Page:Curwood--The Courage of Captain Plum.djvu/257

 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