I shook my head. Not one of these was a real man in the Kentucky, or other proper sense: and Ma Fewkes with her boneless shoulders was not one of those women of whom I had seen many in my life, who could be more terrible to a wrong-doer than an army with bowie-knives.
"There's only two in the outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl to them; and they are old Tom their bunged-up horse, and Rowena Fewkes."
"Who is she?" inquired Virginia Royall.
"A girl about your age," said I. "She's ragged and dirty, but she has a little gumption."
And then she had skipped away, as I finally concluded, to keep Gowdy from seeing her in conversation with me.
3
I pulled out for Manchester with Nathaniel Vincent Creede, whom everybody calls just "N.V.," riding in the spring seat with me, and his carpetbag and his law library in the back of the wagon.
His library consisted of Blackstone's Commentaries--I saw them in his present library in Monterey Centre only yesterday--Chitty on Pleading, the Code of Iowa of 1850, the Session Laws of the state so far as it had any session laws--a few thin books bound in yellow and pink boards. Even these few books made a pretty heavy bundle for a man to carry in one hand while he lugged all his other worldly goods in the other.
"Books are damned heavy, Mr. Vandemark," said he; "law books are particularly heavy. My library is small; but there is an adage in our profession which warns us to beware of the man of one book. He's always likely to know what's in the damned thing, you know, Mr. Vandemark; and the truth being a seamless web, if a lawyer knows all about the law in one book, he's prone to make a hell of a straight guess at what's in the rest of 'em. Hence beware of the man of one book. I may safely lay claim to being that man--in a figurative way; though there are half a dozen volumes or so back there--the small pedestal on which I stand reaching up toward a place on the Supreme Bench of the United States."