The judge, where he returned to Raleigh, resumed his own name of
Turberville, and he allowed it to be known that he would not be offended
by the prefix of General. During his absence he had accumulated a wealth
of evidence of undoubted authenticity, with the result that his claim
against the Fentress estate was sustained by the courts, and when
The Oaks with its stock and slaves was offered for sale, he, as the
principal creditor, was able to buy it in.
One of his first acts after taking possession of the property was to
have Mahaffy reinterred in the grove of oaks below his bedroom windows,
and he marked the spot with a great square of granite. The judge,
visibly shaken by his emotions, saw the massive boulder go into place.
“Harsh and rugged like the nature of him who lies beneath it--but
enduring, too, as he was,” he murmured. He turned to Yancy and Hannibal,
and added,
“You will lay me beside him when I die.”
Then when the bitter struggle came and he was wrenched and tortured by
longings, his strength was in remembering his promise to the dead man,
and it was his custom to go out under the oaks and pace to and fro
beside Mahaffy's grave until he had gained the mastery of himself. Only
Yancy and Hannibal knew how fierce the conflict was he waged, yet in the
end he won that best earned of all victories, the victory over himself.
“My salvation has been a costly thing; it was bought with the blood of
my friend,” he told Yancy.
It was Hannibal's privilege to give Cavendish out of the vast Quintard
tract such a farm as the earl had never dreamed of owning even in his
most fervid moments of imagining; and he abandoned all idea of going to
England to claim his title. At the judge's suggestion he named the
place Earl's Court. He and Polly were entirely satisfied with their
surroundings, and never ceased to congratulate themselves that they had
left Lincoln County. They felt that their friends the Carringtons at
Belle Plain, though untitled people, were still of an equal rank with
themselves; while as for the judge, they doubted if royalty itself laid
it any over him.
Mr. Yancy accepted his changed fortunes with philosophic composure.
Technically he filled the position of overseer at The Oaks, but the
judge's activity was so great that this position was largely a sinecure.
The most arduous work he performed was spending his wages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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