harpsichord, established herself upon the sofa before him and opened a lively fire of questions and comment, he answered with readiness.  He thought her pretty figure in amber lutestring, and the turn of her ringleted head, and the play of her scarlet lips all very good to look at, and he looked without hesitation.  The account which she demanded of the accident which had placed him there he gave with a free, bold, and pleasing touch, and the thanks that were her due as the immediate Samaritan he chivalrously paid.  Unity made friends with all parties, and she now found, with some amusement, that she was going to like Lewis Rand.

Rand looked too, freely and quietly, at the young men, his fellow guests.  Each, he knew, was arrogantly impatient of his presence there.  Well, they had nothing to do with it!  His sense of humour awoke, and Federalist hauteur ceased to fret him.  Colonel Churchill, the most genial of men, pushed his chair into the Republican’s neighbourhood, and plunged into talk.  Conversation in Virginia, where men were concerned, opened with politics, crops, or horseflesh.  Colonel Dick chose the second, and Rand, who had a first-hand knowledge of the subject, met him in the fields.  The trinity of corn, wheat, and tobacco occupied them for a while, as did the fruit and an experiment in vine-growing.  The horse then entered the conversation, and Rand asked after Goldenrod, that had won the cup at Fredericksburg.  “I broke him for you, you know, sir, seven years ago.”

Colonel Churchill, who in his own drawing-room would not for the world have mentioned this little fact to his guest, suddenly thought within his honest heart, “This is a man, even if he is a damned Republican!” He gave a circumstantial account of Goldenrod, and of Goldenrod’s brother, Firefly, and he said to himself, “I’ll keep off politics.”  Presently Rand began to speak of Adam Gaudylock’s account of New Orleans.

“Ay, ay,” said the Colonel, “there’s a city!  But it’s not English—­it is Spanish and French.  And all that new land now! ’twill never be held—­begging your pardon, Mr. Rand—­by Thomas Jefferson and a lot of new-fangled notions!  No Spaniard ever did believe that all men are born equal, and no Frenchman ever wanted liberty long—­not unadorned liberty, anyway.  As for our own people who are pouring over the mountains—­well, English blood naturally likes pride and power and what was good enough for its grandparents!  Louisiana is too big and too far away.  It takes a month to go from Washington to New Orleans.  Rome couldn’t keep her countries that were far away, and Rome believed in armies and navies and proper taxation, and had no pernicious notions—­begging your pardon again, Mr. Rand—­about free trade and the abolishment of slavery!  I tell you, this new country of ours will breed or import a leader—­and then she’ll revolt and make him dictator—­and then we’ll have an empire for neighbour, an empire without any queasy ideas as to majorities and