en, a hardened or an evil man, to-day the
stream of thought was stirred and sullied from every black pool and
weedy depth, and there came floating up folly, waste, and sin. His
reason slept. Had he, by some Inquisitor not to be disobeyed, been
suddenly obliged to give why and wherefore for his hatred, the trained
intellect must have agreed with the questioner. "These causes fail of
sufficiency." That was true, but the truth was sophistry. He dealt now
with the fact that he hated, and in his mind, as he rode at speed along
the river road, he did not even review the past which had given birth to
this present. He hated, and his hand closed upon the rein within it as
though there was there, in addition, another thread.

A hemlock bough brushed violently against his face. He struck it aside,
and, coming to the rocky top of a little rise, checked Selim for a
moment of the fresher air. It came like a sigh from the darkening
clouds. Rand looked out over field and forest to the massed horizon,
then shook the reins, and Selim picked his way down the ridge to a
woodland bottom through which flowed a stream. Rand heard the ripple of
the water. A jutting boulder, crowned by a mountain ash, hid the road
before him; he turned it and saw the stream, some yards away, flowing
over mossed rocks and beneath a dark fringe of laurel. He saw more than
the stream, for a horseman had paused upon the little rocky strand, and,
hearing hoofs behind him, had partly turned his own steed. Rand's hand
dragged at the bridle-rein and Selim stood still.

For a moment the two men, so suddenly confronted, sat their horses and
stared at each other. Between them was a narrow rocky space, about Rand
a heavy frame of leaves, behind Cary the clear flowing stream. Above the
treetops the mounting clouds were dark, but the sun rode hot and high in
a round of unflecked azure. The silence held for a heartbeat, then Rand
spoke thickly: "So you, too, took the river road?"

"Yes. It is rough but short. When did you leave Richmond?"

"As soon as I could. You would have been better pleased, would you not,
had I never left it? In your opinion, I should be in durance there, laid
by the heels with Aaron Burr!"

"You are not yourself, Mr. Rand."

"Do not push innocence upon the board! When did it begin, your deep
interest in my concerns? Before the world was made, I think, for always
we have been at odds. But this--this especial matter, Ludwell Cary, this
began with th