she said peremptorily.

"I shall do nothing of the sort! I shall not let you make an insane
fool of yourself!"

She bent downward. Though in the darkness he could not see her face,
the tensity of her tone told him her eyes were flashing.

"Mr. Bruce," she said with slow emphasis, "if you do not loosen that
rein, this second, I give you my word I shall never see you, never
speak to you again."

"All right, but I shall not let you make a fool of yourself," he cried
with fierce dominance. "You've got to yield to sense, even though I
use force on you."

She did not answer. Swiftly she reversed her riding crop and with all
her strength brought its heavy end down upon his wrist.

"Nelly!" she ordered sharply, and in the same instant struck the
horse. The animal lunged free from Bruce's benumbed grasp, and sprang
forward into a gallop.

"Good night!" she called back to him.

He shouted a reply; his voice came to her faintly, wrathful and
defiant, but his words were whirled away upon the storm.

CHAPTER XV

POLITICS MAKE STRANGE BED-FELLOWS

She quieted Nelly into a canter, made her way through the soundly
sleeping back streets, and at length emerged from the city and
descended into the River Road, which was slightly shorter than
Grayson's Pike which led over the high back country to The Sycamores.
She knew what Nelly could do, and she settled the mare down into the
fastest pace she could hold for the eleven miles before her.

Katherine was aquiver with suspense, one moment with hopeful
expectation, the next with fear that her deductions were all awry.
Perhaps Blake had not gone out to meet a confederate. And if he had,
perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But if her deductions
were correct, who was this secret ally? Would she be able to approach
them near enough to discover his identity? And would she be able to
learn the exact outlines of the plot that was afoot? If so, what would
it all prove to be?

Such questions and doubts galloped madly through her mind. The storm
grew momently in fierceness. The water and fury of three months of
withheld storms were spending themselves upon the earth in one violent
outburst. The wind cracked her skirt like a whip-lash, and whined and
snarled and roared among the trees. The rain drove at her in maddened
sheets, found every opening in her raincoat, and soon she was as wet
as though dropped in the river yonder. The night was as black as the
interior of a