Someone opened a door below and the blare of a marching tune came to his ears which likely meant that the dancing company were going down the chilly halls to the unfurnished rooms where the collation was spread on trestle tables. Jefferson found himself drumming his fingers on his chest in time to the music. There had been so much martial music in his life. He thought of Patrick Henry riding into Williamsburg on that cloudy morning at the head of his militia. Gallant, shabby Patrick, who had stood so tall in his run-down boots and worn leather breeches, his coat out at the elbows, who had twice sent great words ringing on the air of America, words that were so trumpet-strong and stirring that they still echoed in the ears of men and made a small thrill quiver in the breast of Thomas Jefferson himself. “If this be treason, make the most of it!” And “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” He would hear them again and again so long as he lived, remembering that they had challenged the hesitant hearts of rebelling Virginians until they were ready to dare even the great guns of the Third George of Hanover. But now, Jefferson was thinking, how early the fires of patriotism had cooled in Patrick Henry. Patrick had been successful at Red Hill, his plantation. He had made some money, grown old before his time, and been content the last time Jefferson had seen him to sit under a green tree with a jug of cool spring water near by and his grandchildren playing around. Ease and security—were they the drugs that abated the eternal challenge in the minds of men? And did nations like men grow sluggish and apathetic when they were well fed and bodily comfortable, Jefferson wondered? Patrick Henry was dead now, and George Washington was dead. One by one the passionately dedicated builders of the temple of the Republic had vanished from the arena, leaving the affairs of state to the younger, noisier men who had not known the travail, the risks, the fiery trials of the beginning. I am a lone dead leaf hanging on the tree, the old man told himself. I am that despised democrat who greeted pompous envoys in a shabby coat, the one they called Infidel.