ther used to say that the Justice of God was sometimes swift and
terrible. He said we thought of it usually as remote and deliberate, a
sort of calm adjustment in some supernatural Court of Equity. But this
idea was far from the truth. He had seen the justice of God move on
the heels of a man with appalling swiftness; with a crushing force and
directness that simply staggered the human mind. I know the case he
thought about.

Two men sat over a table when my father entered. One of them got up. He
was a strange human creature, when you stood and looked calmly at him.
You thought the Artificer had designed him for a priest of the church.
He had the massive features and the fringe of hair around his bald
head like a tonsure. At first, to your eye, it was the vestments of the
church, he lacked; then you saw that the lack was something fundamental;
something organic in the nature of the man. And as he held and
stimulated your attention you got a fearful idea, that the purpose for
which this human creature was shaped had been somehow artfully reversed!

He was big boned and tall when he stood up.

"Pendleton," he said, "I would have come to you, but for my guest."

And he indicated the elegant young man at the table.

"But I did not send you word to ride a dozen miles through the hills on
any trivial business, or out of courtesy to me. It is a matter of some
import, so I will pay ten eagles."

My father looked steadily at the man.

"I am not for hire," he said.

My father was a justice of the peace in Virginia, under the English
system, by the theory of which the most substantial men in a county
undertook to keep the peace for the welfare of the State. Like
Washington in the service of the Colonial army, he took no pay.

The big man laughed.

"We are most of us for purchase, and all of us for hire," he said. "I
will make it twenty!"

The young man at the table now interrupted. He was elegant in the
costume of the time, in imported linen and cloth from an English loom.
His hair was thick and black; his eyebrows straight, his body and his
face rich in the blood and the vitalities of youth. But sensuality was
on him like a shadow. The man was given over to a life of pleasure.

"Mr. Pendleton," he said, with a patronizing pedantic air, "the
commonwealth is interested to see that litigation does not arise; and to
that end, I hope you will not refuse us the benefit of your experience.
We are about to draw up a deed of