"Judge."

"Ah! Chancellor!"

The Chancellor was nearly seventy years old, wearing an humble, meditative, yet gracious look, as one whose relations to this world were those of stewardship, and whose nearly obsolete dress was the badge, not of worldly pride, but of perished joys and contemporaries. His unaffected countenance seemed to say: "I wear it because it is useless to put off what no one else will wear, when presently I shall need nothing but a shroud."

Judge Custis looked at the meek old gentleman closely, sitting at his plate like a lay brother in some monastery or infirmary, indifferent to talk or news or affairs; and the remembrance of what he had been - keen, accumulative, with youthful passions long retained, and the man buoyant under the judge's guard - impressed the Virginian to say to himself:

"What, then, is man! At last old age asserts itself, and bends the brazen temple of his countenance, like Samson, in almost pious remorse. There sits twenty-five years of equity administration; behind it, thirty years of jocund and various life. No newspaper shall ever record it, because none are printed here; he is indifferent to that forgetfulness and to all others, because the springs of life are dry in his body, and he no more enjoys."

"Are you travelling north, Judge Custis?" the old man asked, for politeness' sake.

"Yes, to Dover."

"There is a seat in my carriage; you are welcome to it."

"I will take it a part of the way, at least, to feel the privilege of your society, Chancellor."

The old man gave a slow, sidewise shake of his head.

"Too late, too late," he said, "to flatter me. I was fond of it once. I have been a flatterer, too."

The Chancellor's black boy was put on the Judge's horse, and the two men, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned the court-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard the sheriff knock off two slaves to a purchaser, crying:

"Your property, sir, till they are twenty-five years of age."

"Ha, ha!" laughed, in a great horse laugh, a nearly chinless villager; "say till ole Patty Cannon can git 'em!"

The purchaser gave a cunning, self-convicted smile at the passing chancellor, whose look of resignation only deepened and grew more humble. The Judge had some vague recollection which moved him to change the subject.

"We see each other but little, Chancellor, though we divide the same little heritage of land. I suppose your people are all proud of Delaware."

"Yes," said the old man; "being such a little adventurer, a mere foundling in the band of states, our people have the pride of their independence. The laws are administered, some more farms are opened in the forest every year, blossoms come, and old men die and are buried on their farms, and their bones respected a few years. Our history is so pastoral that we must show some temper when it is assailed, or we might let out our ignorance of it."

They rode in silence some hours through an older settled and more open country, with some large mill-ponds and a better class of farm improvements, and the sense of some large water near at hand was mystically felt.