tuck 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 car