CHAPTER XIX—HOW AARON IS INDICTED
IT is evening at the White House. The few dinner guests have departed, and Jefferson is alone in his study. As he stands at the open window, and gazes out across the sweep of lawn to the Potomac, shining like silver in the rays of the full May moon, his face is cloudy and angry. The face of the sage of Monticello has put aside its usual expression of philosophy. In place of the calm that should reign there, the look which prevails is one of narrowness, prejudice and wrathful passion.
Apparently, he waits the coming of a visitor, for he wheels without surprise, as a fashionably dressed gentleman is ushered in by a servant.
“Ah, Wirt!” he cries; “be seated, please. You got my note?”
William Wirt is thirty-five—a clean, well-bred example of the conventional Virginia gentleman. He accepts the proffered chair; but with the manner of one only half at ease, as not altogether liking the reason of his White House presence.
“Your note, Mr. President?” he repeats. “Oh, yes; I received it. What you propose is highly flattering. And yet—and yet——”
“And yet what, sir?” breaks in Jefferson impatiently. “Surely, I propose nothing unusual? You are practicing at the Richmond bar. I ask you to conduct the case against Colonel Burr.”
“Nothing unusual, of course,” returns Wirt, who, gifted of a keen political eye, hungrily foresees a final attorney generalship in what he is about. “And yet, as I was about to say, there are matters which should be considered. There is George Hay, for instance; he is the Government’s attorney for the Richmond district. It is his province as well as duty to prosecute Colonel Burr; he might resent my being saddled upon him. Have you thought of Mr. Hay?”