Theo thrust her head forth again. 'How dare you talk of hanging!' she cried into the astonished faces outside. 'Burr is no traitor. And he's not even been tried yet.'

The man in the coonskin cap stopped singing. His jaw dropped. Her blazing eyes abashed him. 'Why, sure, ma'am, he's a traitor. Jefferson says so.'

'He has no right to say so,' she returned furiously. 'The President has no right to condemn any man unheard.'

The dancers broke from ' Money Musk' and crowded round the carriage. They muttered and stared. Pompey, momentarily deserting the horses, pushed his way to her. His black face was gray with fear.

'Don' talk like dat, Mistiss,' he begged in a hoarse whisper. 'Dey mought hurt us. I kain git de horses troo dem nohow.'

'Where you want to go to, ma'am?' asked the man in the coonskin cap, who had overheard Pompey. Theo's words, coupled with her beauty, had had their effect.

She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. 'To the jail,' she answered quietly, 'to see Aaron Burr.'

There was a moment's silence, then somebody tittered. 'They say he casts a spell over the females.'—'Even a gallows bird can find comfort in a pair of soft white arms.'—'Give him a kiss for me, my lady,' shrilled a fat wench, placing her arms akimbo and smacking her lips. This sally won guffaws; somebody slapped the wench across her broad buttocks.

Theodosia rose inside the carriage, her cape and hood slipped off, and she leaned far out the window, directing her words to the farthest of their stupid, goggling faces. 'I am Aaron Burr's daughter. Will you kindly let me pass?'

The crowd fell back then, murmuring, whispering, their expressions changed to avid curiosity. The man in the coon skin cap gave her a look of grudging admiration, and he went to Pompey's aid. 'Make way for this lady!' he shouted. The surging crowd obeyed. The news ran like wildfire over them.

The carriage rolled slowly down the street between rows of staring eyes, and stopped before a small red-brick building with heavily barred windows.

Theo stepped out and made herself known to the uniformed jailer who greeted her. Her small back was straight and her head high, but her legs were trembling.

No matter how I find him, I must not show my dismay, my terror, she thought. In a frenzied effort to anticipate the worst, she pictured him in a dark dirty cell, littered with straw; she saw him with his hair cropped, garbed in the soiled homespun uniform, dun-colored, which was reserved for prisoners. Would he be beaten, humiliated, trapped, his gallantry and courage for once effaced by this incredible degradation? She forced her lips to a casually affectionate smile. There must be no heroics—he would hate them.