This statement failed, however, to produce the slightest effect on

Mr. Ardmore, who only smiled slightly, a smile less incredulous than

disdainful.

“Oh, pshaw! that’s nothing,” he replied; “_I’m_ the governor of North

Carolina!” and mounting his horse he gravely lifted his hat to the

prisoner and galloped away.

While Mr. Ardmore was securing his prisoner in the corn-crib it may be

interesting to return for a moment to the haunted log cabin on Raccoon

Creek, the interior of which was roughly but comfortably furnished.

Above were two small sleeping-rooms, and beside the bed in each stood a

suit-case and a hand-satchel. In each room hung, on convenient hooks,

a long, black frock-coat, a pair of trousers of light cloth, and a

broad-brim black felt hat. Coat, trousers, and hat were exactly alike.

In the room below sat a man in his shirt-sleeves, his feet on a cheap

deal table, blowing rings from a cigar. He presented a picture of the

greatest ease and contentment, as he occasionally stroked his short

brown beard, or threw up his arms and clasped his hands about his head

or caught, lazily at the smoke rings. On the table lay an array of

playing cards and poker chips.

“It’s too good to last for ever,” the lone occupant reflected aloud,

stifling a yawn, and he reached out, with careless indifference, toward

a bundle of newspapers tied together with a piece of twine, and drew

one out and spread it across his knees. He yawned again as though

the thought of a world whose affairs were stamped in printer’s ink

bored him immensely; and then the bold headlines that shouted at him

across half a quarter of the sheet caused him to gasp, and his feet

struck the bare floor of the cabin resoundingly. He now bent over the

paper with the greatest eagerness, muttering as he read, and some

of his mutterings were, it must be confessed, not without profane

embellishment.

TWO COWARDLY GOVERNORS MISSING

SCANDAL AFFECTING TWO STATE EXECUTIVES

IS THE APPLEWEIGHT CASE RESPONSIBLE?

RUMOURS OF FATAL DUEL ON STATE LINE

He read breathlessly the startling story that followed the headlines,

then rose and glanced anxiously at his watch.

“Am I drunk or mad? I must find Osborne and get out of this.”

He leaped to the open door, and gazed into the forest from a little

platform that commanded all sides of the cabin. And there, to his utter

amazement, he saw men in khaki emerging cautiously from the woods. They

were unmistakably soldiers of some sort, for an officer was giving

sharp commands, and the line opened out like a fan along the creek. The

observer of this manœuvre mopped his head with his handkerchief as he

watched the alert movements of the figures in khaki.

He was so absorbed that he failed to hear stealthy steps at the rear of

the platform, but he was now rudely aroused by two uniformed youngsters

with S. C. N. G. on their caps, who sprang upon him and bore him with a

crash to the puncheon floor.

“You’re our prisoner!” shouted one of them, rising when he found that

the prisoner yielded without resistance.

“What for?” blurted the captive, sitting up and rubbing his elbow.

“For being Bill Appleweight, _alias_ Poteet. Get up, now, and come with

us to headquarters, or my instructions are to break your head.”

“Who the devil are you?” panted the prisoner.

“Well, if it’s anything to you, we’re the South Carolina militia, so

you’d better get up and climb.”

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FLIGHT OF GILLINGWATER.

“It will be better for me to break the news to Colonel Gillingwater,”

said Jerry, “and you must go out and meet the troops yourself, with Mr.

Cooke and that amusing Mr. Collins. There is no telling what effect my

tidings will have on Rutherford, or what he will decide to do. He has

never before been so near trouble as he is now, and I may have to give

him first aid to the injured when he finds out that the South Carolina

troops are on Raccoon Creek, all ready to march upon our sacred soil.”

“But suppose your adjutant-general shouldn’t go back to his troops

after he sees you, then what am I to do?”

“If you don’t see him by ten o’clock you will take personal command

and exercise your own discretion as to the best method of landing

Appleweight in a South Carolina jail. After that we must find papa, and

it will be up to him to satisfy the newspapers and his constituents

with some excuse for his strange disappearance.”

Collins had come from Raleigh on the evening train, and he had solemnly

assured Ardmore that the present state of affairs could not be

maintained another twenty-four hours. He had exhausted his professional

resources, and the North Carolina newspapers of all shades of opinion

were clamouring for the truth, and were insisting that, for the honour

and dignity of the state, Governor Dangerfield should show himself

in Raleigh. Even the metropolitan press, which Collins had filled

for several days with blithe stories of the administration’s vigorous

policy in the Appleweight case, had refused further matter from him.

“We’ve got to find Dangerfield or bust. Now, where is that eminent

statesman, Ardmore? You can’t tell me you don’t know; but if you don’t,

Miss Dangerfield does, and she’s got to tell.”

“She hasn’t the slightest idea, but if the newspapers find out that

he’s really and truly missing, he will have to show up; but first we’ve

got to take Appleweight off that case of Chateau Bizet and lodge him in

the jail at Turner Court House, and let Governor Osborne have the odium

of incarcerating the big chief of the border, to whom he is under the

greatest political obligations.”

“But it’s all over the country now that Osborne hasn’t been seen in

Columbia since he and Dangerfield had that row in New Orleans. Cranks

are turning up everywhere, pretending to be governors of various

states, and old Dangerfield is seen on all the outgoing steamers.

There’s been nothing like it since the kidnapping of Charley Ross.”

Ardmore drew on his riding-gloves reflectively, and a delighted grin

illuminated his countenance.

“I caught a lunatic down on the Raccoon this afternoon who said _he_

was the governor of South Carolina, and I locked him up.”

“Well, he may be Osborne,” remarked Collins, with journalistic

suspicion.

“And he may be a Swiss admiral or the king of Mars. I guess I’m a

governor myself, and I know what a governor looks like and acts

like--you can’t fool me. I put this impostor where he’ll have a chance

to study astronomy to-night.”

“Then he isn’t on that case of Chateau Bizet with Appleweight?”

“No; I locked him up in a corn-crib until I get time to study his

credentials. Come along now!”

Ardmore, Collins, and Cooke rode rapidly away through the wide gates of

the estate along the Sapphire road, over which, by his last bulletin,

the adjutant-general of North Carolina was marching his troops. They

had left Cooke’s men with Paul’s foresters to guard the house and to

picket the banks of the Raccoon in the immediate neighbourhood of the

camp of the South Carolinians.

“I guess those fellows can hold ’em till morning,” said Cooke. “We’ve

got to clean up the whole business by to-morrow night. You can’t have

two states at war with each other this way without shaking up the

universe, and if federal troops come down here to straighten things out

it won’t be funny.”

They had ridden about a mile, when Cooke checked his horse with an

exclamation.

“There’s somebody coming like the devil was after him. It must be

Gillingwater.”

They drew rein and waited, the quick patter of hoofs ringing out

sharply in the still night. The moonlight gave them a fair sweep of the

road, and they at once saw a horseman galloping rapidly toward them.

“Lordy, the man’s on fire!” gasped Ardmore.

“By George, you’re right!” muttered Collins, moving nervously in his

saddle. “It’s a human sunburst.”

“It’s only his gold braid,” explained the practical Cooke.

“He must have on solid gold armour, then,” declared Collins.

Seeing three men drawn across the road, the horseman began to check his

flight.

“Men!” he shouted, as his horse pawed the air with its forefeet, “is

this the road to Ardsley?”

“Right you are,” yelled Cooke, and they were aware of a flash, a

glitter that startled and dazzled the eye, and Colonel Rutherford

Gillingwater thundered on.

Ardmore looked at his watch.

“He’s undoubtedly a man of action, if I ever saw one; and I think

we are to be congratulated on having so gallant a commander for our

troops,” said the master of Ardsley; but the sight of Rutherford

Gillingwater had filled his soul with jealous forebodings. He had heard

that women are prone to fall in worship before warriors in their battle

armour, and he was sure that Jerry Dangerfield was a girl of infinitely

kind heart, who might not, when face to face with the issue, subject

the man she had engaged to marry to any severe test.

They rode on, however, and saw presently the lights of camp-fires, and

a little later were ceremoniously halted at the roadside by an armed

guard.

It had been arranged that Collins, who had once been a second

lieutenant in the Georgia militia, should be presented as an officer

of the regular army, detailed as special aide to Governor Dangerfield

during the encampment, and that in case Gillingwater failed to return

promptly he should take command of the North Carolina forces.

An open field had been seized for the night’s camp, and the tents

already shone white in the moonlight. The three men introduced

themselves to the militia officers, and Collins expressed their regret

that they had missed the adjutant-general.

“Governor Dangerfield wished you to move your force on to Ardsley

should we fail to meet Colonel Gillingwater; and you had better strike

your tents and be in readiness to advance in case he doesn’t personally

return with orders.”

Captain Collins, as he had designated himself, apologized for not being

in uniform.

“I lost my baggage train,” he laughed, “and Governor Dangerfield is so

anxious not to miss this opportunity to settle the Appleweight case

that I hurried out to meet you with these gentlemen.”

“Appleweight!” exclaimed the group of officers in amazement.

“None other than the great Appleweight!” responded Collins. “The

governor has him in his own hands at last, and is going to carry him

across the border and into a South Carolina bastille, as a little

pleasantry on the governor of South Carolina.”

“He’s had a sudden change of heart if he’s captured Appleweight,”

remarked a major incredulously. “His policy has always been to let old

Bill alone.”

“It’s only a ripple of the general reform wave that’s sweeping the

country,” suggested Ardmore cheerfully. “Turn the rascals out; put the

rascals in; keep the people hopeful and the jails full. That’s the

Dangerfield watchword.”

“Well, I guess Dangerfield knows how to drive the hearse if there’s got

to be a funeral,” observed the quartermaster. “The governor’s not a man

to ride inside if he can find another corpse.”

And they all laughed and accepted the situation as promising better

diversion than they had expected from the summer manœuvres.

The militia officers gave the necessary orders for breaking the

half-formed camp, and then turned their attention to the entertainment

of their guests. Ardmore kept track of the time, and promptly at ten

o’clock Collins rose from the log by the roadside where they had been

sitting.

“We must obey the governor’s orders, gentlemen,” said Collins

courteously, “and march at once to Ardsley. I, you understand, am only

a courier, and your guest for the present.”

“If you please,” asked Cooke, when the line had begun to move forward,

“what is that wagon over there?”

He pointed to a mule team hitched to a quartermaster’s wagon that a

negro was driving into position across the rough field. It was piled

high with luggage, a pyramid that rose black against the heavens.

One of the militia officers, evidently greatly annoyed, bawled to the

driver to get back out of the way.

“Pardon me,” said Collins politely, “but is that your personal baggage,

gentlemen?”

“That belongs to Colonel Gillingwater,” remarked the quartermaster.

“The rest of us have a suit-case apiece.”

“Do you mean,” demanded Ardmore, “that the adjutant-general carries all

that luggage for himself?”

“That is exactly it! But,” continued the quartermaster loyally, “you

can never tell what will happen when you take the field this way, and

our chief is not a man to forget any of the details of military life.”

“In Washington we all think very highly of Colonel Gillingwater,”

remarked Collins, with noble condescension, “and in case we should

become involved in war he would undoubtedly be called to high rank in

the regular establishment.”

“It’s too bad,” said Cooke, as the three drew aside and waited for a

battery of light artillery to rumble into place behind the infantry,

“it’s too bad, Collins, that it didn’t occur to you to impersonate the

president of the French Republic or Emperor William. You’ll be my death

before we finish this job.”

“This won’t be so funny when Dangerfield gets hold of us,” grinned the

reporter. “We’d better cheer up all we can now. We’re playing with the

state of North Carolina as though it were a bean-bag. But what’s that

over there?”

The pyramidal baggage wagon had gained the road behind them, and

lingered uncertainly, with the driver asleep and waiting for orders.

The conspirators were about to gallop forward to the head of the moving

column, when Collins pointed across the abandoned camp-ground to where

a horseman, who had evidently made a wide detour of the advancing

column, rode madly toward the baggage wagon.

“The gentleman’s trying to kill his horse, I should judge,” murmured

Ardmore. “By Jove!”

“It’s Gillingwater!” chorused the trio.

The rider in his haste had overlooked the men in the road. He dashed

through the wide opening in the fence, left by the militiamen, took the

ditch by the roadside at a leap, wakened the sleeping driver on the

wagon with a roar, and himself leaped upon the box and began turning

the horses.

“What do you think he’s doing?” asked Cooke.

“He’s in a hurry to get back to mother’s cooking,” replied Ardmore.

“He’s seen Miss Dangerfield and learned that war is at hand, and he’s

going to get his clothes out of danger. Lordy! listen to him slashing

the mules!”

“But you don’t think----”

The wagon had swung round, and already was in rapid flight. Collins

howled in glee.

“Come on! We can’t miss a show like this!”

“Leave the horses then! There’s a hill there that will break his neck.

We’d better stop him if we can!” cried Cooke, dismounting.

They threw their reins to the driver of the wagon, who had been brushed

from his seat by the impatient adjutant-general, and was chanting

weirdly to himself at the roadside.

The wagon, piled high with trunks and boxes, was dashing forward,

Gillingwater belabouring the mules furiously, and, hearing the shouts

of strange pursuers, yelling at the team in a voice shrill with fear.

“Come on, boys!” shouted Ardmore, thoroughly aroused, “catch the spy

and traitor!”

The road dipped down into the shadow of a deep cut, where the moon’s

dim rays but feebly penetrated, and where the flow of springs had

softened the surface; but the pursuers were led on by the rumble of the

wagon, which swung from side to side perilously, the boxes swinging

about noisily and toppling threateningly at the apex. Down the sharp

declivity the wagon plunged like a ship bound for the bottom of the sea.

The pursuers bent gamely to their task in the rough road, with Cooke

slightly in the lead. Suddenly he shouted warningly to the others, as

something rose darkly above them like a black cloud, and a trunk fell

with a mighty crash only a few feet ahead of them. The top had been

shaken off in the fall, and into it head first plunged Ardmore.

“There’s another coming!” yelled Collins, and a much larger trunk

struck and split upon a rock at the roadside. Clothing of many kinds

strewed the highway. A pair of trousers, flung fiercely into the air,

caught on the limb of a tree, shook free like a banner, and hung there

sombrely etched against the stars.

Ardmore crawled out of the trunk, screaming with delight. The fragrance

of toilet water broke freshly upon the air.

“It’s his ammunition!” bawled Ardmore, rubbing his head where he had

struck the edge of a tray. “His scent-bottles are smashed, and it’s

only by the grace of Providence that I haven’t cut myself on broken

glass.”

“Thump! bump!” sounded down the road.

“Are those pants up there?” asked Cooke, pointing, “or is it a hole in

the sky?”

“This,” said Collins, picking up a garment from the bush over which it

had spread itself, “has every appearance of being his little nightie.

How indelicate!”

“No,” said Ardmore, taking it from him, “it’s a kimona of the most

expensive silk, which the colonel undoubtedly wears when they get him

up at midnight to hear the reports of his scouts.”

They went down the road, stumbling now and then over a bit of debris

from the vanished wagon.

“It’s like walking on carpet,” observed Cooke, picking up a feathered

chapeau. “I didn’t know there were so many clothes in all the world.”

They abandoned the idea of further pursuit on reaching a trunk standing

on end, from which a uniform dress-coat drooped sadly.

“This is not our trouble; it’s his trouble. I guess he’s struck a

smoother road down there. We’d better go back,” said Cooke.

“Whom the gods would destroy they first dress in glad rags,” piped

Collins.

They sat down and laughed until the negro approached warily with the

horses.

“He’s lost his raiment, but saved his life,” sputtered Collins,

climbing into his saddle.

“He’s lost more than that,” remarked Ardmore, and his flushed

countenance, noted by the others as he lighted a cigarette, was

cheerfuller than they had ever seen it before.

In a moment they had climbed the hill and were in hot pursuit of the

adjutant-general’s abandoned army.

CHAPTER XVII.

ON THE ROAD TO TURNER’S.

“Who goes there?”

“A jug.”

“What kind of a jug?”

“A little brown jug from Kildare.”

Thus Mr. Thomas Ardmore tested his pickets with a shibboleth of his

own devising. The sturdy militiamen of North Carolina patrolled the

northern bank of Raccoon Creek at midnight, aware that that riotous

flood alone separated them from their foes. The terraces at Ardsley

bristled with the guns of the First Light Battery, while, upon a cot in

the wine cellar beneath, Mr. Bill Appleweight, _alias_ Poteet, slept

the sleep of the just.

He was rudely aroused, however, at one o’clock in the morning by

Ardmore, Cooke, and Collins, and taken out through the kitchen to

one of the Ardsley farm wagons. Big Paul held the reins, and four of

Cooke’s detectives were mounted as escort. Ardmore, Cooke, and Collins

were to accompany the party as a board of strategy in the movement upon

Turner Court House, South Carolina.

Appleweight, the terror of the border, blinked at the lanterns

that flashed about him in the courtyard. He had been numbed by

his imprisonment, and even now he yielded himself docilely to the

inevitable. His capture in the first instance at Mount Nebo had been

clear enough, and he could have placed his hand on the men who did it

if he had been free for a couple of hours. This he had pondered over

his solacing solitaire as he sat on the case of Chateau Bizet in the

Ardsley wine cellar; but the subsequent events had been altogether

too much for him. He had been taken from his original captors by a

girl, and while the ignominy of this was not lost on the outlaw, his

wits had been unequal to the further fact, which he had no ground for

disbelieving, that this captivity within the walls of Ardsley had been

due to a daughter of that very governor of North Carolina whom he had

counted his friend. Why the girl had interested herself in his seizure

and incarceration; why he had been carried to the great house of a New

York gentleman whom he had never harmed in the least; and why, more

than all, he should have been locked in a room filled with bottles

bearing absurd and unintelligible titles, and containing, he had

learned by much despairing experiment, liquids that singularly failed

to satisfy thirst--these were questions before which Appleweight,

_alias_ Poteet, bowed his head helplessly.

“The road between Kildare and Turner’s is fairly good,” announced

Cooke, “though we’ve got to travel four miles to strike it. Griswold

evidently thinks that holding the creek is all there is of this

business, and he won’t find out till morning that we’ve crawled round

his line and placed Appleweight in jail at Turner’s where he belongs.”

“You must have a good story ready for the press, Collins,” said

Ardmore. “The North Carolina border counties don’t want Appleweight

injured, and Governor Dangerfield don’t want any harm to come to

him--you may be sure of that, or Bill would have been doing time

long ago. The moral element in the larger cities and the people in

Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts, who only hear of Appleweight

in the newspapers, want him punished, and we must express to them our

righteous indignation that he has been kidnapped and dragged away

from our vengeance by the governor of South Carolina, who wants him in

his own state merely to protect him. We can come pretty near pleasing

everybody if you work it right, Collins. Our manner of handling the

matter will do much to increase Governor Dangerfield’s popularity with

all classes.”

“Gentlemen, it was very impolite of you not to tell me you were ready

to start!” and Jerry came briskly from the side entrance, dressed for

the saddle and nibbling a biscuit.

“But you are not to go! I thought that was understood!” cried Ardmore.

“It may have been understood by you, Mr. Ardmore, but not by me! I

should never forgive myself if, after all the trouble I have taken to

straighten out this little matter, I should not be in at the finish.

Will you kindly get me a horse?”

Miss Dangerfield’s resolution was not to be shaken, and a few minutes

later the party moved out from the courtyard. Cooke rode several

hundred yards ahead; then two detectives preceded the wagon, in which

Appleweight sat on a cross-seat with two more of Cooke’s men on a seat

just behind him. He was tied and gagged, and an old derby hat (supplied

by Paul) had been clapped upon the side of his head at an angle that

gave him a jaunty air belied by his bonds. Though his tongue was

silenced, his eyes were at once eloquent of wonderment, resignation,

and impotent rage. Beside the wagon rode Miss Jerry Dangerfield, alert

and contented. Ardmore and Collins were immediately behind her, and

she indulged the journalist in some mild chaff from time to time, to

his infinite delight, though considerably to Ardmore’s distress of

heart; for, though no words had passed between him and Jerry as to the

disgraceful flight of the adjutant-general, yet the master of Ardsley

was in a jealous mood. The moon had left the conspirators to the softer

radiance of the stars, but there was sufficient light for Ardmore to

mark the gentle lines of Jerry’s face, as she lifted it now and then to

scan the bright globes above.

Paul drove his team at a trot over the smooth road of the estate to

a remote and little-used gate on the southern side, but still safely

removed from the South Carolina pickets along the Raccoon.

“It’s all right over there,” remarked Collins, jerking his head towards

the creek. “The fronting armies are waiting for morning and battle. I

suppose that when we send word to Griswold that Appleweight is in a

South Carolina jail it will change the scene of operations. It will

then be Governor Osborne’s painful task to dance between law-and-order

sentiment and the loud cursing of his border constituents. The

possibilities of this rumpus grow on me, Ardmore.”

“There is no rumpus, Mr. Collins,” said Jerry over her shoulder. “The

governor of North Carolina is merely giving expression to his civic

pride and virtue.”

Leaving Ardsley, they followed a dismal stretch of road until they

reached the highway that connects Turner’s and Kildare.

“It’s going to be morning pretty soon. We must get the prisoner into

Turner’s by five o’clock. Trot ’em up, Paul,” ordered Cooke.

They were all in capital spirits now, with a fairly good road before

them, leading straight to Turner’s, and with no expectation of any

trouble in landing their prisoner safely in jail. A wide publication

of the fact that Appleweight had been dragged from North Carolina and

locked in a South Carolina jail would have the effect of clearing

Governor Dangerfield’s skirts of any complicity with the border

outlaws, while at the same time making possible a plausible explanation

by Governor Dangerfield to the men in the hills of the contemptible

conduct of the governor of South Carolina in effecting the arrest of

their great chief.

They were well into South Carolina territory now, and were jogging on

at a sharp trot, when suddenly Cooke turned back and halted the wagon.

“There’s something coming--wait!”

“Maybe Bill’s friends are out looking for him,” suggested Collins.

“Or it may be Grissy,” cried Ardmore in sudden alarm.

“Your professor is undoubtedly asleep in his camp on the Raccoon,”

replied Collins contemptuously. “Do not be alarmed, Mr. Ardmore.”

Cooke impatiently bade them be quiet.

“If we’re accosted, what shall we say?” he asked.

“We’ll say,” replied Jerry instantly, “that one of the labourers at

Ardsley is dead, and that we are taking his remains to his wife’s

family at Turner’s. I shall be his grief-stricken widow.”

The guards already had Appleweight down on the floor of the wagon,

where one of them sat on his feet to make sure he did not create a

disturbance. At her own suggestion Jerry dismounted and climbed into

the wagon, where she sat on the sideboard, with her head deeply bowed

as though in grief.

“Pretty picture of a sorrowing widow,” mumbled Collins. Ardmore punched

him in the ribs to make him stop laughing. To the quick step of walking

horses ahead of them was now added the whisper and creak of leather.

“Hello, there!” yelled Cooke, wishing to take the initiative.

“Hey-O!” answered a voice, and all was still.

“Give us the road; we’re taking a body into Turner’s to catch the

morning train,” called Cooke.

“Who’s dead?”

“One of Ardmore’s Dutchmen. Shipping the corpse back to Germany.”

The party ahead of them paused as though debating the case.

The north-bound party was a blur in the road. Their horses sniffed and

moved restlessly about as their riders conferred.

“Give us the road!” shouted Cooke. “We haven’t much time to catch our

train.”

“Who did you say was dead?”

“Karl Schmidt,” returned Paul promptly.

Ardmore’s heart sank, fearful lest an inspection of the corpse should

be proposed. But at this moment a wail, eerie and heart-breaking,

rose and fell dismally upon the night. It was Jerry mourning her dead

husband, her slight figure swaying back and forth over his body in an

abandon of grief.

“De poor vidow--she be mit us,” called out big Paul, forsaking his

usual excellent English for guttural dialect.

“Who are _you_ fellows?” demanded Cooke, spurring his horse forward.

The horsemen, to his surprise, seemed to draw back, and he heard a

voice speak out sharply, followed by a regrouping of the riders at the

side of the road.

“We been to a dance at Turner’s, and air goin’ back home to Kildare,”

came the reply.

“That seems all right,” whispered Ardmore to Collins.

“Thus,” muttered Collins, “in the midst of death we are in life,” and

this, reaching Jerry, caused her to bend over the corpse at her feet

as though in a convulsive spasm of sorrow, whereupon, to add colour to

their story, Paul rumbled off a few consolatory sentences in German.

“Give us the road!” commanded Cooke, and without further parley they

started ahead, closing about the wagon to diminish, as far as possible,

the size of the caravan. Paul kept the horses at a walk, as became

their sad errand, and Jerry continued to weep dolorously.

They passed the horsemen at a slight rise in the rolling road. The

party bound for Turner’s moved steadily forward, the horsemen huddled

about the wagon, with Jerry’s led-horse between Ardmore and Collins at

the rear. At the top of the knoll hung the returning dancers, well to

the left of the road, permitting with due respect the passing of the

funeral party. One of the men, Ardmore could have sworn, lifted his

hat until the wagon had passed. Then some one called good-night, and,

looking back, Ardmore saw them--a dozen men, he judged--regain the road

and quietly resume their journey toward Kildare.

“Pretty peaceable for fellows who’ve been attending a dance,” suggested

Collins, craning his neck to look after them.

Cooke turned back with the same observation, and seemed troubled.

“I was afraid to look too closely at those men. They seemed rather

too sober, and I was struck with the fact that they bunched up pretty

close, as though they were hiding something.”

“They were afraid of the corpse,” remarked Collins readily. “To meet

a dead man on a lonely road at this hour of the morning is enough to

sober the most riotous.”

“One fellow lifted his hat as we passed, and I thought----”

“Well, what did you think, Mr. Ardmore?” demanded Cooke impatiently.

“Well, it may seem strange, but I thought there was something about

that chap that suggested Grissy. It would be like Grissy to lift his

hat to a corpse under any circumstances. He has spent a whole lot of

time in Paris, and besides, he never forgets his manners.”

“But suppose it was Griswold,” said Cooke, wishing to dispose

of the suspicion, “what could he be doing out here? _He_ hasn’t

Appleweight--we know that; and he has just now missed his chance of

ever getting him.”

They paused to allow Jerry to resume her horse, and one of the

detectives joined in the conference to venture his opinion that the men

they had passed were in uniform. “They looked like militia to me,” and

as he was a careful man, Cooke took note of his remark, though he made

no comment.

“Suppose they were in uniform,” said Jerry lightly; “they can do no

harm, and as we are now in South Carolina, and they are not our troops,

it would not be proper for us to molest them. Let us go on, for Mr.

Appleweight’s widow is not anxious to miss her train back to the

fatherland.”

“If they were a detail of the enemy’s militia, they would have held us

up,” declared Cooke with finality.

But as they moved on toward Turner’s, Ardmore was still troubled

over what had seemed to him the remarkable Parisian courtesy of the

returning reveller who had lifted his hat as the corpse passed. Grissy,

he kept saying over and over to himself, was no fool by any manner of

means, and he was unable to conjecture why the associate professor of

admiralty, known to be detached on special duty for the governor of

South Carolina, should be riding to Kildare, unless he contemplated

some _coup_ of importance.

The stars paled under the growing light of the early summer dawn.

Appleweight, with shoulders wearily drooping, contemplated the

attending cortege with the gaze of one who sullenly accepts a condition

he does not in the least understand.

A few early risers saw the strange company enter and proceed to the

jail; but before half the community had breakfasted, Bill Appleweight,

the outlaw, was securely locked in jail in Turner Court House, the

seat of Mingo County, in the state of South Carolina, and the jailer,

moreover, was sharing the distinguished captive’s thraldom.

Collins, at the railway station, was announcing to the world the

fact that at the very moment when Governor Dangerfield was about to

seize Appleweight and punish him for his crimes, the outlaw had been

kidnapped in North Carolina and taken under cover of night to a jail in

South Carolina where Governor Osborne might be expected to shield him

from serious prosecution with all the power of his high office.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BATTLE OF THE RACCOON.

Mrs. Atchison met the returning adventurers at the door.

“Your conduct, Jerry Dangerfield, is beyond words!” she exclaimed,

seizing the girl’s hands. “And so you really locked that horrid person

in a real jail! Well, we shan’t miss him! We have been kept up all

night by the arrival here of other prisoners--brought in like parcels

from the grocer’s.”

“More prisoners!” shouted Ardmore.

“Dragged here at an unearthly hour of the morning, and flung into the

most impossible places by your soldiers! You can hear them yelling

without much trouble from the drawing-room, and we had to give up

breakfast because the racket they are making was so annoying.”

The captain of the battery whose guns frowned upon the terraces came up

and saluted.

“Mr. Ardmore,” he said, “I have been trying for several hours to see

Governor Dangerfield, but this lady tells me that he has left Ardsley.”

“That is quite true; the governor was called away last night on

official business, and he will not return for an hour or two. You will

kindly state your business to me.”

The captain was peevish from loss of sleep, and by no means certain

that he cared to transact business with Mr. Ardmore. He glanced at

Miss Dangerfield, whom he had met often at Raleigh, and the governor’s

daughter met the situation promptly.

“Captain Webb, what prisoners have you taken, and why are they not

gagged to prevent this hideous noise?”

Seemingly from beneath the ample porte-cochère, where this colloquy

occurred, rose yells, groans and curses, and the sound of thumps, as of

the impact of human bodies against remote subterranean doors.

“They’re trying to get loose, Miss Dangerfield, and they refuse to stay

tied. The fiercest row is from the fellows we chucked into the coal

bins.”

“It’s excellent anthracite, the best I can buy; they ought to be glad

it isn’t soft coal,” replied Ardmore defensively. “Who are they?”

“They’re newspaper men, and they’re most terribly enraged,” answered

Captain Webb. “We picked them up one at a time in different places

on the estate. They say they’re down here looking for Governor

Dangerfield.”

Collins grinned his delight.

“Oh, perfect hour!” he sang. “We’ll keep them until they promise to be

good and print what we tell them. The little squeaky voice you hear

occasionally--hark!--that’s Peck, of the Consolidated Press. He scooped

me once on a lynching, and here is where I get even with him.”

“You have done well, Captain Webb,” said Jerry with dignity, “and I

shall urge your promotion upon papa at the earliest moment possible.

Are these newspaper gentlemen your only prisoners?”

“No; we gathered up two other parties, and one of them is in the

servants’ laundry; the other, a middle-aged person, I lodged in the

tower, where he can enjoy the scenery.”

He pointed to the tower, from which the flag of North Carolina waved

gently in the morning breeze.

“The prisoner up there made an awful rumpus. He declares he will ruin

the whole state of North Carolina for this. Here is his card, which, in

a comparatively lucid interval, he gave me to hand you at the earliest

possible moment,” and Captain Webb placed a visiting card in Ardmore’s

hands.

A smile struggled for possession of Ardmore’s countenance, but he

regained control of himself promptly, and his face grew severe.

He gave the card to Jerry, who handed it to Mrs. Atchison, and that

lady laughed merrily.

“Your prisoner, Captain Webb, is George P. Billings, secretary of the

Bronx Loan and Trust Company of New York. What was he doing when you

seized him?” demanded Ardmore.

“He was chasing the gentleman who’s resting on the anthracite. He

chased him and chased him, around a tea-house out here somewhere on the

place; and finally this person in the coal hole fell, and they both

rolled over together. The gentleman in the coal hole declares that he’s

Foster, the state treasurer of North Carolina, but his face got so

scratched on the shrubbery that he doesn’t look in the least like Mr.

Foster.”

“I have sent him witch hazel and court plaster, and we can get a doctor

for his wounds, if necessary,” said Mrs. Atchison.

A sergeant rushed up in hot haste with a demand from Colonel

Daubenspeck, of the North Carolina First, to know when Governor

Dangerfield could be seen.

“The South Carolina pickets have been withdrawn, and our officers want

orders from the governor in person,” said the messenger.

“Then they shall have orders!” roared Ardmore. “If our men dare abandon

their outposts----”

He turned and rode furiously toward the border, and in his rage he

had traversed a thousand yards before he saw that Jerry was close

behind him. As they passed the red bungalow the crack of scattering

rifle-shots reached them.

“Go back! Go back! The war’s begun!” cried Ardmore; but, though he

quickened the pace of his horse, Jerry clung to his side.

“If there’s war, and I hope there is, I shall not shrink from the

firing line, Mr. Ardmore.”

As they dashed into their own lines they came upon the regimental

officers, seated in comfortable chairs from the red bungalow, calmly

engaged in a game of cards.

“Great God, men!” blurted Ardmore, “why do you sit here when the

state’s honour is threatened? Where was that firing?”

“You seem rather placid, gentlemen, to say the least,” added Jerry,

coldly bowing to the officers, who had risen at her approach. “Unless I

am greatly mistaken, that is the flag of South Carolina I see flaunted

in yonder field.” And she pointed with a gauntleted hand to a palmetto

flag beyond the creek.

“It is, Miss Dangerfield,” replied the colonel politely, “and you can

see their pickets occasionally, but they have been drawn back from the

creek, and I apprehend no immediate advance.”

“No advance! Who are we to wait for them to offer battle? Who are we

to play bridge and wait upon the pleasure of a cowardly enemy?” and

Jerry gazed upon the furious Ardmore with admiration, as he roared at

the officers, who stood holding their caps deferentially before the

daughter of their commander-in-chief. Ardmore, it was clear, they did

not take very seriously, a fact which she inwardly resented.

“I don’t think it would be quite fair,” said the colonel mildly, “to

force issues to-day.”

“Not force issues!” yelled Ardmore. “With your brave sons of our Old

North State, not force battle! In the name of the constitution, I ask

you, why not?”

“For the reason,” replied the colonel, “that the South Carolina troops

ate heavily of green apples last night in an orchard over there by

their camp, and they have barely enough men to maintain their pickets

this morning. These, you can see, they have withdrawn a considerable

distance from the creek.”

“Then tell me why they have been firing upon our lines? Why have they

been permitted to shoot at our helpless and unresisting men if they are

not ready for war?”

“They were not shooting at our men, Mr. Ardmore. Their pickets are

very tired from loss of sleep, and they were trying to keep awake by

shooting at a buzzard that hung over a field yonder, where there is,

our scouts inform us, a dead calf lying in one of your pastures.”

“They shall have better meat! Buzzards shall eat the whole state of

South Carolina before night! Colonel, I order you to prepare at once to

move your troops across that creek.”

The colonel hesitated.

“I regret to say, sir, that we have no pontoons!”

“Pontoons! Pontoons! What, by the shade of Napoleon, do you want with

pontoons when you have legs? Again, sir, I order you to advance your

men!”

It was at this crisis that Jerry lifted her chin a trifle and calmly

addressed the reluctant colonel.

“Colonel Daubenspeck, in my father’s name, I order you to throw your

troops across the Raccoon!”

A moment later the clear notes of the bugle rose above the splash and

bubble of the creek. There was no opportunity for a grand onward sweep;

it must be a scramble for the southern shore over the rocks and fallen

timber in that mad torrent.

And the Raccoon is a stream from all time dedicated to noble uses and

destined to hold mighty kingdoms in leash. One might well hesitate

before crossing this wayward Rubicon. The Mississippi is merely

an excuse for appropriations, the Potomac the sporting ground of

congressmen and shad. No other known stream is so happily calculated as

the foamy Raccoon to delight at once the gods of battle and the gentle

sons of song. It marks one of those impatient flings of nature in

which, bored with creating orderly, broadly-flowing streams, or varying

the landscape with quiet woodlands or meadows, she abandons herself

for a moment to madness and, shaking water and rock together as in a

dice-box, splashes them out with joyous laughter.

Jerry Dangerfield, seated upon her horse on a slight rise under a

clump of trees a little way back from the stream, coolly munched a

cracker and sipped coffee from a tin cup. Ardmore, again calm, now that

Daubenspeck had been spurred to action, smoked his pipe and watched the

army prepare to advance.

Beyond the creek, and somewhat removed from it on the South Carolina

side, a rifle cracked, and far against the blue arch a huge, black,

languorous object, rising with a last supreme effort, as though to

claim refuge of heaven, fell clawing at space with sprawling wings,

then collapsed and pitched earthward until the trees on the farther

shore hid it from sight. A feeble cheer rose in the distance.

“They sound pretty tame over there,” remarked Ardmore critically.

“There’s no ginger in that cheer.”

“The ginger,” suggested Colonel Daubenspeck ironically, “is probably

all in their stomachs.”

One gun from the battery was brought down and placed on a slight

eminence to support the advance, for which all was now in readiness.

The bugle sang again, and the men of one company sprang forward and

began leaping from rock to rock, silently, steadily moving upon the

farther shore. Here and there some brown khaki-clad figure slipped

and splashed into the stream with a wild confusion of brown leggings;

but on they went intrepidly. The captain, leading his men through

the torrent, was first to gain the southern shore. He waved his

sword, and with a shout his men clambered up the bank and formed

in neat alignment. This was hardly accomplished before a uniformed

figure dashed from a neighbouring blackberry thicket and waved a

white handkerchief. He bore something in his hand, which to Ardmore’s

straining vision seemed to be a small wicker basket.

“It’s a flag of truce!” exclaimed Colonel Daubenspeck, and a sigh that

expressed incontestable relief broke from that officer.

“The cowards!” cried Ardmore. “Does that mean they won’t fight?”

“It means that hostilities must cease until we have permitted the

bearer of the flag to carry his message into our lines.”

The man with the basket was already crossing the creek in charge of a

corporal.

“I have read somewhere about being careful of the Greeks bearing

gifts,” said Jerry. “There may be something annoying in that basket.”

The bearer of the basket gained the North Carolina shore and strode

rapidly toward Miss Dangerfield, Ardmore, and Colonel Daubenspeck.

He handed the trifle of a basket to the colonel, who gazed upon its

contents for a moment with unspeakable rage. The colour mounted in his

neck almost to the point of apoplexy, and his voice bellowed forth an

oath so bleak, so fraught with peril to the human race, that Jerry

shuddered and turned away her head as from a blast of flame. The

colonel cast the wicker basket from him with a force that nearly tore

him from his saddle. It struck against a tree, spilling upon the earth

six small, hard, bright green apples.

“My letter,” said the emissary soberly, “is for Mr. Thomas Ardmore,

and, unless I am mistaken, you are that gentleman.”

Ardmore seized a long envelope which the man extended, tore it open,

and read:--

Thomas Ardmore, Esq.,

Acting Governor of North Carolina,

In the Field:

SIR--As I understand the present unhappy differences between the

states of North and South Carolina, they are due to a reluctance

on the part of the governor of North Carolina to take steps toward

bringing to proper punishment in North Carolina an outlaw named

Appleweight. I have the honour to inform you that that person is now

in jail at Kildare, Dilwell County, North Carolina, properly guarded

by men who will not flinch. If necessary I will support them with

every South Carolinian able to bear arms. This being the case, a

_casus belli_ no longer exists, and to prevent the effusion of blood

I beg you to cease your hostile demonstrations on our frontier.

Our men seized a few prisoners during the night, and I am willing to

meet you to arrange an exchange on the terms proper in such cases.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

HENRY MAINE GRISWOLD,

For the Governor of South Carolina.

“The nerve of it! The sublime cheek of it!” exclaimed Ardmore, though

the sight of Griswold’s well-known handwriting had shaken him for the

moment.

“As a bluffer your little friend is quite a wonder,” was Jerry’s only

comment when she had read the letter.

Ardmore promptly wrote on the back of Griswold’s letter this reply:--

Henry Maine Griswold, Esq.,

Assistant Professor of Admiralty,

Camp Buzzard, S. C.:

SIR--Appleweight is under strong guard in the jail at Turner Court

House, Mingo County, South Carolina. I shall take pleasure in meeting

you at Ardsley at five o’clock this afternoon for the proposed

exchange of prisoners. To satisfy your curiosity the man Appleweight

will be produced there for your observation and identification.

I have the honour, sir, to remain, with high regard and admiration,

your obliged and obedient servant,

THOMAS ARDMORE,

Acting Governor of North Carolina.

“Putting ‘professor’ on that will make him crazy,” remarked Ardmore to

Jerry.

The messenger departed, but recrossed the Raccoon shortly with a

formal note agreeing to an armistice until after the meeting proposed

at Ardsley.

“Colonel Daubenspeck, you may withdraw your men and go into camp until

further orders,” said Jerry, and the notes of the bugle singing the

recall rose sweetly upon the air.

“By George,” said Ardmore, as he and Jerry rode away, “we’ll throw it

into old Grissy in a way that will jar the professor. But when it comes

to the exchange of prisoners, I must tell the boys to bring up that

chap I locked in the corn-crib. I had clean forgotten him.”

“I don’t think you mentioned him, Mr. Ardmore, but I suppose he’s one

of the Appleweight ruffians.”

“Undoubtedly,” replied Ardmore, whose spirits had never been higher,

“though the fellow was not without his pleasant humour. He insisted

with great vigour that he is the governor of South Carolina.”

“I wonder”--and Jerry spoke wistfully--“I wonder where papa is!”

“Well, he’s not in the corn-crib; be sure of that.”

“Papa looks every inch the statesman,” replied Jerry proudly, “and in

his frock-coat no one could ever mistake him for other than the patriot

he is.”

CHAPTER XIX.

IN THE RED BUNGALOW.

“What do you think,” cried Mrs. Atchison, glowing before Jerry and

Ardmore on their return; “we have a new guest!”

“In the coal cellar?” inquired her brother.

“No, in the blue room adjoining Miss Dangerfield’s! And what do you

think! It is none other than the daughter of the governor of South

Carolina.”

“Oh, Nellie!” gasped Ardmore.

“Why, what’s the matter?” demanded Mrs. Atchison. “I had gone in to

Turner’s to look at that memorial church we’re building there, and

I learned from the rector that Miss Osborne, with only a maid, was

stopping at that wretched hole called the Majestic Hotel. I had met

Miss Osborne in Washington last winter, and you may forget, Tommy, that

on our mother’s side I am a Daughter of the Seminole War, a society of

which Miss Osborne is the president-general.--I hope Miss Osborne’s

presence here will not be offensive to you, Miss Dangerfield. She

seemed reluctant to come, but I simply would not take no, and I am to

send for her at four o’clock.”

“Miss Osborne’s presence is not only agreeable to me, Mrs. Atchison,”

responded Jerry, “but I shall join you in welcoming her. I have heard

that the ancestor through whom Barbara Osborne derives membership in

the Daughters of the Seminole War was afterward convicted of robbing

an orphan of whose estate he was the trusted executor, and such being

the case I feel that the commonest Christian charity demands that I

should treat her with the most kindly consideration. I shall gather

some roses, with your permission, and have them waiting in her room

when she arrives, with my card and compliments.”

Ardmore had rarely been so busy as during the afternoon. Several more

newspaper correspondents were found prowling about the estate, and

they were added to the howling mob in the Ardsley cellars. Collins

searched them and read their instructions with interest. They were all

commissioned to find the lost governors of North and South Carolina;

and a number were instructed to investigate a rumour that North

Carolina was about to default her bonds through malfeasance of the

state treasurer. It was clear from the fact that practically every

newspaper in New York had sent its best man to the field that the world

waited anxiously for news from the border.

“It has all happened very handily for us,” said Collins; “we’ve got the

highest-priced newspaper talent in the world right under our hands,

and before we turn them loose we’ll dictate exactly what history is to

know of these dark proceedings. Those fellows couldn’t get anything out

of either Kildare or Turner’s for some time, as Paul’s men have cut

the wires and Cooke has operators at the railway stations to see that

nothing is sent out.”

“When we’ve settled with Griswold and proved to him that he’s lost out

and that the real Mr. Appleweight is in his jail, not ours, we’ll have

to find Governor Dangerfield and be mighty quick about it,” replied

Ardmore. “Paul says there’s a battery of South Carolina artillery

guarding the Dilwell County jail, and that they’ve fooled the people

into thinking they’re North Carolina troops, and nobody can get within

four blocks of the jail. They must have somebody in jail at Kildare.

I don’t like the looks of it. I hope those men we left guarding old

Appleweight in the Mingo jail know their business. It would be nasty to

lose that old chap after all the trouble he’s given us.”

“They’ll keep him or eat him, if I know old Cookie.”

Jerry--a pleasing figure to contemplate in white lawn and blue

ribbons--suggested that the meeting take place in the library, as

more like an imperial council chamber; but Ardmore warmly dissented

from this. A peace should never be signed, he maintained, in so large

a house as Ardsley. At Appomattox and in many other cases that he

recalled, the opponents met in humble farmhouses. It would be well,

however, to have the meeting on the estate, for the property would thus

become historic, but it would never do to have it take place in the

Ardsley library.

“There should be great difficulty in securing pens and paper,” Ardmore

continued, “and we must decline to accept the swords of our fallen

foes.”

They finally agreed on the red bungalow as convenient and sufficiently

modest for the purpose. And so it was arranged.

A few minutes before five the flag of North Carolina was hung from the

wide veranda of the bungalow. At the door stood an armed militiaman.

Colonel Daubenspeck had been invited to be present, and he appeared

accompanied by several other officers in full uniform. Word of the

meeting-place had been sent through the lines to the enemy, and the

messenger rode back with Griswold, who was followed quickly by the

adjutant-general of South Carolina and half a dozen other officers. The

guard saluted as Griswold ran up the steps of the veranda, and at the

door Ardmore met him and greeted him formally.

At the end of a long table Jerry Dangerfield sat with her arms folded.

She wore, as befitting the occasion, a gray riding-dress and a gray

felt hat perched a trifle to one side.

She bowed coldly to Griswold, whose hand, as he surveyed the room and

glanced out at the flag that fluttered in the doorway, went to his

moustache with that gesture that Ardmore so greatly disliked; but

Griswold again bowed gravely to his adversaries.

“Miss Dangerfield, and gentlemen,” began Griswold, with an air of

addressing a supreme tribunal, “I believe this whole matter depends

upon the arrest of one Appleweight, a well-known outlaw of North

Carolina----”

“I beg your pardon----”

It was Jerry who interrupted him, her little fists clenching, a glint

of fire in her eyes.

“It is for me to ask your pardon, Miss Dangerfield! Let us agree that

this person is an unworthy citizen of any state, and proceed. It has

been your endeavour to see this man under arrest in South Carolina,

thus relieving North Carolina or her chief executive of responsibility

for him. We, on our side, have used every effort to lodge Appleweight

in jail on your side of the state line. Am I correct?”

Jerry nodded affirmatively.

“Then, Miss Dangerfield, and gentlemen, I must tell you that you have

lost your contention, for Appleweight spent last night in jail at

Kildare, and to secure his safe retention there, we generously lent

your state a few of our militia to guard him. The proceeding was a

trifle irregular, we admit--the least bit _ultra vires_--but the

peculiar situation seemed to justify us.”

“There are not two Bill Appleweights,” remarked Colonel Daubenspeck. “I

assure you that the real criminal spent last night in jail at Turner

Court House, guarded by trustworthy men, and we are able to produce

him.”

“The quickest way to settle this point, Professor Griswold, is by

bringing in your man,” remarked Ardmore icily.

“On the other hand”--and Griswold’s tone was confident--“as there is no

reason for doubt that we have the real Appleweight, and as we are on

your territory and in a measure your guests, it is only fair that you

produce the man you believe to be Appleweight, that we may have a look

at him first.”

“Certainly,” said Jerry. “Our prisoner does not deny his identity. It

gives us pleasure to produce him.”

At a nod from Colonel Daubenspeck the orderly at the door ran off to

where Cooke and the prisoner waited.

In the interval there was a general exchange of introductions at the

bungalow. The adjutant-general of South Carolina was in a merry mood,

and began chaffing Ardmore upon the deadly character of apples found in

his orchard beyond the Raccoon.

“I deeply regret,” said Ardmore, rubbing his chin, “that the

adjutant-general of North Carolina is suffering from a severe attack of

_paralysis agitans_, and will be unable to meet with us.”

“I deplore the fact,” replied the adjutant-general of South Carolina,

“for one of our scouts picked up a darky in the highway a while ago

who had on a uniform dress-coat with the initials ‘R. G.’ sewed in the

pocket.”

“If you will return that garment to me, General,” said Ardmore, “I will

see that it reaches Colonel Gillingwater by special messenger, where,

upon his couch of pain, he chafes over his enforced absence from the

field of danger.”

Steps sounded on the veranda, and all rose as Cooke appeared in the

door, leading his handcuffed prisoner, who stood erect and glared at

the company in gloomy silence.

“This man,” said Ardmore, “we declare to be Bill Appleweight, _alias_

Poteet.--I ask you, sir”--he addressed the prisoner--“to state whether

you are not known by one or both of these names?”

The man nodded his head and grumbled a reluctant affirmative.

“Professor Griswold,” Ardmore went on, “the gentleman in charge of

the prisoner is Roger Cooke, for many years in the secret service of

the United States. He now conducts a private agency, and is in my

employ.--Mr. Cooke, I will ask you whether you identify this man as

Appleweight?”

“There is no doubt of it whatever. I have known him for years. I once

arrested him for moonshining, and he served a year in the penitentiary

as the result of that arrest.--You will pardon me, sir,” Cooke

continued, addressing Griswold directly, “but this is undoubtedly the

man you had yourself captured at Mount Nebo Church two nights ago,

but who was taken from you, as you may not know, by Miss Geraldine

Dangerfield. She was lost in the woods and came upon the captive, much

to her own surprise.”

Griswold lifted his brows in amazement and turned towards Jerry.

“If that is the case, Miss Dangerfield, I salute you! I am sorry to

confess, however, that I did not myself see the man who was captured

by my friends at the church, owing, it appears, to Miss Dangerfield’s

prompt and daring action, and the regrettable cowardice of my men. I

want to say to you, gentlemen, in all frankness, that I am greatly

astonished at what you tell me. Our prisoner is about the same height

as this man, has the same slight stoop in the shoulders, and the same

short beard; but there the resemblance ends.”

Ardmore was trying not to show too plainly his joy at Griswold’s

discomfiture. None of the South Carolina officers had ever seen

Appleweight, as they lived remote from the scene of his exploits.

Habersham’s men, who had so signally failed in the descent upon Mount

Nebo Church, had taken to the woods on the appearance of the state

soldiery along the border, and could not be found to identify the man

seized at the house on the creek. Habersham had discreetly declined

to support Griswold’s venture at the last moment; to do so would, he

pleaded, ruin his chances of political preferment in the future; or

worse things might, indeed, happen if he countenanced and supported the

armed invasion of North Carolina by South Carolina militia. The zealous

young militiamen who had captured the stranger in the house on the

creek had pronounced the man Appleweight, and their statement had been

accepted and emphasized when the man was taken before Griswold, to whom

he had stubbornly refused to make any statement whatever.

“Now that you cannot deny that we have the real Appleweight,” began

Jerry, “who is, you must remember, a prisoner of the state of South

Carolina, and must be returned to the Mingo County jail at once, I

think we may as well look at your prisoner, Professor Griswold. He

may be one of Mr. Appleweight’s associates in business; but as we are

interested only in the chief culprit, the identity of the man you hold

is of very little interest to us.”

“If,” said Griswold, “he is not Appleweight, the original blown in the

bottle----”

“Jug, if you please!” interposed Ardmore very seriously.

“Then we don’t care about him, and I shall make you a present of him.”

“Or,” remarked Ardmore, “I might exchange him for a ruffian I captured

myself down on the Raccoon. He seemed quite insane, declaring himself

to be the governor of South Carolina, and I locked him up in a

corn-crib for safe keeping.”

“Any man,” said Jerry, lifting her chin slightly, “who would

impersonate the governor of South Carolina would, beyond question, be

utterly insane and an object of compassion. Professor Griswold, will

you please produce your imaginary Appleweight, as at this hour Mrs.

Atchison usually serves tea. Let us therefore make haste.”

One of Griswold’s retinue ran off to summon the prisoner, who was

guarded by half a dozen soldiers near at hand.

The company in the bungalow were all laughing heartily at some sally

by the adjutant-general of South Carolina, who insisted upon giving a

light note to the proceedings, when hurried footsteps sounded on the

veranda, and a sergeant appeared in the doorway and saluted.

The adjutant-general, annoyed at being interrupted in the telling of

a new story, frowned and bade the sergeant produce his prisoner. At

once a man was thrust into the room, a tall man, with a short, dark

beard and slightly stooping shoulders. The strong light at his back

made it difficult for the people grouped about the table to see his

face clearly, but the air somehow seemed charged with electricity, and

all bent forward, straining for a sight of the captive. As he stood

framed in the doorway his face was slowly disclosed to them, and there

appeared to be a humorous twinkle in his eyes. Before any one spoke, he

broke out in a hearty laugh. Then a cry rose piercingly in the quiet

room--a cry of amazement from the lips of Jerry Dangerfield, who had

taken a step forward.

“Oh, papa!” she cried.

“The Governor!” roared Colonel Daubenspeck, leaping across the table.

“It’s Governor Dangerfield!” shouted half a dozen men in chorus.

At this moment Mrs. Atchison and Miss Barbara Osborne stole softly in

and ranged themselves at the back of the room.

The governor of North Carolina alone seemed to derive any pleasure from

the confusion and astonishment caused by his appearance. He crossed to

the table and took his daughter’s hand.

“Jerry, what part do you play in these amateur theatricals?”

Jerry rose, thrusting her handkerchief into her sleeve, and her lips

trembled slightly, though whether with mirth or some soberer emotion it

would be difficult to say. The room at once gave her attention, seeing

that she was about to speak.

“Papa, before these people I am not ashamed to confess that during your

absence from the seat of government I took it upon myself to fill your

office to the best of my ability, finding that many important matters

were pressing and that you had gone into exile without leaving your

address behind. I made Mr. Ardmore, the gentleman on my left in the

pearl-gray suit and lavender tie, first private secretary, and then,

when occasion required, acting governor, though in reality he did

nothing without my entire approval. I am happy to say that nothing has

been neglected, and your reputation as a great statesman and friend of

the people has not suffered at our hands. We arrested Mr. Appleweight,

who is standing there by the fireplace, and landed him in the Mingo

County jail as a joke on Governor Osborne, and to appease the demands

of the press and the Woman’s Civic League of Raleigh. The copies of our

correspondence on this and other matters will tell you the story more

completely. And as for Governor Osborne, I have taught him a lesson

in the etiquette that should obtain between governors that he is not

likely to forget. You will find that we have not hesitated to grant

pardons, and we have filled, in one instance, the office of justice of

the peace, made vacant by resignation. The key to your desk, papa, is

behind the clock on the mantel in your private room.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” began the governor of North Carolina, laying a

hand upon the table, and with the other seizing the lapel of his rough,

brown coat--a pose made familiar by all his photographs--“the jails of

North Carolina are more uncomfortable than I had believed them to be,

and I have taken a slight cold which compels me to be briefer than this

interesting occasion demands. You have witnessed here an exhibition

of filial devotion that has, I am sure, touched us all. It is well

worth while for me to have suffered arrest and imprisonment to realize

the depth of my daughter’s love, and the jealousy with which she has

safeguarded my private and public honour.”

He felt for a handkerchief and touched it gently to his eyes; but

Collins declared afterward that Governor Dangerfield was exactly like

his daughter, and that one never could be sure that his mirth was

genuine.

“I was aware only yesterday, when I saw a newspaper for the first time

in a week, that political capital was being made of my absence from

Raleigh; and that my dear friend, the governor of South Carolina, also,

was being called to account for flinching in the face of imperative

duty.”

“Your friend, Governor?” cried Ardmore, unable to restrain himself.

“Certainly, Mr. Ardmore,” continued Governor Dangerfield. “That angry

parting of ours at New Orleans was all for effect to get space in the

newspapers. We had confided to each other that the cares of state had

worn us to an intolerable point, and that we must have rest. Brother

Appleweight had, I confess, given us both a great deal of annoyance,

and to be frank, neither Osborne nor I wished to take the initiative in

his case. So we resolved to disappear, and go to some quiet place for

rest. We outfitted with old clothes and came to the border. Governor

Osborne has a farm over there somewhere in Mingo County, and we made

it our headquarters; but in roaming about we came upon that charming

shanty of yours, Mr. Ardmore, down on the Raccoon. The house was

deserted, and finding the marks of the official survey running clearly

through the timber, we were amused to find that the house was partly in

North, partly in South, Carolina. The thing touched our fancy. A negro

cooked for us--what has become of him I do not know. We cut ourselves

off from the mail and telegraph and received no newspapers until a

packet came yesterday, and it was only a few minutes after I saw from

the headlines of the _Vidette_ what a row was going on that I realized

that strange things may happen when the king goes a-hunting.”

As he paused, Miss Osborne stepped forward, the men making way for her.

“If this be true, Governor Dangerfield, may I ask you, sir, what has

become of my father?”

Governor Dangerfield smiled.

“I regret, Miss Barbara, that I cannot answer that question; I must

refer it to my daughter.”

“Miss Osborne,” responded Jerry, “while I should be glad to assist you

in recovering your father as a slight return for your having placed

mine in the Dilwell County jail and kept him there all night, I regret

that I am unable to be of the slightest help to you.”

The perspiration was beading Ardmore’s brow, but he smiled as though in

joy at Jerry’s readiness.

“We have taken a number of prisoners,” said Ardmore, meeting the

governor’s glance, “and while I do not think Governor Osborne can

possibly be of the number, yet I shall be glad to produce them all.

There’s a person in the corn-crib a little way across country whom

I captured myself. I believe he’s now tied to a mulberry tree a

little way down the road, as he pretended to be the governor of South

Carolina, and I feared that he might do himself some harm.”

Before he ceased speaking big Paul strode in, an angry and crestfallen

man following at his heels.

“Oh, father!”

It was Barbara Osborne’s voice; but whatever of anger or joy there may

have been in her words and tone was lost in the shout of laughter that

broke from Governor Dangerfield. The governor of South Carolina was in

no such high humour. He sputtered, swore, stamped his foot, and struck

the table with his clenched hand as he demanded to know the meaning of

the outrageous indignity to which he had been subjected.

The more his friend stormed the more Governor Dangerfield roared with

laughter, but when he could control himself he laid an arresting arm on

Governor Osborne’s shoulder, and spoke to Barbara.

“Barbara, may I ask whether you, like my own Jerry, have been

protecting your father’s fair name during his absence; and does that

account for my night spent in the jail at Kildare? If so----”

Governor Dangerfield’s laughter got the better of him, but Barbara,

with dignity, turned to her father.

“It is quite true, that finding your absence occasioning serious

remark, while your attorney-general took advantage of your absence to

annoy me in a most cowardly fashion, with the kind help of Professor

Griswold, I did all in my power to thwart your enemies, and to show

the people of South Carolina that you were not a man to evade the

responsibilities of your office. As to the details of these matters I

prefer, father, to speak to you in private.”

“Professor Griswold?” repeated Governor Osborne haughtily. “I believe

I have not the honour of the gentleman’s acquaintance;” whereupon, to

ease the situation, Ardmore presented his old friend.

“Governor Osborne, allow me to present Professor Henry Maine Griswold,

associate professor of admiralty in the University of Virginia, and the

author of----”

“Griswold?” The anger slowly left Governor Osborne’s face. “Do I

understand that you belong to the Virginia tide-water family of that

name? Then, sir, without hesitation I offer you my hand.”

“Osborne,” cried Governor Dangerfield, “we have every reason to be

proud of our daughters. They have done their best for us; and they seem

to have acted wisely in accepting aid from these gentlemen; and now,

what is to be done with Bill Appleweight?”

“We have with us that requisition you left on your desk,” exclaimed

Barbara, turning to her father.

“I’m afraid that won’t help,” laughed Governor Osborne, “that

requisition, Barbara, is purely Pickwickian in character.”

“The disposition of Appleweight,” said Cooke, “is a matter of delicacy

for both of you gentlemen, and you will pardon me for thrusting myself

forward, but that this affair may end happily for all, neither North

nor South Carolina should bear the burden of prosecuting a man to

whom--we may say it as between friends here--the governors of both

states are under some trifling obligations.”

The governor of North Carolina exchanged a glance and a nod with the

governor of South Carolina.

“Therefore,” resumed Cooke, “we must hit upon a plan of action that

will eliminate both states from the controversy. I will, with your

permission, turn Appleweight over to the United States revenue officers

who are even now in this neighbourhood looking for him.”

“No!” cried Jerry. “We shall do nothing of the kind! I met Mr.

Appleweight under peculiar circumstances, but I must say that I formed

a high opinion of his chivalry, and I beg that we allow him to take a

little trip somewhere until the Woman’s Civic League of Raleigh and

the carping Massachusetts press have found other business, and he can

return in peace to his home.”

“That,” said Governor Osborne, “meets my approval.”

“And I,” Ardmore added, “will give him my private caboose in which to

cruise the larger Canadian cities.”

Two more prisoners were now brought in.

“Governor Dangerfield,” continued Ardmore, “here is your state

treasurer, who had sought to injure you by defaulting the state bonds

due to-day, which is the first of June. And that frowsy person with Mr.

Foster is Secretary Billings, of the Bronx Loan and Trust Company, who

has treated me at times with the greatest injustice and condescension.

Whether Treasurer Foster has the money with which to meet those bonds I

do not know; but I do know that I have to-day paid them in full through

the Buckhaw National Bank of Raleigh.”

Colonel Daubenspeck leaped to his feet and swung his cap. He proposed

three cheers for Jerry Dangerfield; and three more for Barbara Osborne;

and then the two governors were cheered three times three; and when the

bungalow had ceased to ring, it was seen that Ardmore and Griswold were

in each other’s arms.

“Surely, by this time,” said Mrs. Atchison, “you have adjusted enough

of these weighty matters for one day, and I beg that you will all dine

with us at Ardsley to-night at eight o’clock, where my brother and I

will endeavour to mark in appropriate fashion the signing of peace

between your neighbouring kingdoms.”

“For Governor Osborne and myself I accept, madam,” replied Governor

Dangerfield, “providing the flowing frock-coats, which are the vesture

and symbol of our respective offices, are still in the log house on the

Raccoon where I became a prisoner.”

CHAPTER XX.

ROSÆ MUNDI.

Mrs. Atchison and Ardmore had given their last touches to the

preparations for the dinner. Every window of the great house shone and

a myriad of lanterns illuminated the lawns and terraces. The flags of

North and South Carolina were everywhere entwined; nor were the stars

and stripes neglected. They surveyed the long table in the dining-room,

where gold and silver and crystal were bright upon the snowy napery.

“The matter of precedence is serious, Tommy,” urged Mrs. Atchison. “I

cannot for the life of me remember what two monarchs do about entering

a room at the same time.”

“Nor do I, Nellie,” said Ardmore; “unless they sprint for the door, and

the one who gets through first takes the head of the table. Still, that

would be undignified, particularly if the kings were old and fat, and

if they bumped going through the door and took a header it would jar

the divine right.”

“Here in democratic America,” said Griswold, joining them, “there can

be no such preposterous idea of precedence.”

“I should think better of that notion, Professor Griswold,” laughed

Mrs. Atchison, “if I had never seen the goats carefully shepherded to

keep them away from the lambs at functions in Washington. Democracy

may be a political triumph, but it is certainly deficient socially.

Personally I have always wished to bring myself in touch with the poor.

Ardy is quite right that our own kind are distinctly uninteresting.”

“You ought to remember, Nellie, that your idea of going slumming in a

purple coupé and dressed up in your best rags is not well calculated to

inspire confidence and affection among the submerged. But how to handle

two governors has me fussed. You are the hostess, and it’s for you to

decide which excellency shall take you in. I see no way out but to

match for it.”

“That will be unnecessary,” said Mrs. Atchison, “for the doors and the

hall are broad enough for a dozen governors to march in abreast.”

“That would never do, Nellie! You don’t understand these things. You

can’t hitch up a brace of American governors in a team and drive them

like a pair of horses. At least, speaking for the Old North State, I

will say that we can never consent to any such compromise.”

“And I, speaking for the great Palmetto Commonwealth, not less

emphatically reject the idea!” declared Griswold.

“Then,” said Mrs. Atchison, “there is only one possible solution. When

the rest of us have entered the dining-room and taken our places, a

bugle will sound; the governor of North Carolina shall enter from the

north door; the governor of South Carolina from the south door, and

advance to seats facing each other midway of the table. Professor

Griswold, you are an old friend of the family, and you shall yourself

take me in to dinner.”

The members of Mrs. Atchison’s house party, well distributed among

the official guests, were still somewhat at a loss to know what had

happened, but it seemed to be in the air that Tommy Ardmore had at

last done something, though just what was not wholly clear. It was

sufficiently obvious, however, that the little girl with blue eyes

who had the drollest possible way of talking, and whom one never

seemed able to take off guard, had seized strong hold upon the master

of Ardsley; and she, on her part, treated him with the most provoking

condescension. It was agreed by all that Miss Osborne was distinguished

and lovely and that Professor Griswold did not seem out of place at her

side.

The talk grew general after the first restraint was over, and Mrs.

Atchison dropped just the right word here and there to keep the ball

rolling. Governor Osborne had generously forgotten and forgiven his

painful incarceration in the corn-crib, and he and Governor Dangerfield

vied with each other in avowing their determination to live up to the

high standards that had been set for them by their daughters.

Both governors had at almost the same moment turned down their glasses.

It even seemed that they had been drilled in the part, so dexterous

were they in reversing them, so nimbly did they put from them the hope

of wine. The members of the house party noted this act of the two

governors with well-bred surprise; and Ardmore was grieved, feeling

that in some measure the illustrious guests were criticising his

hospitality. The butler at this moment spoke to him, and much relieved

he smiled and nodded. A moment later two jugs, two little brown jugs,

were carried in, and one was placed quietly in front of each governor

at precisely the same moment. Expectation was instantly a-tiptoe.

“Gentlemen,” said Ardmore, addressing the governors, “these jugs have

just been left at the house by our old friend, Mr. Bill Appleweight,

_alias_ Poteet, with his compliments, for the governors of the two

greatest states in the Union. I note that there’s a bit of pink calico

around the stopper of Governor Dangerfield’s jug, while Governor

Osborne’s is garnished with blue and white gingham.”

Governor Osborne rose.

“In politics,” he began, resting his hand gently on the jug, “it would

be a fine thing if we could all live up to our noblest ideals, but

unfortunately we must be all things to all men. What I have here is

not merely the testimonial of a valued constituent, but something much

subtler than that, ladies and gentlemen--a delicate proof that those

of us who would command the good-will and suffrages of the people must

keep a careful eye on the weather-vane. This jug, which you probably

all believe contains the rude product of some hidden still, is as

equivocal as a political platform. I will illustrate my meaning.”

All eyes were bent upon the governor of South Carolina as he picked up

the jug, twisted the cob stopper for a moment, and then poured into

a tumbler which the butler placed for him a clear white fluid; then,

turning the stopper slightly, he poured into another glass a thick

milk-like liquid.

“When among my constituents I almost invariably call for a gourd for

drinking purposes in preference to a tumbler; but in this company I

shall abandon a custom of the plain people and yield to the habits of

the sons of Mammon. I am here, I take it, once more in my official

capacity as governor of South Carolina, and as I am not one to offend

the best sentiments of my people, I pledge you, my friends, not in

the untaxed corn whisky of Appleweight’s private still, but in the

excellent and foamy buttermilk of Mrs. Appleweight’s homely churn.”

As he concluded, Governor Dangerfield rose and performed exactly

the same solemn rite with the jug before him, pouring whisky into

one glass, buttermilk into the other, and leaning across the table

he touched his tumbler of buttermilk to that extended by Governor

Osborne. When the applause that greeted this exchange of courtesies

had subsided, Governor Dangerfield was still standing, and in a quiet

conversational tone, and with a manner engagingly frank, he said:

“Before it seemed expedient to follow the reform bandwagon, I held

certain principles touching the drinking habit. But the American bar

has destroyed drinking as a fine art, and it has now become a vulgar

habit. In the good old times no gentleman ever jumped at his liquor.

He took it with a casual air, even with a sanctifying reluctance.

The idea of rushing into a public place and gulping your liquor is

repugnant to the most primary of the instincts that govern gentlemen.

To precipitate a gill of applejack into that most delicate organism,

the human stomach, without the slightest warning, is an insult to the

human body--ay, more, it is an outrage upon man’s very soul. The aim of

liquor, ladies and gentlemen, is to stay and lift the spirit, not to

degrade it. Drinking at proper intervals ceased to be respectable at a

fixed date in human progress--to be exact, at the moment when it was no

longer a mere incident of personal or social recreation but had become

a sociological and political issue, staggering drunkenly under a weary

burden of most painful statistics.”

“You are eminently right, Governor Dangerfield,” said the governor of

South Carolina, helping himself to the salted almonds; “but you have

used a phrase which piques my curiosity. Will you kindly enlighten us

as to how you interpret proper intervals?”

“With greatest pleasure,” responded Governor Dangerfield. “I remember,

as though it were yesterday, my venerable grandfather saying that no

gentleman should ever approach the sideboard oftener than once before

breakfast, and he was himself a very early riser. I discount this,

however, because he always slept with a jug of Cuban rum--the annual

offering of a West Indian friend--easily within his reach at the head

of his bed. It was his practice for years to sip a little rum and water

while he shaved. He was a gentleman if ever I knew one, and as I look

upon him as a standard authority in all matters of deportment and

morals, I may safely cite him further in answer to your question.

“During the long open season in our country my grandfather constantly

rode over the plantation in immaculate white duck, followed by a

darky on a mule carrying a basket. On our ancestral estate there

were many springs giving the purest and coldest of water, and these

were providentially scattered at the most convenient intervals for

my grandfather’s comfort. And as a slight return to nature for what

she had done for him in this particular, my grandfather, in his early

youth, had planted mint around all these springs. I need hardly point

out the advantages of this happiest of combinations--a spring of clear,

icy water; the pungent bouquet of lush mint; the ample basket borne

by a faithful negro, and my grandfather, in his white duck suit and a

Panama hat a yard wide, seated by the mossy spring, selecting with the

most delicate care the worthiest of the fragrant leaves.

“Now”--and Governor Dangerfield smiled--“I can see that you are all

busy guessing at the number of stops made by my grandfather in the

course of a day, and I hasten to satisfy your curiosity. My grandfather

always started out at six o’clock in the morning, and the springs were

so arranged that he had to make six stops before noon, and four in the

afternoon; but at five o’clock, when he reached home all fagged out by

a hard day’s work and sorely needing refreshment, a pitcher of cherry

bounce was waiting for him on the west gallery of the house. After

that he took nothing but a night-cap on retiring for the night. To my

friend, the governor of South Carolina, I need offer no apologies for

my grandfather, once a senator in Congress, and a man distinguished for

his sobriety and probity. He was an upright man and a gentleman, and

died at ninety-two, full of years and honours, and complaining, almost

with his last breath, of a distressing dusty feeling in the throat.”

When, as time passed, it seemed that every one had told a story or

made a speech, it was Ardmore’s inspiration that Griswold should sing

a song. The associate professor of admiralty in the University of

Virginia had already pledged the loyalty of his state to her neighbours

and twin sisters, the Carolinas, and Barbara, who wore a great bunch

of her own white roses, had listened to him with a new respect and

interest, for he spoke well, with the special grace of speech that men

of his state have, and with little turns of humour that kept the table

bubbling merrily.

“I shall comply with your request, my friends, if you can bear with the

poor voice of one long out of tune, and if our host still has in the

house a certain ancient guitar I remember from old times. But I must

impose one condition, that I shall not again in this place be called

by my academic title. I have known wars and the shock of battle along

the Raccoon”--here his hand went to his lips in the gesture that had

so often distressed Ardmore--“and I have known briefly the joy of a

military title. Miss Osborne conferred on me in an emergency the noble

title of major, and by it I demand hereafter to be known.”

The governor of South Carolina was promptly upon his feet.

“Henry Maine Griswold,” he said in his most official manner, “I hereby

appoint you a major on my staff with all the rights, privileges, and

embarrassments thereunto belonging, and you shall to-morrow attend me

personally in my inspection of our troops in the field.”

As the guitar was placed in Griswold’s hands, Ardmore caused all

the lights to be turned out save those on the table. In the soft

candle-glow Ardmore bent his face upon Jerry, who had been merrily

chaffing him at intervals, but who feigned at other times an utter

ignorance of his presence on earth. As Griswold’s voice rose in the

mellow dusk it seemed to Ardmore that the song spoke things he could

not, like his friend, put into utterance, and something fine and sweet

and hallowed--that sweet sabbath of the soul that comes with first

love--possessed him, and he ceased looking at Jerry, but bent his head

and was lost in dreams. For the song and the voice were both beyond

what the company had expected. It was an old air that Griswold sang,

and it gave charm to his words, which were those of a man who loves

deeply and who dares speak them to the woman he loves. They rose and

fell in happy cadences, and every word rang clear. In the longer lines

of the song there was a quickening of time that carried the sense of

passion, and Griswold lifted his head when he uttered them and let them

cry out of him.

One of Barbara’s white roses had fallen into her lap, and she played

with it idly; but after the first verse it slipped from her fingers,

and she folded her arms on the table and bent her gaze on the quiet

flame of the candle before her. And this was the song that Griswold

sang:

Fair winds and golden suns

Down the year’s dim aisles of gray depart;

But you are the dear white rose of the world

That I hide in my heart.

Last leaves, and the first wild snow,

And the earth through an iron void is whirled;

But safe from the tempest abide in my heart,

O dear white rose of the world!

Blithe air and flashing wing.

And awakened sap that thrills and flows;

But hid from the riot and haste of the spring

Sleeps one white rose.

O scattered leaves of days!

O low-voiced glories that fade and depart!

But changeless and dear through the changing year

Blooms one white rose in my heart.

The last words hung tremulously, tenderly, on the air, and left a spell

upon the company that no one seemed anxious to break; then there was

long applause and cries of encore; but Ardmore, who knew that his

friend had been greatly moved, drew attention away from him to Collins,

who had just entered the room.

The correspondent had been called away shortly before from the table,

and he wore the serious air of one heavy with news.

“I beg to report that I have just completed a treaty with the

journalists assembled in the cellar.”

“I hope, Mr. Collins, that the journalists’ convention below stairs

realized that the lobster we sent them for supper was not canned,

and that the mushrooms were creamed for their refreshment by Mrs.

Atchison’s special command. It is not for us to trifle with the dignity

of the press,” said Jerry.

“The reputations of two governors and of two states are in their

hands,” said the governor of South Carolina, with feeling. “It would

be a distressing end of my public services if the truth of all these

matters should be known. The fact that Governor Dangerfield and I

had merely withdrawn from public life for a little quiet poker in

the country would sound like the grossest immorality to my exacting

constituency.”

“Both yourself and Governor Dangerfield will be relieved to know that

they have accepted my terms, and all is well,” responded Collins. “They

will tell the waiting world that you have both been the guests of

Mr. Ardmore, and that the troops assembled on the Raccoon are merely

at their usual summer manœuvres. As for Appleweight, it has seemed

expedient that he should be dead, and the man who has been called by

that name of late is only an impostor seeking a little cheap notoriety.

The boys are very sick of the cellar, and they would do even more than

this to get away.”

“Mr. Collins,” said Governor Dangerfield, rising, “your great merits

shall not go unrewarded. I have carelessly neglected to appoint a

delegate from North Carolina to the annual conference of the Supreme

Lodge of the Society of American Liars shortly to meet at Lake Placid,

New York. As a slight testimonial of my confidence and admiration, I

hereby appoint you to represent the Old North State at that meeting,

and your expenses shall be paid from the public purse.”

“The boys wish to see your excellencies before they leave,” said

Collins when he had acknowledged the governor’s compliment; and as he

spoke the sound of great cheering broke through the windows, and Mrs.

Atchison promptly rose and led the way to the broad terraces which were

now gay with coloured lanterns.

“Speech! speech!” cried the corps of correspondents. Then Ardmore

seized Governor Osborne’s hand and led him forward to the balustrade;

but before the governor of South Carolina could speak, the group of

newspaper men began chanting, in the manner of a college antiphonal:

What did he say to you?

What did he say to you?

_What did who say?_

What did the governor of North Carolina

SAY

To the governor of South Carolina?

“Gentlemen,” began Governor Osborne, speaking with great deliberation,

“I am profoundly touched by the cordiality of your greeting.

(Applause.) Amid the perplexities of my official life I am deeply

sensible always of the consideration and generosity of our free and

untrammelled American press. (Cheers.) Without your support and

approval, my best aims, my sincerest endeavours in behalf of the

people, must fall short and fail of their purpose. (A voice: You’re

dead right about that.) I am proud of this opportunity to greet this

most complimentary delegation of men distinguished in the noble

profession of which Greeley, Raymond, and Dana were the high ornaments.

(Cheers.) I look into your upturned faces as into the faces of old

friends. But I dare not--(A voice: Oh, don’t be afraid, Governor!)--I

dare not take too personally this expression of your good-will. It is

not myself but the great state of South Carolina that you honour, and

on behalf of mine own people, who have always stood sturdily for the

great principles of the constitution (Cheers); who have failed in no

hour of the country’s need, but have tilled their fields in peace and

defended them in the dark days of war, I thank you, my friends, with

all my heart, again and again.” (Applause and cheers.)

What did you say to him?

What did you say to him?

_What did who say?_

What did the governor of North Carolina

SAY

To the governor of South Carolina?

“On an occasion so purely social as this,” began Governor Dangerfield,

balancing himself lightly upon the balustrade, “it would be most

indelicate for me to discuss any of the great issues of the day.

(A voice: Oh, I don’t know!) I endorse, with all the strength of

my being, and with all the sincerity of which my heart is capable,

the stirring tribute paid to your noble profession by my friend,

known far and near, and justly known, as the great reform governor

of South Carolina. (Cheers.) I am proud that the American press is

incorruptible. (Cheers.) Great commercial nation though we be, the

American newspaper--the American newspaper, I say, is one thing that is

never for sale. (Applause and cheers.) The temptation is strong upon

me to take advantage of this gathering of representative journalists

to speak--not of the fathers of the constitution, not of Jefferson or

Jackson, but of living men and living issues (Cheers and cries of Let

’er go!); but the hour is late (A voice: Oh, not on Broadway, William!)

and, to repeat, it would be the height of impropriety--a betrayal of

the bountiful hospitality we have all enjoyed (A voice: Our lobster

was all right. Another voice, with ironical inflection: _This_ lobster

is all right!), a betrayal, I say, of hospitality for me to do more,

gentlemen, than to thank you, and to say that in your strong hands the

liberties of the people are safe indeed.” (Prolonged cheering.)

As the correspondents marched away to take the special train provided

for them at Kildare by Ardmore, they continued to cheer, and they were

still demanding, as long as their cries could be heard at Ardsley:

What did he say to him?

What did he say to him?

_What did who say?_

What did the governor of North Carolina

SAY

To the governor of South Carolina?

With a sigh Ardmore left them at the great gates of Ardsley and

returned to the house to find Jerry; but that young woman was the

centre of a wide circle of admiring militia officers, and the master

of Ardsley was so depressed by the spectacle that he sought a dim

corner of the grounds where there was a stone bench by a fountain, and

there, to his confusion, he beheld Miss Barbara Osborne and Henry Maine

Griswold; and Miss Osborne, it seemed, was in the act of fastening a

white rose in Professor Griswold’s coat.

CHAPTER XXI.

GOOD-BYE TO JERRY DANGERFIELD.

The next morning Ardmore knocked at Griswold’s door as early as he

dared, and went in and talked to his friend in their old intimate

fashion. The associate professor of admiralty was shaving himself with

care.

“You won’t have any hard feelings about that scarlet fever business,

will you, Grissy? It was downright selfish of me to want to keep the

thing to myself, but I thought it would be fun to go ahead and carry it

through and then show you how well I pulled it off.”

“Don’t ever refer to it again, if you love me,” spluttered Griswold

amiably, as he washed off the lather. “I, too, have ruled over a

kingdom, and I have seen history in the making, _quorum pars magna

fui_.”

“But I say, Grissy, there is such a thing as fate and destiny and all

that after all; don’t you believe it?”

“Don’t I believe it! I know it!” thundered Griswold, reaching for a

towel. He lifted a white rose from a glass of water where it had spent

the night, and regarded it tenderly. “The right rose under the right

star, and the thing’s done; the rose, the star, and the girl--the

combination simply can’t be beat, Ardy.”

Ardmore seized and wrung his friend’s hand for the twentieth time; but

he was preoccupied, and Griswold, fastening his collar at the mirror,

hummed softly the couplet:

With the winking eye

For my battle-cry.

“Grissy!” shouted Ardmore, “she never did it!”

“Oh--bless my soul, what was I saying! Why, of course she wasn’t the

one! Not Miss Dangerfield--never!”

“Well, you like her, don’t you?” demanded Ardmore petulantly.

“Of course I like her, you idiot! She’s wonderful. She’s----”

He frowned upon the scarf he had chosen with much care, snapped it to

shake the wrinkles out, humming softly, while Ardmore glared at him.

“She’s wise,” Griswold resumed, “with the wisdom of laughter--accept

that, with my compliments. It’s not often I do so well before

breakfast. And now if you’re to be congratulated before I go back to

the groves of Academe, pray bestir yourself. At this very moment I have

an engagement to walk with a lady before breakfast--thanks, yes, that’s

my coat. Good-bye!”

Breakfast was a lingering affair at Ardsley that morning. The two

governors and the national guard officers who had spent the night in

the house were not in the slightest hurry to break up the party, for

such a company, they all knew, could hardly be assembled again. The

governors were a trifle nervous as to the attitude of the press, in

spite of Collins’s efforts to dictate what history should say of the

affair on the Raccoon; but before they left the table the Raleigh

morning papers were brought in, and it was clear that the newspaper men

were keeping their contract.

“I congratulate you, Dangerfield,” said Governor Osborne. “I only hope

that the Columbia and Charleston papers have done half as well by me.”

Both governors had decided upon an inspection of such portions of their

militia as were assembled on the Raccoon, and a joint dress parade was

appointed for six o’clock.

Ardmore, anxious to make every one at home, saw the morning pass

without a chance to speak to Jerry; and when he was free shortly before

noon he was chagrined to find that she had gone for a ride over the

estate with her father, Governor Osborne, Barbara, and Griswold. He

went in pursuit, and to his delight found her presently sitting alone

on a log by the Raccoon, having dismounted, it appeared, to rescue a

fledgling robin whose cries had led her away from her companions. She

pointed out the nest, and directed him to climb the tree and restore

the bird. This done, he sat down beside her at a point where the

Raccoon curved sweepingly and swung off abruptly into a new course.

“I hope your father didn’t scold you for anything we did,” he began

meekly.

“No; he took it all pretty well, and promised that if I wouldn’t tell

mamma what he had been doing--about coming down here with Governor

Osborne just to settle an old score at poker--mamma doesn’t approve of

cards, you know--that he would make me a present of a better riding

horse than the one I now have, and he might even consider a trip abroad

next summer.”

“Oh, you mustn’t go abroad! It’s--it’s so lonesome abroad!”

“How perfectly ridiculous! Has it never occurred to you that I am never

lonesome, not even when I’m alone?”

“Well,” said Ardmore, who saw that he was headed for a blind alley,

“I’m glad your father was not displeased with our work.”

“He’ll think we did pretty well after he’s read our correspondence in

his letter books. I told him the stamp we stamped his name with worked

better with the red ink pad than with the black one, which ought, at

any rate, to be clear enough to a man of papa’s intelligence.”

“Did you tell him about that railroad lawyer from New York who wanted

to suppress the law which compels all locomotive whistles to be tuned

to E flat?”

“No; that man sent me a ten-pound box of candy, which was highly

improper, considering papa’s position, and I should have scorned to

accept the candy, only I had forgotten to keep his card.”

“And besides,” added Ardmore gently, “you had eaten the candy. Don’t

you remember that you left nothing but a few burnt almonds which you

wanted to keep for eating filapenas?”

“Don’t be silly!” ejaculated Jerry contemptuously.

“It’s a good thing all this fuss about the Appleweight people is over,

or I should be worse than silly. My mind was not intended for such

heavy work.”

“I think you have a good mind, Mr. Ardmore,” said Jerry, with the

air of one who makes concessions. “You really did well in all these

troubles, and you did much better than I thought you would the day I

hired you for private secretary. I think I could safely recommend you

to any governor in need of assistance.”

“You talk as though you were getting ready to discharge me,” said

Ardmore plaintively, “and I don’t want to lose my job.”

“You ought to have something to do,” said Jerry thoughtfully. “As near

as I can make out you have never done anything but study about pirates

and collect pernicious books on the sinful life of Captain Kidd. You

should have some larger aim in life than that, and I think I know of a

good position that is now open, or will be as soon as papa has cleared

out the peanut shells we left in his desk. I think you would make an

excellent adjutant-general with full charge of the state militia.

You have already had experience in the handling of troops, and as

Rutherford Gillingwater never did anything but get typhoid fever to

earn the place, I see no reason why papa should not appoint you to the

position.”

“But you have to get rid of Gillingwater first,” suggested Ardmore, his

heart beating fast.

“If you mean that he has to be removed from office, I will tell you

now, Mr. Ardmore, that Rutherford Gillingwater will no longer sign

himself adjutant-general of North Carolina. I removed him myself in a

general order I wrote yesterday afternoon just before I told papa that

you and I could not act as governor any longer, but that he must resume

the yoke.”

“But that must have been a matter of considerable delicacy, Miss

Dangerfield, when you consider that you are engaged to marry Mr.

Gillingwater.”

“Not in the least,” said Jerry. “I broke our engagement the moment I

saw that he came here the other night all dressed up to eat and not

to fight, and he is now free to engage himself to that thin blonde at

Goldsboro whom he thinks so highly intellectual.”

Jerry held up her left hand and regarded its ringless fingers

judicially, while Ardmore, his heart racing hotly against all records,

watched her, and with a particular covetousness his eyes studied that

trifle of a hand.

Then with a quick gesture he seized her hand and raised her gently to

her feet.

“Jerry!” he cried. “From the moment you winked at me I have loved you.

I should have followed you round the world until I found you. If you

can marry a worthless wretch like me, if--O Jerry!”

She gently freed her hand and stepped to one side, bending her head

like a bird that pauses alarmed, or uncertain of its whereabouts,

glancing cautiously up and down the creek.

“Mr. Ardmore,” she said, “you may not be aware that when you asked me

to be your wife--and that, I take it, was your intention--you were

standing in South Carolina, while I stood with both feet on the sacred

soil of the Old North State. Under the circumstances I do not think

your proposal is legal. Moreover, unless you are quite positive which

eye it was that so far forgot itself as to wink, I do not think the

matter can go further.”

The slightest suggestion of a smile played about her lips, but he

was very deeply troubled, and seeing this, her eyes grew grave with

kindness.

“Mr. Ardmore, if your muscles of locomotion have not been utterly

paralyzed, and if you will leave that particular state of the Union

which, next to Massachusetts, I most deeply abhor, I will do what I can

in my poor weak way--as father says in beginning his best speeches--to

assist you to the answer.”

Then for many æons, when he had his arms about her, a kiss, which he

had intended for the lips that were so near, somehow failed of its

destination, and fell upon what seemed to him a rose-leaf gone to

Heaven, but which was, in fact, Jerry Dangerfield’s left eye. His being

tingled with the most delicious of intoxications, to which the clasp

of her arms about his neck added unnecessary though not unwelcome

delight. Then she drew back and held him away with her finger-tips for

an instant.

“Mr. Thomas Ardmore,” she said, with maddening deliberation, “it may

not be important, but I must tell you in all candour that it was the

other eye.”

THE END.

NELSON LIBRARY

OF COPYRIGHT FICTION.

Popular editions of recent novels in library-style binding, uniform

with this volume.

58. LADY ROSE’S DAUGHTER. Mrs. H. Ward.

57. THE PRIMROSE PATH. Mrs. Oliphant.

56. THOMPSON’S PROGRESS. C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.

55. LONELY LADY OF GROSVENOR SQUARE. Mrs. H. de la Pasture.

54. LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM. H. G. Wells.

53. CLARISSA FURIOSA. W. E. Norris.

52. CYNTHIA’S WAY. Mrs. A. Sidgwick.

51. RAFFLES. E. W. Hornung.

50. THE FOOD OF THE GODS. H. G. Wells.

49. FRENCH NAN. A. and E. Castle.

48. SPRINGTIME. H. C. Bailey.

47. MOONFLEET. J. Meade Falkner.

46. KIPPS. H. G. Wells.

45. THE GATELESS BARRIER. Lucas Malet.

44. MAJOR VIGOUREUX. “Q.”

43. OLD GORGON GRAHAM. G. H. Lorimer.

42. MRS. GALER’S BUSINESS. W. Pett Ridge.

41. HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS. George Douglas.

40. SELAH HARRISON. S. Macnaughtan.

39. MARCELLA. Mrs. Humphry Ward.

38. HIS HONOR AND A LADY. S. J. Duncan.

37. THE DUENNA OF A GENIUS. M. E. Francis.

36. OWD BOB. Alfred Ollivant.

35. EIGHT DAYS. R. E. Forrest.

34. LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET. Miss Braddon.

33. THE WAGES OF SIN. Lucas Malet.

32. AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH. Sir Gilbert Parker.

31. THE PIT. Frank Norris.

30. MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE. Booth Tarkington.

29. WOODSIDE FARM. Mrs. W. K. Clifford.

28. RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS. C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.

27. A LAME DOG’S DIARY. S. Macnaughtan.

26. MAN FROM AMERICA. Mrs. H. de la Pasture.

25. SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE. “Q.”

24. THE PRINCESS PASSES. C. N. and A. M. Williamson.

23. WHITE FANG. Jack London.

22. THE OCTOPUS. Frank Norris.

21. TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. Sir G. Parker.

20. MATTHEW AUSTIN. W. E. Norris.

19. THE ODD WOMEN. George Gissing.

18. THE LADY OF THE BARGE. W. W. Jacobs.

17. THE GOD IN THE CAR. Anthony Hope.

16. THE HOSTS OF THE LORD. Mrs. F. A. Steel.

15. HIS GRACE. W. E. Norris.

14. THE AMERICAN PRISONER. Eden Phillpotts.

13. IF YOUTH BUT KNEW! A. and E. Castle.

12. CLEMENTINA. A. E. W. Mason.

11. JOHN CHARITY. H. A. Vachell.

10. THE KING’S MIRROR. Anthony Hope.

9. DAVID GRIEVE. Mrs. Humphry Ward.

8. INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS. A. and E. Castle.

7. QUISANTÉ. Anthony Hope.

6. NO. 5 JOHN STREET. Richard Whiteing.

5. ROBERT ELSMERE. Mrs. Humphry Ward.

4. BATTLE OF THE STRONG. Sir Gilbert Parker.

3. THE FORTUNE OF CHRISTINA M’NAB. S. Macnaughtan.

2. INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. Anthony Hope.

1. THE MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE. Mrs. Humphry Ward.

_Others in the Press. A new volume appears on the first and third

Wednesdays of each month._

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS,

And at all Booksellers and Bookstalls.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber using

the original cover as the background and is entered into the public

domain.