he window of my bedroom last night."

He handed Phil a piece of paper on which was written:

"The old club-footed beast who has sneaked into our town, pretending
to search for health, in reality the leader of the infernal Union
League, will be given forty-eight hours to vacate the house and rid
this community of his presence.

"K. K. K."

"Are you an officer of the Union League?" Phil asked in surprise.

"I am its soul."

"How could a Southerner discover this, if your own children didn't know
it?"

"By their spies who have joined the League."

"And do the rank and file know the Black Pope at the head of the order?"

"No, but high officials do."

"Does Lynch?"

"Certainly."

"Then he is the scoundrel who placed that note in your room. It is a
clumsy attempt to forge an order of the Klan. The white man does not live
in this town capable of that act. I know these people."

"My boy, you are bewitched by the smiles of a woman to deny your own flesh
and blood."

"Nonsense, father--you are possessed by an idea which has become an insane
mania----"

"Will you respect my wishes?" the old man broke in angrily.

"I will not," was the clear answer. Phil turned and left the room, and the
old man's massive head sank on his breast in helpless baffled rage and
grief.

He was more successful in his appeal to Elsie. He convinced her of the
genuineness of the threat against him. The brutal reference to his
lameness roused the girl's soul. When the old man, crushed by Phil's
desertion, broke down the last reserve of his strange cold nature, tore
his wounded heart open to her, cried in agony over his deformity, his
lameness, and the anguish with which he saw the threatened ruin of his
life-work, she threw her arms around his neck in a flood of tears and
cried:

"Hush, father, I will not desert you. I will never leave you, or wed
without your blessing. If I find that my lover was in any way responsible
for this insult, I'll tear his image out of my heart and never speak his
name again!"

She wrote a note to Ben, asking him to meet her at sundown on horseback at
Lover's Leap.

Ben was elated at the unexpected request. He was hungry for an hour with
his sweetheart, whom he had not seen save for a moment since the storm of
excitement broke following the discovery of the crime.

He hastened through his work of ordering the movement of the Klan for the