to their feet, and the ways and forms of ordinary business as
marvelous to their minds as the etiquette of the king's palace to
a peasant who has only looked from afar upon its pinnacled roof.
The recent statute had imposed upon the clerk a labor of no little
difficulty because of this very ignorance on the part of those whom
he was required to serve; but he was well rewarded. The clerk was
a man of portly presence, given to his ease, who smoked a long-stemmed
pipe as he sat beside a table which, in addition to his papers and
writing materials, held a bucket of water on which floated a clean
gourd, in easy reach of his hand.

"Be you the clerk, sail?" said a straight young colored man, whose
clothing had a hint of the soldier in it, as well as his respectful
but unusually collected bearing.

"Yes," said the clerk, just glancing up, but not intermitting his
work; "what do you want?"

"If you please, sah, we wants to be married, Lugena and me."

"_Registered_, you mean, I suppose?"

"No, we don't, sah; we means _married_."

"I can't marry you. You'll have to get a license and be married by
a magistrate or a minister."

"But I heard der was a law---"

"Have you been living together as man and wife?"