"Are you going to give me back that ten dollars, you old scoundrel?" shouted O'Day.
"Stand back! stand back!" answered long Jacob; "the quotient was correct; the lex loci and the lex terræ were argued. The lex talionis—"
"Take it!" cried the villain, adroitly firing his shot-gun into the merchant's breast, so as not to injure his humaner beast.
Jacob Cannon staggered to the fence at the head of the wharf, and caught there a moment, and fell dead.
"You scoundrel," screamed Isaac Cannon from the window, "to kill my brother, my executive comfort."
"Yes," answered O'Day, "and I'll give the other barrel to you!"
As Isaac Cannon barricaded himself in, Owen O'Day collected his effects without hurry, and betook himself to the wilds of Missouri.
Cannon's Ferry fell into decay when the railroad at Seaford carried off its trading importance, but there are yet to be seen the never tenanted mansion of the disappointed bridegroom, and the gravestones which show how Jacob's fate frightened Isaac Cannon to a speedy tomb.
In the meantime, John M. Clayton had made use of the fears of Calhoun and his nullifiers, who were menaced with the penalties of treason by the president, to pass a great protective tariff bill by their aid, thus establishing the manufactures in the same period with the railways.
This triumph in the senate left him free to conduct the suit of Randel against the Canal Company, which occupied as many years as the railroad enterprise of Meshach Milburn.