tographer 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 pe