The Ancient Law

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, that's all."

"Well, if they were few, they seem to have been pretty pointed. I hear Kelly closed his place two hours before midnight. Even William Cotton went home without falling once, he said."

"There was a good reason for that. I happened to have some information Cotton wanted."

"I know," said Baxter, drawing out the words with a lingering emphasis while his eyes searched Ordway's face with a curiosity before which the younger man felt himself redden painfully. "Cotton told me you got him out of a scrape as well as a lawyer could have done."

"I remembered the law and wrote it down for him, that's all."

"Have you ever practised law in Virginia?"

"I've never practised anywhere, but I intended to when—" he was going to add "when I finished college," but with a sudden caution, he stopped short and then selected his words more carefully, "when I was a boy. I read a good deal then and some of it still sticks in my memory."

"I see," commented Baxter. His heart swelled until he became positively uncomfortable, and he coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly indifferent. What was it about the chap, he questioned, that had pulled at him from the start? Was it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and gaiety in his look?

"Well, I wouldn't set about reforming things too much if I were you," he said at last, "it ain't worth it, for even when people accept the reforms they are pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man's got to have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good immoderately. But all the same," he concluded heartily, "you're the right stuff and I like you. I respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in preaching or in blows. I reckon, by the way, if you'd care to turn bookkeeper, you'd be worth as good as a hundred a month to me."

There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at breakfast, on his cravat, and Ordway's eyes were fixed upon it with a kind of fascination during the whole of his speech. The very slovenliness of the man—the unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the spotted necktie, the loosely fitting alpaca coat he wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to emphasise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely enough his failures as a gentleman appeared to add to his impressiveness as a man. One felt that his faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal proportions—as the carelessness in his dress was but a degraded form of the lavish generosity of his heart.