I saw he was not yet willing to take us into his confidence.  We parted, Bob going along in the cab with Miss Sands.

Two days afterward she sent for us both as soon as we got to the office.

“I have this telegram from father—­it makes me uneasy:  ’Mailed to-day important letter.  Answer as soon as you receive.’”

The following afternoon the letter came.  It showed Judge Sands in a very nervous, uneasy state.  He said he had been living a life of daily terror, as some of his friends, for whose estates he was trustee, had been receiving anonymous letters, advising them to look into the judge’s trust affairs; that the Reinhart crowd had been using renewed pressure to make him let go all his Seaboard stock, which they wanted to secure at the low prices to which they had depressed it, in order that they might reorganise and carry out the scheme they had been so long planning.  Judge Sands went on to say that the day he was compelled to sell his Seaboard stock he would have to make public an announcement of his condition, as there could be no sale without the court’s consent.  His closing was: 

“My dear daughter, no one knows better than I the almost hopelessness of expecting any relief from your operations.  But so hopeless have I become of late, so much am I reliant upon you, my dear child, and eternal hope so springs in all of us when confronted with great necessities, that I have hoped and still hope that you are to be the saviour of your family; that you, only a frail child, are through God’s marvellous workings to be the one to save the honour of that name we both love more than life; the one to keep the wolf of poverty from that door through which so far has come nothing but the sunshine of prosperity and happiness; the one, my dear Beulah, who is to save your old father from a dishonoured grave.  Dear child, forgive me for placing upon your weak shoulders the additional burden of knowing I am now helpless and compelled to rely absolutely upon you.  After you have read my letter, if there is no hope, I command you to tell me so at once, for although I am now financially and almost mentally helpless, I am still a Sands, and there has never yet been one of the name who shirked his duty, however stern and painful it might be.”

When I handed the letter back to Miss Sands, she said: 

“Mr. Randolph, let me tell you and Mr. Brownley a little about my father and our home, that you may see our situation as it is.  My father is one of the noblest men that ever lived.  I am not the only one who says that—­if you were to ask the people of our State to name the one man who had done most for the State as a State, most for her progressive betterment, most for her people high and low, white and black, they would answer, ’Judge Lee Sands.’  He has been, and is, the idol of our people.  After he was graduated from Harvard, he entered the law office of my grandfather, Senator Robert Lee Sands.