“The common interest,” said Cary, rising.  “When you quit Albemarle this time, you quit it alone?”

Gaudylock tossed aside the acorn.  “That is my fortune,” he answered coolly.

Cary swung himself into his saddle.  “The woods, I see, teach but half the Spartan learning.  We’ll part here, I think, unless you’ll come by Greenwood?”

“Thank you kindly, sir, but I’ve a bit of a woodsman’s job to look after at Roselands.  What was the Spartan learning?”

“You are going,” replied the other, “to the house of a gentleman who knows the classics.  Ask him.  Good-day!”

“Good-day,” said Adam somewhat abruptly, and with a thoughtful face watched the other ride away.  “He has been listening,” thought the hunter, “to singing birds.  Now when, and where, and to how loud a singing?  The nineteenth of February—­and the snowstorm—­and the stars shining as I walked home from Shockoe Hill.  He didn’t know that I was in Richmond!  Then, was he on Burr’s trail?  Humph!  Where was Mr. Ludwell Cary the night of the nineteenth of February?” Adam took up his gun and coonskin cap.  “I’ll see if Lewis can make that light,” he said, and turned his face to Roselands.

Ludwell Cary rode to Greenwood, dismounted, and, going into the library, took from the drawer of his desk a letter, opened it, and ran it over.  “As to your enquiries,” said the letter, “Swartwout and Bollman are believed to be in New Orleans, Ogden in Kentucky, and Aaron Burr himself at a Mr. Harman Blennerhassett’s on the Ohio.  Rumour has it that Burr’s daughter and her son are travelling to meet him.  It says, moreover, that a number of gentlemen in the East are winding up their affairs preparatory to leaving for the West.  One and all look more innocent than lambs, but they dream at night of senoritas, besieged cities, and the mines of Montezuma!  There’s a report to-day that Burr is levying troops.  That’s war.  If these men go, they’ll not return.”  Cary laid down the letter.  “If these men go, they’ll not return.  Is Lewis Rand so fixed in Albemarle?”

He moved from the desk to an old chess table and, sitting down, began to move the pieces this way and that.  “The nineteenth of February—­the nineteenth of February.”  He saw again a firelit room, and heard the tapping of maple boughs against a window.  There she sat in her dress of festive white, listening to a denunciation of Aaron Burr and those concerned with him—­and all the time the man beneath her roof!  Cary sighed impatiently and moved another piece.  Adam Gaudylock, who had let slip that he had been there as well—­and then had been careful to let slip no other fact of value, except, indeed, the fact that he was thus careful!  Cary covered his lips with his hand and sat staring at the board.  The problem, then, was to construct from the hunter’s character the hunter’s part.  A keen trader, scout, and enthusiast of the West, known to and knowing the men of those parts,