o you remember old Gideon Rand?"

The other shrugged. "Yes; and I remember old Stephen Rand, Gideon's
father--a pirate of a man, sullen, cruel, and revengeful! A black
stock!"

"The Waynes were not angels either--save by comparison," quoth the
first. "All the same it was a great speech."

"I grant you that," said the other. "Black stock or not, we'll see him
Governor of Virginia. Curious, isn't it?"

They became aware of their neighbours, glanced uneasily at each other,
raised their eyebrows, and changed to a distant table. Rand made no sign
of having heard. He put out his hand to the Burgundy, filled his glass,
and drank it slowly, then closed his eyes again. A figure, half buried
in the settle by the fire, folded a month-old journal and, rising,
displayed in the light from the hickory logs the faded silk stockings,
the velvet short-clothes, brocaded coat, and curled wig of M. Achille
Pincornet, who taught dancing each winter in Richmond, as in summer he
taught it in Albemarle. Mr. Pincornet, snuff-box and handkerchief in
hand, looked around him, saw the two at the corner table, and crossed to
them. "Mr. Rand, I make you my compliments. I was in the gallery. Ah,
eloquence, eloquence!--substance persuasively put! Minerva with the air
of Venus! I, too, was eloquent in my day! Pray honour me!"

Rand touched the extended snuff-box with his fingers, muttered an absent
word or two, and again sank into revery. Mr. Pincornet, with an affable,
"Ah, hunter!" to Gaudylock, passed on to greet an entering compatriot,
the good Abbe Dubois.

Rand sat still, his head propped upon one hand, the fingers of the other
moving upon the board before him, half aimlessly, half deliberately, as
though he wrote in a dream. Opposite him rested Adam, placid as an
eastern god. The room began to fill and the murmur of voices to deepen.
"The Red Deer is late," affirmed some one. "Damned heavy roads!"

"Then they've sent on a rider!" cried another. "Here's Lynch's man with
the bag!"

It being the custom to address letters, papers, and pamphlets to
gentlemen at "Lynch's Coffee House," there was now a general movement of
interest and expectation. A negro carrying a pair of saddle-bags
advanced, obsequious and smiling, to a high desk at one side of the room
and placed thereon the news from the outer world The genial Mr Lynch,
proprietor of the establishment, took his place behind the desk with due
solemnity, and a score of lawyers, merchants, an