Page:Curwood--The Courage of Captain Plum.djvu/50

 in Chicago sent quick word ahead of you to tell me all about it, and—Strang, the king, doesn't know!"

He spoke the last words in intense earnestness. Then, suddenly, he held out his hand.

"Young man, will you shake hands with me? Will you shake hands?—and then we will go to St. James!"

Captain Plum thrust out a hand and the old man gripped it. The thin fingers tightened like cold clamps of steel. For a moment the face of Obadiah Price underwent a strange change. The hardness and glitter went out of his eyes and in place there came a questioning, almost an appealing, look. His tense mouth relaxed. It was as if he was on the point of surrendering to some emotion which he was struggling to stifle. And Nathaniel, meeting those eyes, felt that somewhere within him had been struck a strange chord of sympathy, something that made this little old man more than a half-