rail? Humph! Where _was_ Mr. Ludwell
Cary the night of the nineteenth of February?" Adam took up his gun and
coonskin cap. "I'll see if Lewis can make that light," he said, and
turned his face to Roselands.

Ludwell Cary rode to Greenwood, dismounted, and, going into the library,
took from the drawer of his desk a letter, opened it, and ran it over.
"As to your enquiries," said the letter, "Swartwout and Bollman are
believed to be in New Orleans, Ogden in Kentucky, and Aaron Burr himself
at a Mr. Harman Blennerhassett's on the Ohio. Rumour has it that Burr's
daughter and her son are travelling to meet him. It says, moreover, that
a number of gentlemen in the East are winding up their affairs
preparatory to leaving for the West. One and all look more innocent than
lambs, but they dream at night of senoritas, besieged cities, and the
mines of Montezuma! There's a report to-day that Burr is levying troops.
That's war. If these men go, they'll not return." Cary laid down the
letter. "If these men go, they'll not return. Is Lewis Rand so fixed in
Albemarle?"

He moved from the desk to an old chess table and, sitting down, began to
move the pieces this way and that. "The nineteenth of February--the
nineteenth of February." He saw again a firelit room, and heard the
tapping of maple boughs against a window. There she sat in her dress of
festive white, listening to a denunciation of Aaron Burr and those
concerned with him--and all the time the man beneath her roof! Cary
sighed impatiently and moved another piece. Adam Gaudylock, who had let
slip that he had been there as well--and then had been careful to let
slip no other fact of value, except, indeed, the fact that he was thus
careful! Cary covered his lips with his hand and sat staring at the
board. The problem, then, was to construct from the hunter's character
the hunter's part. A keen trader, scout, and enthusiast of the West,
known to and knowing the men of those parts, and able to bend the
undercurrents--a delighter in danger, with a boy's zest for intrigue,
risk, and daring--an uncomplex mind, little troubled by theories of
political obligation, political faith and unfaith, loyalty to government
or its reverse--a being born to adventure, but to adventure under
guidance, skilled and gay subaltern to some graver, abler leader--that,
he thought, would be Adam Gaudylock. An old, old friend of Lewis
Rand's--"There's a connection somewhere between the Gaudylocks and the
Ra