“All right,” was the even-toned reply.  “You go and tell Canby to keep his shirt on, Fred; and don’t forget to send those papers in by Gallagher.”

While the senator was speaking, the door opened and the old negro came hobbling in with a driving-coat and the broad-brimmed planter’s hat which made the Honorable David a marked man throughout the length and breadth of the Sage-Brush State.

“De cyar’s at de do’, Marsteh David, and Mistis say she plumb ready when you is, yes-sah,” stammered the serving-man, holding the coat for his master; and a moment later the senator was climbing to his place behind the big wheel of the touring-car, with Mrs. Honoria for his seat-mate on the mechanician’s side, and the chauffeur, the horse wrangler, and Billy Shack comfortably filling the tonneau.

While the touring-car, with its curiously assorted complement of passengers, was leaving Wartrace Hall, Evan Blount, having assured himself that Patricia was not hurt, was trying to estimate the extent of the damage done to the little red roadster by the collision with the tree.  The inspection was brief.  With the front axle bent and the radiator crushed, the car was safely out of commission.

“We’re definitely out of the fight,” he reported shortly, helping his companion down from the driving-seat.

Patricia was still trembling and pale.

“You mean that we can’t go on to the city?” she quavered.

“Not unless we walk; and of course that is out of the question.”

“Then you—­you can’t keep your appointment with Judge Hemingway.”

Blount’s smile was scornful.  “I imagine it was no part of my father’s plans that I should keep my appointment,” he commented bitterly.  “He took it for granted that I would drive out to Wartrace with you, and made his preparations accordingly.  This tree wasn’t here half an hour ago, and it is here now.”

“I can’t believe it of him,” she denied, and her lip quivered.  And then she added:  “Just think, Evan; we might have been killed—­both of us!”

Blount’s teeth came together with a little clicking noise.  “Politics, or what passes for politics in this God-forsaken region, seems to make no account of such a small thing as a human life or two,” he said.  And then:  “I suppose we are due to wait until somebody comes along to pick us up.  It’s four miles or more back to the nearest ranch on the mesa.”

“It is all my fault!” lamented the young woman.  “I—­I might have stopped the car, don’t you think?”

“I wondered a little that you didn’t at least try to stop it,” he permitted himself to say; and at this she forgot the traditions, sociological or other, reverting to the type of the eternal feminine.

“Say it all,” she flashed out.  “You are beginning to wonder if I didn’t do it purposely.  I did do it purposely.  All the way along I had been trying to muster up courage enough to smash the car in the ditch, and if I hadn’t been such a coward I would have done it.  Now hate me, if you want to!”