The Victim | Page 6

his guests. The tall, stately figure, moving with
the unconscious grace of perfect manhood, needed no rules of a
dancing master for his guidance. He had sprung from the common
people, but he was a born leader and ruler of men.
The Boy listened with keen ears to hear him rip out one of those
terrible oaths of which so much had been said. His speech was gentle
and kind, and he asked a blessing at every meal exactly as his own
quiet, dignified father at home. In all the three weeks they remained his
guests not an oath or an ugly word fell from his lips. The Boy
wondered how people could tell such lies.
The General liked boys, too. It was easy to see that. He gave hours of
his time to the games and sports of his adopted son, Andrew Jackson,
Jr., and his two little guests. He got up contests of all sorts. They raced
their ponies. They ran and jumped. They played marbles. They
followed the hounds. And always with them as friend and counselor,
the General, gentle, kind, considerate. The only thing he prohibited was
wrestling.

"No, boys," he said with a frown. "That's not a good sport for high
spirited youth. To feel the hand of a rival on your body may lead to a
fight."
The deep set eyes flashed with the memory of his own hot blooded
boyhood and young manhood.
The General's wife won the Boy's whole heart from the moment he saw
her.
"How could they tell such lies!" he kept repeating with boyish
indignation. Pure and sweet as the face of his own mother was hers.
Loving, unselfish, tender and thoughtful, she moved through her house
with the gentle step of a ministering angel. The knightly deference with
which the General attended her slightest wish, stirred the Boy's
imagination. He could see him standing erect, pistol in hand, in the
gray dawn of the morning on which he faced the enemy who had
slandered her. He could see the big firm hand grip the pistol's handle in
a clasp of steel as he waited the signal of Death. He wondered what sort
of wound Dickenson's bullet had made in the General's breast. Anyhow,
it had not been fatal. His enemy lived but a few hours.
He set his lips firmly, and repeated the Tennesseean's verdict:
"Served him right, too."
The Boy left the Hermitage under the spell of Old Hickory's personality
for life. He had seen a great man.

IV
THE MONASTERY BELLS
The journey from Nashville to Springfield, Kentucky, was quick and
uneventful. Long before the spire of St. Thomas' church loomed on the
horizon, they passed through the wide, fertile fields of the Dominican
monks. The grim figure of a black friar was directing the harvest of a

sea of golden-yellow wheat. His workmen were sleek negro slaves.
Herds of fat cattle grazed on the hills. A flock of a thousand sheep were
nipping the fresh sweet grass in the valley. They passed a big flour mill,
whose lazy wheel swung in rhythmic unison with the laughing waters
of the creek that watered the rich valley. The monks were vowed to
poverty and self-denial. But their Order was rich in slaves and land, in
mills and herds and flocks and generous harvests.
As the sun sank in a smother of purple and red behind the hills, they
saw the church and monastery. The bells were chanting their call to
evening prayer.
The Boy held his breath in silent ecstasy. He had never heard anything
like it before. It was wonderful--those sweet notes echoing over hill and
valley in the solemn hush of the gathering twilight.
They waited for the priests to emerge from the chapel before making
their presence known. Through the open windows the deep solemn
throb of the organ pealed. The soul of the Boy rose enchanted on new
wings whose power he had never dreamed. Hidden depths were
sounded of whose existence he could not know. There was no organ in
the little bare log church the Baptists had built near his father's farm in
Mississippi. His father and mother were Baptists and of course he was
going to be a Baptist some day. But why didn't they have stained glass
windows like those through which he saw the light now
streaming--wonderful flashing lights, whose colors seemed to pour
from the soul of the organ. And why didn't they have a great organ?
He was going to like these Roman Catholics. He wondered what his
mother would say to that?
It all seemed so familiar, too. Where had he heard those bells? Where
had he heard the peal of that organ and seen the flash of those gorgeous
lights? In the sky at sunset