ry, and the
Democrats are foolish enough to believe we have it in the foreign
office. No one of them but Carteaux knows and he dare not speak. The
despatch will never come back here, or if it does, Carteaux will have
gone. People have ceased to talk about it, and now, mother, I am going
away with an easy mind. Do not worry over this matter. Good night."

"Worry?" she cried. "Ah, I would have killed the Jacobin dog!"

"I meant to," he said, and left her.

At dawn he was up and had his breakfast and there was Pearl in the hall
and her hands on his two shoulders. "Kiss me," she said. "God bless and
guard thee, Rene!"

XXV

While Schmidt was far on his homeward way, De Courval rode through the
German settlements of Pennsylvania and into the thinly settled
Scotch-Irish clearings beyond the Alleghanies, a long and tedious
journey, with much need to spare his horse.

His letters to government officers in the village of Pittsburg greatly
aided him in his more remote rides. He settled some of Schmidt's land
business, and rode with a young soldier's interest over Braddock's fatal
field, thinking of the great career of the youthful colonel who was one
of the few who kept either his head or his scalp on that day of
disaster.

He found time also to prepare for his superiors a reassuring report, and
on July 18 set out on his return. He had heard nothing from his mother
or from any one else. The mails were irregular and slow,--perhaps one a
week,--and very often a flood or an overturned coach accounted for
letters never heard of again. There would be much to hear at home.

On July Fourth of 1795, while the bells were ringing in memory of the
nation's birthday, Fauchet sat in his office at Oeller's Hotel. He had
been recalled and was for various reasons greatly troubled. The
reaction in France against the Jacobins had set in, and they, in turn
were suffering from the violence of the returning royalists and the
outbreaks of the Catholic peasantry in the south. Marat's bust had been
thrown into the gutter and the Jacobin clubs closed. The minister had
been able to do nothing of value to stop the Jay treaty. The despatch on
which he had relied to give such information as might enable his
superiors to direct him and assure them of his efforts to stop the
treaty had disappeared eight months ago, as he believed by a bold
robbery in the interest of the English party, possibly favored by the
cabinet, which, as he had to confe