Belknap quitted Mount Hope for Columbus, and there followed daily letters and almost hourly telegrams, but General Herbert felt from the first that the lawyer was not sanguine of success.

Then on the eighth of June, two days before the execution, came a long message from the lawyer.

His wife was ill, her recovery was doubtful; the governor was fully possessed of the facts in North's case and was considering them, would the general come at once to Columbus?
This telegram reached Idle Hour late at night, and the next morning father and daughter were driven into Mount Hope.

The pleasant life with its agreeable ordering which the general had known for ten peaceful years had resolved itself into a mad race with time.

The fearful, the monstrous, seemed to reach out and grip him with skeleton fingers.