Meanwhile Burr’s affairs were going ill in the State of Ohio. Blennerhassett’s foolish “Querist,” and the more foolish conversation of both Blennerhassett and Burr, combined with the assaults of the “Western World,” drew so much attention to the armaments at the island that Mrs. Blennerhassett, left alone while her husband was with Allston and Burr in Kentucky, became alarmed, and thought it necessary to send them a warning. October 20 she wrote to Burr that he could not return with safety. Thinking the note too important to be trusted to the post, and ignorant of Burr’s address, she sent her gardener, Peter Taylor, on horseback, through Chillicothe, to Cincinnati, with orders to ask Senator Smith for the address. Taylor reached Cincinnati October 23, after three days of travel, and went, according to his mistress’s orders, directly to Senator Smith’s house, which was in the same building with his store,--for Smith was a storekeeper and army contractor. The senator was already too deeply compromised with Burr, and his courage had begun to fail. At first he denied knowledge of Burr or Blennerhassett. In Taylor’s words, “He allowed he knew nothing of either of them; that I must be mistaken; this was not the place. I said, ‘No; this was the right place,--Mr. John Smith, storekeeper, Cincinnati.’” In the end, Smith took him upstairs, and gave him, with every injunction of secrecy, a letter to be delivered to Burr at Lexington. Taylor reached Lexington October 25, found Burr, delivered his letters, and candidly added: “If you come up our way the people will shoot you.” The following Monday, October 27, the gardener started on his return, taking Blennerhassett with him, and leaving Burr at Lexington to face the storms that threatened from many quarters at once. The impossibility of returning to the island was but one warning; another came from Senator Smith, who dreaded exposure. The letter he sent by Peter Taylor, dated October 23, affected ignorance of Burr’s schemes, and demanded an explanation of them. October 26 Burr sent the required disavowal:-- “I was greatly surprised and really hurt,” said Burr,[189] “by the unusual tenor of your letter of the 23d, and I hasten to reply to it, as well for your satisfaction as my own. If there exists any design to separate the Western from the Eastern States, I am totally ignorant of it. I never harbored or expressed any such intention to any one, nor did any person ever intimate such design to me.” From that moment to the last day of his life Burr persisted in this assertion, coupling it always in his own mind with a peculiar reservation. What he so solemnly denied was the intention to separate the Western States “by force” from the Eastern; what he never denied was the plan of establishing a Western empire by consent.