It was only a few lines in June’s delicate hand-writing: “I will be there. I go to my ruin, Jerry, for you. Will there be anything in our life together that will make me forget that? June.” Jerry read it over several times. It certainly did not breathe an exalted gladness. Away from him she always seemed in this condition of fear and doubt. It was his presence, his hand upon her, that made her tremulously, submissively his. He would not be sure of her till she was beside him to-night in the buggy. Would that hour ever come? He looked at the clock ticking on the wall. With every passing moment his exaltation seemed to grow stronger. It was difficult for him to be quiet, not to stop and talk to everybody that he encountered with a feverish loquacity. The slowly gathering pressure of the last month seemed to culminate on this day of mad rebellion. Within the past two weeks his stocks had increased largely in value. He was a rich man, and to-night with the woman he loved beside him he would be free. He and she, free in the great outside world, free to love and to live as they would. Would the day never pass and the night never come? In San Francisco the Colonel was completing the business of the pumps as quickly as he could. He felt that he was getting to be a foolish old man, but he could not shake off his worry about June. Her words and appearance at their last interview kept recurring to him. Many times in the past year he had seen her looking pitifully fragile and known her to be unhappy, but he had never before felt the poignant anxiety about her that he now experienced. Despite his desire to get back with as much speed as possible, unforeseen delays occurred, and instead of returning on Friday, as he had hoped, he saw that he would not be back before Wednesday. He wrote this to June in a letter full of the anxious solicitude he felt. To this he received no answer, and, his worry increasing, he was about to telegraph her when he received a piece of information that swept all minor matters from his mind. On Thursday at midday he was lunching with a friend at the club, when, in the course of conversation, his companion asked him if he knew the whereabouts of Beauregard Allen. The words were accompanied with a searchingly significant look. The Colonel, answering that Allen was in Virginia, paused in his meal and became quietly attentive. He knew more than others of Allen’s situation. Of late he had scented catastrophe ahead of his one-time comrade. The man’s face opposite him struck an arrow of suspicion through his mind. He put down his wine glass and sat listening, his expression one of frowning concentration.