"It's awfully nice of them to like my scenery. You'd better send your best man out to meet Colonel Gillingwater of the North Carolina militia, and tell him to march all his troops into the estate by the north gates, and to be in a hurry. Tell him—tell him Governor Dangerfield is anxious to have the staff present in full uniform at a grand ball at Ardsley to-night."
Ardmore rode off alone toward Raccoon Creek to catch a view of the enemy. How far would Griswold go? This question he kept debating with himself. His late friend was a lawyer and a serious one whom he had not believed capable of seizing the militia of one state and using it to make a military demonstration against another. Ardmore could go as far as Griswold; yet he was puzzled to know why Griswold was in the field at all. Miss Dangerfield's suggestion that Griswold's interest in the daughter of the governor of South Carolina accounted for his presence on the border seemed plausible at first; and yet the more he thought about it the less credible it seemed, for he was sure that Griswold had talked to him about women with the frankness that had characterized all their intercourse, and Ardmore racked his brains in his effort to recall the few affairs to which the associate professor of admiralty had pleaded guilty. Memory brought these back to him slowly. There was an Old Point Comfort affair, dating back to Griswold's student days, and to which he had referred with no little feeling once or twice; and there was a York Harbor affair, that came a little later; and there was the girl he had met on a steamer, about whom Griswold had shown sensitiveness when Ardmore had made bold to twit him. But Ardmore could not account for Miss Osborne, unless his friend had been withholding his confidence while seemingly wholly frank; and the thought that this must be true widened the breach between them. And when he was saying to himself that the daughters of governors are not in the habit of picking up cavaliers and intrusting state affairs to them and that it was almost inconceivable that the conscientious Griswold, at the busiest season at the university, should have taken employment from the governor of South Carolina, he found that he had struck a stone wall, and he confessed to himself that the situation was beyond him.
These reflections carried him far toward Raccoon Creek, and when he had reached that tortuous stream he dismounted and tied his horse, the more freely to examine the frontier. The Raccoon is never more than eighty feet wide, but filled with boulders round which the water foams in many curves and splashes, running away in the merriest ripples, so that it is never wholly tranquil. By jumping from boulder to boulder he crossed the turbulent tide and gained the other side with a sense of entering the enemy's country.
"Now," he muttered, "I am in South Carolina."
He drew out his map and held it against a tree the better to study it, reassuring himself that his own property line embraced several sections of the forest on the south side of the state boundary.
"If Grissy shoots me, it will be on my own land," he said aloud.
He cautiously followed the stream until, several hundred yards farther on, and overhanging the creek, he came upon the log cabin in which big Paul had reported the presence of a ghost. Paul's story had not interested him particularly, but now that he was in the neighborhood he resolved to visit the cabin and learn if possible how ghosts amuse themselves by day. He had thrust a revolver into his pocket before leaving the house and while he had no idea that ghosts may be shot, he now made sure that the weapon was in good order. As he sat on a log slipping the cylinder through his fingers he heard whistling farther along the creek, followed quickly by the snapping of twigs under a heavy tread, and a moment later a tall, slender man broke into view.
The stranger was dressed like a countryman, but he was unmistakably not of the Ardsley force of workmen, for these wore a rough sort of uniform. His hands were thrust carelessly into the side pockets of a gray jeans coat. They were thrust in deep, so that the coat sagged at the pockets. His trousers were turned up from a pair of rough shoes and he wore a gray flannel shirt, the collar of which was guiltless of a tie. He was smooth shaven, and carried in his mouth a short pipe, which he paused to relight when about a dozen yards from Ardmore. Then, as he held the lighted match above the pipe bowl for an instant to make sure his tobacco was burning, Ardmore jumped up and covered him with the pistol.
"I beg your pardon," said the master of Ardsley, "but you're my prisoner!"