had long been looked upon with suspicion, vague and ill-directed, now slumbering and now idly alert.  In this very room—­in this very room the man had been talked of, discussed, analysed, and puffed away by the two who now held it with their estranged and troubled souls.  Burr was gone; this August night he was floating down the Ohio toward New Orleans and the promised blow.  Had some fool or knave or sickly conscience among the motley that was conspiring with him turned coward or been bought?  It was possible.  Burr might be betrayed, but hardly Lewis Rand.  That was a guarded maze to which Mr. Jefferson could have no clue.

Jefferson came back to the table and the great chair.  “You were, of course, as free as any man to travel to Philadelphia or where you would.  I heard that you were upon such a journey, and I felt a certitude that you would also visit Washington.  Had you done this, I should have received you with the old confidence and affection.  I should have listened to the explanation I felt assured you would wish to make.  At that time it was my belief that there needed but one long conversation between us to remove misapprehension, to convince you of your error, and to recall you to your allegiance.  Do not mistake me.  I craved no more than was human, no more than was justified by our relations in the past—­your allegiance to me.  But I wished to see you devoutly true to the principles you professed, to the Republican Idea, and to all that you, no less than I, had once included in that term.  I looked for you in Washington, and I looked in vain.”

“You make it hard for me,” said Rand, with lowered eyes.  “I had no explanation to give.”

“When you neither came nor wrote, I assumed as much.  It was in April that you returned to Albemarle.  Since then I have myself been twice in the county.”

“We have met—­”

“But never alone.  Had you forgotten the Monticello road?  After the Three-Notched Road, I should have thought it best known to you.”

“I have not forgotten it, sir.  But I might doubt my welcome here.”

“You might well doubt it,” answered the other sternly.  “But had there been humility in your heart—­ay, or common remembrance!—­that doubt would not have kept you back.  When I saw at last that you would not come, I—­”

He paused, took from the table a book and turned its leaves, then closed and laid it down again.  “I whistled you down the wind,” he said.

There was a silence, then, far away in the hot night, a dog howled.  The hall clock struck the hour.  Rand drew his breath sharply and turned in his chair.  “And you brought me here to-night to tell me so?”

“I will answer that presently.  In these three years you have made yourself a great name in Virginia; and now your party—­It is still your party?”

“It is still my party.”

“Your party wishes to make you Governor.  You have travelled fast and far since the days when you walked with your father!  Yesterday I was astounded to hear that you had refused the nomination.”