stopped by to get a friend. He chanced to meet him at the gate, and seeing that he carried a rope, he inquired: "What is that for?"

"That is to hang Musgrove with," he replied; and he looked Spanish daggers as he delivered himself of this information.

But Musgrove, who was one of the offending members of the former Legislature, escaped the noose. He managed to catch some rumor of what was intended and succeeding in eluding Judge Lynch. The crowd which assembled at the court-house was more than ready to dispatch him; and he was lucky to have found an asylum of safe retreat. However, the incident was only typical of the public temper which was now fully aroused.

As soon as the famous Yazoo Act was rescinded by the passage of the repealing bill which Governor Jackson himself framed, it was decided that a fire should be kindled in the public square for the purpose of consuming the iniquitous records; and accordingly both houses adjourned to the area immediately in front of the Statehouse where, amid formal ceremonies, one of the most thrilling scenes ever enacted in the history of Georgia took place.

Various accounts of the incident have been handed down, and one asserts that when everything was ready for the igniting sparks there suddenly appeared in the midst of the crowd an old man with snowy hair and beard who declared that, feeble as he was, he had come to see an act of public justice performed; and drawing from his bosom a sun-glass he declared that the fire which consumed the monstrous iniquity should come from heaven.

It is said that when the rays of the sun focused by this means had been made instrumental in purging the foul wrong, the old man vanished as suddenly as he had first appeared.

But, eliminating the elements of myth, the fact remains that the iniquitous records were fired by means of solar heat, and that the principal actor in the scene was Governor James Jackson. It was quite natural that the Yazoo companies should refuse to accept the return of the money and litigation ensued. The Supreme Court of the United States held that, under the strict construction of the law, the transfer was valid; but the general government opened negotiations with the swindlers and settled the cases eventually by the payment of large sums. In 1802 Georgia ceded the western lands to the Federal government, and out of them, together with what was acquired from Spain, Alabama and Mississippi were carved.

Soon after the dramatic episode in the public square at Louisville, Governor Jackson was called to the Chief Executive chair of Georgia: an appropriate testimonial of appreciation; and, after completing his term of office as Governor, he was returned to his old seat in the United States Senate, where he continued to represent Georgia until his untimely death, which occurred in Washington on March 19, 1806, at the age of forty-nine. He is buried in the Congressional Cemetery on the banks of the Potomac.

Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, states that the wounds which Governor Jackson received in personal combats caused by his relentless prosecution of the Yazoo conspirators undoubtedly hastened the end. Nor is there anything at variance with this hypothesis in the accounts

which Judge Charlton and Colonel Chappell have preserved. His devotion to Georgia caused his death. And thus allied in double similitude to the ancient Tishbite, he not only drew down the fire from heaven to consume the workings of iniquity, but he also rose to heaven, in the flaming chariot which his zeal had furnished, to blaze upon Georgia's burnished scroll like another splendid Mars.

CHAPTER IV.

Old Judge Dooly, of Lincoln.

VER in what Judge Longstreet calls "the dark corner of Lincoln" there lived during the earlier

decades of the last century an eccentric old judge of the Western circuit by the name of John M. Dooly. This gnarled old limb of the law was verily an odd specimen. Perhaps there never sat on the bench in Georgia a man whose faults were more pronounced; and, strange to say, he made no effort to conceal them. He could play a better game of poker and drink a stouter glass of ale than almost any one of the hardened offenders who quailed under his sentences; and he even made his accomplishments in this respect a matter of jest. But in spite of his failings, the Judge possessed many sturdy and robust characteristics. And whatever else he might have been, he was certainly not a hypocrite; for he was scrupulously honest. He was also unfailingly generous and kindhearted. And oftentimes in the courtroom the sympathetic tear is said to have lurked behind the judicial frown. Deeply versed in the law, he was really an able judge, quick to perceive the point at issue and fearless in dealing out even-handed justice to all litigants. Indeed, the exceptions taken to his rulings were extremely rare.

However, the saving grace in Judge Dooly's mental

make-up was his unrivaled wit. This invested him with an outward glamour which made even his faults in the eyes of the masses seem virtuous and heroic; and usually the courtroom was crowded with spectators who were less eager to hear the eloquent pleas of counsel than to catch the luminous sparks which fell from the Judge's anvil. Lawyers seldom twitted or provoked him, because they did not care to be worsted before the jury-box; but the ordinary proceedings gave him frequent occasions for droll comment. He never hesitated either for words or for ideas; and witty retorts were always on the tip of his tongue.

Judge Dooly was notably opposed to shedding blood; and, singular as it may seem, in view of his well-known antipathies in this respect, he came of fighting stock. His father, Col. John Dooly, for whom Dooly county in this State was named, was killed by the Tories in an unexpected assault upon his home at the outbreak of the Revolution; and his uncle, Capt. Thomas Dooly, suffered death in like manner at the hands of the Indians several years previous. But the Judge himself possessed little of the martial instinct. He detected no music in the roar of musketry and snuffed no perfume in the smell of gunpowder. He was pronouncedly a man of peace; and, if tradition can be trusted, he even carried his preference for the olive-branch so far that when some one called him a liar he accepted the epithet as gracefully as if the offender had tendered him the instrument which Apollo gave to Orpheus.

He may not really have been lacking in personal courage, but his wit was so much more conspicuous than his valor in all the transactions of which we have any ac