and approaching him in sudden and violent anger. "You'd better
take care, coward, they'll kill you if you turn traitor; and right they
should too."

"I shall not turn traitor," he said quietly, "but neither shall I go any
farther than I have gone. I should never have joined, if Boyd and Foster
hadn't deceived me as to the objects of the organization."

"But you have joined, Cal, and I'll not consent to your giving it up,"
said his mother.

"I don't like to vex you, mother," he answered, reddening, "but--"

"But you'll have your own way, whether it displeases me or not? A
dutiful son, truly."

"This is Horace's work, and he's a scalawag, if he is my brother,"
cried Enna, with growing passion, "but if I were you, Cal Conly, I'd be
man enough to have an opinion of my own, and stick to it."

"Exactly what I'm doing, Aunt Enna. I went into the thing blindfold;
I have found out what it really is--a cruel, cowardly, lawless
concern--and I wash my hands of it and its doings."

Bowing ceremoniously he unlocked the door, and left the room.

Enna sprang to it and fastened it after him. "If he was my son, I'd turn
him out of the house."

"Father would hardly consent," replied her sister, "and if he did, what
good would it do? Horace or Travilla would take him in of course."

"Well, thank heaven, Boyd and Foster are made of sterner stuff and our
labor's not all lost," said Enna, returning to her machine.

The two ladies had been spending many hours every day in that room for
a week past, no one but Calhoun being admitted to their secrets, for
whether in the room or out of it they kept the door always carefully
locked.

The curiosity of servants and children was strongly excited, but vain
had been all their questions and coaxing, futile every attempt to solve
the mystery up to the present time.

But three or four days after Calhoun's return from the Oaks, the thought
suggested itself to mischievous, prying Dick and his coadjutor Walter,
that the key of some other lock in the house might fit that of the door
they so ardently desired to open. They only waited for a favorable
opportunity to test the question in the temporary absence of their
mothers from that part of the building, and to their great joy
discovered that the key of the bedroom they shared together was the
duplicate of the one which had so long kept their masculine curiosity
at bay.

It turned readily in the lock and with a smothered exclamation of
delig