Twenty years had gone by.  Herbert Blaine and his bright-eyed wife slept in the city of the dead.  With their latest breath they had, one by one, adjured their beloved daughter, the only surviving child since the civil war had laid low their three manly boys, to regain possession of the old homestead.  Time, they assured her, would make all things even, and long before they laid down the burden of life, they had seen how the wife’s curse beat upon the head of the man who had so oppressed them.  They had learned to feel pity for him whom they had once despised.  Not so Jessie Blaine.  She was a woman now, and had been, for a few brief years, till death robbed her, a happy wife.  But never could she forget that dismal twilight hour when her innocent eyes had photographed the hateful, sneering face of her mother’s enemy; when her ears had phonographed his mocking words.  The scene had haunted her waking and sleeping, for many days; and still after all these years she could and did remember.

She rejoiced when she heard that wild Ben Garrett had broken nearly every law of the decalogue, and was wrecking the peace of all who cared for him.  “They richly deserve it all;” she said, when some fresh escapade or misdemeanor would come to light.  He had squandered his father’s thousands aimlessly, recklessly, and was fast bringing his white hairs in sorrow to the grave.  Jessie Forrester only smiled as she read these items from the local press.  Riches and honors were hers.  There was nothing lacking but the dear old home of her people, and this could not be bought.  She climbed to heights undreamed-of in her earlier days, and became a shining light in the world of letters.  Her books were read in two continents.  Statesmen and distinguished circles sought her till her name became a power in the land.  Her influence was widespread.  In an eastern city she at last came to revel in her books and manuscripts, or in her sweet, healthful, domestic loves, renouncing all thoughts of revenge, for the time being, and abandoning the hope of recovering the sacred pile where she first saw the light.

One day there came a letter bearing the postmark of her native town.  With difficulty deciphering the straggling, tremulous address, she broke the seal and read as follows:—­

  “Madam: 

“A heart-broken father appeals to you in his hour of extremity, to save his son from the gallows.  My boy—­my wayward, reckless boy, who was once as innocent and pure as yourself, has fallen into the hands of treacherous natives and half-breeds in Arkansas, and they accuse him of murdering a traveller for his money.  He is guiltless of this crime—­God knows he is; but the weight of evidence is fearful, and I am powerless to refute it.  The proceedings have been hurried over and the verdict is against him.

“I am unable to go to him—­I bring the case to you.  Go, I beg of you, to Washington and plead with the congressman from this,