rich as I am.
There's property out of their reach, if anything goes wrong with some
business I'm in.

"Why? Well, we know why, all right, you and I. Here's the deeds of the
same property which you give back to me. Only I don't have them put on
record. I keep them hidden--up my sleeve--clear up my sleeve, don't I?"

"You keep 'em hidden all right, I guess," responded Colonel Witham; and
made a mental observation that he'd like to know where the miller really
did hide them.

"So here they are," continued the miller. "It's a little more of the
same game. The property's all yours--and it isn't. You'll oblige, of
course, for the same consideration?"

Colonel Witham nodded assent, and the business was closed.

And, some time later, as Colonel Witham plodded up the road again, he
uttered audibly the wish he had formed when he had sat in the miller's
office.

"I'd like to know where he keeps those deeds hidden," he said,
apparently addressing his remark to a clump of weeds that grew by the
roadside. The weeds withholding whatever information they may have had
on the question, Colonel Witham snipped their heads off with a vicious
sweep of his stick, and went on. "I don't know as it would do me any
good to know," he continued, "but I'd just like to know, all the same."

And James Ellison, his visitor departed, wandered about for some time
through the rooms of his mill. One might have thought, from the sly and
confidential way in which he drew an eye-lid down now and again, as he
passed here and there, that the wink was directed at the mill itself,
and that the crazy old structure was really in its owner's confidence;
that perhaps the mill knew where the miller hid his papers.

At all events, James Ellison, sitting down to his supper table that
evening, was in a genial mood.

"Lizzie," he said, smiling across the table at his wife, "I saw an old
beau of yours to-day--Dan Witham. He didn't send any love to you,
though."

"No," responded Mrs. Ellison, and added, somewhat seriously, "and he has
no love for you, either. I hope you don't have much business dealing
with him."

"Ho, he's all right, is Dan Witham," returned her husband. "He's gruff,
but he's not such a bad sort. Those old times are all forgotten now."

"I'm not so certain of that, James," said Mrs. Ellison.

CHAPTER VI

CAPTURING AN INDIAN

Tim Reardon, a barefoot, sunburned urchin, who might be perhaps twelve
years old, judging from his diminu