Page:Curwood--The Courage of Captain Plum.djvu/114

 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 an-