The news of the accident to Lewis Rand spread far and wide. Both as a
lawyer and as Mr. Jefferson's adjutant he had become in two years' time
a marked man. Federalist and Republican were agreed that the recent
election was but a foot in the stirrup. Another two years might see
him--almost anywhere. He was likely to ride far and to ride fast. To the
Federalists his progress from the tobacco-fields to the Elysian Heights
of office was but another burning sign of the degeneracy of the times
and the tendencies of Jefferson. On the other hand, the Republicans
quoted the Rights of Man and the Declaration of Independence, and made
the name of Lewis Rand as symbolic as a liberty pole. He was _bon
enfant, bon Républicain_. Virginia, like Cornelia, numbered him among
her starry gems. He was of the Gracchi. He was almost anything Roman,
Revolutionary, and Patriotic that the mind of a perfervid poet could
conjure up and fix in a corner of the Argus or the Examiner. Every
newspaper in the state mentioned the accident, and in a letter from a
Gentleman of Virginia, an account of it was read by the subscribers to
the Aurora.

All this was somewhat later, when the stage-coach and the mail-rider had
distributed the slow-travelling news. In the mean time Lewis Rand lay in
the curtained bed in the blue room at Fontenoy, and wondered at that
subtle force called Chance. The blue roses upon the hangings, the blue
willows and impossible bridges of the china, the apple-cheeked moon
surmounting the face of the loud-ticking clock were not more
fantastically unnatural than that he, Lewis Rand, should be lying there
between the linen sheets, in the sunny morning stillness of the fourth
day after his fall, listening for the stir of the awakening house, for
one step upon the stair, and for one voice. He was where he had desired