A realization that the "gun-lugger" had friends "higher up" percolated
at the station-house in another hour, when a limousine halted at the
door, and a legal celebrity, whose ways were not the ways of police
stations or magistrates' courts, stepped to the curb.
"I am waiting to meet Mr. Lescott," announced the Honorable Mr.
Wickliffe, curtly.
When a continuance of the case had been secured, and bond given, the
famous lawyer and Samson lunched together at the studio as Lescott's
guests, and, after the legal luminary had thawed the boy's native
reserve and wrung from him his story, he was interested enough to use
all his eloquence and logic in his efforts to show the mountaineer what
inherent necessities of justice lay back of seemingly restrictive laws.
"You simply 'got in bad' through your failure to understand conditions
here," laughed the lawyer. "I guess we can pull you through, but in
future you'll have to submit to some guidance, my boy."
And Samson, rather to Lescott's surprise, nodded his head with only a
ghost of resentment. From friends, he was willing to learn.
Lescott had been afraid that this initial experience would have an
extinguishing effect on Samson's ambitions. He half-expected to hear
the dogged announcement, "I reckon I'll go back home. I don't b'long
hyar nohow." But no such remark came.
One night, they sat in the cafe of an old French hostelry where, in
the polyglot chatter of three languages, one hears much shop talk of
art and literature. Between the mirrored walls, Samson was for the
first time glimpsing the shallow sparkle of Bohemia. The orchestra was
playing an appealing waltz. Among the diners were women gowned as he
had never seen women gowned before. They sat with men, and met the
challenge of ardent glances with dreamy eyes. They hummed an
accompaniment to the air, and sometimes loudly and publicly quarreled.
But Samson looked on as taciturn and unmoved as though he had never
dined elsewhere. And yet, his eyes were busy, for suddenly he laid down
his knife, and picked up his fork.
"Hit 'pears like I've got a passel of things ter l'arn," he said,
earnestly. "I reckon I mout as well begin by l'arnin' how ter eat." He
had heretofore regarded a fork only as a skewer with which to hold meat
in the cutting.
Lescott laughed.
"Most rules of social usage," he explained, "go back to the test of
efficiency. It is considered good form to eat with the fork,
principally because it is more efficient," The boy nodded.