for the Presidency nearly so deeply
and keenly as this; and then that was afterward retrieved by a most
brilliant victory. But, as a friend once said of him--although he went
on achieving great victories of many kinds, overcoming powerful enemies,
conquering the Indians, subduing the lawless, defying the Spanish and
the French, vanquishing the British and slaying single-handed the Dragon
of the Bank--he could never find a horse to beat Maria.

But he was still trying everywhere and under all circumstances however
unpromising. On that day he cast anxious glances through the open door
of the log court-house at the horses which Tommy Dye, in a forlorn hope,
was having paraded up and down the forest path. He turned away with a
sigh, and went on talking to the United States Attorney for Kentucky at
whose request he had come to the court-house that day. He had done for
his own territory in a lesser degree, the identical thing which Joseph
Hamilton Daviess was desperately striving to do for this country; and he
had consented to give him the benefit of his own experience, and to
advise him as to ways and means. These were always strenuous with Andrew
Jackson, and Joe Daviess himself was not a man of half measures. In mind
and body he was quite as powerful as the man to whom he now listened
with such profound deference. He was also a handsomer man and younger.
He was fully as tall, too, with as lordly a bearing; the most marked
contrast in their appearance being in their dress. General Jackson wore
broadcloth of the cut seen in all his older portraits; Joe Daviess wore
buckskin breeches and a hunting shirt belted at the waist, both richly
fringed on the leg and sleeve. The suit was the same that he had worn
when he rode over the Alleghanies to Washington, to plead the historic
case before the Supreme Court. But the rudest garb could never make him
seem other than the courtly gentleman that he was. He was a scholar
moreover, and a writer of books. A great mind, and ever eager to learn,
he now stood listening to General Jackson with the humility of true
greatness. He bowed to the judge, seeing him enter, but he did not move
or cease to listen. His grave, intent face brightened suddenly as if a
light had passed over it, when he saw Father Orin's merry, ruddy
countenance look in at the open door. He and the priest were close
friends, although they held widely different faiths, and argued fiercely
over their differences of opinion wh