Usually the victims of this dungeon
cell were shot. Sometimes they were hanged. But why tell Nathaniel? So
he ate his meat and bread without words, waiting for the other to speak,
as the other waited for him. And Nathaniel, on his part, kept to himself
the secret of Marion's fate. After they had done with the meat and the
bread and the cold potatoes he pulled out his beloved pipe and filled it
with the last scraps of his tobacco, and as the fumes of it clouded
round his head, soothing him in its old friendship, he told of his fight
with Strang and his killing of Arbor Croche.
"I'm glad for Winnsome's sake," said Neil, after a moment. "Oh, if you'd
only killed Strang!"
Nathaniel thought of what Marion had said to him in the forest.
"Neil," he said quietly, "do you know that Winnsome loves you--not as
the little girl whom you toted about on your shoulders--but as a woman?
Do you know that?" In the other's silence he added, "When I last saw
Marion she sent this message to you--'Tell Neil that he must go, for
Winnsome's sake. Tell him that her fate is shortly to be as cruel as
mine--tell him that Winnsome loves him and that she will escape and come
to him on the mainland.'" Like words of fire they had burned themselves
in his brain and as Nathaniel repeated them he thought of that other
broken heart that had sobbed out its anguish to him in the castle
chamber. "Neil, a man can die easier when he knows that a woman loves
him!"
He had risen to his feet and was walking back and forth through the
thick gloom.
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