t smiled
at her.

"So," he said, in smooth, even tones, "you think the game is up?"

"Yes; but nothing need harm you," she answered, eagerly.

"Harm me!" he repeated, with an ugly sneer; then a sudden, wholesome
curiosity seized him, and he blurted out, "But what do you care?"

Looking up at him, she started to reply, and the words failed her. She
bent her head in silence.

"Why?" he demanded again.

"I have often seen you," she faltered; "I sometimes thought you were
unhappy."

"But why do you come to warn me? People hate me in Nauvoo."

"I do not hate you," she replied, faintly.

"Why?"

"I don't know."

A star suddenly gleamed low over the forest's level crest. Night had
fallen in Nauvoo. After a silence he said, in an altered voice, "Am I to
understand that you came to warn a common criminal?"

She did not answer.

"Do you know what I am doing?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What?"

"You are counterfeiting."

"How do you know," he said, with a touch of menace in his sullen voice.

"Because--because--my father did it--"

"Did what?"

"Counterfeited--what you are doing now!" she gasped. "That is how I know
about the fibre. I knew it the moment I saw it--government fibre--and I
knew what was on it; the flame justified me. And oh, I could not let
them take you as they took father--to prison for all those years!"

"Your father!" he blurted out.

"Yes," she cried, revolted; "and his handwriting is on that piece of
paper in your hand!"

Through the stillness of the evening the rushing of a distant brook
among the hemlocks grew louder, increasing on the night wind like the
sound of a distant train on a trestle. Then the wind died out; a night
bird whistled in the starlight; a white moth hummed up and down the
vines over the porch.

"I know who you are now," the girl continued; "you knew my father in
the Bureau of Engraving and Printing."

"Yes."

"And your name is not Helm."

"No."

"Do you not know that the government watches discharged employes of the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing?"

"I know it."

"So you changed your name?"

"Yes."

She leaned nearer, looking earnestly into his shadowy eyes.

"Do you know that an officer of the secret service is coming to Nauvoo?"

"I could take the plate and go. There is time," he answered, sullenly.

"Yes--there is time." A dry sob choked her. He heard the catch in her
voice, but he did not move his eyes from the ground. His heart seemed to
h