If Blount hesitated it was only because her beauty and her eagerness thrilled him until, for the moment, he could think of nothing else.  Then he closed his desk quickly and struggled into his overcoat, saying:  “It shall be as you wish.  Let’s go.”

XXVII

IN WHICH PATRICIA DRIVES

For fifteen miles north of the capital the Quaretaro road is a well-kept, level speedway, and Miss Anners amply proved the worth of her summer’s training by showing herself a fearless driver.  Half an hour after the small roadster had left the curb in front of the Temple Court Building it was among the hills and climbing to the upper mesa level.

Nearing the mouth of Shonoho Canyon, they overtook and passed a horseman turning into the canyon road.  The man’s horse shied and threatened to bolt at sight of the storming car, but Patricia was looking straight ahead, and she made no movement to slacken speed.  At the passing glimpse, Blount’s mind went shuttling backward to the homecoming night in the Lost Hills, and he made sure he recognized the rider as Hathaway’s morose henchman, the man Barto.

He wondered vaguely what Barto could be doing at the turn in the obstructed side-canyon road, and the wonder went with him while the little car was covering the remaining distance and flying up the cottonwood-shaded avenue at Wartrace Hall.  But a glance at his watch made him forget the Barto incident in a heart-warming thrill of admiration—­the joy of a skilled motorist recognizing kindred skill in another.  The thirty miles from the city had been made in something under fifty minutes.

When she brought the roadster to a stand at the carriage entrance, Patricia spoke for the first time since she had taken the wheel for the record-breaking drive.

“Find your father quickly and say to him what you have come to say.  When you are ready to go back, I’ll keep my promise and drive you.”

“That won’t be at all necessary,” he protested, getting out to stand with his hand on the dash.  “I am perfectly well able to drive myself; and, besides, it would leave you at the wrong end of the road, and alone.”

“Don’t stand there talking about it,” she commanded.  “Go and do what you have to do.  I’ll wait here.”

Blount turned away and found old Barnabas holding the door open for him.  A word passed, and the old negro bobbed his head.  “Yas, sah; Marsteh David’s in de libra’y,” was the answer to Blount’s query, and, throwing his overcoat and soft hat aside, the bearer of burdens not his own walked quickly through the hall and let himself into the room of trial.

The bright autumn day was cool—­cool enough to warrant the crackling wood-fire on the library hearth.  With his easy chair planted at the cosey corner of the fire and an open book on the table at his elbow, the senator sat smoking his long-stemmed pipe in the Sunday afternoon quiet.  Mingled with the fire-snapping there were faint tappings, as if one of the cottonwoods, growing too near the house, were sending twig signals to the inmates.