"Is it very important?"
"It might be. I can't go and ask a lawyer now. Guess the man would feel it was his duty to put Slaney on my trail, and I couldn't go near the settlement in daylight without doing the same. Anyway, it's my mortgage deed, and I have a notion that it might give me a pull on Nevis if the troopers get me. If I'm right, he'll be mighty anxious to get it back again."
"I don't understand," returned Alison. "If he was afraid of your using it against him, he wouldn't have given it to you at all."
Winthrop grinned.
"He didn't. I got him out of his office late at night and crept in for it. I knew where he kept the thing because I'd seen him put it in his safe."
Alison was far from pleased with this confession, but while she considered it another point occurred to her.
"But don't people generally get a duplicate of a paper of this kind?" she asked.
"I had one, but Nevis wanted me to do something that didn't seem quite what we had agreed on, and I went over with the deed to show him he was wrong. He said I'd better leave it, and somehow or other I could never get it out of his hands again."
"Ah," said Alison softly, "I think I wouldn't mind helping you against that man. But you must tell me exactly what you mean to do."
"I'm going across to see Lucy—and out West somewhere after that. If I can get away, and strike anything that will pay me, it's quite likely that I'll leave Nevis alone. If I can't, or there's a reason for it later, I'll write you, and Farquhar or Thorne could take the deed to a lawyer and see if he could get at Nevis with it. In the meanwhile it would be wiser if you just hid the thing away. If Farquhar knows nothing about it, I guess it would save him trouble."