"Come! We must solve the riddle of the lost prisoner at once, and your father will undoubtedly give an excellent account of himself when he gets ready. Meanwhile the fiction that he is personally carrying the war into the Appleweight country must be maintained, and I shall step to the railway station and wire the Columbia newspaper in his name that he is in Mingo County on the trail of the outlaws." The messages were composed by their joint efforts at the station, with not so much haste but that an associate professor of admiralty, twenty-nine years old, could defer in the most trifling matters to the superior literary taste of a girl of twenty whose brown eyes were very pleasant to meet in moments of uncertainty and appeal. He signed the messages Charles Osborne, Governor, with a flourish indicative of the increased confidence and daring which Miss Osborne's arrival had brought to the situation. "And now," said Griswold, as they rode through the meager streets of Turner's, "we will go to Mount Nebo Church and see what we can learn of Appleweight's disappearance." "The North Carolina papers are making a great deal of Governor Dangerfield's activity in trying to put down outlawry on the border," said Barbara. "Marked copies of the newspapers are pouring into papa's office. I can but hold Mr. Bosworth responsible for that. We may count upon it that he will do all in his power to annoy us"--and then, as Griswold looked at her quickly, he was aware that she had colored and averted her eyes; and while, as a lawyer, he was aware that words of two letters might be provocative of endless litigation of the bitterest sort, he had never known before that _us_, in itself the homeliest of words, could cause so sweet a distress. It seemed that an interval of several years passed before either spoke again. "We are quite near the estate of your friend, Mr. Ardmore, aren't we?" asked Barbara presently. "I fancy we are," replied Griswold, but with a tone so coldly at variance with his previous cordial references to the master of Ardsley that Barbara looked at him inquiringly. "I'm sorry that I should have given you the impression, Miss Osborne, that Mr. Ardmore and I are friends, as I undoubtedly did at Columbia. He has, for some unaccountable reason, cut my acquaintance in a manner so unlike him that I do not pretend to explain it; nor, I may add, is it of the least importance." "I was a little surprised," returned Barbara, with truly feminine instinct for mingling in the balm of consolation the bitterest and most poisonous herbs, "that you should have had for a friend a man who frankly follows girls whose appearance he fancies. Even Mr. Ardmore's democratic enthusiasm for the down-trodden laundry girl does not wholly mitigate the winking episode."