“It’s a very ticklish business, this, Mr. Steger,” put in the sheriff, yieldingly, and yet with a slight whimper in his voice.  “If anything were to happen, it would cost me my place all right.  I don’t like to do it under any circumstances, and I wouldn’t, only I happen to know both Mr. Cowperwood and Mr. Stener, and I like ’em both.  I don’ think they got their rights in this matter, either.  I don’t mind making an exception in this case if Mr. Cowperwood don’t go about too publicly.  I wouldn’t 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.