fter this. The rivalry, however, did
not cease here, nor did the secret enmity in their hearts die. The
world is not aware of the true cause of the hatred between them, and it
may never be.

"You are aware," continued the colonel, "that your preceptor, Judge
Reeve, is the brother-in-law of Colonel Burr. If I speak freely of him,
it is because I know him, and because you seem curious to pry into
these secret histories of national men. It is not to be repeated to
offend Judge Reeve, or disturb our relations as friends; for we are
such, and have been for fifty years.

"Colonel Burr has ever been remarkable for abilities from his boyhood.
Reeve and the celebrated Samuel Lathrop Mitchell were his classmates,
and agree that he had no equal in college. They were educated at
Princeton. Burr showed not only talent, but application, and a most
burning ambition. He showed, too, that he was already unscrupulous in
the use of means to accomplish his object. There are stories told of
his college-life very discreditable to his fame. He was as remarkable
in his features as in his mind. His capacious forehead, aquiline nose,
and piercingly brilliant eyes, black as night, with a large, flexible
mouth, Grecian in form, made him extremely handsome as a youth. His
manners were natural and elegant, and his conversational powers
unequalled. They are so to-day. Think of these gifts in a man
uninfluenced by principle, and only obedient to the warmer passions. He
ever shunned collective society, and seemed (for the time, at least)
totally absorbed by one or two only. The eloquence of manner, as the
persuasion of words, was in him transcendent. The whispered sophisms of
his genius burned into the heart, and it was remarked of him, by one
wise and discreet, that he could, in fewer words, win the sympathy and
start to tears a female auditor, than any preacher in the land. From
boyhood he seemed to have the key to every heart he desired to unlock.
Fatal gift! and terribly fatal did it prove to many a victim, and
especially to that gifted but frail girl--Margaret Moncrief.

"Margaret Moncrief was the daughter of an officer of the British army,
and had been left with that old veteran, Putnam, after this officer was
a prisoner of war. Hamilton formed an attachment for her, and Burr,
more from vanity than any other feeling, determined to win her away
from him. She was, for her sex, as remarkable as Burr for his; her
education was very superior, her r