It did not take long to make the rounds of the prim, Puritan village, and though he caught sight of more than one pretty maid peeping with coy curiosity from cottage window or garden plot, he saw no face comparable with that which he had cherished in memory since seeing the original in Blennerhassett's parlor. A lame soldier of the Revolutionary War pointed out to him the squares named Campus Martius and Capitolium, and directed him to follow the Sacra Via, through a covert way, to the wonderful ancient earthworks hard by--vast enclosures, terraces and tumuli, resembling natural hills, but, in fact, the piled-up monuments of the Mound Builders. The greatest and most impressive of these mysterious remains, a huge mound in the form of a sugar-loaf, appealed so strongly to Arlington's imagination, that, contemplating it, he for a time forgot everything else, losing himself in admiration and conjecture. Intending a closer inspection of the steep, artificial hill, he crossed a dry _fosse_ which ran around it in a perfect circle, and was clambering up the mound when a voice from above startled him. "Come up, come right up! There's a good path starts t'other side of that wild gooseberry bush." Looking aloft, Arlington beheld, seated on the summit of the mound, the grotesque figure of Plutarch Byle. "It blows a body, don't it?" said Byle, recognizing the Southerner with a familiar nod. "Give us your hand; I'll haul you safe to the peak of Aryrat. I'm right glad to see you, and I'm not sorry he isn't along with you. Have you got rid of him for good?" "Do you mean Colonel Burr?" "Exactly; he's a sort of burr I hope to God will never stick to me or to any friend of mine. I like you, Burlington, and I congratulate you, as the saying is, that you pulled him off. Folks oughtn't to be too familiar with strangers, ought they? You or I might be taken in by appearances. I confess I was deceived in--I won't say that man, but that hoop-snake. He was as fine looking a man as I am. But let's not mention him. Which way do you hail from now? When did you strike Marietta?" "To-day, Mr. Byle." "Call me Plutarch. I don't like European forms. How long do you calculate to stay, Burlingham?" "Not long. I am on my return to Virginia, and stop in Marietta to see these earthworks. You are acquainted here. Do you know--do you know of a family by the name of Hale?"