第3章

IN the open square on Cheapside in Lexington there is now a bronze statue of John Breckinridge.Not far from where it stands the pioneers a hundred years ago had built the first log school-house of the town.

Poor old school-house, long since become scattered ashes! Poor little backwoods academicians, driven in about sunrise, driven out toward dusk!

Poor little tired backs with nothing to lean against! Poor little bare feet that could never reach the floor! Poor little droop-headed figures, so sleepy in the long summer days, so afraid to fall asleep! Long, long since, little children of the past, your backs have become straight enough, measured on the same cool bed; sooner or later your feet, wherever wandering, have found their resting-places in the soft earth; and all your drooping heads have gone to sleep on the same dreamless pillow and there are sleeping.And the young schoolmaster, who seemed exempt from frailty while he guarded like a sentinel that lone outpost of the alphabet--he too has long since joined the choir invisible of the immortal dead.But there is something left of him though more than a century has passed away: something that has wandered far down the course of time to us like the faint summer fragrance of a young tree long since fallen dead in its wintered forest--like a dim radiance yet travelling onward into space from an orb turned black and cold--like an old melody, surviving on and on in the air without any instrument, without any strings.

John Gray, the school-master.At four o'clock that afternoon and therefore earlier than usual, he was standing on the hickory block which formed the doorstep of the school-house, having just closed the door behind him for the day.Down at his side, between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, hung his big black hat, which was decorated with a tricoloured cockade, to show that he was a member of the Democratic Society of Lexington, modelled after the Democratic Society of Philadelphia and the Jacobin clubs of France.In the open palm of the other lay his big silver English lever watch with a glass case and broad black silk fob.

A young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular; wearing simply but with gentlemanly care a suit of black, which was relieved around his wrists and neck by linen, snow-white and of the finest quality.In contrast with his dress, a complexion fresh, pure, brilliant--the complexion of health and innocence; in contrast with this complexion from above a mass of coarse dark-red hair, cut short and loosely curling.Much physical beauty in the head, the shape being noble, the pose full of dignity and of strength;almost no beauty in the face itself except in the gray eyes which were sincere, modest, grave.Yet a face not without moral loftiness and intellectual power; rugged as a rock, but as a rock is made less rugged by a little vine creeping over it, so his was softened by a fine network of nerves that wrought out upon it a look of kindness; betraying the first nature of passion, but disciplined to the higher nature of control;youthful, but wearing those unmistakable marks of maturity which mean a fierce early struggle against the rougher forces of the world.On the whole, with the calm, self respecting air of one who, having thus far won in the battle of life, has a fiercer longing for larger conflict, and whose entire character rests on the noiseless conviction that he is a man and a gentleman.

Deeper insight would have been needed to discover how true and earnest a soul he was; how high a value he set on what the future had in store for him and on what his life would be worth to himself and to others; and how, liking rather to help himself than to be helped, he liked less to be trifled with and least of all to be seriously thwarted.

He was thinking, as his eyes rested on the watch, that if this were one of his ordinary days he would pursue his ordinary duties; he would go up street to the office of Marshall and for the next hour read as many pages of law as possible; then get his supper at his favourite tavern--the Sign of the Spinning, Wheel--near the two locust trees; then walk out into the country for an hour or more; then back to his room and more law until midnight by the light of his tallow dip.

But this was not an ordinary day--being one that he had long waited for and was destined never to forget.At dusk the evening before, the post-rider, so tired that he had scarce strength of wind to blow his horn, had ridden into town bringing the mail from Philadelphia; and in this mail there was great news for him.It had kept him awake nearly all of the night before; it had been uppermost in his mind the entire day in school.At the thought of it now he thrust his watch into his pocket, pulled his hat resolutely over his brow, and started toward Main Street, meaning to turn thence toward Cross Street, now known as Broadway.On the outskirts of the town in that direction lay the wilderness, undulating away for hundreds of miles like a vast green robe with scarce a rift of human making.

He failed to urge his way through the throng as speedily as he may have expected, being withheld at moments by passing acquaintances, and at others pausing of his own choice to watch some spectacle of the street.