Theo and her father permitted themselves one quick mutual glance of satisfaction.

When Aaron departed, he carried with him Joseph's assurance that he would produce fifty thousand dollars whenever it might be needed.

Aaron went from the Oaks to Statesburgh and visited Natalie. He sounded out her husband, but, on finding the atmosphere unsympathetic, abandoned the subject so deftly that Thomas Sumter was unaware that he had been approached.

Then Aaron returned to Washington, where his high office protected his person from arrest, as it did in all States except New York and New Jersey. In these the murder charges still held. He finished out his term with a kind of dignified flourish that confounded his enemies. He presided over the trial for impeachment of one Judge Chase and did so, said a more sympathetic newspaper, 'with the dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devil.'

The day after the conclusion of this trial, he took formal leave of the Senate and made a speech so moving, so skillfully compounded of pathos and courage that many of the senators were moved to tears.

Public opinion was softening; there were now many to think that he had been unjustly used. He might have settled in any State below the Delaware, but he had no longer the slightest interest in the East. During his forced journey to the South, Richmond Hill had been seized by his creditors and sold to John Jacob Astor for twenty-five thousand dollars. This sum did not begin to liquidate Aaron's obligations, so that the debtor's prison awaited him in New York as well as the murder charge. The West, however, beckoned—the West and the dream of empire.

Aaron set forth on his trip across the Alleghenies, then down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans. As he traveled, his enthusiasm increased. The country was ripe for 'X'—the sublime glittering project. In every town and hamlet, in the lonely settlers' cabins, he found new adherents. He wrote to Theo constantly, using their private cipher, and she, relegated to the eternal feminine rôle of marking time and waiting for news, rejoiced at each report.