and parasite, and lifted to the skies the name of Ludwell Cary.  To the left of the gate, under the locusts, the Republicans praised the President of the United States and all his doings, and poured oblation to Lewis Rand.  From side to side of the path there were alarms and incursions.  Before noon there had occurred a number of hand-to-hand fights, one, at least, accompanied by “gouging,” and a couple of duels had been arranged.

In the courtroom the parties jostled each other at the polls, and the candidates, side by side upon the Justice’s Bench, watched the day go now this way and now that.  Their partisans they must acceptably thank, and they must be quick of wit with their adversaries.  Fatigue did not count, nor hoarseness from much speaking, nor an undercurrent of consciousness that there were, after all, more parties than two, more principles than those they advocated, more colours than black and white, more epithets than hero and villain.  They must act in their moment, and accept its excitement.  A colour burned in their cheeks, and the hair lay damp upon their foreheads.  They must listen and answer to men saying loudly to their faces and before other men, “I hold with you, and your mind is brother to my mind”; or saying, “I hold not with you, and you and your mind are abominable to me!  To outer darkness with you both!”

Sometimes they consulted with their committee-men, and sometimes punch was brought, and they drank with their friends.  Occasionally they spoke to each other; when they did this, it was with extreme courtesy.  Cary used the buttoned foil with polished ease.  Rand’s manner was less assured; there was something antique and laboured in his determined grasp at the amenities of the occasion.  It was the only heaviness.  To the other contest between them he brought an amazing sureness, a suppleness, power, and audacity beyond praise.  He directed his battle, and at his elbow Tom Mocket, sandy-haired and ferret-eyed, did him yeoman service.

At one o’clock there was an adjournment for dinner.  The principal Federalists betook themselves to the Swan; the principal Republicans to the Eagle.  The commonalty ate from the packed baskets upon the trampled grass of the Court House yard.  An hour later, when the polls were reopened, men returned to them flushed with drink and in the temper for a quarrel, the Republicans boisterous over a foreseen victory, the Federalists peppery from defeat.  In the yard the constable had to part belligerents, in the courtroom the excitement mounted.  The tide was set now for Lewis Rand.  The Federalists watched it with angry eyes; the Republicans greeted with jubilation each new wave.  The defeated found some relief in gibes.  “Holoa! here’s Citizen Bonhomme—­red breeches, cockade, and Brutus crop!

     “Ah, ca ira, ca ira, ca ira!”

“That man ran away from Tarleton!—­yes, you did, the very day that Mr. Jefferson—­a-hem!—­absented himself from Monticello!”