CHAPTER IX.
The Saylor Family.
While Cornwall prospered financially and established an enviable reputation as a lawyer, fortune did not overlook the Saylor family.
Old man Saylor and his wife were thrifty souls. Though their farm, with its fine colonial dwelling, was one of the best in their end of the county, they had never been given the opportunity to entertain extensively or had occasion to maintain a stylish and expensive establishment.
Mary's four years at Wellesley had cost about four thousand five hundred dollars. This outlay old man Saylor would never have consented to, looking upon it as an absolute waste of good money, except that he gave Mary as much credit for his acquittal of the Spencer killing as he did John. He had the money to spare, having each year cleared more than that sum on his tobacco and speculations in the mule market.
He was a great judge of mules. Bradley Clay said when a mule colt was foaled Saylor could look at it and tell within five pounds of its weight as a four-year-old.
Caleb had been sent to Lexington to school. He remained during the fall term and until after the spring races. Then he returned home, having been expelled because every day he had attended the races and bet on the horses. It was even said that he had procured a jockey to throw a stake race. He announced that he had finally quit school, which he argued was a waste of time, as he intended to practice law and enter politics.
He was the owner of a fine saddle mare and a gelding that could trot a mile on the smooth turnpike to a light side-bar buggy in 2:45. Either riding the one or driving the other he attended all the farm auctions; nor did he ever miss a county court day or jury trial at either Richmond or Lancaster. At these trials he first sat back of the railing; then, making friends with the sheriff, the clerk and the younger lawyers, he sat within the reservation for members of the bar. The sheriff and clerk had each offered to appoint him a deputy, but these honors he declined with thanks. When he was twenty-one he was more than six feet tall, weighed a hundred and seventy and, as the sheriff said, was the hustlingest politician in the county. He had been voting for several years.
Though his folks were Republicans, and had been since the Civil War, he deemed it a political mistake to vote that ticket in a Democratic county. At an early age he began voting and working in the Democratic primaries and soon acquired considerable influence with farm laborers and tenant-farmers, the men who usually do the voting in country primaries.
One summer morning (he was not yet twenty-four) he told his father he was going to put one over on old man Chenault and beat him for the Legislature. Colonel Chenault was a native of the county; he had been a lieutenant in the Confederate army, was a rich farmer and, it was generally supposed, would have no opposition for re-election.