rful country--great as Rome, I
reckon! And we'd smoke the calumet with old Virginia--and she'd rule
East and we'd rule West. D'you think it's a dream?--Well, men make
dreams come true."

"Yes: Corsicans," answered Rand. "Aaron Burr is not a Corsican." He
looked at his left hand, lying upon the arm of his chair, raised it,
shut and opened it, gazing curiously at its vein and sinew. "You are
talking midsummer madness," he said at last. "Let's leave the blazed
trees for a while--though we'll talk of them again some time. Have you
been along the Three-Notched Road?"

"Yes," replied Adam, turning easily. "Your tobacco's prime, the wheat,
too, and the fencing is all mended and white-washed. It's not the
tumble-down place it was in Gideon's time--you've done wonders with it.
The morning-glories were blooming over the porch, and your white cat
washing itself in the sun."

"It's but a poor home," said Rand, and he said it wistfully. He wished
for a splendid house, a home so splendid that any woman must love it.

"It's not so fine as Fontenoy," quoth Adam, "nor Monticello, nor Mr.
Blennerhassett's island in the Ohio, but a man might be happy in a
poorer spot. Home's home, as I can testify who haven't any. I've known a
Cherokee to die of homesickness for a skin stretched between two
saplings. How long before you are back upon the Three-Notched Road?"

Rand moved restlessly. "The doctor says I may go downstairs to-day. I
shall leave Fontenoy almost immediately. They cannot want me here."

"Have you seen Mr. Ludwell Cary?"

"He and his brother left Fontenoy some time ago. But he rides over
nearly every day. Usually I see him."

"He is making a fine place of Greenwood. And he has taken a law office
in Charlottesville--the brick house by the Swan.

"Yes. He told me he would not be idle."

Adam rose, and took up the gun which it was his whim to carry. "I'll go
talk ginseng and maple sugar to Colonel Churchill for a bit, and then
I'll go back to the Eagle. As soon as you are on the Three-Notched Road
again I'll come to see you there."

"Adam," said Rand, "in the woods, when chance makes an Indian your host,
an Indian of a hostile tribe, an Indian whom you know the next week may
see upon the war-path against you--and there is in his lodge a thing, no
matter what, that you desire with all your mind and all your heart and
all your soul, and he will not barter with you, and the thing is not
entirely his own nor highly valued by