ot the murder of Grant could be
easily handled and I don't believe they will do more than try to scare
him otherwise."

"Why?" again queried Nathan Perry, towering thin and nervous above the
seated council.

"Well," piped the Doctor, with his chin on his cane, "he's too big a
figure nationally for murder--"

"Well, then--what do you propose, gentlemen?" asked Perry who, being the
youngest man in the council, was impatient.

Fenn rose, his back to the ornamental logs piled decoratively in the
fireplace, and answered:

"To sound the clarion means riot and bloodshed--and failure for the
cause."

"To let things drift," put in Brotherton, "puts Grant in danger."

"Of what?" asked the Doctor.

"Well, of indignities unspeakable and cruel torture," returned
Brotherton.

"I'm sure that's all, George. But can't we--we four stop that?" said
Fenn. "Can't we stand off the mob? A mob's a coward."

"It's the least we can do," said Perry.

"And all you can do, Nate," added the Doctor, with the weariness of age
in his voice and in his counsel.

But when the group separated and the Doctor purred up the hill in his
electric, his heart was sore within him and he spoke to the wife of his
bosom of the burden that was on his heart. Then, after a dinner scarcely
tasted, the Doctor hurried down town to meet with the men at
Brotherton's.

As Mrs. Nesbit saw the electric dip under the hill, her first impulse
was to call up her daughter on the telephone, who was at Foley that
evening. For be it remembered Mrs. Nesbit in the days of her prime was
dubbed "the General" by George Brotherton, and when she saw the care and
hovering fear in the pink, old face of the man she loved, she was not
the woman to sit and rock. She had to act and, because she feared she
would be stopped, she did not pick up the telephone receiver. She went
to the library, where Kenyon Adams with his broken leg in splints was
sitting while Lila read to him. She stood looking at the lovers for a
moment.

"Children," she said, "Grant Adams is in great danger. We must help
him."

To their startled questions, she answered: "He is asking your father,
Lila, to release him from the prison to-night. If he is not released, a
mob will take Grant as they took that poor fool last night and--" She
stopped, turned toward them a perturbed and fear-wrinkled face. Then she
said quickly: "I don't know that I owe Grant Adams anything but--you
children do--" She did not complete