"So that is the gentleman who thinks he is going to put a bullet through
me!" exclaimed Nathaniel when the officer had gone beyond hearing. He
laughed, and there was a kind of wild expectant joy in his voice.
"Obadiah, can you not make arrangements for him to go with me alone?"
"He will not go with you at all, Nat," gloated the old man. "Ho, ho, we
are playing at his own game--treachery. When he calls at my place you
will be aboard ship."
"But I should like to have a talk with him--alone, and in the woods.
God--I know a man at Grand Traverse Bay whose wife and daughter--"
"Sh-h-h-h!" interrupted the councilor. "Would you kill little Winnsome's
father?"
"Her father? That animal! That murderer! Is it true?"
"But you should have seen her mother, Nat, you should have seen her
mother!" The old man twisted his hands, like a miser ravished by the
sight of gold. "She was beautiful--as beautiful as a wild flower, and
she killed herself three years ago to save the birth of another child
into this hell. Little Winn is like her mother, Nat."
"And she lives with him?"
"Er, yes--and guarded, oh, so carefully guarded by Strang, Nat! Yes, I
guess that some day she will be a queen."
"Great God!" cried the young man. "And you--you live in this cesspool of
sin and still believe in a Heaven?"
"Yes, I believe in a Heaven. And my reward there shall be great. Ho, ho,
I am taking no middle road, Nat!"
They had passed in a semicircle beyond the temple and now approached a
squat building constructed of logs, which Obadiah had pointed out as the
jail.
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