_“I have just learned,” Ackerman wrote, “that a number of men of notoriously desperate character from the foot of the mountains were in Independence on the day before the tragedy and that a man by the name of Dan Wiley, their leader, reported in person to John Graham’s office.”_ Stella sprang from her bed and began hurriedly to dress. “Now God give me strength for the work I’m going to do!” she cried, with strangling rage. “To think that such a man should dare to speak to me of love--should dare to clasp my hand with the stain of my father’s blood yet fresh on his! I could kill him with my own hand--coward, dastard, sneak, assassin! I hate him--I hate him!” She threw herself on her bed again in a paroxysm of uncontrollable fury. She arose at length, calm, alert, her cheeks flushed with brilliant colour, her great eyes dilated wide and sparkling with courage. The knocker struck sharply and she remembered with a start that Steve Hoyle had returned on the midnight train and would call this morning. She heard Maggie show Steve into the library. Without waiting for her breakfast she hastened to meet him, and he plunged at once into the purpose of his call: “Has John Graham yet confessed his leadership?” “He will to-day,” was the quiet answer. “The fame of your desperate love affair has set the town agog,” Steve laughed triumphantly. “Doubtless,” she replied moodily. “I’ve everything arranged--the men are only waiting for the word.” “I prefer that the law take its course. I’m not ready to commit murder,” she said emphatically. “Nonsense! The law’s a farce--Deliver him to his own men to be judged by the Klan which has set itself above the State. If he is the leader of the Invisible Empire he holds his own High Court. Let his men decide his fate. It’s justice!” Stella hesitated a moment and slowly said: “When I learn from his own lips that he is the Chief of the Klan and find that there is no other way in which he can be made to pay the penalty of his crime, I’ll deliver him to his men.” “They’ll be ready to receive him.” “I shall know in twenty-four hours.” “I’ll await your word,” he answered eagerly, his eyes devouring her beauty. Steve hurriedly left and Stella seated herself at her desk to write her answer to John Graham. Two attempts she tore up. The third suited her. In the centre of a sheet of paper she wrote two words: _“Come--Stella.”_ When John Graham received this note at eleven o’clock from the hands of her messenger, he felt before he broke the seal that it bore glad tidings. He tore it open and with a cry of joy, tried to read, and the tears blinded him. He crushed the note in his hand and bowed his head on his desk, his whole being convulsed with emotion which he could not control. He rose at length, walked to his window, opened the note again and gazed at it until he broke into a joyous laugh, repeating the words: _“Come--Stella.”_