The officer, a good-looking, good-humored young giant, bared his head with an embarrassed smile. He made a brief explanation, turning his hat in his awkward hands, and resting his huge bulk first on one foot and then on the other. Old lady Gordon hardly allowed him to finish what he found to say, which was very little. "Now, what's the use of your telling me any such nonsense as that, Jim Slocum? You know I'm not going to let you come here, interfering with my cook's getting my dinner." "Yes, ma'am," said Jim, deferentially. "I do hate to inconvenience you, ma'am. But you see, ma'am, there's the law and here's the warrant. I'm bound to do what the law requires--I'll have to serve it." "Indeed, you won't do anything of the kind! Who ever heard of such impudence!" exclaimed old lady Gordon. "The very idea! Taking my cook away from getting my dinner to lock her up in jail! Upon my word, Jim Slocum, I thought you had some sense. But I'm not going to allow you to annoy me or get me stirred up on a warm morning like this. I'm not even going to discuss the matter. Just you run along now, Jim, that's a good fellow, and let Eunice alone--she's busy--and don't bother me any more." She settled herself back in her wide, low chair, and began to wave the turkey-wing fan with one hand, turning the leaves of her novel with the other. "But you see, ma'am, it's a mighty grave charge, attempted murder,--the state--" "Grave fiddlesticks!" retorted old lady Gordon, looking up from her novel with real fire blazing now in her fine dark eyes. "The state!" with infinite scorn. "What difference would it make to me if it were the United States? I tell you I won't have another word!" Her raised voice, the lower tone of the officer's mild, but firm, persistence, the hurried gathering and smothered whispering of the servants around the windows and doors, all these combined had finally attracted the attention of Lynn Gordon, who was absorbed in reading in his own room overhead, and he now came hurrying downstairs. Entering his grandmother's room, he looked in surprise at the group which he found there; at her, at the constable, and lastly at Eunice, who had stood quietly by throughout the whole controversy with the manner of a coolly disinterested spectator. The officer turned eagerly to Lynn with the relief that every man feels upon the entrance of another man into a difficult business transaction with women. "Maybe you can persuade your grandmother to let Eunice go," the constable said, addressing him, when a few words had made the matter clear to Lynn. "It is really the quickest way to get her cook back. The county judge is in town; I saw him tying his horse to the tavern hitching-post as I passed coming down here. He'd hurry up the case and get it over in no time to accommodate your grandma, being as they're kinder kin--him and your grandma's folks."