The voice of a woman was heard outside protesting: "No--no--I'll stay here----" Peeler caught her by the arm and drew her within: "This is Lucy, my housekeeper, major." The editor looked in surprise at the slender, graceful figure of the mulatto. He had pictured her coarse and heavy. He saw instead a face of the clean-cut Aryan type with scarcely a trace of negroid character. Only the thick curling hair, shining black eyes and deep yellow skin betrayed the African mother. Peeler's eyes were fixed in a tense stare on a small bundle she carried. His voice was a queer muffled tremor as he slowly said: "Unwrap the thing and show it to him." The woman looked at the editor and smiled contemptuously, showing two rows of perfect teeth, as she slowly drew the brown wrapper from a strange object which she placed on the desk. The editor picked the thing up, looked at it and laughed. It was a tiny pine coffin about six inches long and two inches wide. A piece of glass was fitted into the upper half of the lid and beneath the glass was placed a single tube rose whose peculiar penetrating odor already filled the room. Peeler mopped the perspiration from his brow. "Now, what do you think of that?" he asked in an awed whisper. In spite of an effort at self-control, Norton broke into a peal of laughter: "It does look serious, doesn't it?" "Serious ain't no word for it, sir! It not only looks like death, but I'm damned if it don't smell like it--smell it!" "So it does," the editor agreed, lifting the box and breathing the perfume of the pale little flower. "And that ain't all," Peeler whispered, "look inside of it." He opened the lid and drew out a tightly folded scrap of paper on which was written in pencil the words: "You lying, hypocritical, blaspheming old scoundrel--unless you leave the country within forty-eight hours, this coffin will be large enough to hold all we'll leave of you. K. K. K." The editor frowned and then smiled. "All a joke, Peeler," he said reassuringly. But Peeler was not convinced. He leaned close and his whiskey-laden breath seemed to fill the room as his fat finger rested on the word "blaspheming:" "I don't like that word, major; it sounds like a preacher had something to do with the writin' of it. You know I've been a tough customer in my day and I used to cuss the preachers in this county somethin' frightful. Now, ye see, if they should be in this Ku Klux Klan--I ain't er skeered er their hell hereafter, but they sho' might give me a taste in this world of what they think's comin' to me in the next. I tell you that thing makes the cold chills run down my back. Now, major, I reckon you're about the level-headest and the most influential man in the county--the question is, what shall I do to be saved?" Again Norton laughed: "Nothing. It's a joke, I tell you----"