from his dressing-room--so fresh, indeed, that he was coatless,
hatless, and collarless, and with the dripping bath-sponge clutched
like a missile to hurl at the impudent invaders on the opposite side
of the canyon.

"Hah! wouldn't wait until a man could get into his clothes!" he
rasped, apostrophizing the Utah's new chief of construction. "Jastrow!
Faveh me instantly, seh! Hustle up to the camp there and turn out the
constable, town-marshal, or whatever he is. Tell him I have a writ for
him to serve. Run, seh!"

The secretary appeared and disappeared like a marionette when the
string has been jerked by a vigorous hand, and Virginia smiled--this
without prejudice to a very acute appreciation of the grave
possibilities which were preparing themselves. But having her share of
the militant quality which made her uncle what he was, she stood her
ground.

"Aren't you afraid you will take cold, Uncle Somerville?" she asked
archly; and the Rajah came suddenly to a sense of his incompleteness
and went in to finish his ablutions against the opening of the battle
actual.

At first Virginia thought she would follow him. When Mercury Jastrow
should return with the officer of the law there would be trouble of
some sort, and the woman in her shrank from the witnessing of it. But
at the same instant the blood of the fighting Carterets asserted
itself and she resolved to stay.

"I wonder what uncle hopes to be able to do?" she mused. "Will a