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want any of the men in the district attorney's office to know this. I don't suppose he'll mind if I
keep a deputy somewhere near all the time for looks' sake. I have to, you know, really, under
the law. He won't bother him any. Just keep on guard like." Jaspers looked at Mr. Steger very
flatly and wisely--almost placatingly under the circumstances--and Steger nodded.
"Quite right, Sheriff, quite right. You're quite right," and he drew out his purse while the sheriff
led the way very cautiously back into his library.
"I'd like to show you the line of law-books I'm fixing up for myself in here, Mr. Steger," he
observed, genially, but meanwhile closing his fingers gently on the small roll of ten-dollar bills
Steger was handing him. "We have occasional use for books of that kind here, as you see. I
thought it a good sort of thing to have them around." He waved one arm comprehensively at the
line of State reports, revised statutes, prison regulations, etc., the while he put the money in his
pocket and Steger pretended to look.
"A good idea, I think, Sheriff. Very good, indeed. So you think if Mr. Cowperwood gets around
here very early Monday morning, say eight or eight-thirty, that it will be all right?"
"I think so," replied the sheriff, curiously nervous, but agreeable, anxious to please. "I don't think
that anything will come up that will make me want him earlier. If it does I'll let you know, and you
can produce him. I don't think so, though, Mr. Steger; I think everything will be all right." They
were once more in the main hall now. "Glad to have seen you again, Mr. Steger--very glad," he
added. "Call again some day."
Waving the sheriff a pleasant farewell, he hurried on his way to Cowperwood's house.
You would not have thought, seeing Cowperwood mount the front steps of his handsome
residence in his neat gray suit and well-cut overcoat on his return from his office that evening,
that he was thinking that this might be his last night here. His air and walk indicated no
weakening of spirit. He entered the hall, where an early lamp was aglow, and encountered
"Wash" Sims, an old negro factotum, who was just coming up from the basement, carrying a
bucket of coal for one of the fireplaces.
"Mahty cold out, dis evenin', Mistah Coppahwood," said Wash, to whom anything less than sixty
degrees was very cold. His one regret was that Philadelphia was not located in North Carolina,
from whence he came.
"'Tis sharp, Wash," replied Cowperwood, absentmindedly. He was thinking for the moment of
the house and how it had looked, as he came toward it west along Girard Avenue--what the
neighbors were thinking of him, too, observing him from time to time out of their windows. It was
clear and cold. The lamps in the reception-hall and sitting-room had been lit, for he had
permitted no air of funereal gloom to settle down over this place since his troubles had begun.
In the far west of the street a last tingling gleam of lavender and violet was showing over the
cold white snow of the roadway. The house of gray-green stone, with its lighted windows, and
cream-colored lace curtains, had looked especially attractive. He had thought for the moment of
the pride he had taken in putting all this here, decorating and ornamenting it, and whether, ever,
he could secure it for himself again. "Where is your mistress?" he added to Wash, when he
bethought himself.
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