Galt threw himself into the chair.  “I’ve just seen Ryan,” he said, “and I never met a more sanguine man.  He doesn’t give Webb a chance.”

“Ah, is that so?” asked the governor; his tone was almost indifferent, but in a moment he leaned forward and spoke rapidly: 

“I fear there’s trouble in Kingsborough, Ben.  They’ve brought a negro there to the gaol from’ Hagersville, where there were threats of a lynching.”

“The devil!  Well, you aren’t afraid that Kingsborough will turn lawless?  My dear friend, there isn’t enough vitality down there to make one first-class savage.”

Nicholas fell back again, his vivid hair drawings the superb outline of his head on the worn leather against which he leaned.

“Oh, I’m not afraid of Kingsborough,” he returned, “but Hagersville is only three miles distant, and the country people are much wrought up.  God knows they have reason to be.”

“Ah, the usual thing.”

“I don’t know the details—­but there is sufficient evidence against the man, they say, to hang him twenty times.  He’s as dead as if the noose had left his neck—­but he must die by law.  There hasn’t been a lynching in the State since I’ve been in office.”

He spoke quietly, but Galt saw the anxiety in his face and met it bravely.

“Nonsense, my dear Nick, don’t let your hobby run away with you.  If there had been any danger they’d have got the wretch away.  By the bye, Tom Bassett has gone to New York.  I saw him this morning.”

“Yes, he dropped in last night.  You haven’t seen this, I dare say—­it’s a copy of Diggs’s’ speech at Danville.  So they have fallen on my private life at last.”

He handed Galt a typewritten sheet, watching him closely as he read it.  “This looks as if they feared me, doesn’t it?” he asked.

Galt’s reply was an oath of sudden anger.  “This is Rann!” he cried.  “I see his mark!” A flush of red rose to his face and his voice came again in a long-drawn whistle of helpless rage.  “The scoundrel!” he said sharply.  “He’s raked up that old Kingsborough scandal of Bernard Battle’s and made you the man.  Oh, the sneaking scoundrel!”

His passion appeared in quick contrast to the other’s composure.  He was resenting the slander with a violence that he would not have wasted on it had it touched himself—­for the fame of his friend was a cause for which his easy-going nature would spring at once into arms.

Burr came over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.  “When you come to think of it, Ben,” he said, “it’s no great matter.”

“Then what steps have you taken about it?”

Nicholas’s arm fell to his side.  “I have done nothing.  What’s the use?”

Galt strode to the window and back again to the fireplace.  His eyes were blazing.  “The use?  Why, man, use or no use, I’ll send the last one of them to hell, but they’ll stop it!  It’s Rann—­Rann from the beginning.  I’d take my oath on it—­but I’m his match, and he’ll find it out.  I’ll have Diggs retract this lie by six o’clock this evening or I’ll—­”