“Almost all the rest,” said Cary, “has to do with politics.  I will not read you what he has to say of us slight, younger men and the puny times in which we live.  But this will interest you—­this is of general import.”

He turned the page and read:  “I have to-day a letter from G. Morris with the latest mischief from the North.  Aaron Burr is going West, but with, I warrant you, no thought of the setting sun.  The Ancient Iniquity in Washington smiles with thin lips and pronounces that all men and Aaron Burr are unambitious, unselfish, and peace-loving—­but none the less, he looks askance at the serpent’s windings.  The friends of Burr are not the friends of Jefferson.  There are Federalists—­’tis said they increase in numbers—­who do not wish the former ill; myself I am not of them.  Colonel Burr desired that duel; he lay in wait for the affront which should be his opportunity; he murdered Hamilton.  He risked his own life—­very true, the majority of murderers do the same.  The one who does not is a dastard in addition—­voila tout!

“Burr quits the East, and all men know that the West, like Israel of old, is weary of an Idea and would like to have a King.  If the world revolves this way much longer, the Man of the People will not be asked to write the next Declaration of Independence, and the country west of the Ohio will be celebrating not the Fourth of July but an eighteenth Prairial.  Aaron Burr and his confederates intend an Empire.  ’Tis said there are five hundred men in his confidence here in the East, and that the chief of these wait but for a signal from him or from Wilkinson—­whereupon they’ll follow him and he’ll make them dukes and princes.

“Like Macbeth, he has done his murder and is on his way to be crowned at Scone.  He has not a wife, but he has a daughter ambitious as himself.  She has a son.  He sees his line secured.  He has suborned other murderers and made traitors of honest men—­and our Laputa philosopher at Washington smiles and says there is nothing amiss!

“May I be gathered soon out of this cap-and-bells democracy to some Walhalla where I may find Hamilton and General Washington and be at peace!  This world is growing wearisome to me.

“G.  Morris speaks of the bulk of his news as report merely, but I’ll stake my head the report is true.”

Cary ceased to read.  Jacqueline sat motionless, and in the silence of the room they heard the wind outside and the tapping of the maple branches.

“If I were Mr. Jefferson,” said Cary presently, “I would arrest Colonel Burr this side of the Ohio.  He has been West too often; he is in the East now, and I would see to it that he remained here.  But Mr. Jefferson will temporize, and Burr will make his dash for a throne.  Well! he is neither Caesar nor Buonaparte; he is only Aaron Burr.  He is the adventurer, not the Emperor.  The danger is that in all the motley he is enlisting there may be a Buonaparte.  Then farewell to this poor schemer and any delusions he may yet nourish as to a peaceful, federated West!  War and brazen clamour and the yelling eagles of a conqueror!”