"I didn't ask for a legal opinion," said Mocket. "I'm a lawyer myself. There's land there, you'll not deny, and a river, and plenty of game If a Yankee doesn't find it Paradise, he had no chance anyhow, and a Kentuck can care for himself! There's no sense in calling it a bubble, or being so damned scrupulous!"
Rand made a gesture of contempt. "You let Yazoo companies and the Promised Land alone! People are ceasing to be fools. To-day they demand a hair of the mammoth or a sample of the salt mountain."
Mocket ceased rustling the papers on the table, and turned to regard his chief more closely. "Lewis, I've heard you say things like that more than once lately. A year ago you were mighty respectful to Mr. Jefferson's salt mountain and strange bones and great elk and silk grass and all the rest of it. That was a curious letter of yours in the Examiner. If't was meant to defend his neutrality doings, 'twas a damned lukewarm defence! If I hadn't known 'twas yours, sink me if I wouldn't have thought it a damned piece of Federal sarcasm!—Did you send that paper to the President?"
"No, I did not send it."
"Lewis," said the scamp slowly, "are you breaking with Mr. Jefferson?"
Rand walked to the window and stood looking out upon the winter afternoon. It was snowing hard, and through the drifting veil the trees across the way could hardly be discerned. "Yes," he said deliberately. "Yes,—if you call it breaking with a man to have grown away from him. If he served me once—yes, and greatly!—have I not worked for him since, hand and foot? We are quits, I think. I shall not cease to esteem him."
Mocket breathed hard with excitement. "You haven't been natural for a long time—but I didn't know 't was this—"
"I am being natural now," said Rand somewhat sternly. "I've told you, Tom, and now let it alone. Least said is soonest mended."
"But—but—" stammered the scamp, "are you going over to the other camp?"
Rand did not at once answer. From a plate on the windowsill he took a crust of bread, and, raising the sash, crumbled it upon the snow without. The sparrows came at once, alighting near his hand with a tameness that spoke of pleasing association with the providence above them. "No," said Rand at last, "I am not going over to the other camp—if by that you mean the Federalist camp. Must one forever sign under a captain? It is not my instinct to serve.—Now let it alone."