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I wrote down on a clean sheet of note-paper all that Eliza Shaeffer said: the description of the black and white dress, the woman's height, and the rest, and then I took her to the court-house, chicks and all, and she told her story there to one of the assistant district attorneys. The young man was interested, but not convinced. He had her story taken down, and she signed it.
"That child is ill with the cold; we must stop somewhere to warm her, or she will hardly hold out till we get to the inn at C ." We were just entering the little village of A , in the vicinity of the court-house, and we stopped at a pretty green cottage, and asked permission to warm the children. A stout, middle-aged woman came to the sleigh, and in the kindest manner requested us to alight.
The young folks jes' amble up an' down the court-house yard, bein' moonlight, like a lot o' young colts showin' thar paces. An' even ef they ain't thar ter-night, I'll take ye over thar arter supper, with yer cousin Anice ter keep ye in countenance."
Here, in summer-time, the gentlemen are wont to lounge from store to store in their shirt sleeves; and here stood the old, red-brick court-house, loosely fenced in a shady grove of maple and elm "slipp'ry ellum" called the "Court-House Yard."
The principal tavern there stands on that corner of the court-house square to which the swamper would naturally come first. Here he was to find the engineer.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning when an elegant carriage stopped in front of the court-house. A gentleman stepped out, and was about to ascend the broad steps of the building, when he suddenly stood still. He clapped his monocle to his eye, and loudly exclaimed: "Ah, Chateau-Renaud!" "Beauchamp," came back the answer; and the two friends cordially shook hands.
At ten punctually, Lunalilo, Governor Lyman, the sheriff of Hawaii, the royal chamberlain, and the adjutant-general, walked up to the court-house, and the king took his place, standing in the lower verandah with his suite about him.
Dixie raised her long lashes in a steady stare at him. "Guess what I've been doing at the court-house," she said. "I've been engaged in an odd thing for this modern day of enlightenment. Maybe you think slavery is over maybe you think the Yankees wiped it clean out forty years ago, but they didn't. I've turned the wheels of Time back. I laid down the cash and bought a real live slave to-day.
In the Court-house yard the maple leaves, gray with blown dust and grown to great breadth, drooped heavily, depressing the long, motionless branches with their weight, so low that the four or five shabby idlers, upon the benches beneath, now and then flicked them sleepily with whittled sprigs.
Five miles beyond the tavern is Wilderness Church, at the junction of the Stevensburg with the Orange and Fredericksburg plank-road. Near by is the Brock road, which leads south to Spottsylvania Court-House. West of the old tavern, four miles on the turnpike, is Parker's store.
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