Things grew worse. In a year, when just eighteen years old, P. Henry, Junior, got married--married a rollicking country lass, as foolish as himself--done in bravado, going home from a dance, calling a minister out on his porch, in a crazy-quilt, to perform the ceremony. John Henry would have applied the birch to this hare-brained bridegroom, and the father of the girl would have stung her pink-and-white anatomy, but Patrick coolly explained that the matter could not be undone--they were duly married for better or for worse, and so the less fuss the better. Patrick loved his Doxey, and Doxey loved her Patrick, and together they made as precious a pair of beggars as ever played Gipsy music at a country fair. Most of the time they were at the home of the bride's parents--not by invitation--but they were there. The place was a wayside tavern. The girl made herself useful in the kitchen, and Patrick welcomed the traveler and tended bar. So things drifted, until Patrick was twenty-four, when one fine day he appeared on the streets of Williamsburg. He had come in on horseback, and his boots, clothing, hair and complexion formed a chromatic ensemble the color of Hanover County clay. The account comes from his old-time comrade, Thomas Jefferson, who was at Williamsburg attending college. "I've come up here to be admitted to the bar," gravely said P. Henry to T. Jefferson. "But you are a barkeeper now, I hear." "Yes," said Patrick; "but that's the other kind. You see, I've been studying law, and I want to be admitted to practise." It took several minutes for the man who was to write the Declaration of Independence to get it through his head that the matter wasn't a joke. Then he conducted the lean, lank, rawboned rustic into the presence of the judges. There were four of these men: Wythe, Pendleton, Peyton and John Randolph. These men were all to be colleagues of the bumpkin at the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia, but that lay in the misty future. They looked at the candidate in surprise; two of them laughed and two looked needlessly solemn. However, after some little parley, they consented to examine the clown as to his fitness to practise law. In answer to the first question as to how long he had studied, his reply was, "About six weeks." One biographer says six months, and still another, with anxious intent to prove the excellence of his man, says six years. We had better take Jefferson's word--"Patrick Henry's reply was six weeks." As much as to say: "What difference is it about how long I have studied? You are here to find out how much I know. There are men who can get more in six weeks than others can in six years--I may be one of these."