CHAPTER XX

THE NINETEENTH OF FEBRUARY

“That’s true,” quoth Gaudylock.  “It’s the cracked I pitcher that goes oftenest to the well, and a delicate lady that’s lain a-dying on her bed this twenty year may live to see you and me and the blacksmith buried!  There never was a Churchill that I didn’t like, and I’m certainly glad she’s better this morning.  If you’re going to Greenwood, I’ll bear you company for a bit.  I’m bound for Roselands myself.”

Ludwell Cary dismounted and, with his bridle across his arm, walked beside the hunter.  “Albemarle has not seen you for a long while,” he said pleasantly.  “The county is fond of you, and glad to have you home again.”

“So a lady told me the other day!” answered Adam.  “It has been a year since I was in Albemarle,—­but I saw you, sir, last winter in Richmond.”

“Last winter?  I don’t recall—­”

“At Lynch’s Coffee House.  The twentieth of February.  The day the Albemarle Resolutions were passed.”

“Ah!” breathed Cary.  The two walked on, now in sun, now in shade, upon the quiet road.  The drouth was broken.  There had been a torrential rain, then two days of sunshine.  A cool wind now stirred the treetops; the mountains drew closer in the crystal air, and the washed fields renewed their green.  So bright and sunny was the morning that the late summer wore the air of spring.  Cary stood still beside a log, huge and mossy, that lay beside the road.  “Let us rest here a moment,” he said, and, taking his seat, began to draw in the dust before him with the butt of his whip.  “I do not remember seeing you that day.  I did not know that you were in Richmond.”

“I was there,” answered Adam cheerfully, “on business.”  He took an acorn from the ground and balanced it upon a brown forefinger.  “It’s a handsome place—­Lynch’s—­and, my faith, one sees the best of company!  I was there with Lewis Rand.”

“Ah!”

The sound was sharp, and long like an indrawn breath.  Adam, who could read the tones of a man’s voice, glanced aside and remembered the quarrel.  “Thin ice there, and crackling twigs!” he thought.  “Look where you set your moccasin, Golden-Tongue!” Aloud he said, “You and your brother came in out of the snow, and read your letters by the fire.  It had fallen thick the day before.”

“Yes, I remember.  A heavy fall all day, but at night it cleared.”

“Yes,” went on the other blithely.  “I was at Lewis Rand’s on Shockoe Hill, and when I walked home, the stars were shining.  What’s the matter, sir?”

“Nothing.  Why?”

“I thought,” quoth Adam, “that some varmint had stung you.”  He looked thoughtfully at the acorn.  “You are a schollard, Mr. Cary.  Is the whole oak, root, branch, and seed, in the acorn—­bound to come out just that way?”

“So they say,” answered Cary.  “And in the invisible acorn of that oak a second tree, and that second holds a third, and the third a fourth, and so on through the magic forest.  Consequences to the thousandth generation.  You were saying that you were at Mr. Rand’s the night of the nineteenth of February.”