CHAPTER XLI.

In which justice is seen to be very accommodating.

A few days have elapsed, Maria has just paid a visit to her father, still in prison, and may be seen looking in at Mr. Keepum’s office, in Broad street.  “I come not to ask a favor, sir; but, at my father’s request, to say to you that, having given up all he has in the world, it can do no good to any one to continue him in durance, and to ask of you-in whom the sole power rests-that you will grant him his release ere he dies?” She addresses Mr. Keepum, who seems not in a very good temper this morning, inasmuch as several of his best negroes, without regard to their value to him, got a passion for freedom into their heads, and have taken themselves away.  In addition to this, he is much put out, as he says, at being compelled to forego the pleasure held out on the previous night, of tarring and feathering two northerners suspected of entertaining sentiments not exactly straight on the “peculiar question.”  A glorious time was expected, and a great deal of very strong patriotism wasted; but the two unfortunate individuals, by some means not yet discovered, got the vigilance committee, to whose care they were entrusted, very much intoxicated, and were not to be found when called for.  Free knives, and not free speech, is our motto.  And this Mr. Keepum is one of the most zealous in carrying out.

Mr. Keepum sits, his hair fretted back over his lean forehead, before a table covered with papers, all indicating an immense business in lottery and other speculations.  Now he deposits his feet upon it; leans back in his chair, puffs his cigar, and says, with an air of indifference to the speaker:  “I shall not be able to attend to any business of yours to-day, Madam!” His clerk, a man of sturdy figure, with a broad, red face, and dressed in rather dilapidated broadcloth, is passing in and out of the front office, bearing in his fingers documents that require a signature or mark of approval.

“I only come, sir, to tell you that we are destitute—­” Maria pauses, and stands trembling in the doorway.

“That’s a very common cry,” interrupts Keepum, relieving his mouth of the cigar.  “The affair is entirely out of my hands.  Go to my attorney, Peter Crimpton, Esq.,—­what he does for you will receive my sanction.  I must not be interrupted to-day.  I might express a thousand regrets; yes, pass an opinion on your foolish pride, but what good would it do.”

And while Maria stands silent and hesitating, there enters the office abrubtly a man in the garb of a mechanic.  “I have come,” speaks the man, in a tone of no very good humor, “for the last time.  I asks of you-you professes to be a gentleman-my honest rights.  If the law don’t give it to me, I mean to take it with this erehand.”  (He shakes his hand at Keepum.) “I am a poor man who ain’t thought much of because I works for a living; you have got what I had worked hard for, and lain up to make my little family comfortable.  I ask a settlement and my own-what is due from one honest man to another!” He now approaches the table, strikes his hand upon it, and pauses for a reply.