“I specks he wus up dar, suh,� said Juniper cheerfully. “He ain’t let on ter me dat he wuz anywhere else.�
Caleb got up abruptly and threw open the door into the shop; he had seen Colonel Royall coming. Then he dashed off a note to Aaron Todd, enclosing a cheque for the two pullets and the cockerel, and gave it to Juniper.
“Take that up to the Corners,� he said briefly, “and I think Lysander will get off without arrest, but tell him if he steals any more I’ll thrash him.�
“Yes, suh,� said Juniper, expectant but unbelieving.
Later, however, when Todd took the money and let Lysander off, he was convinced, and, like all new converts, he became a zealot, and went about telling of the miracles wrought by the new lawyer. Thus did Caleb’s fame go abroad in the byways and alleys, which is, after all, the road to celebrity.
Meanwhile, Colonel Royall, very inconsiderately, sat in Diana’s chair. He had heard of the speech at Cresset’s Corners, and knew that Trench was supporting Yarnall for the Democratic nomination. Yet the colonel admired Trench, the force of whose convictions was already bearing fruit.
Eight weeks before, Colonel Royall had made a formal call on Caleb to thank him for his courtesy and service to Diana. He was a Southern gentleman of the old school, and he had done it without allowing even a drop of condescension in his manner. Moreover, he liked Trench and was trying to put together the modesty of the man, who had colored at his acknowledgments, with the incendiary ability that could rouse and hold a meeting of backwoodsmen on a subject that was as foreign to their understanding as it was alarming. Admitted, for the first time, into the inner office, the colonel gazed about with almost as much curiosity as Diana, and he drew conclusions not unlike hers, but more pregnant with the truth.
The colonel’s own face in repose was infinitely sad, yet when he spoke and laughed his expression was almost happy. But he had been twenty years turning the key on his inner self, and the result was an exterior that reminded an observer of an alabaster chalice in which the throbbing pulse of life lay clasped and all but crystallized. His face in repose had almost the sweetness of a woman’s, and only when the blue eyes blazed with sudden wrath was there ever cause to fear him. That he was a dreamer of dreams was apparent at a glance; that he could keep an unhappy secret twenty years seemed more improbable. He leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands on top of the stout hickory stick he carried.
“Mr. Trench,� he said slowly, with his Southern drawl, “I congratulate you on your success in politics.�
Caleb turned red. He was aware of the universal prejudice against his politics in Colonel Royall’s class. “Thank you, Colonel,� he said formally, rising to look for glasses in his cupboard. “I can’t offer you fine old wine, sir, but I have some Kentucky whiskey that Judge Hollis sent me.�