“What did he do?” Virginia demanded.

“He came to my office yesterday morning.  ‘Colonel Carvel,’ said he, ’I hear you wish to rent your house.’  I said yes.  ’You rented it once before, sir,’ said he.  ‘Yes,’ said I.  ’May I ask you what price you got for it?’ said he.”

“And what did you say?” she asked, leaning forward.

“I told him,” said the Colonel, smiling.  “But I explained that I could not expect to command that price now on short notice.  He replied that they would pay it, or not consider the place.”

Virginia turned her head away and stared out over the fields.

“How could they afford it!” she murmured.

“Mr. Brinsmade tells me that young Brice won rather a remarkable case last winter, and since then has had some practice.  And that he writes for the newspapers.  I believe he declined some sort of an editorial position, preferring to remain at the law.”

“And so they are going into the house?” she asked presently.

“No,” said the Colonel.  “Whipple refused point-blank to go to the country.  He said that he would be shirking the only work of his life likely to be worth anything.  So the Brices remain in town.”

Colonel Carvel sighed.  But Virginia said nothing.

CHAPTER X.

RICHTER’S SCAR

This was the summer when Mr. Stephen Brice began to make his appearance in public.  The very first was rather encouraging than otherwise, although they were not all so.  It was at a little town on the outskirts of the city where those who had come to scoff and jeer remained to listen.

In writing that speech Stephen had striven to bear in mind a piece of advice which Mr. Lincoln had given him.  “Speak so that the lowest may understand, and the rest will have no trouble.”  And it had worked.  At the halting lameness of the beginning an egg was thrown,—­fortunately wide of the mark.  After this incident Stephen fairly astonished his audience, —­especially an elderly gentleman who sat on a cracker-box in the rear, out of sight of the stand.  This may have been Judge Whipple, although we have no proof of the fact.

Stephen himself would not have claimed originality for that speech.  He laughs now when it is spoken of, and calls it a boyish effort, which it was.  I have no doubt that many of the master’s phrases slipped in, as young Mr. Brice could repeat most of the Debates, and the Cooper Union speech by heart.  He had caught more than the phrasing, however.  So imbued was he with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln that his hearers caught it; and that was the end of the rotten eggs and the cabbages.  The event is to be especially noted because they crowded around him afterward to ask questions.  For one thing, he had not mentioned abolition.  Wasn’t it true, then, that this Lincoln wished to tear the negro from his master, give him a vote and a subsidy, and set him up as the equal of the man that owned him?  “Slavery may stay where it is,” cried the young orator.  “If it is content there, so are we content.  What we say is that it shall not go one step farther.  No, not one inch into a northern territory.”