"If you don't see him by ten o'clock you will take personal command and exercise your own discretion as to the best method of landing Appleweight in a South Carolina jail. After that we must find papa, and it will be up to him to satisfy the newspapers and his constituents with some excuse for his strange disappearance." Collins had come from Raleigh on the evening train, and he had solemnly assured Ardmore that the present state of affairs could not be maintained another twenty-four hours. He had exhausted his professional resources, and the North Carolina newspapers of all shades of opinion were clamoring for the truth, and were insisting that, for the honor and dignity of the state, Governor Dangerfield should show himself in Raleigh. Even the metropolitan press, which Collins had filled for several days with blithe stories of the administration's vigorous policy in the Appleweight case, had refused further matter from him. "We've got to find Dangerfield or bust. Now, where is that eminent statesman, Ardmore? You can't tell me you don't know; but if you don't, Miss Dangerfield does, and she's got to tell." "She hasn't the slightest idea, but if the newspapers find out that he's really and truly missing, he will have to show up; but first we've got to take Appleweight off that case of Chateau Bizet and lodge him in the jail at Turner Court House, and let Governor Osborne have the odium of incarcerating the big chief of the border, to whom he is under the greatest political obligations." "But it's all over the country now that Osborne hasn't been seen in Columbia since he and Dangerfield had that row in New Orleans. Cranks are turning up everywhere, pretending to be governors of various states, and old Dangerfield is seen on all the outgoing steamers. There's been nothing like it since the kidnapping of Charley Ross." Ardmore drew on his riding-gloves reflectively, and a delighted grin illuminated his countenance. "I caught a lunatic down on the Raccoon this afternoon who said _he_ was the governor of South Carolina, and I locked him up." "Well, he may be Osborne," remarked Collins, with journalistic suspicion. "And he may be a Swiss admiral or the king of Mars. I guess I'm a governor myself, and I know what a governor looks like and acts like--you can't fool me. I put this impostor where he'll have a chance to study astronomy to-night." "Then he isn't on that case of Chateau Bizet with Appleweight?" "No; I locked him up in a corn-crib until I get time to study his credentials. Come along now!" Ardmore, Collins and Cooke rode rapidly away through the wide gates of the estate along the Sapphire road, over which, by his last bulletin, the adjutant-general of North Carolina was marching his troops. They had left Cooke's men with Paul's foresters to guard the house and to picket the banks of the Raccoon in the immediate neighborhood of the camp of the South Carolinians.