“Not now—­some later day, perhaps.  You see it takes all my time to be a great lawyer!”

“You don’t deceive me,” said Mrs. Selden, with great dryness.  “But good or bad, your reason’s your own, and I’ll not ask you to satisfy an old woman’s curiosity.  In my day it was something to be Governor of Virginia.”  She waved her fan more vigorously than before, and the wind from it blew a paper from the table beside her.  She was birdlike in her movements, and before Rand could stoop, she had caught the sheet.  “Rows and rows of figures!” she exclaimed.  “Is it a sum you’re doing?”

He nodded, taking it from her.  “Yes; a giant of a sum,” he answered easily, and put the paper in his pocket.  “Now what is old Carfax doing on your land?”

The consultation over, Mrs. Selden left the office and was handed by Rand into the pumpkin coach.  When he had closed the door, he yet stood beside the lowered glass, his arm, sleeved in fine green cloth, laid along its rim, his strong face, clear cut and dark, smiling in upon his old friend.  In his mind was the long and dreary stretch of his boyhood when she and Adam Gaudylock were the only beings towards whom he had a friendly thought.  He was one of those men whose minds still hold communion with all the selves that they have left behind.  Each in its day had been a throbbing, vital thing, and though at times he found the past obtrusive and wished to throw it off, he could never utterly do so.  There was for him no Lethe.  But if he tasted the disadvantages of so compound a self, to others the array enriched the man, making him vibrant of all that had been as well as all that was.  It put them, too, to speculation as to how great an army he would gather ere the end, and as to the nature of the last recruit.  The visitor from the Three-Notched Road looked at him now with her keen old eyes and laid her mittened hand upon his arm.  “Be a good man, Lewis Rand!  Be a great one if you will, but be good.  That comes first.”

Rand touched her withered hand with his lips.  “It is women who are good.  And you’ll not come to town again until nearly Christmas!  I’ll ride over before then, and I’ll settle Carfax for you.  You are going home now?”

“Vinie Mocket is cutting watermelon rind for me.  I’ll stop there first and then I’ll go home!  Give my love to Jacqueline.  I heard at the Swan that Mr. Jefferson is at Monticello.  Is that true?”

“Yes, it is true.”

“Humph!” said Mrs. Selden.  “Then you’ll be at Monticello all hours.  I wish you’d ask him for a seedling of that new peach tree.”

“I shall not be there all hours,” said Rand, “but I’ll manage to get the seedling for you.  Good-bye, good-bye!”