Washington Irving, approaching the father and daughter to offer his own congratulations, thought, There is something spurious in all this. It doesn't ring true. Though he has beer grudgingly acquitted here, what can he do now? Jefferson is not appeased. There will be more persecution. The people believe him guilty. Moreover, they say he is heavily in debt. Poor Theo. She has hitched her wagon to a very dim star. He clasped her hand, murmuring his congratulations while his eyes were warm with sympathy.

Theo saw the sympathy and resented it. Why should anyone dare to pity them now? Aaron was exonerated.

The burst of elation, the happiness of triumph, were short lived. During the weeks that followed, it became all too clear to Aaron that escape from the gallows in Richmond conferred no such certainty anywhere else. Ohio and Mississippi indicted him on the instigation of Jefferson. He had wriggled out in Virginia, wriggled out even from a subsequent anticlimactic trial for misdemeanor there, but there were other States. In New York and New Jersey he was still wanted for the ' murder' of Hamilton. A Baltimore mob tried to lynch him on general principles——

'Apparently there is not a jail nor a gallowstree in the States but yearns to tender me its gentle hospitality,' he told Theo. 'Can such popularity be deserved?'

Theo was too sick at heart to answer. She had passed beyond outcry at the injustice done him. The unrelenting persecution now seemed to her like a formless black monster. One did not expect justice from a monster: one tried one's puny best to escape.

'Yes,' said Aaron, reading her mind, because of late they had discussed this only solution. 'I shall have to go abroad for a while. Without my presence here, they will cool down or find another quarry. In England I shall find supporters, and in France.'

His eyes narrowed, and she knew that he was thinking of Napoleon. Let him but once establish contact with the great conqueror, and he felt confident of enthusiastic support. Here they were provincial and panicky: they had no vision. In the Old World it would be different: the Emperor would understand.

'Jerome Bonaparte, whom I entertained at Richmond Hill, is now King of Westphalia,' he remarked, pursuing this line of thought.

Theo brightened. 'And surely he will be hospitable to you in return, will help you to see his brother.'

Aaron had no doubt of it. Gradually Theo again found hope. Aaron had never lost it. 'X' was, after all, still possible. Europe would provide the proper theater for the next act. The necessity for exile was perhaps only a blessing in disguise.