Other children came to the door - white children from the square, black children from the garden - and some ventured a little way in to hear the tender wooing of the sympathetic strings. He moved his bow mechanically, but the music sprang forth as if it knew its sister, Grief, was waiting on the chords. At last a bolder child than the rest came and pushed his elbow and said,

"Papa!"

"My boy, my dear boy!" the fiddler cried, as tears streamed down his cheeks, and he lifted the lad to his heart and kissed him.

Judge Custis, though no word passed upon the subject, saw the solitary canker at the Senator's heart - his wife's dead form in the old Presbyterian kirk-yard.

It was soon apparent to Judge Custis, from this and other silent things, that a light-hearted, affectionate, strong, yet womanly, engine of energy constituted the young Delaware lawyer-politician. Keen, cunning, impulsive, hopeful, his feet provincial, his head among the birds, he combined facility and earnestness in almost mercurial relations to each other, and the Judge saw that these must constitute a remarkable jury lawyer.

His face was shaven smooth; his throat and chin showed an early tendency to flesh; the poise of his head and thoughtful darting of his eyes and slight aqualinity of his nose indicated one who loved mental action and competition, yet drew that love from a great, healthy body that had to be watched lest it relapse into indolence. The loss of his wife so soon after marriage had been followed by nearly complete indifference to women, and he had made politics his only consolation and mistress, harnessing her like a young mare with his old roadster of the law, and driving them together in the slender confines of his principality, and then locking the law up among his office students to drive politics into the national arena at Washington.

"You require to be very neighborly, Clayton, in a small bailiwick like this?" the Judge inquired, as they strolled along the square in the soft evening.

"We have the best people in the world in Delaware, friend Custis: few traders, little law, scarcely any violence, and they are easy to please; but it is a high offence in this state not to be what is called 'a clever man.' You must stop, whatever be your errand, and smile and inquire of every man at his gate for every individual member of his household. The time lost in such kind, trifling intercourse is in the aggregate immense. But, Goy! I do love these people."

"It seems to me that you encourage that exaction."

"Well, I do. As an electioneerer, I can get away with any of 'em. Goy! Why, Jim Whitecar, Lord bless your dear soul!" - this addressed to a thick-set, sandy, uncertain-looking man who was about retreating into the Capitol Tavern"what brings you to town, Jim?"