The Last of the Foresters | Page 9

across Longears' nose, half covering the letters he had traced with it on the sand.
Those letters were, in rude tracing:
REDBUD.
And to these Verty had added, with melancholy and listless smiles, the further letters:
GOING TO--
Unfortunately he was compelled to leave the remainder of the sentence unwritten.

CHAPTER V.
WINCHESTER.
Having followed the Indian boy from Apple Orchard to his lodge in the wilderness, and shown how he passed many of his hours in the hills, it is proper now that we should mount--in a figurative and metaphorical sense--behind Mr. Rushton, and see whither that gentleman also bends his steps. We shall thus arrive at the real theatre of our brief history--we mean at the old town of Winchester,
Every body knows, or ought to know, all about Winchester. It is not a borough of yesterday, where the hum of commerce and the echo of the pioneer's axe mingle together, as in many of our great western cities of the Arabian Nights:--Winchester has recollections about it, and holds to the past--to its Indian combats, and strange experiences of clashing arms, and border revelries, and various scenes of wild frontier life, which live for us now only in the chronicles;--to its memories of Colonel Washington, the noble young soldier, who afterwards became, as we all have heard, so distinguished upon a larger field;--to Thomas Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, who came there often when the deer and the wolves of his vast possessions would permit him--and to Daniel Morgan, who emptied many fair cups on Loudoun-street, and one day passed, with trumpets sounding, going to Qu��bec; again on his way to debate questions of importance with Tarleton, at the Cowpens--lastly, to crush the Tory rising on Lost River, about the time when "it pleased heaven so to order things, that the large army of Cornwallis should be entrapped and captured at Yorktown, in Virginia," as the chronicles inform us. All these men of the past has Winchester looked upon, and many more--on strange, wild pictures, and on many histories. For you walk on history there and drink the chronicle:--Washington's old fort is crumbling, but still visible;--Morgan, the strong soldier, sleeps there, after all his storms;--and grim, eccentric Fairfax lies where he fell, on hearing of the Yorktown ending.
When we enter the town with Mr. Rushton, these men are elsewhere, it is true; but none the less present. They are there forever.
The lawyer's office was on Loudoun-street, and cantering briskly along the rough highway past the fort, he soon reached the rack before his door, and dismounted. The rack was crooked and quailed--the house was old and dingy--the very knocker on the door frowned grimly at the wayfarer who paused before it. One would have said that Mr. Rushton's manners, house, and general surrounding, would have repelled the community, and made him a thousand enemies, so grim were they. Not at all. No lawyer in the town was nearly so popular--none had as much business of importance entrusted to them. It had happened in his case as in a thousand others, which every one's experience must have furnished. His neighbors had discovered that his rude and surly manners concealed a powerful intellect and an excellent heart--and even this rudeness had grown interesting from the cynical dry humor not unfrequently mingled with it.
A huge table, littered with old dingy volumes, and with dusty rolls of papers tied with red tape--a tall desk, with a faded and ink-bespattered covering of brown cloth--a lofty set of "pigeon holes," nearly filled with documents of every description--and a set of chairs and stools in every state of dilapidation:--there was the ante-room of Joseph Rushton, Esq., Attorney-at-Law and Solicitor in Chancery.
No window panes ever had been seen so dirty as those which graced the windows--no rag-carpet so nearly resolved into its component elements, had ever decorated human dwelling--and perhaps no legal den, from the commencement of the world to that time, had ever diffused so unmistakeable an odor of parchment, law-calf, and ancient dust!
The apartment within the first was much smaller, and here Mr. Rushton held his more confidential interviews. Few persons entered it, however; and even Roundjacket would tap at the door before entering, and generally content himself with thrusting his head through the opening, and then retiring. Such was the lawyer's office.

CHAPTER VI.
IN WHICH MR. ROUNDJACKET FLOURISHES HIS RULER.
Roundjacket was Mr. Rushton's clerk--his "ancient clerk"--though the gentleman was not old. The reader has heard the lawyer say as much. Behold Mr. Roundjacket now, with his short, crisp hair, his cynical, yet authoritative face, his tight pantaloons, and his spotless shirt bosom--seated on his tall stool, and gesticulating persuasively. He brandishes a ruler in his right hand, his left holds a bundle of manuscript; he recites.
Mr. Rushton's entrance does not attract his attention; he continues to brandish his ruler and to repeat his