Judge Custis looked at the meek old gentleman closely, sitting at his plate like a lay brother in some monastery or infirmary, indifferent to talk or news or affairs; and the remembrance of what he had been—keen, accumulative, with youthful passions long retained, and the man buoyant under the judge's guard—impressed the Virginian to say to himself:
"What, then, is man! At last old age asserts itself, and bends the brazen temple of his countenance, like Samson, in almost pious remorse. There sits twenty-five years of equity administration; behind it, thirty years of jocund and various life. No newspaper shall ever record it, because none are printed here; he is indifferent to that forgetfulness and to all others, because the springs of life are dry in his body, and he no more enjoys."
"Are you travelling north, Judge Custis?" the old man asked, for politeness' sake.
"Yes, to Dover."
"There is a seat in my carriage; you are welcome to it."
"I will take it a part of the way, at least, to feel the privilege of your society, Chancellor."
The old man gave a slow, sidewise shake of his head.
"Too late, too late," he said, "to flatter me. I was fond of it once. I have been a flatterer, too."
The Chancellor's black boy was put on the Judge's horse, and the two men, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned the court-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard the sheriff knock off two slaves to a purchaser, crying:
"Your property, sir, till they are twenty-five years of age."