She leaned back in her chair, white and trembling, for his tones carried conviction.

“I have hated to open this thing up, Kate.  I have waited a long time, hoping you’d understand that I would make a good husband—­that I deserved to have you.  I’m only speaking out now so that you’ll wake up.  You’ve got to stand by the man who has stood by you.  Go talk with your mother!”

After he had hurried out she went back to her work, but her fingers could only fumble at the keys.  By effort of will persons of strong character can compose themselves after disaster has been confirmed; but impending disaster that is hinted at—­guessed at—­is a menace which paralyzes.  She was endeavoring to write down what Richard Dodd had revealed of the plans of Walker Farr.  She understood that the mighty power of the state machine was now doubling its fist over the head of the stranger who had come into her life in such peculiar fashion.  At the same moment she was cowering under the threat of something she did not fully understand.

And from the Dodds—­uncle and nephew—­came the menace which loomed over both of them.

Then to her came Peter Briggs, who had been summoned to a conference in the inner office; by direction of his chief he had been reading to Judge Warren certain entries penciled in the note-book which he guarded with the elastic band.

“The governor wants you to add these items to the record, so that the judge can have a copy,” said Mr. Briggs to the confidential secretary.  “The subject isn’t a very genteel one, Miss Kilgour, but orders are orders, and you’ll have to excuse me.”

And Mr. Briggs kept snapping the elastic band nervously while he dictated, carefully looking away from the young woman.

In such manner Kate Kilgour learned of the existence of Zelie Dionne and of the child whom Walker Farr had protected; Mr. Briggs’s zeal in the interest of his employer had made him a partisan in that affair, with easy conscience regarding the matter of the details.  The bald record showed that Farr and the girl had cared for the child between them, had nursed it with grief and solicitude, had borne it to the plot of land where the little graves were crowded so closely.  Mr. Briggs complacently avoided dates and age and the minuter details.  He even pleaded the case, having caught a cue from Colonel Dodd; his record left the impression that Walker Farr, who had come from nowhere—­nobody knew when—­had lived in Marion unknown and unnoticed at the time when he had compassed the ruin of a confiding girl.

“A scalawag, and a bad one!” commented Mr. Briggs, closing his note-book.  “And of course there’s worse to come!  Posing as a reformer—­that’s the way such renegades work the thing.  A new game for every new place!”

And Kate Kilgour, remembering the vagrant on the broad highway, wrote down the arraignment of this person, trying to understand her emotions.