“‘The farm is so well defended, and there’s nothing I dread so much as a hickory cane,’ the boy had answered. ‘The last visit I made to the farm I wondered whether I was going to convert him to my way of thinking, or he was going to convert me to jelly.’
“Indeed, Deacon Joe stood firm as a mountain. People were saying that the minister would win in a walk, when Marie converted her grandfather by the most remarkable bit of woman’s strategy that I ever observed. It was Napoleonic.
“One day in May, Harry came, much excited, to my office. Deacon Joe was about to move to his island, a mile or so off shore. He was going to take Marie with him for an indefinite period. No boat would be permitted to land there except his own and the Reverend Robert’s. Marie would be a sort of prisoner. That day she had told him of the plan of her grandfather. In Harry’s opinion Knowles had suggested it.
“‘Where is the girl’s mother?’ I asked.
“‘On some Cook’s tour in Europe, and the old man is crazy as a March hare,’ said my young friend. ‘He’s got a lot of bulldogs over there, and his hired men have been instructed to shoot a hole in any boat that comes near.’
“I went over to the Benson homestead that afternoon, and found Deacon Joe sitting on the piazza.’
“‘How are you?’ I asked.
“‘Not very stout,’ said he; ‘heart flutters like a ketched bird.’
“‘What are you doing for it?’