ggered and fell across the books on
the table, his hand to his face. Above him towered Stephen Brice. Towered
was the impression that came to Virginia then, and so she thought of the
scene ever afterward. Small bits, like points of tempered steel,
glittered in Stephen's eyes, and his hands following up the mastery he
had given them clutched Mr. Hopper's shoulders. Twice Stephen shook him
so that his head beat upon the table.

"You--you beast!" he cried, but he kept his voice low. And then, as if he
expected Hopper to reply: "Shall I kill you?"

Again he shook him violently. He felt Virginia's touch on his arm.

"Stephen!" she cried, "your wounds! Be careful! Oh, do be careful!"

She had called him Stephen. He turned slowly, and his hands fell from Mr.
Hopper's cowering form as his eyes met hers. Even he could not fathom the
appeal, the yearning, in their dark blue depths. And yet what he saw
there made him tremble. She turned away, trembling too.

"Please sit down," she entreated. "He--he won't touch me again while you
are here."

Eliphalet Hopper raised himself from the desk, and one of the big books
fell with a crash to the floor. Then they saw him shrink, his eyes fixed
upon some one behind them. Before the Judge's door stood Colonel Carvel,
in calm, familiar posture, his feet apart, and his head bent forward as
he pulled at his goatee.

"What is this man doing here, Virginia?" he asked. She did not answer
him, nor did speech seem to come easily to Mr. Hopper in that instant.
Perhaps the sight of Colonel Carvel had brought before him too, vividly
the memory of that afternoon at Glencoe.

All at once Virginia grasped the fulness of the power in this man's
hands. At a word from him her father would be shot as a spy--and Stephen
Brice, perhaps, as a traitor. But if Colonel Carvel should learn that he
had seized her,--here was the terrible danger of the situation. Well she
knew what the Colonel would do. Would. Stephen tell him? She trusted in
his coolness that he would not.

Before a word of reply came from any of the three, a noise was heard on
the stairway. Some one was coming up. There followed four seconds of
suspense, and then Clarence came in. She saw that his face wore a
worried, dejected look. It changed instantly when he glanced about him,
and an oath broke from his lips as he singled out Eliphalet Hopper
standing in sullen aggressiveness, beside the table.

"So you're the spy, are you?" he said in d