She scarcely heard him. She had just noticed that the sun was now directly overhead. She was in a fever to be off. Her father would be astonished, perhaps hurt, if he came back from the city and she were not there to greet him, to thank him for his beautiful present.

When he had helped her to mount, Washington Irving looked up at her. 'Good-bye,' he said almost humbly. 'You do not wish us to meet again?'

'Of course,' she answered, with warm courtesy. 'Come to Richmond Hill at any time. We shall be so glad to see you'. But her small face was preoccupied, her eyes already straining ahead over the mare's ears down the flat sandy road that led toward home.

He stood quite still, watching her go, his hands deep in the pockets of his green riding-coat, his rumpled hair blown back by the freshening breeze. At the bend of the road, she waved once—quickly, and he waved back.

They did not meet again for seven years.

CHAPTER TWO

AARON was enjoying a productive morning with a small group of his henchmen at Martling's Tavern. He sat in his usual corner of the smoky, ale-soured room, sipping a thimbleful of port, and looking, in his immaculate blue satin suit, like a sleek greyhound in a kennel of mongrels.

Others of the group were drinking claret or guzzling blistering New England rum and paid their court to the chief, who sat erect with a military precision that was born of army training and long self-discipline. His eyes, glittering black, wandered slowly from one face to another, appraising the potentialities of each. Eyes like Theodosia's, but with an added hypnotic, almost reptilian quality that subdued or fascinated at will.

The miscellaneous band of satellites which surrounded him were known as the 'Little Band,' or the 'Myrmidons,' and Theo had also facetiously dubbed them the 'Tenth Legion'. They covered a wide range of personalities.

There were sachems and braves from Saint Tammany's Society—Matthew Davis, Van Ness, the Swartwout brothers; a sprinkling of artists and dilettantes; and some shady characters—wharf-rats, escaped slaves, and prostitutes. The latter had, naturally, no official standing in the 'Little Band,' but they were useful—and Aaron was never one to boggle over fine ethical points.

Whatever their individual peculiarities, they were all united by one prime virtue—uncritical obedience to the wishes of Colonel Burr.

Burr's enemies described him as an octopus insinuating slimy tentacles into all the strata of a deluded society, spewing an inky barrage of lies and sophistry to confound the righteous. His friends saw him quite simply as a god, shining, beneficent, and infinitely seductive.

Both views amused Aaron. He knew very well what he was: a man with a brilliant brain, not unkind, not altogether unscrupulous, but with a genius for manipulating people and events to further his ends.

And the game, to him, was as exciting as the goal.