“He will forfeit his life.” Stella’s eyes rested a moment on the chair in which her father fell the night of his death. She turned and gazed into Steve’s face with a strange absent expression in her eyes as though they were seeing a picture which had etched itself in fire on her soul. “I’m going to cultivate Mr. Graham’s acquaintance,” she slowly said. “I’ll learn from his own lips if he is the leader of the Ku Klux Klan.” “And if you find that he is?” “I may hold you to your pledge!” “And on the day he is executed.” “I will marry you!” CHAPTER III--THE TRAP IS SET THE next morning Steve Hoyle left town and Stella began at once to put into execution her plan to entrap John Graham in the meshes of her beauty and deliver him to justice. She felt instinctively that if this man with his intense and romantic nature ever yielded to the spell of her love, there could be no limit to which he would not go at her bidding. With equal certainty she realised that the task would be a delicate one--a task which might put to the test every power she possessed. Her whole being rose to the work with a thrill of keen, cruel interest--the interest of the primitive huntress on track of the rarest, wildest and most daring game. The first difficulty which apparently opened an impassable gulf between them was the suit which John Graham had begun to regain possession of the estate. The language in which his complaint had been drawn was the limit of bitter accusation permitted in a legal document--parts of it, indeed, the Court had ordered stricken from the record as scandalous and irrelevant. Stella’s eyes danced with excitement as she read in the morning’s paper the announcement of his withdrawal of this suit. The news was accompanied by a brief statement which might have been written as a personal apology to her for the language he had used. _“I beg leave to say to the public in withdrawing this action that I regret the overheated language in which the original complaint was expressed.”_ Without a moment’s hesitation she seized her pen and wrote him an invitation to call. Her words revealed the deeply laid scheme on which her mind had seized in a flash of inspiration. She read and reread it carefully: _My dear Mr. Graham:_ _Permit me to thank you for the manly words of retraction which you have used in this morning’s paper.-Your withdrawal of this suit and the generous manner in which it was done, removes the only barrier to our friendly acquaintance. I wish to renew it, and ask you to please accept at once the position of my personal attorney in the settlement of my father’s estate. Your influence in the courts of North Carolina, your eloquence and genius will, be of invaluable service to an orphan girl who needs the advice of one on whose integrity she can absolutely rely._ _Trusting that you may honour me by answering this request in person at three o’clock this afternoon._ _Sincerely,_ _Stella Butler._