"But you will save him?" Elsie pleaded, looking into his face.
"Yes—or I'll go down with him," was the steady answer.
"Where is Margaret?" he asked.
"Gone to McAllister's with a message from your father," Mrs. Cameron replied.
"Tell her when she returns to keep a steady nerve. I'll save Phil. Send her to find her father. Tell him to hold five hundred men ready for action in the woods by the river and the rest in reserve two miles out of town"
"May I go with her?" Elsie asked, eagerly.
"No. I may need you," he said. "I am going to find the old statesman now, if I have to drag the bottomless pit. Wait here until I return."
Ben reached the telegraph office unobserved, called the operator at Columbia, and got the Grand Giant of the county into the office. Within an hour he learned that the death-warrant had been received and approved. It would be returned by a messenger to Piedmont on the morning train. He learned also that any appeal for a stay must be made through the Honourable Austin Stoneman, the secret representative of the Government clothed with this special power. The execution had been ordered the day of the election, to prevent the concentration of any large force bent on rescue.
"The old fox!" Ben muttered.
From the Grand Giant at Spartanburg he learned, after a delay of three hours, that Stoneman had left with a boy in a buggy, which he had hired for three days, and re-
