University of Virginia Library

61. CHAPTER LXI.

Clay hawkins, years gone by, had yielded, after
many a struggle, to the migratory and speculative instinct
of our age and our people, and had wandered further
and further westward upon trading ventures. Settling finally
in Melbourne, Australia, he ceased to roam, became a
steady-going substantial merchant, and prospered greatly.
His life lay beyond the theatre of this tale.

His remittances had supported the Hawkins family, entirely,
from the time of his father's death until latterly when
Laura by her efforts in Washington had been able to assist in
this work. Clay was away on a long absence in some of the eastward
islands when Laura's troubles began, trying (and almost
in vain,) to arrange certain interests which had become disordered
through a dishonest agent, and consequently he knew
nothing of the murder till he returned and read his letters
and papers. His natural impulse was to hurry to the States
and save his sister if possible, for he loved her with a deep
and abiding affection.—His business was so crippled now, and
so deranged, that to leave it would be ruin; therefore he sold
out at a sacrifice that left him considerably reduced in worldly
possessions, and began his voyage to San Francisco. Arrived

there, he perceived by the newspapers that the trial was near
its close. At Salt Lake later telegrams told him of the acquittal,
and his gratitude was boundless—so boundless, indeed,
that sleep was driven from his eyes by the pleasurable
excitement almost as effectually as preceding weeks of anxiety
had done it. He shaped his course straight for Hawkeye,
now, and his meeting with his mother and the rest of the
household was joyful—albeit he had been away so long that
he seemed almost a stranger in his own home.

But the greetings and congratulations were hardly finished
when all the journals in the land clamored the news of Laura's
miserable death. Mrs. Hawkins was prostrated by this last
blow, and it was well that Clay was at her side to stay her
with comforting words and take upon himself the ordering of
the household with its burden of labors and cares.

Washington Hawkins had scarcely more than entered upon
that decade which carries one to the full blossom of manhood
which we term the beginning of middle age, and yet a brief
sojourn at the capital of the nation had made him old. His
hair was already turning gray when the late session of Congress
began its sittings; it grew grayer still, and rapidly, after
the memorable day that saw Laura proclaimed a murderess;
it waxed grayer and still grayer during the lagging suspense
that succeeded it and after the crash which ruined his last
hope—the failure of his bill in the Senate and the destruction
of its champion, Dilworthy. A few days later, when he stood
uncovered while the last prayer was pronounced over Laura's
grave, his hair was whiter and his face hardly less old than
the venerable minister's whose words were sounding in his
ears.

A week after this, he was sitting in a double-bedded room
in a cheap boarding house in Washington, with Col. Sellers.
The two had been living together lately, and this mutual
cavern of theirs the Colonel sometimes referred to as their
“premises” and sometimes as their “apartments”—more
particularly when conversing with persons outside. A canvas-covered

modern trunk, marked “G. W. H.” stood on end
by the door, strapped and ready for a journey; on it lay a
small morocco satchel, also marked “G. W. H.” There was
another trunk close by—a worn, and scarred, and ancient hair
relic, with “E. S.” wrought in brass nails on its top; on it
lay a pair of saddle-bags that probably knew more about the
last century than they could tell. Washington got up and
walked the floor a while in a restless sort of way, and finally
was about to sit down on the hair trunk.

“Stop, don't sit down on that!” exclaimed the Colonel.
“There, now—that's all right—the chair's better. I couldn't
get another trunk like that—not another like it in America, I
reckon.”

“I am afraid not,” said Washington, with a faint attempt
at a smile.

“No indeed; the man is dead that made that trunk and
that saddle-bags.”

“Are his great-grand-children still living?” said Washington,
with levity only in the words, not in the tone.

“Well, I don't know—I hadn't thought of that—but anyway
they can't make trunks and saddle-bags like that, if they
are—no man can,” said the Colonel with honest simplicity.
“Wife didn't like to see me going off with that trunk—she
said it was nearly certain to be stolen.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why, aren't trunks always being stolen?”

“Well, yes—some kinds of trunks are.”

“Very well, then; this is some kind of a trunk—and an
almighty rare kind, too.”

“Yes, I believe it is.”

“Well, then, why shouldn't a man want to steal it if he got
a chance?”

“Indeed I don't know.—Why should he?”

“Washington, I never heard anybody talk like you. Suppose
you were a thief, and that trunk was lying around and
nobody watching—wouldn't you steal it? Come, now,
answer fair—wouldn't you steal it?”

“Well, now, since you corner me, I don't know but I
would take it,—but I wouldn't consider it stealing.”

“You wouldn't! Well, that beats me. Now what would
you call stealing?”

“Why, taking property is stealing.”

“Property! Now what a way to talk that is. What do
you suppose that trunk is worth?”

“Is it in good repair?”

“Perfect. Hair rubbed off a little, but the main structure
is perfectly sound.”

“Does it leak anywhere?”

“Leak? Do you want to carry water in it? What do
you mean by does it leak?”

“Why—a—do the clothes fall out of it when it is—when
it is stationary?”

“Confound it, Washington, you are trying to make fun of

me. I don't know what has got into you to-day; you act
mighty curious. What is the matter with you?”

“Well, I'll tell you, old friend. I am almost happy. I
am, indeed. It wasn't Clay's telegram that hurried me up so
and got me ready to start with you. It was a letter from
Louise.”

“Good! What is it? What does she say?”

“She says come home—her father has consented, at last.”

“My boy, I want to congratulate you; I want to shake
you by the hand! It's a long turn that has no lane at the end
of it, as the proverb says, or somehow that way. You'll be
happy yet, and Eschol Sellers will be there to see, thank
God!”

“I believe it. General Boswell is pretty nearly a poor
man, now. The railroad that was going to build up Hawkeye
made short work of him, along with the rest. He is'nt
so opposed to a son-in-law without a fortune, now.”

“Without a fortune, indeed! Why that Tennessee
Land—”

“Never mind the Tennessee Land, Colonel. I am done
with that, forever and forever—”

“Why no! You can't mean to say—”

“My father, away back yonder, years ago, bought it for a
blessing for his children, and—”

“Indeed he did! Si Hawkins said to me—”

“It proved a curse to him as long as he lived, and never a
curse like it was inflicted upon any man's heirs—”

“I'm bound to say there's more or less truth—”

“It began to curse me when I was a baby, and it has cursed
every hour of my life to this day—”

“Lord, lord, but it's so! Time and again my wife—”

“I depended on it all through my boyhood and never tried
to do an honest stroke of work for my living—”

“Right again—but then you—”

“I have chased it years and years as children chase butterflies.
We might all have been prosperous, now; we might

all have been happy, all these heart-breaking years, if we had
accepted our poverty at first and gone contentedly to work
and built up our own weal by our own toil and sweat—”

“It's so, it's so; bless my soul, how often I've told Si
Hawkins—”

“Instead of that, we have suffered more than the damned
themselves suffer! I loved my father, and I honor his
memory and recognize his good intentions; but I grieve for
his mistaken ideas of conferring happiness upon his children.
I am going to begin my life over again, and begin it and end
it with good solid work! I'll leave my children no Tennessee
Land!”

“Spoken like a man, sir, spoken like a man! Your hand,
again my boy! And always remember that when a word of
advice from Eschol Sellers can help, it is at your service. I'm
going to begin again, too!”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sir. I've seen enough to show me where my mistake
was. The law is what I was born for. I shall begin
the study of the law. Heavens and earth, but that Braham's
a wonderful man—a wonderful man sir! Such a head! And
such a way with him! But I could see that he was jealous
of me. The little licks I got in in the course of my argument
before the jury—”

“Your argument! Why, you were a witness.”

“Oh, yes, to the popular eye, to the popular eye—but I
knew when I was dropping information and when I was letting
drive at the court with an insidious argument. But the
court knew it, bless you, and weakened every time! And
Braham knew it. I just reminded him of it in a quiet way,
and its final result, and he said in a whisper, `You did it,
Colonel, you did it, sir—but keep it mum for my sake; and I'll
tell you what you do,' says he, `you go into the law, Col.
Sellers—go into the law, sir; that's your native element!' And
into the law the subscriber is going. There's worlds of money
in it!—whole worlds of money! Practice first in Hawkeye, then

in Jefferson, then in St. Louis, then in New York! In the
metropolis of the western world! Climb, and climb, and
climb—and wind up on the Supreme bench. Eschol Sellers,
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,
sir! A made man for all time and eternity! That's the way
I block it out, sir—and it's as clear as day—clear as the rosy
morn!”

Washington had heard little of this. The first reference to
Laura's trial had brought the old dejection to his face again,
and he stood gazing out of the window at nothing, lost in
reverie.

There was a knock—the postman handed in a letter. It
was from Obedstown, East Tennessee, and was for Washington.
He opened it. There was a note saying that enclosed
he would please find a bill for the current year's taxes on the
75,000 acres of Tennessee Land belonging to the estate of
Silas Hawkins, deceased, and added that the money must be
paid within sixty days or the land would be sold at public
auction for the taxes, as provided by law. The bill was for
$180—something more than twice the market value of the
land, perhaps.

Washington hesitated. Doubts flitted through his mind.
The old instinct came upon him to cling to the land just a
little longer and give it one more chance. He walked the
floor feverishly, his mind tortured by indecision. Presently
he stopped, took out his pocket book and counted his money.
Two hundred and thirty dollars—it was all he had in the
world.

“One hundred and eighty.......from two hundred and
thirty,” he said to himself. “Fifty left......It is enough
to get me home.......Shall I do it, or shall I not?.......I
wish I had somebody to decide for me.”

The pocket book lay open in his hand, with Louise's small
letter in view. His eye fell upon that, and it decided him.

“It shall go for taxes,” he said, “and never tempt me or
mine any more!”

He opened the window and stood there tearing the tax
bill to bits and watching the breeze waft them away, till all
were gone.

“The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!” he said.
“Let us go.”

The baggage wagon had arrived; five minutes later the
two friends were mounted upon their luggage in it, and
rattling off toward the station, the Colonel endeavoring to
sing “Homeward Bound,” a song whose words he knew,
but whose tune, as he rendered it, was a trial to auditors.