s enemies
on the jump, and worked them half to death. The mass of manuscript he
sent would have furnished a modest bookstore, and the subjects and
accounts with which he was so familiar drove Madison and others, too
opposed to finance to master the maze of it, close upon the borders of
frenzy. It had been their uncommunicated policy to carry the matter over
to the next session, but Hamilton was determined to have done with them
by adjournment.

And in the midst of this tremendous pressure arrived George Washington
Lafayette.

It was on the first Saturday of his retirement into the deep obscurity
of his library, with orders that no one knock under penalty of driving
him from the house, that Hamilton, opening the door suddenly with intent
to make a dash for his office, nearly fell over Angelica. She was
standing just in front of the door, and her face was haggard.

"How long have you been here?" demanded her father.

"Three hours, sir."

"Three! Have you stood all that time?"

Angelica nodded. She was determined not to cry, but she was wise enough
not to tax the muscles of her throat.

Hamilton hesitated. If the child fidgeted, she would distract his
attention, great as were his powers of concentration; but another
searching of her eyes decided him.

"Very well," he said. "Go in, but mind you imagine that you are a mouse,
or you will have to leave."

When he returned, she was sitting in a low chair by his desk, almost
rigid. She had neither doll nor book. "This will never do," he thought.
"What on earth shall I do with the child?" His eye fell upon the chaos
of his manuscript. He gathered it up and threw it on the sofa. "There,"
he said, "arrange that according to the numbers, and come here every
five minutes for more."

And Angelica spent two hours of every day in the library, useful and
happy.

One day Hamilton was obliged to attend a Cabinet meeting, and to spend
several hours at his office just after. Returning home in the early
winter dusk, he saw two small white faces pressed against the hall
window. One of them was Angelica's, the other he had never seen. As he
entered, his daughter fell upon him.

"This is George Washington Lafayette," she announced breathlessly. "He
came to-day, and he doesn't speak any English, and he won't go near
Betsey or anyone but me, and he won't eat, and I know he's miserable and
wretched, only he won't cry. His tutor's ill at the Inn."

The little Frenchman had retired