no Lethe. But if he tasted the disadvantages of so
compound a self, to others the array enriched the man, making him
vibrant of all that had been as well as all that was. It put them, too,
to speculation as to how great an army he would gather ere the end, and
as to the nature of the last recruit. The visitor from the
Three-Notched Road looked at him now with her keen old eyes and laid her
mittened hand upon his arm. "Be a good man, Lewis Rand! Be a great one
if you will, but be good. That comes first."

Rand touched her withered hand with his lips. "It is women who are good.
And you'll not come to town again until nearly Christmas! I'll ride over
before then, and I'll settle Carfax for you. You are going home now?"

"Vinie Mocket is cutting watermelon rind for me. I'll stop there first
and then I'll go home! Give my love to Jacqueline. I heard at the Swan
that Mr. Jefferson is at Monticello. Is that true?"

"Yes, it is true."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Selden. "Then you'll be at Monticello all hours. I
wish you'd ask him for a seedling of that new peach tree."

"I shall not be there all hours," said Rand, "but I'll manage to get the
seedling for you. Good-bye, good-bye!"

The coach and four lumbered on down the dusty Main Street. Mrs. Selden,
sitting opposite her brown paper bundles, waved her fan and looked out
on the parching trees and the straggling, vine-embowered houses. For
half an hour there had been a thought at the back of her head, and now
it suddenly opened wings. Those strangely arranged lines of figures on
that paper which had fluttered to the floor, they formed no sum that
Lewis Rand was working! The paper that they covered was not a stray
leaf; it had been folded like a letter. There was, she remembered, a
piece of wax upon it. It was a day when men of mark often wrote to each
other in cipher--there was nothing strange in Lewis Rand so
corresponding with whom he chose. Most probably it was a letter from the
President--though that could hardly be, seeing that the President was
at Monticello! Mrs. Selden looked out of the window towards that low,
green mountain which was now rising before her, and frowningly tried to
remember some gossamer of speech which had been blown to her upon the
Three-Notched Road. A quarrel between Rand and the President?--pshaw! it
could hardly have been that! She had a sudden memory of Rand's face ere
he grew to manhood, of the ardent eyes and the involuntary gesture of
reverence