He made sure he should always remember his latest glimpse of the pleasant, homely earth. He was sitting idly on the porch step, letting his gaze go adrift over the nearer green-clad hills to the purple deeps of the western mountain, already steeped in shadow. The pike was deserted, and the shrill hum of the house-flies played an insistent tune in which the low-pitched boom of a bumblebee tumbling awkwardly among the clover heads served for an intermittent bass. Suddenly into the hot silence came the quick _cloppity-clop_ of galloping hoofs. Thomas Jefferson's heart was tender on that side of it which was turned toward the dumb creatures, and his thought was instantly pitiful and indignant. Who would be cruel enough to gallop a horse in such weltering weather? The unspoken query had its answer when Major Dabney's fleet saddle stallion thundered up to the gate in a white nimbus of dust, and the Major flung himself from the saddle and called loudly for Mistress Gordon. Thomas Jefferson sprang up hastily to forward the cry, fear clutching at his heart; but the Major was before him in the wide passage opening upon the porch. "My deah Mistress Gordon! We are in a world of trouble at the manor-house! Little Ardea, my grand-daughteh, was taken sick last night, and to-day she's out of huh head--think of it, _out of huh head!_ I'm riding hotfoot for Doctah Williams, but Lord of Heaven! it'll be nigh sundown befo' I can hope to get back with him. Could you, my deah madam, faveh us--" Thomas Jefferson heard no more; would stay to hear no more. The forest, always his refuge in time of trial, reached a long finger of scattering oaks down to the opposite side of the creek, and thither he fled, cold to the marrow of his bones, though the sun-heated stone coping of the dam on which he crossed the stream went near to blistering his bare feet as he ran. From the crotch of one of the oaks--his watch-tower in other periods of stress--he saw the Major mount and continue his gallop eastward on the pike; and a little later the ancient Dabney family carriage came and went in a smother of white dust, wheeling in front of the home gate and pausing only long enough to take up his mother hastening to the rescue. After that he was alone with the hideous tumult of his thoughts. The girl would die. He was as sure of it as if the heavens and the earth had instantly become articulate to shout the terrible sentence. God had taken him at his word! There would be no intruder to tell him that the woods and the creek belonged to her grandfather. She would be dead; slain by the breath of his mouth. And for all the years and years and ages to come, he would be roasting and grilling in that place prepared for the devil and his angels--and for murderers!