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 I had 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.

CHAPTER V

I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW

I shall burden no one with the dry chronicles of a law office.  The acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a slower one in the telling.  I lacked not application during the three years of my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd tasks as came my way.

The Judge resembled Major Colfax in but one trait:  he was choleric.  But he was painstaking and cautious, and I soon found out that he looked askance upon any one whom his nephew might recommend.  He liked the Major, but he vowed him to be a roisterer and spendthrift, and one day, some months after my advent, the Judge asked me flatly how I came to fall in with Major Colfax.  I told him.  At the end of this conversation he took my breath away by bidding me