Mint grew under the peach-trees in Colonel Henry Price’s garden, purple-stemmed mint, with dark-green, tender leaves. It was not the equal of the mint, so the colonel contended with provincial loyalty, which grew back in Kentucky along the clear, cool mountain streams. But, picked early in the morning with the dew on it, and then placed bouquet-wise in a bowl of fresh well-water, to stand thus until needed, it made a very competent substitute for the Kentucky herb.
In that cool autumn weather mint was at its best, and Colonel Price lamented, as he gathered it that morning, elbow-deep in its dewy fragrance, that the need of it was passing with the last blaze of October days.
Yet it was comforting to consider how well-balanced the seasons and men’s appetites were. With the passing of the season for mint, the desire for it left the palate. Frosty mornings called for the comfort of hot toddy, wintry blasts for frothing egg-nog in the cup. Man thirsted and nature satisfied; the economy of the world was thus balanced and all was well. So reasoned Colonel Price comfortably, after his way.
Colonel Price straightened up from his mint-picking with dew on his arm and a flush of gathered blood in his cheeks above his beard. He looked the philosopher and humanitarian that he was that morning, his breast-length white beard blowing, his long and thick white hair brushed back in a rising wave from his broad forehead. He was a tall and spare man, slender of hand, small of foot, with the crinkles of past
But Colonel Price was not a poet, except at heart, any more than he was a soldier, save in name. He never had trod the bloody fields of war, but had won his dignified and honorable title in the quiet ways of peace. Colonel Price was nothing less than an artist, who painted many things because they brought him money, and one thing because he loved it and could do it well.
He painted prize-winning heifers and horses; portraits from the faces of men as nature had made them, with more or less fidelity, and from faded photographs and treasured daguerreotypes of days before and during the war, with whatever embellishments their owners required. He painted plates of apples which had taken prizes at the county fair, and royal pumpkins and kingly swine which had won like high distinctions. But the one thing he painted because he loved it, and could do it better than anybody else, was corn.
At corn Colonel Price stood alone. He painted it in bunches hanging on barn doors, and in disordered heaps in the husk, a gleam of the grain showing here and there; and he painted it shelled from the cob. No matter where or how he painted it, his corn always was ripe and seasoned, like himself, and always so true to nature, color, form, crinkle, wrinkle, and guttered heart, that farmers stood before it marveling.
Colonel Price’s heifers might be–very frequently they were–hulky and bumpy and out of proportion, his horses strangely foreshortened and hindlengthened; but there never was any fault to be found with his corn. Corn absolved him of all his sins against animate and inanimate things which had stood before his brush in his long life; corn
The colonel had lived in Shelbyville for more than thirty years, in the same stately house with its three Ionic pillars reaching from ground to gable, supporting the two balconies facing toward the east. A square away on one hand was the court-house, a square away on the other the Presbyterian church; and around him were the homes of men whom he had seen come there young, and ripen with him in that quiet place. Above him on the hill stood the famous old college, its maples and elms around it, and coming down from it on each side of the broad street which led to its classic door.
Colonel Price turned his thoughts from mint to men as he came across the dewy lawn, his gleanings in his hand, his bare head gleaming in the morning sun. He had heard, the evening before, of the arrest of Peter Newbolt’s boy for the murder of Isom Chase, and the news of it had come to him with a disturbing shock, almost as poignant as if one of his own blood had been accused.
The colonel knew the sad story of Peter marrying below his estate away back there in Kentucky long ago. The Newbolts were blue-grass people, entitled to mate with the best in the land. Peter had debased his blood by marrying a mountain girl. Colonel Price had held it always to Peter’s credit that he had been ashamed of his mÉsalliance, and had plunged away into the woods of Missouri with his bride to hide her from the eyes of his aristocratic family and friends.
Back in Kentucky the colonel’s family and the Newbolt’s had been neighbors. A few years after Peter made his dash across the Mississippi with his bride, and the journey on horseback to his new home, young Price had followed, drawn to Shelbyville by the fame of that place at a seat of culture and knowledge, which even in that early day had spread afar. The colonel–not having won his title then–came across
On the hopes and ambitions of those early days the colonel had realized, in a small way, something in the measure of a man who sets to work with the intention of making a million and finds himself content at last to count his gains by hundreds. He had taken up politics as a spice to the placid life of art, and once had represented his district in the state assembly, and four times had been elected county clerk. Then he had retired on his honors, with a competence from his early investments and an undivided ambition to paint corn.
Through all those years he had watched the struggles of Peter Newbolt, who never seemed able to kick a foothold in the steps of success, and he had seen him die at last, with his unrealized schemes of life around him. And now Peter’s boy was in jail, charged with slaying old Isom Chase. Death had its compensations, at the worst, reflected the colonel. It had spared Peter this crowning disgrace.
That boy must be a throw-back, thought the colonel, to the ambuscading, feud-fighting men on his mother’s side. The Newbolts never had been accused of crime back in Kentucky. There they had been the legislators, the judges, the governors, and senators. Yes, thought the colonel, coming around the corner of the house, lifting the fragrant bunch of mint to his face and pausing a step while he drank its breath; yes, the boy must be a throw-back. It wasn’t in the Newbolt blood to do a thing like that.
The colonel heard the front gate close sharply, drawn to by the stone weight which he had arranged for that purpose, having in mind the guarding of his mint-bed from the incursions of dogs. He wondered who could be coming in so early, and hastened forward to see. A woman was coming up the walk toward the house.
She was tall, and soberly clad, and wore a little shawl over her head, which she held at her chin with one hand. The other hand she extended toward the colonel with a gesture of self-depreciation and appeal as she hurried forward in long strides.
“Colonel Price, Colonel Price, sir! Can I speak to you a minute?” she asked, her voice halting from the shortness of breath.
“Certainly, ma’am; I am at your command,” said the colonel.
“Colonel, you don’t know me,” said she, a little inflection of disappointment in her tone.
She stood before him, and the little shawl over her hair fell back to her shoulders. Her clothing was poor, her feet were covered with dust. She cast her hand out again in that little movement of appeal.
“Mrs. Newbolt, Peter Newbolt’s widow, upon my soul!” exclaimed the colonel, shocked by his own slow recognition. “I beg your pardon, madam. I didn’t know you at first, it has been so long since I saw you. But I was thinking of you only the minute past.”
“Oh, I’m in such trouble, Colonel Price!” said she.
Colonel Price took her by the arm with tender friendliness.
“Come in and rest and refresh yourself,” said he. “You surely didn’t walk over here?”
“Yes, it’s only a step,” said she.
“Five or six miles, I should say,” ventured the colonel.
“Oh, no, only four. Have you heard about my boy Joe?”
The colonel admitted that he had heard of his arrest.
“I’ve come over to ask your advice on what to do,” said she, “and I hope it won’t bother you much, Colonel Price. Joe and me we haven’t got a friend in this world!”
“I will consider it a duty and a pleasure to assist the boy
“I’m awful early,” said Mrs. Newbolt hesitating at the door. “It’s shameful to come around disturbin’ folks at this hour. But when a body’s in trouble, Colonel Price, time seems long.”
“It’s the same with all of us,” said he. “But Miss Price will be down presently. I think I hear her now. Just step in, ma’am.”
She looked deprecatingly at her dusty shoes, standing there in the parlor door, her skirts gathered back from them.
“If I could wipe some of this dust off,” said she.
“Never mind that; we are all made of it,” the colonel said. “I’ll have the woman set you out some breakfast; afterward we’ll talk about the boy.”
“I thank you kindly, Colonel Price, but I already et, long ago, what little I had stomach for,” said she.
“Then if you will excuse me for a moment, madam?” begged the colonel, seeing her seated stiffly in an upholstered chair.
She half rose in acknowledgment of his bow, awkward and embarrassed.
“You’re excusable, sir,” said she.
The colonel dashed away down the hall. She was only a mountain woman, certainly, but she was a lady by virtue of having been a gentleman’s wife. And she had caught him without a coat!
Mrs. Newbolt sat stiffly in the parlor in surroundings which were of the first magnitude of grandeur to her, with corn pictures adorning the walls along with some of the colonel’s early transgressions in landscapes, and the portraits of
“Well, he comes by it honest,” said she aloud.
Colonel Price did not keep her waiting long. He came back in a black coat that was quite as grand as Judge Little’s, and almost as long. That garment was the mark of fashion and gentility in that part of the country in those days, a style that has outlived many of the hearty old gentlemen who did it honor, and has descended even to this day with their sons.
“My son’s innocent of what they lay to him, Colonel Price,” said Mrs. Newbolt, with impressive dignity which lifted her immediately in the colonel’s regard.
Even an inferior woman could not associate with a superior man that long without some of his gentility passing to her, thought he. Colonel Price inclined his head gravely.
“Madam, Peter Newbolt’s son never would commit a crime, much less the crime of murder,” he said, yet with more sincerity in his words, perhaps, than lay in his heart.
“I only ask you to hold back your decision on him till you can learn the truth,” said she, unconsciously passing over the colonel’s declaration of confidence. “You don’t remember Joe maybe, for he was only a little shaver the last time you stopped at our house when you was canvassin’ for office. That’s been ten or ’leven–maybe more–years ago. Joe, he’s growed considerable since then.”
“They do, they shoot up,” said the colonel encouragingly.
“Yes; but Joe he’s nothing like me. He runs after his father’s side of the family, and he’s a great big man in size now, Colonel Price; but he’s as soft at heart as a dove.”
So she talked on, telling him what she knew. When she had finished laying the case of Joe before him, the colonel sat
“The first thing to do is to get him a lawyer, and the best one we can nail,” the colonel said.
She nodded, her face losing its worried tension.
“And the next thing is for Joe to make a clean breast of everything, holding back nothing that took place between him and Isom that night.”
“I’ll tell him to do it,” said she eagerly, “and I know he will when I tell him you said he must.”
“I’ll go over to the sheriff’s with you and see him,” said the colonel, avoiding the use of the word “jail” with a delicacy that was his own.
“I’m beholden to you, Colonel Price, for all your great kindness,” said she.
There had been no delay in the matter of returning an indictment against Joe. The grand jury was in session at that time, opportunely for all concerned, and on the day that Joe was taken to the county jail the case was laid before that body by the prosecuting attorney. Before the grand jury adjourned that day’s business a true bill had been returned against Joe Newbolt, charging him with the murder of Isom Chase.
There was in Shelbyville at that time a lawyer who had mounted to his profession like a conqueror, over the heads of his fellow-townsmen as stepping-stones. Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that the chins of the men of Shelbyville were the rungs in this ladder, for the lawyer had risen from the barber’s chair. He had shaved and sheared his way from that ancient trade, in which he had been respected as an able hand, to the equally ancient profession, in which he was cutting a rather ludicrous and lumbering figure.
But he had that enterprise and lack of modesty which has lately become the fashion among young lawyers–and is spreading fast among the old ones, too–which carried him into places and cases where simply learning would have left him without a brief. If a case did not come to Lawyer Hammer, Lawyer Hammer went to the case, laid hold of it by force, and took possession of it as a kidnaper carries off a child.
Hammer was a forerunner of the type of lawyer so common in our centers of population today, such as one sees chasing ambulances through the streets with a business-card in one hand and a contract in the other; such as arrives at the scene of wreck, fire, and accident along with the undertaker, and always ahead of the doctors and police.
Hammer had his nose in the wind the minute that Constable Frost came into town with his prisoner. Before Joe had been in jail an hour he had engaged himself to defend that unsophisticated youngster, and had drawn from him an order on Mrs. Newbolt for twenty-five dollars. He had demanded fifty as his retainer, but Joe knew that his mother had but twenty-five dollars saved out of his wages, and no more. He would not budge a cent beyond that amount.
So, as Mrs. Newbolt and Colonel Price approached the jail that morning, they beheld the sheriff and Lawyer Hammer coming down the steps of the county prison, and between them Joe, like Eugene Aram, “with gyves upon his wrists.” The sheriff was taking Joe out to arraign him before the circuit judge to plead to the indictment.
The court convened in that same building where all the county’s business was centered, and there was no necessity for taking the prisoner out through one door and in at another, for there was a passage from cells to court-rooms. But if he had taken Joe that way, the sheriff would have lost a seldom-presented opportunity of showing himself on the
Lawyer Hammer also enjoyed his distinction in that short march. He leaned over and whispered in his client’s ear, so that there would be no doubt left in the public understanding of his relations to the prisoner, and he took Joe’s arm and added his physical support to his legal as they descended the steps.
Mrs. Newbolt was painfully shocked by the sight of the irons on Joe’s wrists. She groaned as if they clamped the flesh of her own.
“Oh, they didn’t need to do that,” she moaned.
Joe doubtless heard her, for he lifted his face and ran his eyes through the crowd which had gathered. When he found her he smiled. That was the first look Colonel Price ever had taken into the lad’s face.
“No,” said he, answering her anguished outbreak with a fervency that came from his heart, “there was no need of that at all.”
They followed the sheriff and his charge into the court-room, where Mrs. Newbolt introduced Colonel Price to her son. While Joe and his mother sat in whispered conversation at the attorney’s table, the colonel studied the youth’s countenance.
He had expected to meet a weak-faced, bony-necked, shock-headed type of gangling youngster such as ranged the Kentucky hills in his own boyhood. At best he had hoped for nothing more than a slow-headed, tobacco-chewing rascal with dodging, animal eyes. The colonel’s pleasure, then, both as an artist and an honest man, was great on beholding this unusual face, strong and clear, as inflexible in its molded lines of high purpose and valiant deeds as a carving in Flemish oak.
Here was the Peter Newbolt of long ago, remodeled in a stronger cast, with more nobility in his brow, more promise in his long, bony jaw. Here was no boy at all, but a man, full-founded and rugged, and as honest as daylight, the colonel knew.
Colonel Price was prepared to believe whatever that young fellow might say, and to maintain it before the world. He was at once troubled to see Hammer mixed up in the case, for he detested Hammer as a plebeian smelling of grease, who had shouldered his unwelcome person into a company of his betters, which he could neither dignify nor grace.
The proceedings in court were brief. Joe stood, upon the reading of the long, rambling information by the prosecuting attorney, and entered a calm and dignified plea of not guilty. He was held without bond for trial two weeks from that day.
In the sheriff’s office Mrs. Newbolt and the colonel sat with Joe, his wrists free from the humiliating irons, and talked the situation over. Hammer was waiting on the outside. Colonel Price having waved him away, not considering for a moment the lowering of himself to include Hammer in the conference.
The colonel found that he could not fall into an easy, advisory attitude with Joe. He could not even suggest what he had so strongly recommended to Mrs. Newbolt before meeting her son–that he make a clean breast of all that took place between himself and Isom Chase before the tragedy. Colonel Price felt that he would be taking an offensive and unwarranted liberty in offering any advice at all on that head. Whatever his reasons for concealment and silence were, the colonel told himself, the young man would be found in the end justified; or if there was a revelation to be made, then he would make it at the proper time without being pressed. Of that the colonel felt sure. A gentleman could be trusted.
But there was another matter upon which the colonel had no scruples of silence, and that was the subject of the attorney upon whom Joe had settled to conduct his affairs.
“That man Hammer is not, to say the least, the very best lawyer in Shelbyville,” said he.
“No, I don’t suppose he is,” allowed Joe.
“Now, I believe in you, Joe, as strong as any man can believe in another––”
“Thank you, sir,” said Joe, lifting his solemn eyes to the colonel’s face. The colonel nodded his acknowledgment.
“But, no matter how innocent you are, you’ve got to stand trial on this outrageous charge, and the county attorney he’s a hard and unsparing man. You’ll need brains on your side as well as innocence, for innocence alone seldom gets a man off. And I’m sorry to tell you, son, that Jeff Hammer hasn’t got the brains you’ll need in your lawyer. He never did have ’em, and he never will have ’em–never in this mortal world!”
“I thought he seemed kind of sharp,” said Joe, coloring a little at the colonel’s implied charge that he had been taken in.
“He is sharp,” admitted the colonel, “but that’s all there is to him. He can wiggle and squirm like a snake; but he’s got no dignity, and no learnin’, and what he don’t know about law would make a book bigger than the biggest dictionary you ever saw.”
“Land’s sake!” said Mrs. Newbolt, lifting up her hands despairingly.
“Oh, I guess he’ll do, Colonel Price,” said Joe.
“My advice would be to turn him out and put somebody else in his place, one of the old, respectable heads of the profession here, like Judge Burns.”
“I wouldn’t like to do that, colonel,” said Joe.
“Well, we’ll see how he behaves,” the colonel yielded, seeing
Joe agreed that they could, and gave his mother a great deal of comfort and assurance by his cheerful way of facing what lay ahead of him. He told her not to worry on his account, and not to come too often and wear herself out in the long walk.
“Look after the chickens and things, Mother,” said he, “and I’ll be out of here in two weeks to help you along. There’s ten dollars coming to you from Isom’s; you collect that and buy yourself some things.”
He told her of the order that he had given Hammer for the retaining fee, and asked her to take it up.
“I’ll make it up to you, Mother, when I get this thing settled and can go to work again,” said he.
Tears came into her eyes, but no trace of emotion was to be marked by any change in her immobile face.
“Lord bless you, son, it all belongs to you!” she said.
“Do you care about reading?” the colonel inquired, scarcely supposing that he did, considering the chances which had been his for development in that way.
Mrs. Newbolt answered for Joe, who was slow and deliberative of speech, and always stopped to weigh his answer to a question, no matter how obvious the reply must be.
“Oh, Colonel Price, if you could see him!” said she proudly. “Before he was ten years old he’d read the Cottage Encyclopedy and the Imitation and the Bible–from back to back!”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re of a studious mind,” said the colonel.
As often as Joe had heard his mother boast of his achievements with those three notable books, he had not yet grown hardened to it. It always gave him a feeling of foolishness, and drowned him in blushes. Now it required some time for
“Mother always tells that on me.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” comforted the colonel, marking his confusion.
“And all the books he’s borrowed since then!” said she, conveying a sense of magnitude by the stress of her expression. “He strained his eyes so when he was seventeen readin’ Shuckspur’s writings that the teacher let him have I thought he’d have to put on specs.”
“My daughter and I have a considerable number of books,” said the colonel, beginning to feel about for a bit more elegance in his method of expression, as a thing due from one man of culture to another, “and if you will express your desires I’m sure we shall be glad to supply you if the scope of our library permits.”
Joe thanked him for the offer, that strange little smile coming over his face again.
“It wouldn’t take much of a library, Colonel Price, to have a great many books in it that I’ve never read,” said he. “I haven’t been easy enough in my mind since this thing came up to think about reading–I’ve got a book in my pocket that I’d forgotten all about until you mentioned books.” He lifted the skirt of his short coat, his pocket bulging from the volume wedged into it. “I’ll have a job getting it out, too,” said he.
“It don’t seem to be a very heavy volume,” smiled the colonel. “What work is it?”
“It’s the Book,” said Joe.
Colonel Price laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder and looked him straight in the face.
“Then you’ve got by you the sum and substance of all knowledge, and the beginning and the end of all philosophy,” said he. “With that work in your hand you need no other, for it’s the father of all books.”
“I’ve thought that way about it myself sometimes,” said Joe, as easy and confident in his manner with the colonel, who represented a world to which he was a stranger from actual contact, as a good swimmer in water beyond his depth.
“But if you happen to be coming over this way in a day or two you might stop in if it wouldn’t trouble you, and I could name over to you a few books that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time.”
“I intend to lighten your brief period of confinement as much as it is in my power to do,” declared the colonel, “and I can speak for my daughter when I say that she will share my anxiety to make you as comfortable as human hands can make you in this place, Joe. We’ll come over and cheer you every little while.”
Mrs. Newbolt had sat by, like one who had been left behind at a way-station by an express-train, while the colonel and Joe had talked. They had gone beyond her limited powers; there was nothing for her to do but wait for them to come back. Now the colonel had reached her point of contact again.
“You’ll be rewarded for your kindness to the widow’s son,” said she, nodding her head earnestly, tears shining in her eyes.
When he was leaving, Colonel Price felt that he must make one more effort to induce Joe to discharge Hammer and put his case into the hands of a more competent man. Joe was firm in his determination to give Hammer a chance. He was a little sensitive on the matter under the rind, the colonel could see.
“If I was to hire the best lawyer I could find, Colonel Price, people would say then that I was guilty, sure enough,” said Joe. “They’d say I was depending more on the lawyer than myself to come clear. Well, colonel, you know that isn’t the case.”
That seemed to settle it, at least for the present. The
Mrs. Newbolt carried her savings with her. When she had paid Hammer she had sixty cents left in her calloused palm.
“That’s egg money,” said she, tying it in the corner of her handkerchief. “Oh, colonel, I forgot to ask the sheriff, but do you reckon they’ll give my Joe enough to eat?”
“I’ll see to that,” said Hammer officiously.
Hammer was a large, soft man in an alpaca-coat and white shirt without a collar. His hair was very black and exceedingly greasy, and brushed down upon his skull until it glittered, catching every ray of light in his vicinity like a bucket of oil. He walked in long strides, with a sliding motion of the feet, and carried his hands with the palms turned outward, as if ready instantly to close upon any case, fee, or emolument which came in passing contact with him, even though it might be on its way to somebody else.
Mrs. Newbolt was not unfavorably impressed with him, for he seemed very officious and altogether domineering in the presence of the sheriff, but her opinion may have been influenced perhaps by Joe’s determination to have him whether or no. She thanked him for his promise of good offices in Joe’s behalf, and he took her arm and impeded her greatly in her progress down the steps.
After Mrs. Newbolt had taken some refreshment in the colonel’s house, she prepared to return home.
“If I had a hoss, madam,” said the colonel, “I’d hitch up and carry you home. But I don’t own a hoss, and I haven’t owned one for nine years, since the city grew up so around me I had to sell off my land to keep the taxes from eatin’ me up. If I did own a hoss now,” he laughed, “I’d have no place to keep him except under the bed, like they do the houn’-dogs back in Kentucky.”
She made light of the walk, for Joe’s bright and sanguine carriage had lightened her sorrow. She had hope to walk home with, and no wayfarer ever traveled in more pleasant company.
The colonel and his daughter pressed her to make their home her resting-place when in town, even inviting her to take up her abode there until the trial. This generous hospitality she could not accept on account of the “critters” at home which needed her daily care, and the eggs which had to be gathered and saved and sold, all against the happy day when her boy Joe would walk out free and clear from the door of the county jail.
