A full moon, blood-red from the smoke of forest fires far to the eastward, was rising over the Wahaska Hills when Griswold unlatched the gate of the Farnham enclosure and passed quickly up the walk.

Since the summoning note had stressed the urgencies, he was not surprised to find the writer of it awaiting his coming on the vine-shadowed porch. In his welcoming there was a curious mingling of constraint and impatience, and he was moved to marvel. Miss Farnham's outlook upon life, the point of view of the ideally well-balanced, was uniformly poiseful and self-contained, and he was wondering if some fresh entanglement were threatening when she motioned him to a seat and placed her own chair so that the light from the sitting-room windows would leave her in the shadow.

"You had my note?" she began.

"Yes. It came while I was away from the hotel, and the regular trip of the Inn brake was the first conveyance I could catch. Am I late?"

Her reply was qualified. "That remains to be seen."

There was a hesitant pause, and then she went on: "Do you know why I sent for you to come."

"No, not definitely."

"I was hoping you would know; it would make it easier for me. You owe me something, Mr. Griswold."

"I owe you a great deal," he admitted, warmly. "It is hardly putting it too strong to say that you have made some part of my work possible which would otherwise have been impossible."

"I didn't mean that," she dissented, with a touch of cool scorn. "I have no especial ambition to figure as a character, however admirable, in a book. Your obligation doesn't lie in the literary field; it is real—and personal. You have done me a great injustice, and it seems to have been carefully premeditated."

The blow was so sudden and so calmly driven home that Griswold gasped.

"An injustice?—to you?" he protested; but she would not let him go on.

"Yes. At first, I thought it was only a coincidence—your coming to Wahaska—but now I know better. You came here, in goodness knows what spirit of reckless bravado, because it was my home; and you made the decision apparently without any consideration for me; without any thought of the embarrassments and difficulties in which it might involve me."

Truly, the heavens had fallen and the solid earth was reeling! Griswold lay back in the deep lounging-chair and fought manfully to retain some little hold upon the anchorings. Could this be his ideal; the woman whom he had set so high above all others in the scale of heroic faultlessness and sublime devotion to principle? And was she so much a slave of the conventional as to be able to tell him coldly that she had recognized him again, and that her chief concern was the embarrassment it was causing her? Before he could gather the words for any adequate rejoinder, she was going on pointedly:

"You have done everything you could to make the involvement complete. You have made friends of my friends, and you came here as a friend of my father. You have drawn Edward Raymer into the entanglement and helped him with the stolen money. In every way you have sought to make it more and more impossible for me to give information against you—and you have succeeded. I can't do it now, without facing a scandal that would never die in a small place like this, and without bringing trouble and ruin upon a family of our nearest friends. And that is why I sent for you to-day; and why I say you owe me something."

Griswold was sitting up again, and he had recovered some small measure of self-possession.

"I certainly owe you many apologies, at least," he said, ironically. "I have really been doing you a great injustice, Miss Farnham—a very grave injustice, though not exactly of the kind you mention. I think I have been misapprehending you from the beginning. How long have you known me as the man who is wanted in New Orleans?"

"A long time; though I tried not to believe it at first. It seemed incredible that the man I had spoken to on the Belle Julie would come here and put me in such a false position."

"Good heavens!" he broke out; "is your position all you have been thinking of? Is that the only reason why you haven't set the dogs on me?"

"It is the chief reason why I couldn't afford to do anything more than I have done. Goodness knows, I have tried in every way to warn you, even to pointing out the man who is shadowing you. To do it, I have had to deceive my father. I have been hoping that you would understand and go away."

"Wait a minute," he commanded. "Let me get it straight; you still believe that the thing I did was a criminal thing?"

"We needn't go into that part of it again," she returned, with a sort of placid impatience. "Once I thought that there might be some way in which you had justified yourself to yourself, but now——"

"That isn't the point," he interrupted roughly. "What I want to know is this: Do you still believe it is a crime?"

"Of course, it is a crime; I know it, you know it, all the world knows it."

Again he sat back and took time to gather up a few of the scattered shards and fragments. When he spoke it was to say: "I think the debt is on the other side, Miss Charlotte; I think you owe me something. You probably won't understand when I say that you have robbed me of a very precious thing—my faith in the ultimate goodness of a good woman. You believe—you have always believed—that I am a criminal; and yet you have been weak enough to let expediency seal your lips. I am truer to my code than you are to yours, as you shall see if the day ever comes when I shall be convinced that I did wrong. But that is neither here nor there. You sent for me: what is it that you want me to do?"

"I want to give you one more chance to disappoint the Wahaska gossips," she replied, entirely unmoved, as it seemed, by his harsh arraignment. "Do you know why this man Broffin is still waiting?"

"I can guess. He is taking a long chance on the chapter of accidents."

"Not altogether. Three days ago, Mr. Galbraith had Miss Grierson telegraph to New Orleans for some one of the bank officials. Yesterday I learned that the man who is coming is the teller who waited on me and who gave you the money. As soon as I heard that, I began to try to find you."

Griswold did not tell her that the danger she feared was a danger past.

"Go on," he prompted.

"You are no longer safe in Wahaska," she asserted. "The teller can identify you, and the detective will give him the opportunity. That is doubtless what he is waiting for."

"And you would suggest that I make a run for it? Is that why you sent for me?"

"It is. You are tempting fate by staying; and, notwithstanding what you have said, I still insist that you owe me something. There is a fast train west at ten o'clock. If you need ready money——"

Griswold laughed. It had gone beyond the tragic and was fast lapsing into comedy, farce.

"We are each of us appearing in a new rÔle to-night, Miss Farnham," he said, with sardonic humor; "I as the hunted criminal, and you as the equally culpable accessory after the fact. If I run away, what shall be done with the—the 'swag,' the bulk of which, as you know, is tied up in Raymer's business?"

"I have thought of that," she returned calmly, "and that is another reason why you shouldn't let them take you. Right or wrong, you have incurred a fresh responsibility in your dealings with Mr. Raymer; and Edward, who is perfectly innocent, must be protected in some way."

It was not in human nature to resist the temptation to strike back.

"I have told Raymer how he can most successfully underwrite his financial risk," he said, with malice intentional.

"How?"

"By marrying Miss Grierson."

He had touched the springs of anger at last.

"That woman!" she broke out. And then: "If you have said that to Edward Raymer, I shall never forgive you as long as I live! It is your affair to secure Edward against loss in the money matter—your own individual responsibility, Mr. Griswold. He accepted the money in good faith, and——"

Again Griswold gave place to the caustic humor and finished for her.

"—And, though it is stolen money, it must not be taken away from him. Once, when I was even more foolish than I am now, I said of you that you would be a fitting heroine in a story in which the hero should be a man who might need to borrow a conscience. It's quite the other way around."

"We needn't quarrel," she said, retreating again behind the barrier of cold reserve. "I suppose I have given you the right to say disagreeable things to me, if you choose to assert it. But we are wasting time which may be very precious. Will you go away, as I have suggested?"

He found his hat and got upon his feet rather unsteadily.

"I don't know; possibly I shall. But in any event, you needn't borrow any more trouble, either on your own account, or on Raymer's. By the merest chance, I met Johnson, the teller you speak of, a few minutes ago at the Winnebago House and was introduced to him. He didn't know me, then, or later, when Broffin was telling him that he ought to know me. Hence, the matter rests as it did before—between you and Mr. Galbraith."

"Mr. Galbraith?"

"Yes. That was a danger past, too, a short time ago. I met him, socially, and he didn't recognize me. Afterward, Broffin pointed me out to him, and again he failed to identify me. But the other day, after I had pulled him out of the lake, he remembered. I've been waiting to see what he will do."

"He will do nothing. You saved his life."

Griswold shook his head.

"I am still man enough to hope that he won't let the bit of personal service make him compound a felony."

"Why do you call it that?" she demanded.

"Because, from his point of view, and yours, that is precisely what it is; and it is what you are doing, Miss Farnham. I, the criminal, say this to you. You should have given me up the moment you recognized me. That is your creed, and you should have lived up to it. Since you haven't, you have wronged yourself and have made me the poorer by a thing that——"

"Stop!" she cried, standing up to face him. "Do you mean to tell me that you are ungrateful enough to——"

"No; ingratitude isn't quite the word. I'm just sorry; with the sorrow you have when you look for something that you have a right to expect, and find that it isn't there; that it has never been there; that it isn't anywhere. You have hurt me, and you have hurt yourself; but there is still a chance for you. When I am gone, go to the telephone and call Broffin at the Winnebago House. You can tell him that he will find me at my rooms. Good-by."

He was half-way to the foot of Lakeview Avenue, striding along moodily with his head down and his hands behind him, when he collided violently with Raymer going in the opposite direction. The shock was so unexpected that Griswold would have been knocked down if the muscular young iron-founder had not caught him promptly. At the saving instant came mutual recognition.

"Hello, there!" said Raymer. "You are the very man I've been looking for. Charlotte wants to see you."

"Not now she doesn't," was the rather grim contradiction. "I have just left her."

"Oh."

There was a pause, and then Griswold cut in morosely.

"So you did take my way out of the labor trouble, after all, didn't you?"

Raymer looked away.

"I don't know just how you'd like to have me answer that, Kenneth. How much or how little do you know of what happened?"

"Nothing at all"—shortly.

"Well, it was Margery who wrought the miracle, of course. I don't know, yet, just how she did it; but it was done, and done right."

"And you have asked her to marry you?"

"Suffering Scott! how you do come at a man! Yes, I asked her, if you've got to know."

"Well?" snapped Griswold.

"She—she turned me down, Kenneth; got up and walked all over me. That's a horrible thing to make me say, but it's the truth."

"I don't understand it, Raymer. Was it the No that means No?"

"I don't understand it either," returned the iron-founder, with grave naÏvetÉ. "And, yes, I guess she meant it. But that reminds me. She knew I was looking for you and she gave me a note—let me see, I've got it here somewhere; oh, yes, here it is—gilt monogram and all."

Griswold took the note and pocketed it without comment and without looking at it.

"Were you going to Doctor Bertie's?" he asked.

"I was. Have you any objection?"

"Not the least in the world. It's a good place for you to go just now, and I guess you are the right man for the place. Good-night."

At the next corner where there was an electric light, Griswold stopped and opened the monogrammed envelope. The enclosure was a single sheet of perfumed note-paper upon which, without date, address or signature was written the line:

"Mr. Galbraith is better—and he is grateful."