t but that shall yield to me, not a
conspiracy but that you shall be able to forestall in time. I
believe that I was born devoted to your interests. Heart and soul I
shall be devoted to them as long as I live, and whether I am
permitted to know you or not. I could ruin you if I chose. I feel
that I have the power within me even for that. But God forbid! I
should have gone mad first. But ask yourself, sir, if I could not
be of vital assistance to your career, did we work in common. And
ask yourself other things--and truthfully. E.C.C

P.S. In a meeting held here last night the two generals poured
vials of their own molten iron into the veins of the rank and file,
belted them together in a solid bunch, vowed that you were a dealer
in the black arts and reducing them to knaves and fools. Their
words sank, no doubt of that. But I uprooted them, and blew them
away. For I professed to be seized with an uncontrollable fit of
laughter at the nonsense of forty-seven men--_the flower of the
State_--terrified of a bare third, and of a man but just in his
thirties. I rapidly recounted your failures in your first Congress,
dwelling on them, harping on them; and then I stood up like a
Chorus, and proclaimed the victories of C's career. C, who had
scowled when I went off into hysterics, almost knelt over my hand
at parting; and the rest departed secure in your fancied destiny,
their waxen brains ready for your clever fingers. At least you will
acknowledge the receipt of this, sir? Conceive my anxiety till I
know it has not fallen into the wrong hands!

A messenger brought the note directly after breakfast, and Hamilton
hastily retreated with it to the privacy of his room. His horse awaited
him, but he read the epistle no less than four times. Once he moved
uneasily, and once he put his hand to his neck as if he felt a silken
halter. He smiled, but his face flushed deeply. Her bait, her veiled
threat, affected him little. But all that was unsaid pulled him like a
powerful magnet. He struggled for fully twenty minutes with the
temptation to ride to that paradise on the hill as fast as his horse
would carry him. But although he usually got into mischief when absent
from Betsey, contradictorily he was fonder of his wife when she was
remote; moreover, her helplessness appealed to him, and he rejected the
idea of delibera