of the
State, the South even. Distance would be his protection, and her
pride and shame would prevent her ever letting her whereabouts or her
fate be known.

Cold-bloodedly, boldly, and with clear-cut reasoning, all this ran
through his mind as he stood looking at Alice Westmore.

We are strangely made--the best of us. Men have looked on the Madonna
and wondered why the artist had not put more humanity there--had not
given her a sensual lip, perhaps. And on the Cross, the Christ was
thinking of a thief.

Two hours later he was bidding her good-bye.

"Next Sunday, do you remember--Alice--next Sunday night you are to
tell me--to fix the day, Sweet?"

"Did mother tell you that?" she asked. "She should let me speak for
myself."

But somehow he felt that she would. Indeed he knew it as he kissed
her hand and bade her good-night.

Richard Travis had ridden over to Westmoreland that Sunday night, and
as he rode back, some two miles away, and within the shadows of a
dense clump of oaks which bordered the road, he was stopped by two
dusky figures. They stood just on the edge of the forest and came out
so suddenly that the spirited saddle mare stopped and attempted to
wheel and bolt. But Travis, controlling her with one hand and,
suspecting robbers, had drawn his revolver with the other, when one
of them said:

"Friends, don't shoot."

"Give the countersign," said Travis with ill-concealed irritation.

"Union League, sir. I am Silos, sir."

Travis put his revolver back into his overcoat pocket and quieted his
mare.

The two men, one a negro and the other a mulatto, came up to his
saddle-skirt and stood waiting respectfully.

"You should have awaited me at The Gaffs, Silos."

"We did, sir," said the mulatto, "but the boys are all out here in
the woods, and we wanted to hold them together. We didn't know when
you would come home."

"Oh, it's all right," said Travis pettishly--"only you came near
catching one of my bullets by mistake. I thought you were Jack
Bracken and his gang."

The mulatto smiled and apologized. He was a bright fellow and the
barber of the town.

"We wanted to know, sir, if you were willing for us to do the work
to-night, sir?"

"Why bother me about it--no need for me to know, Silos, but one thing
I must insist upon. You may whip them--frighten them, but nothing
else, mind you, nothing else."

"But you are the commander of the League--we wanted your consent."

Travis bent low over t