ct of immunity, if only a temporary one, McGuire had settled down
to make the best of a bad job and await with stoicism whatever the
future was to bring. This was Peter's first impression, nothing else
suggesting itself, but when he followed the old man up to his room and
gave him the money he had brought he noted the deeply etched lines at
nostril and jaw and felt rather than saw the meaning of them--that
Jonathan McGuire was in the grip of some deep and sinister resolution.
There was a quality of desperation in his calmness, a studied
indifference to the dangers which the night before last had seemed so
appalling.

He put the money in the safe, carefully locked the combination and then
turned into the room again.

"Thanks, Nichols," he said. "You'd better have some supper and get to
bed to-night. I don't think you'll be needed." And then, as Peter's look
showed his surprise, "I know my man better than you do. To-morrow night
we shall see."

He closed his lips into a thin line, shot out his jaw and lowered his
brows unpleasantly. Courage of a sort had come back to him, the courage
of the animal at bay, which fights against the inevitable.

To Peter the time seemed propitious to state the need for the
observation towers and he explained in detail his projects. But McGuire
listened and when Peter had finished speaking merely shook his head.

"What you say is quite true. The towers must be built. I've thought so
for a long time. In a few days we will speak of that again--_after
to-morrow night_," he finished significantly.

"As you please," said Peter, "but every day lost now may----"

"We'll gain these days later," he broke in abruptly. "I want you to stay
around here now."

On Friday morning he insisted on having Peter show him the tree where
the placard had been discovered, and Peter, having taken lunch with him,
led him down to the big sugar maple, off the path to the cabin. Peter
saw that he scanned the woods narrowly and walked with a hand in his
waist-band, which Peter knew held an Army Colt revolver, but the whine
was gone from his voice, the trembling from his hands. He walked around
the maple with Peter, regarding it with a sort of morbid abstraction and
then himself led the way to the path and to the house. Why he wanted to
look at the tree was more than Peter could understand, for it was Peter,
and not he, who was to keep this costly assignation.

"You understand, Nichols," he said when they reached