can be confiscated.
I'll take a few pelts while they're trying it on!"

Judge Warren bowed stiffly and retired from the interview.

Day after day passed and Colonel Dodd was more than ever convinced that
the nightmare was continuing. Politicians agreed with him--all of them
with amazement, many of them with wrath.

Because the Honorable Archer Converse and the man who had called himself
Walker Farr had dropped completely out of sight, leaving no explanation
of any sort.

"They didn't even tell _me_," confessed Daniel Breed, "and I'm their
chief fugler, and here's the November election right plunk on top of
us--and even the Apostle Paul would have to do at least four weeks of
spry campaigning in this state to be sure of being elected if a state
committee was getting ready to lay down on him like ours seems to be
doing. I'm jogafferbasted. I can't express myself no other way."

Mr. Breed, in moments of especial anxiety and despondency when he
reviewed the situation, darkly hinted that the grand jury ought to look
into the thing. The Consolidated had done about everything up to date
except assassinate and abduct, he averred, and everybody knew Colonel
Dodd's present state of mind.

However, Colonel Dodd did receive Miss Kate Kilgour politely when she
came to him; he had always held her in estimation next to the bouquets
in his office.

"I have come to you," she explained, "because I could not get the
information anywhere else. I have tried. I do not want to bother you,
sir."

The girl was pitifully broken, her voice trembled.

"Well, well, what is it?" he demanded, impatiently, and yet with a touch
of kindly tolerance. "You needn't be afraid of me even if you did leave
me in hop-and-jump style, Miss Kilgour."

"Where is your nephew, Richard?"

And then, in spite of his assuring statement, Miss Kilgour _was_ afraid
of him.

His square face was suffused with red, he thwacked his fist on his
desk and leaped out of his chair and stamped away from her, cursing
viciously.

"Who sent you here to ask me that question?" he shouted, advancing on
her from the window.

"It's my own business--I came on my own account," she stammered.

"How comes it to be your business, miss?"

"I gave him my promise to marry him."

"If you did you made a devil of a mistake; I can tell you that, young
woman!"

"I realize it, Colonel Dodd. I want to know where he is. I want to take
back that promise."

He controlled himself and