“Nothing you’ll call the sheriff about,” the man told him. He faced the Senator squarely, revealing even in the half-darkness a certain racial resemblance to him which made them equals on the instant. For all Stroude’s grooming and the stranger’s shabbiness, they were strangely akin in their antagonism, bound not by family ties but by broader, more basic associations. Each of them, tall, thin, lithe, gazed on the other with unflinching blue eyes. Each of them kept watch with wildcat tenacity. From each of them emanated the recklessness of personal courage that takes no count of law beyond its own code. In their sudden springing to guard, the predominant characteristics of the two men, the Senator and the shambling shadower, flared up stronger than their setting, and although the lights of the White House gleamed golden across the Square, they were mountaineers facing each other in the hate of vendetta. The years and the place fell away from Stroude, leaving him stripped to the bone of his clan’s creed. “We’ve settled our own affairs before,” Stroude said. “We can do it now.” As if the words gave him advantage, the other man seized them swiftly. “Let’s do it, then,” he replied. “I’ve come here to get you to do something you won’t want to do. Will you fight me for it?” “Not till I know the stake.” “Didn’t you get her letter?” “Whose?” “There’s only one woman I’d be coming to you about, I reckon.” “I’ve never heard from her since the day she went back to you. That was twenty-six years ago last May.” “The fourteenth.” “Why should she have written me now?” “She’s dying.” The man’s voice sounded in a softer timbre. “A month ago the doctor from the moonlight school told her that she had only a little while to live. She’s been pining ever since, not about dying, for she’s brave as any man, but for something I couldn’t guess until she told me. She wants to see _you_. She wrote you a letter, but she was afraid you might not get it, and so she sent me. ‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that I won’t rest easy in my grave over there on the side of Big Stony, if he don’t come to me before I die. He told me once,’ she said, ‘that he’d come when I’d call. I’m calling now.’ That’s her message.” His tone lifted from its softer depth. “Are you coming to her?” “I can’t.” “Why not?” “I’ve a thousand duties. I’ve---- It’s ridiculous.” “Then you’re not coming?” “How can I, Martin? I’m not my own man. I’m here for my state, for my country. I have work to do. I can’t let any personal obligation interfere with it. Besides----” “It couldn’t hurt your wife, not even if she knew it. And Dell’s dying.” “I’m sorry, Martin. I am, honestly. Will you tell Dell that I----” “I’ll tell her nothing but that you wouldn’t come. Nothing else matters. And I think you owe her that, at least.” “But----”