He determined to come home. He felt his fiber deteriorat ing. He was aging—at last he knew it. And he longed for the two who were of his blood, Theodosia and the child. He spent many futile, miserable months in trying to obtain a passport, and when finally, in March of 1812., he obtained passage from London for Boston on the Aurora, war rumors were thick between the United States and England.

The British had been secretly inciting the Indians to revolt; they had attacked American ships; they had kidnaped four thousand American seamen and impressed them into the British Naval Service; besides this they had instituted a virtual blockade of American waters. The South felt that these conditions were intolerable and was clamoring for war. New England held that compromise was possible. President Madison also endeavored to stem the rising tide of public hysteria. But the old enmity and jealousy caused by the War of Independence sprang up again. Twenty-nine years had not been long enough to lay them permanently.

Aaron had little love for the America which had cast him out, but none at all for England which had done the same. He stood upon the Aurora's deck and watched the gray line of land fade into the horizon.

'I hope never to visit England again,' he said to the kindly captain, who had finally consented to ship this inconvenient and unpopular passenger, ' except at the head of fifty thousand men. Insula inhospitabilis, as it was truly called eighteen hundred years ago.'

Captain Potter grunted. 'I hope this tarnation war don't catch us in mid-ocean. The Aurora will be captured sure. She's none too fast.'

Aaron laughed. 'Have no fear. Our present administration will never declare war. We are totally unprepared. We have neither men nor money, and I believe but twenty warships. I treat the country's war prattle as I should that of a bevy of boarding-school misses. Show them a bayonet or a sword and they will run and hide.'

He was wrong. War was declared between England and the United States on June eighteenth, but by that time the Aurora was safe in Boston Harbor.

The Aurora was safe, but Aaron was not. The government prosecutions still hung over him. Two of his largest creditors in New York held judgments against him: it was necessary not to be recognized until they could somehow be appeased. So Aaron borrowed an old-fashioned wig and clothes that were too large for him. A rather shabby Mr. Arnot slipped back into his country in much the same way that Mr. Edwards had sneaked out of it four years before. This was not the triumphant return they had pictured, he and Theo. But at least he was back on the same continent with her. Let him once reach New York and their meeting would not be long delayed.