Having exhausted his conversational powers and seeing that further efforts to pump Mrs. Rossmore were useless, the clerical visitor rose to depart: 

“It looks like rain.  Come, Jane, we had better go.  Good-bye, Madam, I am delighted to have made this little visit and I trust you will assure Mr. Rossmore that All Souls Unified Baptismal Presbytery always has a warm welcome for him.”

They bowed and Mrs. Rossmore bowed.  The agony was over and as the door closed on them Mrs. Rossmore gave a sigh of relief.

That evening Stott and the judge came home earlier than usual and from their dejected appearance Mrs. Rossmore divined bad news.  The judge was painfully silent throughout the meal and Stott was unusually grave.  Finally the latter took her aside and broke it to her gently.  In spite of their efforts and the efforts of their friends the Congressional inquiry had resulted in a finding against the judge and a demand had already been made upon the Senate for his impeachment.  They could do nothing now but fight it in the Senate with all the influence they could muster.  It was going to be hard but Stott was confident that right would prevail.  After dinner as they were sitting in silence on the porch, each measuring the force of this blow which they had expected yet had always hoped to ward off, the crunching sound of a bicycle was heard on the quiet country road.  The rider stopped at their gate and came up the porch holding out an envelope to the judge, who, guessing the contents, had started forward.  He tore it open.  It was a cablegram from Paris and read as follows: 

Am sailing on the Kaiser Wilhelm to-day.

Shirley.

CHAPTER VII.

The pier of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, at Hoboken, fairly sizzled with bustle and excitement.  The Kaiser Wilhelm had arrived at Sandy Hook the previous evening and was now lying out in midstream.  She would tie up at her dock within half an hour.  Employes of the line, baggage masters, newspaper reporters, Custom House officers, policemen, detectives, truck drivers, expressmen, longshoremen, telegraph messengers and anxious friends of incoming passengers surged back and forth in seemingly hopeless confusion.  The shouting of orders, the rattling of cab wheels, the shrieking of whistles was deafening.  From out in the river came the deep toned blasts of the steamer’s siren, in grotesque contrast with the strident tooting of a dozen diminutive tugs which, puffing and snorting, were slowly but surely coaxing the leviathan into her berth alongside the dock.  The great vessel, spick and span after a coat of fresh paint hurriedly put on during the last day of the voyage, bore no traces of gale, fog and stormy seas through which she had passed on her 3,000 mile run across the ocean.  Conspicuous on the bridge, directing the docking operations, stood Capt.  Hegermann, self satisfied and smiling, relieved that