THE ROWSEVILLERS.—No. II.

THE CAPTAIN’S COURTSHIP.

The cloth had just been removed, at my second dinner with the club, when the President called on a Mr. Rowley for a story. He tossed off a tumbler of Port—to clear the cobwebs, as he said, from his throat—and began.

“You all know I am a lawyer, and that men who would be witty have a way of quizzing our profession by saying that we cannot tell a story without dragging in our craft. I have no objection to the notion of these smart gentlemen, and shall not even trouble myself to refute them, but go on with my story.

“When I was a student, just after the close of the late war, I used to pay occasional visits to Mount Holly, which was even then a passable county town, and remarkable for its pretty girls, its gay winters, and the quantity of wine drunk by its bar. There wasn’t a lawyer in the place who couldn’t carry his two bottles, and as for wit, these barristers were famed for it from Cape May to Hackensack. But it is not so much with the Mount Holly bar as with Captain Slashbey, one of the clients of the wittiest member there, that my story has to do.

“I first met the gallant captain on a hunting excursion into the pines. He was a portly little gentleman, with a rubicund face, a constant flow of humor, and an opinion of his own good looks rather singular, I must say, at forty-five. He had very short legs and a very round person, and altogether reminded you of a fat pigeon walking upright. He had been in the service during the war, and at the reduction of the army, finding himself pretty well in debt, and without a sous in his pockets, had settled at Squankum, a place in the very heart of the cedar swamps. And very convenient it was for Slashbey, for, like Galway, in Ireland, a sheriff’s writ hadn’t been seen there in the memory of man. It was once attempted to execute a capias there, but the forgemen and squatters rose in a mass, and though the light horse were ordered out, the arrest had to be given up. Now the captain was a popular man in Squankum, and therefore was as safe as in a sanctuary. He thirsted now and then, it is true, for the good things of civilized life afar off, and would often make a dash into Mount Holly, like a guerilla, taking care, however, to retreat before his creditors had wind of his approach. But at length he grew tired of this life,—I’ll thank you for the bottle—and determined to extricate himself from it by marrying an heiress; for the captain was a gallant man, you must know, and, like Will Honeycombe, had a high notion of his own powers.