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"Circuit-riders get higher than that, sometimes," said the preacher, leading his prisoner toward old Wardelow's cabin; "they get as high as heaven!" "Oh!" remarked the sheriff, and gave up the contest. Both men accompanied the prisoner toward his father's house. The preacher began to deliver some cautionary remarks, but the young man burst from him, threw open the door, and shouted: "Father!"
The Mexican war was just breaking out when New Boston was settled, and Wardelow's hair was black, and Mount Pisgah was a little cluster of log huts; but when Lincoln was elected, Wardelow had been gray and called old for nearly ten years, and Mount Pisgah had quite a number of two-story residences and brick stores, and was a county town, with court-house and jail all complete.
When they met at tea-parties, or quilting-bees, or sewing-societies, or in other gatherings exclusively feminine, there were not a few of them who had the courage to say that the world would be better if more men were like old Wardelow. For love seemed the sole motive of old Wardelow's life.
Almost every steamboat man, from captain and pilot down to fireman and roustabout, carried and posted Wardelow's circulars wherever they went up Red River, the Yazoo, the White, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and all the smaller tributaries of the Mississippi.
The freshet which had, soon afterward, swept the town, had carried with it Wardelow's only child, a boy of seven years, who had been playing in a boat which he, in some way, unloosed. From that day the father had found no trace of his child, yet he never ceased hoping for his return.
Upon a tall cottonwood-tree on the river-bank, and nearly in front of Wardelow's residence, was an immense signboard bearing the name of "New Boston Landing," and on the other side of the river, at a ferry-staging belonging to a crossing whose other terminus was a mile further down the river, was a sign which informed travelers that persons wishing to go to New Boston would find a skiff marked "Wardelow" tied near the staging.
Time had rolled on as usual, in spite of Wardelow's great sorrow.
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