"Humph! it's well named! 'License,' indeed! Licensed to lie, cheat, steal,—or, at least, to help others to do so, which amounts to the same thing. No, no, Harry; it may be well to know law enough to keep from being imposed upon, but a Bergan can't stoop to practise it. Lawyers are, without exception, a set of miserable, lying, sneaking pettifoggers. You could drop the souls of a dozen into a child's thimble, and they'd rattle in the end of it after she had put it on her finger."
Bergan's cheek flushed a little, but he was more impressed by the comic than the provoking side of his uncle's dogged prejudice, and he only answered, good-humoredly;—
"I am sorry that you should have had occasion to think so badly of the profession. I shall feel that it is incumbent upon me to make you change your opinion."
"Never!" growled Major Bergan, with an oath. "You would find it easier to lift the Gibraltar rock on the point of a needle. Unless," he added, after a moment, "you can tell me how to make a suit lie against Godfrey Bergan. I've been trying it for ten years, and I've spent money enough to buy another plantation as large as this."
"My uncle Godfrey!" exclaimed Bergan, in much surprise. "Why, what has he done?"
"You had better not call him your 'uncle Godfrey' in my hearing," responded the Major, grimly. "In ceasing to be my half-brother, he ceased to be your uncle. Done! What hasn't he done? First, he got his head filled with cursed abolitionist notions, and freed all his slaves. Next, he offered the greater part of his land for sale at public auction;—just think of it! some of the old lands of Bergan Hall put up to be knocked down to the highest bidder! But I settled that business, by proclaiming far and wide that whoever bid for them might expect to reckon with me for his impertinence; and as I'm known to be a man of my word, no one dared to lift his voice at the sale, and I got them at my own price. Finally Godfrey capped the climax of his degeneracy by opening a hardware store in Berganton. Think of that, Hairy!—a Bergan of Bergan Hall, with a long pedigree of warriors and nobles at his back, standing behind a counter, selling hoes and tea-kettles to negroes and crackers!"
Bergan was silent. Though not without some touch of family pride, derived from his mother, he had nevertheless been taught to believe all upright labor honorable, to hold that life was ennobled from within, by its motive and aim, rather than from without, by its place and form. He could not help suspecting, therefore, that his host, deliberately leading the narrow life of an overseer of slaves, on his ancestral estate, was in reality a more degenerate son of his house than the relative whom he so bitterly contemned. Yet he foresaw that any attempt to defend Godfrey Bergan would but result in bringing down upon himself a torrent of fierce, half-drunken vituperation. Seasoned vessel though he were, the Major's repeated draughts of brandy, very little diluted, had not been without effect, in flushing his face, and inflaming his habitually irritable temper. His present mood would ill brook contradiction.
Fortunately, he neither expected nor waited for an answer. Hastily emptying his glass and filling it again, he went on.
"Now, Harry, if you can tell me any way by which I can ruin his business, turn him out of his house, and make him quit the country, I'll own that I've done the law an injustice, and give you a handsome fee besides. Can the thing be done?"
Bergan silently shook his head; he would not trust himself to speak.