AT LYNCH’S

Rand, walking hastily through the hail of the Capitol, came out into the portico.  Before him, between the great pillars, the landscape showed in glittering silver, in the brown of leafless trees and the hard green of pine and fir.  The hill fell steep and white to the houses at its base and to the trampled street.  In the still and crystal air the river made itself plainly heard.  Across, on the Chesterfield side, the woods formed a long smudge of umber against the blue of the afternoon sky.

There were people here in the open air as there had been in the corridor, a number of men talking loudly, or excitedly whispering, or in silence rolling triumph beneath the tongue, or digesting defeat.  Rand’s progress, here as there, brought a change.  The loud talking fell, the whisperers turned, the silent found their voices, and there arose a humming note of recognition and tribute.  Rand had carried the Albemarle Resolutions, and that with a high hand.  He moved through the crowd, acknowledging with a bend of his head this or that man’s salute, frankly smiling upon good friends, and finely unconscious of all enemies, until at the head of the broad steps he came upon Adam Gaudylock seated with his gun beside him, smoking reflectively in the face of the Albemarle Resolutions and the general excitement.  At Rand’s glance he rose, took up the gun, and slid the pipe into his beaded pouch.  The two descended the steps together.

“I am going to Lynch’s,” said Rand.  “The stage will soon be in and I want the news.  Well?”

“He’s off,” answered Gaudylock.  “Chaise to Fredericksburg at six this morning.  Pitch dark and no one stirring, and he as chipper, fresh, and pleased as a squirrel with a nut!  Pshaw! a Creek pappoose could read his trail!  He’s from New England anyway.  I want a Virginian out there!”

They walked on down the white hillside.  The hunter, tawny and light of tread, scarce older to the eye, for all his wanderings, than the man beside him, glanced aslant with his sea-blue eyes.  “When are you coming, Lewis?”

“Never, I think,” said Rand abruptly; then after a moment’s silent walking, “They should better clean these paths of snow.  Mocket says a brig came in yesterday from the Indies;—­attacks on Neutral Trade and great storms at sea.  I’ve a pipe of Madeira on the ocean that I hope will not go astray.  I wish that some time you would send me by a wagon coming east antlers of elk for the hall at Roselands.”

“Why, certainly!” quoth Gaudylock.  “And so you are going to settle down like every other country gentleman,—­safe and snug, winter and summer, fenced in by tobacco and looking after negroes?  I’ll send you the skin of a grizzly, too.”

“Thank you,” replied Rand; then presently, “I dreamed last night—­when at last I got to sleep—­of my father.  Do you remember how he used to stride along with his black hair and his open shirt and his big stick in his hand?  I used to think that stick a part of him—­just his arm made long and heavy.  I tried once to burn it when he was asleep.  Ugh!”