duty in this matter.

Professor Griswold was not pleased to learn that the governor was still absent from the capital. He felt that he deserved better luck after the trouble he had taken to warn the governor. His conscience had got the better of his comfort—he knew that, and he wrote a telegram to the law firm at Richmond with which he was consultant, asking that a meeting with certain clients arranged for to-day be deferred twenty-four hours. It was now Tuesday; he had no further lectures at the university until the following Monday, and after he had taken his bearings of Columbia, where it occurred to him he had not an acquaintance, he walked toward the capitol with a well-formed idea of seeing the governor's private secretary—and, if that person appeared to be worthy of confidence, apprising him of the governor's danger.

Standing in the many-pillared portico of the capitol, Griswold turned to look down upon Columbia, a city distinguished to the most casual eye by streets an acre wide! And having an historical imagination and a reverence for the past, Griswold gave himself for a moment to Memory, hearing the tramp of armed hosts, and the thunder of cannon, and seeing flames leap again in the wake of battle. It was a glorious day, and the green of late May lay like a soft scarf upon the city. The sky held the wistful blue of spring. Griswold bared his head to the faint breeze, or perhaps unconsciously he saluted the bronze figure of Hampton, who rides forever there at the head of his stubborn legion. He turned into the capitol with a little sigh, for he was a son of Virginia, and here, in this unfamiliar scene, the Past was revivified, and he felt the spell of things that were already old when he was born.

It was not yet nine o'clock when he entered the governor's office. He waited in the reception-room, adjoining the official chamber, but the several desks of the clerical staff remained unoccupied. He chafed a bit as time passed and no one appeared, for his north-bound train left at eleven, and he could not fairly be asked to waste the entire day here. He was pacing the floor, expecting one of the clerks to appear at any moment, when a man entered hurriedly, walked to the closed inner door, shook it impatiently, and kicked it angrily as he turned away. He was a short, thick-set man of thirty-five, dressed in blue serge, and his movements were quick and nervous. He growled under his breath and swung round upon Griswold as though to tax him with responsibility for the closed door.

"Has no one been here this morning?" he demanded, glaring at the closed desks.

"If you don't count me I should answer no," replied Griswold quietly.

"Oh!"

The two gentlemen regarded each other for a moment, contemptuous dislike clearly written on the smaller man's face, Griswold half-smiling and indifferent.

"I am waiting for the governor," remarked Griswold, thinking to gain information.

"Then you're likely to wait some time," jerked the other. "The whole place seems to be abandoned. I never saw such a lot of people."

"Not having seen them myself, I must reserve judgment," Griswold remarked, and the blue serge suit flung out of the room.

Presently another figure darkened the entrance, and the colored servant whom Griswold had seen attending Miss Osborne on the train from Atlanta swept into the reception-room and, grandly ignoring his presence, sat down in a chair nearest the closed door of the inner chamber. Griswold felt that this was encouraging, as implying some link between the governor and his domestic household and he was about to ask the colored woman if she knew the business hours of the office when the closed door opened and Miss Osborne appeared on the threshold. The colored woman rose, and Griswold, who happened to be facing the door when it swung open with such startling suddenness, stared an instant and bowed profoundly.

"I beg your pardon, but I wish very much to see Governor Osborne or his secretary."

Miss Osborne, in white, trailing a white parasol in her hand, and with white roses in her belt, still stood half withdrawn inside the private office.

"I am very sorry that Governor Osborne and his secretary are both absent," she answered, and the two eyed each other gravely. Griswold felt that the brown eyes into which he looked had lately known tears; but she held her head high, with a certain defiance, even.

"That is unfortunate. I stopped here last night on purpose to see him, and now I fear that I must leave—" and he smiled the Griswold smile, which was one of the secrets of his popularity at the university—"I must leave Columbia in a very few minutes."

"The office does not keep very early hours," remarked the girl, "but some one will certainly be here in a moment. I am sorry you have had to wait."

She had not changed her position, and Griswold rather hoped she would not, for the door framed her perfectly, and the sunlight from the inner windows emphasized the whiteness of the snowy gown she wore. Her straw hat was shaped like a soldier's campaign hat, with sides pinned up, the top dented, and a single feather thrust into the side.

"It was not I," said Griswold, "who so rudely shook the door. I beg that you will acquit me of that violence."

The girl did not, however, respond to his smile. She poked the floor with her parasol a moment, then raised her head and asked:

"Who was it, if you please?"

"A gentleman with a brown beard, a red necktie, and a bad disposition."

"I thought as much," she said, half to herself, and her eyes were bent again upon the point of her parasol, with which she was tracing a design in the rug. She lifted her head with the abruptness of quick decision, and looked straight at Griswold. The negress had withdrawn to the outer door, by which she sat with sphinx-like immovability.

"I am Miss Osborne. Governor Osborne is my father. Would you mind telling me whether your business with my father is—"

She hesitated, and her eyes met Griswold's.

"Miss Osborne, as I have no acquaintances here, let me introduce myself. My name is Griswold. My home is Charlottesville. Pardon me, but you and I were fellow-passengers from Atlanta yesterday evening. I am unacquainted with your father, and I have no business with him except—"

He was not yet clear in his mind whether to tell her that her father's life was threatened; it did not seem fair to alarm her when he was powerless to help; but as he weighed the question the girl came out into the reception-room and sat down near the window.

"Won't you have a seat, Mr. Griswold? May I ask you again whether you know the gentleman who came in here and beat the door a while ago?"

"I never saw him before in my life."

"That is very well. And now, Mr. Griswold, I am going to ask you to tell me, if you will, just what it is you wish to say to my father."

She was very earnest, and the request she made rang the least bit imperiously. She now held the white parasol across her lap in the tight clasp of her white-gloved hands.

"I should not hesitate—" began Griswold, still uncertain what to do.

"You need not hesitate in the fear that you may alarm me. I think I know"—and she half-smiled now—"I think perhaps I know what it is."

"My reason for wishing to see your father is, then, to warn him that if a criminal named Appleweight is brought back from his hiding-place on the North Carolina frontier, and tried for his crimes in South Carolina, the governor of that state, your father, will be made to suffer by