Tom’s face paled for an instant.
“Please don’t think that I am afraid of Ned Tone,” he said. “I am only afraid of being driven away from here. But perhaps there is no real danger of it. That fellow’s eyes may not be as sharp as Mick Otter’s. If the old Indian is to be trusted I’ll just carry on and let Ned Tone make the next move; but I think he would have been nosing around before this, if he had recognized my phiz in a newspaper.”
“But he does not know you are here,” said the girl. “He has every reason to believe that you are lost in the woods, wandering about eating wild berries—or dead.”
When old Mick Otter heard Tom Akerley’s story from Catherine, he permitted himself the faintest flicker of a smile. The thing that tickled his sense of humor was the position of his old friend Gaspard Javet.
“Gaspar’ he hate devil darn bad an’ like Tom darn well, what?” he remarked. “We bes’ fix them catridges again before Gaspar’ shoot at deer or bobcat, or maybe he smell somethin’, hey?”
“But what shall we do if Ned Tone sees a newspaper and suspects the truth about Tom?” asked Catherine.
“How you know that until he come, hey? He don’t git no newspaper, maybe, down to B’ilin’ Pot. We watch out sharp, anyhow; an’ if Ned Tone make the move, me an’ Tom take to the big woods; an’ nobody find ’im then, you bet. Ned Tone got nothin’ in his skull ’cept some muscle off his neck.”
With this the girl had to be satisfied, but she believed that both Tom and the old Maliseet under-rated Ned Tone’s cunning and the possible danger which he represented.
The weather held fine and the hay-making went briskly on day by day; and in odd half-hours, usually late at night, Mick and Tom worked at replacing the explosive charges in Gaspard’s cartridges. Catherine helped in this, by carrying and returning, as she had helped Tom in the work of withdrawing the same charges of cordite. She and Tom felt no fear now of the old man’s recognizing Tom as the being that had swooped down from the sky; and Tom felt so sure now of Gaspard’s friendship and sanity that, but for the girl, he would have confessed the facts of the case to him. She would not hear of this, however.
“You don’t know him as well as I do,” she argued. “He is a dear, kind old man—but he is quite mad on that one subject of a visit from a devil. But, of course, if you want to be shot dead, if you are tired of life in this dull place, tell Grandad.”