ockets as if to
protect the gold there.

"You mean that you want to call off our bargain?" he asked.

The councilor rubbed his hands until the friction of them sent a shiver
up Nathaniel's back. "Not that, Nat--O, no, not that! The bargain is
good. The gold is yours. You must deliver the package. But you need not
do it immediately. Understand? I am lonely back there in my shack. I
want company. You must stay with me a week. Eh? Lilacs and pretty faces,
Nat! Ho, ho!--You will stay a week, won't you, Nat?"

He spoke so rapidly and his face underwent so many changes, now
betraying the keenest excitement, now wrinkled in an ogreish, bantering
grin, now almost pleading in its earnestness, that Nathaniel knew not
what to make of him. He looked into the beady eyes, sparkling with
passion, and the cat-like glitter of them set his blood tingling. What
strange adventure was this old man dragging him into? What were the
motives, the reasoning, the plot that lay behind this mysterious
creature's apparent faith in him? He tried to answer these things in the
passing of a moment before he replied. The councilor saw his hesitancy
and smiled.

"I will show you many things of interest, Nat," he said. "I will show
you just one to-night. Then you will make up your mind, eh? You need not
tell me until then."

He took the lead again and this time struck straight down for the town.
They passed a number of houses built of logs and Nathaniel caught narrow
gleams of light from between close-drawn curtains. In one of these
houses he heard the crying of children, and with a return of his grisly
humor Obadiah Price prodded him in the ribs and said,

"Good old Israel Laeng lives there--two wives, one old, one
young--eleven children. The Kingdom of Heaven is open to him!" And from
a second he heard the sound of an organ, and from still a third there
came the laughter and chatter of several feminine voices, and again
Obadiah reached out and prodded Nathaniel in the ribs. There was one
great, gloomy, long-built place which they passed, without a ray of
light to give it life, and the councilor said, "Three widows there,
Nat,--fight like cats and dogs. Poor Job killed himself." They avoided
the more thickly populated part of the settlement and encountered few
people, which seemed to please the councilor. Once they overtook and
passed a group of women clad in short skirts and loose waists and with
their hair hanging in braids down their backs. For