Abner Dudley accepted Major Gilcrest's invitation to accompany him in his coach to Lexington upon a certain court day which was an occasion of unusual excitement. Tidings that the trade of the Mississippi River was again endangered had just been received. The treaty of 1795, which secured to Kentucky the right of navigation of the Mississippi and the right of deposit in the New Orleans Bank, had now come to a termination by limitation of treaty; and the Spanish Intendant of the province of Louisiana had issued a proclamation that there should be no renewal, although it had been plainly stipulated in the former treaty that the privileges should be renewed. The indignation which this act of broken faith produced in Kentucky was greatly augmented by tidings which had just reached the State that Louisiana had been ceded by Spain to France by the treaty made secretly in 1800, but not made public until 1802. The failure of all former efforts to induce Kentucky to sever her allegiance to the Union and to join her fortunes with Spain had not destroyed the hopes of the Spaniards and of self-seeking Kentucky agitators. Thus the revival of the old troubles over the navigation of the Mississippi afforded an opportunity of which treacherous conspirators were not slow to avail themselves. During the noon repast at the tavern, Dudley and James Drane had been neighbors at table; and when the meal was concluded, the two had linked arms and strolled up and down the wide portico running the length of the tavern, and serving to-day as a reception-room for the tavern and as a political arena for groups of excited men who were hotly denouncing Spain and all her works. Other groups near by were as earnestly, but far less noisily, insinuating that Spain was the best friend Kentucky could have, and that her interests lay in the direction of an alliance with the foreign power.