“A jolt? You don’t look it.”
“That’s it; no matter how sick a fellow is, if he doesn’t look sick he gets no sympathy. Just the same, I’m stabbed to the heart. I have been discovered.”
Philip’s smile was grim, but it was a smile. “Sheriff after you with a warrant?” he bantered.
“Worse. At Mrs. Demming’s to-night I met a man who knows me—knew me back home, I mean.”
“Anything fatal about that?”
“The fatality lies in what he told me. Have I ever, by any chance, happened to mention the Follansbees to you?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Friends of the family for three generations. Tom Follansbee was my classmate in college for the little time the powers that were let me stay on the campus. My governor and the Judge were also classmates. You get the idea?—the two families as thick as peas in a pod?”
“I’m listening.”
“Just a minute and you’ll get the full impact of my jolt. There are two daughters, Eugenia and Lucy Ann. Back in the dark ages, when we were both in frocks and pinafores, the two families settled it that Eugenia and I were to marry when we grew up.”