“Better you should,” cried the factor passionately, “than that my little girl should be ruined for life before the whole world.”
“How will she be ruined?” demanded the young man, crisply. “No one knows the story except Braithwaite and his two men, and I think we can keep their mouths closed easily enough.”
“It is impossible!” said the other. “You know yourself that Napoleon Sky's tongue is swiveled two ways, and is the only successful perpetual-motion machine ever invented. If we bribed them, we could be held up regularly for blackmail, and even that would fail; the news would leak out somewhere. I know these wild places; I know what rumor can do. Perhaps, the wind whispers it; perhaps, the birds carry it, or the streams call it out at night. Whatever is done, I know this: that rumor will leap across a practically uninhabited country like wild-fire, and, by the time the brigades come down in the spring, I could not hold my head up among the curious eyes, jerked thumbs, and tongues in cheek. What I want to know, Captain McTavish, is, what can you do about it?”
“Is the Reverend Mr. Gates in the camp?”
“Yes.”
“I'll marry Jean this afternoon, providing she will have me?”
“You shall not!” cried the factor suddenly, with great fierceness, turning his fiery eyes upon the younger man in an expression of hate. “You shall not—ever!”
“Really, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” replied Donald, gently, “I cannot agree to that, and I might as well tell you now that I intend to marry Jean somewhere, some time, if human effort can bring it about, and the sooner the better.”
“You wouldn't dare say that to me, if I weren't laid up,” hissed Fitzpatrick, his hands clenching and unclenching.
“Yes, sir, I would! I have never said it before, because I hadn't the right. Jean loves me, and will marry me; that is all I want to know.”