sly, but with
passionate urgency, "Please GO!"

"It isn't your grandfather that has come for you," said the fat one,
slowly. "It is old Eskew Arp. Something's happened."

She looked at him for a moment, beginning to tremble violently, her
eyes growing wide with fright.

"Is my grandfather--is he sick?"

"You better go and see. Old Eskew's waiting in the hall. He'll tell
you."

She was by him and through the window instantly. Norbert did not follow
her; he remained for several moments looking earnestly at the palms;
then he stepped through the window and beckoned to a youth who was
lounging in the doorway across the room.

"There's somebody hiding behind those plants," he whispered, when his
friend reached him. "Go and tell Judge Pike to send some of the
niggers to watch outside the porch, so that he doesn't get away. Then
tell him to get his revolver and come here."

Meanwhile Ariel had found Mr. Arp waiting in the hall, talking in a low
voice to Mrs. Pike.

"Your grandfather's all right," he told the frightened girl, quickly.
"He sent me for you, that's all. Just hurry and get your things."

She was with him again in a moment, and seizing the old man's arm,
hurried him down the steps and toward the street almost at a run.

"You're not telling me the truth," she said. "You're not telling me the
truth!"

"Nothing has happened to Roger," panted Mr. Arp. "Nothing to mind, I
mean. Here! We're going this way, not that." They had come to the
gate, and as she turned to the right he pulled her round sharply to the
left. "We're not going to your house."

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to your uncle Jonas's."

"Why?" she cried, in supreme astonishment. "What do you want to take me
there for? Don't you know that he's stopped speaking to me?"

"Yes," said the old man, grimly, with something of the look he wore
when delivering a clincher at the "National House,"--"he's stopped
speaking to everybody."

V

BEAVER BEACH

The Canaan Daily Tocsin of the following morning "ventured the
assertion" upon its front page that "the scene at the Pike Mansion was
one of unalloyed festivity, music, and mirth; a fairy bower of airy
figures wafting here and there to the throb of waltz-strains; a
veritable Temple of Terpsichore, shining forth with a myriad of lights,
which, together with the generous profusion of floral decorations and
the mingled delights afforded by Minds's orchestra of Indianapolis an