“My darling, I’m not worthy of such love,” Stella cried, pressing his hand. “What can I do to help you?”
“Keep on loving me--that’s the main thing!--incidentally consult a lawyer--the best you can find--tell him that I’m going to fight, fight, fight to the last ditch my own cause and the cause of my people! Keep out of old Champion’s way. He carries a bribe in one hand, a death warrant in the other. Don’t let him know your plans. Don’t let him know that you love me.”
Stella lifted her head with sudden resolution.
“I’ll get the best lawyer in America. I’ll mortgage the house for the money.”
“My little heroine!” he exclaimed with pride.
Through the iron bars she pressed her lips and hurried to the telegraph office with the light of new courage shining in her eyes.
STEVE HOYLE was confined to his room with a bullet hole through the flesh of his right arm the day following the meeting at Inwood.
He wrote Stella a letter informing her that John Graham had hired a gang of thugs to attempt his assassination on the night he was to meet her, that he had been desperately wounded in her service, and begged that she call at once.
Stella sent him a reply that cut deeper than the bullet from John’s revolver. It was very brief. Steve read it with muttered curses:
_I have long suspected that you were a liar. Last night you proved yourself a coward. Our acquaintance has ended._
Steve paced his room in a speechless rage for an hour, dressed to call on her and demand an interview, and suddenly changed his mind at the sight of a squad of troops hurrying past his door.
The arrest of John Graham had brought him to the verge of collapse. He trembled at the thought that his turn might come next, and feared to put his head out the door.
When ten minutes later the soldiers who had passed suddenly appeared at every exit of his house and loudly knocked for entrance, he dropped into a chair shivering with abject terror.
When arrested he turned his heavy white face toward the sergeant piteously.
“I beg of you, officer, allow me to stay here under guard. I am desperately wounded, by an accident.”
“You’ll have to go to jail,” the trooper snapped.
“But, my dear man, I can’t. I can’t walk,” he gasped with laboured breath. “Just let me stay here under arrest until I can arrange with the authorities to give bail.”