And as she stood desperate, at bay, with her nest storm tossed and threatened, suddenly the impossibility of it all came down upon her, and stern with a very rigidity of resolve she went into the house, lighted a candle by the old desk in the hall, and wrote swiftly a few words of desperate summons to the Senator. She knew that Friday night always found him over the fields at Boliver, and she told him briefly the situation and asked him to come over in the early morning to the rescue--and sacrifice. When she had first come out on the porch she had seen young Bob ride up to the store on one of his colts, and she ran fleetly down to the front gate and called to him. He consented instantly to ride over and deliver the note for her, but he shot an uneasy glance at her from beneath his wide hat as he put the letter in his pocket. "Is anything wrong, Miss Rose Mary?" he asked anxiously but respectfully. "No, Bob, dear, nothing that--that I can't make--right," she answered in a soft, tearless voice, and as he got on his horse and rode away she came slowly up the long front walk that was moonflecked from the leaves of the tall trees. Then once more she stood on the old door sill--at bay. And as she looked at the old Ridge across the sweet, blooming clover-fields, with the darkened house behind her, again the waters of despair rose breast-high and heart-high, beat against her aching throat and were just about to dash over her head as she stretched out one arm to the hills and with a broken cry bent her white forehead in the curve of the other, but suddenly bent head, tear-blinded eyes, quivering breast and supplicating arms were folded tight in a strong embrace and warm, thirsty lips pressed against the tears on her cheeks as Everett's voice with a choke and a gulp made its way into her consciousness. "I feel like shaking the very life out of you, Rose Mary Alloway," was his tender form of greeting. "You're squeezing it out," came in all the voice that Rose Mary could command for an answer. And the broad-shouldered, burden-bearing, independent woman that was the Rose of Old Harpeth melted into just a tender girl who crushed her heart against her lover's and clung as meekly as any slip of vine to her young lord oak. "But I don't care," she finished up under his chin. And Everett's laugh that greeted and accepted her unexpected meekness rang through the hall and brought a commotion in answer. The wee dogs, keen both of ear and scent, shot like small electric volts from Stonie's couch, hurled themselves through the hall and sprang almost waist-high against Everett's side in a perfect ecstasy of welcome. They yelped and barked and whined and nosed in a tumbling heap of palpitating joy until he was obliged to hold Rose Mary in one arm while he made an attempt to respond to and abate their enthusiasm with the other.