“Oh, Lord!  Gov’ner, suh!” was all he got out for a moment, fear at his own rashness seizing him in its grip at the sight of the six distinguished faces turned toward him.

“Jackson!  What do you want?” asked the Governor, not so very gently.

Jackson advanced, with conspicuous lack of his usual style and sang-froid, a tray in his hand, and a quite second-class-looking envelope upon it.  “Beg pardon, suh.  Shouldn’t ‘a’ interrupted, Gov’nor; please scuse me, suh; but they boys was so pussistent, and it comed fum the deepo, and I was mos’ feared the railways was done gone on a strike, and I thought maybe you’d oughter know, suh—­Gov’ner.”

And in the meantime, while the scared Jackson rambled on thus in an undertone, the Governor had the cheap, bluish-white envelope in his hand, and with a muttered “Excuse me” to his guests, had cut it across and was reading, with a face of astonishment, the paper that was enclosed.  He crumpled it in his hand and threw it on the table.

“Absurd!” he said, half aloud; and then, “No answer, Jackson,” and the man retired.

“Now, then, gentlemen, as we were saying before this interruption”—­and in clear, eager sentences he returned to the charge.  But a change had come over him.  The Attorney-General, elucidating a point of importance, caught his chief’s eye wandering, and followed it, surprised, to that ball of paper on the table.  The Secretary of State could not understand why the Governor agreed in so half-hearted a way when he urged with eloquence the victim’s speedy sacrifice.  Finally, the august master of the house growing more and more distrait, he suddenly rose, and picking up the crumpled paper—­

“Gentlemen, will you have the goodness to excuse me for five minutes?” he said.  “It is most annoying, but I cannot give my mind to business until I attend to the matter on which Jackson interrupted us.  I beg a thousand pardons—­I shall only keep you a moment.”

The dignitaries left cooling their heels looked at each other blankly, but the Lieutenant-Governor smiled cheerfully.

“One of the reasons he is Governor at thirty-six is that he always does attend to the matters that interrupt him.”

Meanwhile the Governor, rushing out with his usual impulsive energy, had sent two or three servants flying over the house.  “Where’s Mrs. Mooney?  Send Mrs. Mooney to me here instantly—­and be quick;” and he waited, impatient, although it was for only three minutes, in a little room across the hall, where appeared to him in that time a square-shaped, gray-haired woman with a fresh face and blue eyes full of intelligence and kindliness.

“Mary, look here;” and the big Governor put his hand on the stout little woman’s arm and drew her to the light.  Mary and his Excellency were friends of very old standing indeed, their intimacy having begun thirty-five years before, when the future great man was a rampant baby, and Mary his nurse and his adorer, which last she was still.  “I want to read you this, and then I want you to telephone to Bristol at once.”  He smoothed out the wrinkled single sheet of paper.