"Ah!" said Rand, "I should like to see that land! When you have done a
thing, Adam, a thing that you have striven with all your might to do,
does it at once seem to you a small thing to have done? It does to
me--tasteless, soulless, and poor, not worth a man's while. Where lies
the land of satisfaction?"

"No," answered Adam, "I don't look at things that way. But then I'm not
ambitious. Last year, in New Orleans, I watched a man gaming. He won a
handful of French crowns. 'Ha!' says he, 'they glittered, but they do
not glitter now! Again!'--and this time he won doubloons. 'We'll double
these,' says he, and so they did, and he won. 'This is a small matter,'
he said. We'll play for double-eagles,' and so they did, and he won.
'Haven't you a tract of sugar-canes?' says he. 'Money's naugh. Let us
play for land!' and he won the sugar-canes. 'That girl, that red-lipped
Jeanne of thine, that black eye in the Street of Flowers--I'll play for
her! Deal the cards!' But he never won the girl, and he lost the
sugar-canes and the gold."

"A man walks forward, or he walks backward. There's no standing still
in this world or the next. Where were you after New Orleans, before you
turned homeward?"

"At Mr. Blennerhassett's island in the Ohio. And that's a pleasant place
and a pleasant gentleman--"

"Listen!"

"Aye," answered the other; "I heard it some moments back. Some one is
fiddling beyond that tulip tree."