Just as Master had done a few years before, some brave speculators had bought up quite a bit of the old debt at huge discounts, from men who needed the cash and were glad enough to get something for their worthless notes. Many of these sellers were from the South. Of course, if a speculator could have got inside information about what the conversion rate was going to be, he’d make a killing. Quite properly, until the public announcement, Hamilton hadn’t breathed a word.

Not so his deputy. A New York man, of course. He told his friends.

And the word was—astoundingly—that the debt would be redeemed at par. Full price. Any speculator who could get his hands on the paper cheap could make a fortune.

Among the lucky merchants of New York, therefore, a feeding frenzy had developed. Southern gentlemen, not privy to what was afoot, were glad to find eager takers for any paper they cared to sell. Until they discovered the truth. Then there was an outcry.

“You accursed New York Yankees—you’re feasting upon the sorrows of the South.”

“If you weren’t short of cash, or understood the market, you wouldn’t be in this mess,” the New York insiders cruelly responded.

Such insider dealing might still be legal, but one thing was certain: New York was hated. And not only by the South. Anyone who’d sold their paper cheap felt aggrieved. As for Jefferson, as a Virginia plantation owner himself, there was no doubt where his sympathies lay. He looked upon the New York profiteers with loathing.

And John Master was just about to give Jefferson a few choice words about the shortcomings of improvident gentlemen from the South when, seeing James and Weston’s embarrassed faces, he paused, and checked himself.

What was he thinking of? In a short while, his grandson would be departing for Harvard. James, too, would be departing, for God knows how many months, to England. Did he really want to incur James’s anger, and leave young Weston with the memory of his grandfather making a scene with the great Thomas Jefferson?

James’s journey was necessary. It was some years since Albion had retired from his business in London. Despite what he saw as Grey’s poor behavior, John Master had continued to do business with the senior Albion, but on his retirement the Masters had selected another agent, who had proved to be unsatisfactory. James was going over to London to find another. In a way, Master wished that his son were not going just now.

“You’re traveling to Europe at an interesting time,” he had remarked to him. But a dangerous one also, in his estimation.