hless woods, of the boatmen upon fifty rivers, of the Indian
braves about the council-fire, of hunters, trappers, traders, and long
lines of Conestoga wagons, of soldiers on frontier posts, Jesuit
missionaries upon the Ohio, camp-meeting orators by the Kentucky and the
upper James, martial emissaries of three governments, village lawyers,
gamblers, dealers in lotteries, and militia colonels, Spanish
intendants, French agents, American settlers, wild Irish, thrifty
Germans, Creoles, Indians, Mestizos, Quadroons, Congo blacks,--from the
hunter in the forest to the slave in the fields, and from the Governor
of the vast new territory to the boatman upon a Mississippi ark, not a
type of the restless time but imparted to Adam something of its view of
life and of the winds that vexed its sea. He was a skilful compounder,
and when, forever wandering, he wandered back by wood and stream to the
sunny, settled lands east of the Blue Ridge, he gave to the thirsty in
plantation and town bright globules of hard fact in a heady elixir of
fancy. While he talked all men were adventurers, and all women admired
him. Adam liked this life and this world; asked nothing better than to
journey through a hundred such.

Now, sitting at his ease in the blue room, a fortnight after Rand's
accident, he delivered a score of messages from the Republicans of the
county, gentle and simple, whom he had chanced to encounter since the
accident to their representative.

"Colonel Randolph says the President has bad luck with the horses he
gives--young Mr. Carr was thrown by a bay mare from Shadwell. Old Jowett
swears that a trooper of Tarleton's broke his neck at that identical
place--says you can hear him any dark night swearing like the Hessian he
was. They drank your health at the Eagle, the night they heard of the
accident, with bumpers--drank it just after Mr. Jefferson's and before
the memory of Washington. 'Congress next!' they said. 'Hurrah! He'll
scatter the Black Cockades--he'll make the Well-born cry King's Cruse!
Hip, hip, hurrah! What's he doing at Fontenoy? They'll put poison in his
cup! Hurrah!'"

"Fontenoy will not put poison in my cup," said Rand. "I hope some one
was there to say as much."

"I said it," answered Adam. "They are a noisy lot. Tom Mocket made a
speech and compared you to Moses. He wept when he made it, and they had
to hold him steady on his feet. When they broke up, I took him home to
the Partridge. I'll tell you one spee