At last Galt spoke of the matter, and he could not refuse to listen.

“By the way, I am hearing a good deal about that Battle pardon,” Galt said.  “You are looking into the matter, I suppose?”

The other shook his head.

“I have not done so as yet,” he answered.  “I am waiting.”

“Don’t wait too long or the poor devil may apply higher.  He’s ill, I believe, and if he insists on returning to the State, as they say he will, the law can’t help but arrest him.  It’s a sad case.  So far as I can see he was a catspaw for the real criminal and didn’t have sense enough to hold on to a share of the money after he sold himself.  His sister has been to see you, hasn’t she?  She’s a superb woman, and it was a good day for Dudley Webb when he married her.”

He looked up inquiringly.

“Ah, what were you saying?” asked the governor.

That night he locked himself in with the papers and plunged into the case.  He read and reread each written word until he was in possession of the minutest detail.  In another instance he knew that the reasons for granting the pardon would have seemed sufficient, and he would probably have had it made out at once.  As it was, he admitted the force of the appeal, but something stronger than himself held him back.  Above the name before him he saw the girlish face of the man he hated—­saw it accusing, defying, beseeching—­and beyond it he saw the gray road and the solitary star above the sunset.  In the silence his own voice echoed, “As for him—­may God, in His mercy, damn him.”

He locked the papers away again.  “I cannot do it,” he said.

Several days later he sent for a member of the legislature from the town where the crime was committed.  He questioned him closely, but without result—­the people up there were tired of it, the man said—­at first they had been wrought up, but six years is a long time, and they didn’t care much about it now.  As the governor closed the interview he realised that he had hoped a bitter hope that his revenge might be justified.  When the door had shut, he went back to the case again, and again he left it.  “It ought to be done, but, God help me, I cannot do it,” he said.

The next morning, while he was at work in his office in the Capitol, his secretary came in to tell him that Miss Christina Battle was in the anteroom.  He rose hurriedly.  “I will see her at once,” he said, and he opened the door as Miss Chris came in, panting softly from her ascent in the elevator.

She had changed so little that he took her hand in sudden timidity, recalling the days when he had sold her chickens before her hen-house door.  But when he had settled her in one of the cane rocking-chairs beside the stove, his confidence returned and he responded heartily to her beneficent beam.  Her florid face, shining large and luminous above the stiff black strings of her bonnet, reminded him of illustrations he had seen in which the sun is endowed with human features and an enveloping smile.