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 o