Chapter X (2)

The prisoner raised his eyes and shot a quick, puzzled look at his wife.

"What?" cried the assistant. "You say he had no revolver? Did you not swear that you saw one and sign a paper to that effect?"

Maria looked steadily before her. "I did not understand the paper. I saw no pistol." The words came quietly, positively.

The prosecutor looked helplessly toward the judge and nervously fingered an affidavit.

"You cannot impeach your own witness, Mr. District Attorney," admonished his honor.

The prosecutor turned again to Maria. "Did you not tell Sophia Mantelli that you were weeping because your husband had purchased a revolver with which to kill Beppe?"

"Objected to!" shouted Flynn.

"I will allow it," said his honor, "on the ground of refreshing memory. The witness may answer."

"No," answered Maria in the same quiet voice.

The prosecutor threw down the affidavit in disgust. That was what you got for taking the word of one of these Italians! Well, it would be a lesson! No, he had no more questions. Candido began to chatter at his lawyer and fell to nodding and smiling at Maria, who seemed to see him no more than before.

Flynn rose deliberately, cleared his throat, and elevated and stretched his arms as if to secure freer action, exhibiting during the operation a large pair of soiled cuffs.

"Do you know Pietro What's-his-name?" he inquired sharply.

Maria flushed and her head sank toward the child. "Yes," she murmured.

"You have heard him testify that he saw the killing of Montaro?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where he was at that time?"

Maria's head fell so low that her face could not be seen, and her hand sought the cross upon her bosom.

"Answer the question!" cried Flynn roughly.

"He was with me when we heard the shots below." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He had been there for an hour. He was not with Ludovico at all. He saw nothing."

An excited chatter flew around the benches. The handsome Pietro sat dumfounded.

Candido started from his chair, his face livid with passion, his eyes glaring. "_Traditrice!_ It is thus you deceive me! It is well that I should die. Faithless betrayer!"

In the hysteria of the moment he entirely overlooked the value of the testimony in his behalf. The attendant and the distinguished Flynn thrust him down, and the interpreter hurled at him a torrent of remonstrances. Once more the prisoner buried his face in his hands. Maria, still hanging her head, left the chair, and with her babe in her arms sought a distant corner of the court room.

With the testimony of an officer that a button photograph of Maria had been found pinned inside the coat of Montaro, the prosecution closed its case. The assistant district attorney sat down. The jury shifted their positions. The distinguished Flynn rose to make motions that the case be taken from the jury. It was plain, he argued in sonorous and reverberating tones, that the prosecution had impeached its principal witness by the testimony of the defendant's wife, Maria Delsarto. It had raised a reasonable doubt on its own evidence. There was nothing upon which the jury could predicate a verdict. He asked that they be directed to acquit. Was his motion denied? With an expression of well-simulated surprise, he made the other stereotyped motions. The court denied them all.

Candido saw and trembled. That shaking of the head could mean only one thing! Well, they would let him see the priest first--before they did it.

"Take the chair!" came Flynn's harsh voice from above.

"The chair!" _La sedia!_ Madonna! He knew that word. So soon then? He stiffened with horror. A chilly perspiration broke out all over his body. The room swam and darkness surged across his bewildered vision.

"Take the chair!" repeated the voice.

"_La sedia!_" bellowed the interpreter. "_La sedia!_"

Candido shivered as with ague. His teeth chattered. _Dio!_ Now?

The attendant placed a hand upon his shoulder. Candido uttered a terrible cry, and fell senseless to the floor.

* * * * *

A long adjournment, a talk with the priest, an explanation from the interpreter, and Candido "took the chair," telling his own story in a fluent but listless monotone. He spoke of his father and mother, of his home in Calabria, of Maria whom he had known from childhood. His speech was soft and dejected. Then he told of Beppe--Beppe, the great, coarse, bullying brute who had tormented and abused him! Yet he had never retaliated until the other had sought to ruin his home. Then he had refused him access. Montaro had publicly sworn to be revenged, declaring that he would kill him and marry his widow.

Candido gritted his teeth and shook his curved fingers, uttering various _staccato_ adjectives. Then he recovered himself, and in a different tone began to speak slowly and with great care, pausing after each sentence. From time to time he looked to observe the effect of his testimony upon the distinguished Flynn. That night in the wine shop Montaro had called him aside and in the most insulting manner warned him of his approaching fate. He would be dead within a week, and Maria would belong to another. Then in mockery Montaro had bent over his hand as if to administer a caress and had _bitten_ it--the deadliest of affronts. Candido had hurried out of the shop toward his home, closely followed by Montaro. At the door of the tenement his enemy had rushed upon him with a drawn knife from behind, and to save his own life Candido had fired at him.

"He was a bad man--_un perfido_. He would have killed me and taken my wife from me had I not killed him," continued the defendant. As for this Pietro, he had not been there at all. He was an enemy, a Sicilian.

In response to a question of the assistant, he explained that the pistol was an old one. He had not bought it to kill Montaro. He had had it for four or five years. Had procured it for safety when working on the railroad.

By degrees Candido recovered from his listlessness. He no longer seemed careless as to the result of the case. A new strong thirst for life had taken possession of him. There was an air of frankness about the weather-beaten little countenance, and a trustful look in the brown eyes that served far better than "character witnesses" to convince the jury of his ingenuousness. There was no doubt as to his having made an impression.

The distinguished Flynn patted him on the back as he took his seat and felt greatly encouraged. These Italians were great actors--and no mistake!

But the prosecution had reserved a bombshell for the last, intended to annihilate the testimony of the defendant and neutralize the effect of his personality upon the jury. The assistant called in rebuttal a salesman from a large retail fire-arm store, who testified positively that the pistol in evidence had been purchased the day before the homicide. Flynn turned to the attendant, whom he knew well and cursed. These Guineas! Bought the day before! He had all the air of one who has been grossly and inexcusably deceived. He scowled at Candido, who quailed before him.

"How long do you want to sum up, gentlemen?" inquired the court. "Will twenty minutes each be sufficient?"

The distinguished Flynn burst into a deluge of oratory in which Self-Defense and The Unwritten Law played opposite one another, neither yielding precedence. His client was a hero! The instinct of every true American, of every husband, of every father, must stamp his deed as one blameless in the eyes of the Almighty, and worthy not of censure but of the approval of all honest men and lovers of virtue. At the risk of his own life he had preserved the integrity of his home and the honor of his wife. At the same time he had rid the community of a villain. Never, while the Stars and Stripes floated above their heads would an American jury on this sacred soil, consecrated by the blood of those who sacrificed their lives to liberty, etc.-- He subsided, panting and mopping his forehead.

The assistant rose to reply. This explanation of the defendant that he had killed in self-defense was the last despairing effort of a guilty man to escape the consequences of his horrible crime. Of course the prisoner's own evidence was valueless. Jealousy! Calm, calculating jealousy! That was the key to this awful act. The tell-tale picture on Montaro's coat, the crimson admissions of the defendant's wife, the purchase of the pistol--all spoke for themselves. The prosecutor paused.

"Sympathy is not for the assassin," he concluded. "Think rather of his innocent victim! On the sunny shores of Calabria sits a woman, old and gray, to whom this Beppe is her joy, her pride, who thinks of him by day working in the great America across the seas, and whose heart, as the time for the harvest draws near and the exiles are coming back to work in the fields, will beat with expectation. The others will come. Father will meet daughter, and mother will meet son, and they will tell of their life in the great country of Freedom; but for her there will be no gladness--her Beppe will return no more."

The assistant sank into his seat. Candido was staring at him with wide eyes. He knew the _avvocato_ had been talking about Calabria. Madonna! Would he ever see it again?

"Gentlemen of the jury," began his honor. "I shall first define the various degrees of murder and manslaughter."

The sun fell lower and lower over the Tombs as the judge continued his charge. The jury twisted uneasily in their chairs. Candido grew tired. This interminable flow of talk! Why did not the judge say what should be done to him at once? Millions of motes swam in the sun, and with his head resting on his forearms he watched them idly. He had always loved the sun. A warm lassitude stole over him. On Sundays he had spent whole mornings curled up on a bench in Seward Park with Maria and the _bambino_ beside him. How funnily the motes danced about! He smiled drowsily at them. Some were so tiny as to be almost invisible, and some were really large--if you half closed your eyes and one got near it seemed almost as big as a cat--fluffy like a cat. Those little, tiny motes would float out of nowhere into the band of sunshine and sink and dart across it, vanishing into nothingness. Candido amused himself by blowing millions of them into eternity. He himself was just like that. Out of the black, into the warm sun for a little while, and then--pouf!

There was a tremendous scuffling of feet beside him, and the jury rose and filed out. The noise brought him back out of his dream to the realities again. They were going away! Judgment had been pronounced! The judge bowed solemnly to the retreating foreman. Again the fierce chill of overwhelming animal fear seized him. An officer approached. Madonna! He could not pass into the black like the motes, he could not! And he was as yet unshriven! With his frail little body vibrating like a framework of slender steel, he turned and faced the officer, panting with fear, his eyes darting fire.

"Aw, come along!" growled the attendant, raising his hand to seize him by the arm.

"I cannot die unshriven!" shrieked Candido, and flung himself furiously upon the officer, biting, kicking, scratching, until, nearly fainting from his paroxysm of terror and in a coma of exhaustion, he allowed himself to be carried away by three burly Irishmen.

* * * * *

"Bring up the defendant!" directed the court. The jury were already in and waiting for the prisoner. The Italians had all been hustled out into the corridor. His honor had no mind for any sort of demonstration. The light still poured through the great windows, and the sky was a deep sunny blue over the Tombs. Resisting, clutching at sills and railing, hanging by his arms, Candido was carried in and held bodily at the bar.

"Jurors, look upon the defendant. Defendant, look upon the jurors. How say you, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?" asked the clerk grandiloquently.

"Not guilty," answered the foreman distinctly, and with a shade of defiance in his voice.

"Listen to your verdict as it stands recorded," continued the clerk, unaffected. "You find the defendant not guilty, and so say you all."

"Any other charges against the prisoner?" inquired his honor.

"Not yet," replied the assistant with sarcasm.

Suddenly Candido began again. "Madonna! Save me! I confess that I killed Beppe, my countryman----"

The bifurcated interpreter jabbered furiously at him. An expression of dumb amazement overspread the dusty little face.

"You are free, acquitted, discharged; you may return to your home!" announced the beard dramatically, waving a hand in the direction of the door. The officers lowered Candido slowly to his feet. He picked up his hat. Abject wonder was painted upon his countenance. He gazed from the judge to the jury, and back again to the prosecutor.

"Madonna! I am pardoned for killing Beppe? _O giudici_, I kiss your hands." He seized that of the interpreter and devoured it with kisses. Then with a smile he added: "Ah, you see I could not but kill him! He had ruined my home! He had deprived me of honor!"

The attendants faced him toward the door, and he started slowly away; but before he had taken half a dozen steps he caught sight of the waiting Maria. His face changed. Once more he turned to the interpreter and muttered something hoarsely beneath his breath.

"He says," translated the interpreter, turning to the court, "that he would like to have his pistol."

THE LITTLE FELLER

Five feet high, in a suit of clothes three sizes too large for him, he stood in the doorway of my office impassively examining a card which he held in his hand and looking doubtfully about the room.

"I want to see the assistant district attorney," he said.

"Well, this is the right place," I answered in as encouraging a tone as I could assume.

"I want to see you--to speak with you. That lawyer company----"

"Oh, the Legal Aid? What do you want to see me about?"

"The little feller," he replied, taking a step forward and grasping his flat Derby hat firmly before him with both hands.

"What's the trouble?"

"It's the little feller--Isaac--they have arrested him for larceny." He spoke the words in a matter-of-fact--rather hopeful--altogether engaging manner.

"Larceny, eh! How old is he?"

"Eight. But he didn't do nothin'. He was out with some bad boys, but he didn't do nothin' and the cop arrested him with the others. That's all. I came down to get him off, if I could." He smiled frankly.

"What's your name?" I inquired, for ingenuousness of that sort is uncommon among the Jews.

"Abraham Aselovitch--my father is Isidore and my mother she is Rachael Aselovitch."

"And this little fellow--is he your brother?"

"Sure."

"When does his case come up?"

"Next Monday in the Children's Court." He shifted his position.

"Well, even if he is found guilty they will probably only send him to the Juvenile Asylum."

"That's it--Juvenile Asylum. It's a bad place. I don't want him to go there," replied the boy with determination.

"Why not, Abraham?" I inquired.

"It is a bad place. He will meet bad boys there--like the ones that got him into trouble," he responded with an eager look.

"It's not such a bad place," I ventured.

"I know what it is!" he retorted fiercely. "They make criminals there. Good boys are put in with the bad. It makes no difference. One makes the other bad. Isaac is a _good_ boy."

"How about the evidence?"

"I think they will convict him," remarked Abraham conclusively. "Those cops will swear to anything."

"Oh, it isn't as bad as that," I answered with a smile. "Still, I'm afraid I can't get him off, particularly if the evidence would warrant his conviction. After all, perhaps the Juvenile is the best place for him, or maybe" (the thought struck me) "they will parole him in the custody of his mother."

"No, they won't!" he cried with harsh vindictiveness. "She _wants_ him to go there. The little feller, he makes too much trouble for her. She don't want that she should have to clean up after him. She don't want to have to cook for him." His eyes filled. "My mother, she has no use for the little feller--but he's all I've got."

"Do you work?"

"Sure, every morning I go with my father at six o'clock, and I work all day until seven. Then I come home, and the little feller is lying in my bed and I put my arms around him and go to sleep."

"Six until seven!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, that is the time my father works, and I work for him--on the pants."

"My God! A sweatshop!" I murmured. "Don't you ever have any fun?"

"Sure I do. Saturdays we don't do no work an' I take the little feller down to Coney, an' sit on the sand all day with him. Do we have fun? Well, say, I guess!"

"What does your father give you a week?"

"Sometimes a dollar. Sometimes a dollar and a half. Sometimes nothin'."

"What does your father say about putting Isaac in the asylum?"

"My father!" answered Abraham, his eyes flashing. "_He_ don't want him. Isaac won't work. He's an _American_ boy. He's only eight. He just hangs around the house and musses things up and won't do nothin' they tell him. My father would be glad to get rid of him."

"Well, if he makes all this trouble, why do you want to keep him?" I asked.

"Because I love him!" responded Abraham with a sob. "He's all I've got--that little feller. I want him to grow up a good boy. If they don't want to take care of him, _I will_. I'll earn the money. I'll send him to school, maybe, by and by, and make a _lawyer_ of him." Abraham spoke eagerly. "The old folks, my father and mother, they ain't like me and you, they ain't real Americans, they don't understand these things. All they think about is work and the synagogue. I'm up against it, I know. I've got to work. But the little feller--I want that little feller to come out on top and have a chance."

"McCarthy," said I to the county detective assigned to the office, "kindly step into the next room. I want to speak to this boy alone.

"Abraham, you are up against it, I guess. Don't you think you can go without the little feller for a year? I'll do what I can, but even if he goes up they won't keep him longer than that at the asylum, and probably when he comes out he'll be more of a help to your father and mother."

The big tears stood in his eyes and he twisted his hands together as he answered:

"I guess--maybe--maybe, I could give up going down to Coney for a year, if it was going to do him any good. Don't you think the asylum's so bad?"

"No, indeed," said I. "It's fine. He can learn to play in the band. He'll have a good time. Let him go."

For an instant I thought my words had made an impression. Then the two tears welled over.

"You don't know--" the voice was low and passionate--"you don't know what it is to have nothin' but a little feller like that. And way off there--he would wake up in the night maybe--all alone--a little feller----"

"Abraham!" I exclaimed, "the Juvenile be hanged! I'll see the judge and do my best to have the little fellow remanded in the custody of his brother. And Abraham----"

"Yes, sir."

"Where is the little feller? Out on bail?"

"Yessir."

I fumbled in my pocket for a dollar bill.

"Will you be paid for to-day?" I asked.

"No, there's nothin' doin' to-day," he answered.

"Had any work this week?"

"Nothin' much this week. There ain't much doin' at the shop. I won't get paid this week."

"Well," I continued, "the little feller is free till Monday, anyhow. Take him down to Coney to-morrow. And see here, Abraham, just _spend_ that dollar. Be a good sport." He grinned. "Take the little feller along and sit on the sand, and if there is anything you want to see, no matter if it costs five cents or ten cents, you go in and see it. Have a real good time. Something for the little fellow to remember."

He smiled out of his eyes a heaven-born smile.

"Thank you."

"Never mind that, just do as I say. And Monday you go to court with him. I'll see what I can do."

"You bet I will. I'll take the little feller down there to-morrow. You ought to see him, Mister. Some time I'll bring him in here."

He shook hands and turned to open the door. As it closed behind him, there echoed faintly through the transom:

"Just wait till you see that little feller!"

RANDOLPH, '64

"For the good and the great, in their beautiful prime,
Through thy precincts have musingly trod--"

The roll of the national anthem died away and the veterans stood with bowed heads while the chaplain pronounced the benediction. Then the color bearer elevated the regimental flags, the drums tapped, and the gray-haired soldier boys, in straggling twos, marched slowly out of Saunders's Theater, through the flower-bedecked transept, and into the broad sunshine of Memorial Day. Ralph and I lingered in our seats until the crowd had thinned. In the flag-draped balcony above the platform the members of the band were hurriedly departing with their impedimenta; here and there little old ladies dressed in gray, were making their way with tardy steps toward the side exit; while all around the theater the open windows poured in a battery of mote-filled sunshine upon the deserted benches. The air was heavy with the soft fragrance of the elms outside, the faint odor of starched linen, of pine dust, and of flowers.

"There's a pair for you!" whispered Ralph, as an erect old gentleman accompanied by a white-haired negro came up the aisle. "I wish I knew who they were." He offered to wager large sums, based upon his alleged capacity for divination, that they were an "old grad," a Southerner, probably, and his body servant--"Old Marse" and "Uncle Ned." He instantly saw visions of them as characters in a story he was writing for one of the college papers. He is an imaginative boy.

We followed them out into the transept, and waited in the jog by the entrance while they made the round of the tablets, the white man reading the various inscriptions to his companion, who now and then would nod as if in recollection, and once furtively wiped his eyes with a frayed red-bordered silk handkerchief. The last we saw of them, they were picking their way across the car tracks of Cambridge Street in the direction of the Yard.

All the long spring afternoon, as we lay on the grass with our backs against the tree trunks, pretending to study, but really only watching the little gray denizens of the Yard intent upon their squirrel business, Ralph was making up stories about "Old Marse" and "Uncle Ned." I don't believe the chap read a line of his Stubbs on "Mediæval Architecture," and he was very loath to join me when I dragged him to his feet and said that it was time for supper.

Darkness had fallen when, two hours later, we joined the group of men gathered under the elms around the main entrance of Holworthy, where the Glee Club had assembled for one of its evening concerts. Everywhere the old buildings gleamed with light, for the examinations were on, and each window had its cluster of coatless occupants, who from time to time vociferously participated in mournful, lingering calls for "M-o-r-e." The odor of pipe smoke mingled with the sweet, humid breath of the grass and the subtle perfume of professors' gardens from distant Quincy Street; in the western sky a crescent moon, just peeping from behind the tower of Massachusetts Hall, shyly nestled in the tree tops; while between the great elms we could look, as we lay flat upon our backs, into an infinity of faintly twinkling worlds. Between songs you could hear the creaking of the pump in front of Hollis Hall, and the tinkle of the cup upon its chain as it was tossed heedlessly away by the thirsty wayfarer after he had availed himself of its humble services. Ralph and I, joyously entangled in the anatomy of a dozen classmates, drank in with rapture the never cloying melodies of "Johnnie Harvard," "The Miller's Daughter," "The Independent Cadets," and "A Health to King Charles," none of which old favorites escaped without a second rendition, and it was well on to nine o'clock when with a last

Here's a health to King Charles,
_Fill him up_ to the brim!

the assemblage broke up, in spite of savage disapproval from the windows.

Then only did we surrender to our miserable apprehension of the imminent, deadly "exam." in Fine Arts 4, and with the earnestly avowed purpose of really mastering the difference between a gargoyle and a lintel before we retired to rest, reluctantly mounted the stone steps recently vacated by our musical brethren. Our room was Number 10, the first as you go in on the right, and the flickering gaslight in the hall showed that the door, in accordance with inviolable custom, was still ajar.

"Wait a second while I light the lamp," I remarked to Ralph, and, feeling my way across the room to my desk, stood there fumbling for the matches. As I did so I was startled to hear a voice from the darkness in the direction of the fireplace.

"I beg your pardon," it said. "I'm afraid I have usurped your room, but the door was open and its invitation was too attractive to be refused."

The match flared up and I saw before me Ralph's "Old Marse."

"Oh--of course--certainly," I replied. He had arisen from the armchair in which evidently he had been listening to the singing. Then the wick caught, and by the increased light I saw that the man before me looked older than he had in the morning. His hair was almost white, and his face about the eyes finely wrinkled, but its expression was full of kindly humor, and I felt somehow that this stranger quite belonged there, and that it was I who was the intruder.

"You see," he continued with a smile, "I feel that I have a certain right to be here. This used to be my room. Let me introduce myself. Curtis is my name--Curtis, '64."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Curtis," said I. "I'm Jarvis, 190--. Was this really your room? That seems an awfully long time ago."

He smiled again.

"I'm afraid it seems longer ago to you than to me. Would you mind if I should smoke a cigar with you? I'd like to ask you some things about the old building."

"Please do," said I. "And let me introduce my roommate, Ralph Hughes."

Ralph shook hands with Mr. Curtis, and we all sat down around the fireplace. It seemed rather inhospitable not to be able to offer him any refreshments, but there was only one bottle of beer in the _papier-maché_ fire pail in my bedroom, and it was warm at that. Hence we accepted our guest's cigars with some diffidence and awaited his first interrogation. I could see that Ralph was brimming over with eagerness to ask about "Uncle Ned" and a hundred other things which that romantic ostrich of a boy had invented during the afternoon, and I felt quite sure that before Mr. Curtis got away he would be obliged to pay heavily for the temerity of his visit by being offered up upon the altar as a sacrifice to Ralph's bump of acquisitiveness.

"Yes," said Mr. Curtis, "this was my room for four years. If you look over on the windowpane I think you'll find my name scratched on the glass in the lower left-hand corner. I wonder if that old picture of the Belvoir Fox Hunt, that I left, is still here?"

"Oh, was that yours?" exclaimed Ralph. He darted into the bedroom and unhooked a framed lithograph which had been the joy and pride of the occupants of the room for the past four decades. Mr. Curtis turned it round and pointed to his name in faded ink upon the back at the head of a long line of indorsements, each of which represented a temporary possessor.

"The old room seems about the same. The wall-paper has been changed, but that big crack over by the bedroom I remember well. And there ought to be a bullet hole in the frame of the door."

"A bullet hole!" exclaimed Ralph and I in unison.

"Yes," said Mr. Curtis quietly, "a bullet hole--a thirty-two caliber, I should judge."

Ralph seized the lamp and, holding it high above his head, carefully scrutinized the woodwork of the door.

"There it is!" he cried eagerly. "Right in the middle; and, by George, there's the bullet, too! There's a story about that, I bet--isn't there? Who fired it? How did it get there?"

He replaced the lamp, quivering with interest.

"A story if you like," responded Mr. Curtis, looking curiously out of his laughing brown eyes at my impetuous roommate. "Yes, quite a little story. I could hardly tell you about it unless I told you also something of the man who fired the shot. Did you ever hear of Randolph? Randolph, '64?"

The blank look which came into our faces rendered answer unnecessary.

"Never heard of Randolph, '64! _Sic fama est!_ I suppose some Jones or Smith or Robinson now holds his place. Outside of Prex himself, there wasn't a better-known figure in my time. Why, he occupied this very room. He was my roommate."

"Did he, though!" ejaculated Ralph. "How did he come to be firing a pistol around? Didn't he fall foul of the Yard policeman?"

"There were no Yard policemen in those days," said Mr. Curtis.

"What luck!" ejaculated Ralph. "Do tell us about Randolph!" he pleaded in the same breath.

"Certainly. If you really wish it. I trust you fellows haven't any examinations to-morrow."

"Examinations be hanged!" exclaimed Ralph.

"Well," began Mr. Curtis meditatively, "I remember as if it were only yesterday being awakened one bright September morning in '60 by the sound of a rich negro voice singing in time to the scuff-scuff of the blacking of a pair of shoes. The sound entered the open window through which the autumn sun was already pouring, and penetrated the stillness of my bedroom, over there. I sprang out of bed and, thrusting my head out of the window, beheld, seated comfortably upon the topmost step, a comically visaged darky, clad in a pair of brown overalls and battered felt hat, busily engaged in putting the finishing touches to a highly polished pair of russet riding boots. Piled indiscriminately upon the sidewalk, in front of the windows of the room opposite, lay several huge trunks, while at the foot of the steps reposed a long wicker basket, before which were ranged in order of height an astonishing collection of riding boots and shoes of all varieties, upon which the disturber of my dreams had evidently been hard at work, since they shone with a luster glorious to behold. The negro, having critically examined the boot upon his arm, and evidently satisfied with its condition, arose to place it by the side of its mate, and in so doing caught sight of me. Instantly he had doffed his old gray hat and was making a grave salutation.

"'Good mornin', suh.'

"For a moment this vision of darky courtesy deprived me of my ordinary self-possession. Then his grin became contagious.

"'I heard you singing and thought I'd look out to see who it was. Do you know who those trunks belong to?'

"'Dose? Why, dose is Marse Dick's. Oh, p'r'aps you ain't met Marse Dick--Marse Dick Randolph, ob Randolph Hall, Virginny, suh.' He drew himself up with conscious pride. 'We-uns jes' come las' night. Marse Dick's rooms is in dar'--nodding toward the window--'en I wuz jes' a-lookin' ober some ob his traps. Anyt'ing I kin do fo' you, suh? Glad to be of any service, suh. I'se Marse Dick's boy--Moses--Moses March, suh.'

"'Well, Moses,' I answered, 'I'm glad to make your acquaintance. You can tell Mr. Randolph that if he is going to be a neighbor of mine I shall call upon him at the earliest opportunity.'

"'Yah, suh. T'ank you, suh,' responded Moses.

"Just then the old bell on Harvard Hall began to clamor for the morning chapel service, and realizing that the master of my new acquaintance might be unfamiliar with college regulations, I called out:

"'You'd better wake Mr. Randolph or he'll be late for chapel.'

"'Call Marse Dick!' exclaimed the darky in apparent horror. 'Golly, I darsn't call Marse Dick 'fo' ten o'clock. Why, he'd skin me alive. 'Sides, he tole me to bring roun' Azam 'bout ten o'clock.'

"'Azam?' I queried.

"'Yah, suh; Azam's Marse Dick's hunter. Bes' Kentucky blood, suh. Sired by ole Marse's stallion Satan, out o' White Clover. Dar's a hunter fo' you, suh. You jes' ought ter see Marse Dick a-follerin' de hounds. 'Scuse me, suh, fo' keepin' you a-waitin'. No, suh, t'ank you, suh; I won't forgit de card, suh.'

"Hastily retiring to my bedroom I threw on my clothes and then hurried off to chapel. The shades of Number 9, the room across the hall, were still tightly drawn."

Mr. Curtis stopped and relit his cigar. The yellow sash curtains on their sagging wires softly bellied in the night breeze, and through the open windows came the distant chanting of the Institute march and the tinkle of the pump.

"This very room!" repeated the old gentleman half to himself. "And this very window!" His voice sank dreamily and he seemed for the moment to have forgotten our presence. "Those were happy times. As I look back over the forty years, the time I spent here seems one long vista of glorious autumn days. The same old red-brick buildings; the same green velvet sward; that old tolling bell; the gravel walks; the pump--I remember there always used to be a damp place about ten feet square about the pump; the old creaking stairs outside this very door; the quiet evenings on the steps where those jolly chaps were singing; the long talks before this very fireplace under the lamplight with Dick; and then that fatal rupture with the South! How little it means to you! Why, it is isn't even a dream. It's just tradition. I suppose you feel it--you can't help feeling it. But if you had sat here, as I did, with the fellows going away, and the company drilling on the Delta over there--what do you call it now: the Delta?--and had shared the feverish enthusiasm which we all felt, tempered by the sorrow of losing our comrades; the little scenes when they went off one by one, and we gave each fellow a sword or some knickknack to carry with him; and the long, sad, anxious days when you waited breathless for news--and then, when it came, often as not, had felt a pang at your heartstrings because some fellow that you loved had got it at Bull Run, or Antietam, or Cold Harbor! No, you can never know what that meant, and thank God you can't. The rest is about the same. I see you have squirrels in the Yard now. We never had any squirrels. I suppose you sit in these windows and watch 'em by the hour. Busier than you, I guess.

"But apart from the squirrels and the new buildings, the old place is about the same--bigger, more imposing, of course, with its modern equipment of museums and laboratories and all that, and best of all that splendid monument with its transept full of memories. But it's not the same to me. It's only when I turn toward the corner by Hollis and Stoughton, as I did this afternoon, with Holden Chapel just peeping in between, and the big elms swinging overhead, and, shutting my ears to the rattle of the electric cars, listen to the sound of the same old clanging bell, with the sun gilding the tree trunks and slanting along the gravel pathways, that I can call back those dear old days. Then, it seems as if I were back in '61."

In the pause which followed Ralph volunteered that we all did feel somewhat of the same thing, only in a minor degree. He had often imagined the fellows going off to the war and had wondered if it was anything like what he supposed. He pattered on in his own peculiar way trying to put our guest at ease and, as he expressed it later, to cheer him up. It would never have done, he averred later in his own defense, to let "Old Marse" get groggy over the "sunlit elms." However, Mr. Curtis changed the tone himself.

"And now to come to that first time that I ever saw Randolph. I had just come from tea and was sauntering along the Yard in front of Stoughton when I became conscious that my customary place upon the steps, out there, had been usurped. The trunks and paraphernalia of the morning had disappeared, and although Moses was absent, I knew somehow that this could be no other than 'Marse Dick.' He was tall, with muscular back and shoulders, and his clothes of dark-blue serge hung on him as if they had grown there. His feet were encased in long-toed vermilion morocco slippers, and the other elements of his costume which caught my eye were a yellow corduroy waistcoat, very faddish for those days, and a flowing red cravat. A broad-brimmed black slouch hat was well pulled down over his eyes, while from beneath protruded a long brierwood pipe from which voluminous clouds of smoke rolled forth upon the evening air without causing any annoyance, so it seemed, to an enormous mastiff, who sat contentedly between his master's knees, blinking his eyes and thumping his tail in response to the caresses of the hand upon his head. As I drew near the dog stalked over to meet me, sniffing good-naturedly, and the stranger stepped down, removed his hat, and held out his hand with a smile of greeting.

"'Mr. Curtis, I believe, suh?' he said in a low but agreeable drawl. 'My boy Moses gave me the card you were kind enough to send by him this morning. We are neighbors, are we not?'

"I had rather expected to see the face of a dandy, but instead a pair of black eyes under almost beetling black brows burned steadily into mine. He looked nearer thirty than twenty, and this appearance of maturity was heightened by a tiny goatee. His smile was straightforward and honest, the forehead, under the curly black locks, low and broad, the nose aquiline and the skin dark and ruddy. Yes, he was a very pretty figure of a man--as handsome a lad as one would care to meet on a summer's day--part pirate, part Spanish grandee, part student, and every inch a gentleman. Later there were plenty of fellows who said that no man could dress like that (we were all soberly arrayed in those days) and be a gentleman; or that no one could come flaunting his horses and dogs and niggers into Cambridge, as Randolph undoubtedly did, and be one; or could parade around the Yard smoking real cigars and keep dueling pistols on his mantel and rum under the bed, as Dick did, and be one. But he was, boys, he was!

"Perhaps he did talk too much about his niggers and his acres; too much about his old mansion and its flower gardens, about stables, fox-hunting and fiddlers--what of it? The point was that we were a lot of soul-starved, psalm-singing Yankees, talking through our noses and counting our pennies; while Randolph was a warm-hearted, hot-headed, fire-eating, cursing Virginian.

"We shook hands and I joined him on the steps. It was just such a night as this--calm and sweet, the stars peeping through the boughs, and the windows shining. And that's how I like to think of him.

"He'd never been away from home before except to go to Paris. He talked like a feudal baron, seeming to think that life was just one long holiday; that no one had to earn a living; that things in general were constructed by an amiable Deity solely for our delectation; and there was in his attitude a recklessness and disregard for established usages that left me totally at a loss. Imagine a fellow like myself taught to regard card playing, the theater, and dancing as mortal sins, with a father who believed in infant damnation and predestination; a fellow brought up to gaze in silent admiration at Charles Sumner; and who was allowed a silver half-dollar a week pocket money--imagine me, I say, sitting out there with this free-thinking, free-hating, free-handed slave owner! Why, I loved him with my whole heart inside of five minutes. God bless my soul, how my father used to frown when they told him about my new friend's latest escapade! But with all his freedom of ideas he was as simple as a child. I don't believe the fellow ever had a mean or an impure thought. I believe that as I believe in God.

"Well, I told him about my life--what there was to tell--and he told me about his; how his father had died three years before, leaving him the owner of very large estates and a great many hundred slaves--I forget how many. His mother was still living down on the plantation. They were Roman Catholics--'Papists,' my father called them. The doctrines of the Church, however, didn't seem to bother him at all, that I could see. His father had evidently been the big man of the county, and had shared all his sports and studies, cramming him with the most extraordinary amount of miscellaneous reading and curious Chesterfieldian ideas of honor and manners.

"I can remember, now, just how he described the old place to me, sitting out there on the steps. He thought it the finest home in all the land. Perhaps it was. I never had the heart to go there afterwards. One thing I remember was a grand old garden laid out in terraces, the walks bordered by box two hundred years old and as high as your head, where little red and green snakes curled up and sunned themselves--a garden full of old-fashioned flowers and fountains and sundials, and a water garden, too, with lilies of every sort; and there was a family graveyard right on the place where they had all been buried--where his father had been--with a ghost--a female ghost--named Shirley, I recall that, who flitted among the trees on misty mornings. Oh, it was a great picture! I'll never see that old place. Perhaps it's just as well. It couldn't have been as beautiful as he painted it. You see I'd been born in a twenty-one-foot red-brick house on Beacon Hill.

"Then as we were sitting there on the steps, I broad awake but in fairyland, out from under the trees shuffled Moses's quaint, crooked figure. Wanted to know if eb'ryt'ing was all right with young Marse. Azam and Bhurtpore was fixed first-class, suh. An' he'd done got a little cubby-hole down in the stable to sleep in. Wuz dere any orders to-night, suh? An' what time should he bring Azam roun' in de mornin'?

"'Go 'long with Moses, Jim,' said Randolph. The dog obediently arose, stretched himself, and descended the steps.

"'Good night, Marse Dick,' said Moses.

"'Good night, Moses,' replied Dick. And the two, the darky and the dog, disappeared under the shadow of the elms."

Mr. Curtis knocked the ash from his extinct cigar and relit it at the top of the lamp chimney.

"I should just like to have seen him," remarked Ralph enthusiastically. "And to think that he really lived in this room. How did that happen? And which bedroom did he have?"

"The one on the left, nearest the door," replied Mr. Curtis.

Over in Stoughton some fool was strumming a banjo, singing "I'm a soldier now, Lizette"--rottenly. And some one else, of the same mind as myself apparently, leaned out of the window in the room above us and holloed:

"Oh, quit that! Try being a freshman a while! Lizette won't care."

Evidently the singer decided to follow the advice thus gratuitously given, for the banjo ceased. Then came one of those long silences when you felt instinctively that in a moment something might happen to spoil the excellent opportunity of it, throw us off the key as it were, or break its placid surface like an inconsequent pebble. But Ralph, in a singularly moderate tone, as if leading the theme gently that it might not become startled and break away, continued:

"You said something about dueling pistols, you know."

Mr. Curtis looked at him with that same quizzical smile which my roommate had called forth before.

"That's it. All you want is gunpowder, treason, and plot. My feeble attempt at character sketching has been a failure. Well, now to your dessert."

"You are entirely wrong," said Ralph, rather mortified. "Randolph must have been a perfect corker. I wish we had some chaps like that in 19--. But the Southerners nowadays all seem to go to Chapel Hill, or William and Mary, or Tulane, or some of those God-forsaken places where I don't believe they even have a ball nine. Only, naturally, I wanted to make sure of the bullet hole. You see," he added cunningly, "that bullet hole is the thing that links us together. That's how we'll know when you've gone that it wasn't all a dream."

Mr. Curtis laughed outright.

"You're a funny boy," said he. "Well, two or three days later I asked Randolph to room with me. The matter was easily adjusted, and Moses spent nearly a week in fixing up this den here with what he called 'Marse Dick's contraptions.' Save the old picture there, there's not a thing in the place that suggests the room as it looked then. From extreme meagerness, if not poverty, of furniture it sprang into opulence--almost ornately magnificent it seemed to me with my conservative New England tastes and still more conservative New England pocketbook. I remember a silver-mounted revolver was always lying on one end of the mantelpiece, while in the center was a rosewood case of pistols, curious affairs, with long octagonal barrels, and stocks inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver.

"Randolph soon became a celebrity. He could no more avoid being the most conspicuous figure in Cambridge than he could help addressing his acquaintances as 'suh.' And in spite of his natural reserve, a quality which was curiously combined with entire ease in conversation, he soon acquired a large acquaintance and rather a following.

"Needless to say, I became his almost inseparable companion. Dick's second hunter, Bhurtpore, had been placed entirely at my service, and scarce a day passed that autumn without our scouring the country roads for miles around, followed by three or four of the hounds. Jim, the mastiff, while we were absent on these excursions, spent his time lying beneath the ebony table in 10 Holworthy awaiting our return.

"Randolph tried unsuccessfully to organize a hunt. It soon appeared that Azam and Bhurtpore were the only hunters in Cambridge, and polo had not yet been introduced into this country. Frequently we would take a circle of twenty miles in the course of an afternoon, galloping up quiet old Brattle Street, out around Fresh Pond, until we struck the Concord turnpike, which we followed over Belmont Hill, down past an old yellow farmhouse with blue blinds, at the juncture of the highway to Lexington and what we called the 'Willow Road,' and then under the overarching boughs, through soggy fields full of bright clumps of alders, until the fading light of the afternoon warned us that it was time to turn our horses' heads in the direction of Cambridge."

"We have a Polo Club," said Ralph, "but we haven't any horses."

"Well, now, to get down to your bullet hole," continued Mr. Curtis. "Hazing, of course, was an ordinary affair, and it was not uncommon to see a pitched battle of fisticuffs going on behind some college building.

"Now, mind you, the hazing was not done by the best men, but by the worst, and it was always the tougher elements in the sophomore class that availed themselves of this method of showing that they were feeling their oats. Every one of us looked forward, sooner or later, to getting his dose, and any freshman who smoked cigars and kept a nigger might have expected it as a matter of course. But Dick was a chap that did just as he pleased, and did it with such a confounded air--the '_bel air_,' you know--that you'd have thought we were all a parcel of cavaliers walking in a palace garden. I don't blame them for feeling that he ought to be taken down a peg, when you take everything into consideration.

"For example, imagine his kissing old Mrs. Podridge's hand at a faculty tea! Of course the antiquated thing liked it, but it was so conspicuous. And worse than all, inviting Prex into his room to have a cigar and a glass of Madeira! Think of that! The queer part of it was that Prex nearly accepted the invitation.

"'Why not?' said Dick, in answer to my expostulation. 'Do you mean that in the North one gentleman cannot, without criticism, extend to another the hospitality of his own room?'

"It was all in the point of view. What could you say?

"Some carping fellows spread a canard that Randolph was trying to introduce slavery into Cambridge. Dick did not even notice it sufficiently to direct Moses to display his manumission papers. Of course there was a deal of talking about him, mostly good-natured chaff, and had it not been for Watkins I doubt if anything would have happened. This person was an ill-conditioned, dissatisfied fellow who had come from a small town in Rhode Island with a considerable amount of the initial velocity arising out of local prestige, which, wearing off, left him in a miserable state of doubt as to what to do to rehabilitate himself in the garments of distinction. As you would say, he 'had it in' for Randolph for no reason in the world. Dick was just too good-looking, too prosperous, too independent--that was all. He had an idea, I suppose, that if he could knock the statue off its pedestal he might perhaps occupy the vacant situation.

"One evening I inquired carelessly of Randolph what he should do if the sophomores tried to haze him. He replied, nonchalantly, that he should exercise the sacred right of self-defense as circumstances might require. If anyone tried to interfere with him he must take the consequences. In certain situations the only thing to do was to shoot your aggressor. I looked up to see if he were joking, but his face was entirely serious.

"Another chap who was sitting there laughed and slapped his knee. I can see now that it was just this kind of thing that gave Randolph's enemies some color for saying that he was a sort of crazy fool. Perhaps I was playing Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, after all.

"Presently a lot of other fellows joined us, and by the time Moses appeared we had disposed of a couple of bottles of old Port, from under Dick's bed, and were loudly declaiming our loyalty to the Old Dominion and consigning the class of '63 to eternal torment. In the midst of the uproar some one grabbed Moses and shoved him upon the steps, shouting 'Speech! Speech!' What put the idea into his head I can't imagine--probably antislavery speeches in the square which he had overheard.