“You think it will come to war?”

“I fear,—­yes, I fear,” said the German, shaking his head.  “We fear.  We are already preparing.”

“Preparing?  You would fight, Richter?  You, a foreigner?”

“A foreigner!” cried Richter, with a flash of anger in his blue eyes that died as suddenly as it came,—­died into reproach.  “Call me not a foreigner—­we Germans will show whether or not we are foreigners when the time is ripe.  This great country belongs to all the oppressed.  Your ancestors founded it, and fought for it, that the descendants of mine might find a haven from tyranny.  My friend, one-half of this city is German, and it is they who will save it if danger arises.  You must come with me one night to South St. Louis, that you may know us.  Then you will perhaps understand, Stephen.  You will not think of us as foreign swill, but as patriots who love our new Vaterland even as you love it.  You must come to our Turner Halls, where we are drilling against the time when the Union shall have need of us.”

“You are drilling now?” exclaimed Stephen, in still greater astonishment.  The German’s eloquence had made him tingle, even as had the songs.

“Prosit deine Blume!” answered Richter, smiling and holding up his glass of beer.  “You will come to a ‘commerce’, and see.

“This is not our blessed Lichtenhainer, that we drink at Jena.  One may have a pint of Lichtenhainer for less than a groschen at Jena.  Aber,” he added as he rose, with a laugh that showed his strong teeth, “we Americans are rich.”

As Stephen’s admiration for his employer grew, his fear of him waxed greater likewise.  The Judge’s methods of teaching law were certainly not Harvard’s methods.  For a fortnight he paid as little attention to the young man as he did to the messengers who came with notes and cooled their heels in the outer office until it became the Judge’s pleasure to answer them.  This was a trifle discouraging to Stephen.  But he stuck to his Chitty and his Greenleaf and his Kent.  It was Richter who advised him to buy Whittlesey’s “Missouri Form Book,” and warned him of Mr. Whipple’s hatred for the new code.  Well that he did!  There came a fearful hour of judgment.  With the swiftness of a hawk Mr. Whipple descended out of a clear sky, and instantly the law terms began to rattle in Stephen’s head like dried peas in a can.  It was the Old Style of Pleading this time, without a knowledge of which the Judge declared with vehemence that a lawyer was not fit to put pen to legal cap.

“Now, sir, the pleadings?” he cried.

“First,” said Stephen, “was the Declaration.  The answer to that was the Plea.  The answer to that was the Replication.  Then came the Rejoinder, then the Surrejoinder, then the Rebutter, then the Surrebutter.  But they rarely got that far,” he added unwisely.

“A good principle in Law, sir,” said the Judge, “is not to volunteer information.”