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He, for a time, alternately taught a country school in winter, and was engaged for the remainder of the year in internal commerce, as master of a boat, or as forwarding clerk, in the then prominent houses of De Graff, Walton & Co., and Cary & Dows, on the Mohawk river and Erie canal.
These boats were full of men, brandishing their weapons in the air, their whole number exceeding, probably, six hundred. Some of the shot from the few long guns of the squadron reached the shore, and were buried in the sand; others fell across the bows and near the hulls of the dows to which they were directed; but the cannonades all fell short, as we were then fully a mile from the beach.
I shall be at Shelbyville by the time this reaches you, where I shall stay a day or two to give you time to break the news to Mrs. Jeffcourt, and then come on. You will do this for me in your Christian kindness, Miss Dows won't you? and if you could soften her mind so as to make it less hard for me I shall be grateful.
Captain Dows, superficially remarkable only for a certain odd combination of high military stock and turned-over planter's collar, was slightly exalted by a sympathetic mingling of politics and mint julep at Pineville Court House.
At a second and third interview the preliminaries were arranged, and in three weeks from Courtland's first visit, the Dows' plantation and part of Major Reed's were merged in the "Drummond Syndicate," and placed beyond financial uncertainty.
And so, believing himself a cool, sagacious reasoner, but being actually, as far as Miss Dows was concerned, as blind, fatuous, and unreasoning as any of her previous admirers, he rode complacently forward until he reached the lane that led to the Dows plantation. Here a better kept roadway and fence, whose careful repair would have delighted Drummond, seemed to augur well for the new enterprise.
Miss Reed's dark eyes glanced sideways at the handsome face and elegant figure beside her. Something like a saucy smile struggled to her thin lips. "There mightn't be much to choose, Co'nnle." "I admit it. We should both acknowledge our mistress, and be like wax in her hands." "Yo' ought to make that pooty speech to Sally Dows, she's generally mistress around here.
"Is yo' wanting Miss Mirandy Dows," she asked with great dignity, "oah Miss Sally Dows her niece? Miss Mirandy's bin gone to Atlanta for a week." "I have a letter for Miss Miranda, but I shall be very glad if Miss Sally Dows will receive me," returned Courtland, handing the letter and his card to the girl. She received it with a still greater access of dignity and marked deliberation.
"Married? Yes, to that farm of her aunt's! I reckon that's the only thing she cares for." Courtland looked up, recovering his usual cheerful calm. "Well, I think that after luncheon I'll pay my respects to her family. From what you have just told me the farm is certainly an experiment worth seeing. I suppose your father will have no objection to give me a letter to Miss Dows?"
Whatever might have been the calmer opinion, there was no doubt that the gallant Colonel had changed the prevailing illogical emotion of Pineville by the substitution of another equally illogical, and Miss Sally was not surprised when her father, touched by the Colonel's allusion to his daughter's epistolary powers, insisted upon bringing Joseph Corbin home with him, and offering him the hospitality of the Dows mansion.
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