CHAPTER XIV.
On the Squire's return to town, zealously urged by his mission to warn the officers of the law of the intended attack on the New Pike gate, he felt that supreme elation of spirits belonging to a man who already scents splendid victory in the near future.
Indeed, it promised to be a double one, for not only would he be enabled to strike an effective blow at the raiders, whose warfare on the toll-gates threatened him with a considerable financial loss, but he would also have it in his power to crush one whose ever-unwelcome presence in the neighborhood seemed likely to deprive the Squire of winning a wife.
The wily old man reasoned with himself that he would much prefer to have his nephew alive and in the penitentiary than simply dead. Incarceration would prove a far more lasting and complete revenge than death. In death there would only come a quick oblivion to the Squire's victory, on the nephew's part, while in a long imprisonment, which to the victim would be a living death, there would yet remain a daily and hourly comprehension of unhappy facts, besetting the helpless prisoner like a pack of hungry wolves attacking their prey—an ever-present hideous knowledge of his own powerless condition, and his uncle's complete mastery of the situation.
It was this wish, this growing hope to place his nephew in just such a living tomb, that fanned the hatred of the Squire into a glowing heat, and made him all the more determined that Milt should soon feel the blighting power of his wrath, even through walls of massive stone, and behind barred doors.
All the way to town the old man fed his sluggish imagination by picturing his kinsman and rival thus imprisoned, slowly eating away his heart in rage and solitude, understanding full well that his sweetheart had become the wife of the man he most hated in all the world. Ah! what could be a greater punishment than this? Death would prove sweet compared to it.
The Squire chuckled to himself in a sort of fiendish delight at the mental picture of anguish he had conjured up.
In their last bitter quarrel, when the young man had been driven from the Squire's home, the nephew had boldly laughed in his uncle's face, taunting him with his age and decrepitude, and declaring that he would yet win the girl in spite of all that the old man might do.
Youth and manly beauty are a powerful offset to wealth and age in the eyes of a young woman. The Squire understood this fully, and chafed under the knowledge, but he resolutely determined to see what craft and cunning could accomplish in the unequal struggle. He made up his mind to marry the pretty toll-taker, though there were a dozen importunate suitors in the way. He would ruthlessly trample them all underfoot, or sweep them aside, as he meant to do his nephew, showing neither pity nor mercy.
Ofttimes perseverance is even more effective than love, and the Squire was not of the kind to be easily thwarted when he had once made up his mind to attain a desired result. Stubbornness and determination were his strongest characteristics. These two traits, cleverly united, have carried many a man to success.