THE Fool's patronymic was Servosse; his Christian name, Comfort. His father was descended from one of those Gallic families who abandoned the luxuries of la belle France for an Arcadia which in these later days has become synonymous with bleakness, if not sterility. It is supposable that his ancestors, before they adventured on the delights of Canadian winters in exchange for the coast of Normandy or the plains of Bordeaux, may have belonged to some noble family, who drew their blood, clear and blue, from the veins of a Martelian progenitor.

It is, perhaps, but fair to presume that the exchange of skies was made only for the glory of our gallant and good King Louis, and the advancement of the holy Catholic faith in the New World, rather than for the peace and quiet of the immediate vicinage in which the ancestor dwelt. However this may be, a later ancestor was among those, who, with that mixture of courage and suavity which enabled the voyageurs of that day so successfully to secure and hold the good will of the unsophisticated red-skin, pushed westward along the Great Lakes until they came to the Straits, where so many advantages of a trading-post were combined, that Detroit was there located and christened.

The mutations of government, the lapse of time, and the anglicization of their surroundings had robbed the descendants of the original Servosse of every trace of their Gallic ancestry except the name; and it is only mentioned here for the benefit of some curious student of mental phenomena with credence in hereditary traits, who may believe that an ancestor who could voluntarily abandon the champagnes of Burgundy for the Heights of Abraham, by whatever enticing name the same might be called, was quite capable of transmitting to his descendants such an accès de la folie as was manifested by our particular Fool.

Certainly, no such defect can be attributed to his maternal line: they knew on which side their bread was buttered. Of the truest of Puritan stock, the mother's family had found a lodgment on a little hillside farm carved out of the Hop-Brook Grant in Berkshire, which seemed almost as precarious in its rocky ruggedness and inaccessibility as the barn-swallow's nest, clinging in some mysterious way to the steep slope under the eaves of the old hip-roofed barn against which it was built. Yet, like the nest, the little hillside home had sufficed for the raising of many a sturdy brood, who had flown away to the constantly receding West almost before they had grown to full-fledged man- and womanhood. Brave-hearted, strong-limbed, and clear-headed, or, as they would now be called, level-headed, were these children of the Berkshire hills. There was no trace of mental unsoundness about any of them. Especially free from such imputation was Eliza Hall, the golden-haired, brown-eyed, youngest of nine, who, with her saucily upturning nose, a few freckles on her round cheeks, which made their peach-bloom all the more noticeable,—despite the entreaties of friends, the prayers of lovers, and the protest of parents,— would away to the West in her eighteenth year to become a Yankee schoolma'am in Michigan.

That the young lumberman, Michael Servosse,—rich in the limitless possibilities of a future cast in the way which had been marked out by nature as the path of advancing empire, a brave heart and unquenchable energy, to whom thousands of acres of unrivaled pine-lands yielded tribute, and whose fleet of snug schooners was every year growing larger,—that he should capture and mate with the fair bird from the New-England home-nest was as fitting as the most enthusiastic advocate of natural selection could desire. They were the fairest types of remote stocks of kindred races, invigorated by the fresh life of a new continent.

The first fruit of such a union was the Fool, born on the first day of the month of flowers, in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, on the very spot where the Iroquois met in council with the great chief Pontiac when the cunning plan was devised to gain entrance to the fort by playing a game of lacrosse on the parade-ground for the amusement of the garrison. The wife of a year, as the perils of maternity drew nigh in the absence of her husband, who was up the lake attending to his spring shipments, began to sigh for her far-away mountain home, and so named the new life, which brought consolation to her loneliness, Comfort.

During his babyhood, boyhood, and youth, our hero manifested none of those characteristics from which he afterwards received the name by which he is known in these pages. He was reared with care. Though his father died while he was yet young, he left sufficient estate to enable the mother to give to her children every advantage of education, and divide a small surplus between them as each arrived at man's estate. The young Servosse, therefore, ate, drank, and slept, studied, played, and quarreled, like other boys. Like others who enter college, and have constitutions sufficiently robust to avoid dyspepsia arising from sedentary habits and the frying-pan, he left it at the end of four years, with a diploma properly signed and sealed, as well as very prettily printed on mock parchment, which was quite as good as veritable sheepskin for such a purpose. He studied law, as so many sensible men have done before his day, and with his first mustache was admitted under all the legal forms to sign himself “Attorney and Counselor at Law,” and allowed to practice his art upon such clients as he could decoy into any of the courts of the Commonwealth of Michigan. Thereupon, putting in force the “Circumspice” which appeared upon the seal attached to his license, he cast about for a place in which to set snares for the unwary, and pitched upon the town of Peru; hung out his shingle; obtained a fair business; married the pretty Metta Ward; and, in the summer of his twenty-seventh year, manifested the first symptoms of that mental weakness which led him to perform the task of unwisdom hereinafter narrated.

IT was the 23d of July in his twenty-seventh year. He had been for several days in a very depressed state of mind, nervous and irritable, beset by gloomy forebodings, wakeful, and, when he did sleep, moaning as if in anguish of mind, talking in his sleep, or waking suddenly and crying out, as if in danger or distress. There was nothing in his social or business relations to justify any such state of mind. He was very warmly regarded by the little community in which he was settled,—a leader in its social life, an active member of the church in which he had been reared, and superintendent of its sabbath school. He had a good home, undistinguished by mortgage or incumbrance of any sort; a wife, whose energy and activity kept this home in the neatest possible condition, almost as it seemed without exertion, and certainly without the tyranny of servants; an office in the very center of the town, where it could not escape the search of the most unwilling or unobservant seeker; and a practice which yielded him more than he had any call to spend. All this should have made him the most contented and happy of men.

Yet, in spite of all these comforting surroundings, he had for a considerable time neglected his business to a marked degree, and seemed to have little interest in those things which ought most nearly to have concerned him. For the last few days he seemed to have had no heart or interest in any thing save the results of a battle, which was said to have been fought half a thousand miles away, in which neither he nor any one of his clients had an interest which could have been measured by the American unit of value or any fraction thereof. Yet this young attorney was refusing to eat or drink, because he did not know the results of said battle, or perhaps because he feared that it might not turn out to his notion.

Metta, his young wife, was surprised and alarmed. Never before had there been any thing like trouble in the breast of her spouse, that he did not lighten his heart of at least half its load by at once revealing to her the cause of his annoyance. The difficulties of each puzzling case were talked over with her; and not unfrequently her pure unbiased heart had pointed out to him equities which his grosser nature had failed to perceive. Had he been cast in an action, he was sure to come home at night, perhaps dragging and weary with the story of his discomfiture, to receive consolation and encouragement from her lips; but this new trouble he had studiously concealed from her. At least he had refrained from all conversation in regard to it, and revealed its existence only by the involuntary symptoms which we have set forth. But who could conceal such symptoms from the eye of love? She had seen them, and wept and trembled at the evil that portended. She was no skilled student of mental phenomena; but, if she had been, she would have known that all these indications—insomnia, causeless apprehension, anxiety in regard to matters of no personal moment to him, moodiness, and studious concealment of the cause of his disquietude—were most infallible indications of mental disorder. Yet, although she did not know this as a scientific fact, her heart had diagnosed the symptoms; and the prescience of love had taught her with unerring accuracy to apprehend the evil which impended. With the self-forgetfulness of womanly devotion, she had concealed her sorrow from the purblind eyes of the dull mole whose heart was occupied only with the morbid fancies which were eating their relentless way into his soul. She wept in secret over what she foresaw, and pressed her hands with tearful beseeching to her troubled heart, while her white lips uttered the prayer, which she felt could not be answered, “I pray Thee, let this cup pass from me!”

Yet she met him, through whom she knew this affliction must come, ever with smiles and gladness. At morn she kissed him farewell, as he stood on the vine-covered porch of their little cottage, when he started for his office, while the balmy breath of the summer morning blew over them, and the bees hummed from flower to flower, sipping the honeyed dew from the throats of the unclosed morning-glories. At noon, when he came for the mid-day meal, the door flew open before his hand had touched the knob, and she stood before him in the little hall, draped in the neat, cool muslin which became her so well, a smile upon her lips, and inextinguishable lovelight in her eyes. And when he would sit in moody silence after their pleasant tea, while the evening shadows fell around,—brooding, ever brooding, over the evil which he would persist in making his own,—she would steal into his lap, and her soft arms would clasp his neck, while her lips would not rest from prattle or song until bribed into silence by kisses or laughter. Never had his home been so sweet. Never could home be sweeter. Yet all this seemed only to increase his melancholy, and make him even more moody and disconsolate.

On the previous day he had come home before the tea-table had been set,—an hour before his usual time; but somehow she had expected that he would do so. She had peeped through the blinds of her little chamber, and seen him coming; so that, as he climbed wearily up the steps, he found her standing on the lower stair in the hall, her lips wreathed in smiles, and her head crowned with roses, as she waited to spring into his arms.

“O Metta!” he said in an agonized voice, as he clasped her to his breast, and then put her away, and looked into her blushing face and into the eyes which were crowding back the tears she was determined should not flow,—“O Metta, we are beaten!”

THERE were no more smiles in the cozy home after that announcement. He had brought with him a newspaper, whose horrible details absorbed his attention, and from which he read aloud to her, as with noiseless step and white lips and ashen cheeks she went about preparing the evening meal, of which they had partaken together for the last time alone. Another presence—grim and terrible—sat at the board with them that night, and imbittered all the sweet viands which her pretty hands had prepared with such loving care. The name of this presence was War. It sat opposite the wife, and over against the husband. Its shadow blighted his brain, and paralyzed her heart. She could not eat; and the Fool noticed dully, when he could lift his eyes from the paper beside his plate, that there were great black circles about her eyes, which were not there when he had first met her in the hall that morning.

After supper he went out, which was another sign of mental alienation; since he had never before known a time when he would willingly leave his pretty home and gentle wife for the society of men. He stayed late, and she pretended to be asleep when he came in. She had been weeping in her loneliness; and her heart was so sore that she could not venture to give him the good-night kiss, which she had never before omitted. In the morning there was the same heaviness; and the same Shadow sat with them at the breakfast-table and mocked at the Fool, as he read the morning's paper, and did not see the tears that rolled down the wife's cheeks.

He did not come home to dine, but sent word that he was too busy to leave his office; and it was late when he came to supper. His melancholy seemed to have departed; and he was strangely, unnaturally cheerful and tender to his young wife. He came up the steps with a bound, took her lovingly from the lower stair, where she generally awaited him, and, when he had kissed her a dozen times or so, bore her in his arms to the dining-room, where the tea-table was already spread. Through the whole meal he rattled on of every thing except the fearful Shadow which sat opposite, and which he pretended not to see. When the meal was over, he led his wife into the sitting-room; and taking a seat by the window, over which clambered a rose-tree, some blossoms from which were in her hair, he seated her upon his lap, kissed her again and again, and finally said in tremulous tones,—

“Metta, the governor has called for more troops.”

There was no response, except that the bowed head upon his breast nestled closer, and there was a sound of a sob choked down in the white throat.

“Don't you think, Metta, that I—that is—we—ought to do something—for the country?”

Then came a little wailing cry.

“Didn't I pick lint for two whole days, and sew bandages, and roll them; and [a burst of tears] I'm sure I'm willing to do it every day—if—if—if it will do any good.”

Then the tears flowed in a torrent, and the slender form shook with successive sobs, as if a great deep had been suddenly broken up.

“Oh, I didn't mean that!” said the Fool. “Don't you think I ought to do something?—that I ought to—to— go?”

WHILE the matter was in this unsettled state, the Fool received a letter from Colonel Ezekiel Vaughn of Pipersville, a town in which his command had been for some time quartered just before he had quitted the service, to which fact, among other things, he was indebted for the honor of Colonel Vaughn's, acquaintance.

Some few days after the collapse of the Confederacy, a gentleman had presented himself at the headquarters of the Fool in Pipersville, and directed the orderly in attendance to announce that,—

“Colonel Ezekiel Vaughn desired to surrender, and take the oath of allegiance.”

Thereupon he was ushered into the presence of our hero, and with considerable pomposity announced the fact again. Somehow he did not seem to the young soldier to have that air of one accustomed to camps and the usage of armies which was to be expected from a veteran of a four-years' war, who came in at the last moment to give up his sword, after all his comrades had been paroled and had departed. It is true, he had on the regulation gray suit of “the enemy;” and the marks of rank upon the collar might at one time have been intended for the grade he had announced. He wore a light slouch hat, which, though not of any prescribed pattern, had evidently seen much service of some kind. But the surrender brought to light some queer specimens of uniform and equipments, so that Colonel Servosse would not have been surprised at any thing that an officer might have worn. There was something, however, in the loud and somewhat effusive greeting, which, even allowing all that it was possible should be credited to laxity of discipline, showed that the man before him was not accustomed to association with military men. So he asked quietly,—

“Of what regiment, sir?”

“Colonel Vaughn,—Colonel Vaughn,” said that worthy, depositing himself upon a camp stool, as if in assertion of his familiarity with military surroundings. “Well, sir,” he continued in a loud and somewhat assuming tone, “you've got us, overpowered us at last. It was the Irish and Germans that did it. I had no idea you could get so many of them. They just swarmed on your side. The Yankees never could have whipped us in the world by themselves,—never. But it's over. I surrender, —give up,—quit. I'm not one of those that want to keep up a fuss always. I've come in to give myself up, and go to work now to try and make bread and meat, sir,—bread and meat. You uns have freed all the niggers, so that we have nobody to work for us. Have to come to it ourselves. Haven't you got a mule you could let me have, Colonel? Hain't got no money; but Zek'le Vaughn's credit's tolerably good yet, I reckon. Lost forty odd niggers,—as likely ones, too, as ever stood 'twixt soil and sunshine,—and now have got to go to plowing—at my age. It's hard; but we've got to have bread and meat,—bread and meat, sir. Hard, but can't be helped. Did all I could agin ye; but here you are. Let me take the oath. I want to be sworn, and go to plowing before the sun gets too hot.”

“What regiment did you say, sir?” repeated the officer.

IN a little time another party was ushered into the colonel's quarters. He was a tall, lank countryman, clad in a suit of country jeans, which was at that time almost the exclusive wear. He had a long, scraggly beard, of a dull, sandy color, with streaks of gray; and, as he took off his hat and bowed deferentially, his head appeared quite bald. There was a shrewd look in his small gray eyes, and he seemed to approach the officer as one who had a right to speak freely with him. He coughed slightly, and put a hand to his gray beard with a pathetic gesture as he said,—

“Colonel Servosse, I reckon.”

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?” was the answer.

“Wal, I don't know ez any thin'. I jes' thought I'd drop in an' chat a little.” He coughed again, and added apologetically, “I'll set down, ef you'll allow.”

“Oh, certainly!” said the officer; but the stranger had seated himself without waiting for a reply.

“I reckon you don't know me, Colonel. No? Wal! my name's Brown,—Jayhu Brown.”

“Jehu Brown! Not the man who piloted the boys that escaped from Salisbury prison through the mountains in eighteen sixty-four?”

“Yes,” with another cough, “I'm that man. You weren't in the crowd; were ye, Colonel?”

“No; but I had a friend who was, and he gave me an explicit injunction, if ever I came into this section to find you out, remember him to you, and, if I could serve you in any manner, to do so for his sake.”

“Thank ye. What might be his name?”

“Edgarton—Captain Edgarton—of the Michigan Battery!"

“Oh, yes! I mind him well now. A big-shouldered, likely man, with long hair curlin' in his neck. I cut it off, so that it shouldn't be a mark to foller us by. He's well, I hope.” And the old man coughed again.

“In excellent health. Is a colonel of artillery now, and chief of that arm, on the staff of General Davis of the Fourteenth Corps. He would be overjoyed to see you.”

“Thank ye, thank ye! So you'd heard of ole Jayhu before?” said he with another apologetic cough. “I thought I'd never seed ye. It's not often Jayhu Brown forgits a man he's once sot his eyes on, or his name either; an' I couldn't make out that I'd ever run across yours, though them prisoners was that thin an' wasted that the best man might forget to make 'em out arter they'd hed a few months of full feed.” He coughed again, a sort of chuckling hack, which seemed to take the place of laughter with him.

“You seem to be in bad health, Mr. Brown,” remarked the colonel, alluding to his cough.

“Wal, not partickelar,” answered Brown. “[Hack, hack.] I never was very stout, though I've managed to pull through as many close places as most men. That was a monstrous close time going with them ar fellows from Salisbury. [Hack, hack.]”

“Won't you have a little whiskey?” asked the colonel, mindful of what constituted hospitality in the region where he was.

“Wal, now, Colonel, it's mighty kind of you to think on't I don't keer ef I du just drink the health of an old friend with ye [Hack, hack.]”

The orderly was called, glasses set out, and liquor, sugar, and water placed before the old man.

“No, I thank ye!” said he: “none of them fixin's fer me. I allers did like my liquor clar,—clar an' straight.” And he poured out a brimming goblet of the fiery liquid. “I never drinks liquor, as some folks does, just for the fun of the thing; but I takes a full charge, an' means business. A man at my day hain't got no time to fool away mixin' drinks. [Hack, hack, hack.]”

He placed his hand over his mouth, as he coughed, with a pathetic expression of countenance that suggested visions of the churchyard.

“I don't often drink,—never, unless I need it, or feel a hankerin' fer it. Never was drunk in my life, and don't 'llow to be; but I've allers hearn that what was wuth doin' at all was wuth doin' well.”

Again he pressed his hand to his breast with that peculiar, hacking cough, which seemed to be an apology, chuckle, or explanation, as served. His tall, slender form and solemnity of manner gave it a strange, almost ghastly, effect.

“You seem to have a very troublesome cough, Mr. Brown,” said the colonel.

WARRINGTON had been the seat of an old family whose ancestor, many years before the Revolution, had erected the usual double log-house (or “two-decks-and-a-passage,” as it is still called in that country), in the midst of a charming oak-grove, upon a gently sloping hill, which rose in the bend of as fair a stream as ever babbled over the rocks in foolish haste towards the far-away sea. This log-house had in time given way to a more pretentious structure of brick; the grove had been thinned and trimmed, and avenues laid out in it; and the years which had made the house old and damp, worn the mortar from the bricks, and covered the cypress roof with a carpet of moss, had added glory to the forest monarchs which stood around it, and stretched, year by year, their great arms closer and closer about it, as if to hide its imperfections, and screen its decrepitude from the beholder.

The Warringtons themselves were akin to some of the highest families in the State, and so prided themselves upon their opulence and position that they became chary of alliances with others. They intermarried until the vigor which had amassed great estates became weakened, and imbecility and vice succeeded. The estates were squandered, the revenues lessened, and one plantation after another absorbed, until finally Warrington itself, the family-seat, went to satisfy the demands of importunate creditors half a score of years before our story. Fortunately (or unfortunately, rather, for our Fool) the plantation fell into the hands of an eccentric Frenchman, a bachelor with an abundant fortune, and a taste for horticulture and pomology. He was struck with the beauty of the situation, and the quality of the fruits produced there; and building a neat lodge on one side of the grounds, almost overhanging a little waterfall, which he had improved until it became one of the chief attractions of the place, he shut up the great house, and devoted himself to the culture of fruits and flowers with a contented zeal which yielded marvelous results. All about the central grove of oak and hickory were orchards and vineyards of the rarest and most luscious fruits. Evergreens had been interspersed with deciduous varieties in the grove, and trees of quaint habit and striking foliage were grouped here and there through the grounds.

Of the plantation beyond the immediate surroundings of the house—the six hundred acres of alternate hill and bottom, with woodland and old field interspersed—he had been less careful, having left it in the hands of an overseer to be cultivated or left idle as the fancy or inclination of that worthy might dictate. All he wanted from that portion of his property was, that it should pay the expense of its own cultivation, and furnish enough corn, meat, and forage to subsist himself and the two “boys” (slaves) whom he kept to help him in his horticultural operations, together with the horses and mules employed on the plantation. This was easy, without cultivating more than one-half the arable land. The overseer consequently reduced his cares, and accomplished all his employer required, by “turning out” from year to year portions of the plantation, and failing to “take in” any new ground. The consequence was that when Mr. Noyotte died, in the second year of the war, the bulk of the farming-lands had grown up into pine and sassafras, with rank sedge-grass waving thickly between, and great red gullies stretching across towards every ravine and water-course. The lands which had been under actual cultivation had become very much worn and depreciated by slothful management, until the hillsides were washed, and the bottoms filled with the detritus, to the great detriment not only of the slopes above, but also of the rich alluvium beneath.

The eccentric owner had died, so far as was known, without heirs. He had never been a favorite in the neighborhood, and very little was known of his affairs. His housekeeper, a quadroon woman, claimed his estate under a will duly executed; but as it was suggested that she was a slave and incapable of “taking” under it, and as she was unable to prove the contrary, the will was set aside, and an administrator appointed. It was found that the deceased had become indebted to an extent which his personal estate was insufficient to discharge, especially considering the very low prices which it brought at the sale which the administrator made for that purpose.

Nearly every thing was bought by Colonel Vaughn at figures which would have amazed one who knew nothing of how such matters may be arranged. It was given out and believed that Colonel Vaughn had been authorized, by a letter which had passed the blockade, to represent the heirs of the deceased,— nephews and nieces who lived in France,—and that he was buying in the property just to hold for them. Therefore, when likely negro slaves were bid off by Colonel Vaughn for fifty dollars apiece in Confederate money, every one said it was all right, and there was no counter-bidding. The administrator made his report of sales, and, there being a deficiency of assets, obtained an order to sell the lands, which he was authorized to do either at public or private sale.

Less than ten dollars an acre for such a plantation seemed to the Fool, who was accustomed to the high prices of land at the North, extravagantly cheap,—as perhaps it was in the abstract. He did not know that in its palmiest days the plantation would never have brought that price at a cash sale; while its condition had so deteriorated, that, by the same scale of prices, it would now hardly have been worth more than half that sum: besides which, the deleterious effects of the war upon the value of all property in that region were hardly to be estimated. Of all this he took no account. He answered at once that Colonel Vaughn might take the property at the price named, if he could get a good title. Of that he wished to be sure. Then there came an abstract of title from an attorney of the highest repute, as he well knew, and with it this note:—

So the Fool sold his pretty home, packed up his household idols, took his wife and little daughter, and went to seek health, happiness, and fortune in Dixie. The trade which had been initiated by the persistent Vaughn was duly consummated, and Comfort Servosse became the owner in fee of the family-seat of the Warringtons. It took almost all of his little fortune to pay for it; but, when he had done so, he felt that he had accomplished a good work. He had made a fair bargain, and had now a basis for future happiness and prosperity; and for this he felt himself under some obligation to Colonel Vaughn, and came to the conclusion, that, if that worthy was not gifted with a stomach for fight, he was at all events a good-hearted, obliging fellow. It was not till afterwards that he found out how many prices he had paid; for, when the heirs of Mr. Noyotte —the nephews and nieces in France—sent over to reclaim the residue of the property in the hands of the administrator, it appeared from the record that the land had been sold privately to Colonel Vaughn in 1863, and that there had been received in payment thereof a certain amount of Confederate money, which was duly filed by the administrator, and reported by him as having been lost by the events of the war.

But these things were unknown to the Fool for several years; and Warrington came into his hands a new toy, unsmutched by any suspicion that he had paid too much for his whistle.

WHY attempt to paint the delights of that first winter at Warrington?

Upon examining the place, it was found that the Frenchman's lodge had been used for purposes which prevented its present occupation as a dwelling, and they were forced to go into the old brick mansion. It needed much repairing, and at the best was worth more to look at than to occupy. Yet there was a certain charm about the great rooms, with their yawning fireplaces and dingy ceilings. Transportation was yet defective; and it was long before their furniture could arrive over railroads, worn and old, which had been the object of attack by both armies at different periods of the war.

It was the middle of October when they entered upon their new possession; and all was so new and so lovely to Metta and the little Lily, that no lack of creature-comforts could have checked their enthusiasm. The balmy air, the unfamiliar landscape, the strange sense of isolation which always marks the Southern plantation life, and, above all, the presence of the husband and father who had been absent so long, all united to make them superlatively happy.

Metta rode with her husband all over the country, whose strange irregularity became every day more pleasing to them, —through the thick woods along the bridle-path, where the ground was covered with autumn foliage which had fallen from ripeness rather than from the effects of frost; past the little country farm-houses and the seats of wealthy planters; fording rivers, and crossing rude ferries; every one whom they met, whether of high or low degree or of whatever race, having something about him which was new and strange to one of Northern birth and education.

A letter which Metta wrote to her sister shortly after they arrived will show the feelings of the young wife:—