“Don’t frighten them, Nat.  Get down!”

He crouched until he was only a part of the shadows of the ground and following his example Nathaniel slipped between two of the knolls.  A few yards away the sound of the voices ceased and there was a hesitancy in the soft tread of the approaching steps.  Slowly, and now in awesome silence, two figures came down the path and when they reached a point opposite the hummocks Nathaniel could see that they turned their faces toward them and that for a brief space there was something of terror in the gleam he caught of their eyes.  In a moment they had passed.  Then he heard them running.

“They saw us!” Captain Plum exclaimed.

Obadiah hopped to his feet and rubbed his hands with great glee.  “What a temptation, Nat!” he whispered.  “What a temptation to frighten them out of their wits!  No, they didn’t see us, Nat—­they didn’t see us.  The girls are always frightened when they pass these graves.  Some day—­”

“Graves!” almost shouted the master of the Typhoon.  “Graves—­and we sitting on ’em!”

“That’s all right, Nat—­that’s all right.  They’re my graves, so we’re welcome to sit on them.  I often come here and sit for hours at a time.  They like to have me, especially little Jean—­the middle one.  Perhaps I’ll tell you about Jean before you go away.”

If Captain Plum had been watching him he would have seen that soft mysterious light again shining in the old councilor’s eyes.  But now Nathaniel stood erect, his nostrils sniffing the air, catching once more the sweet scent of lilac.  He hurried out into the opening, with the old man close behind him, and peered down into the starlit gloom into which the two girls had disappeared.  The lovely face that had appeared to him for an instant at Obadiah’s cabin began to haunt him.  He was sure now that his sudden appearance had not been the only cause of its terror, and he felt that he should have called out to her or followed until he had overtaken her.  He could easily have excused his boldness, even if the councilor had been watching him from the cabin door.  He was certain that she had passed very near to him again and that the fright which Obadiah had attempted to explain was not because of the graves.  He swung about upon his companion, determined to ask for an explanation.  The latter seemed to divine his thought.

“Don’t let a little scent of lilac disturb you so, young man,” he said with singular coldness.  “It may cause you great unpleasantness.”  He went ahead and Nathaniel followed him, assured that the old man’s words and the way in which he had spoken them no longer left a doubt as to the identity of his night visitor.  She was one of the councilor’s wives, so he thought, and his own interest in her was beginning to have an irritating effect.  In other words Obadiah was becoming jealous.