He plucked at the withered flowers which the old man had thrown him.  He could detect their sweet scent above the pungent fumes of tobacco and as Obadiah’s triumphant chuckle recurred to him, the gloating joy in his eyes, the passionate tremble of his voice, a grim smile passed over his face.  The mystery was easy of solution—­if he was willing to reason along certain lines.  But he was not willing.  He had formed his own picture of Strang’s wife and it pleased him to keep it.  At moments he half conceded himself a fool, but that did not trouble him.  The longer he smoked the more his old confidence and his old recklessness returned to him.  He had enjoyed his adventure.  The next day he would end it.  He would go openly into St. James and have done his business with Strang.  Then he would return to his ship.  What had he, Captain Plum, to do with Strang’s wife?

But even after he had determined on these things his brain refused to rest.  He paced back and forth across the narrow room, thinking of the man whom he was to meet to-morrow—­of Strang, the one-time schoolmaster and temperance lecturer who had made himself a king, who for seven years had defied the state and nation, and who had made of his island stronghold a hot-bed of polygamy, of licentiousness, of dissolute power.  His blood grew hot as he thought again of the beautiful girl who had appealed to him.  Obadiah had said that she was the king’s wife.  Still—­

Thoughts flashed into his head which for a time made him forget his mission on the island.  In spite of his resolution to keep to his own scheme he found himself, after a little, thinking only of the Mormon king, and the lovely face he had seen through the castle window.  He knew much about the man with whom he was to deal to-morrow.  He knew that he had been a rival of Brigham Young and that when the exodus of the Mormons to the deserts of the west came he had led his own followers into the North, and that each July, amid barbaric festivities, he was recrowned with a circlet of gold.  But the girl!  If she was the king’s wife why had her eyes called to him for help?

The question crowded Nathaniel’s brain with a hundred thrilling pictures.  With a shudder he thought of the terrible power the Mormon king held not only over his own people but over the Gentiles of the mainlands as well.  With these mainlanders, he regarded Beaver Island as a nest of pirates and murderers.  He knew of the depredations of Strang and his people among the fishermen and settlers, of the piratical expeditions of his armed boats, of the dreaded raids of his sheriffs, and of the crimes that made the women of the shores tremble and turn white at the mere mention of his name.

Was it possible that this girl—­