himself outside the Queen City Club. He went in and one of the first men
he met was Pinckney.

So well did he hold himself in hand that Pinckney suspected nothing of his
feelings. Silas was far too good a sportsman to shout at the edge of the
wood, too much of a gentleman to desire a brawl in public. He was going to
knife Pinckney, he was also going to capture Phyl, but the knifing of
Pinckney was the main objective and that required time and thought. He did
not desire the blood of the gentleman; he wanted his pride and _amour
propre_. He wanted to hit him on the raw, but he did not know yet where,
exactly, the raw was nor how to hit it. Time would tell him.

He was specially civil to his intended victim, and he went off home that
evening plotting all the way, but arriving at nothing. He was trying to
make bricks without straw. Pinckney did not drink, nor did he gamble, and
he was far too good a business man to be had in that way. However, all
things come to him who waits, and next morning's post brought him a ray of
light in the midst of his darkness.

It brought him an invitation to the Rhetts' dance on the following
Wednesday; nearly a week to wait, but, still, something to wait for.

"What are you thinking about, Silas?" asked old Seth Grangerson as they
sat at breakfast.

"I'm thinking of a new rabbit trap, suh," responded the son.

The rabbit trap seemed to give him a good deal of food for thought during
the week that followed; food that made him hilarious and gloomy by turns,
restless also.

Had he known it, Phyl away at Charleston, was equally restless. She no
longer thought of Silas. She had dismissed him from her mind, she no
longer feared him as a possible source of danger to the man she loved.
Love had her entirely in his possession to torture as he pleased. She knew
only one danger, the danger that Richard Pinckney did not care in the
least for her, and as day followed day that danger grew more defined and
concrete. Richard had taken to avoiding her, she became aware of that.

She fancied that she displeased him.

If she had only known!

CHAPTER X

Silas Grangerson came to town on the Wednesday, driving in and reaching
the Charleston Hotel about five o'clock in the afternoon.

The Grangersons scarcely ever used the railway. Silas, often as he had
been in Charleston, had never put foot in a street car; even a hired
conveyance was against the prejudices of these gentlemen.

This antagon