"But, my dear child," he said, "what a wrong thing for you to have done. It was a splendid, chivalrous, gallant sacrifice, but it was wrong. And if you don't mind I'd like to shake hands with you again." "You see, sir, there was no one with whom I might advise in the emergency that came upon me without warning," she explained. "I had no confidante except my mother, and she--through madness--had turned against me. I had no friend then--I have one now, though." And she went to Miss Smith and put her head on the elder woman's shoulder. With her arms about the girl, Miss Smith addressed the governor. "We are going away a while together for a rest," she told him. "We both need it. And when we come back she is going to join me in my work. Some day Margaret will be a better interior decorator than her teacher can ever hope to be." "Then from now on, so far as you two are concerned, this ghastly thing should be only an unhappy dream which you'll strive to forget, I'm sure," he said. "It's all over and done with, isn't it?" "Over and done with for her--yes," said Miss Smith. "But how about your duty as governor? How about my duty as a citizen? Shouldn't we each of us, you in your big way and I in my small way, work to bring about a reform in the statutes under which such errors are possible? Think, governor, of what happened to this child! It may happen again to-day or to-morrow to some other equally innocent sufferer. It might happen to any one of us--to me or to someone dear to you." "Miss Smith," he stated, "if ever it happens to you I shall take the witness stand on your account and testify to two things: First, that you are the sanest human being in this state; and second, that you certainly do know how to play a hunch when you get one. If I had your intuition, plus my ambition, I wouldn't be governor--I'd be running for president. And I'd win out too!" CHAPTER V THE RAVELIN' WOLF When the draft came to our town as it came to all towns it enmeshed Jeff Poindexter, who to look at him might be any age between twenty-one and forty-one. Jeff had a complexion admirably adapted for hiding the wear and tear of carking years and as for those telltale wrinkles which betray care he had none, seeing that care rarely abode with him for longer than twenty-four hours on a stretch. Did worry knock at the front door Jeff had a way of excusing himself out of the back window. But this dread thing they called a draft was a worry which just opened the door and walked right in--and outside the window stood a jealous Government, all organized to start a rookus if anybody so much as stepped sideways.