“I am sorry, sir,” Jefferson said as the three stared indignantly. “I am Thomas Jefferson. You are very welcome in my house but at this moment I must beg to be excused and be about some urgent business.” And he turned the key in the lock. The letter lay in the drawer where he had left it. He took it out, lifted the seal again, and let the single sheet slide out into his hand. It was a very brief and slightly curt note from a Philadelphia banker. A friend for whom Jefferson had felt a sudden compassion and whom he had trusted had abruptly gone bankrupt. The note Jefferson had endorsed for this friend, with the hope of helping him recoup his fortunes, was now long overdue, unpaid and collectible; since Mr. Jefferson had put his personal endorsement upon the paper he was now legally assumed to be liable for the full amount of payment. The note was drawn for twenty thousand dollars. 5 _Monticello: Autumn, 1809_ With a frantic kind of energy that early autumn, Jefferson forsook his books and set himself to the job of assaying and recuperating his own personal estate. During his long absences, Thomas Randolph, and his son, young Jefferson after him, had done their best by the vast property—the acres about Monticello, and the farm, Poplar Grove, a few miles away. But many fields had been neglected and weeds and brush had taken over; the slaves, having no firm master, had learned to shirk tasks cleverly and leave much undone. Thomas Jefferson had never been a harsh master, but now he became a stern and demanding one. Nails must be made and bricks burned, both for his own building plans and for sale in the market. His French friend, Du Pont de Nemours, on his last visit had brought him a small flock of merino sheep. Jefferson enjoyed supervising the shearing of these sheep, and the washing of the wool, and watched the carding, spinning, and weaving going on under Martha’s supervision. He decided to have a suit of clothes made from his own fine woolen cloth and busied himself drawing patterns, measuring, and figuring for days. The wrist that had been broken in Paris had never been properly set, and he found using drawing tools and writing letters more and more of a painful chore. And always he was interrupted by guests. Some he had invited, regretting later his hospitable impulse, but the uninvited continued to find their way up the winding road to his mountain. He must, he determined, have a place that was his own where he could study and work undisturbed either by the family or by these strangers, most of whom he was certain had only one desire—to be able to go home and boast that they had seen the great Thomas Jefferson and the fabulous house he had created.