“I can hardly excuse my coming,” he says, “and I apologize before I state my errand. I would have you believe, too, that my presence here is entirely by my own suggestion.”
Aaron bows.
The good doctor explains that he has been called upon to go, professionally, to the fighting ground with Hamilton.
“That is how I became aware,” he concludes, “of what you have in train. I resolved to see you, and make one last effort at a peaceful solution.”
Aaron coldly shakes his head: “There can be no adjustment.”
“Think of his family, sir! Think of his wife and his seven children!”
“Sir, it is he who should have thought of them. You should have gone to him when he was maligning me. What? You know how this man has slandered me! He has spoken to you as he has to hundreds of others!” The good doctor looks guiltily uneasy. “And now I am asked to sit down with the scorn he has heaped upon me, because he has a family! Does it not occur to you, sir, that I, too, have a family? But with this difference: Should he fall, there will be eight to share the loss among them. If I fall, the blow descends on but one pair of loving shoulders, and those the slender shoulders of a girl.”
There is no hope: The good doctor goes his disappointed way.
The fighting grounds are a flat, grassy shelf of rock, under the heights of Weehawken. The morning is bright, with the July sun coming up over the bay. Hamilton, pale, like a man going open-eyed to death, takes his barge at the landing near the Grange. The good Dr. Hosack and his friend Pendleton are with him. The barge is pulled across to the grassy shelf, under the somber Weehawken heights.
The good doctor remains by the barge, while Hamilton, with friend Pendleton, ascends the rocky, shelving, shingly twenty feet to the place of meeting. They find Aaron and Van Ness awaiting them. Aaron touches his hat stiffly, and walks to the far end of the narrow grassy shelf.