e talent on his side.
I'll leave you here to clear up things."

"Does Mrs. Rand wait here for you?"

"No. She leaves Richmond with Miss Dandridge to-morrow."

Tom took out his knife and began to whittle, an occupation that in him
denoted sustained mental exertion. The other sat on before the empty
fireplace, the mark upon his forehead, his hand twitching where it lay
upon the arm of his chair. The clock ticked loudly; the sun, now low in
the heavens, sent its gold shafts through the window; outside, the
locusts shrilled in a dusty sycamore. Rand rose and, going to the
cupboard, took from it a bottle and a glass, poured out brandy for
himself, and drank it. In an age of hard drinking he was accounted
puritanically abstemious. Mocket, glancing after him, knew that the
draught meant disturbance so deep that the organism needed, rather than
craved, the strength within the glass. Rand came back to the fireplace.

"Do you remember when, in November, I burned here, or thought I burned
here, all papers, all letters--"

"Do I?" asked Mocket, with emphasis. "There's nothing happened to make
me forget."

"A man cannot weave a net so fine that some minnow will not slip through
and become leviathan! It escaped and has grown. Well, that too was in
the nature of things." He took the ash-stick from the corner of the
hearth and handled it as though he were again holding down burning
papers. "So things are all right at Williamsburgh? I had a happy
home-coming."

"You always have that," said Tom simply. "You've had a wonderful
fortune, and more there than anywhere. I'm always telling Vinie--"

"Vinie!" answered the other. "Vinie would always blindly worship on. The
sun might darken and go out, but where's the odds since she would never
know it! Faith like a dog's or a child's or Vinie's--there's comfort
there! But the awakened mind, and Judgment side by side upon the throne
with Love--Oh, there's verjuice in the world!" He broke into harsh
laughter.

"I wish I knew what ailed you," thought Mocket. "I'll try another tack."
He stopped whittling and turned from his desk. "Coming out of the
Capitol, I heard Ludwell Cary say that he goes next week to Albemarle."

"It is indifferent to me," replied the other, "whether he goes or
stays." His hands closed upon the ash-stick until his nails were white.
Suddenly he spoke without apparent relevance. "He is one of those men
who are summoned in time of trouble--when the mind is tossed and