this was madness or else another ruse to test his honesty.  The discovery thrilled him.  It was wonderfully quiet out in that next room and very dark.  Were hidden eyes guarding that bag?  Well, if so, he would give their owner to understand that he was not a thief.  He rose from his chair and moved toward the bag, lifted it in his hand, and tossed it back again so that the gold in it chinked loudly.  Then he went to the narrow aperture and blocked it with his body and listened until he knew that if there had been human life in the room he would have heard it.

The outer door was open and through it there came to him the soft breath of the night air and the sweetness of balsam and wild flowers.  It struck him that it would be pleasanter waiting outside than in, and it would undoubtedly make no difference to Obadiah Price.  In front of the cabin he found the stump of a log and seating himself on it where the clear light of the stars fell full upon him he once more began his interrupted smoke.  It seemed to him that he had waited a long time when he heard the sound of footsteps.  They came rapidly as if the person was half running.  Hardly had he located the direction of the sound when a figure appeared in the opening and hurried toward the door of the cabin.  A dozen yards from him it paused for a moment and turned partly about, as if inspecting the path over which it had come.  With a greeting whistle Captain Plum jumped to his feet.  He heard a little throat note, which was not the chuckling of Obadiah Price, and the figure ran almost into his arms.  A sudden knowledge of having made a mistake drew Captain Plum a pace backward.  For scarcely more than five seconds he found himself staring into the white terrified face of a girl.  Eyes wide and glowing with sudden fright met his own.  Instinctively he lifted his hand to his hat, but before he could speak the girl sprang back with a low cry and ran swiftly down the path that led into the gloom of the woods.

For several minutes Captain Plum stood as if the sudden apparition had petrified him.  He listened long after the sound of retreating footsteps had died away.  There remained behind a faint sweet odor of lilac which stirred his soul and set his blood tingling.  It was a beautiful face that he had seen.  He was sure of that and yet he could have given no good verbal proof of it.  Only the eyes and the odor of lilac remained with him and after a little the lilac drifted away.  Then he went back to the log and sat down.  He smiled as he thought of the joke that he had unwittingly played on Obadiah.  From his knowledge of the Beaver Island Mormons he was satisfied that the old man who displayed gold in such reckless profusion was anything but a bachelor.  In all probability this was one of his wives and the cabin behind him, he concluded, was for some reason isolated from the harem.  “Evidently that little Saintess is not a flirt,” he concluded, “or she would have given me time to speak to her.”