“The thing is preposterous,” he said lightly. “The idea that your father would attempt to enter his own state surreptitiously is inconceivable in these days when public men are denied all privacy, and when it’s any man’s right to deceive the press if he finds it essential to his own comfort and peace; but the intimation that your father is in South Carolina for any dishonourable purpose is preposterous. One thing, however, is certain, Miss Osborne, and that is that we must produce your father at the earliest possible moment.”
“But”—and Barbara hesitated, and her eyes, near tears as they were, wrought great havoc in Griswold’s soul—“but father must not be found until this Appleweight matter is settled. You understand without making me speak the words—that he might not exactly view the matter as we do.”
It was a painful subject; and the fact that she was driven by sheer force of circumstances to appeal to him, a stranger, to aid her to perform a public service in her father’s name rallied all his good impulses to her standard. It was too delicate a matter for discussion; it was a thing to be ignored; and he assumed at once a lighter tone.
“Come! We must solve the riddle of the lost prisoner at once, and your father will undoubtedly give an excellent account of himself when he gets ready. Meanwhile the fiction that he is personally carrying the war into the Appleweight country must be maintained, and I shall step to the railway station and wire the Columbia newspaper in his name that he is in Mingo County on the trail of the outlaws.”
The messages were composed by their joint efforts at the station, with not so much haste but that an associate professor of admiralty, twenty-nine years old, could defer in the most trifling matters to the superior literary taste of a girl of twenty whose brown eyes were very pleasant to meet in moments of uncertainty and appeal.
He signed the messages Charles Osborne, Governor, with a flourish indicative of the increased confidence and daring which Miss Osborne’s arrival had brought to the situation.
“And now,” said Griswold, as they rode through the meagre streets of Turner’s, “we will go to Mount Nebo Church and see what we can learn of Appleweight’s disappearance.”
“The North Carolina papers are making a great deal of Governor Dangerfield’s activity in trying to put down outlawry on the border,” said Barbara. “Marked copies of the newspapers are pouring into papa’s office. I can but hold Mr. Bosworth responsible for that. We may count upon it that he will do all in his power to annoy us”—and then, as Griswold looked at her quickly, he was aware that she had coloured and averted her eyes; and while, as a lawyer, he was aware that words of two letters might be provocative of endless litigation of the bitterest sort, he had never known before that us, in itself the homeliest of words, could cause so sweet a distress. It seemed that an interval of several years passed before either spoke again.
“We are quite near the estate of your friend, Mr. Ardmore, aren’t we?” asked Barbara presently.
“I fancy we are,” replied Griswold, but with a tone so coldly at variance with his previous cordial references to the master of Ardsley that Barbara looked at him inquiringly.