“It is indifferent to me,” replied the other, “whether he goes or stays.”  His hands closed upon the ash-stick until his nails were white.  Suddenly he spoke without apparent relevance.  “He is one of those men who are summoned in time of trouble—­when the mind is tossed and the heart is wavering.  They always answer—­they come down the street at night, between the box bushes, up the steps beneath the honeysuckle—­on such an errand they would not fear the lion’s den!  They are magnanimous, they are generous, they are out of our old life, they can tell us what we ought to do!” He struck the ash-stick violently against the hearth.  “Honeysuckle and box and the quiet of the night, and ’Yes, I knew, I knew.  ‘Twas thus and so, and I would counsel you—­’ Oh, world’s end and hell-fire! forgiveness itself grows worthless on such terms!”

He threw the stick from him, rose abruptly, and walked to the window.

“The clouds pile up, but they do not break, and the heat and fever of this August air grow intolerable.  To abstract the mind—­to abstract the mind”—­He stood listening to the locusts and all the indefinable hum of the downward-drawing afternoon, then turned to Tom.  “Give me those Winchester papers.  Now what, exactly, did you do in Williamsburgh?”

CHAPTER XXIX

THE RIVER ROAD

The days of speeches, for the Government and for Aaron Burr,—­Hay, Wirt, and McRae against Edmund Randolph, Wickham, Botts, Lee, and Luther Martin,—­went crackling by with bursts of heavy artillery and with running fire of musketry.  It was a day of orators, and eloquence was spilled like water.  At last the case rested.  The Chief Justice summed up, exhaustively, with extraordinary ability, and with all the impartiality humanly possible to a Federalist Chief Justice dealing with a Republican prosecution.  The jury, as is known, brought in a Scotch verdict, whereupon the prisoner was immediately upon his feet with a vehement protest.  Finally the “Not proven” was expunged from the record, and Aaron Burr stood “Acquitted.”  The famous trial for treason was over.

As, throughout the summer, all roads led to Richmond, now, in the fierce heat and dust of early autumn, there was an exodus which left the town extremely dull after all the stir and fascination of the Government’s proceedings.  Burr, indeed, discharged for treason, was still held in bail to answer for the misdemeanor, judges and lawyers were still occupied, and many witnesses yet detained.  But the result of the matter was a foregone conclusion.  Here, too, there would be a “Not proven,” with a demand on the part of the accused for a “Not guilty,” and a final direction by the judges to the jury to return a verdict in the usual form.  The trial of a man for a misdemeanor in levying war with Spain—­a misdemeanor which, if proved, could entail only imprisonment—­was an infinitely less affair than a prosecution for high