d the Colonel added to the debt I owed him by
suggesting that Major Colfax take me to Virginia and recommend me to a
lawyer there.

"Nay," cried the Major, "I will do more. I like the lad, for he is
modest despite the way you have paraded him. I have an uncle in
Richmond, Judge Wentworth, to whom I will take him in person. And when
the Judge has done with him, if he is not flayed and tattooed with
Blackstone, you may flay and tattoo me."

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 Wentwor