im, 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
Prai