Two forces had driven her into a morbid interest in the crime, pride and remorse. In mere laughing banter she had promised her father if a single insult should be offered him, or a hair of his head harmed, she would give her life to avenge the deed. She had not dreamed of such a possibility. But now that the impossible had happened, she would make good her word to the dead. And she would make it good, not only because she had promised and her heart was sick with remorse for the part she had unconsciously played in the tragedy, but for a deeper personal reason--the consciousness of the insult to her pride which the crime had offered. The assassin had dared to strike her father dead in her home, in her very presence. Had the knife sought her own heart she would have felt less deeply the wound. Somewhere even by her side there stood amid the shadows of life a being who could thus insult her by ignoring her very existence! She resolved to make that man feel her power by paying the penalty with his own life. An element of pitiless cruelty in her character found for the first time its expression in a passionate thirst for the blood of this criminal. She had seen every effort to penetrate the mystery fail with increasing inward rage. Larkin, who had charge of the Judge’s campaign, had been aggressive and untiring for two weeks and then had given up and returned to his duties as Chairman of the State Executive Committee. The Attorney General announced his departure for Washington and ordered the withdrawal of the troops and detectives. Stella hastened to send her burning protest against his action. General Champion, who had been deeply moved by her beauty and evident suffering, called personally at the old Graham mansion for an interview. He received her indignant protests with the gravest courtesy. “Please don’t tell me, General,” she began bitterly, “that my father’s death is an apparently insoluble mystery. I am sick, sick, sick of hearing such rubbish! Eight weeks ago he was murdered in cold blood in this hall on the very spot where you are now sitting. It was not done by ghosts, it was not an accident, it was done by a living man. I refuse to recognise in it an act of Providence. I will not wear an emblem of mourning as long as this man breathes on earth. I have sworn it My father was in the service of his country attempting to enforce its laws. I have the right to demand that a rich and powerful government avenge his death. It is incredible that the coward who did this crime can not be caught and punished.” “Upon the other hand, my dear child,” said the General, “I assure you that the apprehension of this criminal is one of the most difficult tasks ever assigned the Department of Justice.” “And why, pray?” “Because in this climate the Invisible Empire is yet stronger than the visible----” “You believe then that the Klan committed the deed?” she asked