Mr. Wirt followed Mr. Wickham, and was followed in turn by Luther Martin.  The firing was heavy.  Boom, boom! went the guns of the Government, quick and withering came the fire from the defence.  If advantage of position was with the first, the last showed the higher generalship.  The duel was sharp, and it was followed by the spectators with strained interest.  The Chief Justice on the bench and the prisoner at the bar, attentive though they both were, alone of almost all concerned seemed to watch the struggle calmly.  It drew toward late afternoon.  Luther Martin, still upon the Overt Act, after an ironic compliment or two to the Government counsel, and a statement that George Washington, the great and the good, might with a like innocency of intents have found himself in a like position with Colonel Burr, withdrew his guns for the night.  The prosecution, after a glare of indignation, announced that on the morrow it would begin examination of witnesses; the Chief Justice said a few weighty words, and the court was adjourned.

Out to the air, the grass and the trees, the gleam of the distant James, and a tremendous and fantastic show of clouds, piled along the horizon and flushed by the declining sun, streamed the crowd.  Excited and voluble, lavish of opinions that had been pent up for hours, and drinking in greedily the fresher air, it made no haste to quit the Capitol portico or the Capitol Square.  There were friends and acquaintances to greet, noted people to speak to, or to hear and see others speak to, the lawyers to congratulate and the judges to bow to—­and last but not least, there was the prisoner to mark enter, with the marshal, a plain coach and drive away to the house opposite the Swan, to which he had been removed from his rooms in the Penitentiary.

The women who had observed the first day of the great trial from the gallery made, of course, no such tarrying.  They left the building and the square at once, and the men of their families present saw them into their carriages, or, if the distance home was not great, watched them walk away in little groups with a servant or two behind them.

At the head of the Capitol steps Jacqueline and Unity found Fairfax Cary awaiting them, and upon the grass below they were joined by Mr. Washington Irving.  Mrs. Wickham was with them, Mrs. Carrington, Mrs. Ambler, and Miss Mayo.  All the women lived within a short distance of one another, and all, escorted by the two gentlemen, would walk the little way across Capitol and Broad to Marshall Street.  Unity was to take supper with Mrs. Carrington and to spend the night with Mrs. Ambler, and she would not go home first, unless—­She looked at Jacqueline.  “Did the fireworks frighten you, honey?  Would you rather that I stayed with you?”

Jacqueline laughed.  “The fireworks were alarming, weren’t they, Mrs. Wickham?  No, no; go with Mrs. Carrington, Unity.  To-night I’m going to write to Deb and read a novel.”  They were now opposite the Chief Justice’s house, and as she spoke, she paused and made a slight curtsy to the elder ladies.  “Our ways part here.”