"I voted you in my precinct that time I ran for alderman in New York," said Ardmore, "but that's no sign you had a right to vote there. I shot Ballywinkle through the booth at the same time. I was a reform candidate and needed votes, but I hoped Bally would get arrested and be sent to jail. My impression is that you are really a citizen of Rhode Island, which is where Newport is." The debate as to Eighteen Eighty's legal residence was interrupted by the arrival of a summons for Ardmore, who hurriedly left the table. Big Paul awaited him below, mounted and holding a led-horse. "There's a line of the South Carolina militia crawling through the woods toward Raccoon Creek. They insist that it's a practice skirmish and that they've come over here because the landscape is naturally adapted to their purposes." "It's awfully nice of them to like my scenery. You'd better send your best man out to meet Colonel Gillingwater of the North Carolina militia, and tell him to march all his troops into the estate by the north gates, and to be in a hurry. Tell him--tell him Governor Dangerfield is anxious to have the staff present in full uniform at a grand ball at Ardsley to-night." Ardmore rode off alone toward Raccoon Creek to catch a view of the enemy. How far would Griswold go? This question he kept debating with himself. His late friend was a lawyer and a serious one whom he had not believed capable of seizing the militia of one state and using it to make a military demonstration against another. Ardmore could go as far as Griswold; yet he was puzzled to know why Griswold was in the field at all. Miss Dangerfield's suggestion that Griswold's interest in the daughter of the governor of South Carolina accounted for his presence on the border seemed plausible at first; and yet the more he thought about it the less credible it seemed, for he was sure that Griswold had talked to him about women with the frankness that had characterized all their intercourse, and Ardmore racked his brains in his effort to recall the few affairs to which the associate professor of admiralty had pleaded guilty. Memory brought these back to him slowly. There was an Old Point Comfort affair, dating back to Griswold's student days, and to which he had referred with no little feeling once or twice; and there was a York Harbor affair, that came a little later; and there was the girl he had met on a steamer, about whom Griswold had shown sensitiveness when Ardmore had made bold to twit him. But Ardmore could not account for Miss Osborne, unless his friend had been withholding his confidence while seemingly wholly frank; and the thought that this must be true widened the breach between them. And when he was saying to himself that the daughters of governors are not in the habit of picking up cavaliers and intrusting state affairs to them and that it was almost inconceivable that the conscientious Griswold, at the busiest season at