The Major was a short, slight old gentleman, quite a contrast to the John Bull type of his lusty, side-whiskered neighbor. He wore a dingy brown wig, and as he pottered about, raising a rose from the earth with his gold-headed ebony stick, or stooped to uproot an encroaching weed, his furtive glance was often levelled on old Dwight.
“I declare I really might as well,” he muttered, undecidedly. “What's the use making up your mind to a thing and letting it go for no sensible reason. He's taking a wrong view of it. I can tell that by the way he puffs at his cigar. Yes, I'll do it.”
The Major passed through the gateway and slowly drew near his preoccupied neighbor.
“Good-morning, Henry,” he said, as Dwight looked up. “If I'm any judge of your twists and turns, you are not yet in a thoroughly good-humor.”
“Good-humor? No, sir, I'm not in a good-humor. How could I be when that young scamp, the only heir to my name and effects—”
Dwight's spleen rose and choked out his words, and, red in the face, he stood panting, unable to go further.
“Well, it seems to me, while he's not my son,” the Major began, “that you are—are—well, rather overbearing—I might say unforgiving. He's been sowing wild oats, but, really, if I am any judge of young men, he is on a fair road to—to genuine manhood.”
“Road to nothing,” spluttered Dwight. “I gave him that big farm to see what he could do in its management. Never expected him to work a lick—just wanted to see if he could keep it on a paying basis, but it was an investment of dead capital. Then he took up the law. He did a little better at that along with Bill Garner to lean on, but that never amounted to anything worth mentioning. Then he went into politics.”
“And I heard you say yourself, Henry,” the Major ventured, gently, “that you believed he was actually cut out for a future statesman.”
“Yes, and like the fool that I was I hoped for it. I was so glad to see him really interested in politics that I laid awake at night thinking of his success. I heard of his popularity on every hand. Men came to me, and women, too, telling me they loved him and were going to work for him against that jack-leg lawyer Wiggin, and put him into office with a majority that would ring all over the State; and they meant it, I reckon. But what did he do? In his stubborn, bull-headed way he abused those mountain men who took the law into their hands for the public good, and turned hundreds of them against him; and all for a nigger—a lazy, trifling nigger boy!”