“And now you want to go back. Do you know what it means if you are arrested? Have you thought of that?”
Roger Oakley waved the query aside as though it concerned him not at all.
“I want to be with you,” he said, wistfully. “You may not get through alive, and I want to be with you. You'll need me. There's no one you can trust as you can me, for I won't fail you, no matter what the danger is. And there's the girl, Dannie. Have you thought of her?”
Dan set his lips. “My God, I can't think of anything else.”
There was a moment's silence.
“Here,” said Dan, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “I am going to give you what money I have. It isn't much.”
“What for, Dannie?”
“You are sure to be seen and recognized if you stay about here. Your description has been telegraphed all over the State. For that reason I'll take you with me part way. Then I'll slow up, and you can hide again. It's your only chance. I am sorry I can't do more for you. I wish I could; but perhaps we can arrange to meet afterwards.”
His father smiled with the unconscious superiority of the man who firmly believes he is controlled by an intelligence infinitely wise and beyond all human conception. No amount of argument could have convinced him that Providence was not burning millions of feet of standing timber and an occasional town solely for his guidance. In his simple seriousness he saw nothing absurd nor preposterous in the idea. He said:
“I've wanted to escape, Dannie, for your sake, not for mine. But when I seen you to-night I knew the Lord intended we should keep together. He didn't bring us here for nothing. That ain't His way. There's no one to go with you but me, and you can't go alone.”