The Indian teacher, Charles Griffin by name, looked with a whimsical face at the silver pieces laid arow upon the top rail.  “Very well, Jean,” he said.  “It is good to give of thy substance.  Meshawa and the others will have a feast.  Yes, I will remember to tell them to whom they owe it.  Good-day to you both.”

The meadow, the solemnly playing Indians, and their gentle teacher were left behind, and the two men, passing the long college all astare with windows, the Indian school, and an expanse of grass starred with buttercups, came into Duke of Gloucester Street.  Broad, unpaved, deep in dust, shaded upon its ragged edges by mulberries and poplars, it ran without shadow of turning from the gates of William and Mary to the wide sweep before the Capitol.  Houses bordered it, flush with the street or set back in fragrant gardens; other and narrower ways opened from it; half way down its length wide greens, where the buttercups were thick in the grass, stretched north and south.  Beyond these greens were more houses, more mulberries and poplars, and finally, closing the vista, the brick facade of the Capitol.

The two from Fair View plantation kept their forest gait; for the trader was in a hurry to fulfill his part of the bargain, which was merely to exhibit and value the skins.  There was an ordinary in Nicholson Street that was to his liking.  Sailors gamed there, and other traders, and half a dozen younger sons of broken gentlemen.  It was as cleanly dining in its chief room as in the woods, and the aqua vitae, if bad, was cheap.  In good humor with himself, and by nature lavish with his earnings, he offered to make the storekeeper his guest for the day.  The latter curtly declined the invitation.  He had bread and meat in his wallet, and wanted no drink but water.  He would dine beneath the trees on the market green, would finish his business in town, and be half way back to the plantation while the trader—­being his own man, with no fear of hue and cry if he were missed—­was still at hazard.

This question settled, the two kept each other company for several hours longer, at the end of which time they issued from the store at which the greater part of their business had been transacted, and went their several ways,—­Hugon to the ordinary in Nicholson Street, and MacLean to his dinner beneath the sycamores on the green.  When the frugal meal had been eaten, the latter recrossed the sward to the street, and took up again the round of his commissions.

It was after three by the great clock in the cupola of the Capitol when he stood before the door of Alexander Ker, the silversmith, and found entrance made difficult by the serried shoulders of half a dozen young men standing within the store, laughing, and making bantering speeches to some one hidden from the Highlander’s vision.  Presently an appealing voice, followed by a low cry, proclaimed that the some one was a woman.