“No, Miss Susie, I’ve serious work just now with the present lord of this manor; my future hangs on the issue. I’ll win--and I’ll come home later in the evening without a scratch.” Again the slender white hand rested on his arm. “Promise me to wait an hour until you are cooler and your head is clear before you see him--will you?” “Maybe,” he said evasively. “If you do appreciate my coming,” she urged, “at least show it by this; promise for my sake, won’t you?” He hesitated a moment and answered with courtesy: “Yes, I promise for your sake, Susie, my little mascot and fellow conspirator of The Invisible Empire--good-bye!” He seized her hand, and held it a moment. “My! my! but you look one of us to-night, with that sylph figure robed in white standing there ghost-like in the moonlit shadows!” “I wish I could share your dangers. I’d go on a raid with you if you’d let me,” she cried eagerly. “No doubt,” he laughed. “I’ll sit up until you come,” she whispered as she turned and left him. John Graham leaned against the picket fence and watched intently the white figure until Susie Wilson disappeared. The talk with her had more than half sobered him. “And now for business,” he muttered, turning through the open gate toward the house. He stopped suddenly with amazement. “Well, what the Devil! every window from cellar to attic ablaze with light. And the old scoundrel has always kept it dark as the grave.” He seated himself on a rustic bench in the shadows to await the lapse of the hour he had promised Susie, and pondered more carefully the plan of personal vengeance against Butler which was now rapidly shaping itself in his mind. That he had the power, as chief of the dreaded Ku Klux Klan, to execute it was not to be doubted. The Invisible Empire obeyed his word without a question. Tender memories of his childhood began to flood his soul. Beneath these trees he had spent the happiest days of life--the charmed life of the old régime. He could see now the stately form of his mother moving among its boxwood walks directing the work of her slaves. He had not been there before since the day her body was carried from the hall five years ago and laid to rest in the family vault in the far corner of the lawn. Ah, that awful day! Could he ever forget it? The day old Butler brought his deputy marshals and evicted his father and mother from the home they loved as life itself! The Graham house had always been a show place in the town of Independence. Built in 1840, by John’s grandfather, Robert Graham, the eccentric son of Colonel John Graham of Revolutionary fame, it was a curious mixture of Colonial and French architecture. The French touches were tributes to the Huguenot ancestry of his grandmother.