The town sits up and rubs its eyes. Aaron’s enemies--the old fashionable Hamilton-Schuyler coterie--are scandalized; his friends are exalted. What is most important, a cataract of clients swamps his offices, and when the sun goes down, he has received over two thousand dollars in retainers. Instantly, he is overwhelmed with business; never again will he cumber his journals with ha’penny registrations of groat and farthing economies. As redoubts are carried by storm, so, with a rush, to the astonishment of friend and foe alike, Aaron retakes his old place as foremost among the foremost at the New York bar. CHAPTER XXIII--GRIEF COMES KNOCKING BUSINESS rushes in upon Aaron; its volume overwhelms him. “This is too much,” says he, “for a gentleman whose years have reached the middle fifties,” and he takes unto himself a partner. Later he takes another partner; the work of the firm overflows into a quartette of rooms and keeps busy a dozen clerks. “Why labor so hard?” asks the stubborn Swartwout. “Your income is the largest at the bar. You have no such need of money.” “Ay! but my creditors have!” “Your creditors? Who are they?” “Every soul who lost a dollar by my Southwestern ambitions--you, with others. Man, I owe millions!” Aaron works like a horse and lives like a Spartan. He rises with the blue of dawn. His servant appears with his breakfast--an egg, a plate of toast, a pot of coffee. He is at his desk in the midst of his papers when the clerks begin to arrive. All day he is insatiable to work. He sends messages, receives them, examines authorities, confers with fellow lawyers, counsels clients, dictates letters. Business incarnate--he pushes every affair with incredible dispatch. And the last thing he will agree to is defeat. “Accept only the inevitable!” is his war-word, in law as in life. Aaron’s day ends with seven o’clock. He shoves everything of litigation sort aside, helps himself to a glass of wine, and refuses further thought or hint of business. It is then he calls about him his friends. The evening is merry with laughter, jest and reminiscence. At midnight he retires, and sleeps like a tree. [Illustration: 0357] “Colonel Burr,” observes Dr. Hosack--he who attended Hamilton at Weehawken--“you do not sleep enough; six hours is not enough. Also, you eat too little.” Aaron gazes, with comic eye at the rotund, well-fed doctor, the purple of good burgundy in his full cheeks. “If I were a doctor, now,” he retorts, “I should grant your word to be true. But I am a lawyer, and must keep myself on edge.” Aaron’s earliest care is to write his arrival to the lustrous Theo. The reply he receives makes the world black. “Less than a fortnight ago,” she says, “your letters would have gladdened my soul. Now there is no more joy, and life a blank. My boy is gone--forever dead and gone.”