Chapter 37

During this week Judge Rutherford's every hour was filled with action and excitement. He had not a friend or acquaintance in either House whom he did not seek out and labour with. He was to be seen in the lobby, in the corridors, in committee-rooms, arguing and explaining, with sheafs of papers in his hands and bundles of documents bulging out of his pockets. He walked down the avenue holding the arm of his latest capture, his trustworthy countenance heated by his interest and anxiety, his hat thrust on the back of his head. "There's got to be justice done," he would protest. "You see, justice has got to be done. There's no other way out of it. And I'd swear there ain't a man among you who doesn't own up that it is justice, now all this evidence has been brought together. The country couldn't be responsible for throwing the thing over--even till another session. Everything's in black and white and sworn to and proved--and the papers Baird has sent in clinch the whole thing. Now just look here--" And he would repeat his story and refer to his documents, until even the indifferent succumbed through exhaustion, if not conviction.

He appeared at Dupont Circle two or three times a day, always fevered with delighted hope, always with some anecdote to relate which prognosticated ultimate triumph. If he could not find anyone else to talk to he seized upon Miss Burford or Uncle Matt and poured forth his news to them. He wrote exultant letters to Jenny, the contents of which, being given to Barnesville, travelled at once to Talbot's Cross-roads and wakened it to exhilarated joyfulness, drawing crowds to the Post-office and perceptibly increasing the traffic on the roads from the mountains to that centre of civilised social intercourse.

"Tom's a-gwine to win his claim," it was said. "Judge Rutherford's walkin' it right through for him. Tom'll be way ahead of the richest man in Hamlin. Sheby'll be a hairest. Lordy! what a sight it'll be to see 'em come back. Wonder whar they'll build!"

In Washington it had begun to be admitted even by the reluctant that the fortunes of the De Willoughby claim seemed to have taken a turn. Members of substantial position discussed it among themselves. It was a large claim, and therefore a serious one, but it had finally presented itself upon an apparently solid foundation.

"And it is the member from the mountain districts, and the old negro, and the popular minister who will have carried it through if it passes," said Senator Milner to his daughter. "It is a monumental thing at this crisis of affairs--a huge, unpopular claim on a resenting government carried through by persons impelled solely by the most purely primitive and disinterested of motives. An ingenuous county politician, fresh from his native wilds, works for it through sheer prehistoric affection and neighbourliness; an old black man--out of a story-book--forges a