Balgray sits aghast.--Meanwhile the chance of war between America and England broadens, the cloud in the sky grows blacker. Aaron is all impatience to find a ship for home; war might fence him in for years. At last his hopes are rewarded. The _Aurora_, outward bound for Boston, is reported lying off Gravesend. The captain says he will land Aaron in Boston for thirty pounds. And now he is really going; the ship will sail on the morrow. At midnight he takes up his diary: “It is twelve o’clock--midnight. Having packed up my residue of duds, and stowed my papers in the writing desk, I sit smoking my pipe and contemplating the certainty of escaping from this country. As to my reception in my own country, so far as depends on J. Madison & Co., I expect all the efforts of their implacable malice. This, however, does not give me uneasiness. I shall meet those efforts and repel them. My confidence in my own resources does not permit me to despond or even doubt. The incapacity of J. Madison & Co. for every purpose of public administration, their want of energy and firmness, make it impossible they should stand. They are too feeble and corrupt to hold together long. Mem.: To write to Alston to hold his influence in his State, and not again degrade himself by compromising with rascals and cowards.” It is in this high vein that Aaron sails away for home, and, thirty-five days later, sits down to beef and potatoes with the pilot and the _Auroras_ captain, in the harbor of Boston. He goes ashore without a shilling, and sells his “Bayle” and “Moreri” to President Kirtland of Harvard for forty dollars. This makes up his passage money for New York. He negotiates with the skipper of a coasting sloop, and nine days later, in the evening’s dusk, he lands at the Battery. It is the next day. The sun is shining into narrow Stone Street. It lights up the Swartwout parlor where Aaron, home at last, is hearing the news from the stubborn, changeless one--Swartwout of the true, unflagging breed! “It is precisely four years,” says Aaron, following a conversational lull, “since I left this very room to go aboard the _Clarissa_ for England.” “Aye! Four years!” repeats the stubborn one, meditatively. “Much water runs under the bridges in four years! It has carried away some of your friends, colonel; but also it has carried away as many of your enemies.” For one day and night, Aaron and the stubborn, loyal Swartwout smoke and exchange news. On the second day, Aaron opens offices in Nassau Street. Three lines appear in the _Evening Post_. The notice reads: “Colonel Burr has returned to the city, and will resume his practice of the law. He has opened offices in Nassau Street.”