met her at the door. His keen eye read the answer at once.

"You have failed!" said he.

She raised her dark eyes to his, herself silent, mournful.

"What did he say?" demanded Burr.

"Said he was under orders--said you should go to Mr. Jefferson with
your plan--said Mr. Jefferson alone could stop him. Failed? Yes, I
failed!"

"You failed," said Burr, "because you did not use the right argument
with him. The next time _you must not fail_. You must use better
arguments!"

Theodosia stood motionless for an instant, looking at her father, then
passed back into the house.

"Listen, my daughter," said Burr at length, in his eye a light that
she never had known before. "You _must_ see that man again, and bring
him back into our camp! We need him. Without him I cannot handle
Merry, and without Merry I cannot handle Yrujo. Without them my plan
is doomed. If it fails, your husband has lost fifty thousand dollars
and all the moneys to which he is pledged beyond that. You and I will
be bankrupt--penniless upon the streets, do you hear?--unless you
bring that man back. Granted that all goes well, it means half a
million dollars pledged for my future by Great Britain herself, half
as much pledged by Spain, success and future honor and power for you
and me--and him. He _must_ come back! That expedition must not go
beyond the Mississippi. You ask me what to tell him? Ask him no longer
to return to us and opportunity. _Ask him to come back to Theodosia
Burr and happiness_--do you understand?"

"Sir," said his daughter, "I think--I think I do not understand!"

He seemed not to hear her--or to toss her answer aside.

"You must try again," said he, "and with the right weapons--the old
ones, my dear--the old weapons of a woman!"

CHAPTER IX

MR. THOMAS JEFFERSON

Not in fifty years, said Thomas Jefferson in the last days of his
life, had the sun caught him in bed. On this morning, having said
good-by to the man to whose hands he had entrusted the dearest
enterprise of all his life, he turned back to his desk in the little
office-room, and throughout the long and heated day, following a night
spent wholly without sleep, he remained engaged in his usual labors,
which were the heavier in his secretary's absence.

He was an old man now, but a giant in frame, a giant in mind, a giant
in industry as well. He sat at his desk absorbed, sleepless, with that
steady application which made possible the enormous total of his