“Let no witness depart without taking a copy of his evidence, which is now more important than ever. The criminal Burr is preserved, it seems, to become the rallying point of all the disaffected and worthless of the United States, and to be the pivot on which all the conspiracies and intrigues, that foreign governments may wish to disturb us with, are to turn. There is still, however, the misdemeanor; and, if he be convicted of that, Judge Marshall must, for very decency, give us some respite by a confinement of him; but we must expect it to be very short.” There is a day’s recess; then the charge of “levying war against Mexico” is called. The red-nosed Wilkinson now tells his story; and is made to admit--the painful sweat standing in great drops upon his purple visage--that he has altered in important respects several of Aaron’s letters. Being, by his own mouth, a forger, the jury marks its estimate of the red-nosed one by again acquitting Aaron, and pronouncing a second finding: “Not guilty!” Thus ends the great trial which has rocked a continent. Aaron is free; his friends crowd about him jubilantly, while the loving, lustrous Theo weeps upon his shoulder. CHAPTER XXI--THE SAILING AWAY OF AARON. SIX months creep by; May is painting Manhattan with its flowers. The house of the stubborn, loyal Swartwout is in Stone Street. Long ago, in the old Dutch beaver-peltry days, the home of the poet Steen-dam was there. Now it is the dwelling place of John Swartwout, and Aaron is his guest. The lustrous Theo is with Aaron this sunny afternoon, luster something dimmed; for the hour is one sad and tearful with parting. It is a last parting; though the pair--the loving father! the adoring, clinging daughter!--hopefully, happily blind, believe otherwise. “Yes,” Aaron is saying, “I must sail tonight. The ship is at anchor in the lower bay.” Theo, the lustrous, is too bravely the child of Aaron to break into lamentation, though the wrung heart fills her eyes with tears. “And should your plans fail,” she says, “you will come to us at the ‘Oaks.’ Joseph, you know, is no longer ‘Mr. Alston,’ but ‘Governor Alston.’ As father to the Governor of the State, and with your own high name, you may take what place you will in South Carolina. You promise, do you not? If by any trip of fortune your prospects are overthrown, you will come to us in the South?” “But, dearling, my plans will not fail. I have had letters from Lords Mulgrave and Castlereagh, I bear with me the indorsement of the British Minister in Washington. Openly or secretly, England will support my project with men and money and ships. If, in some caprice of politics or a changing cabinet, she should refuse, I shall seek Napoleon. Mexico and an empire!--that should match finely the native color of his Corsican feeling.” Night draws on; Aaron and the lustrous Theo say the sorrowful words of separation, and within the hour he is aboard the _Clarissa_, outward bound for England.