r, sir. It must be
important--"

"Of the utmost importance, Senator. A high official in the confidence of
the President sent me to inform you that Stanton, the Attorney General,
is planning to issue a warrant for your arrest for high treason."

"Indeed?"

"You are advised to leave Washington on the first train."

A dry smile flickered about the corners of the Senator's strong mouth.

"Thank you. Please say to my friend that I appreciate the spirit that
prompted his message. Ask him to say to Mr. Stanton that I have decided
to remain in Washington a week. Nothing would please me better than to
submit this issue to the courts for adjustment. He will find me at home
every day and at all hours."

CHAPTER V

BOY AND GIRL

From the moment Dick Welford had seen Socola bowing and smiling before
Jennie Barton he had hated the man. He hated foreigners on general
principles, anyhow. This kind of foreigner he particularly loathed--the
slender, nervous type which suggested over-refinement to the point of
effeminacy. He had always hated slender, effeminate-looking men of the
native breed. This one was doubly offensive because he was an Italian.
How any woman with true womanly instincts could tolerate such a spider
was more than he could understand.

Jennie Barton had always frankly said that she admired men of his own
type. He was six feet one, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and weighed a hundred
and ninety-six pounds at twenty-one years of age. He had always felt
instinctively that he was exactly the man for Jennie's mate. She was
nineteen, dark and slender, a bundle of quick, sensitive, nervous
intelligence. Her brown eyes were almost black and her luxuriant hair
seemed raven-hued beside his. He had always imagined it nestling beside
his big blond head in perfect contentment since the first summer he had
spent with Tom Barton at their cottage at the White Sulphur Springs.

He had taken it for granted that she would say yes when he could screw
up his courage to speak. She had treated him as if he were already in
the family.

"Confound it," he muttered, clenching his big fist, "that's what worries
me! Maybe she just thinks of me as one of her brothers!"

It hadn't occurred to him until he saw the light kindle in her eyes at
the sight of that smooth-tongued reptilian foreigner. He was on his way
now to her house, to put the thing to the test before she could leave
Washington. Thank God, the spider was tied down here at