“The time has come?” she asked quickly.

“I reckon it has, little woman.”

“I wish I might be there to see,” she said softly.  And then, whipping a packet of papers from under her street-coat:  “Take these.  When you see what they are, you’ll know why I haven’t given them to you before this.  As long as you didn’t know anything about it, you could tell Evan the simple truth—­that you didn’t have them.”

The Honorable David pocketed the papers without looking at them.

“I suspected you—­or, rather, young Collins—­quite a little spell ago,” he said with imperturbable good nature.  “I couldn’t have done it myself; I reckon no right-minded man could have done it, but—­”

“—­But women have no conscience,” she finished for him. “I hadn’t in this instance.  There was too much at stake with a firebrand like Evan to deal with.  Don’t be too good-natured, David—­to-night, I mean.  You know that is your failing when you have a man down.  But to-night you must make the man pay the price.  That’s all, I think.  I’m going back to Evan now to see if I can’t make him talk to me.  That is the one thing I have seldom been able to do thus far.”

If Blount was a little surprised when the small plotter came back to take the chair recently vacated by his father, he was generous enough not to show it.  The huge sense of relief was still with him, and its mellowing influence made him smile leniently when she said:  “I want to be reasoned with, Evan.  I have just let your father persuade me that a certain thing he is about to do is perfectly safe, when I am afraid it isn’t.”

“Since he is undertaking to do it, it’s safe enough, you may be sure,” he replied at random.

“Then you know what it is?”

“Oh, no; he didn’t tell me where he was going.  But on general principles, you know, I think he can be trusted to take care of himself.  He is a many-sided man, Mrs. Blount.  You are his wife, but I have sometimes found myself wondering if, after all, you know him as he really is.”

“Perhaps I don’t,” she agreed readily enough.  “But I do know his absolute fearlessness, at least.  That’s why I’m a little nervous just now.”

Blount took the alarm at once, as she hoped he would.

“You mean that he is really going into danger of some sort?” he demanded.

She nodded.  “He is going to meet a man who is—­well, he is a big man with many of the same qualities that your father has.  But down at the very bottom of him there is a quality that even your father doesn’t suspect.  Have you ever seen a cornered rat, Evan?”

Blount had got upon his feet and was buttoning his coat.

“I don’t know how much or how little you know about what has taken place this afternoon, Mrs. Blount,” he broke out hastily, “but I can tell you this much:  I am my father’s son now, whatever I have been in the past, and if he is in danger, my place is with him.  Tell me where he has gone.”