This torrent came out in tones appalling. His very frame shook. It was awful, said Mr. Lear. More than once he threw his hands up as he hurled imprecations upon St. Clair. Mr. Lear remained speechless; awed into breathless silence. The roused Chief sat down on the sofa once more. He seemed conscious of his passion, and uncomfortable. He was silent. His warmth beginning to subside, he at length said in an altered voice: "_This must not go beyond this room_." Another pause followed--a longer one--when he said in a tone quite low, "_General St. Clair shall have justice; I looked hastily through the dispatches, saw the whole disaster but not all the particulars; I will receive him without displeasure; I will hear him without prejudice; he shall have full justice_." He was now, said Mr. Lear, perfectly calm. Half an hour had gone by. The storm was over; and no sign of it was afterwards seen in his conduct or heard in his conversation. The result is known. The whole case was investigated by Congress. St. Clair was exculpated and regained the confidence Washington had in him when appointing him to that command. He had put himself into the thickest of the fight and escaped unhurt, though so ill as to be carried on a litter, and unable to mount his horse without help. A passage from one of Mr. Jefferson's letters which the historian Sparks records, may here be given, as its spirit covers the private as well as public life of Washington. Mr. Jefferson withdrew his services as Secretary of State from the administration of Washington towards the close of his first term in the Presidency. His retirement from that post took place when party spirit was violent and bitter in the extreme; never was it more so in the annals of our country; and it was known that he had differed from Washington on political questions of the greatest importance. Nevertheless, writing of him at a later period Mr. Jefferson says: "His integrity was most pure; his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man."