He checked himself abruptly.  “How long have you had this?”

“A half-hour.  The speech goes in the evening papers.”

“A half-hour!  And you sit here snivelling about your lynching.  Why, what are the necks of ten such devils worth to your good name?  When I come to think of it, I’d like to lend a hand at a lynching myself.  If I had Rann here—­”

The governor laughed dryly.  “To tell the truth, my dear fellow, I don’t take it seriously.  The people know me.”

Galt uttered an angry exclamation and flung out his hand.  “Oh, give over, Nick,” he implored.  “Don’t drive me to frenzy!  I can’t stand much more.”

He took up a sheet of paper and wrote several lines in pencil.  “After all, I’ve been thinking to some purpose,” he said.  “Judge Bassett is the man we need.  I’ll telegraph to him from your office, and I’ll have his reply scattered broadcast.  If it riddles Webb like shot, I’ll have it out.”

“Oh, it isn’t Webb,” said Nicholas.  He was looking into the fire, but as the door closed behind Galt he turned and seated himself at his desk.  The law-book he had been reading lay to one side, and he opened it and followed up the question that perplexed him.  His face was grave, but his eyes were shot with light.  When Galt came back he entered slowly and hesitated an instant before speaking, then he said: 

“There’s bad news, Nick.  The judge has had a stroke of paralysis.  He is now unconscious.  Tom can’t be reached, and you—­”

Nicholas took out his watch.  “I have fifteen minutes in which to make that train,” was his answer.  “Will you tell Dickson to repeat all messages?” Then, as Galt followed him into the hall, he looked back and spoke again.  “Until to-morrow,” he said, and went out.

Galt delivered the message to Dickson and walked uptown to Webb’s house, where he expected to find him.  He had not lunched, and he remembered suddenly that Nicholas had also gone hungry; but the thought brought a smile as he rang Webb’s bell.  “Oh, for once in a lifetime a man may be heroic,” he said.  Then he entered the house and found, not Dudley, but Eugenia.

At the sound of his name she had risen and come swiftly forward with outstretched hand.  Her face was white and her eyes heavy with anxiety, but he felt then, as always, the calm nobility of her carriage.  In the added fulness of her figure her beauty showed majestic.

He took her hand, holding it warmly in his own.  “My dear Eugenia, if you are in trouble, remember that I am an ignoble edition of Juliet.”

“Oh, I want you, not Juliet,” she said.  “I have sent for Dudley, but he has not come—­I took the paper at the door by chance—­and I find that Colonel Diggs has brought up that old dead lie about the governor.  He dares to say that the people of Kingsborough believe it—­the coward!  They never believed it—­it is false—­as false as the lie itself.  Oh, if I were a man I would kill him for it, but I am a woman, and you—­”