it were repeated now, and we may outwit the whole scheme without any
unnecessary anxiety and fright. Also, you must keep your eyes and ears
open to all that's done and said here. Don't let anything escape you. If
I can get across the Neosho this morning I can reach the Mission in time
to keep the Osages from the plot, and maybe break it up. Then I'll come
back here. They might need me if Jean"--he did not finish the sentence.
"In two days I can do everything needful; while if the word were started
here now, it might lead to a Rebel uprising, and you would be
outnumbered by the Copperheads here, backed by the Fingal's Creek
crowd. You could do nothing in an open riot."

"I comprehend ye," said O'mie. "It's iverything into me eyes an' ears
an' nothin' out av me mouth."

"Meanwhile," the priest spoke affectionately, "you must be strong, my
son, to choose the better part. If it's life or death,--O God, that
human life should be held so cheap!--if it's left to you to choose who
must be the sacrifice, you will choose right. I can trust you. Remember,
in two or three days at most, I can be back; but keep your watch,
especially of Jean. He means mischief, but I cannot stay here now, much
less take him with me. He would not go."

So it happened that Father Le Claire hurried away in the darkness and
the driving rain, and at a fearful risk swam his horse across the
Neosho, and hastened with all speed to the Mission.

When that midnight storm broke over the town, on the night when O'mie
followed the strangers and found out their plot, I helped Aunt Candace
to fasten the windows and make sure against it until I was too wide
awake to go to bed. I sat down by my window, in the lightning flashes
watching the rain, wind-driven across the landscape. The night was pitch
black. In all the southwest there was only one light, a sullen red bar
of flame that came up from Conlow's forge fire. I watched it
indifferently at first because it was there. Then I began to wonder why
it should gleam there red and angry at this dead hour of darkness. As I
watched, the light flared up as though it were fanned into a blaze. Then
it began to blink and I knew some one was inside the shop. It was
blotted out for a time, then it glowed again, as if there were many
passing and re-passing. I wondered what it could all mean in such an
hour, on such a night as this. Then I thought of old Conlow's children,
of "Possum" in his weak, good-natured homeliness, and