Gryson pulled a false beard from his pocket and showed it. "Wit' that, and me old hat, I've been keepin' most o' th' boys from tippin' me off," he said.

"All right; here's the lay-out. You have earned immunity, so far as this latest raid on you is concerned, by turning State's evidence. But you've got to move on, and keep moving. Do you get that?"

The fugitive nodded, and Blount got up to stagger across to the office wardrobe, from which he took the extra rain-coat kept there for emergencies.

"Here, get into this and go down-stairs. At the corner above, you'll find a two-seated motor-car backed against the curb. Do you know enough about machinery to start an auto-engine?"

Gryson nodded again. "I'd ought to, seein' that I've been a gang boss in a shop that made 'em."

"Good enough; crank the motor, climb in, and wait. I'll do the rest."

Five minutes later, Blount had stumbled out of the elevator at the ground-floor and was groping his way along the sidewalk toward the corner—groping because the pain had become blinding again and the street-lights were taking on many-colored and fantastic brilliancies.

When he finally found the car, it was mainly by the sense of hearing; the motor was drumming softly under the hood, and there was a blur in the mechanician's seat which answered for the crouching figure of the ward-worker. By a supreme effort of will Blount swung himself up behind the steering-wheel and let the clutch in. Luckily, the street was clear of vehicles and he made the turn in safety; but fully realizing his handicap, he steered straight away from the business district, and making a wide circuit through the residence quarter, brought the car out in the eastern suburb at the beginning of a road paralleling the Transcontinental tracks.

With the lights of the city dropping away to the rear, and the drumming motor quickened to racing speed, he told the fugitive from justice what was to be done and the manner of its doing. Twenty-two miles out they would reach the coal-mine station of Wardlaw, a few minutes ahead of the Overland. Since all east-bound trains stopped at the coal-mines to coal the engines, the way of escape would be open.

Something more than a wordless, space-devouring half-hour beyond this, Blount applied the brakes and dropped his passenger at the rear of the small iron-roofed building which served as the railroad station for the coal-mines. Far to the rear on the twenty-two-mile tangent the headlight of the coming train showed like a blazing star low on the western horizon.

"Go and blacken your face and hands at one of the slack dumps and pass yourself for a miner quitting his job," was Blount's parting suggestion; but the hollow-eyed fugitive had a last word to say, too, and he said it.

"I've been t' hell and back, as I told you, and 'twas f'r on'y th' wan thing: give me your word, Evan Blount, that you'll chop th' damn' tree down and let it lie where it falls! That's all I'm askin', this trip."

"You needn't lose any sleep worrying about that," was the curt reply; and without waiting for the train arrival, Blount turned the car and sent it racing on the way back to the city.

By all the tests he knew how to apply, he was little better than a dead man when he returned the hired auto to the side-street garage and made his halting way around to the hotel. He had long since given up the idea of trying to see Blenkinsop. He knew that the editor would not be in his office much before ten o'clock, and the two-hour wait was not to be endured.

Clinging desperately to the single purpose of getting back to the deserted room before his absence should be discovered, and weighed down by a crushing sense of the immorality of the step he had just taken in bargaining with a hunted criminal and in conniving at his escape, he pressed on, pushing through the revolving doors and slipping once more into the Saturday evening lobby throng. Edging around to the stair, he took all the cautious steps in reverse; ascending first to his own room to leave the rain-coat and the hat, and afterward feeling his way down the servants' stair and through the lower corridor to the locked door in his father's private suite.

Past this he had a hazy notion that part of him—the observing part—stood aside and looked on while the other part slowly and painfully struggled out of its clothes and into its pajamas. Also he saw the other part, after it had carefully secreted the wrapped package of papers under the mattress, beat the pillows feebly and bury its head in them. After that there was a great blank.



XXVI

APPLES OF GOLD

Notwithstanding the pillow-muffled plunge which was almost a lapse into the coma of utter exhaustion, Evan Blount awoke early on the Sunday morning, refreshed and measurably free from pain. Since the sun was just beginning to gild the lofty finial on the dome of the Capitol opposite, there was no one stirring as yet in the adjoining rooms of the suite, and the streets were silent save for the chanting cries of the newsboys.

Slipping out of bed, Blount crossed to the window and threw it open. It was good to be able to stand and walk without wincing; and a breath of the sunrise breeze sweeping down from the eastern hills was like a draught of invigorating wine. As he leaned out for an instant to make sure that not even the height would bring a return of the vertigo, the wail of the nearest newsboy became shrilly articulate: "Here's yer Morning Plainsman! All erbout the great election frauds!"

Hardly crediting his ears, Blount listened again, and when the cry was repeated he closed the window softly and sat down to grapple with this newest development of his problem. Did the newsboy's selling-cry mean that Blenkinsop had found out for himself, and independently, about the falsified registration lists? If so, there would be no public vindication for one Evan Blount; but also—thank God!—no need for a son to blazon himself to the world as his father's accuser. A great wave of thankfulness rolled over Blount's head, submerging him and turning the exclamation which sprang to his lips into a paean of rejoicing. Instantly he saw himself throwing up his railroad connection and taking his rightful place as his father's counsel and defender. Here, at last, was a cause into which he could fling himself body and soul. True, people would say that he had been in league with the corporations, the boss, and the machine, from the first, but what did that matter?

But would his father need a defender? No shadow of doubt as to this was admissible in the face of the accumulating evidence, he told himself. From the opening day of the campaign the machine and the corporations had been working hand in hand; Gryson and his fellow-crooks were the sufficient proof; and besides.... Blount reached under the mattress and drew out the wrapped package, untying the string with fingers that trembled. A cursory examination of the affidavits sufficed. In Gryson's sworn statement, and in two others, the "Big Boss" was inculpated definitely and by name.

Blount glanced at the little clock on the dressing-case. The early Sunday morning silence still prevailed in the great hotel, and his resolve was quickly taken. Dressing hurriedly, he went up to his own room, and after a shave, a bath, and a freshening change which included the removal of the disfiguring bandage, he put on a close-fitting silk travelling-cap under the soft hat and went down to the lobby.

There were but few guests stirring at that hour, and Blount had the writing-room to himself when he bought a copy of The Plainsman and turned anxiously to the editorial page. After the first thrilling of relief born of the newsboy's cry, an unnerving fear had crept in to whisper that possibly the facts might not bear out the thankful assumption. A rapid reading of Blenkinsop's editorial confirmed the fear, and the reader's lips grew dry and his breath came quickly when he realized that the submerging wave of thankfulness had risen only to be driven back. Blenkinsop had no facts, no evidence; he was merely hitting out blindly with a general accusation of fraud which he made no effort to substantiate or prove!

Evan Blount saw the thorny path stretching away before him again, and he rose up to walk in it like a man. As once before, he went down to the railroad restaurant for his breakfast, seeking solitude, and the meal had been half-absently eaten before he had readjusted himself, sorrowfully but firmly, to the unchanged situation. His duty was as clearly defined now as it had been the day previous, or at any time in the past. There was nothing changed, nothing different, save that a new complication had arisen in the crucial shortness of the interval for action. Knowing human nature a little, he knew how difficult it is to arouse an effective public sentiment on the eve of an election, no matter how important the issues involved. In a hard school of experience the voter has learned to discount the final-moment cry of fraud. Would an exposure, however convincing, appearing only in the Monday and Tuesday morning newspapers have the desired effect?

Blount walked by devious ways from the railroad station to the Temple Court, and secluded himself behind the locked door of his office to have a chance to think the problem out to some effective conclusion. What should he do? Should he find Blenkinsop and get him and the United Press representative together at once, laying before them the damning evidence and telling them to use it as they could? Or was there some surer way of firing the mine of protest and exposure?

There was one other way, at least, but the mere thought of it made him sick and shaken. As an upright citizen and a member of the bar, was it not his duty to lay the evidence, not before the public in the newspapers, but before a competent court of justice? And in that event, was there in this land of graft and corruption a judge sufficiently fearless and incorruptible to act with the needful vigor and promptness?

When Blount asked himself this question, the answer came quickly. Though it was the common accusation, well or ill founded, that the lower courts of the State were the creatures of the corporations, the judges on the supreme bench still commanded the respect of the people. Hemingway, the chief justice, was peculiarly a man for a crisis; strong, honest, and entirely fearless; a man who would not stop to haggle over nice questions of precedent and jurisdiction where the public welfare demanded prompt and effective action.

For a long half-hour Blount sat staring absently at the desk litter, trying to decide between the two courses open to him. He knew that his father and Judge Hemingway had been lifelong friends, and this added another drop of bitterness to a cup which was already overflowing. None the less, he was confident that the judge would do his duty as he saw it. It was a merciless thing to do—to make this just judge the slayer of the friend of his youth; but at the end Blount reached for the telephone-book and began to search for the chief justice's residence number. Before he could find it the phone bell rang.

"Well?" he answered shortly, putting the receiver to his ear.

It was Miss Anners who was at the other end of the wire, and he was instantly aware of the note of anxiety in her voice.

"Evan!" she exclaimed; "you don't know what a fright you have given us! What are you doing at your office when you ought to be here and in bed?"

Blount drew the desk instrument closer and tried to put her off lightly.

"I'm all right again. I turned out early this morning to make up for lost time. You wouldn't expect me to stay in bed for more than a day to oblige a common, ordinary coach-dog, would you?"

"Yes, but see here—listen: Doctor Dillon has been here, and he is perfectly shocked. He says there may be complications, and the very least you can do is to be careful. Your father has had the hotel boys looking everywhere for you. When are you coming back?"

Here was the direct question which Blount had been dreading. Now, if never before, the wretched involvement had reached a point beyond which it was impossible to follow his father's plea for a continuance of the kinsman amenities.

"I think you had better leave me out of any plans you are making for the day," he answered evasively. "I shall be pretty busy."

"No—listen," she insisted. "It's wrong to work on Sunday, but if you will be obstinate, you must stop at luncheon-time. We are going to drive out to Wartrace Hall this afternoon; Doctor Dillon says we positively must take you away from town and keep you quiet for a few days."

"I can't go with you," he answered brusquely, adding: "And I'm not sure that I can join you at luncheon. There is so much to be done that I shall probably drop around to the club for a bite at one o'clock. Don't wait for me, and don't worry. Above all, please don't tell anybody where I am—not even Dick Gantry."

He was considerably relieved when she said "Good-by" rather abruptly, and rang off. None the less, he thought it a little strange that his father should be planning to leave the capital on the very eve of the great struggle. Was he so sure that nothing could happen within the next twenty-four hours? Leaving the query answerless, he returned to the interrupted duty. Deliberately, with the open telephone-book before him, he sought and found Judge Hemingway's number; and a few seconds later he had the judge's house in Mesa Circle, with the judge himself answering his call. The wire conversation was brief and to the point. Cautiously, and in well-guarded phrase, Blount stated his case. By a series of correlated incidents which could be explained later, documentary evidence of a great conspiracy had fallen into his hands; would the judge step aside so far as to accord him a Sunday interview, taking his word for it that the emergency was most urgent, and that the time was too short to admit of the ordinary methods of procedure?

The judge's answer was satisfactory, though Blount fancied it was rather reluctantly given. A family engagement—an accepted luncheon invitation—would intervene; but between four and five o'clock in the afternoon the chief justice would be in his chambers in the Capitol building, and would be glad to have the son of his old friend the senator come at that hour.

With time on his hands, Blount squared himself at his desk and began to set his railroad house in order. Now that the dreadful step was practically taken, he was free to wind up the business of his office, leaving things in order for his successor. Once he had thought that he could not stay in the capital or in the West after the cataclysm. But now the manlier thought prevailed. A hard fate was making him his father's betrayer; but beyond the betrayal, with the bare duty done, he would take his place as his father's son, proving his love and loyalty by going down with him to any depth of infamy into which the cataclysm might drag him.

Since there was much to be done in the winding-up task, the forenoon fled quickly, and the hands of the small paper-weight clock on the desk were pointing to a quarter of two when Blount snapped the rubber band upon the final file of referred papers. There were other odds and ends to be set in order, but he determined to let them wait until he had eaten. A scant half-hour in the club grill-room was all he allowed himself, and at a quarter past two he was back at his desk, preparing to make the cleaning-up task complete. Between four and five, Judge Hemingway had said; and Blount began on one of the odds and ends, which was the writing of his letter of resignation from the railroad service.

He was enclosing the letter when there came a light tap at the office-door, and then the door itself opened to admit Patricia—a Patricia bright-eyed and determined, alluringly charming in her tightly veiled driving-hat, muffling motor-coat, and dainty gauntlets.

"You?" said Blount not too hospitably. "I thought you said something about going to Wartrace?"

"So I did, and so I am," she asserted, coming to sit in the chair last occupied by one Thomas Gryson.

"And the others?" he queried.

"They have just left; gone on ahead in the touring-car. I was deputed to bring you."

"But I told you this morning that I couldn't go, and I can't!" he protested.

She looked him squarely in the eye. "Evan, you don't dare tell me why you can't!"

"Business," he pleaded.

"That may be half of the truth, but it isn't any more than half." Then she made the direct appeal: "I wish you'd tell me, Evan. I know a little—just the little that Mrs. Blount has seen fit to tell me—and no more. There is trouble threatening; some dreadful trouble. I saw it yesterday when you were so miserable; I can see it in your eyes this minute."

Blount got up and began to pace the floor so that she might not see his eyes. He was no more proof against such an appeal than any lover gladly ready to bare his soul to the woman chosen out of a world of women for his confidant and second self would be.

"I want to tell you," he affirmed, wheeling abruptly to face her; "I wanted to tell you yesterday, only it was too horrible. You will know it all when I say that by this time to-morrow the whole State will be ringing with the story of David Blount's degradation and ruin; and I—his only son, Patricia—I shall be the one who will have betrayed him and brought it to pass!"

She blanched a little at that, and there was a great horror in her eyes. But he noted at the moment, and remembered it afterward, that she did not push him into the harrowing details, as another woman might have done.

"You are very sure, I suppose?" she said gently.

He drew the packet of affidavits from his pocket.

"This is the evidence: sworn statements incriminating my father and many others."

"You had those papers yesterday?"

"No. I got up last night to keep my appointment with the man who brought them. But you see now why I can't go to Wartrace with you."

"I see that you are going to do something for which you will never, never be able to forgive yourself," she said gravely. "You are going to make use of those papers?"

He sat down and stared gloomily at her. "Patricia, I have taken a solemn oath. The law which I have sworn to uphold is greater than—" He was going to say, "greater than any man's claim for immunity," but she finished the sentence otherwise for him.

"Is greater than your love for your father. I suppose I ought to be able to understand that, but I am not. Evan, you can't do it—you mustn't do it; every drop of that father's blood in your veins ought to cry out against it."

"Ah!" he exclaimed with a sudden indrawing of his breath. "You don't know what it is costing me!"

"Truly, I don't," she asserted calmly. "Your father is a great and good man. If he had a daughter instead of a son, she would know and understand." Then, in a quick and generous upflash of feeling: "I wish he had a daughter—I wish I were she! I should try to show him that blood is thicker than water!"

"You wish—you were—his daughter? Do you realize what you are saying?" Then he went on brokenly: "Don't, Patricia, girl—for God's sake don't tempt me to do evil that good may come! Can't you understand how I am driven to do this thing—how every fibre of me is rebelling against the savage necessity? God knows, I'd give anything I am or hope to be if the necessity could be wiped out!"

Instantly she changed her attack.

"But I say you can not do it. You are a brave man, Evan; I know, because I have seen you tried. You mustn't turn cowardly now."

"Nor shall I!" he countered quickly. "But I don't understand."

"Don't you? Isn't it cowardly to strike this cruel blow in the dark? You can't do this thing without giving your father the warning that you would give your bitterest enemy—you simply can't, and still be the man I have known and l—liked for two whole years!"

"Father's going to Wartrace this afternoon is merely an added twist of the thumb-screws," he protested in fresh wretchedness. "I should have gone to him first—I meant to go to him first. From what you said over the telephone this morning I gathered that the Wartrace trip was to be made on my account, and I hoped, I believed, it would be given up when I refused to go. Now I can not see him first; the time is too short. That which is to be done must be done to-day—this afternoon; otherwise it will be too late. Don't make it any harder for me, Patricia. Surely you can see how hard it is, in any case!"

"As I said a moment ago, I can see that you are about to do something for which, in all the years to come, you will never be able to get your own forgiveness. Oh, I know," she went on bitterly. "You will tell me that I am a woman, with only a woman's standards, which are valueless when they get mixed up with the emotions. But I can tell you that I know your father better than you do—much better. And I believe in him, utterly, absolutely. Won't you give him a chance, Evan? Won't you show him those dreadful papers and ask him what he will do when you have betrayed him?"

Blount winced painfully at the hard word, and then he remembered that he had been the first to apply it. But he answered her in the only way that seemed possible:

"The time: I have promised to meet Chief Justice Hemingway at his chambers between four and five this afternoon."

"Chief Justice Hemingway?" she queried. "Why, he—" she broke off suddenly and sprang from her chair. "I have the little car here in the street. It was Mrs. Blount's proposal; she said you would change your mind if I came after you and offered to drive you. Come! I'll promise to bring you back before five o'clock. I know the time is awfully short, but I can do it!"

If Blount hesitated it was only because her beauty and her eagerness thrilled him until, for the moment, he could think of nothing else. Then he closed his desk quickly and struggled into his overcoat, saying: "It shall be as you wish. Let's go."



XXVII

IN WHICH PATRICIA DRIVES

For fifteen miles north of the capital the Quaretaro road is a well-kept, level speedway, and Miss Anners amply proved the worth of her summer's training by showing herself a fearless driver. Half an hour after the small roadster had left the curb in front of the Temple Court Building it was among the hills and climbing to the upper mesa level.

Nearing the mouth of Shonoho Canyon, they overtook and passed a horseman turning into the canyon road. The man's horse shied and threatened to bolt at sight of the storming car, but Patricia was looking straight ahead, and she made no movement to slacken speed. At the passing glimpse, Blount's mind went shuttling backward to the homecoming night in the Lost Hills, and he made sure he recognized the rider as Hathaway's morose henchman, the man Barto.

He wondered vaguely what Barto could be doing at the turn in the obstructed side-canyon road, and the wonder went with him while the little car was covering the remaining distance and flying up the cottonwood-shaded avenue at Wartrace Hall. But a glance at his watch made him forget the Barto incident in a heart-warming thrill of admiration—the joy of a skilled motorist recognizing kindred skill in another. The thirty miles from the city had been made in something under fifty minutes.

When she brought the roadster to a stand at the carriage entrance, Patricia spoke for the first time since she had taken the wheel for the record-breaking drive.

"Find your father quickly and say to him what you have come to say. When you are ready to go back, I'll keep my promise and drive you."

"That won't be at all necessary," he protested, getting out to stand with his hand on the dash. "I am perfectly well able to drive myself; and, besides, it would leave you at the wrong end of the road, and alone."

"Don't stand there talking about it," she commanded. "Go and do what you have to do. I'll wait here."

Blount turned away and found old Barnabas holding the door open for him. A word passed, and the old negro bobbed his head. "Yas, sah; Marsteh David's in de libra'y," was the answer to Blount's query, and, throwing his overcoat and soft hat aside, the bearer of burdens not his own walked quickly through the hall and let himself into the room of trial.

The bright autumn day was cool—cool enough to warrant the crackling wood-fire on the library hearth. With his easy chair planted at the cosey corner of the fire and an open book on the table at his elbow, the senator sat smoking his long-stemmed pipe in the Sunday afternoon quiet. Mingled with the fire-snapping there were faint tappings, as if one of the cottonwoods, growing too near the house, were sending twig signals to the inmates.

The senator moved the open book a little farther aside when his son made an abrupt entrance into the cheerful room.

"Well, son, you made out to get here after so long a time, didn't you?" he said gently. And then: "How's the broken head to-day?"

"Better," answered the son shortly, adding: "It's the least of my troubles just now."

"That's good," was the hearty comment. Then, with the long stem of the pipe pointing to a Morris-chair: "Draw up and sit down. I reckon the drive has tired you some, even if you won't admit it. Where's the little girl?"

Evan Blount saw instantly that he must be brief and pitiless.

"Patricia is waiting in the car to drive me back to town," he explained, forcing himself to speak calmly. "I have an appointment with Chief Justice Hemingway which must be kept, and he will wait in his chambers in the Capitol only until five o'clock. Father, do you know why I have made that appointment?"

The senator wagged his great head in a way which might mean anything or nothing, and said: "How should I know, son?"

"I hoped you would know. It's not a very pleasant task for me to tell you," the younger man went on, ignoring the chair to which the long-stemmed pipe was still pointing. "A short time ago—yesterday, to be exact—evidence, legal evidence, of corruption and false registration in four of the city wards, and in a number of outlying districts in the State, was put into my hands. This evidence incriminates a group of ringleaders and a still larger number of election officers. You know what I've got to do with it."

The older man nodded slowly.

"Yes, I reckon I know, son; and I'm not saying a word. If you weren't a Blount, I might ask if you haven't learned that one of the first rules in the book of politics is the one that says we mustn't hang the dirty clothes out where everybody can see 'em, but I know better than to say anything like that to you."

The young man's heart sank within him. It seemed evident that his father was still unsuspecting, still unconscious of the dreadful consequences to himself. Only utter frankness could avail now.

"I can't discuss the question of expediency with you," he said hastily, "any further than to say that I'd cheerfully give ten years of my life to be able to consider it. Let me be perfectly plain: This evidence I am speaking of involves you personally. If the papers are put into Judge Hemingway's hands there will be a searching investigation, prompt indictments, criminal proceedings, and all the disgrace that the widest publicity can bring upon the men who are responsible for the present desperate state of affairs."

The senator had laid his pipe aside and was staring soberly into the fire. "Go on, son," he said quietly; "let's have the rest of it."

"You know what has led up to the present wretched involvement—my involvement," Blount went on. "When I took the railroad job, I did it in good faith and went about preaching the gospel of the square deal for everybody, including the corporations. But in a very short time I discovered that my own people were not keeping faith with me; had no intention of keeping it. Later on, a number of corporation officials and managers, men who had formerly made corrupt deals with the railroad company, and are to this day profiting by them, became frightened. Assuming that I was the chief broker for the railroad company in the present campaign, these men wrote me letters which were in the highest degree incriminating."

The big man who was staring into the heart of the fire nodded thoughtfully.

"I remember; you told me something about that before, didn't you?"

"Yes, and we needn't go into the details again. I meant to use those letters as a club to hammer a little honesty into my own employers. Up to that time I had been trying to believe that the machine—your machine—and the railroad lawbreakers were not one and the same thing."

"But you changed your mind about that?"

"I had to, after I found out that you had corrupted one of my clerks and had sent one of your thugs to dynamite my safe. That is past and gone; but you can see where it left me. As you and everybody in the State know, I had been committing myself publicly everywhere, doing it with the assurance that when it came to the pinch I could bring Gantry and Kittredge and even Mr. McVickar himself to terms—the terms of honesty and fair dealing. With my weapon stolen, I was left helpless, facing the certainty that on the day after the election I should be pilloried in every hole and corner of my native State as the most shameless liar that ever breathed. Do you wonder that I was desperate?"

"No, son; I reckon you wouldn't have been much of a Blount if you hadn't been."

"I was desperate. I said to myself that I would find another weapon, even if I should have to take a leaf out of your own book, dad, to do it. I took the leaf, and I have the weapon. You drove Gryson away, but you made one small miscalculation. You didn't believe that his desire for revenge would be stronger than his fear of the gallows."

Again the older man nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes, son; I know. He came back twice: once when he found you in your office last Wednesday night; and again yesterday, or rather last evening, when you got out of your bed and went to help him make his getaway on the east-bound Overland."

Evan Blount started back, and his exclamation was of pure astoundment.

"You knew all this?" he gasped.

"Oh, yes; I reckon there isn't much happening that such a double-dyed old villain as I am doesn't find out, Evan," was the sober rejoinder.

"But, good heavens! if you know so much, you must know what Gryson came back for, and what he gave me!"

"Yes; I know that, too. I reckon I might as well make a clean breast of it while I'm at it."

"You knew it last night, and yet you didn't send somebody to hold me up and take the papers away from me?"

The senator's chuckle rumbled deep in his mighty chest.

"Maybe I was counting a little on the kinship, Evan, boy. Maybe I was saying to myself: 'No, I reckon the boy won't do it, after all—not when he reads what's set down in the papers; he just naturally couldn't do it.'"

"Oh, my Lord, dad!" was the choking response. "Can't you see that you are killing me by inches? Can't you see that I've got to choose between being a man clear through, or a scoundrel as weak and shifty as any of those I have been denouncing? My God, it's terrible!"

"I reckon you're going to choose straight," said the older man, still with eyes averted.

"I have chosen," said the son brokenly; "or perhaps it would be truer to say that there never has been any choice since the moment when I set my foot in the path which has led me thus far on the way to hell. I can despise myself utterly for the means I took to secure the evidence, but that very lapse makes it all the more needful that I should atone as I can."

David Blount rose and put his back to the fire.

"Son, you are a man among a thousand—among ten thousand," he said quietly. "When it comes to a pure question of good, old-fashioned right and wrong, you can buck up just like your old great-gran'pap, the judge, did when he had to sentence one of his own sons for killing an Indian. You haven't said it in so many words, so I'll say it for you: you've got me, and maybe some others, right where you can shove us into the penitentiary. That's about what you're trying to tell me, isn't it?"

"For God's sake, don't put it that way!" Blount protested. "I gave you fair warning almost at the first. I've got to fight for the right as I see it. If I don't, I shall be less than a man—less than your son. Can't you see that it is breaking my heart?"

A silence electrically surcharged with possibilities settled down upon the isolated room, with the stillness broken only by the crackling of the fire and that other distant tapping as of tree-twigs on the roof. At the end of the pause the senator took a forward step and put a hand on his son's shoulder.

"I haven't one word to say, Evan, boy," he began slowly. "As you told me that first day out here, son, it's your job to hew to the line and let the chips fall where they may. You go ahead and do just what seems right and law-abiding to you. I'd rather go to jail twice over than have you do any different. Is that what you're wanting me to say?"

Blount dropped into a chair, as if the touch on his shoulder had crushed him, and covered his face with his hands. It was hard—harder than even his own prefigurings had forecast it. Fighting against the patent facts, he had been cherishing a lingering hope that his father might be able to brush away the cruel necessity at the last moment. But now the hope was dead.

It was a long minute before he staggered to his feet and groped his way to the door, leaving his father standing before the fire and once more puffing absently at the long-stemmed pipe. When old Barnabas had helped him into his coat and had given him his hat, he found Patricia still sitting in the car, with the motor purring softly under the hood.

"Must you go back?" she queried, when he had descended the steps to climb stiffly into the seat beside her.

He nodded.

"Your duty is clear?"

"Perfectly clear—now."

"And the consequences?" she asked.

"I can only guess," he muttered. "Ruin and disgrace for all of us, I suppose. Of course, you understand that I have resigned from the railroad service and shall stand with my father when—when the thing is done."

She was backing the little roadster into the circling driveway to turn for the start. At the reversing moment she made her final plea.

"Don't do it, Evan—don't do it! I have no more than a woman's reason to offer, but I am sure you are opening the door to a lifelong sorrow for yourself and—and—for me!"

It was the last two words that steeled him suddenly. Not even at her beseeching would he turn aside from the plain path of the oath-bound obligation. It struck him like a blow that the turning aside would make him forever unworthy of her.

"Take me back to the city as quickly as you can!" he said. "Or, better still, stay here and let me have the car. That is my last word."

"You're not fit to drive a car!" she snapped; and for further answer she threw the speed lever into the intermediate gear and released the clutch. Like a projectile hurled from a catapult, the swift little roadster shot away down the cottonwood avenue, and with a jerk of the lever into the "high" the second race against time was begun.

For the first few miles Patricia's passenger had all he could do to keep his seat. On its upper mesa windings the Quaretaro road follows the course of the stream which has been robbed of its waters for the cultivated lands, and though the roadway was good the hazards were plentiful when taken at speed. More than once Blount caught himself in the act of reaching for the steering-wheel, but as often he desisted. As on the outward race, Patricia was staring straight ahead, and giving the little car every throb of speed there was in its machinery. None the less, he could see that she had it under perfect control.

What finally happened came with the suddenness of the thunder-clap following a bolt which strikes near at hand. They were on the down-grade approach to the mouth of Shonoho Canyon, and they could not see beyond the gentle curve to the left, where the smaller gulch found its intersection with the main ravine. When they were within a hundred yards of the curve the stretch below came into view. Blount had a momentary glimpse of some barrier—a pine-tree, as it proved to be—lying across the main road. Seeing it, he realized at the same instant that Patricia was neither throttling the motor nor applying the brakes. After that he had barely time to snap the switch and to throw the heavy wind-shield down before the devastating crash came.



XXVIII

THE GOSSIPING WIRES

After his son had left him, the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush remained standing before the library fire until he heard the machine-gun exhausts of the small roadster distance-diminishing down the driveway avenue. Then he stepped aside and pressed the bell-push ordinarily used to summon the old negro footman.

In answer to the call a door opened beyond the chimney-jamb, and immediately the gentle twig-tapping sounds resolved themselves into the clickings of a pair of telegraph relays and the chatter of a typewriter. A good-looking young fellow, with his coat off, entered the library, carefully closing the door behind him.

"Want to send something, senator?" he asked, whipping a note-book from his hip-pocket.

"No, not just this minute. Anything new coming over the wires?"

"Nothing startling. Steuchfield reports from Ophir that we swing the miners' vote almost to a man unless something unforeseen breaks loose. Hetchy gives us a good word from Twin Buttes; and Griggs, up in the Carnadines, wires from Alkire that he has just completed an auto canvass of the High Line district. The ranchmen up that way have had a pretty bad scare. There was a threat made that the price of water was going to be raised. But they're all right now."

The boss nodded approvingly. Then: "How about those microphone notes?"

"Crowell is writing them off," was the reply. "He'll have them in half an hour or so."

The senator drew out his watch, a huge thick-crystalled time-piece dating back to the range-riding period.

"As matters have turned out, I shall be going to the city before long," he said. "If the notes are not ready before I leave, you can order out the speed-car and send them in by Gallagher any time before six o'clock. Don't slip up on that, Fred; tell Gallagher to deliver the notes to me, in person, at the Inter-Mountain. What's become of Professor Anners?"

"He's staying over at Haworth's ranch, just to be near the fossil bone-field. They've made another plesio-something find, and Haworth telephones that the professor couldn't be dragged away with a derrick until those bones are safely out of the ground and boxed for shipment."

The professor's host smiled indulgently, saying: "It's just as well, I reckon. The professor's about as blind as a bat when it comes to seeing anything this side of a million years ago, but if he were here he might wonder why we've set up a telegraph-office—wonder, and talk about it."

The young man in his shirt-sleeves was turning to go. "I'll hustle Crowell on those notes," he promised: but as he was reaching for the door-knob the senator stopped him.

"Hold on a minute, Fred; how is that contrivance of ours at the mouth of Shonoho working?"

"It's working all right. Canby is on watch there now, and he says he can see everything that passes on both roads."

"That's good. These little precautions are mighty necessary in a close fight. Those folks over at Shonoho Inn ought to have thought of this outer-guard business for themselves, but it seems they didn't. They'd be right awkwardly embarrassed if some fellow they don't want to see should slip in on 'em without notice. While I think of it, don't fail to keep me posted on what Canby sees after I go back to town. He thinks he's safe, does he?"

"Perfectly. Nobody can see his dugout from the road, and his oil-heater doesn't make any smoke. That scheme of laying insulated wires on the ground works like a charm. You could walk all over them without noticing them." The young man was opening the door as he spoke, and he broke off suddenly to say: "That's his call ringing now. Would you like to come and talk to him?"

"No; you can tell me what he says, if it's worth telling."

The clerk disappeared into the room of the tapping noises, but he was back again almost immediately.

"It was Canby," he said hurriedly. "He says two men on horseback have just dragged a good-sized pine-tree down the Shonoho road and are placing it across the county road. He can't see the men's faces very well, but he thinks the bigger of the two is Jack Barto."

It was the senator's boast that he had never lost a tooth or had one filled, and his smile showed the double row, strong and evenly matched, under the drooping grayish mustaches.

"That boy Canby is a mighty good guesser, Fred. I shouldn't be surprised if the fellow he has spotted is Jack Barto, sure enough. If you didn't know beforehand what a good-natured, meechin' sort of rooster Jack is, you might think he was fixing to play some kind of a hold-up game on somebody."

"That's what Canby thinks, and he asked me to hold the wire open."

The big boss smiled again. "Then don't you reckon you'd better go and hold it?" he suggested mildly; and the young man in his shirt-sleeves vanished to do it.

When he was left alone, the senator went to the house phone connecting the library with the remoter suites. A touch of the button brought an answering word, and he spoke softly into the transmitter.

"The time is getting right ripe, and I thought you might want a minute or so to put on your things," he said, in answer to the low-toned "Well?" that came over the house wire. Then he added: "I don't know but what we may have to make a little bluff at somebody on the way in. When you order the car around, suppose you tell Rickert to put 'Tennessee' and Billy Shack in the tonneau, with a couple of shot-guns. We can drop 'em if they look too warlike and conspicuous."

He was hanging the ear-piece on its hook when the shirt-sleeved young man burst in again excitedly.

"It is a hold-up!" he declared breathlessly. "Miss Anners and Mr. Evan have slammed their car into the tree, and Canby says the two horseback men are watching them from the dry gulch just below him!"

"All right," was the even-toned reply. "You go and tell Canby to keep his shirt on, Fred; and don't forget to send those papers in by Gallagher."

While the senator was speaking, the door opened and the old negro came hobbling in with a driving-coat and the broad-brimmed planter's hat which made the Honorable David a marked man throughout the length and breadth of the Sage-Brush State.

"De cyar's at de do', Marsteh David, and Mistis say she plumb ready when you is, yes-sah," stammered the serving-man, holding the coat for his master; and a moment later the senator was climbing to his place behind the big wheel of the touring-car, with Mrs. Honoria for his seat-mate on the mechanician's side, and the chauffeur, the horse wrangler, and Billy Shack comfortably filling the tonneau.

While the touring-car, with its curiously assorted complement of passengers, was leaving Wartrace Hall, Evan Blount, having assured himself that Patricia was not hurt, was trying to estimate the extent of the damage done to the little red roadster by the collision with the tree. The inspection was brief. With the front axle bent and the radiator crushed, the car was safely out of commission.

"We're definitely out of the fight," he reported shortly, helping his companion down from the driving-seat.

Patricia was still trembling and pale.

"You mean that we can't go on to the city?" she quavered.

"Not unless we walk; and of course that is out of the question."

"Then you—you can't keep your appointment with Judge Hemingway."

Blount's smile was scornful. "I imagine it was no part of my father's plans that I should keep my appointment," he commented bitterly. "He took it for granted that I would drive out to Wartrace with you, and made his preparations accordingly. This tree wasn't here half an hour ago, and it is here now."

"I can't believe it of him," she denied, and her lip quivered. And then she added: "Just think, Evan; we might have been killed—both of us!"

Blount's teeth came together with a little clicking noise. "Politics, or what passes for politics in this God-forsaken region, seems to make no account of such a small thing as a human life or two," he said. And then: "I suppose we are due to wait until somebody comes along to pick us up. It's four miles or more back to the nearest ranch on the mesa."

"It is all my fault!" lamented the young woman. "I—I might have stopped the car, don't you think?"

"I wondered a little that you didn't at least try to stop it," he permitted himself to say; and at this she forgot the traditions, sociological or other, reverting to the type of the eternal feminine.

"Say it all," she flashed out. "You are beginning to wonder if I didn't do it purposely. I did do it purposely. All the way along I had been trying to muster up courage enough to smash the car in the ditch, and if I hadn't been such a coward I would have done it. Now hate me, if you want to!"

Blount would have been less the lover than he was if he had not been moved to something much warmer than hatred.

"Let us say that you are doing your level best to save my faith in human nature, Patricia, girl," he said soberly. "Do you know what you are? You are the one loyal person in a tricky world. I am still fair enough to say that it was fine—splendid! And I only wish my father were worthier of such superb loyalty and affection."

She looked at him curiously for a moment. Then her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye, and she laughed and said: "Yes, I think women are more loyal than men; and I am sure they are vastly more discerning at times. Don't you think—"

The interruption was the appearance of two horsemen pushing their animals out of a small gorge on the right. When they had gained the main road they came up, ambling easily, and Blount instantly recognized the leader of the pair. It was Barto again.

"Howdy?" said the timber-looker, riding up to hang with one knee over the saddle while he grinned genially at the two castaways. "Lost out ag'in, ain't ye, Mr. Blount? Couldn't make out, nohow, to run yer chug-wagon over that there pine-tree, could ye?"

"Did you put the tree in the road?" snapped Blount, his anger rising promptly, now that there was a man to quarrel with.

"I reckon we did; and it was one Hades of a job, too," was the cool reply. "Had to drag the dern thing f'r more'n half a mile down the gulch with the hawss-ropes."

Here was plenty of material for a wrathful explosion, but Blount controlled himself.

"By whose orders did you do it?" he demanded.

"Th' boss's."

"Mr. Hathaway?"

"Not on yer life; it was the big boss this time."

Blount's quick glance aside at his companion was a wordless "I told you so!" and then to Barto: "Well, now that you have stopped us, what's next?"

The outlaw grinned again and kicked his horse a little nearer.

"I'm a-holdin' you up sure enough this time, Mr. Blount—jest like another little Billy th' Kid," he confided. "You're goin' to gimme them papers you've got in your pocket, and then me an' Kinky we rides away all peaceful and leaves you and the lady to set down quiet till somebuddy comes along to pick you up."

Blount put his hand to his head. His wound was throbbing painfully again, and the pain may have been partly responsible for his answer.

"When you get those papers you'll take them from a dead man, Barto. Do your instructions go that far?"

The man of many trades swung straight in his saddle and fell into the attitude of one listening. Then the good-natured grin became a menacing scowl.

"Shuck them papers out, and do it sudden!" he commanded.

"No," said Blount crisply.

Instantly the timber-looker's pistol was out.

"Give 'em up!" he shouted; "shell 'em out, quick, 'r by the holy—"

The interposition broke in stormily. Down the grade from the upper mesa level came a touring-car, with a big man at the wheel, a veiled woman beside him, and three men in the tonneau. "Holy smoke!" said the outlaw, and with his riding mate was slipping away up the Shonoho road when the touring-car, with brakes protesting, came to a stand at the tree barrier. Like a flash, two of the three men in the tonneau leaped out, and a charge of buckshot whistling over the heads of the two obstructionists halted them. Thereupon the Honorable David gave his orders tersely.

"Tennessee, you go up yonder and argue with Jack Barto a spell," he directed. "Tell him and his partner that the Wartrace smoke-house is the safest place in Quaretaro County for a couple of club-witted bunglers like they are, and then you see to it that they get there. You, Billy, help Rickert get a tow-rope hitch on that road-car, and we'll see if we can't jerk it out of the way." After which he turned to his son as casually as if only the preconceived and preconcerted had come to pass: "Tried to wreck you, did they? Mighty near made a job of it, too, from the looks of Miss Patty's little car. Not hurt, are you? That's good. Climb in here, both of you, and when we get this windfall out of the road we'll go on to town."

Blount put Patricia into the empty tonneau while Shack and the chauffeur were making the tow-rope hitch, but he was still angry enough to hesitate when it came his turn. A glance at his watch decided him. It was still only half past four. Had his father repented so far as to override the obstacle which he himself had interposed? Patricia was holding the tonneau-door open, and Blount got in and took his seat beside her.

A small engineering feat, made possible by the power plant of the big car and the tow-rope, soon cleared the way of the wrecked roadster and the tree. Then the senator gave another order.

"You and Billy stay here and see if you can't get that roadster so you can run it to town on its own power," he said to the chauffeur; and over his shoulder to the pair behind him: "If you'll change partners back there, and let Honoria ride on the cushions—"

Though he could not remotely apprehend his father's reason for the rearrangement, Blount got out, helped Mrs. Honoria down and up again, and then climbed into the seat she had just vacated. At the click of the tonneau door-latch the big car rolled on down the grade, and for a good half of the straightaway fifteen miles to the city the younger man held his peace grimly. Finally he turned to his father and said:

"I'm blaming you for the tree, and for Barto's attempt to get those papers away from me. Am I wrong?"

The Honorable David shook his head.

"This close to an election you're mighty near safe in blaming anybody and everybody in sight, son," he returned gravely; and apart from this small break in the monotony, the second half of the fifteen miles went speechless.

The clock in the Temple Court tower was pointing to five minutes of five when the senator, instead of taking the direct street to the Inter-Mountain, as his son expected him to, turned the car aside into the Capitol grounds and brought it to rest before the side entrance which led to the chambers of the Supreme Court justices.

"You're still in time, Evan, boy," he intimated gently; "and I'm only going to ask one thing of you. When you get through with Hemingway, come around to the hotel and show your grit by taking dinner with the rest of us. Are you man enough to do that?"

If the son hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second. When he answered, it was to say: "If I were going up-stairs to put a noose around my own neck, it would be simpler and easier than the thing I've got to do. As to your one condition—dad, I'll be with you at dinner, and at all other times, after this thing is done. I've quit the railroad, and I did it so that I might be free to be your son and your lawyer when the smash comes. Can I say more?"

"You don't need to say another blessed word, son," was the sober rejoinder; and when Evan Blount got out, the Honorable David drove away without a backward glance for the young man who was dragging himself up the granite steps of the Capitol entrance like a condemned criminal going to execution.



XXIX

AT SHONOHO INN

Evan Blount's interview with the venerable chief justice was not at all what he had imagined it would be. To begin with, he found it blankly impossible to take the attitude he had meant to take—namely, that of a conscientious member of the bar, rigorously ignoring all the little cross-currents of human sympathy and the affections.

Almost at once he found himself telling his story incident by incident to the kindly old man who was figuring rather as a father confessor than as a judge and a legal superior. When it was done, and the chief justice had gone thoughtfully over the mass of evidence, Blount saw no thunder-cloud of righteous indignation gathering upon the judicial brow. Nor was Judge Hemingway's comment in the least what he had expected it would be.

"I can not commend too highly your prudence and good judgment in bringing these papers to me, Mr. Blount," was the form the comment took. "Your position was a difficult one, and not one young man in a hundred would have been judicious enough to choose the conservative middle path you have chosen. The fanatic would have rushed into print, and the vast majority would have weakly compromised with conscience. It is a source of the deepest satisfaction to me, as your father's friend, to find that you have done neither."

"As my father's friend?" echoed Blount.

"Yes, just that, Mr. Blount. There is an appreciation which transcends the commonplace things of life, and I don't know which is worthier of the greater admiration, your courage in coming to me, or your father's single-heartedness in urging you to do it after he had learned the purport of these papers. Yet this is what I should have expected of David Blount as I know him. Men say of him that he has sometimes wielded his tremendous political power regardless of the law and of other men's rights. But in the field of pure ethics, in the exercise of the high and holy duty which is laid upon the man who has become a father, I should look to find your father doing precisely what he has done. I assure you that it is not without reason that many of his fellow citizens call him most affectionately the 'Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.'"

"But the consequences!" gasped the unwilling informer. "His name in those affidavits!"

The chief justice was nodding slowly.

"Without doubt a great crime has been committed, and a still greater one is contemplated. We shall take prompt action to defeat the contemplated crime at the polls next Tuesday, rest assured of that. But at the same time, let me say a word for your comfort: these papers came to you from the hands of a criminal, and that particular criminal had—as I am well informed—every reason to be vindictively enraged against your father. I am sure you are too good a lawyer to fail to see the point. If this man Gryson, in 'getting even,' as he expressed it to you, has added perjury to his other crimes—But we need not follow the suggestion any further at this time. Be hopeful, Mr. Blount, as I am. Leave these matters with me, and go and be as good a son as he deserves to my old friend David."

Evan Blount left the venerable presence in the judges' chambers of the Capitol with a heart strangely mellowed, and with a feeling of relief too great to be measured. At last, without compromise, and equally without the slightest concession to the natural human passion for vindication, the momentous step had been taken. Whatever might come of it, there would be no daggerings from an outraged conscience, no remorse for an unworthy passion impulsively yielded to. Also, with the rolling of the terrible burden to other and entirely competent shoulders there came a sense of freedom that was almost jubilant; and under the promptings of this new light-heartedness he was able to make a reasonably cheerful fourth at the cafe dinner-table a little later.

Oddly enough, as he thought, Patricia was also cheerful, though she vanished with Mrs. Honoria to the private suite shortly after the adjournment to the mezzanine lounge. Past this, after the father and son had smoked their cigars in man-like silence for a time, Mrs. Honoria, coated and hatted as if to go out, came back to sit near the balustrade, looking down upon the kindling lobby activities. Shortly after her coming the senator rose to go. Instantly his wife sprang up to walk with him to the head of the great stair.

"The time has come?" she asked quickly.

"I reckon it has, little woman."

"I wish I might be there to see," she said softly. And then, whipping a packet of papers from under her street-coat: "Take these. When you see what they are, you'll know why I haven't given them to you before this. As long as you didn't know anything about it, you could tell Evan the simple truth—that you didn't have them."

The Honorable David pocketed the papers without looking at them.

"I suspected you—or, rather, young Collins—quite a little spell ago," he said with imperturbable good nature. "I couldn't have done it myself; I reckon no right-minded man could have done it, but—"

"—But women have no conscience," she finished for him. "I hadn't in this instance. There was too much at stake with a firebrand like Evan to deal with. Don't be too good-natured, David—to-night, I mean. You know that is your failing when you have a man down. But to-night you must make the man pay the price. That's all, I think. I'm going back to Evan now to see if I can't make him talk to me. That is the one thing I have seldom been able to do thus far."

If Blount was a little surprised when the small plotter came back to take the chair recently vacated by his father, he was generous enough not to show it. The huge sense of relief was still with him, and its mellowing influence made him smile leniently when she said: "I want to be reasoned with, Evan. I have just let your father persuade me that a certain thing he is about to do is perfectly safe, when I am afraid it isn't."

"Since he is undertaking to do it, it's safe enough, you may be sure," he replied at random.

"Then you know what it is?"

"Oh, no; he didn't tell me where he was going. But on general principles, you know, I think he can be trusted to take care of himself. He is a many-sided man, Mrs. Blount. You are his wife, but I have sometimes found myself wondering if, after all, you know him as he really is."

"Perhaps I don't," she agreed readily enough. "But I do know his absolute fearlessness, at least. That's why I'm a little nervous just now."

Blount took the alarm at once, as she hoped he would.

"You mean that he is really going into danger of some sort?" he demanded.

She nodded. "He is going to meet a man who is—well, he is a big man with many of the same qualities that your father has. But down at the very bottom of him there is a quality that even your father doesn't suspect. Have you ever seen a cornered rat, Evan?"

Blount had got upon his feet and was buttoning his coat.

"I don't know how much or how little you know about what has taken place this afternoon, Mrs. Blount," he broke out hastily, "but I can tell you this much: I am my father's son now, whatever I have been in the past, and if he is in danger, my place is with him. Tell me where he has gone."

The little lady's eyes were demurely downcast. "I shouldn't dare tell you that, but—but perhaps I might show you. I didn't promise not to—not to follow him," she returned with exactly the proper shade of half-frightened reluctance.

"Is it far?" he asked.

"Y-yes; we should have to drive."

"Excuse me for a minute or two," he said abruptly, and, making a bolt for the elevator, he was back almost within the limit named with a top-coat for himself and a driving-wrap for his companion. "I broke into your suite and made Patricia give me the wrap," he explained. "If it isn't what you want, I'll try again."

"It will do nicely," she told him; and together they went down the broad marble stair to the ground-floor.

"Do we take a cab?" he asked, when they reached the sidewalk.

"No; it's only a short walk to the garage, and we can take the touring-car."

"I'm entirely in your hands," he rejoined; and then: "Perhaps you'd better take my arm. We can make quicker time that way."

The small plotter's eyes were dancing when she slipped her hand under his arm. In a career which had not been entirely devoid of excitement, Mrs. Honoria had rarely found men difficult. But this particular young man was proving himself to be the easiest among many.

At the garage Blount asked for the family touring-car, more than half-expecting to be told that his father had taken it. The garage man nodded and laughed. "You can have it, but you came within an ace of losing out," he said. "The senator was just here, and he was going to take it, but he changed his mind when I told him the big roadster was in."

Blount made no comment, and when the car was ready he asked his companion where she would ride.

"In front, with you," was the quick reply; and when they were placed she gave him his running orders. "Slip out of the city by the quietest streets you can find and take the Quaretaro road," she directed, and he obeyed in silence, holding the speed down until they had left the capital behind them and were bowling along under the stars on the fine boulevarded county road.

"Do we take it easy or the other way?" he asked, speaking for the first time since they had left the town garage.

"You may drive as fast as you like until we come to the hills," he was told; and with this permission Blount let the motor out and speedily put the fifteen miles of the straightaway road to the rear.

"Is it Wartrace?" he inquired, when the touring-car was breasting the first of the grades in the gulch-threading climb to the second mesa level.

"No. When you come to the pine-tree, turn to the right up Shonoho Canyon."

"We can't get anywhere on that road," he objected. "It's washed out and posted. I tried to go up there the other day when I had Patricia out in the little car."

"I think you will find it quite passable to-night," was all the answer he got; and a little later, when they had turned out of the main road and were ascending the small canyon, the prophecy came true. The brush barricade had been thrown aside, and there were fresh wheel tracks in the sand.

At sight of the wheel marks the senator's wife spoke again.

"You have been up here before?"

"Yes, once; in the middle of the summer."

"There is a small hotel at the head of the road."

"I know; but it is closed."

"It has been reopened—please throttle the motor so it won't make so much noise—the hotel is occupied now, as I say, and that is where we shall find your father. Are you still willing to do as I tell you to?"

"In all things reasonable."

"As if I'd ask you to do anything unreasonable!" she broke out half-petulantly. "Listen; there is a lawn with a circular driveway in front of the hotel. Drive to the outer edge, near the cliff, and stop the car."

Five minutes later he had obeyed his instructions literally. Through the groving of trees on the lawn he could see the lights in the lower story of the inn. At the flicking of the motor-switch a man with a pair of lineman's climbing spurs at his belt rose up out of the shadows and touched his cap to the lady, saying: "The boss is here; he has just gone in."

"I know," was the low-toned response. And then to Evan: "Help me out, please."

When they stood together beside the car she spoke again to the lineman.

"Is it all right, Jackson? Can you do what I asked you to?"

"We can try it a whirl," said the man; and thereupon he led the way across the lawn, around to the darkened end of the bungalow-built resort house, and through a sheltering pergola to a side door. "I got hold of the key, and it's open," he signified, meaning the door. "Can you find your way in the dark on the inside?"

"Perfectly," was the whispered reply; and then the lineman guide got his further orders: "Go back to the car and see that nobody interferes with it, Jackson." Then, when the man had disappeared in the tree shadows, the little lady turned short upon Blount. "I am going to take you where you can see and hear, but you must promise me not to interfere unless it becomes perfectly plain that your father needs you. Is it a bargain?"

"It is—if you'll allow me to be the judge of the need."

She laughed softly. "You are simply incorrigible, and I should think there would be times when Patricia would be tempted to stick pins into you," she mocked. Then: "Come on; we are wasting time," and, entering the house, she took his hand and led him through a dark passage, up a stair, through another passage into a long, low-pitched room, bare and empty save for a great pyramid of dining-tables and chairs piled in the middle of it, and lastly through a cautiously opened door which admitted a flood of yellow lamp-light from below.

"The musicians' gallery," she whispered. "Go to the screen and look down, but for Heaven's sake, don't make any noise!"

Blount obeyed mechanically. The orchestra gallery, screened on three sides by an open fretwork of Moorish design, was built out from the wall of the dining-room, and through the latticings of the fretwork he could look down upon the oblong lobby of the resort hotel. There was a table-desk with lamps on it drawn out in front of a cheerful wood-fire burning in a great stone fireplace, and in front of the fire, standing with his back to the blaze, Blount saw his father. From a lighted room at the opposite end of the lobby space came a confused clattering of telegraph instruments. Blount caught a glimpse of shirt-sleeved clerks moving about in the room beyond, and then a door opened beneath him and the vice-president of the Transcontinental Company strode out into the firelight to shake hands with his visitor and to say: "I've been looking for you; I thought you'd come in out of the wet before it was too late, David. Sit down and tell me how much you're going to bleed us for, and I'll make out the check."

With a cold hand gripping at his heart, Blount turned away, sick and revolted, and there was a curse on his lips for the cruelty of the woman who had brought him to be a witness to his father's shame. But when he groped for the door of egress and found it, the knob refused to turn. The door was locked and he could not retreat.



XXX

THE RECKONING

Evan Blount's first impulse when he found his retreat cut off by the locked door of the musicians' gallery was to make his presence known instantly to the two men standing before the fire in the lobby below. Shame, vicarious shame for the father who would thus find himself unmasked before his son, was all that made him hesitate; and in the pausing moment he heard his father's reply to the vice-president's challenging greeting.

"The same old song; always the same old song with you, isn't it, Hardwick?" the senator was saying in jocose deprecation. "What money can't buy, isn't worth having; that's about the way you fellows always stack it up." Then, with sudden grimness: "Sit down, Hardwick. I've come to say a few things to you that won't listen very good, but you've got to take your medicine this time."

"What's that?" demanded the vice-president, dropping mechanically into his desk-chair. And then: "It's no use, David. We've beat you at your own game. We're going to roll up a majority next Tuesday that will wipe you and your broken-down machine out of existence. Don't you believe it?"

"Not yet—not quite yet" was the mild rejoinder.

"Well, you'd better believe it, because it's the truth. You are down and out. I had you beat, David, that night last summer when you gave me your 'de-fi' and I came back by taking your son away from you. The young gentleman you were going to spring on us for your next attorney-general has done more than any other one man in the campaign to help our lame dog over the stile."

"Yes," said the big man, sunning his back at the fire, "that is one of the things we're going to flail out right here and now, Hardwick; about the boy and what he's been doing. You told him to go out and preach the good, clean gospel of the square deal, didn't you?"

It was at this point that the listener in the musicians' gallery, a prey to tumultuous emotions which were making the freshly healing wound in his head throb like a trip-hammer, lost all of his compunctions and drew closer to the fretwork screen.

"He didn't need any special instructions," was the vice-president's rejoinder, and his tone chimed in with the hard-bitted smile. "Now that it is all over, I don't mind telling you that he mapped the thing out for himself, and all we had to do was to sit tight and give him plenty of rope. Candidly, David, I don't believe I'm hardened enough to play the game as it ought to be played out here in the sage-brush hills. The young fellow's sincerity came pretty near getting away with me when I saw how ridiculously in earnest he was."

"Yet you let him go on, putting himself deeper and deeper in the hole every time he stood up before an audience, and you never said a word—never gave him a hint that you were not going to back him up in everything he was saying?"

This time the hard-bitted smile broke into a laugh.

"Let's get down to business, David. You wouldn't expect us to throw the game away when somebody was trying his best to put the winning card into our hands. We needn't dig back into the campaign for something to jangle over, you and I. We can come right down to the present moment. You're cornered, but I don't deny that you've still got a few votes to dispose of. How much do you want for them?"

Blount saw his father take a step forward, and for a flitting instant he thought there would be violence. But apparently nothing was farther from the senator's intention.

"I'm not selling to-night, Hardwick; I'm buying," he said, with the good-natured smile wrinkling at the corners of his eyes. "I want to know how much you'll take to clean up right where you are and make my boy's word good to the people of this State."

Mr. McVickar turned to his table-desk and took up a sheaf of telegrams.

"I'm a pretty busy man this evening, David; and if you haven't anything better than that to offer—"

"You've got a lot of crooked deals out—special rates and rebates and such things; the boy believed you were going to call them all off and be good, Hardwick."

The vice-president laid the telegrams aside and turned back again with the air of a man determined to sweep away all the obstructions at one shrewd push.

"You're wasting your time and mine; let's get down to business," he snapped. "Some little time ago your son began to urge this same 'reform measure,' as he termed it. I believe he even went so far as to threaten Gantry and Kittredge with the publication of certain private letters from our patrons, letters written to him in his capacity of field campaigner for our company. I don't suppose he really meant to do any such disloyal thing as that, but—"

"But to make sure he wouldn't, you had one of your hired shadow-men blow up his safe and steal the letters," put in the senator mildly. "That was prudent, Hardwick. I was a little scared up myself for fear Evan might get real good and mad, and let the cat out of the bag; I was, for a fact."

"Without admitting the safe-blowing, I may say that the letters were destroyed, and our friends were advised to be a little more conservative in their correspondence. That settles the 'reform measure' incident and brings us down to the present argument. If you are not here to get in line with us, what did you come for?"

"I came to give you one more chance to be decent, Hardwick; just—one—more—last—chance."

"David, there are times when you make me tired, and this is one of them. For years you've held us up and dictated to us; but this time we've got you by the neck. Did you ever happen to hear of a fellow named Thomas Gryson?"

"Oh, yes; I've heard of him. I believe he has been on your pay-rolls for a while—notwithstanding the fact that he is an escaped criminal," was the shrewd counter-thrust.

"He's a scoundrel; we'll admit that. Just the same, your son hired him to go out and get evidence in a certain matter of alleged crookedness in the registration lists. He got it, and delivered the papers to your son last night. Some of those affidavits incriminate you, David. If we wanted to use them, we could send you to the penitentiary, right here in your own State."

The senator drew up a mock-Sheraton arm-chair and lowered his huge frame gently into it.

"In order to use those papers against me you'd first have to get hold of them, wouldn't you, Hardwick?" he asked.

"We have them," was the terse assertion.

The Honorable David's chuckle rumbled deep in his capacious chest.

"Barto phoned you an hour or so ago that he had 'em, but, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, he couldn't deliver 'em to you until to-morrow morning. Isn't that about the way it shapes up?"

The vice-president's frown marked an added degree of irritation. "So you have a cut-in on my telephone wire, have you?" he rasped.

The senator leaned forward and laid a forefinger on the vice-presidential knee.

"Listen, Hardwick," he said. "I dictated that phone message to you, and Barto repeated it word for word because he had to—I reckon maybe it was because one of my men was holding a gun to his other ear while he talked to you. The little hold-up that you planned this afternoon didn't come off. Barto lost out bad, and when we get around to giving him the third degree, I shouldn't wonder if he'd tell a whole lot of things that you wouldn't want to see printed in the newspapers."

Mr. McVickar sprang out of his chair with an agility surprising in so heavy a man, crossed to the open door of the room where his clerical force was at work, and slammed it shut. When he returned, he was no longer the confident tyrant of foregone conclusions.

"Where are those papers now, Blount?" he inquired.

"They are in the hands of Chief Justice Hemingway, for investigation and such action as he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench see fit to take."

"Good God! Your son did that, knowing that you are as deep in the mud as we are in the mire?"

"I reckon he did, so. That boy is all wool and a yard wide. He thought he was putting me in the hole, too, along with Kittredge and your railroad crooks, and it came mighty near tearing him in two. But he did it. You haven't been more than half-appreciating that boy, Hardwick."

"'He thought,' you say; isn't it the fact that you are in the hole, David?"

The senator reached over, took one of the gigantic McVickar cigars from the open box on the desk, and calmly lighted it.

"You're a pretty hard man to convince, Hardwick," he said slowly, when the big cigar was filling the air of the lobby with its fragrance. "Away along back at the beginning of this fight I told you what I was aiming to do, and why. You wouldn't believe it then, and you don't want to believe it now; but that's because you don't happen to have a son of your own. When that boy of mine wired me that he was coming out here to get into the harness, I began to turn over the leaves of the record and look back a little. It was a mighty dirty record, McVickar. I don't know that I'm any better man now than I was in the days when we made that record—you and I—but when I looked it over, it struck me all in a heap that I'd have to get out the bucket and scrubbing-brush if I didn't want to make a clean-hearted, clean-minded boy plumb ashamed of his old daddy."

"But, say—you haven't quit your scheming for a single minute, Blount!" retorted the railroad tyrant. "You are just as much the boss of the machine to-day as you've ever been!"

"I reckon, that's so, too," was the measured reply. "But there's just this one little difference, Hardwick: a machine, in a factory or in politics, is a mighty necessary thing, and we wouldn't get very far nowadays without it. Here in America we're just coming to learn that machine politics—which is sometimes only another name for intelligent organization—needn't be bad politics unless we make 'em bad. To put it another way, the machine will grind corn or clean up the streets and alleys just as easily as it will grind up men and principles."

The vice-president made a gesture of impatience.

"Come to the point," he urged. "Do you mean to tell me that you can face an investigation by the Supreme Court?"

"For this one time, Hardwick, I can. For this one time in the history of the Sage-Brush State, the slate—the machine slate—is as clean as the back of your hand. When the court comes to investigate, it will find that every crooked deal in this campaign has had a railroad man or a corporation man at the back of it. Let me tell you what's due to happen. Chief Justice Hemingway had luncheon with me to-day, and he came early enough to give me a quiet hour before we went to table with the ladies. There is going to be an investigation, and some sharp, shrewd young lawyer is going to be appointed by the court to take evidence. When this young man gets to work, every wheel in the machine is going to roll his way. Every bribe you've offered and paid, every false name you've put on the registration lists, every deal you've made with men like Pete Hathaway and McDarragh, has had its witnesses, and by the gods, Hardwick, they'll testify—every man of them!"

Again the vice-president sprang from his chair, but this time it was to walk the floor with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets. The listener in the musicians' gallery found a seat and sat down to let the intoxicating, overwhelming joy of it all have its will of him. In the fulness of time the tramping magnate who had been so crushingly out-generalled in his own chosen field came to stand before the big man, who was still quietly smoking in the sham-Sheraton arm-chair.

"You spoke of the appointment of a special prosecuting attorney, David," he said in a harsh monotone. "Who will it be?"

"You've guessed it already, I reckon. It'll be the boy, Hardwick. Hemingway will appoint him if he is willing to serve."

"He's taken our retainer!" snapped the vice-president.

"Not much, he hasn't! you hired him for wages, and if he wants to resign—he has resigned, by the way—and take another job, I reckon he can do it without breaking any of the Ten Commandments."

"We can't stand for that—you know we can't."

"No; I don't think you can—not as a corporation. Besides the flock of witnesses that we can drum up, he'll have those letters that we were talking about a while back. You missed fire on that, too, Hardwick. What your man dynamited out of Evan's office safe, and what you destroyed, were only clever copies. The real letters were stolen by the boy's friends, and little as you may believe it, the object of that theft was to give you this last chance. The boy was mighty hot under the collar, and we couldn't be sure that he wouldn't start the fireworks before the band was ready to play. He would have started them, too, if his match hadn't been taken away from him."

Mr. McVickar walked around the other end of the table-desk and sat down heavily.

"You've spoken twice of a 'last chance' David," he said grittingly. "What is it?"

"It's the chance I gave you in the beginning. First, let me tell you what I reckon you're already admitting. You're whipped, Hardwick; your slate's broken, and your man Reynolds hasn't a ghost of a show—he nor any of the others on your string. You haven't made a move that we haven't caught onto just about as soon as you put your fingers on the piece you meant to move. For instance, that little box up there in the beaming just over your head—the one that looks as if it were a part of the house electric installation—is a microphone, and one of your own men helped to put it up. We've got copies of every letter and telegram you've dictated since you had this desk dragged out here a week ago Saturday."

"I'm taking all that for granted," was the curt admission.

"Then we'll come down to the nib of the thing and put you out of your misery. You've got two things to do—just two, Hardwick. One of 'em is to clean house and make a good job of it, just like you let Evan believe you were going to do when you sent him out to tell the people of this State a lot of things that you didn't mean to have come true; cut out all the deals, all the private tariffs, all the little preferentials and palm-warmings. When you've done that, you'll find that the other thing will mighty nearly do itself."

"Name it," rasped the magnate.

"It's just merely to take your railroad out of politics in this State, and keep it out. We've had enough of you, McVickar, and more than enough. Is it a bargain?"

"It's a damned one-sided bargain thus far, Blount. What do we get for all this?"

Again the senator chuckled genially. "You may not believe it, but we're going to let you down easy. You do these two things that I've mentioned, and get rid of Kittredge and a few others that have been caught red-handed, and the Supreme Court investigation won't touch your railroad as a corporation—in other words, it'll go after individuals. But you've got to play fair, you know—and bring forth fruits meet for repentance, before the fact. How does that strike you?"

Again the vice-president got up to walk the floor, but this time the deliberative interval was shorter.

"What is the political programme, as you have it figured out, David?" he asked presently.

"It'll be a landslide for us, as I have told you. Gordon will go in by the biggest majority that has ever been rolled up in this State. Dortscher will succeed himself as attorney-general; and by and by, after things have quieted down, he will resign. That will give Gordon the appointment of his successor, and I'm thinking it might be a pretty good thing for you, as well as for the people of the State, if Alec should happen to pick out a bright young fellow who knows your side of the question as well as the people's, and who is square enough to give you a fair show when it comes to framing up any new railroad legislation."

"That will be your son, I suppose?"

"If he'll take it," was the imperturbable rejoinder.

For the third time the vice-president, dying hard, as befitted him, deliberated thoughtfully. At the end of the thoughtful interval he took a cigar from the open box and clamped it between his teeth.

"We trade," he said shortly. And then: "How will you take it—in stock or bonds?"

The Honorable David rose slowly and snapped the cigar ash into the fire.

"I'm right sorry, Hardwick, but this is one time when I reckon we'll have to have what you might call the spot cash. Promises don't go. You're too good a fighter to be allowed to get up merely because you've hollered 'enough.' Come on into your telegraph-shop and let me hear you dictate that string of 'come-off' orders. Then we'll drive to town in my road-car, and you can tip off Kittredge and a few of the other prominent victims by word of mouth, as you'll most likely want to."

For a full minute after the two had left the lobby together Evan Blount sat motionless in the screened orchestra gallery. Then he got up and groped once more for the door-knob. It yielded at his touch, and in the semi-darkness beyond the opening he saw his father's wife with her arms upstretched to him.

"Oh, Evan, dear—am I forgiven?" she asked softly.

"Little mother!" he said, and then he took her face between his hands and kissed her.

* * * * *

When the Honorable David Blount reached the city an hour or more later, and had dropped his passenger at the Railway Club, he found his son waiting for him in the otherwise deserted sitting-room of the Inter-Mountain private suite.

"I couldn't sleep without telling you first, dad," the waiting one broke out. "I've been eavesdropping; I was a listener, unwilling at first, but not afterward, to everything that was said an hour or so ago in the lobby of the little hotel at the head of Shonoho. Do I need to tell you in so many words how deep the plough has gone?"

"I reckon not," was the gentle reply. "Neither do you need to tell me how you came to be out at Shonoho when I thought I'd left you tied hand and foot right here in the hotel." Then, with the quizzical smile wrinkling at the corners of the grave eyes: "How does the political wrestle strike you by this time, son?"

"It strikes me that I haven't been in it; not even in the outer edges of it. Isn't that about the size of it?"

"Oh, no; you've been doing good work, mighty good work. You've helped out in the only way that help could come in this campaign; you've stirred up a good, healthy public sentiment in favor of a square deal for everybody. McVickar was fixing to tangle it all up—get the people down on him until they'd simply legislate the life out of his railroad. But he couldn't see that."

"He sees it now—the 'machine' has made him see it."

"Yes. You didn't know that a machine could be put to any really righteous use, did you, boy? But in this campaign it has gone in to knock out the crookedness, big and little. Listen, son; you heard what I told McVickar. After you'd sent me that wire from Boston last summer, saying you'd come, I lay awake nights projecting how I'd put you in training for a spell, and then help you into the saddle and make you the boss of the round-up, the same as I'd been. Then it came over me, all of a sudden, that I'd been as crooked as a dog's hind leg—that we'd all been crooked. Not that I've ever taken a dollar for my personal pocket, for I haven't; but I've bought and sold and dickered and schemed with the best of 'em, and the worst of 'em. On top of that, I began to ask myself how I'd like it to see you wallowing in the same old mud-hole, and—well, Evan, boy, you may have a son of your own some day, and then you'll know. I let things rock along until you came; until that first day at Wartrace when you ripped out at me about hewing to the line. Right then and there I made up my mind that I'd put the whole power of the 'machine,' as you call it, into one campaign for a clean election and a square deal."

"Oh, good Lord!" ejaculated the son, "and I've been fighting you and your organization at every turn!"

"Oh, no, you haven't," was the quick rejoinder.

"You've been fighting graft and crookedness, and that's what you thought you were hired to do. As you know now, McVickar wasn't playing quite fair with you. Just the same, you've been in the hands of your friends, right from the start. It's the organization that's been giving you all these chances to preach the gospel of the square deal; it was a shrewd little captain-general of the organization who pushed Hathaway up against you to let you know that the railroad people were running around in the same old circles—hollering for justice, and doing everything under the sun to defeat the ends of justice—muddying the spring because, they say, they don't know what else to do. And, by the way, it was that same little captain-general who put you up against the real thing to-night, without telling me or anybody else what she was going to do."

The younger man left his chair to go to one of the windows where he stood for a moment or two looking down upon the street-lights. When he turned, it was to say: "I'm with you, dad, heart and soul. But you won't mind my saying that I'm still a little bit afraid that you and your kind are a menace to civilization and a free government. You'll let me hang on to that much of my prejudice, won't you?"

"Sure! Hang on to anything you like, son, and say anything you like. Or, rather, let me say something first. How about this 'career' business of Patricia's? Have you fixed that up yet?"

Blount shook his head. "She's going home with her father next week," he said. And then: "Do you know what she did to-day, dad? She ran the little red car into that pine-tree intentionally—so I couldn't get back here in time to give Judge Hemingway those affidavits, which we both supposed would incriminate you."

"Well, God bless her loyal little soul!" exclaimed the Honorable David, and the grave eyes were suspiciously bright. "I hadn't told her a word of what I was trying to do; but, Lord love you, Evan, she knew: you trust a good woman for knowing, every time, son. And now one more thing: Have you come to know Honoria any better in these last few days?"

"Yes; much better, within the last few hours, dad."

"That's good; that does my old heart a heap of good, son! Now then, you go straight off to bed and sleep up some. You've had a mighty hard day for a sick man. To-morrow morning we'll drive out to Wartrace and get ready to touch off the fireworks when the returns trickle in on Tuesday. I tell you, boy, Tuesday's election is going to be a regular old-fashioned, heave-'em-up and keep-'em-a-going land-slide! Good-night, and good dreams—if that cracked head doesn't go and roil 'em all up for you."



XXXI

A LA BONNE HEURE

By some law of contraries, whose workings not even the politically profound can fathom, the election proved the truth of the adage that all signs fail in a dry time by recording itself as one of the quietest and most orderly ever known in the Sage-Brush State. A few editors there were, like Blenkinsop, of The Plainsman, who maintained stoutly that it sounded the death-knell of the machine, but there was no gainsaying the result. The "Paramounters" ticket, with or without the help of the machine, was elected by sweeping majorities everywhere; and Gantry, roaming the corridors and lounging-rooms of the Railway Club and reading the bulletins as they were posted, shook his head despairingly over each fresh announcement.

Late in the evening, finding that the senator's party had left the Inter-Mountain the day before to drive to Wartrace, the traffic manager called up the Quaretaro Mesa country-house and poured the news of the debacle into Evan Blount's ear.

"We've gone to the everlasting bow-wows, and Mr. McVickar has disappeared, and the end of the world has come," was the way he phrased it for the listening ear; but the word which came back must have been peculiarly heartening, since from that time on to an hour well past midnight Gantry figured hilariously as the self-constituted host of any and all who would be entertained.

At Wartrace Hall there was also rejoicing, albeit of a quieter sort. Five people sat around the cheerful blaze in the library, and when Crowell, whose telegraph instrument was in the adjoining den, had brought the final report from the outlying wards of the capital, he was told to close his key and go to bed.

After the young man had withdrawn, the Honorable David rose to stand with his back to the fire.

"Well, Evan, boy, are all the tangles straightened out for you for keeps, now?" he asked jovially.

"Just about all of them, dad," laughed the younger man. He had been spending a very happy evening, due less to the triumphant story which had been pouring in over the wires than to the fact that Patricia had been occupying the other half of the small sofa which he had dragged out to face the fire.

"Don't feel sore because you didn't get the governor you thought you were going to get when you went around preaching the gospel?" said the father, still chuckling.

"We've got a better man and a bigger one, I'm sure," was the quick reply. Then he added: "But I think I am still doubtful about the advisability of injecting the machine principle into politics."

The senator laughed silently.

"Call it 'the organization' instead of 'the machine,' son, and you've named the power that moves the civilized world to-day. Man, the individual, is just about as helpless as a new-born baby. If you want to reform anything, from an unjust poor-law to the tariff, your first move is to rustle up a following; after that, you've got to solidify your bunch of sympathizers into a working organization—in other words, into a machine. Isn't that so, Professor Anners?"

The white-haired professor of palaeontology nodded sleepily. He had been dreaming of the Megalosauridae, and had not heard the question.

"You've heard me called 'the boss' from the time Dick Gantry had his first talk with you back yonder in Massachusetts," the senator went on, turning again to his son. "Call me a man with friends enough to make me a sort of foreman of round-ups in the old home State, and you've got it about right. I don't say that I've always used the power as it ought to be used; the good Lord knows, I'm no more infallible than other folks. You've gone through a heap of trouble and worry because you thought, when you got ready to knock the wedge out of the log, my fingers were going to get caught in the split, along with a lot of others. That would have been true enough any other year but this, I reckon, so you didn't have your fight and your worry for nothing. I've bought and trafficked and bargained and compromised—I don't deny that—but only when it seemed as though the end justified the means. Maybe the end never does justify the means—I'm open to conviction on that. But sometimes it's mighty easy to persuade yourself that it does."

It was just here that the professor awoke with a start and a snort, excused himself abruptly, and stumped off to bed. Mrs. Honoria, sitting under the drop-light and stitching patiently at her bit of stretched linen, laid the tiny embroidery-hoop aside, signalled to her husband, and vanished in her turn. A few minutes after she had gone, the senator crossed from his corner of the fireplace to stand before the two sitting on the little sofa.

THE END