He and Mahaffy had met exactly one month before, on the deck of the steamer from which they had been put ashore at the river landing two miles from Pleasantville. Mahaffy's historic era had begun just there. Apparently he had no past of which he could be brought to speak. He admitted having been born in Boston some sixty years before, and was a printer by trade; further than this, he had not revealed himself, drunk or sober.
At the judge's elbow Mr. Mahaffy changed his position with nervous suddenness. Then he folded his long arms.
“You asked if there was any news, Price; while we were waiting for the boat a raft tied up to the bank; the fellow aboard of it had a man he'd fished up out of the river, a man who'd been pretty well cut to pieces.”
“Who was he?” asked the judge.
“Nobody knew, and he wasn't conscious. I shouldn't be surprised if he never opens his lips again. When the doctor had looked to his cuts, the fellow on the raft cast off and went on down the Elk.”
It occurred to the judge that he himself had news to impart. He must account for the boy's presence.
“While you've been taking your whiff of life down at the steamboat landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary coincidence.” The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. “Back east—” the judge jerked his thumb with an indefinite gesture “back east at my ancestral home—” Mahaffy snorted harshly. “You don't believe I had an ancestral home?—well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns across the front, having a spacious paneled hall sixty feet long. I had the distinguished honor to entertain General Andrew Jackson there.”
“Did you get those dimensions out of the jug?” inquiry Mahaffy, with a frightful bark that was intended for a sarcastic laugh.
“Sir, it is not in your province to judge me by my present degraded associates. Near the house I have described—my father's and his father's before him, and mine now—but for the unparalleled misfortunes which have pursued me—lived a family by the name of Hazard. And when I went to the war of '12—”
“What were you in that bloody time, a sutler?” inquired Mahaffy insultingly.