kind word, “I know this Mr. Colfax, and if you will come into the tavern this evening after court, we’ll see what can be done.  I have a case of my own at present.”

Tom was very grateful.  He spent the remainder of the daylight hours with other friends of his, shooting at a mark near by, serenely confident of the result of his case now that Colonel Clark had a hand in it.  Tom being one of the best shots in Kentucky, he had won two beaver skins before the early autumn twilight fell.  As for me, I had an afternoon of excitement in the court, fascinated by the marvels of its procedures, by the impassioned speeches of its advocates, by the gravity of its judges.  Ambition stirred within me.

The big room of the tavern was filled with men in heated talk over the day’s doings, some calling out for black betty, some for rum, and some demanding apple toddies.  The landlord’s slovenly negro came in with candles, their feeble rays reenforcing the firelight and revealing the mud-chinked walls.  Tom and I had barely sat ourselves down at a table in a corner, when in came Colonel Clark.  Beside him was a certain swarthy gentleman whom I had noticed in the court, a man of some thirty-five years, with a fine, fleshy face and coal-black hair.  His expression was not one to give us the hope of an amicable settlement,—­in fact, he had the scowl of a thundercloud.  He was talking quite angrily, and seemed not to heed those around him.

“Why the devil should I see the man, Clark?” he was saying.

The Colonel did not answer until they had stopped in front of us.

“Major Colfax,” said he, “this is Sergeant Tom McChesney, one of the best friends I have in Kentucky.  I think a vast deal of Tom, Major.  He was one of the few that never failed me in the Illinois campaign.  He is as honest as the day; you will find him plain-spoken if he speaks at all, and I have great hopes that you will agree.  Tom, the Major and I are boyhood friends, and for the sake of that friendship he has consented to this meeting.”

“I fear that your kind efforts will be useless, Colonel,” Major Colfax put in, rather tartly.  “Mr. McChesney not only ignores my rights, but was near to hanging my agent.”

“What?” says Colonel Clark.

I glanced at Tom.  However helpless he might be in a court, he could be counted on to stand up stanchly in a personal argument.  His retorts would certainly not be brilliant, but they surely would be dogged.  Major Colfax had begun wrong.