“Yes, and perhaps he would spare me now, but I have a feeling that I ought to stay with him. I should feel uneasy if I left him.”
“Oh, well, do as you think best,” said Wentworth rather crossly. He found the cabin insupportably dull, and would like to have wandered around with Gerald as a guide.
“I am sorry. I am afraid you will find time hang heavy on your hands.”
“It can’t be helped!” said Wentworth dryly. “I came here at your father’s request, and to-morrow I must start for home. I will take a walk by myself.”
He strolled out into the woods, taking his bearings, so as not to lose the way.
“Well, well, this will soon be over,” he said to himself. “Warren Lane is doomed. If I could only get hold of those papers before he dies I would leave the place content, and would not care if I never saw him or Gerald again. Where can he keep them? If the boy hadn’t interrupted me as he did, I might have found them. Does he keep them about his person, I wonder?”
He sauntered along for half an hour in a different direction from the one he had taken in his earlier walk.
“Not a house, or even a cabin!” he soliloquized. “This is indeed a forlorn place. One couldn’t well get more out of the world.
“Ha, here is a cabin and its owner,” he exclaimed a few moments later as his eye lighted on a log hut in a small clearing. “It seems pleasant to see a living being.”
The owner referred to was a man of sturdy make, very dark as to complexion, with coarse, black hair. He was roughly dressed, and was smoking a pipe. Wentworth coughed to attract attention, and the man looked up.