t of it, perhaps all. I hope
so, for I am used to it."

He laughed, and quite as light-heartedly as ever; but Washington looked
at him with uneasiness.

"You are a terrible fighter, Hamilton," he said. "I have never seen or
dreamed of your equal. Why not merely oppose to them a massive
resistance? Why be continually on the warpath? They give you a tentative
scratch, and you reply with a blow under the jaw, from which they rise
with a sullener determination to ruin you, than ever. When you are alone
with your pen and the needs of the country, you might have the wisdom of
a thousand years in your brain, and I doubt if at such times you
remember your name; you are one of the greatest, wisest, coolest
statesmen of any age; but the moment you come forth to the open, you are
not so much a political leader as a warlike Scot at the head of his
clan, and readier by far to make a dash into the neighbouring fastness
than to wait for an attack. Are you and Jefferson going to fight
straight through this session?--for if you are, I shall no longer yearn
so much for the repose of Mount Vernon as for the silences of the tomb."

Washington spoke lightly, as he often did when they were alone, and he
had returned from Virginia refreshed; but Hamilton answered
contritely:--

"We both behaved abominably last year, and it was shocking that you
should bear the brunt of it. I'll do my best to control myself in the
Cabinet--although that man rouses all the devil in me; but not to fight
at the head of my party. Oh! Can the leopard change his spots? I fear I
shall die with my back against the wall, sir, and my boots on." "I
haven't the slightest doubt of it. But be careful of giving too free and
constant a play to your passions and your capacity for rancour, or your
character will deteriorate. Tell me," he added abruptly, narrowing his
eyes and fixing Hamilton with a prolonged scrutiny, "do you not feel its
effects already?"

By this time the early, half-unwilling, half-magnetized affection which
the boy in Hamilton had yielded to his Chief had given place to a
consistent admiration for the exalted character, the wisdom, justice,
and self-control of the President of the United States, and to a devoted
attachment. The bond between the two men grew closer every day, and only
the end of all things severed it. Hamilton, therefore, replied as
frankly as if Washington had asked his opinion on the temper of the
country, instead of probing the sacr