Dred by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author:Harriet Beecher Stowe [Stowe, Harriet Beecher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411437890
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXVII

THE TRIAL

"WELL, now," said Frank Russel, to one or two lawyers with whom he was sitting, in a side-room of the court-house at E., "look out for breakers! Clayton has mounted his war-horse, and is coming upon us, now, like leviathan from the rushes."

"Clayton is a good fellow," said one of them. "I like him, though he doesn't talk much."

"Good?" said Russel, taking his cigar from his mouth; "why, as the backwoodsmen say, he an't nothing else! He is a great seventy-four pounder, charged to the muzzle with goodness! But, if he should be once fired off, I'm afraid he'll carry everything out of the world with him. Because, you see, abstract goodness doesn't suit our present mortal condition. But it is a perfect godsend that he has such a case as this to manage for his maiden plea, because it just falls in with his heroic turn. Why, when I heard of it, I assure you I bestirred myself. I went about, and got Smithers, and Jones, and Peters, to put off suits, so as to give him fair field and full play. For, if he succeeds in this, it may give him so good a conceit of the law, that he will keep on with it."

"Why," said the other, "don't he like the law? What's the matter with the law?"

"Oh, nothing, only Clayton has got one of those ethereal stomachs that rise against almost everything in this world. Now, there isn't more than one case in a dozen that he'll undertake. He sticks and catches just like an old bureau drawer. Some conscientious crick in his back is always taking him at a critical moment, and so he is knocked up for actual work. But this defending a slave-woman will suit him to a T."

"She is a nice creature, isn't she?" said one of them.

"And belongs to a good old family," said another.

"Yes," said the third, "and I understand his lady-love has something to do with the case."

"Yes," said Russel, "to be sure she has. The woman belongs to a family connection of hers, I'm told. Miss Gordon is a spicy little puss—one that would be apt to resent anything of that sort; and the Gordons are a very influential family. He is sure to get the case, though I'm not clear that the law is on his side, by any means."

"Not?" said the other barrister, who went by the name of Will Jones.

"No," said Russel. "In fact, I'm pretty clear it isn't. But that will make no odds. When Clayton is thoroughly waked up, he is a whole team, I can tell you. He'll take jury and judge along with him, fast enough."

"I wonder," said one, "that Barker didn't compound the matter."

"Oh, Barker is one of the stubbed sort. You know these middling kind of people always have a spite against old families. He makes fight because it is the Gordons, that's all. And there comes in his republicanism. He isn't going to be whipped in by the Gordons.

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