The discussion in the parlor had become heated, and occasionally words in a voice not Ware’s reached Sylvia distinctly.  Some one was alternately beseeching and threatening the minister.  It was clear from the pauses in which she recognized Ware’s deep tones that he was yielding neither to the importunities nor the threats of his blustering caller.  Sylvia had imagined that the storms of life had passed over the retired clergyman, and she was surprised that such an interview should be taking place in his house.  She was about to retreat to the dining-room to be out of reach of the voices when the parlor door opened abruptly and Thatcher appeared, with anger unmistakably showing in his face, and apparently disposed to resume in the hall the discussion which the minister had terminated in the library.  Thatcher seemed balder and more repellent than when she had first seen him on the floor of the convention hall on the day Harwood uttered Bassett’s defiance.  Sylvia rose with the book still in her hand and walked to the end of the room; but any one in the house might have heard what Thatcher was saying.

“That’s the way with you preachers; you talk about clean politics, and when we get all ready to clean out a bad man, you duck; you’re a lot of cowardly dodgers.  I tell you, I don’t want you to say a word or figure in this thing at all; but you give me that book and I’ll scare Mort Bassett out of town.  I’ll scare him clean out of Indiana, and he’ll never show his head again.  Why, Ware, I’ve been counting on it, that when you saw we were in a hole and going to lose, you’d come down from your high horse and help me out.  I tell you, there’s no doubt about it; that woman’s the woman I’m looking for!  I guessed it the night you told that story up there in the house-boat.”

“Quit this business, Ed,” the minister was saying; “I’m an old friend of yours.  But I won’t budge an inch.  I’d never breathed a word of that story before and I shouldn’t have told it that night.  It was so far back that I thought it was safe.  But your idea that Bassett had anything to do with that is preposterous.  Your hatred of him has got the better of you, my friend.  Drop it:  forget it.  If you can’t whip him fair, let him win.”

“Not much I won’t; but I didn’t think you’d go back on me; I thought better of you than that!”

Thatcher strode to the door and went out, slamming it after him.

The minister peered into the library absently, and then, surprised to find Sylvia, advanced to meet her, smiling gravely.  He took both her hands, and held them, looking into her face.

“What’s this you’ve been reading?  Ah, that book!” The volume slipped into his hands and he glanced at it, frowning impatiently.  “Poor little book.  I ought to have burned it years ago; and I ought to have learned by this time to keep my mouth shut.  They’ve always said I look like an Indian, but an Indian never tells anything.  I’ve told just one story too many. Mea maxima culpa!”