“Oppose him! I have got to whip him to the dust if I shake down the very towers of his stronghold! It’s well we have the militia on the road. With the state army at our back we can show Tommy Ardmore a few things in state administration that are not dreamed of in his philosophy.”
“Do you suppose they really have Appleweight?” asked Barbara.
“Not for a minute! They told us that story merely to annoy us when they found what we were looking for. That touch about the wine cellar is characteristically Ardmoresque. If they had Appleweight you may be sure they wouldn’t keep him on the premises.”
Whereupon they rode back to Turner Court House much faster than they had come.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PRISONER IN THE CORN-CRIB.
Jerry and Ardmore sat at a long table in the commodious Ardsley library, which was a modification of a Gothic chapel. It was on the upper floor, with broad windows that had the effect of bringing the landscape indoors, and the North Carolina sky is, we must concede, a pleasant thing to have at one’s elbow. A large accumulation of mail from the governor’s office at Raleigh had been forwarded, and Jerry insisted that it must be opened and disposed of in some way. Governor Dangerfield was, it appeared, a subscriber to a clipping bureau, and they had been examining critically a batch of cuttings relating to the New Orleans incident. Most of them were in a frivolous key, playfully reviving the ancient query as to what the governor of North Carolina really said to the governor of South Carolina. Others sought causes for the widely-reported disappearance of the two governors; and still other reports boldly maintained that Governors Dangerfield and Osborne were at their capitals engaged in the duties of their respective offices.
“It’s a good thing we got hold of Collins,” observed Ardmore, putting down a clipping from a New York paper in which the reports of Governor Dangerfield’s disappearance were analyzed and tersely dismissed; “for he knows how to write, and he’s done a splendid picture of your father on his throne attending to business; and his little stingers for Osborne are the work of genius.”
“There’s a certain finish about Mr. Collins’s lying that is refreshing,” replied Jerry, “and I cannot help thinking that he has a brilliant future before him if he enters politics. Nothing pains me more than a careless, ill-considered, silly lie, which is the best that most people can do. But it would be very interesting to know whether Governor Osborne has really disappeared, or just how your friend the Virginia professor has seized the reins of state. Do you suppose he got a jug from somewhere, and met Miss Osborne and——”
“Do you think—do you think—she may have—er—possibly—closed one eye in his direction?” asked Ardmore dubiously.
“Mr. Ardmore”—and Jerry pointed at him with a bronze paper-cutter to make sure of his attention—“Mr. Ardmore, if you ever imply again by act, word, or deed that I winked at you I shall never, never speak to you again. I should think that a man with a nice sister like Mrs. Atchison would have a better opinion of women than you seem to have. I never saw you until you came to my father’s house to tell me about the jug—and you know I didn’t. And as for that Barbara Osborne, while I don’t doubt that even in South Carolina a Daughter of the Seminole War might wink at a gentleman in a moment of extreme provocation, I doubt if she did, for she lacks animation, and has no more soul than a gum overshoe.”