The young Mormon paused before ascending. “Ludlow, as soon as you can give me a few things to make the women comfortable for the run to Green Bay, I'll take them and put out.”
“Tell Cecilia to come down. She'll know what they need.”
Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth silently but most tenderly the lighthouse-keeper stood with his feet and gaze planted on a braided rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his feet and remarked:
“It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we're going to have fair weather.”
“I think we are,” she answered.
Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped Cecilia gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs when the crunching of many feet on gravel was heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at one of the windows.
At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and let James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.
Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for his weapons.
“Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them,” he said to the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. “They'll kill you, and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer. I'm going to open this window.”
A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force a way through the window.