"Is it about Mr. Banks? Do you know where he is?" asked Nell anxiously.
"No, it ain't about him," replied Maggie Leblanc. "I don't know nothin' about him."
Nell led the way to the sitting room, and motioned her visitor to a chair by the fire.
"Has—has anything happened to—Mr. Rayton?" she asked.
Maggie shook her head. "No! No! It is about me—an' Dick Goodine." She brushed her eyes furtively with the back of her hand. "I liked Dick," she continued unsteadily; "but he didn't seem to care. Then I—begun to feel's if I hated him. I knew him an' Davy Marsh was bad friends, so I begun to try to get Dick inter trouble with Davy—an' maybe with the law. After Davy's canoe upsot in the rapids that day, I went an' found the broken pole in the pool, an' fixed an end of it so's it looked like it had been cut halfway through. Then I put it up on a rock so's it would be found.
"I knowed folks would think Dick done it because he an' Davy wasn't good friends, an' he was the last man Davy seen afore he started upstream that day. Dick helped Davy to load the canoe. Then—then I sot fire to Davy's camp. But when Dick said as how he didn't fire the camp nor cut the pole, most every one seemed to believe him. I was feelin' different about Dick by that time—mighty sorry I tried to hurt him. But I was afeared to tell anybody what I done. Davy Marsh is that mean an' small, he'd have the law on me. Then Mr. Rayton, he got shot—an' then Mr. Banks, he got lost; an' this mornin' Dick Goodine up an' tells yer brother, an' Doc Nash, an' a whole bunch more, as how it was him shot Mr. Rayton."
"Yes. Jim told me of it. He mistook Mr. Rayton for a deer," said Nell.
"But some folks don't believe as how he took him for a deer," said Maggie. "It's the talk all over the settlement now—an' old Captain Wigmore, he be makin' a terrible story of it all. He has started up talk about what happened to Dave Marsh ag'in. He's makin' it look 'sif Dick done everything—an' like 'sif he done something to Mr. Banks, too. An' there be plenty of fools in this settlement to listen to him. So I'm tellin' ye the truth about who sot fire to Davy Marsh's camp. Davy don't know it himself. He says Dick done it—when Dick ain't lookin'. But I done it—an' 'twas me doctored that piece of canoe pole that broke by accident first of all—an' I'm willin' to swear to it on the book!"
"You need not swear it to me," said Nell Harley. "I believe what you have told me—every word of it—though it is a terrible thing! And I believe whatever Dick Goodine says. What can I do to help Dick?"
"I guess you like Dick pretty well," said Maggie Leblanc, with a swift, sidewise glance of her black eyes. "An' Dick likes you. That's why I got mad at him, an' Wigmore an' some other folks say that's why he shot at Mr. Rayton."