sat upright in
his armchair with a clarionet pressed to his lips and his cheeks
ballooned, playing "Trouble in the Land."

The soloist at length took the instrument from his pursed lips and wiped
the mouthpiece with his handkerchief, and as he did so the negro man who
was both bodyservant and butler opened the door of the room.

"Thar's a gentleman done come ter see you, sah. He 'pears mighty urgent
in his mind an' he wouldn't give me no name."

The officer, bethinking himself of political satellites who sometimes
make a virtue of mystery, smiled as he directed: "Bring him in here,
Tom. It's cold in the parlour."

Into the library came Boone, and stood silent until the negro had closed
the door upon his exit; then he nodded curtly. There was an air of
suppressed wildness in his eyes and a pallour under the bronze of his
cheeks, upon which the attorney, as he offered a chair, made no comment.

"I'm here," announced the visitor with a brusque pointedness, "to give
you information upon which it is your duty to act."

There was an unintended rasp of challenge in the manner, and under it
the official's lips compressed themselves. Boone in his overwrought
state felt that he must make haste, while he yet held himself in hand,
and the attorney, believing his visitor to be ill, curbed his own
temper.

"Let's have the information," he suggested. "Then I'll be in a better
position to construe my own duty."

"Presumably you wish to punish all those guilty of the conspiracy that
ended in Senator Goebel's death," went on the mountain man in a hard
voice. "I say presumably, because the Commonwealth has heretofore
appeared to discriminate among the accused."

The attorney bridled. "As to Governor Goebel's death," he asserted
heatedly, and in the very employment of the widely different titles the
two men proclaimed their antithesis of political creed and opinion, "my
record speaks for itself. My sincerity needs no defence."

"That you can prove. Saul Fulton is under indictment in your court. He
forfeited his bond and went to South America with or without your
knowledge. He has come back, and I am prepared to direct your deputy
sheriff to his hiding place. If he got away without your knowledge you
ought to be glad to have this news. If you winked at his going, I mean
to put you on record."

Boone Wellver had not seated himself. He still stood, with a stony face
out of which the eyes burned unnaturally, and the Commonwealth's