"Vinie!" answered the other. "Vinie would always blindly worship on. The sun might darken and go out, but where's the odds since she would never know it! Faith like a dog's or a child's or Vinie's--there's comfort there! But the awakened mind, and Judgment side by side upon the throne with Love--Oh, there's verjuice in the world!" He broke into harsh laughter. "I wish I knew what ailed you," thought Mocket. "I'll try another tack." He stopped whittling and turned from his desk. "Coming out of the Capitol, I heard Ludwell Cary say that he goes next week to Albemarle." "It is indifferent to me," replied the other, "whether he goes or stays." His hands closed upon the ash-stick until his nails were white. Suddenly he spoke without apparent relevance. "He is one of those men who are summoned in time of trouble--when the mind is tossed and the heart is wavering. They always answer--they come down the street at night, between the box bushes, up the steps beneath the honeysuckle--on such an errand they would not fear the lion's den! They are magnanimous, they are generous, they are out of our old life, they can tell us what we ought to do!" He struck the ash-stick violently against the hearth. "Honeysuckle and box and the quiet of the night, and 'Yes, I knew, I knew. 'Twas thus and so, and I would counsel you--' Oh, world's end and hell-fire! forgiveness itself grows worthless on such terms!" He threw the stick from him, rose abruptly, and walked to the window. "The clouds pile up, but they do not break, and the heat and fever of this August air grow intolerable. To abstract the mind--to abstract the mind"--He stood listening to the locusts and all the indefinable hum of the downward-drawing afternoon, then turned to Tom. "Give me those Winchester papers. Now what, exactly, did you do in Williamsburgh?" CHAPTER XXIX THE RIVER ROAD The days of speeches, for the Government and for Aaron Burr,--Hay, Wirt, and McRae against Edmund Randolph, Wickham, Botts, Lee, and Luther Martin,--went crackling by with bursts of heavy artillery and with running fire of musketry. It was a day of orators, and eloquence was spilled like water. At last the case rested. The Chief Justice summed up, exhaustively, with extraordinary ability, and with all the impartiality humanly possible to a Federalist Chief Justice dealing with a Republican prosecution. The jury, as is known, brought in a Scotch verdict, whereupon the prisoner was immediately upon his feet with a vehement protest. Finally the "Not proven" was expunged from the record, and Aaron Burr stood "Acquitted." The famous trial for treason was over.