CHAPTER XXXI — A LACE HANDKERCHIEF
The next morning the lulls between the gusts of wind grew longer and the wind-waves shorter. The snow ceased to fall and the shadows on the clouds began to brighten with the glow of the sun behind them.
The city stirred and shook off its white robe of death. The woman looked at the wounded man with a stifled moan.
“It’s no use, Ruth,” he said, feebly. “I can’t escape. I’ve got to face it.”
“What will they do to you, Frank?” she asked, in misery.
“I don’t know,” he answered, brokenly. “I killed him in the heat of passion in a fight. But I’ll be tried for murder.”
The officers came and read the warrant of arrest. The dark, tense figure, erect, with defiant face wreathed in midnight hair, stood by his bedside and held his hand.
Her great eyes glowed and gleamed as though a young lioness stood guard over a wounded cub.
Behind the bars in murderers’ row the weeks and months were dragging slowly to the day of trial. The rush and roar and fever of the city were now a memory as he sat in brooding silence.
The press was hostile, and reporters worked daily with an army of detectives to find every scrap of evidence against him, and as the day fixed for his arraignment drew near, story after story appeared in the more sensational journals, written with the clearest purpose of influencing the mind of every possible juryman.
Ruth’s heart sank with anguish as she read these stories, but they stirred her to more vigorous action. She read every newspaper carefully and followed every clue of reporter and detective to anticipate its influence.
Not a day passed but that she carried to the man behind the bars a message of courage and cheer.
Gordon would sit and watch for that one face whose light was hope until it became the only reality in a universe of silence and darkness. His whole life seemed to focus now on the little face with its dimpled chin and shy, tremulous lips smiling into his cell.
The soft contralto voice, even when it sank to the lowest notes of melancholy, was full of tenderness and caressing feeling. As he touched her tapering fingers on the steel bars and watched the red blood mount until her delicate ears shone like transparent shells in the dark mass of her hair, visions of their life together would rise until the past few years seemed the memory of a delirium.
He studied her with increasing fascination. The illuminating power of restraint had developed new forces in his sensitive mind. How marvelous she seemed, walking toward his cell with gentle yet triumphant footfall, her face aglow with tenderness and love, and how his soul leaped those bars and embraced her!
Many friends on whom he had counted had failed. She had never failed. Her resources were endless, her energy infinite. She would have fought all earth combined without a tremor. And yet those who came in contact with her felt a gentleness that touched with the softness of a caress.
The day before the trial her face glowed with hope.
“Frank, our lawyers are sure we will win!” she cried, with joy. “Barringer has determined to rest the case on the charge of wilful murder. And if he does the jury will acquit you. There is only one shadow of uncertainty.”
The dark eyes clouded and a gleam of fire flashed from their depths.
“I know,” he said, sorrowfully.
“We can’t find whether that woman is going on the witness stand against you. I’ve tried in vain to get one word from her lips.”
She brushed a tear from her eyes with a lace handkerchief. The man saw it was the mate to the one she had given him stained with her blood the day he had deserted her.
When, she turned to go, he felt for the cot behind him as though blind, fell on his face and burst into sobs.
CHAPTER XXXII — A LIFETIME IN A DAY
The court-room was crowded to suffocation. The corridors were jammed, the pavements, park and street outside a solid mass of humanity.
The prison van plowed its way through the throng. Gordon stepped out, with handcuffs jingling on his wrists, and straightened his giant figure between the two officers who led him.
A cheer suddenly burst from the crowd and echoed through the court-room.
There was no mistaking that cry. He had heard it before. He knew. He had killed a banker. They were glad of it and proud of him. In muttered curses and cheers they said so. He was the champion of a class, and the murder of an enemy had made him a hero. No matter the right or wrong. Down with every banker—what did they care!
Ruth met him in the anteroom, followed him into the prisoner’s dock and took her place by his side.
The bill of indictment was read.
“The People against Frank Gordon.”
With terrible memories the title rang through his soul. The people, for whom he had fought, for whom he had suffered, worked and dreamed, had put him on trial for his life. What a strange fate! The faces grew dim, and a sense of illimitable and awful ruin crushed him.
A soft hand stole gently into his, and its warmth cleared his brain.
He looked around the room and, to his surprise, saw dozens of people he had helped in his ministry of the Pilgrim Church. Just in front of him sat a woman who, under the inspiration of his preaching, had given her fortune to found an orphanage for homeless girls, and was spending her life in happy service as its presiding genius.
She nodded and smiled, and her eyes filled with tears.
There was a stir in the group of lawyers behind him, and the old woman who had kissed him the day Ruth was watching pushed to his side, seized his hand, choked, and could say nothing. She had come all the way from Virginia to cheer him.
Ludlow, his faithful deacon, he saw, and near him sat Van Meter. The little black eyes were solemn and the mouth drawn with sorrow. Over against the wall, jammed in the crowd, he saw Jerry Edwards, who was still telling the story of his life with reverent wonder and love. He clasped both hands together, shook them over the heads of the crowd, and smiled.
A feeling of awe came over him as he thought of the eternity of man’s deeds, going on and on forever, whatever might be his own fate.
He looked curiously at Barringer, the young Assistant District Attorney, who was conducting the case against him. In the dark-brown eyes, keen and piercing, there was deadly hostility. He had become famous as a relentless public prosecutor. He came of a long line of great lawyers of the old South, and the breath of a court-room was born in his nostrils. Gordon was chilled by the cold, clear ring of his penetrating voice.
While the jury was being impaneled, Ruth sat by Gordon, eagerly trying to see the invisible secrets of every juror’s soul who faced the man she loved.
The court ruled that Socialists were disqualified to sit on the case.
When the twelve men were selected she scanned their faces with searching gaze for the signs of life or death. Their names all seemed strange. She could make nothing out of them.
The opening address of Barringer choked her with fear. In cold-blooded words he told the jury of the certainty of the guilt of the prisoner. His manner was earnest, dignified and terrible in its persuasive assurance.
For days his awful closing sentence rang like a death knell in her ears.
Four days of the week were consumed by the witnesses for the prosecution. On Friday morning Ruth and her lawyers were elated over the unimportant character of the testimony.
Suddenly Barringer looked at the prisoner, frowned, and said:
“Call Kate Ransom Gordon to the witness stand.”
The prisoner went white and lowered his eyes.
There was a stir at the side door. With quick, firm step the magnificent figure crossed the room, with every eye save one riveted on her beautiful face.
She took her seat, and in cool, clear tones told her story.
The prisoner looked up once, and she met his gaze with a glance of fierce resentment.
She gave the long history of his suspicions of Overman, of their quarrels about him, of his jealousy and his threat to kill him. With minute detail she explained the events of the fatal Sunday, described his entrapping Overman in the library unarmed, and of his murder in the dark. She told how she had rushed to the door and found no light within, and how he had enticed her into the room and attempted to choke her to death.
Finally she explained to the jury that the wounds Gordon had received were not from Overman in a fight, but that he had tried to kill her and commit suicide and had failed.
For five hours she sat in the witness chair and coolly swore his life away, baffling with keenest wit at every turn the shrewd lawyer who baited, harassed and cross-questioned her with merciless vigour.
When she declared that Gordon’s wounds were self-inflicted, he stared at her in dazed wonder and gasped to Ruth:
“Merciful God, is she deliberately lying, or does she believe it?”
Ruth did not answer, but slipped her warm little hand in his and pressed it. His fingers were like icicles.
Gordon seemed to sink into a stupor and take no further note of what was going on in the room.
He turned around, placed his arm on the chair, and fixed his eyes on Ruth, looking, looking! As he felt her hot hand trying to warm the chill of death in his own, he followed every movement of a muscle of her face with hypnotic intensity.
When they led him back to the prison van his shoulders drooped with mortal weariness. He had lived a lifetime in a day, and his hair had turned gray.
CHAPTER XXXIII — THE VERDICT
Gordon seemed to take no further interest in the trial. He only sat day after day and watched Ruth. Now and then a faint flush tinged the prison pallor of his cheeks as from some thought passing in his memory.
Barringer’s speech to the jury was one of fierce and terrible eloquence. Every art of persuasion, every trick of oratory, every force of personality he used with pitiless power. In ridicule, sarcasm, invective, pathos and logic, his voice rose and fell, pulsed and quivered, or rang with the peal of a trumpet. He held the jury in the hollow of his hand for four hours, while Ruth stared at him with her heart in her throat, every word cutting her flesh like a knife or smashing the tissues of her brain with the force of a bludgeon.
The jury retired.
Through the dreary hours of the afternoon Ruth sat in the anteroom by Gordon’s side waiting for the verdict. Minutes lengthened into hours, and hours into days and years, until time and eternity were one, and she lived a life of despair or hope within the second between the ticks of the clock on the wall.
She tried to say a word of cheer to Gordon, and choked. The little chin drooped, showing the white teeth, and she sat in dumb misery like a sick child.
The man looked at her tenderly and said:
“You must be calm, Ruth, dear. Death is a physical incident that no longer interests me, except as it affects you. You are the one miracle of life and death to me.”
She pressed his hand and could not answer.
At five o’clock the jury returned for instructions, and she listened with agony to their awful questions.
At six o’clock there was a hurried stir in the court-room. The crowd surged into its doors and packed every inch of space.
The jury were filing in with their verdict.
The judge solemnly took his seat, and the clerk summoned Gordon to stand up.
The giant figure rose with dignity and his steel-gray eyes pierced the jury.
The foreman’s lips moved:
“Guilty of murder in the first degree!”
A long breath, a stir, a murmur, and then a broken sob from a woman’s heart. Her arms were around his neck, her head on his breast, and her swollen lips in low, piteous tones cried:
“My darling!”
CHAPTER XXXIV — THE APPEAL
Two weeks later the judge pronounced the sentence of death. Again the dark figure was by the prisoner’s side, alert, erect, every faculty of mind and body at its highest tension, her cheeks aflame with defiance, her eyes gleaming with hidden fire.
She was sure the Court of Appeals would grant a new trial. She bade her beloved good-by at the gates of Sing Sing, and the door of the Chamber of Death closed upon him.
Day and night she worked with tireless energy. She systematically laid siege to the editors and owners of the papers in New York, and at last won every hostile critic by her patience, her beauty of character, and the infinite pathos of her love.
The moment sentence of death was pronounced on Gordon, Kate sued for a divorce from him as a convicted felon, and it was granted.
The little dark woman became the toast of every hardened newspaper reporter who came in contact with her. The newsboys learned to recognise her from her pictures, and as she went in and out of the court-rooms and the lawyers’ offices they would watch and wait for her, doff their dirty caps, smile, hand her a flower, and cry:
“She’s de queen!”
When Ruth saw the notice of Kate’s divorce, she asked her lawyers to arrange at once for her to remarry Gordon at Sing Sing.
The senior counsel shook his head.
“You must not dare, madam,” he gravely said. “If we should not get a new trial, or fail on the second trial, the Governor at Albany is our only hope.”
A wave of sickening terror swept Ruth’s soul. She recalled King’s strange reserve of the past months. His letters were kind and sympathetic, but there was something hidden between their lines that chilled her.
“We must not lose!” she answered, bitterly.
“I don’t think we will,” the lawyer hastened to assure her. “But we must reserve every weapon.”
The Court of Appeals decided in Gordon’s favour and ordered a new trial.
As the day approached, Ruth’s nervousness increased. His chances were better, but she could hear the awful words of Kate Ransom swearing away his life. Their echoes rang in her soul until she could no longer endure it.
She was at Gramercy Park at last.
When Kate swept proudly and coldly into the room, and extended her hand, she held it in her grasp timidly and nervously.
“I’ve come to beg you,” she said, piteously, “not to say he made those wounds in his own breast. They fought a duel as men have often done. You were in a swoon. You thought he did it himself because he told you he was going to die with you. He did not hurt you. He only laid you tenderly on the lounge, smoothed your hair, kissed and left you. Surely you have brought me enough sorrow. Have pity on me!”
Kate led her to a seat and spoke with quiet decision. “I said what I believed to be the truth. I shall repeat it. I can feel his wild beast’s claws on my throat now in the night sometimes and wake with a scream.”
“Ah, but he was mad,” she cried, through her tears. “He is tender and gentle as a child. Surely you”—she paused and caught her breath—“who have slept with your head on his dear breast know this!”
“It is useless to talk to me,” she answered, with anger. “He deserves to die. And it will be a good riddance for you, and for the world. He was stirring the passions of mobs that will yet make work for hangmen.”
“But he is not on trial for this,” she pleaded, “You should be the last to reproach him with it. Think of all the sacrifices for you—his career, his wife and children, his father, his friends. Surely there is yet one spark of love for him in your heart?”
Kate shook her head.
“Then for my sake, I beg of you—you are a woman. You have loved. Have mercy on me! You asked me once for help—did I fail you?”
The blond face softened.
“No, you didn’t. I’m sorry for you. If it were your life, I’d save it if I swore a thousand lies—but for him, the brute—I can feel him strangling me now—you have not felt his hands on your throat.”
“No,” said the soft contralto voice, “not on my throat; it would have been a relief to have felt them there. They were on my soul. But I love him—-”
Kate was relentless, and Ruth left, shivering with anguish and angry pride.
The new trial dragged its length to the second jury. Ruth spent and pledged the last dollar of her fortune.
Once more she heard the foreman, in tones that seemed far off in space, say the fatal word—
“Guilty!”
She stood by his side again before the judge and heard the words of death fall from his lips, this time with blanched face and cold little fingers locked in agony.
Again the gates at Sing Sing closed, and a woman turned her footsteps toward the Governor’s Mansion at Albany.
CHAPTER XXXV — BETWEEN TWO FIRES
Ruth trembled at the thought of her appeal to King. She knew his iron will, his intense love, and the certainty with which he had long regarded their coming union. His ambitions were still mounting, and daily with better assurances of success. His party had chosen another man their candidate for the Presidency, and had been overwhelmed in defeat, while he had been re-elected Governor by a larger plurality.
He received her with grave tenderness.
“Morris,” she cried, pathetically, seizing his hand and holding it, “he is not guilty of murder. Everything has been against him in these trials. They were not fair. He killed that man in what men have always called a fair fight. You are a manly man. You believe in justice. You will not let them kill him!”
She could feel the strong man’s hand tremble in hers, looked up into his face, and saw a tear quiver on his lashes.
“Oh! Ruth,” he cried, bitterly, “why do you cling to this man? He is regarded as the most dangerous firebrand in America. I could show you hundreds of letters piled on that desk begging me in the name of law and order and all the forces of civilised society not to interfere with his sentence. Come, you know how I love you. This is horrible cruelty to me. The doors of the White House are opening. You know that what I have, am now, and ever may be, is yours. It will all be ashes without you. I offer you a deathless love, honour and glory, and you come here to tell me you prefer a convicted felon in his cell. My God, it is too much!”
The Governor leaned on his desk and shaded his face with his hands.
“How can I help it, Morris, if I love him?” she asked, piteously.
He raised his head, looked away, and softly said:
“Ruth, could you never love me?”
She was silent a moment and her lips trembled.
“If he dies, I cannot live,” she gasped.
He leaned close, took her hand, and said:
“I’ll order a stay of sentence for three months.”
She kissed his hand, and murmured:
“Thank you.”
From the telegraph office at Albany over the wires to Sing Sing’s house of death flew the message:
“Sentence stayed for three months while the Governor considers your pardon. Faith and hope eternal. RUTH.”
The next express carried her to him with the copy of the Governor’s order in her bosom.
The warden smiled and congratulated her. She had long before won his heart, and there was no favour within the limits of law that he had not granted to the man she loved.
Ruth looked at Gordon tenderly through the barred opening of his cell.
Her heart ached as she saw the ashen pallor of his face and the skin beginning to draw tight and slick across the protruding cheek-bones of his once magnificent face. Three years of prison had bent his shoulders and reduced his giant frame to a mere shadow of his former self. Only the eyes had grown larger and softer, and their gaze now seemed turned within. They burned with a feverish mystic beauty.
Ruth fixed on him a look of melting tenderness and asked:
“Do you not long for the open fields, the sky and sea, my dear?”
He gazed at her hungrily.
“No. Sometimes I’ve felt a queer homesickness in these dying muscles that thirst for the open world, but I’ve no time to think of mountain or lake, or hear the call of field or sea—-Ruth, I can only think of you! I have but one interest, but one desire of soul and body—that you may be happy. I would be free, not because I fear death or covet life”—his voice sank to a broken whisper—“but that I might crawl around the earth on my hands and knees and confess my shame and sorrow that I deserted you.”
“Hush, hush, my love; I forgive you,” she moaned.
“Yes, I know; but all time and eternity will be too short for my repentance.”
The woman was sobbing bitterly.
“These prison bars,” he went on with strange elation, “are nothing. The old queer instinct of asceticism within me, that made a preacher of an Epicurean and an athlete, has come back to its kingship. Its sublime authority is now supreme. I despise life, and have learned to live. There is no task so hard but that the king within demands a harder. There can be no pain so fierce and cruel but that it calls my soul to laughter. As for Death—”
His voice sank to dreamy notes.
“She who comes at last with velvet feet and the tender touch of a pure woman’s hand—her face is radiant, her voice low music. She will speak the end of strife and doubt, and loose these bars. With friendly smile she will show me the path among the stars, until I find the face of God. I’ll tell Him I’m a son of His who lost the way on life’s great plain, and that I am sorry for all the pain I’ve caused to those who loved me.”
Ruth felt through the bars and grasped his hand, sobbing.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t, Frank! Stop! I cannot endure it!”
The warden turned away to hide his face.
CHAPTER XXXVI — SWIFT AND BEAUTIFUL FEET
For three months Ruth went back and forth from Sing Sing to Albany, battling with the Governor for Gordon’s life and cheering the condemned man with her courage and love.
The fatal day of the execution had come, and she was to wage the last battle of her soul for the life of her love with the man who loved her.
It was a day of storm. The spring rains had been pouring in torrents for a week and the wind was now dashing against the windows blinding sheets of water.
A carriage stopped before the Governor’s Mansion, and two women wrapped in long cloaks leaped quickly out. The Governor was at his desk in his office.
There was the rustle of a woman’s dress at his door. He looked and sprang to his feet, trembling.
He threw one hand to his forehead as though to clear his brain, and caught a chair with the other.
Advancing swiftly toward him, he saw the white vision of Ruth Spottswood the night of the ball when he had lost her. The same dress, the same rounded throat, only the bust a little fuller, and the same beautiful bare arms with the delicate wrists and tapering fingers. The great soulful eyes, with just a gleam of young sunshine in their depths, and the same flowers on her breast. She walked with lithe, quick grace, and now she was talking in the low sweet contralto music that had echoed in his soul through the years.
“Please, Governor,” she was saying, as her hot hand held his, “save my father!”
The man’s eyes were blinking, and he put one hand to his throat as though he were about to choke. He looked past the white figure of the girl and saw her mother kneeling in the corner of the room, the tears streaming down her face and her lips moving in prayer.
In quick tones he called:
“Ruth!”
She leaped to her feet and was before him in a moment, with scarlet face, dilated eyes and disheveled hair.
“You’ve won. I give it up.”
Ruth pressed both hands to her breast and caught her breath to keep from screaming.
He pressed the button on his desk. The clerk appeared.
“Write out a full pardon for Frank Gordon, and call the warden of Sing Sing!”
Ruth dropped to her knees, crying:
“O Lord God, unto thee I give praise!”
In a moment the clerk hurried back to the Governor’s side and in startling tones whispered:
“The wires are down, sir. I can’t get the warden.”
The Governor snatched his watch from his pocket.
“There is no train for two hours. Order me a special!”
The despatcher flashed his command for a clear track as far as the wires would work, and within fifteen minutes the great engine with its single coach dashed across the bridge and plunged down the grade toward Sing Sing, roaring, hissing, screaming its warnings above the splash and howl of the storm.
The Governor sat silent with his head resting on his hand, shading his eyes.
Ruth, still and pale, gazed out the car window, and, shivering, closed her eyes now and then over the vision of a cold dead face she feared to see at the journey’s end.
They had made fifty miles in fifty minutes, and not a word had been spoken.
The Governor looked at his watch and leaned over:
“Cheer up, Ruth. We are making a mile a minute through the storm, over slippery rails. We will make it in time.”
Suddenly the emergency brakes came down with a crash, every wheel was locked, and the train slid heavily on the track, hissing, grinding, swaying, the steel rails blazing with sparks.
The Governor sprang from the car. “We’re blocked by a wreck, sir,” the conductor said, touching his cap. “The high water has undermined the track on the river bank.”
Within twenty minutes the engine in front of the wreck was secured, Ruth and Lucy were in the cab, and the engineer and fireman stood reading their orders.
“Gentlemen, I am the Governor,” said a voice by their side.
They looked up.
“This is a matter of life and death. The life of a man—and the life of the little pale woman I helped into your cab. Put this engine into Sing Sing by five minutes to two o’clock and I’ll give you a thousand dollars. Five hundred for each of you.”
The engineer smiled.
“We’ll do it for you, sir, without money. We voted for you.”
The Governor pressed their hands.
Down the storm-clouded track the engine flew with throbbing heart of steel and breath of fire like a panting demon. Back and forth over the spongy rails she swayed, her mighty ribs cracking as she lurched and jumped and plunged. But the fireman in his flannel shirt, dripping with perspiration, never paused, as with steady stroke he fed her roaring mouth; and the engineer, with his hand on her pulse, leaned far out of the cab with his eyes fixed on the flying track.
The hour for the condemned man was at hand. He had asked the warden as a special favour to do his duty without delay at the appointed time.
Gordon was ready, dressed with his old fastidious distinction to the last detail of his toilet. He had spent the entire night before writing to Ruth the last chapter in a secret diary he had kept and given to the warden for her.
The warden read the death warrant with halting lips. He had been strangely drawn to this tall young giant with his premature gray hairs. Gordon’s words of lyric fire to him of the mysteries of life and death had thrown a spell over his imagination. He was going to kill him now with the horrible feeling that he was his own brother.
“Come, my friend,” Gordon said to him, cheerfully, “you promised me there should be no delay. I’ve a child’s eagerness now to push the black curtains aside and see what lies beyond. I’ve often dreamed and wondered. In a few minutes I shall know. I hear it calling me, that unknown world of silence, beauty and mystery. Let us make haste.”
But the feet of the jailer were of lead. He would stop and hold his lower lip tightly under his teeth, as though in pain.
At last they were in the dim chamber that is the vestibule of death. The cap had been drawn over his face and the leather straps buckled on his wrists legs,
The warden put his hand on the electric switch.
There was a shout and a stir without, the thump of hurrying feet, and the butt of a guard’s gun thundered against the door.
The warden sprang forward.
“Stop! The Governor!” he heard faintly shouted through the deep-padded panels.
CHAPTER XXXVII — THE KISS OF THE BRIDE
For a quarter of an hour the Governor sat and talked with Lucy, waiting the arrival of Gordon and Ruth. The warden arranged that they should meet in the adjoining room alone.
No eye save God’s saw their meeting. Those who waited only heard through the heavy curtains half articulate cries like the soft crooning of a mother over her babe.
When they entered the room and Lucy had clung passionately for a moment to the neck of the tall, gaunt figure, the Governor took his hand.
“I have accepted Ruth’s word and yours for the truth in this case, Frank Gordon. I have grown to know that she is the soul of truth. I heard you preach once from the text, ‘He saved others, himself he could not save.’ I did not know then what you were talking about. I know now—”
“Oh, Morris,” Ruth broke in, “we will always love you as the nearest and dearest friend on earth.”
“As for you, Frank Gordon,” he went on. “I could no longer hate you if I tried. In the presence of a love so pure, so divine as that which hallows your life, I uncover my head. I am on holy ground—I am in the presence of the living God.”
He turned away, and Ruth broke into a sob, while the man by her side hung his head and sat down as though too weak to stand.
The Governor lifted Gordon from the seat, seized Ruth’s hand and placed it in his.
“I know your heart’s desire, Ruth,” he said, slowly, “I have an officer of the law here to perform a marriage ceremony. Holding your first marriage a divine sacrament, you once planned a civil one in this grim prison. No matter how I learned this: it shall be so to-day.”
The magistrate advanced and pronounced them husband and wife, sat down by a desk, and made out the record.
The Governor rose and handed the official pardon to Gordon.
“To you I give life.”
He tore the other paper into two parts by its dotted lines, handed Ruth one half and held the other in his trembling fingers.
“This, Ruth, is your marriage certificate”—he paused—“and my death warrant. Frank Gordon, we have changed places.”
Again the woman sobbed.
“You have forgotten something, Morris,” she answered, wistfully.
“Yes, I know: myself.”
“It is your right to kiss the bride,” she said, softly, “and I wish it.”
He stooped and reverently touched her forehead. And when he turned away Lucy stood before him, her soft young bosom, neck and face crimson, her eyes dancing, and the sweet little mouth quivering.
“May I kiss you, Governor?” she cried, tremblingly. “You are my hero!”
Her bare arms flashed around his neck, and her warm lips met his.
In the mansion on the hill at Albany, the Governor sat that night in his magnificent room alone until the dawn of day, holding in his hand an old battered tintype picture of a laughing girl standing beside a poor young lawyer.