"You saw the attorney-general this morning," she went on. "As you suggested, he would naturally be the one to whom I should turn, but I can not do it. I--there is a reason"--and she faltered a moment--"there are reasons why I can not appeal to Mr. Bosworth at this time." She shrugged her shoulders as though throwing off a disagreeable topic, and he saw that there was nothing more to be said on this point. His heart-beats quickened as he realized that she was appealing to him; that, though he was only the most casual acquaintance, she trusted him. It was a dictum of his, learned in his study and practise of the law, that issues must be met as they offer--not as the practitioner would prefer to have them, but as they occur; and here was a condition of affairs that must be met promptly if the unaccountable absence of the governor was to be robbed of its embarrassing significance. As he pondered for a moment, a messenger rode into the grounds, and Miss Osborne slipped away and met the boy at the steps. She came back and opened a telegram, reading the message at one of the windows. An indignant exclamation escaped her, and she crumpled the paper in her hand. "The impudence of it!" she exclaimed. He had risen, and she now turned to him with anger and scorn deepening her beautiful color. Her breath came quickly; her head was lifted imperiously; her lips quivered slightly as she spoke. "This is from Governor Dangerfield. Can you imagine a man of any character or decency sending such a message to the governor of another state?" She watched him as he read: RALEIGH, N. C. The Honorable Charles Osborne, Governor of South Carolina, Columbia, S. C.: Have written by to-night's mail in Appleweight matter. Your vacillating course not understood. WILLIAM DANGERFIELD, Governor of North Carolina. "What do you think of that?" she demanded. "I think it's impertinent, to say the least," he replied guardedly. "Impertinent? It's the most contemptible, outrageous thing I ever heard of in my life! Governor Dangerfield has dilly-dallied with that case for two years. His administration has been marked from the beginning by the worst kind of incompetence. Why, this man Appleweight and his gang of outlaws only come into South Carolina now and then to hide and steal, but they commit most of their crimes in North Carolina, and they always have. Talk about a vacillating course! Father has never taken steps to arrest those men out of sheer regard for Governor Dangerfield; he thought North Carolina had some pride, and that her governor would prefer to take care of his own criminals. What do you suppose Appleweight is indicted for in this state? For stealing one ham--one single ham from a farmer in Mingo County, and he's killed half a dozen men in North Carolina."