go
into these with you. You must take it from me that it is impossible."

The Major drew back. "That is final, sir?"

"That is final."

There was a silence. Rand sat, chin in hand, thoughtfully regarding his
visitor. Major Churchill, erect, rigid, grey, and arid, stared before
him as though indeed he saw only snowy plains, fallen men, and a forlorn
hope. At last he spoke in a dry and difficult voice. "You persevere in
your intention of returning to Richmond and to your house on Shockoe
Hill in November?"

"It is my plan, sir, to go to Richmond in November."

"Immediately upon your return from over the mountains?"

Rand shot a glance at his interlocutor. "Immediately."

"These lands that you are going to see, sir--they are not as far as the
Washita?"

"No; they are not as far as the Washita." Rand sat upright and let his
hand fall heavily upon the arm of his chair. "That is a curious
question, Major Churchill."

"Do you find it so?" asked the Major grimly. "_I_ should, were it asked
of me--so damned strange a question that it would not pass without
challenge! But then, I am not declining governorships nor travelling
West."

Rand rose from his chair. "Major Churchill"--He stopped short, bit his
lip, and walked away to the window. There he drew the curtain slightly
aside and stood with brow pressed against a pane, gazing out into the
frosty darkness. A half moon just lifted the wide landscape out of
shadow, and from the interlacing boughs of trees the coloured leaves
were falling. Rand looked at the distant mountains, but the eye of his
mind travelled farther yet and saw all the country beyond, all the land
of the To Be, all the giant valley of the Mississippi, all the rolling,
endless plains, all Mexico with snowy peaks and mines of gold. The
apparition did not come dazzlingly. He was no visionary. He weighed and
measured and reckoned carefully with his host. But there, beyond the
mountains, lay no small part of the habitable world,--and the race of
conquerors had not died with Alexander or Caesar, Cortez or Pizarro!
Witness Marengo and Austerlitz and that throne at Fontainebleau! He
dropped the curtain from his hand and turned to the firelit room and to
the tense grey figure on the hearth. "Major Churchill, if, softened by
Jacqueline's presence there at Fontenoy, you came to-night to Roselands
with the simple purpose of making friends with the man she loves, then,
sir, that man would be a heartless churl in