ing extemporaneously, and Hamilton caught his
breath. In the music was the thunder of the hurricane he so often had
described to his children, the piercing rattle of the giant castinets
[sic], the roar and crash of artillery, the screaming of the trees, the
furious rush of the rain. Robert Hamilton thought it was a battlepiece,
but involuntarily he lifted his hat. As the wonderful music finished
with the distant roar of the storm's last revolutions, Hamilton turned
to his cousin with the cynicism gone from his face and his eyes
sparkling with pride and happiness.

"What do I care for Burr?" he exclaimed. "Or for Jefferson? Has any man
ever had a home, a family, like mine? Let them do their worst. Beyond
that door they cannot go."

"Burr can put a bullet into you, sir," said Robert Hamilton, soberly.
"And he is just the man to do it. Jefferson is too great a coward. For
God's sake be warned in time."

Hamilton laughed and ran up the stoop. His wife was in the drawing-room
with Angelica, who was white and excited after the fever of composition.
Mrs. Hamilton, too, was pale, for she had heard the news. But mettle had
been bred in her, and her spirits never dropped before public
misfortune. She had altered little in the last seven years. In spite of
her seven children her figure was as slim as in her girlhood, her hair
was as black, her skin retained its old union of amber and claret. The
lingering girlishness in her face had departed after a memorable
occasion, but her prettiness had gained in intellect and character;
piquant and roguish, at times, as it still was. It was seven years since
she had applied her clever brain to politics and public affairs
generally--finance excepting--and with such unwearied persistence that
Hamilton had never had another excuse to seek companionship elsewhere.
Moreover, she had returned to her former care of his papers, she
encouraged him to read to her whatever he wrote, and was necessary to
him in all ways. She loved him to the point of idolatry, but she kept
her eye on him, nevertheless, and he wandered no more. When he could not
accompany her to Saratoga in summer, she sent the children with one of
her sisters, and remained with him, no matter what the temperature, or
the age of a baby. But she made herself so charming that if he suspected
the surveillance he was indifferent, and grateful for her companionship
and the intelligent quality of her sympathy. Elizabeth Hamilton never
was a