greeted with a smiling face the people of her husband's party. Many, of
course, she knew; only a difference of opinion stood between them and
the Churchills; but others were strangers to her--strangers and curious.
She felt it in the touch of their hands, in the stare of their eyes, and
her heart was vaguely troubled. She saw her old dancing master,
tiptoeing on the edge of the throng, and her smile brought Mr.
Pincornet, his green velvet and powdered wig, to her side. He put his
hand to his heart and bowed as to a princess.

"Ha! Mr. Pincornet," exclaimed Rand, "I remember our night at Monticello.
Now I have a teacher who will be with me always!--Jacqueline, I want you
to speak to my old friend, Adam Gaudylock."

"Ah, I know Mr. Gaudylock," answered Jacqueline, and gave the hunter
both her hands. "We all know and admire and want to be friends with Adam
Gaudylock!"

The picture that she made in her youth and beauty and bridal raiment was
a dazzling one. Adam looked at her so fully and so long that she blushed
a little. She could not read the thought behind his blue eyes. "You
shall be my Queen if you like," he said at last, and Jacqueline laughed,
thinking his speech the woodsman's attempt to say a pretty thing.

Rand drew forward with determination a small brown figure. "Jacqueline,
this is another good friend of mine--Miss Lavinia Mocket, the sister of
my law partner.--Vinie, Vinie, you _are_ shyer than a partridge! You
shan't scuttle away until you have spoken to my wife!"

"Yeth, thir," said Vinie, her hand in Jacqueline's. "I wish you well,
ma'am."

Rand and Adam laughed. Jacqueline, with a sudden soft kindliness for
the small flushed face and startled eyes, bent her flower-crowned head
and kissed Vinie. "Oh!" breathed Vinie. "Yeth, yeth, Mith Jacqueline, I
thertainly wish you well!"

"Where's Tom?" asked Rand. "Tom should be here--" but Vinie had slipped
from the ring about the bride. Adam followed; Mr. Pincornet had already
faded away. More important folk claimed the attention of the newly
wedded pair, and Mr. Mocket had not yet appeared when at last the
gathering, bound for the wedding feast at Mrs. Selden's, deserted the
interior of the church and flowed out under the portico and down the
steps to the churchyard and the coaches waiting in the road. Lewis and
Jacqueline Rand came down the path between the midsummer flowers. They
were at the gate when the sight and sound of a horse coming at a gallop
along the road drew from Rand an exclamation. "Tom Mocket--and his horse
in a lather! There's news of some kind--"

It was so evident, when the horse and rider came to a stop before the
church gate, that there was news of some kind, that the wedding guests,
gentle and simple, left all talk and all employment to crowd the grassy
space between the gate and the road and to demand enlightenment.
Mocket's horse was spent, and Mocket's face was fiery red and eager. He
gasped, and wiped his face with a great flowered handkerchief. "What is
it, man?" cried a dozen voices.

Mocket rose in his stirrups and looked the assemblage over. "We're all
Republicans--hip, hip, hurrah! Eh, Lewis Rand, I've brought you a
wedding gift! The stage had just come in--I got the news at the Eagle!
Hip, hip--"

"Tom," said Rand at his bridle rein, "you've been drinking. Steady, man.
Now, what's the matter?"

"A wedding gift! a wedding gift!" repeated Tom, taken with his own
conceit. "And I never was soberer, gentlemen, never 'pon honour! Hip,
hip, hurrah! we're all good Republicans--but you'll never guess the
news!--The Creole's dead!"

"No!" cried Rand.

There arose an uproar of excited voices. "Yes, yes, it's true!" shouted
Mocket. "The stage brought it. He was challenged by Aaron Burr. They met
at a place named Weehawken. Burr's first shot ended it.--Sandy'll
trouble us no more!"

"It's rumour--"

"No, no, it's gospel truth! There's a messenger from the President, and
letters from all quarters. He's dead, and Burr's in hiding! Gad! We'll
have a rouse at the Eagle to-night! Blue lights for Assumption and
Funding and the Sedition Bill and Taxes and Standing Armies and the
British Alliance--

     "Oh, Alexander, King of Macedon,
     Where is your namesake, Andy Hamilton?

"In a hotter place, I hope, than Saint Kitts!"

"Hush!" said Rand. "Don't be ranting like a Mohawk! When a man's dead,
it's time to let him rest."

He turned to the excited throng, and as he did so, he was aware that
Jacqueline was standing white and frozen, and that Unity was trying to
take her hand. He felt for her an infinite tenderness, and he promised
himself to give Tom Mocket an old-time rating for at least one
ill-advised expression. Such wedding gifts were not for Jacqueline. But
as for the news--Rand felt his cheek grow hot and his eyes glow. In all
the history of the country this was the decade in which political
animosity, pure and simple, went its greatest length. Each party thought
of the struggle as a battlefield; the Federalist strength was already
broken, and now if the leader was down, it was not in fighting and
Republican nature to restrain the wild cheer for the rout that must
follow. Rand was a fighter too, and a captain of fighters, and the
hundred whirling thoughts, the hundred chances, the sense of victory,
and the savage joy in a foe's defeat--all the feeling that swelled his
heart left him unabashed. But he thought of Jacqueline, and he tried to
choose his words. There would be now, he knew, no wedding feast at Mrs.
Selden's. Randolphs, Carrs, Coles, Carters, Dabneys, Gordons,
Meriwethers, and Minors--all would wish to hurry away. Plantation,
office, or tavern, there would be letters waiting, journals to read, men
to meet, committees, clamour, and debate. Of the ruder sort who had
crowded to the church, many were already on the point of departure,
mounting their horses, preparing for a race to the nearest tavern and
newspaper. "Gentlemen," exclaimed Rand, "if it's true news--if we have
indeed to deplore General Hamilton's death--"

"'Deplore!'" cried Mocket.

"'Deplore!'" echoed bluntly a Republican of prominence. "Don't let's be
hypocrites, Mr. Rand. We'll leave the Federalists to 'deplore'--"

"Oh, I'll deplore him with pleasure!" cried a third. "It won't hurt to
drop a tear--but for all that it's the greatest news since 1800!"

"Hip, hip, hurrah!"

"Weehawken! where's Weehawken? What's Burr in hiding for? Can't a
gentleman fight a duel? Let him come down here, and we'll give him a
triumph!"

"'Deplore!'"--

"I chose my word badly," said Rand, with the good-nature that always
disarmed; "I shall not weep over my enemy, I only mean that I would not
ignobly exult. Of course, sir, it is great news--the very greatest! And
all here will now want the leisure of the day."

"Tell them, Lewis, that I'll excuse them," said Cousin Jane Selden. "We
won't have a feast on the day of a funeral."

A little later, deep in the embrace of the old Selden coach, husband and
wife began their journey to the house on the Three-Notched Road. In the
minutes that followed the disposal of their wedding guests it had been
settled that they would not return to Mrs. Selden's--it was best to go
home instead. Cousin Jane would take Deb; Unity must return at once to
Fontenoy. Hamilton and Edward Churchill had served together on
Washington's staff; of late years they had seldom met, but the
friendship remained. Unity knew, but would not speak of it, that Uncle
Edward had finished, only the night before, a long letter to his old
comrade-at-arms. With the exception of Deb, all the little party were
aware that Jacqueline Rand's chances for forgiveness from her uncles
were measurably slighter for this day's tidings. She seemed dazed, pale
as her gown, but very quiet. She held Deb in her arms, and kissed Unity
and Cousin Jane Selden. Her husband lifted her into the coach, wrung the
others' hands, and followed her. "Good-bye, Lewis," said Mrs. Selden at
the door. "I'll send a bowl of arrack to your men, and I'll ride over
to-morrow to see Jacqueline. Good-bye, children, and God bless you
both!"

The coach and four took the dusty road. A turn, and Saint Margaret's was
hidden, another, and they were in a wood of beech and maple. The heat of
the day was broken, and a wind was blowing. Rand took Jacqueline's
hands, unclasped and chafed them. "So cold!" he said. "Why could we not
have heard this news to-morrow!"

She shuddered strongly. "The noble--the great--" her voice broke.

"Is it so you think of him?" he asked. "Well--I, too, will call him
noble and great--to-day.

     "No more for him the warmth of the bright sun;
     Nor blows upon his brow the wind of night!

"He's gone--and we all shall go. But this is our wedding day. Let us
forget--let us forget all else but that!"

"I grieve for the country," she said.

He kissed her hand. "Poor country! But her Sons die every day. She is
like Nature--she takes no heed. Let us, too, forget!"

"Oh, his poor wife--"

Rand drew her to him. "Will you mourn for me when I am dead?"

"No," she answered. "We will die together.--Oh, Lewis, Lewis, Lewis!"

"You promised that you would be happy," he said, and kissed her. "You
promised you would not let Fontenoy and the things of Fontenoy stand
like a spectre between us. Forget this, too. Everywhere there is dying.
But it is our wedding day--and I love you madly--and life and the
kingdoms of life lie before us! If you are not happy, how can I be so?"

"But I am!" she cried, and showed him a glowing face. "I am happier than
the happiest!"

The wood thinned into glades where the shadows of beech and maple were
beginning to be long upon the grass; then, in the afternoon light, the
coach entered open country, fields of ox-eyed daisies, and tall pine
trees standing singly.

"I never came this far," said Jacqueline. "I never saw the house."

"It is there where the smoke rises beyond that tobacco-field," answered
Rand. "All the tobacco shall be changed into wheat."

They came in sight of the house,--a long storey-and-a-half structure of
logs, with two small porches and a great earthen chimney. Pine trees
gave a scanty shade. House and outbuildings and fencing had all been
freshly whitewashed; over the porches flourished morning-glory and
Madeira vines, and the little yard was bright with hollyhock and
larkspur. Jacqueline put her hand in her husband's. Rand bent and kissed
it with something in touch and manner formal and chivalrous. "It is a
poor house for you. Very soon I shall build you a better."

"I want no better," she answered. "Have you not lived here all these
years?"

"Adam called you Queen. You should have a palace--"

"If I am Queen, then you must be a King. I think it is a lovely palace.
What is that tree by the gate--all feathery pink?"

"A mimosa. Mr. Jefferson gave it to me. It is like you--it does not
belong on the Three-Notched Road. It should stand in a palace garden
with dim alleys, fountains, and orange groves." He ended in a deeper
tone, "Why not? One day we may plant a mimosa in such a garden, and
smile and say, 'Do you remember the tree--do you remember our wedding
day?' Who knows--who knows?"

"You shall stay in that palace all alone," said Jacqueline. "I like this
one best."

The house stood back from the road in its clump of pines. The coach
stopped, and Rand and Jacqueline, descending, crossed a strip of short
grass tufted with fennel and velvet mullein to the gate beneath the
mimosa, entered the gay little yard, and moved up the path to the larger
of the two porches. They were at home. On the porch to welcome them
they found the white man who worked on shares and oversaw the farm, Joab
and three other slaves of Rand's, Mammy Chloe, Hannah, and the negro men
who belonged to Jacqueline. These gave a noisy greeting. Rand put money
into the hands of the slaves and sent them away happy to the tumble-down
quarter behind the house. The white man took his leave, and Mammy Chloe
and Hannah retired to the kitchen, where supper was in preparation. Rand
and Jacqueline entered together the clean, bare rooms.

Later, when Hannah's supper had been praised and barely touched, the two
came again to the porch, and presently, hand in hand, moved down the
steps, and over the dry summer grass to the mimosa at the gate. Here
they turned, and in the gathering dusk looked back at the house, the
sleeping pines, and all the shadowy surrounding landscape.

"Hear the frogs in the marsh!" said Rand. "They are excited to-night.
They know I have brought a princess home."

"Listen to the cow-bells," she said. "I love to hear them, faint and far
like that. I love to think of you, a little barefoot boy, bringing home
the cows--and never, never dreaming once of me!"

"When could that have been?" he asked. "I have always dreamed of
you--even when 'twas pain to dream!--There is the first whip-poor-will.
_Whip-poor-will!_ Once it had the loneliest sound! The moon is growing
brighter. The dark has come."

"I love you, Lewis."

"Darling, darling! Listen! that is the night horn. The lights are out in
the quarter. Do you hear the stream--our stream--hurrying past the apple
tree? It is hurrying to the sea--the great sea. We've put out to sea
together--you and I, just you and I!"

"Just you and I!" she echoed. "Oh, bliss to be together!"

"Let us go," he whispered. "Let us go back to the house," and with his
arm around her, they moved up the path between the flowers that had
closed with the night.

CHAPTER XIII

THE THREE-NOTCHED ROAD

Lewis Rand and his wife dwelt that summer and autumn in the house on the
Three-Notched Road, and were happy there. If the ghost of Gideon Rand
walked, the place, renovated, clean, bright, and homely sweet, showed no
consciousness of any influence of the dark. Passers-by on the dusty road
looked curiously at the gay little yard and the feathery mimosa and the
house behind the pines. "Lewis Rand lives there," they said, and made
their horses go more slowly.

The pines hid the porch where Jacqueline sat with her work, or, hands
about her knees, dreamed the hours away. She was much alone, for after
the first week Rand rode daily to his office in Charlottesville. There
was no reconciliation with her people. All her things had been sent from
Fontenoy. Linen that had been her mother's lay with bags of lavender in
an old carved chest from Santo Domingo, and pieces of slender, inlaid
furniture stood here and there in the room they called the parlour. Her
candlesticks were upon the mantel, and her harp made the room's chief
ornament. Her fortune, which was fair, had been formally made over to
her and to Rand. She was glad it was no less; had it been vastly
greater, she would only have thought, "This will aid him the more." The
little place was very clean, very sweet, ordered, quiet, and lovable.
She was a trained housewife as well as the princess of his story, and
she made the man she loved believe in Paradise. Each afternoon when he
left the jargon and wrangling of the courtroom his mind turned at once
to his home and its genius. All the way through the town, beckoning him
past the Eagle and past every other house or office which had for him an
open door, he saw Jacqueline waiting beneath the mimosa at the gate,
clad in white, her dark hair piled high, about her throat a string of
coral or of amber. Out on the road, beneath the forest trees, in the
radiance of the evening, he rode with his head high and a smile within
his eyes. All the scheming, all the labour and strife of the day, fell
from him like rusty armour, and his spirit bathed itself in the thought
of that meeting. She did not always await him at the gate; sometimes he
found her half a mile from home, sitting in the sunset light upon a
stone beside the road. Then he dismounted, kissed her, and they walked
together back to their nest in the tree of life. Supper-time would
follow, with the lighted candles and the fragrance from Hannah's
kitchen, and the little humorous talk with the old, fond, familiar
servants, and the deeper words between husband and wife of things done
or to be done; then quiet upon the porch, long silences, broken
sentences of deep content, while the glow faded and the stars came out;
then the candles again and his books and papers, while she read or sewed
beside him. When his task was done she sang to him, and so drew on the
hour when they put out the lights and entered the quiet, spotless
chamber where the windows opened to the east.

Rand worked as he had not worked before. All the springs were running,
all the bitter wells were sweet; to breathe was to draw in fulness of
life, and all things were plastic to his touch. Love became genius, and
dreaming accomplishment. In Albemarle, in Virginia, in the country at
large, the time was one of excitement, fevered labour, and no mean
reward. The election for President was drawing on. Undoubtedly the
Republicans and Jefferson would sweep the country, but it behooved them
to sweep it clean. The Federalist point of view was as simple. "Win!
but we'll not make broad the paths before you! Winning shall be
difficult." The parties worked like Trojans, and he who could speak
spoke as often as any leader of heroic times.

At court house and at tavern banquets, at meetings here and meetings
there, barbecues, dinners, races, militia musters, gatherings at
crossroads and in the open fields, by daylight and by candlelight and by
torchlight, Republican doctrine was expounded, and Federalist doctrine
made answer. The clash of the brazen shields was loud. It was a forensic
people and a plastic time. He who could best express his thought might
well, if there were power in the thought, impress it so deeply that it
would become the hall-mark of his age. His chance was good. Something
more than fame of a day shone and beckoned before every more than able
man. To stamp a movement of the human mind, to stamp an age, to give the
design to one gold coin from the mint of Time,--what other prize worth
striving for? The design?--one thought of moderate Liberty and the head
of Washington, another thought of Liberty and the head of Jefferson,
another of License and a head like Danton's, another of Empire and a
conqueror's head.

In Albemarle, at all Republican gatherings the man most in demand was
Lewis Rand; and the surrounding counties of Fluvanna, Amherst, Augusta,
and Orange considered themselves happy if he could be drawn to this or
that mass meeting. It was not easy to attract him. He never consciously
said to himself, "Be chary of favours; they will be the more prized"; he
said instead, "I'll not waste an arrow where there's no gold to hit."
When he saw that it was worth his while to go, he went, and sent an
arrow full into the gold. Amherst and Augusta, Fluvanna and Orange,
broke into applause and prophecy, while upon each return home
Republican Albemarle welcomed him with added rapture, and Federalist
Albemarle hurled another phrase into its already comprehensive anathema.
His reputation grew amain, both in his native section and in the state
at large. Before the autumn his election to the House of Delegates,
which in April seemed so great a thing, began to assume the appearance
of a trifle in his fortunes. He would overtop that, and how highly no
man was prepared to say. Through all the clashing of shields, through
Republican attack and Federalist resistance, through the clamour over
Hamilton's death, the denunciation and upholding of Burr, the
impeachment of Chase, the situation in Louisiana, the gravitation
towards France, and the check of England, the consciousness of Pitt and
the obsession of Napoleon,--through all the commotion and fanfaronade of
that summer Rand kept a steady hand and eye, and sent his arrows into
the gold. In the law, as in politics, he was successful. A comprehensive
knowledge and an infinite painstaking, a grasp wide and firm, a somewhat
sombre eloquence, a personal magnetism virile and compelling,--these and
other attributes began to make his name resound. He won his cases, until
presently to say of a man, "He has Lewis Rand," was in effect to
conclude the matter. He had no Federalist clients; that rift widened and
deepened. Federalist Albemarle meant the Churchills and the Carys, their
kinsmen, connections, and friends. The gulf seemed fixed.

Jacqueline, keeping at home in the house on the Three-Notched Road, saw
very few from out her old life. Those who had been her girlhood friends
kept aloof. If their defection pained her, she gave no sign--she had
something of her father's pride. Among the Republican gentry she was of
course made much of, and she saw something of the plainer sort of her
husband's friends. Tom Mocket came occasionally on business with Rand,
and once he brought Vinie with him. Jacqueline liked the sandy-haired
and freckled scamp, and made friends with Vinie. In the first July days
Adam Gaudylock often sat upon her porch, but now for weeks he had been
wandering in the West. Once or twice Mr. Pincornet, straying that way,
had delicately looked his pity for a lovely woman in a desert waste.
Cousin Jane Selden remained her good neighbour and kind friend, and once
Mr. Ned Hunter brought a message from Unity. Her old minister came to
see her, and Dr. Gilmer, when illness called him in that direction,
always drew rein at her gate. Ludwell Cary was out of the county, and
Fairfax Cary never rode that way. Unity came whenever it was possible,
and thrice, between July and October, Deb and Miranda and a horsehair
trunk arrived for a blissful week. To Deb they were unshadowed days. The
log house, the pine wood and singing stream, an owl that hooted each
night, a row of tiger lilies and a thicket of blackberries, Jacqueline
to tell her stories, Mammy Chloe and Hannah, the new brother who came
home every evening riding a great bay horse and kissing Jacqueline
beneath the mimosa tree, the brother who showed her twenty unguessed
treasures and gave her the Arabian Nights,--Deb thought the week on the
Three-Notched Road a piece out of the book, and wept when she must go
back to Fontenoy.

But Colonel Churchill and Major Edward never came, never wrote, never
sent messages to Jacqueline, never, she forced Unity to tell her,
mentioned her name or would hear it mentioned at Fontenoy. Only Aunt
Nancy, lying always in the chamber, her key-basket beside her on the
white counterpane, talked of her when she chose. "But she talks as
though you were dead," acknowledged Unity; then, "Oh, Jacqueline, it
must all come right some day! And as for him, he's talked of more and
more,--everywhere one goes, one hears his name! He's head and front of
his party here. Oh, what a party! Mrs. Adams writes that at Washington
they eat soup with their fingers and still think _Ça Ira_ the latest
song! Cannot you convert him? They say the Mammoth's jealous, and that
your husband and Colonel Burr correspond in cipher. Is that so?"

"I don't know," said Jacqueline. "I shall not try to convert him. I
would have a man loyal to his beliefs--so would you, Unity! Suppose
yourself of another party--would you change Fairfax Cary? You would wish
him to stay always the Federalist that he is! So with me. I love my
great Republican."

"I love you," said Unity. "Kiss me. Now, when do you go to Richmond?"

"Next month. Oh, Unity, if Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward would but make
friends before we go!"

Unity, stopping for an hour at Cousin Jane Selden's, remarked to that
lady, "Ah, she is happy! She does not know and she does not care what is
said of Lewis Rand. They say dreadful things. The last Gazette--"

"She doesn't hear a Federalist upon the subject," replied Cousin Jane.
"The last Gazette! Pooh! who believes what a Federalist paper says of a
Republican, or a Republican paper says of a Federalist? Most men and all
newspapers are liars."

"It says that he is a Buonaparte ready to break the shell."

"Buonaparte's a great man, my dear."

"And that the Mammoth's alarmed--"

"Like the hen that hatched the eaglet--"

"And that Lewis Rand's no more Republican at heart than he is
Federalist. He's just for Lewis Rand."

"Hm-m-m!"

"And that his name's known as far west as the Mississippi."

"There's no law against a man's name spreading. It's what every man
strives for. One succeeds, and the birds that carried the news are
indignant."

"And that he's an Atheist."

"Lewis Rand's no saint, child, but he's no fool either. You'll be
telling me next that he mistreats his wife."

"Ah, he does not do that!" exclaimed Unity. "She's deep in love. He
can't be so very bad, can he, Cousin Jane?"

"He's not a monster, child: he's just a man.--And now, Unity, I am
making damson preserves to-day."

"I'll go," said Unity, rising. "But they believe these things at
Fontenoy."

"Do they believe them at Greenwood?"

"I don't know. Ludwell Cary is still away--"

"When are you going to marry his brother?"

"Why, I don't know that I am going to marry his brother at all,"
answered Unity, her foot upon the coach step. "Good-bye, Cousin Jane. I
wish I could make pot-pourri like yours."

"You must know what spices to use, and when to gather the roses," said
Cousin Jane. "Good-bye, child! You read too many romances, but you're a
loyal soul and one of your gowns is prettier than another. Don't you
believe all the world says of Lewis Rand. It's mighty prone to make
mistakes. The man's just a sinner like the rest of us."

At Fontenoy, that September afternoon, Fairfax Cary, riding over from
Greenwood, found Miss Dandridge seated upon the steps which ran down to
the garden from the glass doors of the library. Her chin was in her
hands, and her black eyes were suspiciously bright. "You were crying,"
exclaimed the younger Cary. "Why?"

"I've been reading about the Capulets and the Montagues."

"You are not one to cry for the dead," said the young man. "Tell me
truly."

"No; I'm crying for the living. I've been talking to the Capulets. I've
been giving Uncle Edward a piece of my mind."

"Which he would not take?"

"Just so. Oh, it was a battle royal! But I lost--I always lose. He is
sitting there in triumphant misery, reading Swift. I brought my defeat
out here. Now and then I am glad I am a woman."

"I'm glad all the time," said Fairfax Cary. "Don't dwell on lost
battles. Unity, when are you going to let me fight all your battles?"

"I don't know," answered Miss Dandridge promptly. "I don't even know
that I would like to have all my battles fought for me. I'm not lazy,
and I believe my ancestors fought their own. Besides--would you fight
this one?"

There was a pause; then, "Do you love your cousin so?" asked the young
man.

"Love Jacqueline? Jacqueline is like my sister. If she is not happy,
then neither am I!"

"But she is happy. She loved Lewis Rand, and she married him."

"Yes, yes. But a woman may marry her lover and yet be unhappy. If he
takes her to a strange country, she may perish of homesickness."

"Has he taken her to a strange country?"

"Yes," cried Unity, with fire. "How can it but be a strange country?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "Why, why did she not love your brother!"

"That," said the younger Cary grimly, "is what I do not profess to
understand. And I would fight for your cousin, but I will not fight for
Lewis Rand. My brother's enemies are mine."

"You see. You wouldn't fight this battle, after all."

"Would Miss Dandridge wish me to?"

Unity regarded the sunset beyond the snowball bushes. "No," she said at
last, with a sigh and a shake of her head, "no, I wouldn't. I had rather
a man behaved like a man than like an angel."

"You are the angel. At least your cousin will not live much longer in
that log house, with the pines and the tobacco and the ghost of old
Gideon. Lewis Rand has bought Roselands."

"Roselands!"

"You knew it was for sale. Well, he's bought it. I had the news from the
agent. It's to be put in order this winter, and in the spring Rand will
come back from Richmond and take possession. It is strange to think of a
Rand owning Roselands!"

"A Churchill will own it, too! It will have been bought with Churchill
money. I am so glad! It can be made a lovely place. Jacqueline will have
the garden and the old, long drawing-room! Deb and I can go there
easily. It is all more fitting--I am glad!"

"It is too near Greenwood," said the other gloomily. "I think that
Ludwell will stay in Richmond."

"I'm sorry," said Unity softly and brightly. "I wish, I wish--but what's
the use in wishing? There! the sun has gone, and it is growing cold. I
have sat here until I'm no longer angry with Uncle Edward. Poor man! to
be reading Swift all this time!--I'll walk with you to the front porch."

"I thought," ventured the young man, "I thought that perhaps you might
ask me to stay to supper. It's so lonely at Greenwood."

"You stayed to supper last night," said Miss Dandridge pensively, "and
you were here to dinner the day before, and you rode over the preceding
afternoon, and the morning before that you read me Vathek.--Oh, stay to
supper by all means!"

Cary picked up her scarf and handed her down the steps to the
path that was beginning to be strewn with autumn leaves. "Miss
Dandridge--Unity--it has been fourteen mortal days since I last asked
you to marry me! You said I might ask you once a month--"

"I didn't," said Unity serenely. "I said once a month was too often."

"Aren't you ever going to love me?"

"Why, some day, yes!" replied Miss Dandridge. "When you've swum the
Hellespont like Leander, or picked a glove out of the lion's den like
the French knight, or battered down a haunted castle like Rinaldo, or
taken the ring from a murderer's hand like Onofrio, or set free the
Magician's daughter like Julio--perhaps--perhaps--"

"I must cast about to win my spurs!" said the younger Cary. "In the mean
time I'll ask you again, come fourteen days."

Late September passed into October. The nuts ripened, the forests grew
yellow and red, and the corn was stacked in the long, sere fields, above
which, each morning, lay a white mist. Goldenrod and farewell-summer
faded, but sumach and alder-berry still held the fence corners. The air
was fragrant with wood smoke; all sound was softened, thin, and far
away. A frost fell and the persimmons grew red gold. The song birds had
gone south, but there were creatures enough left in the trees.
Sometimes, through the thin forest, in the blue distance, deer were
seen; bears began to approach the corn-cribs, and in the unbroken
wilderness wolves were heard at night. Early and late the air struck
cold, but each midday was a halcyon time. In the last of October, on a
still and coloured morning, Rand and Jacqueline, having shaken hands
with the overseer and the slaves they were leaving, caressed the dogs,
and said good-bye to the cat, quitted the house on the Three-Notched
Road. At the gate they turned, and, standing beneath the mimosa, looked
back across the yard where the flowers had been touched by the frost, to
the house and the sombre pines. They stood in silence. Jacqueline
thought of the first evening beneath the mimosa, of the July dusk, and
the cry of the whip-poor-will. Rand thought, suddenly and
inconsequently, of his father and mother, standing here at the gate as
he had often seen them stand. There was no mimosa then.--Jacqueline
turned, caught his hand, and pressed it to her lips. He strained her in
his arms and kissed her, and they entered the chaise which was to carry
them to Richmond. Before them lay a hundred miles of sunny road, three
days' companionship in the blue, autumnal weather. A few moments, and
the house, the pines, and the hurrying stream were lost to view. "A long
good-bye!" said Rand. "In the spring we'll enter Roselands!"

"You value it more than I," answered Jacqueline. "I loved the house
behind us. Loved! I am speaking as though it were a thing of the long
past. Farewells are always sad."

"I value it for you," said Rand. "Have I not chafed, ever since July, to
see you in so poor a place? Roselands is not ideal, but it is a fairer
nest for my bird than that we've left!"

Jacqueline laughed. "'Roselands is not ideal!' I think Roselands quite
grand enough! Oh, Lewis, Lewis, how high you build! Take care of the
upper winds!"

"I'll build firmly," he answered. "The winds may do their worst. Here is
the old road to Greenwood. Now that the trees are bare, you can see the
house."

They drove all day by field and woodland. At noon they paused for
luncheon beside a bubbling spring in a dell strewn with red leaves, then
drove on through the haze of afternoon. There were few leaves left upon
the boughs. In the fields that they passed the stacked corn had the
seeming of silent encampments, deserted tents of a vanished army, russet
and empty wigwams drawn against a deep blue sky. Now and then, in the
darker woods, there was a scurry of partridges, the red gleam of a fox,
or a vision of antlers, and once a wild turkey, bronze and stately,
crossed the road before the chaise. When they passed a smithy or a mill,
the clink of iron, the rush of water, came to them faintly in the smoky
air. That night they slept at the house of a wealthy planter and good
Republican, where, after supper, all sat around a great fire, the
children on footstools between the elders, and stories were told of
hunting, of Indian warfare, and of Tarleton's raid. At ten they made a
hall and danced for an hour to a negro's fiddling, then a bowl of punch
was brought and the bedroom candles lighted.

In the morning Rand and Jacqueline went on towards Richmond, and at
sunset they found themselves before a country tavern, not over clean or
comfortable, but famous for good company. The centre of a large
neighbourhood, it had been that day the scene of some Republican
anniversary, and a number of gentlemen, sober and otherwise, had
remained for supper and a ride home through the frosty moonlight. Among
them were several lawyers of note, and a writer and thinker whose
opinion Rand valued. Besides all these there were at the inn a group of
small farmers, a party of boatmen from the James, the local schoolmaster
and the parson, a Scotch merchant or two, and the usual idle that a
tavern draws. All were Republicans, and all knew their party's men. Rand
descended from the chaise amidst a buzz of recognition, and after supper
came a demand that he should speak from the tavern porch to an
increasing crowd. He did not refuse. To his iron frame the fatigue of
the day was as naught, and there were men in the throng whom he was
willing to move. It came to him suddenly, also, that Jacqueline had
never heard him speak. Well, he would speak to her to-night.

His was an universal mind. On occasion he could stoop to praise one
party and vituperate another, but that was his tongue serving his
worldly interest. The man himself dealt with humanity, wherever found
and in whatever time, however differentiated, however allied, with its
ancestry of the brute and its destiny of the spirit; with the root of
the tree and the far-off flower and every intermediate development of
stem and leaf; with the soil that sustained the marvellous growth, and
with the unknown Gardener who for an unfathomable purpose had set the
inexplicable seed in an unthinkable universe. From the ephemera to the
star he accepted and conjectured, and while he often thought ill of the
living, he had never yet thought ill of life. He had long been allied
with a thinker who, with a low estimate of at least so much of human
nature as ran counter to his purposes, yet believed with devoutness in
the perfectibility of his species, and had of the future a large, calm,
and noble vision. If Lewis Rand had not Jefferson's equanimity, his sane
and wise belief in the satisfying power of common daylight, common
pleasures, all the common relations of daily life; if some strangeness
in his nature thrilled to the meteor's flight, craved the exotic,
responded to clashing and barbaric music, yet the two preached the same
doctrine. He believed in the doctrine, though he also believed that
great men are not mastered by doctrine. They made doctrine their
servant, their useful slave of the lamp. He knew--none better--that the
genie might turn and rend; that there was always one last, one fatal
thing that must not be asked. But his mind was supple, and he thought
that he could fence with the genie. Usually, when he spoke, he believed
all that he said, believed it with all the strength of his reason, and
yet--he saw the kingdoms of the world. To-night, in the autumn air, pure
and cold beneath the autumn stars, with the feeling and the fragrance of
the forest day about him, in sympathy with his audience, and conscious
in every fibre of the presence of the woman whom he loved, he saw no
other kingdom than that of high and tranquil thought.

Jacqueline, seated at her open window, listened for the first time to
any public utterance of her husband's. He was not a man who often spoke
of the processes of his thought. Sometimes, in the house on the
Three-Notched Road, he told her, briefly, his conclusions on such and
such a matter, but he rarely described the road by which he travelled.
She knew the conservative, the British, the Federal side of most
questions. That was the cleared country, familiar, safe, and smiling;
her husband's side was the strange forest which she had entered and must
travel through. She was yet afraid of the forest, of its lights and its
shadows, the rough places and the smooth, the stir of its air and the
possibility of wild beasts. To her it was night-time there, and where
the ground seemed fair and the light to play, she thought of the marsh
and the will-o'-the-wisp. She could not but be loyal to the old, trodden
ways. She had married Lewis Rand, not his party or its principles. But
to-night, as she listened, the light seemed to grow until it was dawn in
the forest, and the air to blow so cold, strong, and pure that she
thought of mountain peaks and of the ocean which she had never seen.
She was no longer afraid of the country in which she found herself.

Rand, standing in the red torchlight above the attentive crowd, preached
a high doctrine, preached it austerely, boldly, and well. He did not
speak to-night of the hundred party words, the flaunting banners,
systems, expedients, and policies fit for this turn of the spiral, born
to be disavowed, discarded, and thrown down by a higher, freer whorl;
but he gave his voice for the larger Republicanism, for the undying
battle-cry, and the ever-streaming battle-flag. He had no less a text
than the Liberty and Happiness of the human race, and he made no
straying from the subject.

Freedom! Happiness! What is freedom? What is happiness? Freedom is the
maximum of self-government finally becoming automatic, and the minimum
of government from without finally reduced to the vanishing-point.
Happiness is the ultimate bourne, the Olympian goal, the intense and
burning star towards which we travel. Does not its light even now fall
upon us? even now we are palely happy. And how shall we know the road?
and what if, in the night-time, we turn irremediably aside? How are they
to be attained, true Liberty and true Happiness? Learn! Light the lamp,
and the shadows will flee.--Self-government. Teach thyself temperance,
foresight, and wise memory of the past. Thou thyself, in thine own body,
art a community. See, then, that thy communal life is clean, that thy
will is in right operation, and thy minds divide thee not to disaster.
Thy very ego, is it not but thy president, the voice of all thy members,
representative of all that thy race has made thee to be, effect of ten
million causes, and cause of effects thou canst not see? Let thy ego
strengthen itself, deal justly, rule wisely, that thy state fall not
behind in this world-progress and be lost out of time and out of mind,
in a night without a dawn. There have been such things: over against
immortal gain there lies immortal loss. Work, then, while it is day, for
if thou work not, the night will make no tarrying. Know thyself, and,
knowing, rule that strange world of thine. Were it not a doom, were it
not a frightful doom, that it should come to rule thee? ... Government
from without! Government of to-day, Government abroad as we see it in
every journal, in every letter that we open--how heavy, how heavy is the
ball and chain the nations wear! If we alone in this land go free, if
for four golden years we have moved with lightness, look to it lest a
gaoler come! Government! What is the ideal government? It is a man of
business, worthy and esteemed, administering his client's affairs with
thoroughness, economy, and honour. It is a wise judge, holding the
balances with a steadfast hand, sitting there clothed reverently, to
judge uprightly and to do no more. It is a skilled council, a picked
band, an honourable Legion, chosen of the multitude, to determine the
line of march for an advancing civilization; to make such laws as are
according to reason and necessity and to make none that are not, and to
provide for the keeping of the law that is made. The careful man of
affairs, the upright judge, the honest maker of honest laws must needs
present an account for maintenance and for that expenditure which shall
give offence neither to generosity nor to justice; and the account must
be paid, yea, and ungrudgingly! Let us pay, then, each man according to
his ability, the tax that is right and fitting; and let us, moreover,
give due honour to the vanguard of the people. It is there that the
great flag waves with all the blazonry of the race. But we want no
substituted banner, no private ensign, no conqueror's flapping eagles!
Government! Honour the instrument by which we rule ourselves; but
worship not a mechanical device, and call not a means an end! Admirable
means, but oh, the sorry end! Therefore we'll have no usurping
Prætorian, no juggling sophist, no bailiff extravagant and unjust, no
spendthrift squandering on idleness that which would pay just debts! A
ruler! There's no halo about a ruler's head. The people--the people are
the sacred thing, for they are the seed whence the future is to spring.
He who betrays his trust, which is to guard the seed,--what is that
man--Emperor or President, Louis or George, Pharaoh or Cæsar--but a
traitor and a breaker of the Law? He may die by the axe, or he may die
in a purple robe of a surfeit, but he dies! The people live on, and his
memory pays. He has been a tyrant and a pygmy, and the ages hold him in
contempt.... War! There are righteous wars, and righteous men die in
them, but the righteous man does not love war. Conquest! Conquest of
ignorance, superstition, and indolence, conquest of the waste and void,
of the forces of earth, air, and water, and of the dying beast within
us, but no other conquest! We attained Louisiana by fair trade, for the
benefit of unborn generations. Standing armies! We want them not.
Navies! The sea is the mother of life; why call her that of death? Her
highways are for merchant ships, for argosies carrying corn and oil,
bearing travellers and the written thought of man; for voyages of
discovery and happy intercourse, and all rich exchange from strand to
strand. Why stain the ocean red? Is it not fairer when 'tis blue? Guard
coast-line and commerce, but we need no Armada for that. Make no
quarrels and enter none; so we shall be the exemplar of the nations....
Free Trade. We are citizens and merchants of the world. No man or woman
but lives by trade and barter. Long ago there was a marriage between the
house of Give and the house of Take, and their child is Civilization.
Sultan or Czar may say, "Buy here, sell there, and at this price. You
are my slave. Obey!" But who, in this century and this land, shall say
that to me--or to you? Are we free men? Then let us walk as such through
the marts of the earth. "Trade where you will," saith Nature. "It was so
I brought the tree to the barren isle, and scattered the life of the
seas." Authority of law! Respect the law, and to that end let us have
laws that are respectable. Laws are made to be kept, else we live in a
house of chicane. But there is a danger that decrees may thicken until
they form a dungeon grate for Freedom, until, like Gulliver, she is held
down to earth by every several hair. Few laws and just, and those not
lightly broken. The Contract between the States--let it be kept. It was
pledged in good faith--the cup went around among equals. There is no
more solemn covenant; we shall prosper but as we maintain it. Is it not
for the welfare and the grandeur of the whole that each part should have
its healthful life? The whole exists but by the glow within its parts.
Shall we become dead members of a sickly soul? God forbid! but sister
planets revolving in their orbits about one central Idea, which is
Freedom by Coöperation. To each her own life, varied, rich, complete,
and her communal life, large with service rendered and received! Each
bound to other and to that central Thought by primal law, but each a
sovereign orb, grave mistress of her own affairs! Slavery! Ay, I will
give you that though you want it not! Slavery is abominable. There is a
tree that grows in the tropics which they call the upas tree. All who
lie in the shadow of its branches fall asleep, and die sleeping. To-day
we lie under the upas tree--would that we were awake! I have heard
that--in the tropics--the sons sometimes hew down that which the fathers
have planted. I would that it were so in Virginia! Freedom of thought,
of speech, and of pen. I will away with this cope of lead, this Ancient
Authority, which is too often an Ancient Iniquity. Did it not have
once a minority? was it not once a New Thought? Is not a man's
thought to-day as potent, holy, and near the right as was his
great-grandfather's thought which was born in a like manner, of the
brain of a man, in a modern time? I will think freely and according to
reason. When it seems wise to tell my mind I will speak; and with
judgment I will write down my thought; and fear no man's censure.
Knowledge! I was a poor boy, and I strove for learning, strove hard, and
found it worth the striving. I know the hunger, and I know the rage when
one asks for knowledge and asks in vain. Is it not a shameful thing that
happy men, lodged warm and clear in the Interpreter's house, should hear
the groping in the dark without, know that their fellows are searching,
in pain and with shortness of breath, for the key which let the
fortunate in, and make no stir to aid those luckless ones? Give of your
abundance, or your abundance will decay in your hands and turn to that
which shall cause you shuddering!

His words went on, magnetic as the man. He spoke for an hour, coming at
the last to a consideration of those particular questions which hung in
Virginian air. He dealt with these ably, and he subtly conciliated those
of his audience who might differ with him. None could have called him
flatterer, but when he ceased to speak his hearers, feeling for
themselves a higher esteem, had for him a reflex glow. It was what he
could always count upon, and it furthered his fortunes. Now they crowded
about him, and it was late before, pleading the fatigue of his journey,
he could escape from their friendly importunity. At last, it being
towards midnight and the moon riding high, the neighbouring planters and
their guests got to saddle and, after many and pressing offers of
hospitality to Rand and his wife, galloped off to home and bed. The
commonalty and the hangers-on faded too into the darkness, and the folk
who were sleeping at the inn took their candles and said good-night.
All was suddenly quiet,--a moonlit crossroads in Virginia, tranquil as
the shaven fields and the endless columns of the pine.

Upstairs, in the low "best room," Rand found his wife still seated by
the open window, her folded arms upon the sill, her eyes raised to the
stars that shone despite the moon. He crossed to her and closed the
window. "The night is cold. Dearest, have you been sitting here all this
time?"

She rose, turning upon him a radiant face. "All this time. I was not
cold. I was warm. I am so happy that I'm frightened."

"Did you like it?" he asked. "I hoped that you would. I thought of
you--my star, my happiness!"

"I used to wonder," she said; "when they would come home to Fontenoy and
say, 'Lewis Rand spoke to-day,' I used to wonder if I should ever hear
you speak! And when they blamed you I said to my aching heart, 'They
need not tell me! He's not ambitious, self-seeking, a leveller, a
demagogue and Jacobin!-he is the man I met beneath the apple tree!' And
I was right--I was right!"

"Am I that man?" he asked. "I will try to be, Jacqueline. Leveller,
demagogue, and Jacobin I am not; but for the rest, who knows--who knows?
Men are cloudy worlds--and I dream sometimes of a Pursuer."

The next morning the skies had changed, and Rand and Jacqueline fared
forward through a sodden, grey, and windy day. The rain had ceased to
fall when at twilight they came into Richmond by the Broad Street Road.
Lights gleamed from the wet houses; high overhead grey clouds were
parting, and in the west was a line of red. The wind was high, and the
sycamores with which the town abounded rocked their speckled arms. The
river was swollen and rolled hoarsely over the rocks beneath the red
west. Rand had taken a house on Shockoe Hill, not far from the Chief
Justice's, and to this he and Jacqueline came through the wet and windy
freshness of the night. Smiling in the doorway were the servants--Joab
and Mammy Chloe and Hannah--who had set out from Albemarle the day
before their master and mistress. Rand and Jacqueline, leaving the
mud-splashed chaise, were welcomed with loquacity and ushered into a
cheerful room where there was a crackling fire and a loaded table.

"Mrs. Leigh's compliments, Miss Jacqueline, an' she done sont de rolls.
Mrs. Fisher's best wishes, an' she moughty glad to hab a neighbour, an'
she done sont de broiled chicken. An' Mr. Hay, he done sont de oysters
wid he compliments--an' de two bottles Madeira Mr. Ritchie sont--an' Mr.
Randolph lef' de birds, an' he gwine come roun' fust thing in de
mawnin'--"

"We shall have friends," said Rand. "I am glad for you, sweetheart. But
I wish that one Federalist had had the grace to remember that Jacqueline
Churchill came to town to-day."

"Ah, once I would have cared," answered Jacqueline. "It does not matter
now."

"There's a tear on your hand--"

Jacqueline laughed. "At least, it doesn't matter much.--Is that all,
Joab?"

"An' Marse Ludwell Cary, he ride erroun in de rain an' leave he
compliments for Marse Lewis, an' he say will Miss Jacqueline 'cept dese
yer flowers--"

"One remembered," said Rand, and watched his wife put the flowers in
water.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAW OFFICE

"If you were not so damned particular--" said the weasel disconsolately.

"I'm not damned particular," answered Rand. "I've wanted wealth and I've
wanted power ever since I went barefoot and suckered tobacco--as you
know who know me better than almost any one else! But this"--he tapped
the papers on the table before him--"this is cheating."

"Oh, you!" complained the scamp. "You are of the elect. What you want
you'll take by main force. You are a strong man! You've taken a deal
since that day we went into the bookshop by the bridge. But I'm no
Samson or David--I'm just Tom Mocket--and still, why shouldn't I have my
pennyworth?"

Rand paused in his walking up and down the office in Main Street. It was
the late winter, a year and more from that evening when he and
Jacqueline had first come to the house on Shockoe Hill. Standing by the
rough deal table, he laid an authoritative hand upon the documents with
which it was strewn. "You'll never get your pennyworth here. The scheme
these gentry have afoot is just a Yazoo business. If these lands exist,
they're only a hunting-ground of swamp, Indians, and buffalo. The survey
is paper, the cleared fields a fable, the town Manoa, the scheme a
bubble, the purchasers fools, and the sellers knaves,--and there's your
legal opinion in a nutshell!"

"I didn't ask for a legal opinion," said Mocket. "I'm a lawyer myself.
There's land there, you'll not deny, and a river, and plenty of game If
a Yankee doesn't find it Paradise, he had no chance anyhow, and a
Kentuck can care for himself! There's no sense in calling it a bubble,
or being so damned scrupulous!"

Rand made a gesture of contempt. "You let Yazoo companies and the
Promised Land alone! People are ceasing to be fools. To-day they demand
a hair of the mammoth or a sample of the salt mountain."

Mocket ceased rustling the papers on the table, and turned to regard his
chief more closely. "Lewis, I've heard you say things like that more
than once lately. A year ago you were mighty respectful to Mr.
Jefferson's salt mountain and strange bones and great elk and silk grass
and all the rest of it. That was a curious letter of yours in the
Examiner. If't was meant to defend his neutrality doings, 'twas a damned
lukewarm defence! If I hadn't known 'twas yours, sink me if I wouldn't
have thought it a damned piece of Federal sarcasm!--Did you send that
paper to the President?"

"No, I did not send it."

"Lewis," said the scamp slowly, "are you breaking with Mr. Jefferson?"

Rand walked to the window and stood looking out upon the winter
afternoon. It was snowing hard, and through the drifting veil the trees
across the way could hardly be discerned. "Yes," he said deliberately.
"Yes,--if you call it breaking with a man to have grown away from him.
If he served me once--yes, and greatly!--have I not worked for him
since, hand and foot? We are quits, I think. I shall not cease to esteem
him."

Mocket breathed hard with excitement. "You haven't been natural for a
long time--but I didn't know 't was this--"

"I am being natural now," said Rand somewhat sternly. "I've told you,
Tom, and now let it alone. Least said is soonest mended."

"But--but--" stammered the scamp, "are you going over to the other
camp?"

Rand did not at once answer. From a plate on the windowsill he took a
crust of bread, and, raising the sash, crumbled it upon the snow
without. The sparrows came at once, alighting near his hand with a
tameness that spoke of pleasing association with the providence above
them. "No," said Rand at last, "I am not going over to the other
camp--if by that you mean the Federalist camp. Must one forever sign
under a captain? It is not my instinct to serve.--Now let it alone."

He closed the window and, turning again to the table, bent over an
unrolled map which covered half its surface. The chart was a large
one, showing the vast territory drained by the Ohio, the Missouri,
and the Mississippi, and the imagination of the cartographer had
made good his lack of information. Rivers and mountains appeared
where nature had made no such provision, while the names, quaint
and uncouth, with which Jefferson proposed to burden states yet
in embryo sprawled in large letters across the yellow plain.
"Assenispia--Polypotamia--Chersonesus--Michigania," read Rand.
"Barbarous! I could name them better out of Ossian!" He traced with his
finger the lower Ohio. "This is where Blennerhasset's island should be."
The finger went on down the Mississippi. "What a river! When it is in
flood, it is a sea. And the rich black fields on either side! Cotton!
Our Fortunatus purse shall be spun of that. They call the creeks bayous.
All these little towns--French and Spanish. To speak to them of
Washington is to speak of the moon--so distant and so cold. Here are
Indians. Here are settlers from the East, and the burden of their song
is, 'We are so far from the Old Thirteen that we care not if we are
farther yet!'"

"Hey!" exclaimed Mocket. "That's treason!"

"Here Adam Gaudylock met Wilkinson. The river narrows here, and runs
deep and strong." Rand's hand rested on the coast-line. "New Orleans,"
he said, "but capable of becoming a new Rome. Here to the westward is
the Perdido that they call the boundary,--then Mexico and the City of
Mexico. If not New Orleans, then Mexico!" He straightened himself with a
laugh. "I am dreaming, Tom--just as I used to dream in the fields! Ugh!
I feel the hot sun, and the thick leaves draw through my hands! Let's
get back to every day. To-morrow in the House I am going to carry the
Albemarle Resolutions. The last debate is on. Wirt speaks first, and
then I speak."

"Ludwell Cary is fighting you," said Mocket. "Fighting hard."

"Yes."

"Well, I'll be there to hear you speak. Lord! if I could speak like you,
Lewis, and plan like you, and if whiskey would let me alone, and if I
wasn't afraid of the dark, I'd make a stir in the country--I'd go higher
than a Franklin kite!"

"You might manage the rest," said Rand, with good-natured scorn; "but it
doesn't do to be afraid of the dark."

From the pegs behind the door he took his greatcoat and beaver. "I am
going home now," he said. "I have company to supper."

"Who, then?" asked Mocket. "Adam Gaudylock? He's in town."

Rand laughed. "Who, then?' Tom, Tom, you've the manners of the West
Indian skippers you consort with! No, it's not Adam Gaudylock. It is--"
He hesitated, then took up a pen and wrote two words. "That's his
name--but you are to keep it dark."

Mocket's tilted chair came noisily to the floor. "What! In Richmond!--he
in Richmond! When did he come? Where's he staying?"

"He came last night, and he's staying quietly at Bowler's Tavern. It
isn't known that he's here, and he is not anxious that it should be
known. He's here on business, and he goes to-morrow. That is all--and
you're to say no word of what I tell you."

"All right," quoth Tom. "I won't blab. But I'd mightily like to see the
man who shot Alexander Hamilton."

"I've told you he's not anxious for company."

"Oh, I know!" said Tom, not without humility. "I'm small fry. Well,
there are curious things said about him, and you and he are strange
bedfellows! How did it happen?"

"Tom, Tom," answered Rand, "you ask too many questions! It was an
accident, or it was predestined and foreordained when I was dust blown
about by the wind. You may take your choice according to your theology!
I'm going now. Be at the House early to-morrow."

"Are you going to take that Mathews case? Young Mathews was here
yesterday, swearing that if he couldn't get you, he would hang himself."

"I've said that I would take it."

"Ludwell Cary's for the other side."

"Yes, I know. I'll win."

"Well, you're fairly pitted. Half the town backs one and half the other.
That letter signed 'Aurelius' in the Gazette--did you know 'twas his?"

Rand dropped his hand from the latch. The colour rushed to his face,
then ebbed as quickly. "No, I did not know," he said, in a voice that
was not quite steady. "I thought of quite another man."

"It is Ludwell Cary's, and every Black Cockade in Richmond, and not a
few Republicans, are quoting it. My certie! it was a commentary in
caustic--and so damned courteous all the time!"

"I don't care for such courtesy," answered Rand "Ludwell Cary had best
look where he treads."

"Well, I thought I'd tell you," said his colleague "I don't like the
Carys, either!--And so I'm not to go into that land scheme?"

"No. It's a small thing, and not honest. Some day, Tom, I'll help you to
a larger thing than that."

"And honest?" said Mocket shrewdly.

The other turned upon him with anger, black as it was sudden. "Honest!
Yes, honest as this storm, honest as any struggle for any piece of earth
wider than a coffin space! Who are you to question me? I give you
warning--"

"Gently, gently!" exclaimed the scamp, and started back. "Lord, how
Gideon peeps out of you now and then!"

"You need not say that, either," retorted Rand grimly. He stood for a
moment, a cloudy presence in the darkening room, then with a short laugh
recovered himself. "I thought the black dog was dead," he said. "It's
this gloomy day--and I did not sleep last night. Honest! We're all
indifferent honest!"

"Well, well," answered the pacific Tom, "I'll sink or swim with you.
I've followed where you have led this many a day."

Outside the red brick office the snow lay deep. It was still falling
steadily, in large flakes, grey in the upper air, feathery white and
pure against the opposite houses and the boles of leafless trees. The
day was closing in. Up and down the street merchants were putting up
their shutters; customers had been few on such a snowy day. Here and
there appeared a figure, booted and greatcoated, emerging from a tavern
or from a law office such as Rand's. A sledge passed, laden with pine
and hickory, drawn by mules with jangling bells; and a handful of boys
loosed from school threw down their bags of books and fell to
snowballing. A negro shuffled by with a spade on his shoulder, singing
as he went,--

     "Didn't my Lawd deliber Daniel,
     Didn't my Lawd deliber Daniel,
         An' why not ebery man?
     He delibered Daniel from de lions' den,
     An' de Hebrew Chillern from de furnace,
     He delibered David from de han' of Saul,
         An' why not ebery man?"

Rand turned into Governor Street, climbed its white ascent, and struck
across the Capitol Square. Above him every bough had its weight of snow,
and seen through the drifting veil the pillared Capitol looked remote as
that building of which it was a copy. He walked quickly, with a light
and determined step, a handsome figure in a many-caped coat of bottle
green, striding through the snow toward the cheer of home. In his outer
man, at least, the eighteen months since his marriage had wrought a
change. What was striking then was more striking now,--his ease and
might of frame, the admirable poise of his head, and the force expressed
in every feature, the air of power that was about him like an emanation.
The difference was that what had been rude strength was now strength
polished and restrained. The deeps might hide abrupt and violent things,
but the surface had assumed a fine amenity. Where he wished to learn he
was the aptest pupil, and from the days of the tobacco-field he had
longed for this smooth lustre. Not Gideon, but the mother, spoke in the
appreciation and the facility. Manner counted for much in Lewis Rand's
day; the critical point was not what you did, but the way you did it.
Rand set himself to learn from his wife all the passwords of the region
native to her, but into which he had broken. She taught him that code
with a courtesy and simplicity exquisitely high-minded and sweet, and
he learned with quickness, gratitude, and lack of any false shame. What
else he might have learned of her he dimly felt, but he had not
covenanted with existence for qualities that would war with a hundred
purposes of his brain and will. He and Jacqueline were lovers yet. At
the sight of each other the delicate fire ran through their veins; in
absence the mind felt along the wall and dreamed of the gardens within.
If the woman who had given all was the more constant lover; if the man,
while his passion sweetened all his life, yet bowed before his great
idol and fought and slaved for Power, it was according to the nature of
the two, and there was perhaps no help.

He left the Capitol Square and went on toward the house he had retaken
for the second winter in Richmond. Few were afoot, though now and then a
sleigh went by. Rand's mind as he walked was busy, not with the debate
of to-morrow or the visitor of to-night, the Mathews trial or Tom
Mocket's puerile schemes, but with the letter in the Gazette signed
"Aurelius." It had been an attack, able beyond the common, certainly not
upon Lewis Rand, but upon the party which, in the eyes of the
generality, he yet most markedly represented. In the inflamed condition
of public sentiment such attacks were of weekly occurrence; the wise man
was he who put them by unmoved. For the most part Rand was wise. Federal
diatribes upon the Tripoli war, the Florida purchase, the quarrel with
Spain, Santo Domingo, Neutral Trade, and Jefferson's leanings toward
France left him cold. This letter in the Gazette had not done so. It had
gone to the sources of things, analyzing with a coolness and naming with
a propriety the more remarkable that it acknowledged, on certain sides,
a community of thought with the party attacked. The result was that, as
in civil war, the quarrel, through understanding, was the more
determined. The man who signed "Aurelius" had not spared to point out,
with a certain melancholy sternness, the plague spots, the defenceless
places. Moreover, throughout his exposition there ran a harsh and sombre
thread, now felt in denunciation and now in ironic praise. There was
more than unveiling of the weakness of any human policy or party; the
letter was in part a commination of individual conduct. No name was
used, no direct reference given or example quoted; but one with acumen
might guess there was a man in mind when the writer sat in judgment. The
writer himself was perhaps not aware of the fulness of this betrayal,
but Lewis Rand was aware. The paper had angered him, and he had not
lacked intention of discovering at whose door it was to be laid. He had
enemies enough--but this one was a close observer. The subtlety of the
rebuke shook him. How had the writer who signed "Aurelius" known or
divined? He thought of Major Edward Churchill, but certain reasons made
him sure the letter was not his. And now it seemed that it was Ludwell
Cary's.

Rand's lips set closely. Ludwell Cary might not know where all his
shafts were striking, but Rand felt the sting. Fair fight in the
courtroom,--that was one thing,--but this paper was wrought of sterner
stuff. There was in it even a solemnity of warning. Rand's soul, that
was in the grasp of Giant Two-Ways, writhed for a moment, then lay still
again. With his characteristic short laugh, he shook off the feeling
that he mistook for weakness, dismissed the momentary abashment, and
pursued his way through the snowy streets. The question now in his mind
was whether or no he should make his resentment plain to Ludwell Cary.
At long intervals, three or four times in the winter, perhaps, it was
the latter's custom to lift the knocker of Rand's door, and to sit for
an hour in Jacqueline's drawing-room. Sometimes Rand was there,
sometimes not; Cary's coming had grown to be a habit of the house,
quiet, ordered, and urbane as all its habits were. Its master now
determined, after a moment's sharp debate, to say nothing that he might
not have said before he knew the identity of that writer to the Gazette.
He was conscious of no desire for immediate retaliation; these things
settled themselves in the long run. He did not intend speaking of the
matter to Jacqueline. Pride forbade his giving Cary reason to surmise
that he had hit the truth. Rand was willing to believe that many of the
shafts were chance-sent. The reflection hardly lessened his anger, but
it enabled him to thrust the matter behind him to the limbo of old
scores.

He was crossing Broad Street when the door of a house before him opened,
and a young man, with a gay word of farewell to some one in the doorway,
ran down the steps and into the snowy street. It was Fairfax Cary. Rand
and he, passing, lifted their hats, but they did not speak. Had it been
the elder Cary, there would have been a moment's tarrying, an exchange
of courteous speech. But Fairfax Cary made no secret of his enmity. If
he did not offensively publish it, if he was, indeed, for so young a
man, somewhat grimly silent upon those frequent occasions when Rand was
talked of, the hostility was defined, and at times frank. He went on now
with his handsome head held high. Rand looked after him with a curious,
even a wistful smile upon his lips. He was himself a man young in years
and strength of passion, but older far in experience and in thought. He
did not dislike Fairfax Cary; he thought indeed that the young man's
spirit, bearing, and partisanship were admirable. His smile was for the
thought that had lightened through his mind: "If in after years I could
have a son like that!" He wanted children; he wanted a son. Rand sighed.
The day had been vexatious, and there were heavy questions yet to settle
before the evening closed. After all, what was the use, since
Jacqueline cared nothing for baubles, and there was no child! Better
live out his days at Roselands, a farmer and a country lawyer! He shook
off the weight, summoned all his household troop of thoughts, and went
on homewards through the falling snow.

CHAPTER XV

COMPANY TO SUPPER

Jacqueline arranged the flowers, cut from her window stand, in the
porcelain vase, and set the vase with care in the centre of the polished
table. All was in order, from the heavy damask napkins and the Chelsea
plates to the silver candlesticks and the old cut-glass. She turned her
graceful head, and called to her husband, whose step she heard in the
adjoining room. He came, and, standing beside her, surveyed the mahogany
field. "Is there anything lacking?" she asked.

He turned and kissed her. "Only that you should be happy!" he said.

"If I am not," she answered, "he will never find it out! But when I see
him, I shall hear that fatal shot!"

"He will make you quite forget it. All women like him."

"Then I shall be the exception. General Hamilton was Uncle Edward's
friend. At Fontenoy they'll call it insult that I have talked with this
man!"

"They will not know," Rand replied. "It was an honest duel fought nigh
two years ago. Forget--forget! There's so much one must forget. Besides,
others are forgiving. There is not now the old enmity between him and
the Federalists." "No?" said Jacqueline. "Why is that?"

"I cannot tell you, but old differences are being smoothed over. It is
rather the Republicans who are out with him."

"I know that he is no friend to Mr. Jefferson."

"No, he is no friend to Mr. Jefferson. The room looks well, sweetheart.
But some day you shall have a much grander one, all light and
splendour, and larger flowers than these--"

His wife rested her head against his shoulder. "I don't want it, Lewis.
It is only you who care for magnificence. Sometimes I wonder that you
should so care."

"It is my mother in me," he answered. "She cared--poor soul. But I don't
want magnificence for myself. I want it for you--"

"You must not want it for me," cried Jacqueline, with wistful passion.
"I am happy here, and I am happy at Roselands--but I was happiest of all
in the house on the Three-Notched Road!"

There was a moment's silence, then Rand spoke slowly. "I was not born
for content. I am urged on--and on--and I cannot always tell right from
wrong. There is a darkness within me--I wish it were light instead!" He
laughed. "But if wishes were horses, beggars might ride!--And you've cut
all your pretty bright flowers! After supper, before we begin our talk,
you must sing to him. They say his daughter is an accomplished and
beautiful woman. But you--you are Beauty, Jacqueline!"

The knocker sounded. "That is he," exclaimed Rand, and went into the
hail to welcome his guest. Jacqueline returned to the drawing-room, and
waited there before the fire. She was dressed in white, with bare neck
and arms and her mother's amethysts around her throat. In a moment the
two men entered. "This is my wife, Colonel Burr," said Rand.

Jacqueline curtsied. A small, slight, black-eyed, and smiling gentleman
bowed low, and with much grace of manner took and kissed her hand. "Mr.
Rand, now I understand the pride in your voice! Madam, I wish my
daughter Theodosia were with me. She is my pride, and when I say that
you two would be friends, I pay you both a compliment!"

"I have heard much of her," answered Jacqueline, "and nothing but good.
My husband tells me that you have been in the South--and in Virginia we
are welcoming you with a snowstorm!"

"The cold is all outside," said Colonel Burr. "Permit me--"

He handed his hostess to the green-striped sofa, and seated himself
beside her with a sigh of appreciation for the warmth and soft light of
the pleasant room, and the presence of woman. "Your harp!" he exclaimed.
"I should have brought a sheaf of Spanish songs such as the ladies sing
to the guitar in New Orleans!--My dear sir, your fair wife and my
Theodosia must one day sing together, walk hand in hand together, in
that richer, sweeter land! They shall use the mantilla and wield the
fan. Crowns are too heavy--they shall wear black lace!"

He spoke with not unpleasant brusqueness, a military manner tempered
with gallantry, and he looked at Rand with quick black eyes. "Yes, they
must meet," said Rand simply. He spoke composedly, but he had
nevertheless a moment's vision of Jacqueline, away from the snow and the
storm, walking in beauty through the gardens of a far country. He saw
her with a circlet of gold upon her head, a circlet of Mexican gold.
Crowns were heavy, but men--ay, and women, too!--fought for them. Hers
should be light and fanciful upon her head. She should wear black lace
if she chose,--though always he liked her best in white, in her kingdom,
in the kingdom he was going to help Aaron Burr establish.--No! in the
kingdom Aaron Burr should help Lewis Rand establish! His dream broke. He
was not sure that he meant to come to an understanding with Burr. It
depended--it depended. But still he saw Jacqueline in trailing robes,
with the gold circlet on her head.

Joab at the door announced supper, and the three went into the
dining-room, where the red geraniums glowed between the candles.
Jacqueline took her place behind the coffee-urn, and Joab waited.

The meal went pleasantly on. Colonel Burr was accomplished in
conversation, now supple and insinuating as a courtier, now direct,
forceful, even plain, as became an old soldier of the Revolution, always
agreeable, and always with a fine air of sincerity. The daughter of
Henry Churchill did not lack wit, charm, and proper fire, and the
Virginia hostess never showed her private feelings to a guest. She
watched over the stranger's comfort with soft care, and met his talk
with graceful readiness. He spoke to her of her family: of her
grandfather, whose name had been widely known, of her father, whose
praises he had heard sung, of Major Churchill, whom he had met in
Philadelphia in General Washington's time. He spoke of her kinsmen with
an admiration which went far toward including their opinions. Jacqueline
marvelled. Surely this gentleman was a Democrat-Republican, lately the
Vice-President of that party's electing. It was not two years since he
had slain General Hamilton; and now, in a quiet, refined voice, he was
talking of Federalists and Federal ways with all the familiarity,
sympathy, and ease of one born in the fold and contented with his lot.
She wondered if he had quarrelled with his party, and while he was
talking she was proudly thinking, "The Federalists will not have
him--no, not if he went on his knees to them!" And then she thought, "He
is a man without a country."

Rand sat somewhat silent and distrait, his mind occupied in building,
building, now laying the timbers this way and now that; but presently,
upon his guest's referring to him some point for elucidation, he entered
the conversation, and thenceforth, though he spoke not a great deal, his
personality dominated it. The acute intelligence opposite him took
faint alarm. "I am bargaining for a supporter," Burr told himself, "not
for a rival," and became if possible more deferentially courteous than
before. The talk went smoothly on, from Virginia politics to the
triumphal march of Napoleon through Europe; from England and the death
of Pitt to the Spanish intrigues, and so back to questions of the West;
and to references, which Jacqueline did not understand, to the Spanish
Minister, Casa Yrujo, to the English Mr. Merry, and to Messieurs Sauvé,
Derbigny, and Jean Noël Destréhan of New Orleans.

Joab took away the Chelsea plates and dishes, brushed the mahogany, and
placed before his master squat decanters of sherry and Madeira. The
flowing talk took a warmer tone, and began to sing with the music of the
South and the golden West; to be charged with Spanish, French, and
Indian names, with the odour of strange flowers, the roll of the
Mississippi, and the flashing of coloured wings. It was the two men now
who spoke. Jacqueline, leaning back in her chair, half listened to the
talk of the Territory of Orleans, the Perdido, and the road to Mexico,
half dreamed of what they might be doing at Fontenoy this snowy night.
The knocker sounded. "That is Adam Gaudylock," exclaimed Rand. "Joab,
show Mr. Gaudylock in."

Jacqueline rose, and Colonel Burr sprang to open the door for her. "We
may sit late, Jacqueline," said Rand, and their guest, "Madam, I will
make court to you in a court some day!"

Gaudylock's voice floated in from the hall: "Is a little man with
him?--a black-eyed man?" She passed into the drawing-room, and, pressing
her brow against the window-pane, looked out into the night. The snow
had ceased to fall, and the moon was struggling with the breaking
clouds. The door opened to admit her husband, who came for a moment to
her side. "It is not snowing now," he said. "A visitor will hardly knock
on such a night. If by chance one should come, say that I am engaged
with a client, make my excuses, and as soon as possible get rid of him.
On no account--on no account, Jacqueline, would I have it known that
Aaron Burr is here to-night. This is important. I will keep the doors
shut, and we will not speak loudly." He turned to go, then hesitated.
"On second thoughts, I will tell Joab to excuse us both at the door. For
you--do not sit up, dear heart! It will be late before our business is
done."

He was gone. Jacqueline went back to the fire and, sitting down beneath
the high mantel, opened the fifth volume of Clarissa Harlowe. She read
for a while, then closed the book, and with her chin in her hand fell to
studying the ruddy hollows and the dropping coals. Perhaps half an hour
passed. The door opened, and she looked up from her picture in the deep
hollows to see Ludwell Cary smiling down upon her and holding out his
hand. "Perhaps I should have drifted past with the snow," he said, "but
the light in the window drew me, and I heard to-day from Fontenoy. Mr.
Rand, I know, is at home."

"Yes," answered Jacqueline, rising, "but he is much engaged to-night
with--with a friend. Did Joab not tell you?"

"Mammy Chloe let me in. I did not see Joab. I am sorry--"

He hesitated. There came a blast of wind that rattled the boughs of the
maple outside the window. The fire leaped and the shadows danced in the
corners of the room. Jacqueline knew that it was cold outside--her
visitor's coat was wet with snow. Sitting there before the fire she had
been lonely, and her heart was hungry for news from home.

"May I stay a few minutes?" asked Cary. "I will read you what Major
Edward says of Fontenoy."

She was far from dreaming how little Rand would wish this visitor to
know of his affairs that night. Her knowledge extended no further than
the fact that for some reason Colonel Burr did not wish it known that he
was in Richmond. She listened, but the walls were thick, and she heard
no sound from the distant dining-room. Cary would know only what she
told him, and in a few minutes he would be gone. "I should like to hear
the letter," she said, and motioned to the armchair beside the hearth.
He took it, and she seated herself opposite him, upon an old,
embroidered tabouret. Between them the fire of hickory logs burned
softly; without the curtained windows the maple branches, moved by the
wind, struck at intervals against the eaves. Jacqueline faced the door.
It was her intention, should she hear steps, to rise and speak to Lewis
in the hail without.

The letter which Cary drew from his breast pocket was from Major
Churchill. That he did not read it all was due to his correspondent's
choice of subjects and great plainness of speech; but he read what the
Major had to say of Fontenoy, of the winter weather and the ailing
slaves, of Mustapha, of county deaths and marriages, of the books he had
been reading, and the men to whom he wrote. Major Edward's strain was
ironic, fine, and very humanly lonely. Jacqueline's eyes filled with
tears, and all the flames of the fire ran together like shaken jewels.

"Almost all the rest," said Cary, "has to do with politics. I will not
read you what he has to say of us slight, younger men and the puny times
in which we live. But this will interest you--this is of general
import."

He turned the page and read: "I have to-day a letter from G. Morris with
the latest mischief from the North. Aaron Burr is going West, but with,
I warrant you, no thought of the setting sun. The Ancient Iniquity in
Washington smiles with thin lips and pronounces that all men and Aaron
Burr are unambitious, unselfish, and peace-loving--but none the less, he
looks askance at the serpent's windings. The friends of Burr are not the
friends of Jefferson. There are Federalists--'tis said they increase in
numbers--who do not wish the former ill; myself I am not of them.
Colonel Burr _desired_ that duel; he lay in wait for the affront which
should be his opportunity; he murdered Hamilton. He risked his own
life--very true, the majority of murderers do the same. The one who does
not is a dastard in addition--_voila tout!_

"Burr quits the East, and all men know that the West, like Israel of
old, is weary of an Idea and would like to have a King. If the world
revolves this way much longer, the Man of the People will not be asked
to write the next Declaration of Independence, and the country west of
the Ohio will be celebrating not the Fourth of July but an eighteenth
Prairial. Aaron Burr and his confederates intend an Empire. 'Tis said
there are five hundred men in his confidence here in the East, and that
the chief of these wait but for a signal from him or from
Wilkinson--whereupon they'll follow him and he'll make them dukes and
princes.

"Like Macbeth, he has done his murder and is on his way to be crowned at
Scone. He has not a wife, but he has a daughter ambitious as himself.
She has a son. He sees his line secured. He has suborned other murderers
and made traitors of honest men--and our Laputa philosopher at
Washington smiles and says there is nothing amiss!

"May I be gathered soon out of this cap-and-bells democracy to some
Walhalla where I may find Hamilton and General Washington and be at
peace! This world is growing wearisome to me.

"G. Morris speaks of the bulk of his news as report merely, but I'll
stake my head the report is true."

Cary ceased to read. Jacqueline sat motionless, and in the silence of
the room they heard the wind outside and the tapping of the maple
branches.

"If I were Mr. Jefferson," said Cary presently, "I would arrest Colonel
Burr this side of the Ohio. He has been West too often; he is in the
East now, and I would see to it that he remained here. But Mr. Jefferson
will temporize, and Burr will make his dash for a throne. Well! he is
neither Cæsar nor Buonaparte; he is only Aaron Burr. He is the
adventurer, not the Emperor. The danger is that in all the motley he is
enlisting there may be a Buonaparte. Then farewell to this poor schemer
and any delusions he may yet nourish as to a peaceful, federated West!
War and brazen clamour and the yelling eagles of a conqueror!"

He spoke with conviction, but now, as though to lighten his own mood, he
laughed. "All this may not be so," he said. "It may be but a dream of
our over-peaceful night."

Jacqueline rose, motioned him with a smile to keep his seat, and, moving
to an escritoire standing near the door, wrote a line upon a sheet of
paper, then rang the bell and when Joab appeared, put the paper into his
hand. "Give this to your master," she said, and came back to Cary beside
the fire. She smiled, but he saw with concern that she was very pale,
and that the amethysts were trembling at her throat. "I should not have
read you this letter," he exclaimed. "It is over-caustic, over-bitter.
Do not let it trouble you. You have grown pale!"

She bent over the fire as if she were cold. "It is nothing. Yes, I was
troubled--I am always troubled when I think of Fontenoy. But it is over
now--and indeed I wanted to hear Uncle Edward's letter." She
straightened herself and turned to him a smiling face. "And now tell me
of yourself! You are looking worn. Men work too hard in Richmond. Oh,
for the Albemarle air! The snow will be white to-morrow on my fir tree,
and Deb will have to throw crumbs for the birds. I have learned a new
song. When next you come, I will sing it to you."

"Will you not," asked Cary,--"will you not sing it to me now?"

She shook her head. "Not now. How the branches strike against the roof
to-night!"

As she spoke she moved restlessly, and Cary saw the amethysts stir
again. A thought flashed through his mind. It had to do with Lewis Rand,
of whom he often thought, sometimes with melancholy envy, sometimes with
strong dislike, sometimes with unwilling admiration, and always with
painful curiosity. Now, the substance of Major Churchill's letter
strongly in mind, with senses rendered more acute and emotions
heightened as they always were in the presence of the woman he had not
ceased to love, troubled, too, by something in her demeanor, intangibly
different from her usual frank welcome, he suddenly and vividly recalled
a much-applauded speech that Rand had made three days before in a public
gathering. It had included a noteworthy display of minute information of
western conditions, extending to the physical features of the country
and to every degree of its complex population. One sentence among many
had caught Cary's attention, had perplexed him, and had remained in his
memory to be considered afterwards, closely and thoughtfully. There was
one possible meaning--

Cary crumpled the letter in his hand. Rand's speech perplexed him no
longer. That was it--that was it! His breath came quickly. He had
builded better--he had builded better than he knew, when he wrote that
paper signed "Aurelius"!

With fingers that were not quite steady he smoothed and refolded Major
Churchill's letter He was saying to himself, "What does she know She
grew pale Thou suspicious fool! That was for thought of home He will
have told her nothing--nothing! Her soul is clear."

He pocketed his letter and, rising, spoke to her with a chivalrous
gentleness "I will go now Do not let the thought of Fontenoy distress
you Do you remember the snow man we made there once, wreathing his head
with holly? But I'll tell you a strange thing,--even on such a night as
this, I always see Fontenoy bathed in summer weather!"

"Yes, yes," she answered "I, too. Oh, home!"

He held out his hand "You'll give my compliments to Mr. Rand?"

"Yes," she said. "He is busy to-night with a client from the country. He
works too hard."

"Take him soon to Roselands and tie him there. Sing him To Althea and
make him forget." He bent and kissed her hand. "Good-night--good-night!"

"Good-night," she answered, and moved with him to the door. Standing
there, she watched him through the hail and out of the house, then
turned and, going to the window, pressed her brow against the pane and
watched him down the street. The night had cleared; there was a high
wind and many stars.

In Rand's dining-room the three men sat late over the wine and the
questions that had brought them together, but at last the conference was
somewhat stormily over. Burr and Adam Gaudylock left the house together,
the hunter volunteering to guide the stranger to his inn. It was
midnight, and Colonel Burr did not see his hostess. He sent her courtly
messages, and he pressed Rand's hand somewhat too closely, then with his
most admirable military air and frankest smile, thrust his arm through
Gaudylock's and marched away. Rand closed the door, put down the candle
that he held, and turned into the drawing-room.

Before the dying fire he found Jacqueline in her white gown, the
amethysts about her throat, and her scarf of silver gauze fallen from
her hand upon the floor. In her young face and form there should have
been no hint, no fleeting breath of tragedy, but to-night there was that
hint and that breath. The fire over which she bent and brooded seemed to
leave her cold. The room was no longer brightly lighted, and she
appeared mournfully a part of the hovering shadows. Her spirit had power
to step forth and clothe the flesh. Almost always she looked the thing
she felt. Now, in the half light, bent above the fading coals, she
looked old. Her husband, with his hand upon the mantel-shelf, gazed down
upon her. "It was wise of you to send me that note. Burr and I might
have walked in here, or we might have spoken loudly. I heard Cary when
he went out. How did you manage?"

"He asked for you. I told him that you were engaged with a client from
the country. Oh, Lewis!"

Rand stooped and kissed her. "It was the best thing you could say. I
would not have had him guess our visitor to-night. You are trembling
like a leaf!"

"The best that I could say!--I don't know that. I feel like a leaf in
the wind! I did not understand--but I was afraid for you. It is done,
but I prefer to tell the truth!"

"I prefer it for you," said Rand. "To-night was mere unluckiness. And he
suspected nothing?"

"He went without knowing who was in the dining-room. Lewis, what is
there to suspect?"

He stood looking down upon her with a glow in his dark eyes and an
unwonted red in his cheek. "Suspect? There is nothing to suspect. But to
expect--there might be expectations, my Queen!"

"As long as you live you are my King" she said. "To-night I am afraid
for my King. I do not like Colonel Burr!"

"I am sorry for that. He is said to be a favourite with women."

"Lewis!" she cried, "what does he want with you? Tell me!"

So appealing was her voice, so urgent the touch of her hand, that with a
start Rand awoke from his visions to the fact of her emotion. His eye
was hawklike, and his intuition unfailing. "What did Ludwell Cary say to
you?" he demanded.

She took her scarf from the floor, wound her hands in it, and clasped
them tightly before her. "When I told him,--Mammy Chloe let him
in,--when I told him that you were busy with your client, he thought no
more of it. And then we talked of Fontenoy, and he read me a letter from
Uncle Edward. Much of the letter was about Colonel Burr, and--and
suspicions that were aroused. Uncle Edward called him a traitor and a
maker of traitors. That is an ugly name, is it not? Ludwell Cary did not
think the rumour false. He said that if he were Mr. Jefferson, he would
arrest Colonel Burr. He, also, called him traitor. I can tell you what
he said. He said, 'But Mr. Jefferson will temporize, and Burr will make
his dash for a throne. Well! he is neither Cæsar nor Buonaparte; he is
only Aaron Burr. The danger is that in all the motley he is enlisting
there may be a Buonaparte. Then farewell to this poor schemer and any
delusions he may yet nourish as to a peaceful, federated West! War and
brazen clamour and the yelling eagles of a conqueror!' That is what he
said."

There was a silence, then Rand spoke in a curious voice, "Saul among the
prophets! In the future, let us have less of Ludwell Cary."

"Lewis, why did Colonel Burr come here to-night?"

Rand turned from the fire and began to pace the room, head bent and hand
at mouth, thinking rapidly. His wife raised her hands, still wrapped in
the silver scarf, to her heart, and waited. As he passed for the third
time the tall harp, he drew his hand heavily across the strings. The
room vibrated to the sound. Rand came back to the hearth, took the
armchair in which Cary had sat, and drew it closer to the glowing
embers. "Come," he said. "Come, Jacqueline, let us look at the pictures
in the fire."

She knelt beside him on the braided rug. "Show me true pictures! Home in
Virginia, and honourable life, and noble service, and my King a King
indeed, and this Colonel Burr gone like a shadow and an ugly
dream!--that is the picture I want to see."

For a moment there was silence before the white ash and the dying heart
of the wood, then Rand with the tongs squared a flaky bed and drew from
top to bottom a jagged line. "This," he said, "is the great artery; this
is the Mississippi River." He drew another line. "Here to the southwest
is Mexico, and that is a country for great dreams. There the plantain
and the orange grow and there are silver and gold--and the warm gulf is
on this side, and the South Sea far, far away, and down here is South
America. The Aztecs lived in Mexico, and Cortez conquered them. He
burned his ships so that he and his Spaniards might not retreat. Here is
the land west of the Mississippi, unknown and far away. There are grassy
plains that seem to roll into the sun, and there are great herds of
game, and warlike Indians, and beyond the range of any vision there are
vast mountains white with snow. Gold, too, may be there. It is a country
enormous, grandiose, rich, and silent,--a desert waiting dumbly for the
strong man's tread." He turned a little and drew another line. "To this
side, away, away to the east, here where you and I are sitting,
watching, watching, here are the Old Thirteen,--the Thirteen that the
English took from the Indians, that the children of the English took
from England. It is the law of us all, Jacqueline, the law of the Three
Kingdoms: the battle is to the strong and the race to the swift. The Old
Thirteen are stable; let them rest! Together they make a great country,
and they will be greater yet But here is the Ohio--la belle Rivière, the
Frenchmen call it. And beyond and below the Ohio, through all the
gigantic valley of a river so great that it seems a fable, south to New
Orleans, and westward to the undiscovered lies the country that is to
be! And Napoleon, in order that he may brandish over England one
thunderbolt the more, sells it for a song!--and we buy it for a
song--and not one man in fifty guesses that we have bought the song of
the future! The man who bought it knows its value--but Mr. Jefferson
cares only for Done lays. He'll not have the Phrygian. He dreams of
cotton and olives, of flocks and herds, rock salt and peaceful mines,
and the manors of the Golden Age,--all gathered, tended, worked,
administered by farmers, school-teachers, and philosophers! The
ploughshare (improved) and the pruning-hook, a pulpit for Dr. Priestley,
and a statue of Tom Paine, a glass house where the study of the mastodon
may lead to a knowledge of man, slavery abolished, and war abhorred, the
lion and the lamb to lie down together and Rousseau to come true--all
the old mirage--perfectibility in plain sight! That is his dream, and it
is a noble one. There is no room in it for the wicked man. In the mean
time he proposes to govern this land of milk and honey, this
bought-and-paid-for Paradise, very much as an eastern Despot might
govern a conquered province. The inconsistencies of man must disconcert
even the Thinker up in the skies. Well--it happens that the West and
this great new city of ours, there at the mouth of the river, with her
levees and her ships, her merchants, priests, and lawyers, do not want
government by a satrap. They want an Imperial City and a Cæsar of their
own. Throughout the length and breadth of this vast territory there is
deep dissatisfaction--within and without, for Spain is yet arrogant upon
its borders. The Floridas--Mexico--fret and fever everywhere! It is so
before all changes, Jacqueline. The very wind sighs uneasily. Then one
comes, bolder than the rest, sees and takes his advantage. So empires
and great names are made."

"So good names are lost!" she cried. "It is not thus that you spoke one
October evening on our way from Albemarle!"

Rand dropped the iron from his hand. "That was a year and a half ago,
and all things move with rapidity. A man's mind changes. That
evening!--I was in Utopia. And yet, if we reigned,--if we two reigned,
Jacqueline,--we might reign like that. We might make a kingdom wise and
great."

"And Mr. Jefferson, and all that you owe to him? And your letter to him
every month with all the public news?"

"That was before this winter," he answered. "We have almost ceased to
write. I am not like James Madison or James Monroe. I cannot follow
always. Mr. Jefferson is a great man--but it is hungry dwelling in the
shadow of another."

"Better dwell in the shadow forever," cried Jacqueline, with passion,
"than to reign with faithlessness in the sun!"

"I am not faithless--"

"So Benedict Arnold thought! Oh, Lewis!"

"You speak," said Rand slowly, "too much like the Churchills and the
Carys."

In the silence that followed, Jacqueline rose and stood over against
him, the scarf trailing from her hand and the amethysts rising and
falling with her laboured breathing. He glanced at her and then went
on: "Burr leaves Richmond to-morrow. He does not go West till summer,
and all his schemes may come to naught. What he does or does not do will
depend on many things, chiefly on whether or not we go to war with
Spain. I am not going West with him--not yet. I have let him talk. I
have brought him and Adam Gaudylock together; I have put a little money
in this land purchase of his upon the Washita, and I have given him some
advice. That is all there is of rebellion, treason, and sedition,--all
the cock-a-hoop story! Ludwell Cary may keep his own breath to cool his
own porridge. And you, Jacqueline, you who married me, you have not a
soul to be frighted with big words! You and I shall walk side by side."

"Shall we?" she said. "That will depend. I'll not walk with you over the
dead--dead faith, dead hope, dead honour!"

"I shall not ask you to," he answered. "You are not yourself. You are
using words without thought. It is the cold, the lateness, and this
dying fire--Ludwell Cary's arrogance as well. Dead faith, hope,
honour!--is this your trust, your faith?"

"Lewis, Lewis!"

He rose, crossed the shadowy space between them, and took her hands.
"Don't fear--don't fear! We two will always love. Jacqueline, there is
that within me that will not rest, that cries for power, and that
overrides obstacles! See what I have overridden since the days beneath
the apple tree! I am not idly dreaming. Conditions such as exist to-day
will not arise again. Upon this continent it is the time of times for
the bold--the wisely bold. This that beckons is no mirage in the West;
it is palpable fact. Say that I follow Burr--follow! overtake and pass
him! He has a tarnished name and fifty years,--a supple rapier but a
shrunken arm. He's daring; but I can be that and more. He plans; I can
achieve. I am no dreamer and no braggart when I say that in the West I
can play the Corsican. What can I do here? Become, perhaps, Governor of
Virginia; wait until Mr. Jefferson is dead, and Mr. Madison is dead, and
Mr. Monroe is dead, and then, if the world is yet Republican, become
President? The governorship I do not want; the presidency is but a
chance, and half a lifetime off! But this--this, Jacqueline, is real and
at hand. Say that I go, say that I gain a throne where you and I may sit
and rule, wise and great and sovereign, holding kingdoms for our
children--"

"Oh!" exclaimed Jacqueline.

Rand drew her to him. "Don't fear--don't fear! The child will come--we
want him so!"

"Promise me," she cried,--"promise me that you will see Colonel Burr no
more, write to him no more! Promise me that you will put all this away,
forever, forever! Oh, Lewis, give me your word!"

"I will do nothing rash," he said. "We will go back to Roselands,--we
will watch and wait awhile. Burr himself does not go West until the
summer. Ere then I will persuade you. That first July evening, under the
mimosa at the gate, even then this thing was vaguely, vaguely in my
mind."

"Was it?" she cried. "Oh me, oh me!"

"You are wearied," he said, "chilled and trembling. I wish that Ludwell
Cary had aired his views elsewhere to-night! Put it all from your mind
and come to rest--"

"Lewis, if ever you loved me--if ever you said that you would give me
proof--"

"You know that I love you."

"Then, as I gave up friends and home for you, give up this thing for me!
No, no, I'll not cease to beg"--She slipped from his arm to her knees.
"Lewis, Lewis, this is not the road--this is not the way to freedom,
goodness, happiness Promise me! Oh, Lewis, if ever you loved me, promise
me!"

From Rand's house on Shockoe Hill Ludwell Cary walked quickly homeward
to the Eagle, where he and his brother lodged. As he walked he thought
at first, hotly and bitterly enough, of Lewis Rand and painfully of
himself, but at length the solemnity of the white night and the high
glitter of the stars made him impatient of his own mood. He looked at
the stars, and at the ivory and black of the tall trees, and his mind
calmed itself and turned to think of Jacqueline.

In the Eagle's best bedroom, before a blazing fire and a bottle of port,
he found Fairfax Cary deep in a winged chair and a volume of Fielding.
"Well, Fair?" he said, with his arm upon the mantel-shelf and his booted
foot upon the fender.

The younger Cary closed his book and hospitably poured wine for his
brother. "Were you at the Amblers'?" he asked. "It's a night for one's
own fireside. I went to the Mayos', but the fair Maria is out of town.
On the way I stopped at Bowler's Tavern to see his man about that filly
we were talking of, and I had a glass with old Bowler himself. He let
out a piece of news. Who d'ye think is in town and under Bowler's
roof?--Aaron Burr!"

There was a silence, then Cary said quietly, "Aren't you mistaken,
Fair?"

"Not in the least," answered the other. "He came in a sloop from
Baltimore yesterday. It is not known that he's in town; he does not want
it known. He's keeping quiet,--perhaps he has another duel on his
conscience. I don't believe old Bowler knew he had let the cat out. Burr
leaves to-morrow. He was out visiting to-night."

"How do you know that?" Cary demanded, with sudden sharpness.

"Bowler's best bedroom in darkness--no special preparations for
supper--Burr's man idling in the kitchen--mine host taking no cake to
speak low,--in short, the wedding guest was roaming. I wonder where he
was!"

The elder Cary raised and drained the glass of wine. He knew where Aaron
Burr had supped and passed the evening, and a coldness that was not of
the night crept upon him. As for Lewis Rand, he cared not what he did
nor why he did it, but for Jacqueline Churchill. This had been the
client from the country! All the time she was keeping it secret that
Burr was there. She had turned pale. No wonder!--the faithful wife!

"Take care, that glass is thin--you'll break it!" warned the younger
Cary, but the glass had snapped in the elder's fingers.

"Pshaw!" said Cary; "too frail for use! I'm off to bed, Fair. That bill
comes up to-morrow, and it means a bitter fight. Good-night,--and I say,
Fair, hold your tongue about Aaron Burr. Good-night!"

In his room he put out the candle, parted the window curtains, and
looked upon Orion, icily splendid in the midnight sky. "What is there
that is steadfast?" he thought. "Does she love him so?" He stood for a
long time looking out into the night. He thought of that evening at
Fontenoy when he had come in from the sultry and thunderous air and had
found Rand seated in the drawing-room and Jacqueline at her harp,
singing To Althea,--

     "Minds innocent and quiet take
        That for a hermitage."

The words and the vision of Fontenoy that night were yet with him when
at last he turned from the window and threw himself upon the bed, where
he finally fell asleep with his arm flung up and across his eyes.

CHAPTER XVI

AT LYNCH'S

Rand, walking hastily through the hail of the Capitol, came out into the
portico. Before him, between the great pillars, the landscape showed in
glittering silver, in the brown of leafless trees and the hard green of
pine and fir. The hill fell steep and white to the houses at its base
and to the trampled street. In the still and crystal air the river made
itself plainly heard. Across, on the Chesterfield side, the woods formed
a long smudge of umber against the blue of the afternoon sky.

There were people here in the open air as there had been in the
corridor, a number of men talking loudly, or excitedly whispering, or in
silence rolling triumph beneath the tongue, or digesting defeat. Rand's
progress, here as there, brought a change. The loud talking fell, the
whisperers turned, the silent found their voices, and there arose a
humming note of recognition and tribute. Rand had carried the Albemarle
Resolutions, and that with a high hand. He moved through the crowd,
acknowledging with a bend of his head this or that man's salute, frankly
smiling upon good friends, and finely unconscious of all enemies, until
at the head of the broad steps he came upon Adam Gaudylock seated with
his gun beside him, smoking reflectively in the face of the Albemarle
Resolutions and the general excitement. At Rand's glance he rose, took
up the gun, and slid the pipe into his beaded pouch. The two descended
the steps together.

"I am going to Lynch's," said Rand. "The stage will soon be in and I
want the news. Well?"

"He's off," answered Gaudylock. "Chaise to Fredericksburg at six this
morning. Pitch dark and no one stirring, and he as chipper, fresh, and
pleased as a squirrel with a nut! Pshaw! a Creek pappoose could read his
trail! He's from New England anyway. I want a Virginian out there!"

They walked on down the white hillside. The hunter, tawny and light of
tread, scarce older to the eye, for all his wanderings, than the man
beside him, glanced aslant with his sea-blue eyes. "When are you coming,
Lewis?"

"Never, I think," said Rand abruptly; then after a moment's silent
walking, "They should better clean these paths of snow. Mocket says a
brig came in yesterday from the Indies;--attacks on Neutral Trade and
great storms at sea. I've a pipe of Madeira on the ocean that I hope
will not go astray. I wish that some time you would send me by a wagon
coming east antlers of elk for the hall at Roselands."

"Why, certainly!" quoth Gaudylock. "And so you are going to settle down
like every other country gentleman,--safe and snug, winter and summer,
fenced in by tobacco and looking after negroes? I'll send you the skin
of a grizzly, too."

"Thank you," replied Rand; then presently, "I dreamed last night--when
at last I got to sleep--of my father. Do you remember how he used to
stride along with his black hair and his open shirt and his big stick in
his hand? I used to think that stick a part of him--just his arm made
long and heavy. I tried once to burn it when he was asleep. Ugh!"

"I dreamed," said Gaudylock imperturbably, "of a Shawnee girl who once
wanted me to stay in her father's lodge. 'It is winter in the forest,'
quoth she, 'and the wolves begin to howl. All your talk of places where
the river runs through flowers and the pale faces build great villages
is the talk of singing birds! Stay by the fire, Golden-tongue!' and I
stayed--in the dream.

     "When you see a partridge
       Scurrying through the grass,
     Fit an arrow to the bow,
       For a man will pass!

"Heigho!"

"I am already," retorted Rand, "at the place where the river runs
through flowers and the pale faces have built villages. Who will say
that I did not cross the forest?--I was years in crossing it! Here is
Lynch's."

The coffee house on Main Street was the resort of lawyers, politicians,
and strangers in town, and towards dusk, when the stage and post-rider
were in, a crowded and noisy place. It was yet early when Rand and
Gaudylock entered, and neither the mail-bag, nor many habitués of the
place had arrived. The room was quiet and not over brightly lit by the
declining sun and the flare of a great, crackling fire. There were a
number of tables and a few shadowy figures sipping chocolate, wine, or
punch. Rand led the way to a corner table, and, sitting down with his
back to the room, beckoned a negro and ordered wine. "I am tired, voice
and mind," he said to Gaudylock, "and I know you well enough to neglect
you. Let us sit still till the papers come."

He drank his wine and, with his elbow on the table, rested his forehead
upon his hand and closed his eyes. Adam emptied his glass, then, leaning
back in his corner, surveyed the room. Two men came and seated
themselves at a neighbouring table. They were talking in lowered voices,
but Gaudylock's ears were exceedingly keen. "A great speech!" said one.
"As great as Mr. Henry ever made. Do you remember old Gideon Rand?"

The other shrugged. "Yes; and I remember old Stephen Rand, Gideon's
father--a pirate of a man, sullen, cruel, and revengeful! A black
stock!"

"The Waynes were not angels either--save by comparison," quoth the
first. "All the same it was a great speech."

"I grant you that," said the other. "Black stock or not, we'll see him
Governor of Virginia. Curious, isn't it?"

They became aware of their neighbours, glanced uneasily at each other,
raised their eyebrows, and changed to a distant table. Rand made no sign
of having heard. He put out his hand to the Burgundy, filled his glass,
and drank it slowly, then closed his eyes again. A figure, half buried
in the settle by the fire, folded a month-old journal and, rising,
displayed in the light from the hickory logs the faded silk stockings,
the velvet short-clothes, brocaded coat, and curled wig of M. Achille
Pincornet, who taught dancing each winter in Richmond, as in summer he
taught it in Albemarle. Mr. Pincornet, snuff-box and handkerchief in
hand, looked around him, saw the two at the corner table, and crossed to
them. "Mr. Rand, I make you my compliments. I was in the gallery. Ah,
eloquence, eloquence!--substance persuasively put! Minerva with the air
of Venus! I, too, was eloquent in my day! Pray honour me!"

Rand touched the extended snuff-box with his fingers, muttered an absent
word or two, and again sank into revery. Mr. Pincornet, with an affable,
"Ah, hunter!" to Gaudylock, passed on to greet an entering compatriot,
the good Abbé Dubois.

Rand sat still, his head propped upon one hand, the fingers of the other
moving upon the board before him, half aimlessly, half deliberately, as
though he wrote in a dream. Opposite him rested Adam, placid as an
eastern god. The room began to fill and the murmur of voices to deepen.
"The Red Deer is late," affirmed some one. "Damned heavy roads!"

"Then they've sent on a rider!" cried another. "Here's Lynch's man with
the bag!"

It being the custom to address letters, papers, and pamphlets to
gentlemen at "Lynch's Coffee House," there was now a general movement of
interest and expectation. A negro carrying a pair of saddle-bags
advanced, obsequious and smiling, to a high desk at one side of the room
and placed thereon the news from the outer world The genial Mr Lynch,
proprietor of the establishment, took his place behind the desk with due
solemnity, and a score of lawyers, merchants, and planters left tobacco,
wine, julep, and toddy to press around his temporary throne. Every day
at this hour Lynch mounted this height, and he dearly loved the
transient importance. Now he solemnly unfastened the bags, drew out a
great handful of matter, looked it over, amid laughing clamour, with
pursed lips and one raised, deprecating hand, then in a cheerful,
wheezing voice began to call out names,--"Major Du Val--Major Baker--Mr.
Allan--Mr. Munford--Mr. Chavallie--Colonel Harvie--Major Gibbon--Dr.
Foushee--Mr. Warrington--Major Willis--Mr. Wickham--Mr. Rand--"

There was a moment's check while Lynch craned his neck. "Mr. Rand's not
here, I believe?"

"Lewis Rand,--no!" quoth Mr. Wickham. "What should he do in a mere
coffee house with mere earthly newspapers? He's walking somewhere in a
laurel garden in the cool of the evening."

Rand's voice came out of the depths of the room that was now just light
enough to see the written word. "I am here, Mr. Lynch." He rose and came
forward. "Good-afternoon, gentlemen--good-afternoon, Mr. Wickham!"

"Did you hear?" asked Wickham coolly. "Well, it is a laurel garden, you
know! Mr. Lynch, let's have candles--"

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Lynch. "Colonel Ambler--Mr. Carrington--Mr.
Rutherfoord--Mr. Page--Mr. Cary--Mr. Fairfax Cary--"

"They are coming later," said a voice.

"Thank you, Mr. Mason--Mr. Carter--Mr. Call--Mr. Cabell--the Abbé
Dubois-"

The list went on. Candles were lighted on every table and on the
mantel-shelf, though outside the windows the west was yet red. Two
negroes brought and tossed into the cavernous fireplace a mighty backlog
of hickory. The sound of the fire mingled with the rustle of large thin
sheets of paper, the crisp turning of Auroras, National Intelligencers,
Alexandria Expositors, Gazettes of the United States, excited journals
of an excited time, with softly uttered interjections and running
comment, and with now and then a high, clear statement of fact or
rumour. At home, the hour's burning question was that of English and
Spanish depredation at sea, attack upon neutral ships, confiscation and
impressment of American sailors. In Washington, the resolutions of Gregg
and Nicholson were under consideration, and all things looked toward the
Embargo of a year later. Abroad, the sign in the skies was still
Napoleon--Napoleon--Napoleon! Now, at Lynch's, as the crowd increased
and the first absorbed perusal of script and print gave way to exchange
of news and heated discussion, the room began to ring with voices.
Broken sentences, words, and talismanic phrases danced as thick as motes
in a sunbeam. "Non-Importation.... Gregg.... Too wholesale....
Nicholson.... Silk, window-glass.... Napoleon.... Brass, playing-cards,
books, prints, beer, and ale.... Napoleon.... The Essex of Salem, the
Enoch and Rowena.... Texas--the seizure of Texas. Two millions for the
Floridas.... The Death of Pitt.... Napoleon--Austerlitz.... 'Decius' in
the Enquirer--that's John Randolph of Roanoke.... 'Aurelius'--that
letter of 'Aurelius'--"

Rand, at the corner table, had moved his chair so as to face the room.
Letters and papers were spread before him; he had broken the seal of a
thin blue sheet and drawn a candle close to the fine, neat, and pointed
writing. The letter interested him, and he apparently took no heed of
the rapid disjointed speech around him. But the word "Aurelius" brought
a sudden, darting glance, a movement of the lower lip, and a stiffening
of the shoulders. Gaudylock, who sat and smoked, supremely indifferent
to the display of newspapers, marked the flicker of emotion. "He sees a
snake in the grass," he thought lazily "Who's 'Aurelius'?"

Rand turned the thin blue page, snuffed the candle, and fell again to
his reading. Right and left the talk continued. "Glass, tin.... The
Albemarle Resolutions. Great speech. He's over there.... All this talk
about Aaron Burr.... Austerlitz--twenty thousand Russians.... Westwood
the coiner got clean away on a brig for Martinique. One villain the less
here, one the more in Martinique. Martinique! that's where the Empress
Josephine comes from--"

"My faith!" said Adam. "It's worse than the mockingbirds in June!"

The doors opened and the two Carys entered the coffee room. Rand lifted
his eyes for a moment, then let them fall to the third sheet of his
letter. Mr. Lynch bustled forward. "Ha, Mr. Cary, your letters are
waiting! Mr. Fairfax Cary,--your servant, sir!--Eli, wine for Mr.
Cary--_the_ Madeira. Christopher, more wood to the fire! The night is
falling cold."

"Very cold, Mr. Lynch," said Ludwell Cary. "Colonel Ambler--Mr. Wickham,
we meet again!"--and his brother, "We never have such cold in Albemarle,
Mr. Lynch! Ha, your fire is good, and your wine's good, and your
company's good. There's a table by the fire, Ludwell."

They moved to it, exchanging greetings, as they went, with half the
room, sat down, drank each a glass of wine, and fell to their letters,
careless of the surrounding war of words. The elder's mail was
heavy,--letters from London, from New York, from Philadelphia, one from
his overseer at Greenwood, others from clients, colleagues, and
strangers,--all the varied correspondence of the lawyer, the planter,
and the man of the world. Fairfax Cary's letters were fewer in number,
but one was gilt-edged, curiously folded, and superscribed in a strong
and delicate hand. "Miss Dandridge seals with a dove and an olive
branch?" murmured the elder brother. "Lucky Fair! What's the frown for?"

"Olive branch?" quoth the other. "She should seal with a nettle! Listen
to this: 'Mr. Hunter has been some time with us at Fontenoy. Mr. Carter
spent his Christmas here--he dances extremely well. Mr. Page gives us
now and then the pleasure of his company. He turns the leaves of my
music for me. Mr. Lee and I are reading Sir Charles Grandison together.
I see Mr. Nelson at Saint Anne's.' Saint Anne! Saint Griselda! Her
letters are enough to make a man renounce the world, the flesh, and the
devil, and turn Trappist--"

"I wish the room would turn Trappist," said the other. "I am tired of
talk. I would like to be somewhere in the woods to-night--quiet. We
won't stay long here. There has been contention enough to-day."

The younger leaned forward. "Lewis Rand is over there--three tables
back."

"I know. I saw him when we came in. Read your letters and we will be
gone."

The minutes passed. Outside Lynch's the western red faded, and the
still, winter night came quickly on. Within, fire and candles burned
bright, but to not a few of Mr. Lynch's patrons the flames danced
unsteadily. It was an age of hard drinking; the day had been an exciting
one, and Lynch's wine or punch or apple toddy but the last of many
potations. The assemblage was assuredly not drunken, but neither was it,
at this hour and after the emotional wear and tear of the past hours,
quite sane or less than hectic. Its mood was edged. Now, in the quarter
of an hour before the general start for home and supper, foreign and
federal affairs gave way to first-hand matters and a review of the day
that was closing. It had been a field day. The city of Richmond was
strongly Federal, the General Assembly mainly Republican. At Lynch's
this evening were members, Federalist and Republican, of the two Houses,
with citizens, planters, visitors enough of either principle. When the
general talk turned upon the Albemarle Resolutions and the morning's
proceedings in the House of Delegates, it was as though an invisible
grindstone had put upon the moment a finer edge.

Lewis Rand, sweeping his letters and papers together, had nodded to Adam
and moved from his table to that of a pillar of the Republican party,
with whom he was now in attentive discourse. Apparently he gave no heed
to the voices around him, though he might have heard his own name,
seeing that wherever the talk now turned it came at last upon his speech
of that morning. Presently, "Mr. Rand!" called some one from across the
room.

Rand turned. "Mr. Harrison?"

"Mr. Rand, there's a dispute here. Just what did you mean by--" and
there followed a quotation from the morning's speech.

Rand moistened his lips with wine, turned more fully in his chair, and
answered in a sentence of such pith as to bring applause from those of
his party who heard. In a moment there was another query, then a third;
he was presently committed to a short and vigorous exposition and
defence of the point in question. The entire room became attentive.
Then, as he paused, the strident voice of a noted and irascible man
proclaimed, "That's not democracy and not Jefferson--that doctrine, Mr.
Rand. Veil her as you please in gauze and tinsel, you've got conquest by
the hand. You may not think it, but you're preaching--what's the word
that 'Aurelius' used?--'Buonapartism.'"

A Federalist of light weight who had arrived at quarrelsomeness and an
empty bottle put in a sudden oar. "'Buonapartism' equals Ambition, and
both begin with an R." He looked pointedly at Rand.

"My name begins with an R, sir," said Rand.

"Pshaw! so does mine!" exclaimed the man at the table with him. "Let him
alone, Rand. He doesn't know what he is saying."

Rand turned to the first speaker. "'Buonapartism,'--that's a word that's
as ample as Charity, but I hardly think, sir, that it covers this case.
It's a very vague word. But writers to the Gazette are apt to be more
fluent than accurate."

"I shouldn't call it vague," cried his opponent. "It's a damned good
word, and so I'd tell 'Aurelius,' if I knew who he was."

"It wasn't random firing in that letter," said a voice from another
quarter of the room. "I don't much care to know the gunner, but I'd
mightily like to know who was aimed at. It was a damned definite thing,
that letter. 'Buonapartism--the will to mount--sacrifice of
obligations--Genius prostituted to Ambition--sin against light--a man's
betrayal of his highest self and his own belief--the mind's incurable
blindness--I, I am above all law--to take rich gifts and hold the gods
in contempt--Dædalus wings'"--The speaker paused to fill his glass.
"Yes, I should powerfully like to know at whom 'Aurelius' was aiming."

"At no one, I think," said Rand coolly. "He made a scarecrow of his own,
and then was frightened by it. His chain-shot raked a man of straw,--and
so would I tell 'Aurelius,' if I knew who he was."

As he spoke, he moved to face the fire. He had not raised his voice, but
he had given it carrying quality. Cary raised his eyes, and laid down
the paper he had in his hand. A genial, down-river planter and
magistrate entered the conversation. "Well, I for one don't hold with
all this latter-day hiding behind names out of Roman history! Brutus and
Cato and Helvidius, Decius and Aurelius, and all the rest of them! Is a
man ashamed of his English name?"

"Or afraid?" said Rand, then bit his lip. He had not meant to carry
things so far, but the pent-up anger had its way at last. His mind was
weary and tense, irritable from two sleepless nights and from futile
decisions, and he inherited a tendency to black and sudden rage. It was
true he had walked through life with a black dog at his heels. Sometimes
he turned, closed with, throttled, and flung off his pursuer; sometimes
he left him far behind; more than once he had seen him mastered and done
with, dead by the wayside, had drawn free breath, and had gone on with a
victor's brow. Then, when all the fields were smiling, came at a bound
the dark shape, leaped at the throat, and hung there. It was so this
evening at Lynch's. He strove with his passion, but he was aware of a
wish to strive no longer, to let the black dog have his way.

There was a laugh for the speaker before him. "You see, sir," cried a
noted lawyer, "Brutus and Cato, Helvidius, Decius, and Aurelius, and
all the noble Romans died before duelling came in! 'Sir, the editor of
the--ahem!--newspaper, I take exception to this statement in your
pages.' 'Sir, I refer you to Junius Brutus. Answer, Roman!' Never a
sound from Limbo!--'Sir, Decius has grossly misrepresented. Where shall
I send my challenge?' 'To Hades, no less! Not the least use in knocking
up John Randolph of Roanoke.'--'Sir, I am at odds with Aurelius. Pray
favour me with the gentleman's address.' 'Sir, he left no name. You see,
he lived so long ago!'"

Amid the laugh that followed, Cary turned a smiling face upon the
speaker. "_I_ will answer, Mr. Wickham, for Aurelius. Do you really want
to challenge me?" He slightly changed his position so as to confront
Rand's table. "In this instance, Mr. Rand, I am certain there was no
fear."

His speech, heard of all, wrought in various ways. Mocket the day before
had not exaggerated the general interest in the letter signed
"Aurelius." Now at Lynch's there arose a small tumult of surprise,
acclaim, enthusiasm, and dissent. His friends broke into triumph, his
political enemies--he had few others--strove for a deeper frown and a
growling note. The only indifferent in Lynch's was Adam Gaudylock, who
smoked tranquilly on, not having read the letter in question nor being
concerned with Roman history. Lewis Rand sat in silence with compressed
lips, bodily there in the lit coffee room, but the inner man far away on
the mind's dark plains, struggling with the fiend that dogged him.
Fairfax Cary's cheek glowed and his eyes shone. He looked at his
brother, then poured a glass of wine and raised it to his lips. "Wait,
Fairfax! We'll all drink with you!" cried a neighbour. "Gentlemen and
Federalists, glasses!--Ludwell Cary, and may he live to hear his
children's children read 'Aurelius'!"

The Federalists drank the toast with acclaim, while the Republicans with
equal ostentation did no such thing. Mr. Pincornet in his corner,
hearing the words "Gentlemen" and "Cary," drank with gusto his very thin
wine, and Adam drank because he had always liked the Carys and certainly
had no grudge against "Aurelius," whoever he might be.

In the first lull of sound the man at the table with Lewis Rand spoke in
a loud, harsh, but agreeable voice. "Well, Mr. Cary, the staunchest of
Republicans, though he can't drink that toast, need not deny praise to a
masterpiece of words. Words, sir, not facts. What I want to know is at
whom--not at what, at _whom_--you were firing? I thought once that Aaron
Burr was your mark. But he's too light metal--a mere buccaneer! That
broadside of yours would predicate a general foe--and I'm damned if I
wouldn't like to know his name!"

"We would all like to know his name," said Rand. "And when we know it, I
for one would like to hear Mr. Cary's proofs of faithlessness to
obligations."

In the hush of expectation which fell upon the room the eyes of the two
men met. In Rand's there was something cold and gleaming, something that
was not his father's nor his grandfather's, but his own, deadly but
markedly courageous. Cary's look was more masked, grave, and collected,
with the merest quiver of the upper lip. In the mind of each the curtain
strangely lifted, not upon Richmond or Fontenoy or the Court House at
Charlottesville, but upon a long past day and the Albemarle woods and
two boys gathering nuts together. This lasted but an instant, then Cary
spoke. "In that letter, Judge Roane, 'Aurelius' had no thought of Aaron
Burr. I doubt if in writing he meant to give to any image recognizable
face and form. I think that, very largely, he believed himself but
personifying the powers of evil and the tendencies thereto inherent in
the Democrat-Republican as in all human doctrine. If he builded better
than he knew, if he held the mirror up, if, in short, there's any whom
the cap fits"--He paused a moment, then said sternly, "Let the wearer,
whoever he may be, look to his steps!" and turned to face Rand. "Seeing
there is no name to divulge, there are of course no proofs of
faithlessness." He rose. "It is growing late, gentlemen, and I, for one,
am committed to Mrs. Ambler's party. Who goes towards the Eagle?"

There was a movement throughout the coffee room. It was full dark, home
beckoned, and a number besides Cary were pledged to the evening's
entertainment. From every table men were rising, gathering up their
papers, when Rand's voice, harsh, raised, and thick with passion, jarred
the room. "I hold, Mr. Cary, that not even to please his fine
imagination is a gentleman justified in publicly weaving caps of so
particular a description!"

Cary turned sharply. "Not even when he weaves it for a man of
straw?--your own expression, Mr. Rand."

"Even men of straw," answered the other thickly, "find sometimes a
defender. By God, I'll not endure it!"

"All this," said Cary scornfully,--"all this for the usual, the
familiar, the expected Federalist criticism of Republican precept and