the plunge of leaving his master and taking his
chance in the great world.

"Very well," said Burr. "When you change your mind, just put a clean
shirt in your pocket, come to New York and asked for Colonel Burr."

Then he dismissed the boy from his presence and the whole episode from
his mind, got into his coach and continued on his way.

Two months later he was at breakfast in the dining-room at Richmond
Hill,--with Theo probably pouring out his "dish of coffee,"--when a
vast disturbance arose downstairs. A roughly dressed lad had presented
himself at the front door and insisted on seeing Colonel Burr, in
spite of all the resistance of his manservant. At last he succeeded in
forcing his way past, and made his appearance in the breakfast-room,
followed by the startled and indignant servant. Burr did not recognise
him in the least, but the youth walked up to him, pulled a shirt--of
country make but quite clean--out of his coat pocket, and held it out.

Immediately it all came back to Burr, and he was delighted by the
simplicity with which the wagon-maker's apprentice had taken him at
his word. No one could play the benefactor more generously when he
chose, and he lost no time in sending Vanderlyn to Paris to study art.
So brilliantly did the young man acquit himself in the _ateliers_
there that within a very few years he was the most distinguished of
all American painters in Europe. In Henry Brevoort's Letters are
references to his commission to paint General Jackson, among others.

And now comes the pleasant part of this little story within a story:

In 1808, Aaron Burr was an exile in London. His trouble with Hamilton,
his mad scheme of empire and trial for treason, his political
unpopularity, had made him an outcast; and at that time, he, the most
fascinating, and at one time the most courted of men, lived and moved
without a friend. And he met Vanderlyn,--once the wistful lad who drew
pictures when his master wanted him to turn spokes. Now Vanderlyn was
a big man, with a name in the world and money in his pocket,
and--Aaron Burr's warm and grateful friend. Burr was living in
lodgings at eight shillings a week at that time, and his only caller
was John Vanderlyn.

In 1812 it seemed safe, even advisable, for the exile to return to
America again, but where was the money to be found? He was penniless.
Well, the money was found quite easily. Vanderlyn made a pile of all
his best canvases, sold them, and handed ove